The Purge, The Mist, Lost in Space Reviews

The Purge movies have always been just a little bit more than violence. The politics behind it seems vaguely what an out of control America might do. The movie series introduced the concept and went back and explained a bit how it all started. The TV series gives even more background but delves right into the action with a new Purge just about to happen.

The series from 2018 runs 10 episodes and in Canada was on Amazon Prime. The second season begins this October.

The series follow a number on people who are willing participants in The Purge to those that are the victims of it. No particular actor stands out though a few are known actors. The rest are carrying their first show. Any thought that a long form story would be more compelling is lost by the fact that the actors are not particularly likable. That isn't always a problem but if that is the case, the character has someone you love to hate instead. We don't get that either.

The Purge only take places for 12 hours once a year. Not sure what I was expecting but perhaps it was a better character arc. For example, The Walking Dead first episode really set up a good reason to follow the entire first season. The Purge really didn't do that for me.

By the way, one of the reasons I left The Walking Dead and stopped watching Fear The Walking Dead was that they were relentlessly downbeat. And increasingly they had unlikable characters. And I'm not talking about the villains. The Purge never caught me is that they didn't have characters I wanted to follow. Moreover, they had characters that struck me as too stupid to live. This is a worse crime in my book.

I won't be watching the second season.

The Mist which aired on the Spike Channel in the U.S. and Canada was based on the Stephen King story and the movie of 2007. The series ran an episode run in 2017 and can be caught on some streaming services now. It was cancelled by Spike.

The book, the movie and the series have various difference but the one consistency is that a fog descends on a town and traps people in their homes or for many, a supermarket/mall. Also consistent is that in the mists are creatures that are killing people.

The series started off promising and the ratings indicated a winner. However, somewhere along the show went off the rails. A major departure was that the mist did not only have creatures within it but mind altering visions. While this might have made for interesting back stories, it also raised serious questions.

There were hints that there were chosen people who were immune. This led to persecution or blindly following someone for messianic reasons. The book and the original movie were more clear that people took sides out of fear not and that religion took a part in dividing people. The series took the position that nature was judging humanity. To say the least it was a bit muddled.

What wasn't muddled was the same thing that The Purge was guilty of: no likable characters.

The book left things off somewhat hopefully that somewhere far off there was a place the mist had left alone. Our remaining characters head there. The movie had a Twilight Zone-like ending which I won't spoil. The TV series left things off that our major characters have escaped the mall and are now headed to where the mist all began.

We'll never know what that is cause the show was cancelled. Even if it had been renewed I would have not watched.

Lost in Space on Netflix, not be confused from the TV series of 1965-1969, is a 2018 releases series released on the streamer. Like the series before it, the show is based on the 1812 novel Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss about a family shipwrecked in the West Indies. It has been adapted countless times but putting the story into space was possibly the most innovative. There was also a movie in 1998 that had some seriously questionable special effects and wooden dialogue. The bad dialogue might have been forgivable for sci-fi but not terrible special effects.

A family caught up in extreme circumstances makes for a compelling story. Setting it in space sets the imagination running. The original series went through a number of phases including from black and white to colour and from more serious to whimsical. Some people loved part of the show but not all of it and that varied year to year. And eventually, the show fell into a trap of Dr. Smith, Robot and youngest boy Will Robinson as the central characters. That would be popular and also be its undoing. The robot's phrase of Danger Will Robinson Danger would live on long after the series.

It seems that the space version of Swiss Family Robinson falls into the same traps every time. There is nothing wrong with the initial premise that Earth is facing increasing pressures due to population or catastrophe or hostilities. Colonization and using families as a unit makes sense insofar as cohesion, especially if there is no return to Earth. However, it can make things boring too if you have no outsiders who may be friends, foes, romantic partners, competitors or any and all configurations.

It seems Lost in Space writers have considered this and the reasons previous versions of the show failed. However, ultimately the same Dr. Smith, boy and robot format appears to what is relied upon. In 10 episodes it is surprising how little character depth actually happens. Almost everyone is a cardboard cutout.

There are a few good actors on the show but they hardly seem to have enough that makes standout. The series has been renewed for another season. I'm prepared to see if the show breaks out. It is important to know that many of the best TV series of all time had at least 20 to 24 episodes to show their worth. Still, my patience is wearing with this show.