The premise of this show was great, the sets and cinematography were great, there’s scenes and whole episodes ghat are absolutely fantastic, show even starts off great.
But the liberal brainrot would never have allowed this show to become much more than low effort fantasy. Somehow turns an interesting setting of the US being occupied by the Nazi empire into some fucking Haruki Murakami esque fever dream about butterflies and time portals, without any mention of the soviets.
This show had so much potential
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I think it’s a very fun show! The setting of the show is a somewhat interesting thought exercise. But don’t get me wrong, the stuff about portals and alternate dimensions was being hinted at since the very beginning. If you care about story writing, the arcs of John Smith and the Japanese lads are very interesting to follow as well.
A final thought about the final season:
spoiler
It felt just a bit too rushed toward the end. For instance, it’s almost like they felt like the Black Communist Rebellion couldn’t ultimately win, otherwise the cattle would be asking questions.
I think it’s an excellently directed show paired with some truly bad writing. They knew how to introduced cool thematic elements into the story but they had no idea how to flesh it out.
They somehow deNazified the Nazis, they made Himmler look normal. I understand exploring the banality of evil and it’s interesting how they drew Nazi parallels with American culture, but they never truly committed one way or the other and in the end undermined the sinister element of their own premise, that fucking Nazis rule the entire world. Like, rarely is the holocaust even mentioned, the Nazis are portrayed as nothing more than an occupying force. If there’s ever a time when you should rely on the story of good vs evil, it’s when you’re talking about Nazis.
Agreed. I thought it was a very good show based on an even better novel, but the writing was a bit lacking at some points. I hadn’t even thought about the fact that they don’t ever mention Soviets. If I’m not mistaken, in the book they pretty much glassed Russia and Africa, so not much is said about that.
I loved it except for the final 30 seconds of the whole show, which was truly an absolute cop-out garbage ending, incredibly unsatisfying. It didn’t ruin the rest of the show for me, though. It wasn’t GoT levels of a preposterous ending spoiling the enjoyment of everything that came before, but I was very disappointed.
I think that, in the absence of a truly antagonist character, the Nazis were doomed to play something similar to Cold War with the Japanese. You can only act like the baddies for so long before the audience gets desensitized to it, imo.
Regardless, I think some bits and pieces of the story are still quite relevant and they hit like a wall. For instance, John Smith losing his child to the brainwashing nazi machinery (he had to forfeit his life because of a truly forgettable genetic defect), and then also losing it in the “alternative dimension” to the brainwashing American machine for the Vietnam war.
I’m South American though, so for me both the Nazis and the USA are irredeemable. This may have skewed my enjoyment of the show in a different direction than yours!
I watched the first episode or three and that was it. I couldn’t get over my suspension of disbelief. There’s a lot that had to happen in order for the Axis Powers to win WWII. Even more had to be done in order to occupy the US. None of those things were addressed on the show. I have the book sitting on my shelf, but never got around to it (I have so much shit I need to read).
I mean, at least with the book, how the war actually went is 0% what the book is about and so it’s hardly even mentioned. I personally think that’s a fine approach and much better than making up some bullshit lore to justify something that doesn’t really need justification.
It’s been years since I saw it. What I remember was how it kind of just ignored the Allies in the pacific. Like Japan was somehow occupying the US, but also China, Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, Guam, Alaska, etc.
It’s one of the reasons they lost the war, so I get omitting parts of that to create an alt history. But it’s something you should mention. The show leaned heavily into the US being the only country that won the war.
Fatherland by Robert Harris had much better world building and a better understanding of how the Axis functioned.
But, like, that’s not what it’s about. It’s not about what happened to the other allies and it’s honestly only partially about what happened to a portion of America. It’s a bit about racial hierarchy and a bit about wu and weird time travel fugues. There’s a reason, for example, that they discuss the intrigue around Hitler’s successor but they just don’t resolve it; it’s just something that’s going on that informs the social circumstances that the characters are responding to. It has no interest in war game bean-counting.
I get that. What I’m saying is the setting makes no sense with what I saw in those first few episodes. It’s very “The Axis won WWII because reasons and now the world is just this way.” It just hand waves the problems the Axis would have occupying the US or how that would affect minority groups. Or what happened post-war in other countries.
My point is they may as well have created an entirely fictional setting (like Harry Potter) because there wasn’t much thought behind the world in Man in the High Castle. It just seems full of liberalism and Great Man hypothesis.
This is also my problem with that civil war movie.
Here’s how the Axis Powers can win WWII and occupy America:
Star Trek Enterprise Spoilers
Time traveling aliens can appear with the intention of using the Nazis in order to build a device that will allow them to return home (or something I don’t remember what they were doing)
they need to introduce mamala so we can vote the nazis out of the high castle
During the fourth season they introduced the Black Communist Rebellion who fought against the Japanese on the West Coast, but I don’t know how well they’re portrayed because I lost interest long before then.
Edit: I just checked the show’s fandom wiki and apparently after they caused the Japanese to withdraw from the US, they created the Western States of America, which is a, I quote: “Federal Anarchist Communist republic (inspired by Marxism-Leninism)”
"Federal Anarchist Communist republic (inspired by Marxism-Leninism)
Hearts of Iron IV mods understand left wing ideologies better than this (well, some of them at least)
It so thoroughly destroyed what made the book good that I couldn’t get through it. And it’s not like the book is some masterpiece of fiction, either. They just didn’t give a damn about it at all.
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I love dick, but I gotta say that one is by far his worst book imo. I think it’s only popular because alternate histories capture the public imagination, regardless of how good they are.
Not a bad premise, and the idea that the US would integrate into a nazi-jaapanese-fascist system without much difficulty isn’t a bad theme, but its just a very boring and meandering book without much else.
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For sure, his books overall are pretty meandering, they’re like a dream that takes you to different places so that you often forget where you just were.
I just got finished with a short story anthology of his, and finally finished a scanner darkly (unlimited genocide on the movie also) month ago, which was incredible.
Three stigmata of Palmer eldritch, ubik, and androids dream will always be some of my fav books of all time tho.
He’s got some real “horny pulp author” issues in some of those (though I otherwise quite like Ubik, for example), which might also be part of why Man in the High Castle is taken more seriously. Then again, there’s lots of weird horny issues in other authors that get basically ignored, so I guess that’s an unlikely explanation.
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Me too, paycheck was so weird but entertaining.
Minority report especially had a wild ending that was completely unexpected after watching the movie (both the story and the movie are great, just very different, ie loosely inspired by).
I felt the same way about that show where Lindberg becomes president
I think I dropped it after a few episodes because nothing interesting was happening
I’m glad I never started on the show, because what I read about it was discouraging enough for me to read about the ending, and the ending was Bioshock Infinite levels of concentrated bazinga shit.
In the book at least, I really like the fever dream stuff
Saying nothing that hasn’t been said already in this thread here but I enjoyed it initially (albeit there were some annoying things like implying that the Nazis were great at building technological marvels etc) then tuned out when all the weird Bioshock Infinite parallel dimension hopping shit started happening.
Not really related but I also remember reading some lame reddit “What if le evil Soviets won” alt history that was called “The Man in the High Gulag” which is the cringiest shit I’ve ever heard.
“The Man in the High Gulag”
Brother that’s amazing
