First Impressions: Falling Skies

[lasherman]

(This is a possible double-post because I tried posting this over half-an-hour ago and still nothing)

Well, I just saw the recent series premiere of Falling Skies, and since this is a show that nearly flew completely under my radar, I was wondering who among you also managed to see it?

For those of you unaware, Falling Skies is a new sci-fi T.V. series about a resistance fighting alien invaders after humanity has been almost completely wiped out. Think Terminator: Salvation, but with robots AND aliens.

Anyway, after seeing the premiere, my high hopes proved to be well founded. It's a big-budget, well-acted, well-written action-adventure-sci fi-drama starring a bunch of relatively unknown actors. The scenery looks great, the aliens are pretty convincing and prove to be a genuine threat, and, oh yeah, robots that are like a mix of The Terminator, the mech from District 9, and Predator.

It's got a real 'struggle for survival' feel to it, kind of like Walking Dead with character depth, and it seems like its going to be one of the more promising shows to come out.

So, anybody else see it (If not, please go watch it now)? What did the rest of you who did see it think?

 

[harv3034]

I'm happy to say that I saw it and, like you, my expectations were met easily.

**Cautionary Spoiler Warning**

The people feel surprisingly well developed, dispite the utter lack of backstory so far. The writing is pretty far above average (but this is showing on a major network so, no surprise), the action is interesting and purposful and it already has a kind of... what's the word?... relatability to it (in regards to the search for the Dad's kid).

I have to admit, what happened to the leader of the small group (at the end of the second half) was not as I expected to happen and I wonder how said decission will come back to bite them in the ass.

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to the next episode.

 

[Technicolor]

I can't say I was impressed by "Falling Skies", primarily for three reasons, the pacing of the plot, the characters, and the presentation of its subject matter.

Inevitably I have to compare this to AMC's "The Walking Dead", and not favorably, since Falling Skies seems to trying too hard to attract that crowd but not actually utilize the good aspects of that show.

The pacing is all over the place, as the episode begins with a big action set piece, that doesn't really have any relevance to the plot overall, nor does it establish anything about the characters. The character establishing scenes are poorly done as well, because Falling Skies just "tells" us about our characters qualities without actually showing it any tangible way.

One of the worst scenes, is early on when our main character, a history professor, is being established. He nicely explain his backstory as a historian by talking about war history, but then one of the token black guys suddenly blurt out "Yeah, Your Professor KICKASS!", without any evidence to back that up, and the show never seems to want to justify that moniker, because our so called "Professor Kickass" never actually does anything kickass, he is just saved by someone else or he just runs away.

The other characters were "Professor Kickass's" sons, a teenager and a 7 year old, both of which are annoying as hell. The teenager constantly tries to be the rebellious one, to the point of nearly getting killed on multiple occasions and the 7 year, as well as being the center of a love triangle for two girls who both get less than two minutes of screen time. The 7 year old simply acts oblivious, and says nothing interesting yet he and the other kids get at least 20 minutes of doing nothing for the plot or characters.

I may be overly negative, because there are qualities, the effects look decent sometimes, but luckily the CGI aliens don't appear onscreen often, so there are endless things exploding instead. Also the story actually picks up towards the end when we meet a somewhat crazy as shit criminal bandit and his team. He was actually the only really interesting character, and I was happy to see that he will at least continue in the series.

Overall I felt like was watching "The Walking Dead" pilot only without any suspense, likeable characters, or decent pacing. I might still watch the next episode to see the crazy bandit dude again however.