Altered Carbon Season 2 dropped on Netflix on February 27, 2020. I am up to episode 5 and so far I am enjoying it a lot more than the first season.
A few changes that I have noticed:
This season is a lot more contained. The first season jumped around a lot in time and location. So far in this season they have made use of a few very short flashbacks.
A lot less gratuitous sex/nudity. The first season went overboard with this.
Better writing and acting. Anthony Mackie (The Falcon in the Avengers) is really good as the lead this season. At 8 episodes instead of 10, the plot is moving along more quickly.
Just finished binging it and it was very enjoyable. I didn’t like it quite as much as the first season, and definitely missed the hot naked ladies as well as the obviously much higher budget, but it was a worthy follow up and I hope we get a third season.
Same here, so I can only give my opinion of the novels (I read 3), which is that I enjoyed the first one, and while I enjoyed it, at first it did not leave me wanting More, Now, but then soon enough the second novel came out, and I decided that I liked it, and did not hesitate to read the third one. My biggest issue was a bit of “Fridge Logic” in which people seemed oddly squeamish about embracing the full cyberpunk implications of their gimmick technology-- but maybe that was deliberately deliberate, as, in the author’s own words, “There is a central conceit that I keep — not consciously, I swear! — returning to in my work. It takes different metaphorical guises, but at root it’s always the same sense of something grand and worthwhile being abandoned by vicious and stupid men in favour of short-term profit and tribal hegemony.”
OK, I watched some of it. I still prefer the more elaborate story and better characterization of the original novels compared to the TV adaptation. I understand making a TV show requires certain changes, but some of the stuff was bizarre and silly, distracting from the serious themes – what was up with the execution via gladiatorial combat? Reileen is his sister now (what a coincidence)? He travels with a second-rate copy of the cool AI hotel for some reason? Etc. Also, I’m not sure how much someone who hasn’t read the books is supposed to know background stuff, like what is the Protectorate, who is Falconer, what are the differences between Earth and Harlan’s World… But, overall, it’s entertaining and the smaller number of episodes makes it very watchable.
Did you watch the first season of the show? IIRC, it has been two years since I watched it, most of your questions were answered in that season. The hotel AI was a pretty major character.
I also watched it, but I don’t remember–were all of the edits justified? I’m talking about Season 2, though. About the hotel character (dressed like Poe instead of Jimi Hendrix for some reason), I didn’t mean to imply it was not a major character, but: in the book, before leaving Earth, Kovacs makes sure to send some steady business its way. In Season 2, though, the same hotel is with him, on a completely different planet, as a sort of sidekick. So I thought to myself, why would he have a hotel as a sidekick? Or any sidekick at all, for that matter? It does not fit his character, and seemed rather odd. Also, it diminishes the hotel as a fleshed-out character a little to imply it only revolves around Kovacs.
If I am misremembering things, my excuse is, those novels came out nearly 20 years ago…
Finally started it. This was my favorite show of the year it came out, so I hope it can live up to that season. I would have preferred the same actor stayed in the role…
FYI if you have not run across it, there is a Takeshi Kovacs adventure in graphic novel form, called “Download Blues”.
Regarding Season 2,
Another odd beat is that Kovacs gets “killed”[li] (self-sacrifice to “save the world”!?), instead of the bright-eyed, hopeful, redeemed second-chance Kovacs getting abruptly blown away as revenge for a few brutal murders. Now, which ending is more cyberpunk?[/li]
That basically sums up the kind of problems I have with the essence of the show, even though the acting, the background, etc. make the show visually cool.
You’ve hit on one of my beefs with Season 2 (which I’m currently watching and mostly enjoying). It seems to me that the same person inhabiting different “sleeves” should sound like the same person—maybe not the same vocal timbre, but a similar rhythm and style. Anthony Mackie doesn’t sound anything like Joel Kinnaman; he has a completely different acting style and isn’t modifying his delivery at all. Then the show brings in a third Kovacs played by Will Yun Lee, and he doesn’t sound anything like those two other guys. :dubious:
Yeah, after I posted that I remembered he was in the first season—but, IIRC, not nearly as much as in Season 2. (Feel free to correct me on that point, too; I don’t even remember what I was doing an hour ago.)
I have yet to finish season 2, but he was in season 1 quite a bit, actually. He is the original Takeshi(he was Asian when we saw him as a little kid with his sister).
I’ve only watched the fist two episodes of Season 2, so I can’t comment there, but he was in Season 1 a lot - all the Envoy training/rebellion flashbacks & the fight in the apartment flashback.
The fundamental flaw of season 2 is that they “resleeved” Takeshi into Anthony Mackie when the obvious choice would have been to simply resleeve him into Will Yun Lee and let him play the role fully.
Zero agains Mackie, but it feels inconsistent. Will Yun Lee already played the part and it would have been smoother and better to just let our main character be him.
I’ve just seen episode 4. I’m not totally heads over heels about it, but each episode has left me wanting more. But dammit, Poe is clearly the best character, and Kovacs being an ass towards him sort of diminishes my enthusiasm for his (Kovacs, I mean) arc.
It is useful to remember he (Kovacs) is very much an antihero, and it would take a while to enumerate all the extremely fucked-up stuff he does, both on- and off-stage. (btw in the beginning of the comic he’s on some shithole planet killing time getting drunk and brawling in seedy bars, and this presumably takes place after a total of centuries of life and his adventures of the books/tv show, so we can see how quick he is to fundamentally change as a person)
I just finished it. The only thing that bothered me was the ending.
They spend two seasons telling you that life has no meaning without death, and then the closing shot is “but good news, he was saved from death!”
There is speculation for a third season, including that the books are a trilogy. So maybe there is a setup for tension with Quellchrist there. But him being saved by the deus ex machina landed poorly for me.