posted
I mean, the show sounds similar enough to BSG to warrant saying "If you like BSG, chances are that you'll like this." The thread title doesnt make me infer that it's a clone/variant or anything. They're just similar.
Posts: 1407 | Registered: Oct 2008
| IP: Logged |
Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
quote: What I did was reject the suggestion that Infinite Ryvius is a 'better BSG' because, by the description you included in the OP yourself, it seems to be a radically different story with some similar elements and themes. I see nothing about religion, myth, or aliens in your description for example. Some of the larger elements in BSG, and the description says '486 children of various ages' when you can count on literally one hand the number of children in BSG.
Because those elements of BSG is where it essentially jumped the Shark and dilluted the show and locked into a weirdness cycle of where it could only maintain ratings by just jumping over more sharks in an even more outlandish way than the last into you were left wonder when did the sharks start driving motorcycles jumping over microcosms.
Not that BSG even then was 'bad' but it just got more disappointing and kept trying to tackle more and more themes and just ending up average overall and finally ending with a whimper of where nothing was truly solved or resolved, the only saving grace that thank god it didn't decide to repeat Battlestar 1980.
Infinite Ryvius sticks to basically the core elements that I liked in BSG and worked on fleshing and elaborating on those never straying from that path and thus giving a far more satisfactory experience when it did finally resolve.
Looking for example for an analogy from the latest Extra Credits regarding story structure here's my take:
Ryvius has your basic three act structure, Act 1, when you show the characters and their normal lives, where you introduce them and their characterizations and the basic setting; then it all gets destroyed and the basic underlying question is raised, the call to action.
Act 2 is spent with nothing trying to get the tools to answer that question, where multiple events can happen within quick succession with great action and pacing.
Finally Act 3, the Question is resolved, the action finally ended, the quest that was begun is finally over and all the loose ends tidied up.
Infinite Ryvius excellent story telling keeps these clearly in its vision resulting in a cleanly told consistent story that goes through each act changing acts subtly but unquestionably in the eyes of a keen viewer and ends wonderfully.
Battlestar just ping pongs, like you have the 3 act structure interspaced randomly with separate structures from entirely other structures! Madness. The situation just gets more and more complex with the writers making up more and more stuff to add onto it, every question answered just gets a dozen more questions contrively written into it.
BSG would have been a considerably more consistent show had they kept focus on the military-survival aspects and had a clear ending planned from the start based on resolving that, my suggestion would have been finding the actual Earth but in our near-future and they allying up to defeat and push back the Cylons in a final properly done myth arc.
IP: Logged |
quote:I mean, the show sounds similar enough to BSG to warrant saying "If you like BSG, chances are that you'll like this." The thread title doesnt make me infer that it's a clone/variant or anything. They're just similar.
Which wasn't really the premise of the OP.
------------
quote:Because those elements of BSG is where it essentially jumped the Shark and dilluted the show and locked into a weirdness cycle of where it could only maintain ratings by just jumping over more sharks in an even more outlandish way than the last into you were left wonder when did the sharks start driving motorcycles jumping over microcosms.
I wasn't aware we were going to be treating your opinion as fact, Blayne. Many of the fans felt that some of the Cylon, myth, and religion elements were really quite well done, though.
quote: Not that BSG even then was 'bad' but it just got more disappointing and kept trying to tackle more and more themes and just ending up average overall and finally ending with a whimper of where nothing was truly solved or resolved, the only saving grace that thank god it didn't decide to repeat Battlestar 1980.
This is just factually inaccurate. You may not have liked how things were resolved, but they were resolved.
quote: Infinite Ryvius sticks to basically the core elements that I liked in BSG and worked on fleshing and elaborating on those never straying from that path and thus giving a far more satisfactory experience when it did finally resolve.
Now we're (finally) getting somewhere. You're saying that Infinite Ryvius tells the kind of story BSG should have told?
quote:Infinite Ryvius excellent story telling keeps these clearly in its vision resulting in a cleanly told consistent story that goes through each act changing acts subtly but unquestionably in the eyes of a keen viewer and ends wonderfully.
Battlestar just ping pongs, like you have the 3 act structure interspaced randomly with separate structures from entirely other structures! Madness. The situation just gets more and more complex with the writers making up more and more stuff to add onto it, every question answered just gets a dozen more questions contrively written into it.
BSG would have been a considerably more consistent show had they kept focus on the military-survival aspects and had a clear ending planned from the start based on resolving that, my suggestion would have been finding the actual Earth but in our near-future and they allying up to defeat and push back the Cylons in a final properly done myth arc.
Blayne, none of this has anything to do with the acting of live-action vs. animation, one of the central questions at hand, remember?
As for your suggested ending, well, I have to say that from this fan's perspective, that suggestion seems really bad. It's self-insertion, smacking of fanfiction (Hey, it's us, Earth!), and it wraps up everything in a neat and tidy bow, which for complicated human storytelling just isn't very realistic.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I actually agree with Blayne about BSG's plot. So if there's a series that tells a similar story without those issues, and is already complete, I'm interested. But yeah, it's a completely different point than the acting.
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
I will agree that the show went off the reservation more than once in proportion to its explorations of those plots, but I disagree to the extent that he discusses it, and I frankly wonder if he would be as adamant about it if there weren't an animated series being held up next to it.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
Well I've never had the desire to rewatch BSG while I've did have the desire to rewatch babylon 5 or some of the Trek movies.
quote: As for your suggested ending, well, I have to say that from this fan's perspective, that suggestion seems really bad. It's self-insertion, smacking of fanfiction (Hey, it's us, Earth!), and it wraps up everything in a neat and tidy bow, which for complicated human storytelling just isn't very realistic.
A proper writing staff could make it work, and while I would say that what they did do in BSG was "well written" on its own but in comparison to the plot as a whole it just went as it is medically known as snoopy-loopy or as its known elsewhere underwent "Indigo Prophecy Syndrome"
IP: Logged |
posted
A proper writing staff simply wouldn't do it, Blayne, or at least I have difficulty imagining them doing it. Injecting a near-future real-world Earth into the BSG universe would fly directly in the face of much of the entire series. It'd be silly.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
And yet they did just that with Caprica.
IP: Logged |
posted
...which is a) a different series, b) not taking place in the spot in the story you suggested earlier, and c) I haven't started the second season yet but unless I'm very mistaken, it's not a near-future real-world Earth at all in Caprica.
Blayne, exactly how often in storytelling do you see, right near the end, the good guys who are on the verge of being wiped out, encounter a previously completely unexpected bunch of allies that help them handily overwhelm their enemies letting them live happily ever after? How often in good storytelling that's not to be encountered in fanfiction or 'wouldn't it be cool if...' style storytelling?
posted
I don't see how an animation can possibly compare to live action.
Watch a closeup shot of a human being. There is movement. Constant movement. You can see something happening, thoughts being formed, words coming to the tip of tongue, eyes glancing, shining, noses quirking, throats clearing, et cetera. A lot of these are involuntary actions on the part of the actor. A good actor makes it all come together to make it work.
For computer animation, all those movements are planned and mimicked and artificial. It's close, but it's not the real thing.
For traditional animation, capturing that "life" is not even an option, except for really big budget productions, and even then, on an extremely minuscule scale.
Posts: 339 | Registered: Apr 2008
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by manji: I don't see how an animation can possibly compare to live action.
It can, but this won't. This particular form of animation is used for the sake of economy, making significant use of one-frame pans and cycle-stuttering basic visual sequence tropes (envision watching an anime where you see a person who is being animated in two frames, to make him 'grimace' with sweat beads — think of how common this is) as well as long stretches of animated time where little or nothing is actually being animated besides mouths.
But, this anime aside, well-done works that are really spending the care and budget necessary (see: pixar) can easily be said to 'compare' to live action. Even surpass a lot of it, if not all of it.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
And you need to tell stories about advanced canines in spaceships how often, exactly? Not exactly a very good comparison for your case.
Samprimary's point, and mine, and the point others are making, is that while animated acting can* equal live action, as it's actually done it usually doesn't. He goes into more detail as to why, and people who are actually recommending series to watch with fervency know those technical details are pretty accurate.
*I'm not personally sold that the acting on its own in an animated feature can be just as high quality as live-action, but I am sold that it can be so good that it comes to the point where it's too close to tell the difference clearly between two different stories.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
That was sort of lazy, but it's not just that. You can exagerate certain expressions in anime because of emphasized feature so it just has a charm, so between anime and live action character, I dont really care.
And there's also guys like that fat insane with guy with the cane, the chick from FLCL, Rail Tracer, whatever.
Posts: 1407 | Registered: Oct 2008
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
