Posted on 03/16/2018 12:56:22 PM PDT by GoldenState_Rose
Youve surely gotten the memo by now. As a fan of The Twilight Zone, youre supposed to be head over heels for Black Mirror.
I wish I could join the chorus.
I dont mean the show is without merit. Its well-produced, acted and directed. It has some intriguing storylines. But its no Twilight Zone for the 21st century.
Sure, its an anthology with fantasy/sci-fi touches. But its also incredibly pessimistic...Yes, TZ had its share of downbeat endings (hello, Henry Bemis). And its true that Serling didnt shrink from showing us the dark side of human nature (The Shelter and The Monsters are Due on Maple Street being two notable examples).
But one of the hallmarks of Serlings writing was his faith in humanity. He didnt leave us to wallow in misery he kept encouraging us to be better. We dont have to tear each other apart, he said. We can overcome suspicion and hatred.
And it worked. As we listen to his concluding narrations, we feel as if we want to try harder.
Black Mirror shows us the dark side as well. The problem is, it leaves us there.
And it keeps hitting the same theme: were all slaves to our devices. A fair point, but does that have to surface in practically every episode?
And as the questions above indicate, theres a bit of a preoccupation with sex. Even if you think a modern TZ needs that (and I dont), surely its possible to have an episode or two without it? Apparently not.
If that sounds like your cup of tea, tune in. But if youre looking for a modern-day Twilight Zone, I wouldnt recommend it. Black Mirror casts a dark reflection indeed.
(Excerpt) Read more at thenightgallery.wordpress.com ...
You and me both. I followed the episode, waiting for the kidnapping resolution, and switched off when the pig appeared.
Never heard of it, what channel is it on?
That article is like “The Twilight Zone”-———where in hell does one watch “Black Mirror”?
.
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It’s mostly Brtish and the Brits, like the main landers, do not always have “Hollywood endings”.
Yes. I think the series is awesome as a whole.
The world, in general in 1960, had faith in humanity. Now, not so much.
Maybe that’s what we need to get back to. A series that does just that.
I love Black Mirror and Twilight Zone. I really wouldn’t heavily compare them. BM isn’t nearly as twist oriented, and is very tech obsessed. I think the only reason people compare the two is that anthology series have struggled so hard to find audiences they’ve forgotten that there actually were a bunch. I think a better comparison would be to Tales From the Crypt, it doesn’t have the demented humor, but they both love the dark side of life.
Sirling’s script for POTA followed the book. It’s actually a great story, as much as I love most of the Apes movies I’d really love to see somebody actually make a movie from the book.
You beat me to it. Is this on one of those streaming-only networks like Netflix or Hulu?
I’ve read the book and Serlin’s original visualization. It’s inferior to the finished product.
First draft of a script is a rough way to judge. Movies change a lot in the course of filming and editing. I don’t want to toss aside any of the existing Apes movies (well maybe Beneath) but I still want to see a movie actually based on the book. It’s a hell of a story that CAN make a great movie.
I don't know, hopefully the guy who posted it will respond.......
Netflix
I liked the one where 300,000 trolls with internet “courage” were executed by mechanical bees. Definitely a plus for humanity.
I just think Serling’s vision is inferior to the ultimate vision the filmmakers went with. And the reasons are the same defects we see in Twilight Zone - too literal, too obvious, and not much creativity.
For Serling, the apes had to be almost exactly like us. I think that’s a terrible creative choice.
There’s some controversy over the ending and who gets credit. Admittedly, it’s a totally Rod Serling ending, and it’s powerful. But the imagery isn’t even original, having been used in a 50s SF magazine, I think. I don’t think anyone stole it (Serling, Jacobs, or others), but it’s not original, either.
And I think it’s a great idea and a shame that Hollywood continues to pay for an idea that they can never be bothered to use. The apes are SUPPOSED to be exactly like us, that’s the whole point of the novel.
Hitting somebody adapting a novel into a movie for not being original is kind of silly. The job handed to him was not to be original, it was to adapt a work to a different media. Which he did, well. With some tweaking and good directing it could have been a good movie, very different from the POTA series we got. The biggest difference really would have been the commentary. The Boulle novel’s commentary is about hubris and man’s assumption that we’re the top of the evolutionary ladder, while the movies have all been commenting on racism and white man’s assumption to being on top. Maybe Boulle’s message doesn’t connect well enough to get 9 movies and 2 TV shows but it’s still a good story.
The 1st episode of this show, has a mayor or governor or president of something, forced into having sex with a pig to release his kidnapped daughter. He had sex with the pig.
I wasnt liking where that show was leading and as soon as it was known he was doing it, I turned it off. Disgusting crap. I will never watch another episode of that depressing depraved show again.
Netflix, but I agree with the author and don’t care for “Black Mirror.” The more I watch the Twilight Zone, the more my heart swells for how genius and meaningful Rod Serling’s writing really is...
Just this one minute intro alone, to the episode “The Obsolete Man” regarding the nature of human dictatorships. LOVE!
“You walk into this room at your own risk, because it leads to the future, not a future that will be but one that might be. This is not a new world, it is simply an extension of what began in the old one. It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has refinements, technological advances, and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom. But like every one of the super-states that preceded it, it has one iron rule: logic is an enemy and truth is a menace.”
“This is Mr. Romney Wordsworth, in his last forty-eight hours on Earth. He’s a citizen of the State but will soon have to be eliminated, because he’s built out of flesh and because he has a mind. Mr. Romney Wordsworth, who will draw his last breaths in The Twilight Zone.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oADlQPJ_Zfc
Black Mirror is its own thing. It’s not another Twilight Zone.
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