Take two.
Normally I only review ongoing series’ after they’ve ended, but in this case they made more after I thought they might be done. If I didn’t have any interest in the series, I wouldn’t bother, but I do (at least, did), so here goes.
A society absolutely dominated by mass-media in almost every aspect of one’s life. People don’t seem bothered by it, trying to escape it…they seem a seam (ugh) less part of it, and wanting to be accepted into the collective even more, and more…
Everything is enhanced to make grading others as easy and fast as possible. People seem either genuinely happy walking around spending as much time worrying about their grade/grading others as they do actually LIVING, or they do their best to appear so…for grading purposes, of course.
The best things that happen – either naturally, or more often artificially created or at least enhanced – are immediately captured on video/picture/text and uploaded to the collective, in the hope others will appreciate how good they are. This seems much more important than the actual things themselves…the joy of a moment seems to mean more as a way of gathering an up-tick in your rating than in actually ENJOYING the moment…sad.
Also sad that this is NOT totally “science fiction”. It’s science fact, in many ways. And some people probably can watch this and NOT see it as horror. But it is…this is a horror show of ‘Mean Girls’-as-society-ideal; the wonderful BEGINNING, of course…not the horrible, incomprehensible breakup of that ideal clique.
A lot of things are just down the road, sooner or later, if people continue to care more about what other people think than what THEY think, what THEY believe, and what THEY value.
Almost everyone is absolutely ruthless in pursuit of mass popularity…humanity is an afterthought to most, as are personal convictions, beliefs, opinions…’Mean Girls’ is baby-steps in comparison. Even genuine emotion mixes with fake, forced, artificial. It’s hard to tell the two apart…but don’t worry, soon it won’t be hard…it’ll be impossible.
Outliers remain, of course…but they just don’t GET IT…yet.
About two-thirds of the way through it lapses; it starts to explain everything you (For the Love/Lack of God, hopefully) already knew, as long as you were a non-computerized human.
“…no…NO…I…can’t…LEAVE.”
(emotions)
FAIR USE: CRITICISM – A great, powerful clip…and one that fits here, strangely enough.
There’s a slow decline, unfortunately. Terribly unfortunate: from near-perfect and rising, to human.
Oh well. Brave new world, indeed.
The outcome you know is coming…has so much potential.
I mean, 15 million merits of potential…
and…
hey…sort of, wow.
Great music, it builds (not as good as, but…) like ’28 Days Later’…and the emotion, you’ll find, isn’t so different.
The effects are very good and well-placed, the acting is convincing.
Great artistic touch when she looks up right before the end.
Very good ending; nothing maudlin about it…”there’s no vindication here, counselor. Or absolution, or benediction, or ANYTHING…”
Don’t miss the ending. It’s human.
Wow. It’s not ‘Fifteen Million Merits’, but it’s the first thing I’ve felt the excitement of NEEDING to post about in quite a while. I hesitate to praise it TOO much (perhaps two wows is a bit much), because the surprise of seeing something good after a lot of sh1t sometimes pushes the dial too high.
What’s my Alexa ranking now…F@CK THAT.
The best since 2.
Inspirational Quote: “You are just…too old to get it.”
P.S. – I enjoyed writing this…so it doesn’t matter if you like it, or not.