Altered Carbon is a confusing mess

Vulture

“The cyberpunk sci-fi series, which debuted Friday on Netflix, is ambitious, convoluted, violent, derivative, and somehow simultaneously grimy and glossy,” says Jen Chaney. "It raises provocative questions about the social implications of turning people’s souls into transferable digital files, but piles so much exposition and so many story lines on top of everything that it collapses like an excessively tall tower built out of Philip K. Dick novels and CGI. There are some compelling scenes and moments in Altered Carbon, but at no point do any of them convince me to care about what happens to the main characters residing in Bay City, a San Francisco from decades hence that looks an awful lot like the hologram-ad-heavy Los Angeles from Blade Runner, with a few dashes of Total Recall mixed into the sauce.”

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• It looks like an above-average Syfy series with basic-cable production values and premium-cable nudity
• It’s stunning how indebted Altered Carbon is to Blade Runner
• Altered Carbon is gratuitously violent and sexual, using its gore and nudity as filler when the story drags
• The deep pockets of Netflix allow for an astoundingly ambitious production design
• Ambitious, dense and thrilling: Altered Carbon is flawed — and fantastic
• Cast and crew respond to whitewashing criticisms