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********MAJOR SPOILERS!********
Hello!
This is a difficult review to write. While, as others have pointed out, the acting mostly varies from adequate to very good (the standouts being Juliette Lewis and Melissa Leo), with decent photography and direction, the total end results are closer to a train wreck than a TV series. (I haven't read the books, but many have indicated that the series is reasonably close, so many of these comments will apply to the author and books.)
The series started out promising. A strange town, a mystery. As others mentioned, a combination of "The Prisoner", "Twin Peaks", and "Lost". Quickly, I (having read thousands of science fiction books), knew it would be one of three explanations: 1. suspended animation, 2. time travel, or the long shot, aliens. Several episodes later, guess what?- 2,000 years of suspended animation.
Soon I realized that much of this was simply ripped off from 1967's movie, "In the Year 2889". Mad scientist figures out the end of the world's coming, saving select people in a small valley with cliffs on 3 sides that the cannibalistic mutant humans with huge pointy teeth, can't get down. Model of the entire valley, talk of procreation, etc, etc.
Nowhere in this series do ANY of the characters in the town of Wayward Pines, act rationally, sane, or use logic in the slightest manner. I could list more than 100 irrational, idiotic things the characters did, given the situation, but there isn't nearly enough room.
Ummm... where is the food coming from? ...the cars? ...the houses? ...the electricity?
Some people defend this, saying it's all from immense storage areas inside the mountain. (It would have to be! There are no crops, no factories, no livestock.)
Ummm... how would you like a nice, heaping dish, of 2,000 year old ice cream? (Big favorite of the sheriff.) What about a nice dish of 2,000 year old cereal, with 2,000 year old milk? Running cars on 2,000 year old gasoline (gasoline's octane drops so low after 7 years, it won't run cars). Where do you buy those tires today, with that 2,000 year warranty? I'd like a set!
Ludicrous, ridiculous! Did the incompetent writers think ANY plot point in this entire story, through in the slightest?
Imagine this, if you would. Mad scientist billionaire sets this all up. Freezes everyone he's kidnapped over more than a decade. Freezes food. Now, ALL of this equipment has to run perfectly, without repair for 2,000 years, and automatically wake them up! How many items manufactured TODAY, will still be working even 20 years from now, let alone 2,000 years! WHERE is the power coming from, to run all of this power hungry equipment? Idiotic!
Most of these problems could've been avoided by using an old science fiction idea, a "stasis field", where time stops inside (seen in the TV show, "Red Dwarf"), where everything could have been stored.
The mad "scientist" billionaire, a biologist, who has set this all up, thinks nothing of having regular executions (murders, really), for the tiniest of offenses, in a town where no one knows it's 2,000 years in the future, with terrible monsters outside the electric fence! Though they don't know it, they are living on stores that won't last forever.
Ummm... wouldn't it make slightly more sense, to be figuring out a way to clear the monsters out of an area so that you could farm, and start building factories, BEFORE your storehouse runs out, and everyone starves to death? Instead of wasting a bunch of people monitoring everyone's tiniest move in town, and going through all of your limited stores? And setting everyone at each others throats bloodily demanding executions for the smallest, most insignificant infractions?
The rational for this, is that in the first incarnation of the town, when the residents were informed of the real situation, they began committing mass suicide. Hogwash! In wartime, when cities were bombed into rubble (a similar kind of psychological shock), no such thing happened.
And being a biologist, he should CERTAINLY know, that the gene pool here is already almost too small to continue the human race. Each execution, POOF!, those genes are gone forever from the gene pool. Obviously, he should have frozen sperm, to guarantee genetic diversity over the coming generations, but somehow this simple thought eluded him (though I doubt that 2,000 year old frozen sperm would be any more viable than 2,000 year old frozen humans).
And THEN, he decides to kill off the entire town, because they've displeased him, and defrost a third group, to try again. Madness! Irrational! Bad, stupid, stupid, stupid writing.
I've saved the worst bit for last, the creatures, the "abbies". The creatures are supposedly mutated humans. The writers obviously don't have the slightest clue what a mutation is, or how they happen (randomly and incrementally), or what is required for the mutation to become widespread (advantages over their predecessors in a given environment).
Believe me, if "abbies" suddenly started being born everywhere (something that can't happen), they would overwhelmingly be killed at birth. They would not take over the planet, and kill all the normal humans. Again, bad, stupid writing.
Also, they can't survive as depicted. Apparently 100% males (ummm, how do they procreate?) Naked, without clothing, in IDAHO??? I don't think so! Hundreds of them, constantly, in tiny areas? WHAT do they eat? They would die out rapidly from starvation after clearing out an area of game.
There is a partial fix for this stupidity. That the creatures were a result of genetically modifying humans to create super-soldiers, and used in a war. Simultaneously, a biological weapon wipes out regular humans, leaving the creatures unscathed. (NOT original ideas.) But the ignorant writers didn't write this, or anything resembling competent writing, of course.
Garbage, drivel, terrible, waste of time.
You've been warned!
Karl
********MAJOR SPOILERS!********
score 1/10
domain-5 28 July 2015
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3286266/ |
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18-10-2020 11:37:09