Devs

Alex Garland, the man behind Ex Machina and Annihilation has done it again. Floored by the first two episodes. The man creates art.

Finished. Enjoyed the unfolding of this story, and its twist and turns. The settings and scenery were superb, and the themes brooding and intense. One of those shows which makes you ponder reality, determinism and existence. In the end the Omega point was a constructed one but why the hell not, I say. This may be hard going for many, and some may turn to the wayside at the pacing. Deus ex machina. 9/10.

I was a bit bummed out that the core relationships that the drama stems from are pretty basic, but I guess that they were kinda necessary to have some grounding for all the crazy complex ideas to bounce off of.
The reveal about the name was real dumb, I really enjoyed that. The show has moments of obvious humor, like cuts & angles $ awkward interactions you'd see in a comedy, but it comes off as almost off putting in the context of the usual heavy droning abstract music, people staring into the camera mournfully aesthetic. The effect of that is unnerving and it feels like it should throw the tone off balance, but personally I found it made me more engaged. It's like the show telling me that it's not trying to be realistic or recreate known human emotions and dilemmas. Everyone talks so plainly and slowly & with a consideration that people in real life (or in most movies) only ever find briefly. The 'drama' of the show is mostly about people coming to terms with big metaphysical realizations, so I guess it makes sense that they just say what they think a lot.
I appreciate that the focus was always on the character reactions. The twists and revelations are presented as being wild and huge, and I guess I haven't seen all of them in the specific arrangement they have here, but each of the individual beats and ideas are common to a lot of sci-fi. The drama isn't "what are they going to do" it's "how would that affect a person". Like for as much as dweebs like [spoiler]Elon Musk[/spoiler] will talk about [spoiler]'what if the world was a computer simulation' or whatever, [/spoiler] they never really extrapolate past that into the things that would be actually interesting to think about. I don't give a shit if Deckard was a robot or not, but it's really interesting to think about what it means for the world around him if he was, right?

Story 4/5
Characters 5/5
Depth 4/5
Cast 5/5
Artistry 4/5

Found the plot/concept to be extremely stimulating, loved it almost exclusively for that reason. The only reason i didn't give it a 10 is because i didn't love the acting style of the main character, it didn't feel very natural or convincing enough. Why is she always glaring? Not sure if it was the actor or the script, but she was totally one-dimensional. Anyway, she was decent enough and it was easy to look past that because of the plot/concept. Super interesting.

It's good, but not easy to watch. The pace is very slow and many dialogs are boring. But just as you're falling asleep, they bring some interesting scientific or philosophic dialog, that makes you think. The show expects you to have some knowledge on science.

The show also has a very artistic approach, which I personally don't like to much. A lot of gold colours, antique looking tech and creepy faces. And then there is some terribly uncomfortable music. I guess it's supposed to serve the story by making you feel bad.

Ex Machina. Deus Ex Machina. Deus. Devs. Devils.
All the halos was some fallen angels type shit.

I fucking love Alex Garland. One of the only filmmakers I can think of that can truly make brilliant cerebral films, and in my view he is clearly the frontrunner of modern science fiction. Devs is no different, taking you to all sorts of places with ambition that could have only been made possible with the miniseries format. Honestly every auteur should get the chance to make at least one of these.

Forest's daughter - which plays central to the plot and there's a huge statue of her repeatedly shown throughout - is named Amaya (played by an actor named Amaya) which is what he names the company after. Put the company - Amaya - and the project - Devs which we all know is really Deus - together and you get something terribly close to 'amadeus' which means 'God's love'.
I wonder if this is is a cool way to say the daughter represents love that the company and therefore Forest is missing, and a literal fake statue of her portrays a fake kind of love being projected to the public/world.

This show has so many crazy moments, and it's actually a pretty interesting story about free will and life. While the acting wasn't out of this world, and I think the ending was a little lackluster, the characters were still interesting enough to keep the story going. I definitely recommend this to anyone who enjoys Garland's other works.

The concept of the show is really neat, but does rely that you are interested in the quantum and many worlds interpretation and the consequences of that. If you are not, still will be a dull show.
That being said, the concept is nice and makes you think, but the story itself is too little and too slow. Should have been a mini serie at most.
The end was kind of bs though