SummarySet in the near future, people are forced to make to life changing choices in the face of rapid climate change in the drama series from Scott Z. Burns.
SummarySet in the near future, people are forced to make to life changing choices in the face of rapid climate change in the drama series from Scott Z. Burns.
In oftentimes harrowing fashion, "Extrapolations" looks at one possible future while offering enough scientific know-how to keep the series exciting even in the bleakest of times.
You experience different stories of people on our planet who are changing extremely due to climate change. The series is quite critical and quite extremely implemented, which makes it quite interesting. If you get involved in the series, you should be aware that the consequences have time jumps of up to 10 years, which may be a bit confusing and perhaps could have been better implemented. Maybe it would also have been better to stretch the series more (more episodes) or to share it on two seasons with an even greater focus on the characters and more on the environment themes/consequences or changes for humanity, which should also have been shown visually, according to the motto: The eye eats with it. The actors consistently convince and here and there some WOWs came up with me without watching the cast before. Visually, there is also a lot of interesting things to see.
Every time I saw a big name actor in this show, I thought about how big their house must be, how many houses they must own, and how many flights on a private jet they must have taken to be part of this show. One of my family members noticed that all of the characters live rich, comfortable lives. We see the results of climate change as they watch TV. It is as of the people making this show have no concept of struggle except as it might apply to watching other people. And ultimately show pins the fate of mankind rests on all our shoulders, even though some shoulders bear much, much more responsibility than others.
The show itself looks good and in its own way, shows us the predicted effects of climate change. You can see the production value and the talent of the enormous cast of characters. The writing is sometimes clever. After animals like tigers are extinct, kids believe they’ve always been extinct. Sometimes the writing is blunt force trauma. A cynical business man boldly claims that can profit from climate change because he will be dead before the worst of it. Some of it is just too forcefully poetic to enjoy a rewatch. We need more scenes to show what is happening on the ground. Let us see heat stroke, drought, flooding, and fires and not clean offices and well dressed models. I want to see this show get its hands dirty,
It’s a humane, carefully constructed but often frustrating project—and one that illustrates why insightful art about the climate crisis has proven so elusive.
Extrapolations does sometimes compel. But when opposing speechifiers go at it hammer and tongs about causes, effects and solutions, it can drag like a long night at the debating soc.
The show works a bit like a breezy and brisk collection of linked short stories, constantly moving forward, continually showing new consequences of our own inaction. Keeping the characters flat and underserved, though, makes the lavishly depicted world they inhabit feel less like a matter of concern. ... Clumsy in its delivery of information, “Extrapolations” is also maudlin where “Black Mirror” is icy.
Just awful. I had such high hopes given the quality of the actors that signed up for this. Perhaps they had high hopes too but it fails at every level. The producers had a golden opportunity to show how life of various levels of society would be affected by climate change and thy failed miserably. Each episode is relatively disconnected from the prior one although some are somewhat linked. Each one seems worse than the other. I used to like Forrest Whitaker but not in this. He seems absolutely amateurish. Perhaps you can "credit" the stilted, not credible dialogue, but notwithstanding that, the recitation of his lines, his gestures and his expressions are high school level at best. It is literally painful to watch.. We may struggle through the final episode with John Snow for giggles.
Updated: Out of 7 episodes so far, only the 5th, is well done and interesting. The rest being predictable and preaching candy wrapped in great actors names, is mostly very uneven and wasted opportunity.
First episode is maybe still ok as an introduction, second has great ideas there, but somehow the end us wasted opportunity (underwhelming and predictable). Third one instead of showing destruction of Miami is wasted on other stuff (don't want to spoil it), the ending is so disgustingly sugary that it offends intelligence of viewers. Some people would stop watching the series here. Fourth episode is wasted for clumsy rehearsal of some white house procedural drama, flashy but pretty empty and again predictable.
Only the 5th one has something to say and show. Happens in India, shows the heatwave effects (so called wetbulb effect) and how horrible is for average human beings. And first time in the series really shows what it means for majority of the people in the world - working class, poor from outiside developed countries. So far we could think that climate change only touches lifes of middle class from the West, and it's really more of the question if you can buy more comfortable mode of survivial. Till that episode it doesn't include working class and poor (even poor from US and Europe) as if they would not exist or they would be a mere background like wild animals going to extinct. 5th episode is well made, has finally flavor of something authentic (people speaking and showing their feeling in their mother language - still it's being reduced because apparently American viewers cannot read subtitles) and shows mortal danger and helplessness of climate changes. That could be shown in Miami episode, but choose to go for some moral arguments and preaching. In India we have at least a glimpse of how mortifying and real the future might be.
If antalogu would keep 5th episode formula would get 9 stars, but for all the too obvious preachiness, wasted ideas and focusing on middle class sanitized troubles, it get generous 3 stars. Can only hope that the rest of episodes are different.
Updated: After watching now 7 episodes - it's pretty obvious that for creators the only people worth making series about are the ones from rich West, and global South is just some non-existent background, mentioned briefly only on radio/news. Even animals are getting more attention than real people living in India, Bangladesh, African countries etc. Dropping my to 1 - there is literally one episode happening in Global South. Shame.
Remember when the tone-deaf celebrities banded together to 'inspire' us by singing Imagine? It seems like someone in Hollywood saw that and thought, "This is how we'll save the world!" by having a bunch of out-of-touch, pampered actors and producers tell us how WE need to do more to protect THEIR lifestyle.