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San Francisco, 9:48 AM
Tue Dec 8
28 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/19/09
11/18/09
Personally, so far I really like it (through the first four episodes), but I find the general reaction, especially here at io9, quite hilarious. When news of this whole thing first came in (and as the show got closer to it's premiere) people here were constantly screaming "YARM!" and crying out in hysterics about how they didn't want to see the same story re-hashed over and over again. Fair enough, and a sentiment that I can honestly say I echo, but the funny thing is that (at least in my mind), this isn't yet another remake.
It's different, it shows us how the Village has evolved from it's original state to something that, in some ways, is far scarier. I mean, they went WELL out of their way in the beginning of the first episode to prove that this was most certainly not a re-hash of the old Village, but a modern version thereof. And despite this evolution of the settings, characters, and in some ways motivations, people are now crying that...Number 6 isn't like the original Number 6. Oh, and the Village is totally different now too. How the fuck are producers, writers, and actors meant to please you guys when all they hear is "Give us something different!" and when they do, the response is "No, actually, what we meant was we wanted something that's exactly the same as it was before, but we're going to bitch if you do that too."
I'll definitely try to post another, more in-depth comment later once I've seen the final two episodes (who knows, maybe I'll change my mind), because there were a few other things I wanted to touch on as well. In any case, it just seems like there's no pleasing you guys. This mini-series certainly isn't flawless, but I think it's far more better than most posters here seem to think. Comparing it to the original was your first mistake...
11/18/09
1 - I think that many fans of the original would have been more willing to accept the new version if, and only if, the new version had been good. Interesting characters, decent writing, well performed acting, that sort of thing.
But with that first and foremost hurdle failed, it becomes difficult to win people over. And when even the most ardent defenders of the show often start with a defense of it's flaws, that becomes a higher hurdle.
2 - As others have said, if the creators had not wished to to invite comparison with the original series, then they shouldn't have called it the same name as the original series, nor made references or call-outs to the original series.
However, when you deliberately appropriate the name and no small part of the iconography of a previous work that many consider the first serious attempt to create art in the medium of television, you're inviting some comparisons there, and it is only natural that your work will be judged in light of the original.
Oddly, I think that The Prisoner is actually something that probably should be remade every now and then, to talk about it's themes in the climate of the times. For example, here's something in the original series that is really mind-bending: When you're watching it in the modern day, there are parts where Number 6 seems to be acting foolishly, taking action or talking to people out in the open. Then it dawns on you that even though he's a spy, it takes 6 some time to realize that in The Village, he could be under constant video surveillance. Then you realize that as part of modern society, you are fully aware of the fact that you can be under constant video surveillance, and that you've known this for years. In fact, you're used to. You've watched TV shows about it, and maybe you even think that it makes you safer. A circumstance that for our spy protagonist is strange, is almost normal for us. You may have even voted for it.
When they started the protagonist of the new series as one of the people behind the video monitors, and even when they touched on it when he joined the undercovers, I thought they might make something of it. But no, they didn't really.
Maybe that's what rankles the most. Compounding the other failures is a failure of imagination.
11/18/09
I also find it interesting that this article likens this to the americanized version of the british orignial. Other than being co-produced AMC, how is this not a Brit creation?
I guess my slightly xenophobic point is that Brits are equally capable of ruining good concepts.
11/18/09
You might even say that was a Christ-like thing to do.
See? It's just like McGoohan and Danger Man, except it's Caviezel and The Passion. Same actor playing the same character on two different shows.
11/18/09
That's all. Carry on.
11/18/09
[If the show had wanted me to buy into the idea of The Village as a kind of institutionalized environment where people's individuality is suppressed in order to make them more well-adjusted, then Number 6's arrival should have been in a cloyingly comforting institutional setting, not the "running through the desert" thing that made no sense but looked vaguely cool.]
Why? You're asking for cliche, or at least the status quo, rather than celebrating the originality of this version's take on the "it was all a dream" thing. You really wanted to see #6 enter a ridiculous white sanitarium at the beginning? Or see the desert world transform into a vinegar-reeking terrazzo-floored stainless steel government mental health facility? Ugh. Unbelievable.
Love ya, Charlie.
11/18/09
11/18/09
11/18/09
11/19/09
11/19/09
11/18/09
11/18/09
Stop The Damn Remakes and use your brains to invent new stuff.
11/18/09
11/19/09
11/19/09
(I'm still pretending to be an AMC executive. You know how they're all about coke parties and conspicuous consumption and high class call girls down there, it's like Wall Street during the 80's. or 90's. or 00's.)
#speakup
12/01/09
11/18/09
The fact that some extremely capable actors tried to bring life into this zombie of a program only served to point out just how awful it truly was. By the end I found I cared not a bit whether any of the prisoners in the Village, or they real world counterparts, lived or died. Six was a pathetic, passive blowhard, all talk and no action; his little speech about how flawed he is because he's human comes across more as a 6-year old's whine than as a mature philosophical observation. 313 was just as bad, full of self-pity and cowardice.
I forced myself to watch the whole way through, hoping against hope that the end would somehow justify the work of the original series, but no, it was not to be: 6 becomes One? Becomes the god of this nightmare that imprisons the minds of others, to keep them safe? Let's his avatar in the dream become Two, and continue's Two's lies about the reality of their prison? Buys into the idea that mind control is okay because it makes it easier for people to fit in and be useful? Embraces the idea that it's okay to takes away a person's liberty because, after all, it's because we're just looking out for your wellbeing?
Nonsense.
"Do as I command and all will be well," is the kind of paternalistic argument that dictators and tyrants have been foisting on their subjects for millenia. Confronted with the choice of becoming King, Patrick McGoohan's Number 6 refused to become the very thing he'd struggled against, i.e. refused to protect people from their own choices; Jim Caviezel's 6, by contrast, takes up the mantle of King, however reluctantly, lest someone get hurt -- and undercuts everything the iconic series stood for.
11/18/09
11/18/09
Needn't be a conspiracy theorist to recognize the influence that ideology can exert on creative works. Furthermore, the reading of 6's collaborationism as justified seems consonant with writer Bill Gallagher's comments in interviews on his work that he aimed for a "less individualistic," "more community-minded approach" reflected in an ending that affirmed the importance of community over the individual.
Now, it's valid to read a text against the grain of its author's stated intentions, but we should at least acknowledge a reading by those intentions.
What angers many of us fans of the original is that this remake is that it's such a polar opposite of the original in ideological terms. Now, perhaps a case could be made for soft totalitarianism (I disagree that political-corporate entities equate to actual community, so I wouldn't call it communitarian), and that's fine--go right ahead. But to use the Prisoner as a platform for doing that immediately brings to mind the Situationist concept of "recuperation," where revolt is recovered by and for the existing order. Such a process needn't be conscious or conspiratorial--when Beat became Beatnik it was a matter of marketing and business, not politics.
Some quotes from Gallagher:
"McGoohan's piece was based upon the assertion of the individual, and I allowed myself to look at it in the polar opposite way. What happens if the cult of the individual is allowed to run? We're all obsessed with self, we're all obsessed with more, and now, and me, and gimme... and what happens if that's affected us, and what if that kind of world, what are the consequences of that? McGoohan says, 'Look. We live in a world which is authoritarian, and we've got to break it.' What if we live in a society now that's selfish and dangerous?"
"What if the problem is mass individualism? What happens to us as a species if that becomes dangerous? If it’s so out of kilter that it begins to threaten our existence, for instance?"
"The original says we must assert our individuality: ‘I am a free man.’ But one thing that interests me is that perhaps we have become too individualistic."
11/18/09
Secondly, in order to create a good tragedy, you have to get the audience to care about the characters and the choices they make. And frankly, I didn't. I couldn't. I actively started to despise them. They made stupid choices, and were easily manipulated. And the prisoner himself was the worst case. If I'm actively rooting against the protagonist, it's very difficult to feel the pathos of tragedy.
And finally, there is the problem that the anti-establishment argument they made was at best a juvenile one. Hell, they didn't even seem to touch on the question of who was the one deciding what "better" was, and if they had the right to decide that.
11/18/09
if the intent was to endorse a close-knit community with strong bonds to one another why is the object held up to represent that a totalitarian society where every inhabitant lives in fear of when they will be disciplined for reasons they do not even fully understand? the series doesn't contrast hyper individuallism with communitarianism because neither the village at the start nor the village by the end falls into either group.
it would have made far more sense for 6 to wake up in a village where everyone is obsessed with being different from everyone else to the point where, should 6 do anything anyone else is doing, they react erratically and even violently until the authorities appear to cart him off for failing to make his own path. it could then have proceeded in much the same way that it did, with the village gradually transitioning from one 2 to the next 2 both literally and ideologically.
instead we go from hard totalitarian to soft totalitarian and, assuming the work was intended to be interpreted as a comedy and not a tragedy, we're left with the message that controlling people against their will is ok as long as you do it the right way and with good intentions. that the ends justify the means. which, as many have already pointed out, is pretty dangerous thinking when who gets to decide what 'the right way' means is just one man.
11/18/09
11/18/09
Blowing up the diner is actually the less forgivable of the two incidents, if you look at it from a writer's point of view. Blowing up his apartment was an attempt to either kill him or drive him forward, and bears little other weight, save in retrospect if you're looking for something to match the diner in the show's "real world".
However, in the aftermath of the diner explosion, we are expressly told by 313 that these sorts of things just "happen sometimes", and that they then "Try to forget about it" and "Get on with their lives". All while she's showing her fear very obviously. The concept of terrorism as a means of social control is blatant, and without even a trace of subtlety, but at least sort of works. Now, combine that with the capitulationist ending, where the prisoner now joins the oppressors, and the intended commentary become so obvious that it's insulting.
It even contravenes the show's internal logic, such as it was, because we see the Village use all sorts of other means at their disposal to make troublesome people disappear without so vulgar a display.
11/18/09
11/19/09
@Hypnosifl: it didn't occur to me either until i looked into what gallagher had to say about the series. his quotes certianly endores the position that his intent was to make a comedy (in the classical sense, not the ha ha funny sense), that the ending was nobel and not tragic, that it was better that 2 won. several of the quotes are listed above in gene mayes' post.
11/19/09
11/20/09
Also, you're right that I shouldn't assume that the new Two would perpetuate the policy of keeping the prisoners ignorant of the "other place." On the other hand, it could make their imprisonment worse because they would know of a place they could live free from the restraints of the Village, so the new Two might feel compelled to continue or reinstate the policy to keep the prisoners from feeling bad or worse about their situation.
I'd also argue that whether the people who created this show endorse Six's final choice or not isn't the question. The story itself implicitly accepts and endorses Two's actions and justifications for same by having Six -- the protagonist -- choose to become Two -- the antagonist. While it could be argued that Six chose the lesser of two evils -- life as prisoners vs. destruction of the Village -- it still was evil (as the sleeping 313's tears indicated).
Imagine a different ending, where all the prisoners are gathered at one of the oblivion pits. Imagine Six telling them, "You're all fragments of people living in the other place, sent to this dream world; but this world is dying because it no longer has a dreamer. You can choose to leave this world or stay, but for anyone to stay, one of you must become the new dreamer -- here are the pills. Those who stay will remain prisoners of this world, subject to the rules of the dreamer. Some of you want me to be the one to save you; I say, choose for yourself your own salvation. I choose to leave." And jumps down into the pit -- leaving the prisoners (and the audience) to decide for themselves what choice to make.
Now THAT would have been an ending.
11/18/09
Anyway. I think they should have just gone batsh!t crazy with it and made #1 be #6 from the future and the ending is #6 realizing some crazy realization that causes him to travel back and hire all the #2s and make his past self (#6) give up secrets or something.
So the wife was #1? Is that the deal? I miss Patrick.
11/18/09
The big problem with the new version is that, while the original deliberately used absurdism to comment upon the world, this version mistakes obscurity for absurdism mostly because the creators simply weren't skilled or talented enough to pull off their ambitions.
Shame, really.
11/18/09
it just seemed like this woman that 6 was in love with was made into a placid, worthless being. and after quitting SummaKor, he ends up back there at the end?!? WTF. he's battling 2 and SummaKor for the entire thing, and that's what he comes into at the end? he BECOMES 2? he BECOMES the lead at SummaKor? ridiculous.
i wanted to see some matrix-meets-james-bond action at the end, eliminating SummaKor and setting everyone free.
this just seemed to be a ridiculous ending that caught me staring at the screen going WTF WAS THAT?!? for a good 10 minutes.