Netflix’s Altered Carbon is carbon-copy sci-fi
The future is grim. And also very familiar.
Netflix’s new sci-fi extravaganza “Altered Carbon” offers a neon-coloured future where technology has made people question what really makes us human.
Based on the 2002 book by Richard K. Morgan and created by Laeta Kalogridis (Terminator Genisys, Shutter Island), Carbon is a weak sci-fi tale about a world in which humanity can transfer consciousness from one body to another. The series is a bit too reminiscent of sci-fi classics like Blade Runner in its visuals and plotting, and it has trouble getting its story off the ground.
Carbon enters its future world through the eyes of Takeshi Kovacs, a supersoldier known as an “Envoy” who is killed in the first few minutes of the première (played by Byron Mann) and his consciousness, or “stack,” is put on ice for 250 years.
In the future, it’s placed in a new body, or “sleeve” (Joel Kinnaman) after the wealthy Laurens Bancroft (James Purefoy) buys and assigns him to solve Bancroft’s own murder.
Kovacs’ investigation is closely watched by Det. Kristin Ortega (Martha Higareda), who couldn’t solve the murder. She’s suspicious of the wealthy class of “Meths,” a group of people so rich they can afford to keep “resleeving” themselves and essentially live forever. The lower classes, meanwhile, are lucky if they can re-sleeve even once. Kovacs eventually recruits Vernon Elliot (Ato Essandoh), whose daughter was murdered and trapped in a kind of psychological torture in her own stack.
When Carbon focuses on Bancroft’s murder, it’s most successful, unspooling a mystery entwined with vice and riches. But more often, it gets lost in extraneous subplots and characters. Visually, the series is so dark you can’t see the action. A futuristic San Francisco, called “Bay City,” is littered with neon advertisements and flying cars. It’s clear that Carbon was expensive, and its effects are clean but rather uninspired. The world it creates is intriguing but clumsily set up, with so much exposition forced into the dialogue it becomes jarring. And the show takes itself so seriously that episodes are often weighed down by their own ponderousness.
Kinnaman is fine in the lead role, but Carbon isn’t helped by putting the consciousness of an Asian man in a white man’s body, a tone-deaf move amid Hollywood controversy about whitewashing Asian characters. One might argue that the body-swapping concept makes it “postracial,” but race is clearly an aspect of this future world, from a rich kid who spits slurs at Japanese party guests to Ortega, who speaks Spanish at home with her mother, a devout “neo-Catholic.”
Carbon also is often gratuitously violent and sexual, leaning on its gore and nudity as filler when the story drags. Sure, in a world in which bodies are expendable, violence against them might be common and taboos rare. But the series never explains the ethics of violence in its future world, as some characters embrace it while others express disdain. It also revels in its exploitation of blood and (mostly) female nudity to titillate male sci-fi fans.
With Carbon, Westworld, Star Trek: Discovery and Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams, sci-fi is having a moment again on TV, especially on streaming services.
Carbon just isn’t the future we’re looking for.