| Title | Qt3 Movie Podcast: Chernobyl |
| Author | Tom Chick |
| Posted in | Games |
| When | June 24, 2019 |
Sometimes a TV show is good enough to count as a movie..
I would call the podcast police, but it looks like our comrades have the situation under control.
This analysis of the biggest nuclear reactor in the solar system backs up your Lovecraft theory, Tom.
I hear there were Deep State Amerikanskies behind this catastrophe. And I don’t just mean the podcast.
I’m curious as to why Christien thinks Gorbachev’s portrayal was sympathetic (with the implication that it was overly so). He does come across as more competent than many of the decision-makers, and certainly more willing to take responsibility, but that didn’t make me more sympathetic to him. He was after all, ultimately responsible for the lies in Vienna, the show trial and the failure to rectify the other reactors, among many other misdeeds.
So that makes me wonder how much control Gorbachev would have. I would think he would have a great deal of strategic control but somewhat limited tactical control on a day to day basis.
I would think that outside of a crisis, the state apparatus would control the tactical situation of running the state.
True, but as portrayed in the show, he made a number of key calls.
I agree 100% with you on that. It was more of me thinking how things were outside of a crisis situation.
I would certainly think he bears the responsibility for the response once the true scale of the disaster was known.
It’s also interesting how the Russians kept lowballing their people with small amount of Rubles for the equivalent of a suicide mission. Although I guess when you are trying to hide the enormity of the situation you can’t offer tens of thousands of Rubles.
There was presumably also a limit to what rubles alone could get you in the USSR, though maybe fewer in the 80s than before.
I’ve only watched the first episode so far, and liked it. Could have loved it, but it does this very, very silly thing…
Since I haven’t finished I don’t know if you guys talk about this on the podcast, but why is everybody speaking English? It’s not the 60s anymore, ffs.
I tolerate global English on silly things, but not on realistic drama with a naturalistic style. It’s really throwing me off. Not enough to make me dislike what I saw so far, but certainly enough to mess up with my suspension of disbelief and lower the impact of that first episode. It feels like a huge miss by the show.
It is addressed on the podcast @Juan_Raigada. Apparently during casting they had people using Russian accents but found that people were playing the accent, not the role so they got rid of the Russian accents. I think that quote is correct. Dingus or Tom can correct me if it’s not.
They said they couldn’t escape a kind of cartoonish “Boris and Natasha” sound when everyone was doing accents. I think it was a smart call.
Yeah, if you’re not going to do original language, I much prefer it if shows/films don’t put on accents (unless they’re supposed to be speaking in English in context). As well as avoiding cheesiness, it means you can play to people’s understandings of what different accents signify, which is something Chernobyl did particularly well. An anglo audience can’t differentiate Russian accents, but at least in the UK they can tell a working class accent from a posh/educated one and a rural one from an urban one.
Russian accent would be even worse!!!
That’s not what I was talking about. It’s a Russian story (and history). I just don’t understand why it isn’t in Russian. It’s baffling. It brings it down to more typical Hollywood fare in some ways (not in others, and there’s fantastic stuff in the first episode, but it does hurt a lot imho).
For a show that seems to be about truth and lies, it’s a weird way to stating out loud it is a lie itself. Again, it did hurt my suspension of disbelief a lot.
It probably helps I haven’t seen a dubbed thing in decades.
You can criticise the decision, but it’s not baffling. They wanted a recognisable English cast.
But it does not feel like a series that depends on its cast being recognizable. Actually the contrary. The whole style and approach seems to be an stylized naturalism (given the weird situation being depicted, naturalism seems to be too strong a descriptor, though).
I didn’t see a single big name actor in there. Seems they went for a more naturalistic casting, but that goes against the language decision.
Jared Harris and Emily Watson, the two “heroes” are big names.Stellar Skateboard only a little less so. That’s a very heavyweight cast for TV.
Ah, they don’t seem to almost be on the first episode (baby was crying during that last scene). That makes more sense.
Still a mistake, imho. It’s like if Letters from Iwo Jima was shot in English. It’s even somewhat disrespectful due to the seriousness of the subject and the treatment of it otherwise.
The creators said that it had to be English speaking as subtitles are not popular. They decided to use British English because they believed that American English was too jarring for American viewers.
I found that it bothered me for the first 10 minutes and then I just got used to it and it faded into the background. I can understand why some might be bothered by it though.