 Okay, so I just finished watching the Alex Ryder TV series the first season anyhow Which actually came out in June in the United Kingdom, but for whatever reason it wasn't available in the US until November 13th so I'm not sure why they did that, but anyways, I just finished watching it and It's not as bad as I was thinking it would be you know based on the trailer I thought it looked like absolute garbage and I was not interested at all But you know because I run this channel. I was like, okay fine I'll watch it see what I have to say about it, and I will say that it's not a bad show It is a decent action spy thriller drama type thing But it's not a very good adaptation of Alex Ryder. This is the introduction song. It's not very good But it's not too long So it's gonna be very difficult to talk about this in any sort of detail without massive spoilers So I'm just gonna do huge blanket spoiler warning for both the book series and the show Or well not too much the book series, but a little bit and massive for the show though And if you want my spoiler-free thoughts, basically, it's a decent show has some good acting some decent storylines Good action scenes as well. Those are pretty fun, but it's more inspired by Alex Ryder than it is based on it so those are my thoughts from now on massive show spoilers and Major spoilers for the first two books minor spoilers for the books after that now when I say that the series is a bad adaptation I'm mostly talking about one specific thing because you see the characters are Pretty similar to how they were in the books Like they might be expanded a little bit or tweaked a little bit But they do still have the same core personality and all that and the plotline as well It follows the same Shell of the story, let's say like a lot of the details are changed But the overall direction that it goes in and a lot of the big events are the same Like if you've ever seen the walking dead TV show and you've read the comics and so you can compare it those two like Yeah, the shell of the story is the same in the show But they change a lot of things and Alex Ryder does something very similar here So when I say that it's a bad adaptation. I mostly mean that in terms of tone Because you see Alex Ryder is actually very easy to explain. It's just James Bond for children and James Bond is pretty silly at times you know people people tend to forget that because the modern ones ever since the Daniel Craig Casino Royale, which came out like 15 years ago now People tend to forget that they weren't always that serious They used to be pretty goofy like that's why they had gadgets that were like exploding pens and stuff And Alex Ryder is also pretty silly at times and that's okay because it does get Really dark at a few points like mostly it's silly because really MI6 would never trust a 14-year-old to go and do this sort of espionage like that there's just no way they would ever think that was a good idea because it wouldn't be a good idea and So it's really only dark at a few points and those are admittedly some of the best parts of the series But that's not really the point the show is dark all the way through and Sometimes that works. In fact, I would say that like if you just look at the show on its own Yeah, the dark tone works pretty well for the most part but it's just it's not Alex Ryder at that point because You have to just kind of embrace the silliness like the villain's plan in this like it skips over Stormbreaker Just just so you know like it it completely cuts that out I guess they just thought the movie was that bad, but it skips straight to point blank and the villain's plan in that is to Clone himself and then kidnap the sons of a bunch of rich people Surgically alter his clones to look like those those sons and then replace them so that they can take over the world That's pretty fucking silly no matter how you try to spin it but the show just Tries to make it serious and it does not work at all like it does It just does not work with that dark tone It feels off and there's a complete disconnect there And we also lose out on some of the more fun bits of the series like the gadgets You know in in the books Smithers always showed up He was he was basically just the cue of the books He would always show up and he give Alex some weird gadgets that he would use like look Alex It looks like a CD player, but it's actually a buzz saw I'm not making that up by the way in the point blank book He did actually have a CD player that doubled as a buzz saw or look It's an earring or it looks like an earring, but it's actually a grenade again Not making that up that was really in there or look it's a pen but if you turn it upside down the woman's clothes fall off and you can see her tits like you know that sort of stuff and That was fun, but Smithers is still in the show and so he winds up being a little bit useless and I'm gonna go on a spoiler-filled rant here. So if you want to skip that just skip until my hand is down, but Basically in the show Smithers is a normal sized black guy Whereas in the books he was a really really fat white guy and I don't really care that they changed his race like that's not a big deal, but We do lose out on possibly the best joke in the entire series because again He's a really really fat guy throughout the entire series and then in the last book Him and Alex wind up getting chased by some bad guys They managed to escape and the whole time Alex is thinking wow He actually moves pretty fast for someone that size and then at the end Smithers is like well, I can't work for my six anymore I'm just gonna have to disappear and then he peels off the fat suit that he'd been wearing the entire time He's actually just a normal sized skinny dude, and he was also Irish for some reason like That's a funny joke. Okay. He had he had us fooled and Alex fooled the entire series That's a really funny joke and we missed out on that So that's my small rant out of the way But in addition the villain winds up looking kind of dumb because of the dark tone like not only is his plan really dumb but in the book he was Pretty clearly a white supremacist. They didn't spend much time on it though Like his name is dr. Hugo grief and he was a scientist that worked for the apartheid South African government And at one or two points he did mention people like Adolf Hitler as being great men So it was clear there was clearly some subtext there that yeah, the dude was a white supremacist But it was subtle because it didn't really tie into anything. You know, he was just a crazy villain We didn't need to know that much more beyond that whereas in the show Hugo grief Like he literally makes the passcode to his door 1889 because that's the year Adolf Hitler was born. It sounded like one person deciding the fate of millions of people Who lives and who dies makes sense faster. It's the year Hitler was born That's his code. I promise you and he literally quotes Adolf Hitler and other Nazis at several points and talks about how the strong have to rule over the weak and like Any subtlety just goes out the window and it makes him seem Ironically like more of a cartoony villain even though they were trying to make him more realistic and more serious It just completely fails the plot here while again, it's not bad It does try to be overarching, you know, cuz one thing I was really worried about when they First announced the show and said that they were skipping over Stormbreaker was I wasn't sure how they were going to tie in all the stuff about like Alex's uncle Ian dying and Alex being recruited by MI 6 and him Being forced to go to point blank and do the stuff for them I was wondering how they were gonna tie all that together and I think they do a decent job of that and then also in the show Well, they try again, they try to make it overarching They try to add more elements from the other books because if you haven't read them the books are all pretty episodic They stand alone pretty well Like you can pick up any one of them and even if you haven't read the others You can still generally pick up on most of the important information and I think that works Okay, like I am interested in seeing where they go with this in later seasons But stuff like Yassin Grogorovich and Scorpia do actually play a role in this early season Even though they had nothing to do with Hugo grief in the in the book Like they were just something that was introduced later. So I'm not sure how I feel about Them trying to make some sort of big bad with this. Maybe it'll work. Maybe it won't but whatever the case It's not really an Alex Ryder adaptation at that point It's just kind of something that's inspired by Alex Ryder But I do want to reiterate that despite all my issues with this as an adaptation. I think it's a decent show So in the interest of fairness, let's talk about some of the good stuff here I really like how they expanded on a lot of the characters like Alex in particular They got a really good actor to play him and he actually looks like a teenager too by the way like Okay, in the original Stormbreaker movie He was played by Alex Petty for who was like 17 at the time of filming, but he looks like he's fucking 25 So it just it doesn't really work whereas in this they got someone who is in his 20s But he actually looks like he could be around 15 or 16. So it works better But that said they also show him actually more in his uncle because they didn't spend much time on that in the books Like, you know, this is the guy that raised him. This is his father figure and it's just kind of Oh, he's dead at the beginning of the first book and then They don't dwell on it that much So it makes Alex come across as kind of cold and inhuman Which I think might be on purpose because again James Bond But nonetheless it it does feel a little weird But we also see Alex go through a lot of suffering and he feels a lot more determined because he feels like okay This is me completing my uncle's final mission, which was the case in Stormbreaker But they don't really spend that much time on it No, not even in the book, which I always thought was a little weird like in this it feels like he's saying okay I'm completing my uncle's work and that's my way of saying goodbye. So I did really like that and they also spend time developing his friends and his relationship with them like Jack, you know, she in the books was more of a plot point or a Character, I don't I don't even know a good word for her But she wasn't really a character in her own right and so no spoilers some stuff that happens in the last book Between her and Alex which is supposed to be like really emotionally devastating just doesn't quite hit the way It's supposed to at least not for me But now she is an actual character and even if she's not the most amazing or most well-developed character She's actually there and Alex's friend Tom is also in this and gets a weird amount of screen time especially it just he looks a lot like Michael Jones too, which is distracting but Whatever whatever that's not a big deal. He gets a lot of screen time and we do see Alex and him be friends So what they were definitely going for is that they were trying to make Alex feel like an actual teenager as opposed to some blank slate Spy ultra badass, which he kind of is at times in the books like not always But kind of and they also spend a lot of time on his love life, which I just hated like that's one of the only Parts of the show I just absolutely hated was they spend a lot of time on his love life So while I do appreciate that they expanded his character a lot It's not always a good thing And then there's other characters that get some expansion to like Alan Blunt does have some personality to him Ian Ryder his uncle does Get a little bit of development because think about it in the books How much do we really know about him other than he was a spy for MI6? Like we we don't know much at all Yasin Grigorovich strangely enough does get a little bit of actual character development in this which I was not expecting at all And people like Mrs. Jones and other people that work at MI6 really drive home the point that What they're doing Forcing a teenager to go into these dangerous situations and risk his life and get hurt is Pretty fucked up like in the books. They do talk about that But not until much later on in the series and they really do hammer at home there Whereas in this there there's kind of like yeah, this is pretty bad, right? And they're like well, we we don't really have a choice So we just got to help and prepare and wish them the best I also really liked most of the action scenes like there's a couple that are way too short and a little bit I guess subdued would be a good word But there are some others that are just a lot of fun Like there are two fight scenes in particular that I really liked because in this show when someone gets hit It looks like it hurts, you know like in most movies and TV shows and stuff people can get hit a million times and just Walk it off like they're not hurt at all. Whereas in this people will get hit in the head And even if they're still conscious, they'll be like woozy and barely able to stand and stuff And so I liked that it did give it a little bit more of a realistic flair and that was fun And I especially liked the snowboard scene as well It wasn't quite as good as it was in the book But those of you who have read it know what I'm talking about that was that was a lot of fun And there should have been a little bit more gunfire and explosions type stuff in this but I get it There were budgetary constraints. So I'm not that upset about it beyond that There are just some scenes which are either really weird or really dumb or some plot points Which are really weird and really dumb as well Like for example at one point Tom accidentally blows Alex's cover like he talks to someone He doesn't realize is the bad guy and like somehow Tom winds up finding out about Alex being a spy too, which is also stupid but The get bad guy captures Tom and he accidentally gives them some information like it's just kind of a dumb plot point and it Makes Tom come across as being kind of annoying and unnecessary to the plot. There's like I mentioned There's a lot of focus on Alex's love life, which I hated There's also Okay, so for those who haven't read the book this is all about Alex pretending to be a rich guy's son so that he can get sent off to some like boarding school for troubled teens way off in the French Alps and part of his Preparing to be undercover is that he's pretending to be this guy named Alex friend who is the son of this Billionaire who owns like food manufacturing and part of that is that he lives at his mansion for a couple of days with the billionaire and his family and his daughter Fiona her and Alex just hate each other in the books and They hate each other in the show too, but they also felt the need to add a scene where Alex is getting really horny over her and it It feels weird Especially because she's supposed to be about his age, but she looks like she's in her 20s. So it's it It just feels a little odd to get him to watch him get horny over his fake sister But I guess it's not that big a deal And then there's a bit where the characters hack into the main bad guys computer and change some of the passwords for like Door key codes and stuff and then they come back much later after they've already been found out and the pass codes have not changed at all And so just stuff like that, you know and one thing that again I it just makes it not an Alex writer adaptation is that Alex makes friends with all the other kids at the boarding school or not all of them but a couple other kids at the boarding school and then he enlists them to help with his spy stuff and they do and Like it's not even that they're bad characters or anything It's just it doesn't really feel like James Bond for kids at that point. It feels like just your standard Kids try to escape evil school type story, which I read probably 10 trillion billion of those when I was a kid and In fact Alex writer was one of the things that I read when I was getting tired of those so I Don't like that. They did that at all. It feels weird, but you know again overall thoughts Decent show really really is a decent show. There's a lot of solid performances in there some fun action scenes The storyline isn't bad It's just not really an Alex writer show Huge huge huge thanks to everybody who watched this far and especially to my patrons whose names are here and my $10 up guys are Oppo Savalainen Ava tumor brother Santotis Christopher Quinten Deanna Day him Mbis Emily Miller Evan Stigal Joel Karkat Kitsune Madison Lewis Bennett nature boy NB star Reeze e-Rowla sad martigan tobacco crow tombini vacuous Silas and they victims You are all really great because without you well quite frankly I wouldn't be able to do this and if you want your name up here And if you want stuff like early access to my videos then consider becoming a patron You know it's all it takes a dollar a month And if you can't do that then just sharing this video around liking on it commenting on it You know all that stuff that helps too. Anyways, thanks for watching. See you next time. Bye