(08-05-2020, 09:14 PM)Mattias Westlund Wrote:(08-04-2020, 06:02 AM)Samulis Wrote: S04 really just didn't do it for me and I stopped about halfway through; it felt like a major drop in production values/budget (and I think it actually was to be fair).
Definitely agree with this. S04 was disappointing and felt more like a cookie-cutter sci-fi show, as mentioned in one of my previous comments. I'm really hoping they'll get their shit together again for S05 or I will likely bow out as well. While it's commendable that the producers at Amazon decided to bail the show out and continue making it, I'm not entirely sure they realized what they had on their hands, and what made previous seasons great.
(08-04-2020, 06:02 AM)Samulis Wrote: It just felt like they forced themselves to 'jump the shark' higher and higher in order to make any of it make sense and it didn't seem all that enjoyable. IMHO, it slowly declined from realistic space adventure to Marvel action movie, with characters becoming less dynamic/3D and more archetypal/2D with each season. Now, perhaps that's how the original book was written; I don't know, I've never read it.
Actually, I think it happens the same way in the books. With the Ring network and the Slow Zone and all that. But I'm guessing it's less rushed than in the show. I'm on S03 right now and it's a little jarring how the story suddenly jumps forward by like a year mid-season. The pacing is very off.
Part of the problem I think stems that the first three books were self-contained, until James S.A. Corey---that is, Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck---expanded it into a nine-book series. The impression I get regarding the Amazon series is that the same creative team as the first three is still in place. The problem I think really is in the original material---apparently, the original Cibola Burn takes place entirely on Ilus. There's no Avasarala, Bobbie, or Belter plot originally. Cibola Burn has its fans but apparently among a pretty significant portion of the fandom it's considered the least of the books. So in that respect the tv series is an improvement. I've read the first three books, and the television series is better. The characters are more fleshed out, the storylines are better thought through and more compelling. Comparing the tv and book versions of Ashford, especially, illustrates it---the tv version is so much more interesting then the book version.
I don't think the production values suffered---maybe there was a little bit more inconsistency from this to that but I felt it was as on par with the previous seasons.
Now, as far as the pacing... this is a flaw in how the tv version was written. The first season only covers half of the first book, Leviathan Wakes. The second season is the second half, plus the first half of the second book, Caliban's War. Then season three, of course, ended up being the last season Syfy commissioned, so the first half is the rest of Caliban's War, and the second half is the entirety of Abaddon's Gate. IMO, there are respects in which Abaddon's Gate is improved by the compression. It's much pacier then the book is---the flaw, though, is that some of the finer points of character are lost. Give this to the cancellation and Amazon pick-up---season four was the fourth book, nothing else. I hope they stick to the book-a-season thing.
