Blurring the Line between LIfe and Mortality || Altered Carbon Film Review

Death is inevitable. The acknowledgement and understanding of that fundamentally provide a perspective on life and a default approach to life. For many, there's the appreciation of life and the heightened consciousness of our wellbeing, existential contemplation, and a sense of urgency to achieve one's dreams. That, in general, makes our world run the way it does. If, however, death were still inevitable but not permanent, how differently would we perceive life, and how differently would the world be?

In the world of Altered Carbon, death isn't permanent, as consciousness is stored in high-tech storage devices called "cortical stacks" are plugged into bodies, blurring the line between life and mortality. Bodies are referred to as "sleeves," connoting the dispensability of the human body since consciousness can be stored and transferred between them. And with two seasons of cyberpunk drama and action and a total of 18 episodes, this is one enjoyable series I'll share about its good, bad, and things in-between.

For a long time, I had seen this series around. I didn't quite hear much about it that was enough to convince me to check it out, so I just ignored it. After checking out its trailer and then finding that it had an interesting story and concept that I had never seen before, I gave it a chance. Fast forward to two seasons consumed, and I'll say I've been missing something all along.

Futuristic concepts like this fascinate me, and so I automatically liked the approach to reincarnation with high-tech devices that are capable of storing human consciousness and loading it up into bodies, then referring to the bodies as "sleeves." Pretty neat. And from that concept, too, whole new worlds were birthed.

The film portrays the never-changing fact that human nature is naturally selfish and greedy, with the idea that people want to live forever by all means. Surely, affording sleeves doesn't come cheap; therefore, the divide between the haves and have-nots is further amplified, with some relegated to living multiple times in discarded sleeves while others bask in eternal youth and privilege.

The first episode of this film had me hooked. The idea of a super soldier having foresight or anticipation and being able to predict certain actions by other individuals caught my attention and made me long for more of that in other use cases. And then, soon enough, there was the explanation of how "reincarnation" works that fascinated me. There are also exhibitions of interesting tech, such as advanced gadgets and weapons.

I found it interesting to see the same person in different bodies, interacting with people, and going about their lives or missions simply by having digital human minds sent here and there. At the same time, however, I had to keep track of many faces and personalities all through the show.

The film starts out like a sort of normal murder mystery and detective stuff, fused with a lot of action, but then delves deeper with its story. I liked that it wasn't all guns and fights alone, although I very much enjoyed a lot of them. Little by little, the story expands, introducing more characters and history, as well as some more drama along the way.

It's heavily worth noting that this film, especially the first season, has many sexually inclined elements. For the most part of the first season, I kept seeing naked people. In fact, I think I saw every single person go naked in the film at some point. Okay, that's hyperbole, but you get the idea. The story, however, wasn't driven around sexual drama; it just felt dented by the incessant use of it. On the bright side, the second season was way less of that.

Speaking of the second season, I didn't quite enjoy it as much as the first. The major reason why this is so is because of this "reincarnation" idea. Because people kept changing faces, which was a normal thing, there was a completely new set of faces in the second season, although only the main character and a very small number of others showed up in the second season. It felt as though I was watching a completely different film, as I didn't find characters I was already used to. Also, the second season seemed a little bland and overstretched, especially at the end. At some point, I began to feel like the show should end already so I could move on to another.

There were a lot of acronyms in this film, so much so that I finished the entire film without fully understanding some of them. They were too many to keep up with and used so frequently that they made me understand the story less in certain areas. They were usually vaguely explained. For example, I didn't know RD meant "real death" for about 4 episodes and that DHF literally meant Digital Human Freight throughout the film. I just managed to get through the film by following the context.

I mostly enjoyed the film, not just for the story alone but for the effort and time invested in the visual storytelling of the film. Cyberpunk films require quite a lot of work with graphics, camera applications, and motion-picture techniques. I found it appealing to see how brilliantly executed many of the scenes are.

There were many characters and even way more actors for each of them, but I'd like to commend them for staying true to their characters all through. Many of them were excellent, especially for season one, and I couldn't have enjoyed the show if they had been terrible, but they were great instead.

Altered Carbon is quite an enjoyable show, especially with the fancy tech stuff and really cool action in most parts. It may have been flawed by the ambiguity of many terms and incessant sexual inclination, but it appeals to me in many ways. I'd sure mention that if I were recommending it to anyone.

It seemed to me like a third season was intended from the way it ended, but I'll be candid with myself and say that I doubt I'd be excited about it when it does come out. Nonetheless, it's a pretty cool show.

I will give it a rating of 7/10.