In 2016, the American drama "Westworld" was born.
This Emmy-nominated and Golden Globe Award for Best Series has built a terrifying and cruel future with bizarre imagination and deep exploration, which once aroused global heated discussions.
Now, the Westworld team has brought a whole new world -
"Edge World"
Produced by Amazon, the first season consists of 8 episodes, with a single episode length of about 60 minutes.
At present, only two episodes have been launched, and the Douban score has soared to 8.8 points.
Judging from the two episodes that have been launched, its sci-fi setting, expression, narrative rhythm, etc., are all intrinsically related to "Westworld".
Perhaps, a gorgeous "Nolan-style new science fiction" is taking shape.
01
Nolan here refers to Christopher Nolan's younger brother, Jonathan Nolan.
Younger brother Jonathan has written his brother's directorial masterpieces "Batman: The Dark Knight" and "The Dark Knight Rises" as a co-screenwriter.
Although not as good as his brother, his brother's directing talent is not bad, and the core of the creative team of "Westworld" is him.
Westworld
In the production of "Edge World", Jonathan and his wife Lisa Joy are executive producers, the equivalent of executive producers.
Vincenzo Natali, one of the directors of the series, made a name for himself in the early years with B-grade films such as "Panic" and "Human-Beast Hybrid", but in recent years has turned to mainstream genre narratives and deeply participated in the production of popular dramas such as "Hannibal", "Westworld" and "The Whimsy of Guillermo del Toro".
"The Whimsy of Guillermo del Toro" will also be broadcast soon
Another director, Orrick Riley, has directed some episodes of "The Walking Dead" and "The Powerpuff Throws".
The cast of "Edge World" includes "King Haibian" super killer Chloë Moretz, "Westworld" "Daddy" Louis Hurthamm, and the resentful boyfriend Jack Leno in the horror film "Midsummer Night's Terror".
The most surprising thing is the joining of Liang Peishi played by Harry Potter's first love girlfriend Zhang Qiu.
She played a slightly proud and gloomy technician in the play, which is far from the original image of Zhang Qiu.
The creation of "Edge World" is a bit of a "production-centric" flavor, that is, the style of the series is controlled by the Nolans and his wife, and their production company, Kilter Films, is also one of the producers.
This means that the strengths and weaknesses of Westworld (for all seasons) will probably all be reproduced in Edge World.
After the series was launched, IMDb scored 8.5, Rotten Tomatoes freshness 64%, and metacritic expert score 58.
It can be seen that Nolan-style new science fiction is still based on a strong setting, and there is a certain degree of controversy in specific narrative means and details.
The British newspaper The Guardian praised the drama as "a compact storyline, consistent internal logic, and a bold interpretation." ”
CNN pointed out that the show "has nothing special about the villain or plot, the only thing that catches the eye is the set design." ”
So, what kind of story does "Edge World" tell?
02
The series is based on William Gibson's novel of the same name.
Gibson, born in 1948, is known as the father of cyberpunk, and his Hugo Award masterpiece "Neuromancer" may be brought to the big screen by Tim Miller ("Deadpool") in the future.
William Gibson
The English title of "Edge World" is The Peripheral, that is, peripherals.
Peripherals refer to devices other than the host, such as printers, corresponding to the play, involving two basic settings.
First, in the future, any item can be printed by a 3D printer, and the heroine Flin works in a 3D printing shop.
Second, Furin entered the game world through a 3D printed cutting-edge virtual reality hood.
If you put aside all the extended meanings, the peripheral should refer to this hood.
The story of the first two episodes, seemingly complicated, is actually simple.
Set in the year 2032, the Blue Ridge Mountains of the United States.
Flin and her brother Bolton are both video game masters, and Flin is more powerful in comparison.
The two live with their mother, who is blind due to a brain tumor and has little time, and the two need a lot of money to treat her.
At this time, Bolton received a job, and a Columbia company asked him to use the aforementioned hood to enter a game and get paid for the task.
To avoid mistakes, Flin decides to enter the game instead of Burton.
The game world is set in London, England in 2100.
In the game, Flin takes on the role of a male character named Spoon Ice, enters Buckingham Palace, and follows the instructions of the guide to take the rich woman Meliet away with sweet words.
In the car, Flin uses drugs to stun Meliette, but is attacked by her robot driver, and after a fight, Fllyn quits the game and suddenly feels dizzy.
The extreme realism of the game experience made Flin can't help but enter the game again, this time, Flin experienced an eye-catching pain in the game.
It turned out that the guide was going to change Meliet's eyeballs into the spoon ice eye and, through the iris scan, enter a database-like place.
In the database, the guide forced Flin to receive some kind of important information.
At this time, an agent arrives and severely wounds Flin with a sonic gun, causing Flin to never want to enter the game again.
However, Furin received a call from the commissioning company, who claimed that someone was offering a $9 million reward on the dark web for the lives of the Furlin family.
Only by re-entering the game can this crisis be resolved.
Flin didn't believe it at first, but it wasn't until a small team of professional killers attacked that Flin decided to enter the game for the third time.
This time, Flin has her own identity in the game, and finally understands the meaning and purpose of the whole game -
The game is related to the guide Elita.
Elita seems to be carrying some secret, and Fline's next task is to find the missing Eelita.
The series leads to two concepts, "quantum tunneling" and "cross-time line".
The former is different from time travel.
Time and space travel directly transmits the whole of the person (body and consciousness), while quantum tunneling only transmits the data of the person, not the real body of the person.
In other words, Flin is not playing a simulation game, but exists from a distance in the carrier of the game.
Cross-time lines refer to the fact that when people in two timelines touch each other, the past timelines will immediately branch out and form a continuous space-time on the branches.
This space-time is the cross-time line.
These two concepts, connecting the years 2032 and 2100, also open up the real world and the game world, making it impossible to distinguish which of them is more real before the mystery is revealed.
For now, London in 2100 is the gaming world.
But is it possible that the Blue Ridge Mountains in 2032 are actually the game world of Londoners in 2100?
03
Edge World and Westworld have a lot of similarities.
Both dramas have two main worlds, one real and one fictional, but there is no strict distinction between real and fiction, and the two are always infiltrating and changing each other.
Westworld
In this gorgeous worldview setting, both dramas try to elevate the height of exploration to the percussion of human nature -
In "Westworld", when the bionic man is infinitely close to human beings themselves, does the distinction and association between the two still make sense?
In "Edge World", when people can detach from the body and "transport" consciousness to another carrier of time and space, is "the body the temple of man" (Haruki Murakami) no longer valid?
Nolan also places this percussion in the dual dimensions of history and future.
Westworld is set in the American West at the end of the 17th century.
"Edge World" directly installs giant Greek statues in future cities, and projects medieval naval battles onto the Thames, forming an impactful historical landscape.
These two operations aim to prove that the future originates in history, and the charm of science fiction is hidden in the barbarism and civilization of history.
It can be seen that Nolan's ambition in "Edge World" is not small.
However, just as the later stages of "Westworld" are out of control and lacking, "Edge World" also hides a crisis under the grandeur and splendor of the surface.
First of all, William Gibson's original book is not very large.
Judging from the development of the series, it seems that Furin is facing a world-class conspiracy and crisis, after all, the story involves many heavy elements such as technology giants, Russian-American rich, and dark web hunting.
But the landing point of the original ending is love, like a cyberfairy tale.
Therefore, if "Edge World" does not control the rhythm and details precisely, it is likely to end up top-heavy.
In fact, I can feel that the rhythm of the second episode has been imbalanced -
In order to explain the worldview setting of the whole drama as soon as possible, it is a perfect match compared to the first episode of literary drama and martial arts.
The second episode mostly advances the plot with dialogue, and the sense of amazement is reduced, and the only spectacle may be the stunning transformation of "Super Killer".
These possible problems all originate from the style of Nolan's works.
Compared with his brother's dialectic and rigor, his works often have hardcore points on the surface, but it is easy to slide into emptiness and shallowness in the interior.
This can be seen from the "Suspect Tracking" series, which he wrote and directed part of the episodes.
"Suspect Tracking"
"Suspect Tracking", which is also a bit of sci-fi flavor, is loved by fans to a large extent, due to the male charm of the lead actor Jim Caviese, and the unique bond established by the two male protagonists in the play due to detectives.
As for the case itself, it actually lacks narrative and detail charm.
From this point of view, although "Edge World" has a very good opening, we can only be cautious about the quality of the whole show for the time being.
Text: County Hao