I finished watching The Man in the High Castle last night. I enjoyed it, but there were some things I don’t think I fully caught. Having never read the book, though I have read a lot of Dick’s other works, I’m wondering how much was changed between the two. Spoilers from the book are fine with me.
I’m going to ask my questions in the next post to avoid any spoilers in the preview box.
What was up with Tagomi and the heart necklace? I didn’t get what was so special about it, but he kept looking at it and the camera kept focusing on it. I know he picked it up when the prince was shot, was it supposed to remind him of all the stuff that was starting to happen?
Was Joe a double agent or something else? He seemed to be loyal to both sides at the same time. I never could tell if he was 100% a Nazi or in love with Juliana.
Why didn’t Wegener kill Hitler. I can only guess that he figured that he knew killing Hitler would mean a huge war, but then why did he kill himself? Hitler didn’t seem surprised or pissed, he had to of known Wegener was forced to assassinate him.
What were the films? There were films about things that happened in ‘our’ reality, things that happened in their reality, and future events. Who made them and why? And why did Hitler want them.
And finally, which way was Tagomi dreaming at the end? Wikipedia, not the best for these kinds of things, says he was imagining an alternate vision of 1962, but I can see him coming out of meditation after dreaming about what might have been had Germany and Japan won the war.
This show was one big WTF, but at least it was an interesting WTF. Unlike a lot of other shows at least I’m not upset at having wasted 10 hours. There’s not going to be a second season is there?
It was the necklace that Jeff made for Juliana, which she left behind when she set off for Canon City.
My question is – who was the sniper who killed the “bad” Nazis who had John Smith in the cabin? Was it his son? Even on freeze frame I couldn’t tell.
So, how good is this program? I was planning to binge watch it, but want to have some idea if it would be worth it.
I knew it was her necklace, I was just wondering if it held some actual meaning for him. The best I could come up with is that it’s a reminder of all the things he had done and he found it at the attempted assassination and was keeping it as a physical reminder.
I binge watched it over this past weekend. I knew very little about it before I started. There is some WTF with it, which is why I started this thread so there could be actual conversation instead of the one with no spoilers in it. There’s a lot of good acting and scenery in the show, and if you like your characters not fully black and white there’s a lot of gray with everyone.
It is a Philip K Dick novel, and most everything I read by him always left me thinking and wondering about the story and what, if any, the point was of the book. If you like that kind of story telling then you’ll probably like the show.
Okay, I watched the first episode earlier this evening. I am not sure this program is for me. I am disappointed it is set in the 1960s as, for some reason, I thought it would be set in present day.
Right now it feels kind of like The Americans to me; a show I tried to stick with but could not.
How does film of America winning the war exist? Is there some kind of mass hallucination going on?
Our world is an alternate history in that Axis-won world. In the book, the alternate history is even different from our own reality - I think, IIRC, in that alt history after the Allies win, WW3 happens between the US and the UK - which makes it a bit less confusing (though Dick does love asking questions about the nature of reality).
Note on the the films replaced a book from the book, in fact in the book I think the fictional book mentions a fictional writing in the what if world where the Allies won by a Phillip Dick.
Making them films instead of a book increases the magic/timey-whimey of the whole story by a lot. In the book, the Man in the High Castle was the writer of the Alt-Fiction book where the Allies won.
I last read the book in 1991 so I don’t really recall a lot of details. I found the series caught the flavor of the book without really being the book if that makes any sense. There are a lot of changes and that is OK, I don’t think the book would have made a good movie if literally translated to the screen.
Soooo… Good use of time to watch it? Or a giant mind fuck?
Is that necessarily mutually exclusive?
(I’m only on Ep3, so I can’t answer it quite yet)
Overall I thought it was quite good, but that is downgraded from my first impression. I thought it dragged a little in the later episodes and a lot was left unexplained.
Is this planned as a single season program? I don’t know if I want to invest time in yet another program that ends on a cliff with no resolution to major plot points.
Don’t invest. Really. No idea why there are threads about this.
It was the Major (the blond guy in Smith’s office).
I really enjoyed the show. Then again, I’m a huge fan of Philip K. Dick, who really couldn’t write a plot, but presented very interesting situations that made you think about the nature of reality. And I think that was the point of the show (at least this season - if it continues, it needs more of a driving plot). It’s probably the first show I’ve seen that makes you root for Hitler not to be assassinated ;).
Kinda pissed because I went off of What Exit?'s thread where he declared it the best tv show he’d ever seen, better than Breaking Bad and Sopranos.
Oops.
I watched the whole thing today, and didn’t really enjoy it. I thought it dragged. I never really felt captivated. How did I last a whole day? Well, I’m a bit obsessive about tv.
I could see watching one or two episodes a week and having it be an interesting show in one’s weekly mix. But dedicating a day to it like I did was a stupid mistake.
I watched two episodes last night and can’t say that I have any desire to see a third.
Nothing about it really grabbed me. None of the characters left an impression on me.
Lastly, the picture looked muted and dirty, like the back light to my tv was having problems (only this show, not others). So visually, it was just kinda annoying.
I haven’t decided if I’ll give it another episode or not.
Actually I said “best since Sopranos”. Sadly by the 10th episode I lowered by opinion. But it did start very strong.
That’s also a matter of opinion.
On balance I would recommend this show. I thoroughly enjoyed it while I was watching, but looking back on the thing as a whole I’m a little unsatisfied.
I thought the world building was top notch, with excellent production values and “good enough” acting. The constant “will he betray them or won’t he” “suspense” got a little tiresome after a while, and I considered it a distraction from the more interesting aspects of the show, namely the details of the various empires and how people lived in them.
But the ending really fell flat. He opens his eyes to an alternative Allies-winning future? Why? How does that interact with anything that has happened so far? It made all of the earlier plot seem pointless. For me it really had an annoying “it was all a dream” quality about it.
So I just finished watching it, I was really invested in the first nine episodes but the last one fell flat IMO. What was the whole point of the last scene and why was so much focus placed on the necklace? Are we meant to think that Hitler was The Man in the High Castle, or was his identity just a red herring that didn’t have a point? Who made the films, were they actually real?
Had I known going in that no questions would actually be answered I would not have invested ten hours. Or if there supposed to be a second season?