Anyone watch The Man in the High Castle (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 months ago by gueybana@hexbear.net to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net

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The premise of this show was great, the sets and cinematography were great, there’s scenes and whole episodes ghat are absolutely fantastic, show even starts off great.

But the liberal brainrot would never have allowed this show to become much more than low effort fantasy. Somehow turns an interesting setting of the US being occupied by the Nazi empire into some fucking Haruki Murakami esque fever dream about butterflies and time portals, without any mention of the soviets.

This show had so much potential

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[-] Brickardo@feddit.nl 20 points 2 months ago

I think it's a very fun show! The setting of the show is a somewhat interesting thought exercise. But don't get me wrong, the stuff about portals and alternate dimensions was being hinted at since the very beginning. If you care about story writing, the arcs of John Smith and the Japanese lads are very interesting to follow as well.

A final thought about the final season:

spoiler

It felt just a bit too rushed toward the end. For instance, it's almost like they felt like the Black Communist Rebellion couldn't ultimately win, otherwise the cattle would be asking questions.

[-] gueybana@hexbear.net 19 points 2 months ago

I think it’s an excellently directed show paired with some truly bad writing. They knew how to introduced cool thematic elements into the story but they had no idea how to flesh it out.

They somehow deNazified the Nazis, they made Himmler look normal. I understand exploring the banality of evil and it’s interesting how they drew Nazi parallels with American culture, but they never truly committed one way or the other and in the end undermined the sinister element of their own premise, that fucking Nazis rule the entire world. Like, rarely is the holocaust even mentioned, the Nazis are portrayed as nothing more than an occupying force. If there’s ever a time when you should rely on the story of good vs evil, it’s when you’re talking about Nazis.

[-] joaomarrom@hexbear.net 16 points 2 months ago

Agreed. I thought it was a very good show based on an even better novel, but the writing was a bit lacking at some points. I hadn't even thought about the fact that they don't ever mention Soviets. If I'm not mistaken, in the book they pretty much glassed Russia and Africa, so not much is said about that.

I loved it except for the final 30 seconds of the whole show, which was truly an absolute cop-out garbage ending, incredibly unsatisfying. It didn't ruin the rest of the show for me, though. It wasn't GoT levels of a preposterous ending spoiling the enjoyment of everything that came before, but I was very disappointed.

[-] Brickardo@feddit.nl 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I think that, in the absence of a truly antagonist character, the Nazis were doomed to play something similar to Cold War with the Japanese. You can only act like the baddies for so long before the audience gets desensitized to it, imo.

Regardless, I think some bits and pieces of the story are still quite relevant and they hit like a wall. For instance, John Smith losing his child to the brainwashing nazi machinery (he had to forfeit his life because of a truly forgettable genetic defect), and then also losing it in the "alternative dimension" to the brainwashing American machine for the Vietnam war.

I'm South American though, so for me both the Nazis and the USA are irredeemable. This may have skewed my enjoyment of the show in a different direction than yours!