bjornwilde (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bjornwilde) wrote2020-11-22 01:58 pm
bjornwilde) wrote2020-11-22 01:58 pm
I watched The Boys so you may not have to
This review is based entirely on the TV show as I have not read the comics. I remember seeing the comics but the covers just did not look like my jam so I didn't bother reading them. As I've heard the comics are more brutal and more Garth Ennis that the show, I will definitely not be reading. Spoilers behind the cut.
My first impressions of The Boys was someone who watched A Clockwork Orange and Fight Club without getting the nuances of each decided to make a super hero story. The show is gory, brutal, violent, misogynistic, and grim. It is the edgiest of the edgy, yet behind all that something interesting starts to appear.
First what I did not like:
-Super heroes as narcissistic assholes at best and sociopaths at worst.
-The gore. Really. The splat fest was up there with any of the Friday the 13th movies or Aliens.
-The toxic masculinity
-The sexual harrasment.
-The one POC being a straight up stand in for a sports star who uses chemical enhancements to maintain his stardom.
Things that were interesting:
-Super heroes as a mix of internet influence, celebrity, and sports star. This was interesting to me likely as there was a constant PR drive for everything the super heroes did. They were less the paragons of justice comics make them and more a PR stunt for the company that owned their contracts.
-What the company and the super heroes said about capitalism.
-The intermixing of Evangelical religion and capitalism.
-How trauma can fuck you up and you may not even recognize it.
Things I loved:
-Hidden inside all this edgy grim badness was a core of hope in the face of overwhelming odds. The good guys at first come across as horrible, especially Butcher (played by Karl Urban who hams it up big time for the role), but they keep struggling against what are basically gods. They find the dirt and honestly are trying to change things for the better. Except for Butcher, who is really just out for revenge.
-The super heroes who actually do want to do good, Starlight who is the new super who gets a harsh reality check when she finds out what the supes are really like, and Queen Maeve, who is jaded and cynical having dealt with the Company and the other asshole supes. Starlight never loses her hope, despite the harsh wake up, and Maeve finds it again thanks in no small part to Starlight.
-Queen Maeve!
-That making real, lasting change is hard and isn't immediate. Things do not end up roses at the end of the second season but they are at least better for some people and the is a chance for the world of the future.
-The nazi gets her ass beat...bad and harshly.
So if you can handle edgy, gory violence with asshole narcissistic sociopaths as dominate characters, with a mix of toxic mascilinity, there is something to watch beyond that. I would say it takes about 3-4 episodes for that to come in. Hughie and Starlight are the main couple that drew me in. Frenchie and Mother's Milk were great and once they rescue the asian woman things get interesting. There is a good mystery in here, though I will say Straczynski's Rising Stars and Moore's Watchmen handled the idea of maybe super heroes aren't wonderful much better.
And the writers need better ideas on how to kill supes. It's not that hard to kill someone with invulnerable skin if they still breath. A sack over the head while they are bound will kill them much neater than shoving a block of C4 up their bum and detonating it.
My first impressions of The Boys was someone who watched A Clockwork Orange and Fight Club without getting the nuances of each decided to make a super hero story. The show is gory, brutal, violent, misogynistic, and grim. It is the edgiest of the edgy, yet behind all that something interesting starts to appear.
First what I did not like:
-Super heroes as narcissistic assholes at best and sociopaths at worst.
-The gore. Really. The splat fest was up there with any of the Friday the 13th movies or Aliens.
-The toxic masculinity
-The sexual harrasment.
-The one POC being a straight up stand in for a sports star who uses chemical enhancements to maintain his stardom.
Things that were interesting:
-Super heroes as a mix of internet influence, celebrity, and sports star. This was interesting to me likely as there was a constant PR drive for everything the super heroes did. They were less the paragons of justice comics make them and more a PR stunt for the company that owned their contracts.
-What the company and the super heroes said about capitalism.
-The intermixing of Evangelical religion and capitalism.
-How trauma can fuck you up and you may not even recognize it.
Things I loved:
-Hidden inside all this edgy grim badness was a core of hope in the face of overwhelming odds. The good guys at first come across as horrible, especially Butcher (played by Karl Urban who hams it up big time for the role), but they keep struggling against what are basically gods. They find the dirt and honestly are trying to change things for the better. Except for Butcher, who is really just out for revenge.
-The super heroes who actually do want to do good, Starlight who is the new super who gets a harsh reality check when she finds out what the supes are really like, and Queen Maeve, who is jaded and cynical having dealt with the Company and the other asshole supes. Starlight never loses her hope, despite the harsh wake up, and Maeve finds it again thanks in no small part to Starlight.
-Queen Maeve!
-That making real, lasting change is hard and isn't immediate. Things do not end up roses at the end of the second season but they are at least better for some people and the is a chance for the world of the future.
-The nazi gets her ass beat...bad and harshly.
So if you can handle edgy, gory violence with asshole narcissistic sociopaths as dominate characters, with a mix of toxic mascilinity, there is something to watch beyond that. I would say it takes about 3-4 episodes for that to come in. Hughie and Starlight are the main couple that drew me in. Frenchie and Mother's Milk were great and once they rescue the asian woman things get interesting. There is a good mystery in here, though I will say Straczynski's Rising Stars and Moore's Watchmen handled the idea of maybe super heroes aren't wonderful much better.
And the writers need better ideas on how to kill supes. It's not that hard to kill someone with invulnerable skin if they still breath. A sack over the head while they are bound will kill them much neater than shoving a block of C4 up their bum and detonating it.