Rant: Worldbuilding vs Storytelling - Altered Carbon
Started watching Altered Carbon on Netflix (heads up its not for kids), and I started to do a little googling on it and check out reviews and the "controversy" of the show. (A white man is playing an Asian character (actually the character is an asian man forced into a white mans body)) parenthesizes!
Anyway I'm writing this because once again I see critics hate on a movie/show for either not delivering a message or world building. What I want to focus on if the title didn’t already give it away is the world building aspect of a film. I feel like world building should be backseat to story and not the other way around.
You don't watch a movie to explore options of what happens in the general area, you go to see a character move from point a to b. That move can be emotional, physical, spiritual....literally spiritual if they die. And that move is how we relate to the story. So while this first episode of Altered Carbon slacks on delivering the most relatable (or rather easy) connection, “Fish out of Water”. It does set up the most important aspect of the story....this is a murder mystery. Its a sci-fi murder mystery, but the sci-fi aspect is secondary...so its a murder sci-fi.
I was reading about how someone wants to see more of the body transferring aspects, more cyber punk aspects, but they are only the set piece for the mystery. Those elements exist to bring us clues that we can’t readily decipher because we have no experience with them. As a mystery show however, they do give us classic detective story tropes. A reluctant hero with attention to detail, a locked door murder, a hard boiled cop, and mysterious figures working in the shadows. So with this off my chest, I hope you come to appreciate the story that I have no stake in. I am able and will be turncoat the second the show gets too dumb. Now if you excuse me, I will be over in my corner, being an apologist for Netflix’s Bright which I liked more than Wonder Woman (jk.....(or am I?))
