 Okay, I am literally months later than I wanted to be on this but I am finally sitting down and filming my review of the Alex Ryder TV show or more specifically the second season of the Alex Ryder TV show and I think it's pretty good. This is the introduction song. It's not very good but it's not too long. I said that the first season was pretty good and I feel pretty much the same about the second season. It's it's more inspired by the books than it is a direct adaptation of them. Like there are a fair few amount of changes but that's not inherently a good or bad thing. It just is like it's different than the books were. So the first season skipped over the first book Stormbreaker and just went right to the second one which meant that they kind of had to fold in some of the introduction to the spy world that Alex had to go through in the first book before he could even go on his mission to point blank which didn't work 100%. I talked about that in my first review if you didn't see that but then the second season they also skipped over the third book. They skipped over Skeleton Key and went straight to Eagle Strike which I kind of understand why they did it but I am disappointed because Skeleton Key was one of the better books in the series in my opinion. However the reason that they did it I'm pretty sure is because they're going for more of a overarching narrative with this. You know they don't want to have every season be pretty episodic the way the books were up until Eagle Strike and then after that they had a bit more of an overarching story because that's when Alex really gets more involved with Scorpia and so on and so forth. And the first season did hint at that as well like when they were folding in all the stuff about Alex's uncle Ian being killed and Yasinger Gorovich and just introducing all of that alongside point blank stuff they were also hinting that Scorpio was working with the villain of the second season and it's also hinted that Scorpia are the ones that killed him at the end of the second season to prevent too much information from getting out. So I get what they're doing and why they're doing it but I am still a bit disappointed that Skeleton Key was left off. And well much like the first season I would say that this show has rather than being James Bond for kids like the books were it's more Jason Bourne for kids. I forget exactly who said that but I saw some like comments or review online which said that and I think that's a very succinct way of putting it like it's a bit darker it's a bit more violent it's a bit more realistic you don't really have the silly gadgets like it's a yo-yo but it's also a gun like that sort of thing which James Bond and Alex Ryder are both famous for. So I can see how that might be disappointing for some people but for me personally I was still pretty happy with it. So like I said this one follows the plot of book four in the series Eagle Strike and in that one Alex finds out that Damian Cray who is this world famous pop star and philanthropist is up to something evil he's not sure precisely what and he tries warning MI6 about it but they don't believe him and then adventure ensues. Now I'm just gonna list off a bunch of stuff that I really liked about this season first. First of all I loved how we dove much much deeper into Alex's PTSD here like in the books we do get that but it doesn't come in until much later in the series whereas here it's pretty early on and it's in the forefront and they also go deeper into it like Alex is paranoid and he's constantly anxious so it kind of makes sense why MI6 wouldn't really trust him when he comes to them telling them about Damian Cray is up to something partially because you know he just doesn't have that much evidence for it but also partially because well he's paranoid why would they trust him so I did like that and I also liked how he has friends in the show who play a bigger role in the story than they did in the book or the books excuse me mostly Tom and Katya now Tom was in the books but he was like a tertiary character at best who is barely in there I mean he was in like the book After Eagle Strike which is just called Scorpia he was in that a little bit and he may have been mentioned once or twice beyond that but he was very much a non-entity in the books whereas Katya was not in the books at all I believe like she was in the first season as a Ukrainian general's daughter who was at the Point Blank Academy but in the books yeah it was an all-boys academy so she just wasn't there whereas yeah in this they both work with Alex and help him out in his spy stuff now I think that this is a good thing because the books are 100 Alex all the time pretty much and just getting to see some different people is nice and also watching Alex really interact with them makes him feel like more of a well developed well-rounded character overall because while he's likable enough in the books he is very simple and very straightforward so changing that up I think is a very good thing overall the one downside I will say is that he feels less isolated and what I mean by that is in my video the Rise and Fall of Alex Ryder which you should check out if you haven't I mentioned that a lot of kids books especially ones that were coming out at that time were more about teams you know the main characters would always have a couple of friends with them that would help them out on their adventures like you know Harry Potter always had Ron and Hermione alongside him helping him out with fighting the bad guys whereas Alex was always on his own and always had to rely on his own wits so it made all of the spy thriller stuff just seem well a little bit more thrilling and a little bit more dangerous so we do lose out on that but I would still say it's a net positive the action here is good yeah it's like I said in season one the action is just pretty good you know it's not super crazy over the top like you may be expecting and one thing I mentioned before that still holds true here is that when people get hit like if they get punched or something it looks like it actually hurts and well that's pretty rare you know like that barely ever happens in movies or shows of this nature whereas in real life yeah when you get hit especially if you're hitting the head or something you you can be really woozy for a few seconds so I did like that just small details like that make the action in the fight seems a little bit better and finally I think that when they expanded Damien Kray's character that was a really good move on their part like in the book he's just kind of how do I even put this without spoilers because there will be a spoiler section but that's later basically you know that he's doing something that he thinks is going to be for the greater good but he's still a crazy person and in the show he's still that but they go a little bit deeper into it like they show why he hates drugs so much is mainly because his brother died from an overdose like he overdosed when Damien was just a kid and he's like in his 40s now so even though it's decades later you can see that is still extremely traumatic for him to lose a member of his family like that and he doesn't want anyone else to go through with that so even though yes he is still a villain and yes he is still a crazy person he just feels more like a human being okay so now for the dislikes and this is the shorter list but it is still notable um so in this version of the story Alex actually meets with Sabina near the beginning of this season and in the books uh the way that Alex found out about Damien Cray being up to something is that he was on vacation he saw Yasinger Gorovitch wandering around and he realized hey wait a minute that's the guy that killed my uncle what's he up to he followed him for a bit and then found out that he was working with Damien Cray so that's how he knew he was up to something whereas in the show uh he runs into Sabina Plezence uh in the books it was Sabina Pleasure I don't know why they changed it to Plezence in the show there might be like a double entendre or something that I'm missing there but they did change it he ran into her and her father is a journalist who is investigating Damien Cray for something and then Yasinger Gorovitch attempts to murder her father and I think that's a little bit of a better way to start it off and a little bit of a better way for Alex and Sabina to meet up and become friends however their romantic relationship is pretty forced like I didn't like it that much because she's not in all that much of the season and I do buy her and Alex's friends I'll give it that but yeah it's just it's just a little forced you know I don't have a lot else to add I also dislike how Damien Cray's video game that he was working on was just like way too over the top and futuristic like it's this big hologram projector where you can shoot arrows and stuff it's like that scene in the second Hunger Games movie where Katniss is training before the other Hunger Games and she's shooting arrows at the hologram things and it's like that almost and I don't know it's kind of like what they did with the Stormbreaker movie where in the book it was just a computer it was a really nice computer that uh Harrod Sale was giving out to all the schools in England but it was just a computer whereas in the movie they made it into like this room-sized monstrosity where you could uh like jack into your brain and go into virtual reality and stuff and it was just really weird and over the top and this it's kind of the same thing like in the book it was just a video game console it was a really nice video game console which with like you highly technologically advanced graphics and stuff but it was just a video game console whereas in the show it's just crazy over the top and it it wound up being kind of stupid you know like if the tone was more uh James Bond than Jason Bourne I think it would have been fine but the fact that this is meant to be taken more seriously it's meant to seem more realistic it just doesn't fit and it's kind of stupid and finally the biggest problem with this season and in fact with the show in general by far in my opinion at least is that Alex and Yassen really feel a lot less connected than they did in the books and what I mean by that is Yassen Gruborovich is the man who killed Alex's uncle his father figured the man who raised him so obviously yes Alex does have a lot of hate towards him and kind of wants him dead but the show doesn't really focus on that that much and so they just uh they don't feel like they have that sort of rivalry about with some other stuff mixed in there that the books had because for starters there's only two seasons of build-up whereas in the books it was four entire books of build-up and for another uh near the end of the first book Yassen he doesn't just save Alex's life he or he doesn't just spare Alex's life he also saves it because if you haven't read it or if it's been a while uh the main villain harrowed sale after his plans are foiled he takes Alex hostage and he's gonna take him off somewhere to do something we don't know exactly what but it was likely to kill him and then Yassen shows up and his orders were to kill uh sale and he does saving Alex's life and he also just has an opportunity to kill Alex and Alex even says like hey I'm gonna kill you one day and Yassen rather than just taking the opportunity to save himself some trouble spares the kids life like he saves him and spares him and he even gives him some advice he tells him like hey look leave the spy game now because if you don't take this opportunity you're gonna be stuck here forever and it's not going to end well for you and obviously he wound up being correct in the end and in fact we find out in the prequel novel Russian roulette that Yassen was uh being he was ordered to kill Alex but he just didn't you know he disobeyed orders to save him and even though by the time you read the prequel you know why he did it it if you didn't know that then it's still really fascinating you start wondering well why would this guy do that and then when you get to eagle strike he also saves and spares his life multiple times and then in the show I'm not gonna give too much away but the final episode final confrontation uh Alex and Yassen do interact more and he saves and spares his life some more and then like the very end there's you know big twist about uh what's going on there and it just doesn't hit as hard but it all comes at once you know it just it just doesn't there's not enough time for it to sink in uh but you know that's the biggest problem I have with the show by far overall still pretty good uh I do appreciate that it grew up with me you know it's it's not just uh banking on nostalgia it's also changing the story a little bit so I don't know exactly what's going on and it's uh making it a little bit more adult so overall yeah I did like that if you were a fan of the alex writer books and you haven't watched the show yet I'd say check it out you know it's at least worth uh checking out a few episodes before you decide if you like it or not but I personally really enjoy it and now for uh spoiler corner ALLAH ALLAH ALLAH ALLAH ALLAH ALLAH ALLAH ALLAH ALLAH okay so this is basically just going to be expanding on the alex and yassen stuff uh basically at the end uh in the final confrontation uh the damien cray tells yassen hey kill alex and sabina uh because they're gonna cause trouble but yassen says no I'm not going to kill them and then uh damien shoots him and there's a fight between him and alex and in the book alex just defeats him and then they manage to stop him from launching the missiles and they save the day but in the show uh cray is actually about to kill alex and then yassen shoots him and so saving alex's life again and in both versions of this it's still slightly different like in the book alex just talks to yassen for a minute and then he tells him hey your father was an assassin I was friends with him uh go find scorpia in venice and then you'll find your destiny whereas in the show uh he still has the gun up and he you know ben shot he's bleeding out and then alex says go ahead and kill me now we both know you want to he's like why would i want to do that i your father was my friend and then he drops the gun and tells him a little bit more about it and says go find scorpia and you know it is still a pretty uh big moments like you realize oh okay this guy saved alex's life again so maybe he's not totally evil or even if he is totally evil still he has some sort of connection with alex that is preventing him from do that from doing anything to him and now at this moment you realize oh okay it was because he knew his father and it still works pretty well but like I said before it just doesn't have as much time to sink in as it should have you know because when it's spread out across multiple books like that it has months or years to sink in uh but in this he really doesn't do anything to indicate that he cares about alex in any way until like the final episode really so it just doesn't work quite as well uh but I will say that at the very least this was foreshadowed in the books they basically never talk about alex's parents at all but then when jason is dying he tells them about his father he's like hey I knew your dad and so it just it doesn't completely come out of nowhere but it is still like uh oh okay I guess that's a that's twist then whereas in the show uh in the first season they did have stuff that was implying that alex's father was somehow involved in all of this and it is made clear that jason uh has some sort of connection to his family besides just being the guy who killed his uncle because there is a moment in the first season where he passes by alex and says hey you look familiar do I know you from somewhere it's also a little weird how in the show he just says find scorpia and he doesn't say anything about venice so I don't know even though the final scene is alex saying all right let's go find scorpia I don't know how they're going to know where to search if that's the case but at the same time I think what they're doing is they're just trying to make it so that the next the first couple of uh episodes of season three are going to be about them investigating and if they already knew to look in venice it would just be too easy for them so they're gonna have to work a little harder follow some more clues in this case and like possibly hop all the way across Europe or something but you know I just I see why they're doing it uh overall yeah like I said the alex writer show the structure doesn't always work super great when we're translating the books on the screen but you know this is this is a different story so it's not the end of the world and honestly I would say the show needs a bit more advertising because it's pretty good and uh yeah if you've read the books check it out uh thanks to everyone who has gone this far including my ten dollar and up patrons uh aposavalanen olivia reyan brother santotis buffy valentine carolina clay dan anseljevic dark king echo flax great grebo carcat kitsune leislerutikova lord tiebreaker madison lewis benet maryland roxy matthew bodro michael weingartner microphone peep the toad return of cardamom sad martigan sillier the vixen tom beanie and vaivictus as well as all the other names you see on here if you want to help support the channel and get your name on here and also get access to like early videos and voting on future topics then consider joining my patreon page if you don't feel like doing that you could also become a channel member or if you're unable or unwilling to do that you know just like subscribe and like the video and share it around and stuff so i can like eat um or voie ways that is how you say the whatever goodbye