Kind of a shame, really. Visually, it was very well done. Some good music, some nice surreal moments. But the (lack of) plot really doesn’t pull it all together and, while I expected quite a bit of reimagining, I’m not even sure why this was called The Prisoner at all. It’s as if they took some B sci-fi movie plot and layered Prisoner trappings on top of it. Oh well.
bcnu
I don’t get AMC, but the thread got me wondering if KAR120C might have made a cameo of some sort.
A bit of googling led me to discover that the original vehicle was a Lotus…wait for it…7.
But 76432 you don’t understand. I’m not 86917, not today. I’m just a man dreaming of 4-15. Ooops, I mean thinking about 4-15. Oh no it’s too late…
You guys really need to rent the original, it had a very creative plot and steller acting top to bottom. Sure the plot was out there for the 60’s, but you could follow it and they worked towards a logical conclusion. This reminded me of a Sci Fi channel special, but less plot.
Thanks. But I guess, in understanding it a little, now I don’t understand it at all. It just doesn’t make sense. If Two was trying to help troubled people IRL, why would he subject them to Fascism Lite in the Village? Why have Six arrive disoriented and hostile? Why would 93 and Six’s fake brother have been killed for trying to leave? Why teach the children how to conduct surveillance? Why have the shimmery twin towers appear at all? Why have wraps be the only available food? 
I just don’t think the filmmakers thought things through at all. They knew a little about the original McGoohan series, apparently, then put their own spin on it with what they thought were some nifty-cool concepts, but ended up with an illogical, bizarre mess. Blech.
Yes, what was with the food in wraps??
I don’t know, I thought they were both pretty hot.
And was Mrs. 2 the same actress that was in the Viagra commercial in the last hour?
I give props to a local car dealer, which ran special ads during the show that included the lines “At Stevenson Honda-Chevy-Kia, you’re always Number One to us!” and “We’re friendly people, and we’ll never forget your name!”
Yes, I believe she was…
But there’s hot, and then theres really, really, really hot.
I guess the brunette would be ok if 4-15 wasn’t available. I can’t believe that when she was laying on the floor in his apartment playing with her hair, giving him “the look” he never caught the hint.
But to be honest, the way Jim played that charactor he didn’t seem to be the brightest tool in the drawer. In the original 6 was brilliant, I wonder what happened to him? Oh, that’s right, he’s American this time.
Well they did have cake & ice cream that wasn’t in wrap form, but everthing else was in wraps. Major WTF moment.
I never said The Matrix wasn’t derivative and unoriginal. Quite the contrary.
You see, if the show wanted to add some bite, there would have been some questions as to whether six really accepted the situation or was being brainwashed himself. But it went for a bland, new-age, feel-good ending.
Well, not entirely. Looks like Six is the new Two, and musing over making the Village a nicer place, but you know what they say about absolute power…
Like I said before, the whole “the village is the only thing that exists” pitch, doesn’t work if you’re living in a house and town full of branded items. Unless of course, you buy into the idea that everything that surrounds you just dropped out of the sky one day.
I’d add to your original summary BTW - the bazillionaire philanthropist also owns Summacor. Michael was in a division that wasn’t cleared for info about the Village. So when he independently comes up with a list of people in the Village based on his surveillance, the first response is panic and an order to cease & desist. When the information finally trickles up to the bazillionaire, he realizes he might have found a successor.
I don’t think it started as Fascism Lite. It drifted that way, because there’s no way to remove freedom without imposing some kind of totalitarianism. That’s why at the very end 6 (the new 2?) makes his little monolog about doing it better. He’ll fail too.
When you die, you leave the village? The guy that New York 6 pointed out on the street as a “soldier who blew up a school” was 909. Maybe once you’re completely cured, they have to kill you in the village so you live full time in the real world.
The wraps - IRL Helen can only put so much detail into her dreams. So there’s only a few styles of houses, and everyone gets wraps to eat. Plus it was funny. Or, Helen is a terrible cook - remember she made wraps for them to eat at the very end. Maybe that’s all she knows how to make.
I agree though - it was a mess, and the original was much, much better.
Well I finally finished it. Not bad, I thought, although not nearly as amusing as the original. I think the blase elements of the plot would not have mattered as much if the lead had had more charisma than a sock puppet. A nice compelling star makes even the blandest fare enjoyable.
My take on the wraps was that they were part of the allegory of being a prisoner: all “wrapped up” in the confines of the village. No wide open edges to escape through, like on four sides of a sandwich. With a wrap, there’s only one way out!
Nice little touches: the boneshaker bicycle, the cigarette smoking scene, the little “6” embedded in the O of “Prisoner,” and how the Summakor logo and the logo of The Village (which also looks like a hand signaling STOP!) are kind of permutations of each other.
I know I’m in the minority, but I really liked it. I don’t think you can really compare it to the original because it wasn’t a straightup remake, it was a new story that shared some of the same elements, but wasn’t really about the same thing.
If I had to though, I would say the original has a more likeable archetypal hero, not that that’s better, and was a little more accessible. The new one was more interesting, atmospheric, and had a better ending with actual payoff.
I found it kind of amusing that the original was much more literal, with an abstract ending, and this one was much more abstract, with a literal ending.
I also liked how people within the ‘dream’ were called ‘dreamers’ if they could remember real life.
11-12 was my favorite character, and was probably the true ‘prisoner’ since he had no real life counterpart and so could never escape. I didn’t get why he killed his lover though - 2 already knew about them so it can’t be to keep it a secret. I also found it strange that 2 seemed relatively OK with the relationship other than the age issue, but in a later episode he complains about 11-12 being in the bar again and tells him to meet a nice girl so they can have children.
It feels like there were still a few loose threads, but having seen the resolution I’ll have to go back and watch again to see how things work while knowing the situation.
One thing I particularly liked was the surprise that the ‘flashbacks’ were really contemporaneous with the Village story and not memories of the past.
I thought the first night was fairly straightforward, giving you one view of what’s going on, and then the second night gets confusing, showing you all the problems with the original viewpoint, and then in the third part the original viewpoint cracks apart completely and reveals the truth.
I think most of your questions are related - 2 is trying to create a certain kind of environment for the subconscious avatars of the people, but it’s very hard to create a static community without methods of control which limit freedom. Things get out of hand, especially with the influence of six, who has a much closer connection to his ‘real life’ self than anyone besides 2 and 2’s wife, and perhaps his blinkmatch mate. “Dreamers” were people who remembered parts of their real life. They had to be reformed or removed because the whole point of being there was to have a place to work on yourself or have an experience free from the horrible things in your real life. Of course, 2 went a little overboard with his methods, thought killing people just released them from the Village unharmed, but he eventually realized it and turned things over to 6.
6 awoke far from the Village with memories intact because his self was whole and not broken like therapeutic Villagers. He basically arrived as a full blown ‘dreamer’.
Everything was wraps because the wife liked wraps, as we see when she awakens- it was her subconscious influence.
I’m not sure Patrick McGoohan was a great actor, but he did stubborn and pissed off very well, and the original series played to those strengths (not surprisingly, given that he created it as a showcase for himself). By contrast, JC was called upon to display a wide variety of extreme emotions – a lot – and succeeded primarily in having great bone structure.
Worst bad review ever.
I like the original too, but a logical conclusion? The final episode of the original is (in)famous for being totally bizarre and offering no definitive answers to any of the questions raised in the series. Tellingly, a semi-official sequel attempted to rationalize the finale and in doing so, turned it on its head.
I had DVR’ed it, and just finally finished.
What a steaming heap of Rover poo! I watched the original when it first came to the US, and it was the first thing I got from Netflix when I joined.
The scary part of it was that the people in the village were willing pawns. Remember how they would unfurl their umbrellas in unison? That is far scarier than a bunch of people who have somehow forgotten real life. Plus, in the original, “why did you resign” was ironic, because of the jailers had any clue about the immorality of what they did, the reason would be obvious. I also watched the full Secret Agent / Danger Man series, and several times Drake’s secret service screwed him over. “Be seeing you” even showed up. Number 6 was Drake - but if they admitted it they’d have to pay royalties to the guy who created Danger Man.
This one was a total mess. If Six was in the Village at the same time he was in real life, how did he enter? How did the dream include independent actors not in real life? What did dying in the Village mean? If you were in the Village and happy in a dream, but in the real world and miserable, what good did the Village do? How did Six’s “brother” know the truth, and why kill him? And what happens if you die in real life? If the hot chick got blown up in his apartment, why was she still there - or was that why she killed herself?
The original series said something interesting about conformity and an oppressive society. What does this one say? That it is better to lose yourself in dreams than solve problems? When the original Number Six found out he was Number One, he still “resigned” from the Village, yet again. This one gets co-opted. In the original, in the episode “Free for All” Number Six gets elected Number Two, but refuses to become Number Two. Not like this one.
Add to that the fact that Number Six could believably fight back, while Six was a nothing, the lack of conflict, and the fact that Six gets handed the solution.
Somewhere in Netland someone is working on a massive post giving a minute by minute suckitude log. I don’t have the time.
I don’t think they are directly comparable other than the mystery of being in an unknown place that seems to be a prison and some stylistic elements. For sure they are different thematically.
A combination of drugs and the psychic skills of 2’s wife.
The same way dreams can in real life.
It means your dream self stops being in the village and returns to normal dreaming. I think we saw 11-12’s lover fine in real life after he died in the village.
I think it was clear that the village was helping the people in real life. The taxi cab driver mentioned psychological growth he was achieving in his real life. Obviously the worse off you started, the longer it would take to make improvements.
“Dreamers” in the village were people who started getting memories of their real lives. Which wasn’t conducive to them progressing, which is the reason ‘dreaming’ was discouraged. People got ‘killed’ when their behavior threatened the progress of other villagers and the village as a whole (or could no longer remain oblivious and so threatened their own progress). 6 obviously became a big source of chaos, but 2 didn’t want him to leave because of his special stature, so he killed off the people whose lives 6 disturbed instead.
I agree that was a weak point. There doesn’t seem to be a reason for 2 to be killing people in real life. So I’d guess that was staged. But it should have been explained better.
There was definitely a strong theme about our surveillance culture, which is more timely than the original’s themes would have been which were more relevant during the cold war. But it was also just a story in the end, it can be interesting and entertaining without having to have a big message.
Six wasn’t as strong a personality, true, but why does he have to be? His strength was more about internal conflict than external. Number 6 was super clever in fighting the village, but six was strong in his battle to stay true to himself.
I think the new ending was better. Even most original Prisoner fans agree the original’s ending was kind of crap. I think surreal story with a concrete reveal works better than concrete story with a surreal reveal.
Except that in the original Number Six was a prisoner while Six wasn’t. They are not just different thematically, they are opposite. I’m surprised Six’s last words weren’t “I love Big Brother.”
The real theme comes from Dylan’s “Talking World War III Blues” - “you can be in my dream if I can be in yours.”
Other people in my dreams don’t have independent existences. As far as I can tell, she takes the drugs, no one else. Plus the “well, we have conscious and unconscious, so why not a third level” was feeble in the extreme - and I suspend disbelief three times before breakfast.
Perhaps. I’ll buy it - though it means that pretty much nothing which happened in the Village means anything.
I just got that he was getting help thanks to the real life Two. Clearly Six did not seem to have his Village experiences affect his real life, not that I could tell. It was filmed as if his real experiences happened before he came to the Village, which keeps up the suspense but is a cheat.
If they were all in Mrs. 2’s head. how is there this link? And how, given that the people in the Village seemed to be rational enough to conduct a life, were they not rational enough to notice the ton of illogic in their situation? Sure, in a dream you don’t, but this is the only place they acted as if there was a dream.
It is not at all clear if the girl knew about the bomb, or if she planted the bomb. In fact, if Two wanted Six, why do the bomb at all? If Two decided to resign only during the 3rd show, why give Six special treatment? It was a major cheat, making it seem to us that there was a battle between Michael and the company when there was no such thing.
When I thought the Village was real, it disturbed me that their surveillance was so feeble. The original Village had really advance surveillance for the time. This one, not so much. It also disturbed me that Six was so feeble in terms of security. True he wasn’t an experienced agent like Drake, but even a boob should know that in this situation your house is bugged, and not just after Yenta the matchmaker drops by.
Yes, things can be interesting and entertaining without a message - but they are usually not remakes of a show which is famous for its message. This series was in my opinion, neither.
He was? The most interesting part was when he was being handed the line about his previous life. It seemed to me that he was just beginning to have real doubts about whether his memories were true or not - and then his brother spilled the beans for no reason I can tell. In the end he agrees to take over a place which means he agrees that it is fine to lie to everyone for their own supposed best interests. In the original the battle between Number Six and the various Number Twos was the theme. In this, Two’s battle with himself counted for far more than for anything having to do with Six.
Mc Goohan’s ending was brilliant, because no mundane ending could have lived up to the rest of the show. It’s a dream is never a good ending - not for the Wizard of Oz movie, and not for this.
Your response does make me think that not only was this version a mess, it was a dishonest mess. Much of the stuff that didn’t make sense was there to convince us it was more or less like the original.
It would make for three excellent MST3K episodes, however.