Reviews

If Kill Bill and Samurai Champloo had a CG animated baby who grows up to develop an unhealthy fixation on teeth, it's name would be Blue Eye Samurai.

I recommend it to anyone who enjoys Samurai stories. I watched it all the way through and was entertained, but it's not a masterpiece and in my opinion doesn't deserve the hype it has generated. If you go in expecting a magnum opus of storytelling and animation, you'll probably be disappointed.

The main characters are compelling, but antagonists and most supporting characters are cliche caricatures- with the exception of Swordfather (who I loved.) The main and primary supporting characters are lifted from various other stories, with a few exceptions.

The animation sometimes looks exceptionally good, but the wonky CG animation mars it.

The soundtrack doesn't fit. I like anachronistic soundtracks, but this one is not well done.

It is a fun story, though, and I enjoyed it warts and all.

The show is better than the book. That's something I say rarely, but it's my honest opinion. The beginning of both book and show are breathtaking, but fall apart mid way through. After fumbling a time-jump so badly it nearly lead me to quit watching, the show writers take the pig's ear that is the 2nd half of the novel and make it look like a silk purse.

While the show's transition from young child to young adult Alice isn't particularly well done, it's far better than the book's. After the abrupt book transition to Alice as a young woman the story goes to pieces. I understand that both show and book are character-driven (if you're looking for a fast-moving suspense or action drama, don't bother with this show) but in the book the characters stop developing in any way after the time jump. The show stumbles for an episode or so then picks up the threads the book author dropped and do their best to weave both the character and plot arcs into a coherent and compelling narrative.

The soundtrack is fantastic if you like otherworldly modern indie music. The acting and scenery are very good. If you enjoy a bleak, slow-burning character study that blossoms in sparse sunlight, then this Australian drama is worth a look.

As a fan of the books & games, I thought the first season was decent. It's an adaptation of a multi-book short story collection with an overarching narrative. Without prior knowledge of the series, I may have required multiple views to understand the timeline and events. It has a similar feel to the stories, though, and I enjoyed it.

Season 2 had a great first episode and an okay finale, but meandered in the middle episodes. The substance of many adapted stories were altered. Parts that were main story in the book felt like filler and lacked necessary plot & character development. I'll never understand why adaptations leave out parts that are important to understanding the main plot and characters, yet add meaningless fluff & soap opera drama. Some characters that don't say ten words in the books are main POV characters now.

Season 3 was awful. Before even looking at the train wreck of the content, I wonder why NF released half the season, when the second half will be aired three weeks? Why not wait and release the entire series, or release one episode each week? Anyway, regardless of the stupid release schedule, the first half of season 3 is abysmal. The main actors who brought the characters to life in season 1 don't seem to want to be there at all anymore. The script writers are no longer even trying to follow the Witcher stories, they're just off in the weeds doing their own thing. The drop in quality this season is precipitous. I'm sorry to say it, but Netflix's The Witcher is no longer worth watching.

The first season kept me guessing the entire time. The script and acting were very good, cinematography and soundtrack decent, plus the storytelling and character development were top-tier for a police procedural. The storytelling went beyond "whodunnit" and rather than feeling like a rubbernecking gawker, I found myself immersed in the characters' lives.

Unfortunately after the first season the quality of the plot and storytelling dips significantly. I can understand a studio wanting to milk a popular IP for all it's worth, but it would be great if they just didn't do that when they can't maintain even a modicum of the first season's quality. The first series finale was a quality capstone to the series, and if the show ended there I would have rated it an 8 or 9 without hesitation.

How could I not love a show called Star Trek with decent production values, starring some of my favorite actors, about a quantum entangled magic mushroom-powered starship?

Let me count the ways:

-The main plot was based largely on the worst sci fi plot crutch ever: evil alternate universe. I hated those episodes in TOS and DS9 and I hated them here. Except in TOS and DS9 you could ignore those episodes and the rest of the overarching plot would still make sense. STD is saturated with evil alternate universe rubbish. TNG and to a lesser extent Voyager did alternate universe/timeline episodes in a more thought-provoking way. It's a shame if they had to do so much of it that they didn't go a route with more nuance.

-Ret-cons and re-imagining of some of my favorite characters, lore, and alien species. They did the Klingons dirty and utterly destroyed the cultural identity of the Trill. I deeply wish that new Trek series would leave Spock alone. I thought seeing young Spock and Sarek developing as characters would be great. Instead it's like watching a 1980's era soap operas with Star Trek characters shoe-horned in.

-Regardless of how many feats of scripting gymnastics they did to explain away why Discovery was so much more technologically advanced than any other future Trek ship, it all comes off as ridiculous and unbelievable. Not only the ship, but the technological capabilities of other established Trek societies are ridiculous in any context. So much of the plot relies on absurd "technology" that is fantasy, not science fiction.

-Officers allowing crew mates to put their personal navel gazing over the safety of the ship and allowing them to derail military discipline is something that can not be explained away by this being an earlier "Trek" in the timeline. In no era would that sort of thing fly amongst a crew of astronauts nor in any any branch of the military. In every other Trek a character's inability to stow their emotional baggage and not make it the entire crew's problem resulted in the character being disciplined. Even when it was about something important, like Warf avenging his mate's murder and potentially stopping a Klingon civil war in TNG. He broke the chain of command and was demoted and prevented from ever attaining a command level rank. Warf got in trouble for ignoring orders to save his wife's life in DS9 too. Conversely, so much Discovery screen time, including during duty and even on the bridge, is focused heavily on characters navel gazing in the 2020's fashion, at the expense of telling a story about space exploration amongst a disciplined crew.

-Complete bastardization of the Trek message of hope in hard times, solidarity amongst intelligent species, quandaries about when it is acceptable to interfere with another culture, civilization, or planet and when it's better to mind one's own affairs and let the issue develop without interference.

Even Michelle Yeoh and Tig Notaro could not save this disaster. Please stop calling these generic space opera shows "Star Trek."

If you like dark, slice-of-life comedy that explores the less-than-pleasant aspects of being a flawed human being, you'll probably like this.

The seasons the main character is a disgraced baseball announcer turned viral internet meme, seems destined to return to life in the gutters again and again, no matter how badly he wants to me a good person, and many fresh chances he gets. All the while he is dropping crass yet strangely philosophical commentary on his life, baseball, and whatever else pops into his head. His character development doesn't really begin until late in the second season, and the third concludes it in a way that should have made a solid series finale. All the characters have satisfying conclusion to their stories and most (not all) of the plot points are tied up well.

Unfortunately they made a shark jumping fourth season. There's a ten-year time-jump and only the main character remains from the first three seasons. Every other character is gone. This show always interjected socially relevant commentary into the jokes, so that aspect wasn't new, and isn't what I'm complaining about. The fourth season kept the politics and chucked the jokes. What remained a non-stop fire hose of Twitter-worthy hot takes. Do yourself a favor and don't watch the fourth season unless you're into that sort of thing.

For people who don't know, the target audience of this show are Dungeons and Dragons nerds (not shaming, I am one,) and people who are particularly fans of Critical Role. This show is an adaptation of a DnD tabletop campaign. It's not supposed to feel like a scripted show, as a large part of it is supposedly improvised. There are a lot of reviews complaining that the writing is bad or immature and they're not wrong, but they're also not the target audience. Comparing this to shows like Arcane or Cowboy Bebop is ridiculous. Apart from being animated media, this show has nothing in common with story rich SFF dramas.

FWIW a lot of this show IS silly and juvenile. It had some laugh out loud moments, and I enjoyed watching it with my TTRPG group and laughing together, reminiscing when it reminded us of our adventures. It's not something I'd watch on my own, though. Personally, I don't get the hype of Critical Role nor following other people's campaigns-it's a lot more fun to play in one! The show does what it sets out to do, though. It has a high rating because it meets the expectations of its primary audience. The animation and voice acting is decent, and they capture the atmosphere of cooperative storytelling in the format of table top role playing games. It's just not my cup of tea.

TL;DR Recommend to people who haven't read the books, and are looking to escape into a mediocre young adult fantasy series.

*** The mark of a good book-to-screen adaptation is that it appeals to either book fans or people new to the series. The mark of a great book-to-screen adaptation is that it has something compelling for both audiences. Rafe Judkins "Wheel of Time" accomplished neither.

The first season starts out rough around the edges, has a few brilliant scenes in the middle episodes, and loses its way completely at the end of season one. If you're new to Wheel of Time, it will probably feel like a generic action fantasy with a lot of extremely petty teen drama, and an inconsistent magic system with no rules that allows characters to return from the dead. It's not a categorically bad show all around, especially if the source material is ignored, but there's little to distinguish it from the other similar action fantasy fare.

For people who read the books, loved the diverse world, deftly-written political intrigue that inspired A Song of Ice and Fire, complex characters, mature, socially-conscious messages of humanism and solidarity in hard times, and consistent magic system- prepare for disappointment.

I can't imagine the show will age well due to sacrificing character growth and the majority of the plot for empty virtue signaling shoved through the myopic lens of the current zeitgeist. The world of The Wheel of Time was already full of diverse cultures, representations of all kinds of people, and unlike the show, it wasn't tokenizing or pandering at all. The book series has 2,500+ diverse, named characters to choose from. The book's story of the secluded and xenophobic Two Rivers village led to an inspiring message of hope and tolerance when the village takes in refugees, for example. In the show, the Two Rivers and every other location we've seen has shoe-horned diversity from the start, so I guess we can forget seeing the story of how the people of this world grow to tolerate one another and fight together.

If you expect either a faithful retelling or even a quality adaptation with its own identity, look to the next turning of the wheel. You won't find it here.

***

The initial review was for the first three episodes, as they air I'll add an update for each episode.

-Episodes #1-3 I didn't expect a perfectly faithful representation of the books, and came into this with very low expectations in that regard. I expected the book series' sprawling plot to be stretched over the basic bones of the story, and to stick to the main cast, cutting out a lot of the side plots and simplifying some of the main plot.

Three episodes in, Wheel of Time is mediocre. A mature detailed and original story has been lowered to generic action fantasy, and as of now, there's nothing to make it stand on its own apart from the source material.

The introductions to the setting and culture of the Two Rivers region and Emond's Field village were rushed. Depictions of the major events of the world were rushed. The political intrigue missed by a mile. The main characters are only vaguely recognizable from the source material, apart from their names, and have little chemistry for people who are supposed to be cradle-to-grave best friends.

The CGI isn't great, but it's not terrible. The intro is well done. The soundtrack doesn't stand out in any way. Some of the costumes are excellent and others are awful. A lot of the subtle visual symbolism and details are well done, but if you haven't read the books and already know what to look for, you'll probably miss most of it.

-Episode #4: The acting, character chemistry, and pacing all improve a lot in the fourth episode. Hopefully this is a sign of better things to come. I'm concerned that they're portraying the channeling (magic system) in an inconsistent and overpowered way that may significantly derail the plot. This episode was a huge departure from the books, but despite its flaws a marked improvement from the three pilot episodes.

-Episode #5: The sudden month-long time-skip is jarring, and forced a major restructuring of the plot as written in the books. Most of this episode focused on a character that wasn't in the book, and didn't move the plot forward at all. I understand that some changes must be made to adapt a novel series to television, but never understand the decision to cut so much relevant plot material for new scenes and characters that don't add anything significant to the story. Despite those issues, this episode continued to improve in terms of character chemistry. I'm still undecided whether to accept significant departures from the books like the Aes Sedai sobbing and beating their breasts with emotion. Even in extremis, the Aes Sedai serenity is one of their defining characteristics.

On the plus side: Loial is appropriately cast. The show runners really missed an opportunity by not having Loial voice the narrator.

Episode #6: Another episode that failed to move the plot forward. I left this episode feeling frustrated that it is not only going far afield if the source material, but I can't imagine how hollow this world, and abstruse plot would feel to someone who never read the books.

Most of the character development that happened in this part of the books was cut completely, or replaced with some ham-fisted attempts to advance character growth with a single event. It also looks like they're skipping over the entire searching mission to find out what power threatens the world, and how to confront it. Instead a character has a dream that reveals everything, so we can skip the interesting parts and presumably jump straight into the action.

One of the main character actors quit during this episode and they had his character inexplicably wander off and vanish for the rest of the season.

-Episode #7: The opening scene was very well done. It was one of the best choreographed fight scenes I've seen in fantasy film or TV. That one scene did justice to and even expanded on the source material.

Unfortunately anything praise-worthy ended there.

So much time is wasted on events that don't move the story forward, while character growth and plot are limited to rushed exposition. I'm beginning to lose hope that this will improve. The original story is really cut to bare bones, mangled, and it doesn't distinguish itself as an adaptation.

-Episode 8: This was an abysmal season finale. Almost the entire episode was spent focused on a battle that happens "off-screen" in the books as a set-up for the heroic feat of the main character. Only the main character doesn't do it. As it was done in the show, the battle scene was poorly set-up, bordering on nonsensical. The battle done this way doesn't move the story forward, or tell us anything we didn't know about the world, and killed off some of the main and supporting characters who were not even at that battle in the books.

The main action scene in the first book's finale, an introduction to The Forsaken- the primary antagonists of Wheel of Time who the show has not even made mention of- the powerful human servants of The Dark One, was replaced with a dream sequence.

Once again the magic system is portrayed in an inconsistent way, so overpowered in some instances, and underpowered in others.

The episode ends with several of the main characters maimed/dead/lost their power, no explanation of what happened to the central main character at the end- he just wanders off, leaving his injured friend behind.

Then there was the last-minute tease of some of the next season's antagonists with an overpowered and pointless display of magic, shown with absolutely no context. If I hadn't read the books I'd have no clue at all what was supposed to be happening in this episode.

As much as I love this IP's source material, I doubt I'll bother to watch the next season. I really wanted to love this show, but I don't think it's salvageable.

Side note: If you're not enjoying the show or if you are and want more Wheel of Time right away, check out Wheel of Time audiobook co-narrated by Kate Reading. The narrators voice act all the characters and really bring the story to life.

Odd anachronistic soundtrack and costumes. Both belong more in a teen clothing store at the mall than a "historical" drama following the life of Mary Stuart.

If you can enjoy it for what it is, trash fantasy loosely based on the life of a historical figure, it's not a bad show.

If you're looking for serious historical dramas, this is probably not for you.

The Spanish Princess follows political intrigue around Catherine of Aragon's betrothals and marriages to English royals. It adapts the historical fiction The Constant Princess and The King's Curse by Philippa Gregory.

This adaptation was the weakest of the three Starz series, based on Gregory's Tudor and Plantagenet series, but it has enough redeeming qualities to make it worth watching, with caveats. Recommended for people who enjoy historical drama but aren't sticklers for historical accuracy. It departs from the source material The Constant Princess quite a bit more than the first two Starz series, to its detriment.

Good Soundtrack Great set and costumes Good casting and acting. Mediocre script.

I've read and enjoyed the books. The Tudors and Plantagenet series by Philippa Gregory is a series that is worth reading, but very long and detailed. Most of the books focus on only a single character's point of view, and White Princess Starz series selects chapters and plot events from multiple books in the series, doing a fantastic job weaving together the story of love and political intrigue in the courts of Henry VII of England from the viewpoints of their Queens, advisors, and adversaries.

Recommended for people who enjoy historical dramas but don't mind some historical inaccuracies.

Good Soundtrack Great set and costumes Good casting, script and acting.

I've read and enjoyed the books. The Tudors and Plantagenet series by Philippa Gregory is a series that is worth reading if you're into historical dramas, but it's very long and detailed. There are a few diversions and omissions from the source material, but it is overall well done.

Most of the books focus on only a single character's point of view, and there are many books that cover the same time period from different characters' viewpoints. White Queen, the adaptation, selects chapters and plot events from multiple books in the series, doing a fantastic job weaving together the story of political intrigue in the royal courts of Edward IV and Richard III of England from the viewpoints of their Queens, advisors, and adversaries.

Recommended for people who enjoy historical dramas but don't mind some historical inaccuracies. Recommended for people who enjoyed the books, but don't mind some departures from the source.

Good Soundtrack Great set and costumes Good casting, script and acting.

Edit: The Expanse was cancelled half way through season 6. Season 6 was rushed, and unfortunately spent half the airtime on a story arc that they did not finish. As much as I would love to rate this an 8 or a 9 and recommend without caveat, this story is unfinished and concluded in an unsatisfying way.

***

I read and enjoyed The Expanse books, and found the TV adaptation well done. The show has all the important character development and plot points, and while there are a few rushed parts, and some significant changes to the plot and character arcs later on, it actually has better pacing than the books. I recommend consuming both books and television show, because they complement each other well.

Good sound track.

Good CG and practical effects

Great casting and character portrayals

With the exception of the inter-dimensional alien threats, the politics of a the solar system and state of Earth, Mars, and The Belt is a believable story about what human society could be like a few generations after achieving sub-light, intra solar system space travel. The social commentary is divorced enough from our current political circumstances that it doesn't feel like it pandering, yet still manages to be relevant and thought-provoking.

My suspension of disbelief is stretched to tearing by the cast of teens, barely functioning adults, and sex crazed artificial intelligence sent on the last hope mission to save Earth. That and the male character wearing drag queen style makeup and high heels as an astronaut. I'm down with gender nonconformity but can't buy an elite astronaut doctor on a perilous mission to save humanity finding time to glamorize.

The story wasn't compelling at all in the first season, and got a little better in the second. 1/3 stars are for the not as gawdawful second season.

Main character actress Katee must be so muscular because she carried the entire show. 2/3 stars are for Katee.