Remember The Matrix? It was alright, right? I mean it was pretty revolutionary in terms of changing the way we can look at action movies. It gave action movies the potential to be more than just a barrage of bullets. Action movies could now be thought-provoking and engaging on a cerebral level. And the Wachowski Brothers are who we can thank for, if not starting that revolution, letting it catch fire at the dawn of the new millennium.
And here we are a little over fifteen years later and the W. Bros are back again trying to pick up after their critical and financial failure Jupiter Ascending (Actually lets face it, most of their stuff since Matrix has been meh at best). Now I’m gonna be honest, I like most of the story ideas that these guys present. Maybe because its my history of watching so much Anime that the plot lines and pacing are so easy for me to digest. I mean I don’t know anyone who follows these guys who wouldn’t admit that they basically make live-action anime. And of course that’s what Sense8 gives off (at least in the first episode).
Now I’m gonna give them some credit because having eight main character that all don’t interact with each other seems really hard. The whole first episode could barely have anything to do with the plot because it’s too busy making sure we know these characters, some of which we only get like two minutes with. So already they’ve kind of shot themselves in the foot to begin with. Not to mention, knowing the W. Bros, this plot is going to be convoluted as fuck, so they’ll need to get to explaining it ASAP. Anyway like I said there are eight character and since basically ninety percent of this 1st episode is character introduction, their Bio’s seem like a good place to start.
Courtesy of the Wikipedia Entry
- Capheus Van Damme: A compassionate Matatu van driver in Nairobi with a strong sense of justice who is desperately trying to earn money to buy medicine for his mother, who is suffering from AID’s.
- Sun Bak: Daughter of a powerful Seoul businessman and burgeoning star in the underground kickboxing world
- Nomi Marks: A lesbian trans woman and hacktivist living in San Francisco.
- Kala Dandekar: A pharmacist and devout hindu in Mumbai engaged to marry a man she does not love.
- Riley Blue: An Icelandic DJ with a troubled past that made her run away to London.
- Wolfgang Bogdanow: A Berlin locksmith and safe-cracker, who has unresolved issues with his late father and participates in organized crime.
- Lito Rodriguez: A closeted gay Spanish tele nova actor living in Mexico City.
- Will Gorski: A Chicago cop haunted by an unsolved murder from his childhood.
So if the description of the characters wasn’t enough to tip you off. Then by the picture you can clearly tell that they are casting a wide net hoping to hit every demographic possible. Which there’s nothing wrong with. But again, some may see it as just pandering, and so far that’s the way it seems to me. But it could change. I just find it a little suspicious that there is every race in this show. Diversity for the sake of diversity just seems to put me off. Please don’t take this the wrong way, I’m not racist.
Oh yes the plot! Remember I hinted at that a few paragraphs ago. Well somewhere in this equal opportunity mess, there is indeed a plot. And it’s probably the main reason anyone is talking about this show, it sure was the only reason it caught my attention. So these characters are all the same age and at the beginning of the show all see the same woman appear in front of them. She then proceeds to kill herself, which is shown in more detail in the cold-open of the show. And bam! Now these characters are connected by some force that allows them to randomly experience the same things that another person of the group is feeling. (Yes! Finally a show that portrays what it feels like to be a young teenager on Tumblr. I guess they weren’t lying when they said Jonny Depp is living inside there head). This continues to happen all throughout the character intros and every time it happens, it reminds me why I was so interested in the first place. Seeing people’s lives being changed by this unexplainable force that has crashed into their lives and how they deal with it. It was a good taste of what the show may turn into. And I’m willing to drudge through a slew of, for the most part, uninteresting characters to get more of that.
Hopefully in future episodes they can get some of these characters together because I don’t know how long I can care about these people individually. And since they got most of the characters intros out-of-the-way, I foresee them getting right into the story next episode. But overall I am still very interested in this series, and will continue to give updates as I watch the episodes. I know the series is up in its entirety on Netflix, but I don’t feel I would do the show justice if I just binged it. At the least each episode deserves a little time to dwell on. So I’ll probably post episode reviews every other day, or something like that.
Also I am very interested in what you think about this show if you have seen it (just please no spoilers). I feel that shows like this are meant to be talked about and that’s where they shine. So please comment, especially if you have a different opinion to my own.
