<i>Altered Carbon</i> Is a Moody, Violent Spectacle
If there really are no new ideas, as Mark Twain once theorized, and the best we can hope for is a kind of kaleidoscope effect made out of the same old shapes, then Altered Carbon at least renders the resulting impressions in violent, trippy technicolor. Adapted from the 2002 novel of the same name by Richard K. Morgan, the new Netflix series is replete with ideas and images from sci-fi works past and present. Can you download a human soul? What are the consequences of immortality? If you give humans more power, what kind of excesses and atrocities will they be capable of?
doesn’t think about any of these things too hard, which is one of the reasons it never fully consolidates into a workand among them. Its punch is visual rather than emotional, with scene after scene of vibrant, catalytic fight sequences that spawn yet ever more excess. The show is often beautiful, in a grungy, cyberpunk, chemical-high kind of way, and sometimes electrifying. But its thrills are cheap, even if is reportedly .
