Two Nerds watch the first episode of HBO’s The Nevers, a steampunk Buffy the Vampire Slayer slash X-Men hybrid. The Nevers was created by Joss Whedon, who then apparently “stepped away” some time after all the allegations about his behavior on the set of Justice League. Whatever his involvement, the series is undoubtedly Whedonesque, with familiar character types and relationship dynamics. As a steampunk series, there are also easy comparisons to Carnival Row, which was incredibly beautiful and hopelessly boring; His Dark Materials, which is a great book series, disastrous movie, and uneven HBO series; and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, which has great art direction but still bugs me. Salman Rushdie’s Booker prize winning novel Midnight’s Children gets discussed in the same breath as X-Men, which made me have an attack of the giggles. We’re on the hook for episode two, but The Nevers wasn’t amazing or anything.
2 minutes in to the pilot episode, I turned to Sara and said, “I am shocked that Eva Green isn’t in this.”
I will say that the most recent episode (3?) has a legit awesome fight scene that is nothing I’ve ever seen before, and executed amazingly well on a TV (well, HBO) budget.
No spoilers, but Whedon’s go-to tricks continue to appear several episodes in..
2 minutes in to the pilot episode, I turned to Sara and said, “I am shocked that Eva Green isn’t in this.”
I will say that the most recent episode (3?) has a legit awesome fight scene that is nothing I’ve ever seen before, and executed amazingly well on a TV (well, HBO) budget.
No spoilers, but Whedon’s go-to tricks continue to appear several episodes in..
I’ll add that “disintegrated alien tech in the sky that gives random people superpowers” is also the premise of Wild Cards.
I totally thought of that AFTER we did the podcast, alas!
Honestly, Eva Green would class things up a bit, though I feel like she’s already covered a lot of this kind of material in Penny Dreadful, but better. That series was done dirty.
I think we’re watching epi 3 today, so I’m pumped for the fight scene! I know they tried to act like Whedon wasn’t all over this after everyone called him out for being an asshole, but this show is completely made out of his tics. Some of that is fine, and some of it isn’t. We kind of wandered off and binged the hell out of Shadow & Bone instead of watching The Nevers.
The Nevers’ behind the scenes bits (I always enjoy that kind of stuff) are kind of hilarious for how assiduously they pretend Whedon doesn’t exist.
I think we landed on the position that we’d give the show a fair chance to work through the early locked-down material and get the most Whedony stuff out of the pipes, and then see what they do once his shadow looms slightly less large over the project. We haven’t reached that horizon yet, as far as I can tell.
Also: Penny Dreadful ftw. I’m so curious about City of Angels.