Ridley Scott's Raised By Wolves Show Premiere Episode 1 only (spoilers) HBOMAX
Anyone else watch this yet?
1st off about HBO MAX, as a longtime HBO customer I was really put off, as was my wife, about the idea that this new merger channel and new content would not be available to us. Well we were completely wrong. If you subscribe to HBO then you get it. I know there is a Roku thing going on so it's not available there. But we are Gen X dinosaurs who have not cut the cable, for me mostly because sports and for her 'cause she's a cable fiend, so we bundle Infinity cable, broadband, and home security. Cable still not cut. So you enter your cable provider that you get your HBO through into the HBOMAX app, and then cast it to your Google Chromecast (for us) or smart TV. This works beautifully for us with having real broadband speed in the house. The 15 seconds back/forward, and FF RW all work great. Not the same for Disney+ which was stop-starty af last we used it recently for a Endgame rewatch. "Daddy, why does it keep doing that?" But I digress.
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Okay I thought this premiere episode was good to really amazing at moments. As a parent it was at moments super dark and depressing to watch. The kid wondering off, the kids slowly being picked off by some extraterrestrial pathogen. At one point I think I said "It's cold and windy af get those coughing kids inside!" And then just the horrible low feeling I felt for the last remaining child. Or back up....even that last 2 remaining where the one was coughing and sick, and both the 2 remaining kids looking at Mother with fear and distrust. But when it was down to just Campion.....I just remember saying "oh this is nightmare fuel, this is nightmare fuel." When it's kids involved, that's just full tilt dread for me.
Huge fan of Travis Fimmel by way of getting deep into the Vikings History Channel series. He's got that mischievous glimmer in his eye with his acting chops that served well again in this role by instantly making Mother as an android when the "Believers" find them. Maaaaaaan and then when the action started....boy that escalated quickly. And gross! haha. She is a 1-android army. I think her flashback and her amnesia to her full powers is telling us she was a war machine in the great Atheists vs Believers war on mankind. And I think the "atheists" are not human atheists, but this is a post-apocalyptic story after AI reached singularity and went sentient, where AI would naturally be atheists and "technocratic". But man oh man could she fuck shit up in a hurry. Took down that whole damn Ark like an afternoon snack.
I knew this 1st episode would pack 10 pounds of story in a 5 pound bag, and if the goal for that was to get me hooked then mission accomplished. There is some ticky-tacky stuff that I noticed that I could gripe about, particularly Father with his cording. Like as an android you would think after he picked up a fucking giant dinosaur skull that he could calculate and test the tensile strength of his cording weighed against his body weight. And also not throw your already frayed af rope over ragged rocks like dude put a towel down or something! But rule of cool softened that gripe and a few others. Interested to hear what anyone else who might have watched it thought about it.
1st off about HBO MAX, as a longtime HBO customer I was really put off, as was my wife, about the idea that this new merger channel and new content would not be available to us. Well we were completely wrong. If you subscribe to HBO then you get it. I know there is a Roku thing going on so it's not available there. But we are Gen X dinosaurs who have not cut the cable, for me mostly because sports and for her 'cause she's a cable fiend, so we bundle Infinity cable, broadband, and home security. Cable still not cut. So you enter your cable provider that you get your HBO through into the HBOMAX app, and then cast it to your Google Chromecast (for us) or smart TV. This works beautifully for us with having real broadband speed in the house. The 15 seconds back/forward, and FF RW all work great. Not the same for Disney+ which was stop-starty af last we used it recently for a Endgame rewatch. "Daddy, why does it keep doing that?" But I digress.
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Okay I thought this premiere episode was good to really amazing at moments. As a parent it was at moments super dark and depressing to watch. The kid wondering off, the kids slowly being picked off by some extraterrestrial pathogen. At one point I think I said "It's cold and windy af get those coughing kids inside!" And then just the horrible low feeling I felt for the last remaining child. Or back up....even that last 2 remaining where the one was coughing and sick, and both the 2 remaining kids looking at Mother with fear and distrust. But when it was down to just Campion.....I just remember saying "oh this is nightmare fuel, this is nightmare fuel." When it's kids involved, that's just full tilt dread for me.
Huge fan of Travis Fimmel by way of getting deep into the Vikings History Channel series. He's got that mischievous glimmer in his eye with his acting chops that served well again in this role by instantly making Mother as an android when the "Believers" find them. Maaaaaaan and then when the action started....boy that escalated quickly. And gross! haha. She is a 1-android army. I think her flashback and her amnesia to her full powers is telling us she was a war machine in the great Atheists vs Believers war on mankind. And I think the "atheists" are not human atheists, but this is a post-apocalyptic story after AI reached singularity and went sentient, where AI would naturally be atheists and "technocratic". But man oh man could she fuck shit up in a hurry. Took down that whole damn Ark like an afternoon snack.
I knew this 1st episode would pack 10 pounds of story in a 5 pound bag, and if the goal for that was to get me hooked then mission accomplished. There is some ticky-tacky stuff that I noticed that I could gripe about, particularly Father with his cording. Like as an android you would think after he picked up a fucking giant dinosaur skull that he could calculate and test the tensile strength of his cording weighed against his body weight. And also not throw your already frayed af rope over ragged rocks like dude put a towel down or something! But rule of cool softened that gripe and a few others. Interested to hear what anyone else who might have watched it thought about it.
Comments
So I think it was interesting that when Mother came out of the shelter to unleash the ass whooping, the Veteran Warrior dude, his name is Marcus, tried to quickly tell the others in his party "Don't look at her!" But it was too late and she fried their faces into gross meatloaf. Man that was sick. The Cleric told Mother and Campion at dinner that he was a Cleric but the others were warriors from The War. So this war and Mother's flashback are not from too long ago it seems. Not like a 100 year jump it seems, unless the cyrogenic space travel thing. And Marcus, who I always want to call Ragnar cause of Vikings, has like a seared scar on one half of his face like he didn't quite look away in time from one of these android banshee attacks in The War. Like he was trying to quickly warn the others from previous battle experiences.
So I think if they look away they don't get hurt. This I think is backed up when she's on the Ark. Maybe the atmosphere on the planet makes it less severe (albeit way more gross) than being in an anti-gravity spaceship in space, because she was turning room fulls of people into bloody psychedelic desktop screensavers. But the one guy who wasn't looking at her in the control room and was instead ducking and hiding under the table wasn't decimated. So we got a little bit of a Medusa thing going on there maybe is my take. We'll see how that plays out...
and yes, that eye thing he does. Recently watched a very so so war movie he was in and it was pretty effective.
This show is right up my alley in terms of aesthetic, mystery, themes, sci-fi, just everything. I hope it holds up.
On a related note, I was there for prometheus and the following alien film with one exception: the the unbelievably irrational decision making. So let's hope we've sanded down that rough edge in this series
I thought the acting by Father and Mother was fantastic. It must be hard to balance the line of trying to act like a robot yet still care deeply for your children. I've particularly enjoyed Father trying to do the right thing for Campion even if it meant failing their mission. I felt incredibly bad for Campion when Mother decommissioned Father. As the parent of young children I felt the same horror that cdrive described.
This is the type of show I never knew I wanted so badly. I hope they deliver.
I strongly recommend not watching the trailer ahead of time.
This would be a good show for the guys to cover. Seems like it would be right up their alley.
The first episode was simultaneously slow-going for the first 45, and lightening speed for the last 15. I have heard that the season gets better after episode 1, so I'm gonna stick with it. I think I mostly liked it, it just felt poorly paced.
The more I consider it from mother's perspective, her actions are a logical way to fulfill her mission.
I enjoyed the hints of the broader universe, and am curious to learn more.
I also loved the Mithraists and their Larper outfits... one of them even says he is a "Cleric". The Mithraists seem totally incongruous and cheesy, and it's hard to say why it worked so well for me. Maybe my take-away is, to endure on a generation-spanning space mission, the travelers would indeed become more cult-like and bizarre over time. (The Expanse presents similar ideas.)
Finally, shout out to I Am Mother, an interesting Netflix film from a year ago, which explored a very similar themes. It was covered on a Bald Move podcast.
Bring on the Orks!
Wild stuff all around, and I enjoyed Travis Flimmel. Hopefully he sticks around.
As many mentioned episode 1 starts off a little slow but that's expected with having to build the world this takes place in. I don't have any kids but I am very close with my nieces and nephews, 3 of which live 5 houses away so while I didn't exactly view some of that as a parent lens, it definitely hit home. Holy shit Mother can unleash an ass whoopin at a completely different kind of level. I was 100% in on this before I even saw an episode with Ridley Scott being the name behind it and it clearly being a Sci Fi mindfuck. I'm going to leave it here because I don't want to start giving away anything from the 2nd or 3rd episode.