Went to my uncles cabin in the woods for a few days to relax, he's got the box set of the show and decided to give it a rewatch, was a pretty big fan in college. Got through like 3 episodes and shut it off.
Yes, Whedon is a creepy and maybe knowing that affecting my judgment, but honestly does feel like I'm noticing things my younger brain didn't. A lot of the dialog seems overwritten, some of the "quirky" shit the characters do comes off more obnoxious than endearing, also the story is giving me weird AnCap vibes. I mean yeah the Alliance clearly is pretty evil but we never get much explanation as to what the Brown Coats political program is, why did they want to succeed? Them being confederate coded sure as shit doesn't help.
Also, it almost leans TOO much into the whole western asethic sometimes, to the point I find it unbelievable. Okay, sure, humanity hastily colonized some planets and now some have regressed into SciFi Deadwood, I can dig that. But like, people on horses with cowboy hats seems a bit too comic for me.
Idk, just some random observations.
Edit: oh yeah and the intro song fucking sucks. That was something I thought even back when I liked the show.
The Hunger Games and its consequences. That series is pretty good for YA and gets dangerously based at times, but it kickstarted a trend of fiction featuring arbitrarily segregated societies but not doing anything with them
I actually quite like Hunger Games as well. But God were the copies so bad. Divergent will always be one of the shittiest things I ever got tricked into reading.
It's like the YA novel equivalent of what Final Fantasy VII did for JRPGs for a generation or two, everyone kept trying to copy it often without understanding what made it good
Or like the whole genre of YA "romance with a hot supernatural creature" novel (plus film adaptations!) that sprung up trying to recreate the success of Twilight
the sequels to the hunger games got worse though
It was a bit of a trope structure for just-add-water dystopias. the Uglies series was incredibly popular and, I'd argue, really popularized that idea in YA.
Unfortunately, if I remember right, it tries to pull the "violent rebellion is as bad if not worse than fascism" card, and so naturally the protagonist turns against the rebellion at the very last second.
Assuming you're referring to the ending,
spoiler
The revolution itself isn't really portrayed as bad, just elements within it like Coin. Everything about her characterization screams deep state neolib ghoul, and I see Katniss's assassination of her as recognition that prim and proper "rules based order" liberals are just as dangerous as more obviously evil fascists, and can't be trusted