Blugh and blee
I got through watching the pilot for Lucifer on Fox (I really didn't want to, the commericals pointed to absolute degredation of the graphic novel material, but curiousity got the best).
NO. No. NO NO NO!
I mean c'mon. You can't even fault me for being one of those "it's not exactly like the book!" bitches - this doesn't even make sense. There's a character called Lucifer, a character called Mazikeen, and a nightclub called Lux. NOTHING else has anything REMOTELY to do with ANYTHING from the original. Not his character's perogative, personality, perspective, or any detail whatsoever - It's basically if you took the movie 'Glitter' and named the main characters for those from 'Fight Club' and then said the former was "loosely based" on the latter. -_-
As I've said, it was OKAY that the Watchmen movie took out the bit with the engineered alien - it STILL sucked for different reasons (despite some nice styling). It was OKAY that the Ender's Game movie took out the part with Locke and Demosthenes - it STILL sucked for different reasons (despite the awesomeness of the battle sequences). Both films managed to miss the point and feeling of the books - the fear/paranoia of Watchmen, the isolation of Ender's Game - those things that BUILT the actual heroes, without which the stories become silly. Now this - and admittedly I'm only an episode in - not only misses the point and any inkling of the feeling, but it just plain sucks with no redeeming qualities at all. The writing is lazy and contrived, trying to ride on quips and accents; the plot idiotic (Lucifer's one of the most powerful beings in the universe, so of course he's now reduced to a quirky cop-buddy-sidekick sniffing around for human sex - I guess we're not capable of grasping anything beyond that?), and the casting completely uninspired - all I want to do is punch Lucifer in the face; he both looks and acts like a complete douche - and three of the five female characters in the episode may as well have been triplets. And the shoehoring in of 'meaningful' Cool Guy songs - as R mentioned, they're gonna run out of tongue-in-cheek song references to the devil pretty quick.
Honestly I'm just pissed. There was no point to this - it's a complete waste of the franchise. Anyone who enjoyed the comics for what they were will despise this, and for people who've never read and don't care about the comics? It's STILL shitty.
I can't watch any more, I just can't. So if anyone sees more and it miraculously turns around, let me know!
You know what show IS cool, though, is Rectify ^^ After catching wind of the plot I finally gave it a watch because of the striking similarities to the present nationwide buzz over 'Making A Murderer' (very good documentary in itself - really sets up the premise of the need to cast scrutiny on the screwed up justice system without blatant namecalling. And of course Steven Avery still may very well be guilty - bringing in both mystery and urgency (since it's presently happening) to the gut reaction - but that's not even the point, that becomes clear. Excellent exposure of the weirdness of pleas and plots and consipracies going on right now in lawyer's offices and courtrooms in real life.
So after watching that, I went oh yeah, Rectify is in my queue, and blew through the first 2 seasons like I was on speed (really wish the rest was on Netflix) :C Daniel Holden makes such an awesome character - strange and unpredictable but slowly developed and explained, certainly sympathetic but with ambiguous likeability, since he's honestly damaged in that way where you go "No no, why can't you just react to this situation like a normal human being so you don't get in trouble here? Oh yeah, you're all fucked up". Holden seems not so much like Steven Avery as a fantasy vehicle for his implicated nephew Brendan Dassey, who didn't have a chance at all and lost any chance of real adulthood ("Because I'm stupid, mom!" Ach, I wanted to cry ;_; and now everyone who ever thinks or talks about him adds in that he's mentally deficient; it's his legacy forever).
If you don't presume you get a second chance at life this stuff becomes so very poignant. The entirety of lives, families and communities stripped away forever because this or that stroke of fortune. You read about it in the news all the time - this show draws out what remains of one of those lives, with social development completely stunted and twisted (and then adds in the harrowing spectres of both death row and solitary confinement, both circumstances which in themselves will demolish a mind). So what's left of that mind? And what's left of that system, with prosecutors and counties trying to save face? Lots of things to pull at and challenge your emotions and point of view. Also there's some awesome music (like this Dorothy Squires song, so pretty! And oh god all the 90's stuff blasting me in the feels) and beautiful shots. And the other characters get some complexity to them too! From the evidently intelligent DA to the mother who at first just seems like the shellshocked-helpless-mother trope, but whose actual personality comes out in little endearing ways with time, to most everyone! They've all got lives.
I put in an example of something I like so I'm not just taking a big dump of negativity. I want things to just reach that singularity of care brought to every aspect of all enterprises; I want everything we're using resources on to be good.This way of thinking may make a snob, but we have so much access now to all the works in entertainment and have for some time, so there's not much excuse for crap like Lucifer on Fox. People might go, why does everything have to be 'good'? What if I wanna see tv-pretty people doing it with each other and dropping one-liners and action sequences?
Por que no los dos??