Dilldappe Reviews

The Expanse (2015–2022)

Not brilliant, but good

[8/10 · 1 February 2022]

The show had its peak in the finale of S3. It started strong and as the show progressed only improved up to the ending of season 3. Sadly, after that it declined and S6 was barely interesting anymore. The magic of the early season was gone.

Its interesting to think about why, but hard to find an answer. While the show switched from SyFy to Amazon Prime, the team stayed basically the same. Only the budget increased. So the only conclusion would be weaker source material, to which the show stuck mostly. And it shows. While the first seasons were a multilayered show about a great mystery, the later seasons turned predictable and straightforward with less and less compelling storytelling and no mystery left at all.

You won't regret watching S1-4, but 5 and 6 are skippable.

All of Us Are Dead (2022– )

Overrated

[6/10 · 31 January 2022]

Mostly dragging on to much, with wooden acting and just laughable dialogue. Its pretty boring most of the time, with hilarious scenes in which main characters dodge dozens of zombies in narrow corridors becaus plot armor. Emotional impact missing, some deaths just random and some ... lets say weird superpowers. If one had started to fly at the end, I would not hav been surprised.

Made it to episode 6 before checking out.

It is well crafted in some regards, hence a 6 out of 10. But you won't miss out much if you don't watch it.

4400 (2021–2022)

Oh dear god!

[3/10 · 8 December 2021]

It takes like 10 minutes to realize this is garbage.

Rebooting a show that is from 2004 is already questionable, but missing every beat of and point of what made the original interesting takes a special kind of ignorance. Avoid at all costs, watch the orginal. The reboot is just about checking boxes - quality of writing is stone carving level and acting is medicore.

NO NO NO - if you can't improve or enhance the original show just stay away or rebooting something wortht watching.

Dune (2021)

Somewhat underwhelming

[7/10 · 24 October 2021]

As much as I wanted to like this movie, it falls short of expectations. The most jarring issue of this movie is its failure to appeal to a general audience in terms of lore and background. While watching the movie, I never could shake the thought of how much the movie fails to explain the most important parts of the setting to anyone who has not read the book.

Thats the main issue the movie fails on. If you read the book, the movie will improve; but if you don't it does not provide enough information to really get the viewer engaged into the universe of Dune. In that case its only a generic popcorn movie to be awed and marveled at by the audience for its visuals and special effects, but it cannot create the true insight into Frank Herbert's creation. And thats a shame. Maybe in another 20 years we will get an actual true adaptation of what Frank Herbert wanted to tell.

As it stands, even David Lynch or the SciFi mini series was closer to the mark than this. What a sad state of affairs.

The Watch (2020–2021)

Disgustingly bad

[3/10 · 10 January 2021]

Nothing of this show is remotely true to the original work of Terry Pratchett. Well, maybe Carrot's hair colour, but even his character gets a bad treatment of getting a changed background and impact.

It is really sad to see what happened to this. Its like the creators only read the summaries, usually find at the back of the books, and mangled them into a story. Nothing fits to the true work, as characters appearing later in the watch series are not only present at the start, but with their character arcs completed.

It also is not funny, or humorous, or insightful, or sarcatic, or ironic, or satire. Its just bland, bad and poor. Every Terry Pratchett fan should save themself from exposure to this and stay as far away from it as possiple.

PS You may think about comments about race- and genderchanging of characters. Yes. That happens. It does neither add nor detract on how awful the show is. Dont even think about "wokeness" when the base concept is just disgusting. Even the acting is sub-par, but the worst is just the writing.

The Stand (2020–2021)

Confusing mess

[6/10 · 17 December 2020]

Unless you know the book, you will be left with a puzzled look on your face. The story jumps all over the place in a poor man's effort of "modern" storytelling. Its like someone has thrown the book in a blender and pulls out random pages to clue them back together in the order he pulled them out. There is no logic to the scene progression ... unless you know the source. And then you'll still left angry over unnecessary changes, wild jumps and inconsistencies. Could have been an amazing series in the hands of competent writers - as it is, its easy to forget and another King adaptation gone down the drain.

Acting is quite decent, though. That can't safe this show from burning down pretty fast and being forgotten even faster. A pity.

Death in Paradise: La Murder Le Diablé (2020) Season 9, Episode 1

Poor criminal writing

[5/10 · 11 January 2020]

While the characters themself are very much themselves, there is nothing much to complain about that.

The case, however, is bad. Apart from being rather obvious who commited the murder and how, the feeling that the authors thought themself to be clever cannot be escaped. Especially the resolution is really bad, as Mooney only shows how the prime suspect is not the murderer, he does not actually provide any evidence against the real murderer. Not a single piece of real evidence, apart from him telling how the crime was commited. And even him proving it was not the first suspect could easily countered by a good lawyer. In short, the idea was nice, but the resolution so bad, a backwater lawyer could bail the real murderer since there is not a single piece of evidence presented apart from a nice tale from the inspector.

Watchmen (2019)

What the heck is this supposed to be?

[5/10 · 24 October 2019]

Watching this left me with a serious amount of confusion as to what the show is trying to do here.

There are some positives to point out. The production value is cleary high, the main actress pretty good and convincing in her part, but the plot is all over the place. There is also some interesting world building hinted at. As this takes place in 2019 and has to continue from the timeline of the original Watchmen, they had to make up some things about how the world progressed done the time line. While as of yet it is kind of unclear whether the events surronding Veidt, Rorschach and the Comedian of the comics took actually took place in this universe or not, there is still some interesting things to notice: People use pagers and smartphones are nowhere to be seen. There are serious issues with the enviroment (including squid rains), there arent that many computers around, no tablets etc; but there are flatscreen TVs and holographic HUDs in cars. So there is interesting stuff in the world building, and thats a positive.

But the big thing, apart from the appearent nerf of Dr. Manhatten who still hangs out on Mars and this time can't constuct a literal sand castle compared to the complex glass clock we know he was able to pull off before, is the lack of any real connection to the well known Watchmen. There is a TV programm, appearently, about the popular characters, but that really is the only reference. This leaves the feeling, that the creators only use the Watchmen IP to tell their story and ride on the popularity of the IP in order to promote their story. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth, especially considering that Rorschach now is the face of the antagonist organisation, which, *surprisesurprise* is white supremist. yawn. While the police uses faschist methods itself and Watchmen has always been political commentary of the time, this is getting boring.

The storytelling feels disjointed and the big (maybe) death at the end of episode 1 was even more predictable than Han Solo getting stabbed by Kylo in TFA. Literally no surprise.

This show might get better, but for now its a half baked attempt to craft a well-known and very populare IP on a PC narrative that is so popular to tell right. It is outright abuse to use the Watchmen for this, though, and I would be really surprised if the creator of the comic is fine with this. Involved in the show he is not. Maybe the storytelling will improve, and the quality in which it is delivered, but serious doubts remain and in the end the show is more likely to "meh" audiences than engage them.

Titans: Trigon (2019) Season 2, Episode 1

What a mess!

[5/10 · 8 September 2019]

I can get behind the idea of finishing the cliff hanger of S1 fast, but this was kind of .... warp speed. Its over in 30 minutes and left me wondering whether it could either have been resolved in the last season or at least been an issue for more than just a few minutes of the new season. Its not the worst resolution, but overall 'meh'.

Also there is the setup for a new villian which is only shown and unless you know your comics you will be left wondering "Who the heck is that?", which isnt good after the last villian was an extra diminensional being with the plan to consume the world. Kind of underwhelming.

Finally, Iain Glenn pulls of the worst American accent I have heard in ages. It sounds like he could not be bothered for a 2nd take of the scene and they went with the first iteration. When he appeared I assumed him to be Alfred, not Bruce.

Overall, I like the show well enough to consider this a bump in the road, but what a let down after the great finale of S1 this was!

The Dead Don't Die (2019)

Boring, bland and pretentous

[4/10 · 31 May 2019]

This movie is a waste of time - do yourself a favor and dont watch it. The suggested humor from the trailer is constantly missfiring, dull and repetitive. You are supposed to laugh at usage of the same line thats repeated over and over until the last person rolls his eyes in agony. Sarcastic remarks are made to hit the audience over the head with the absurdity of the situation, thrown in with some blunt 4th wall breaking. Nothing works, not even the acting. While the main cast is supposed to be almost apathic at the outbreak of a zombie apacolypse, it geniuely kills the mood and every sense of drama or tension. After this you will wonder if Adam Driver cant really act and Bill Murray was high or thinking about his paycheck the while time.

There are no pay-offs to character arcs and they push some weird social commentary over the cause of the outbreak thats so mindnumbingly obvious and in your face it loses all weight, plus voice-over to really hammer home the fact how humans where zombie-like to begin with on how they consume and want ever more. Really dull in its delivery it only adds to the feeling of wanting to just be done with the movie. Save yourself from boredom and regret over wasted time and money and skip this.

Game of Thrones: The Long Night (2019) Season 8, Episode 3

The worst that could happen

[3/10 · 30 April 2019]

Game of Thrones is now over - the big bad has been defeated after not uttering a single word of text. What was his motivation? We will never know. The Night King, a character invented for the show, has met his arch enemey: plot convenience!

Overall, apart from a few cool shots, most of the episode used the bad old technique of being shot in the dark so the audience isn't bothered with details or clear understanding of what is going on. On more that half a dozen events characters are left in dire situation that would have spelled doom in the good old times when the show could be bothered with logic; only to cut back to a character a few minutes later to find him/her in the same situation with a now convenient way out - like Jon Snow being circled and surrounded by undead at one point, only to cut back to him to see the undead only in front of him (apart from 2 easily dispatched wights) further away from him than when we left him. Characters get swarmed and pulled to the ground at least 6 times and then cut to someplace else, only to cut back to them to find them in perfect health and standing again, now being swarmed again.

Oh, and the Night King dies. The show pulles a clichè "kill the mothership"-move. The Long Night, that had been build up from Episode ONE! is over after only 80 minutes and with 3 episodes left we are left with only to deal with Cercei ---- yawn! All that the source material was about, how the Game of Thrones didnt matter with the Long Night looming and threatening to kill everyone if they dont put aside their petty differences - gone and wasted. Seriously, this was the worst that could have happened, turning the Night Kind into a standard clichè villian that doesn't matter in the long run. The show is done and over, and half of it was wasted, while the other half was pointless.