To describe the premise as unrealistic would mean nothing as nobody should expect realism from what is essentially a post-apocalyptic sci-fi flick.
Watching something like this should lead to "what-if" scenarios, help you identify with more or less complex characters that beg you to care for them. Making a series out of something like this would allow the writers to embed details that allow characters to grow and plots to capture the audience for at least a season. And much like it is with meeting a new person, the pilot of series is expected to offer a perspective of what is to come.
But we have none of that in "Revolution", which is a truly awful series under all aspects.
The series would have us believe that a cataclysmic event left the world without electricity. This is fine, it is a bold premise that demands to know "how could this have happened", since it seems to defy any reason. The writers hint of a future answer and this is good.
What is bad? All that follows make no sense. We are given a 10-years after world, with decrepit ruins of the civilization.
Wait ... what, ruins? In my country we have blocks of flats that are over 50 years old and still stand strong without any maintenance whatsoever (sure, they look like crap, but they stand and are inhabited).
Next. Henchmen firing muskets? Why? You don't need complex technology to make bullets for the mechanical repeating rifles. They had those in the wild west before electricity. (FAQ on this is false: yes, making modern ammo is difficult without electric machinery but that doesn't equal revert to musket - in fact revert to musket poses huge problems because even if ammo can be anything, you need to first manufacture the weaponry as existing weapons have rifling bores, moreover to make simple rifle bullets you don't need the same process as the more modern ammo and they would still be compatible with a lot of modern guns).
Next. Can these characters be any less likable? A hot-headed teenager and her brother, a Justin Bieber-lookalike?
Next. Lacking electricity, how can people be alive? (most cellular processes require electricity - passing electrical charges along, brain processes are completely dependent on this) How can anything be alive? If you rub some material on your hair, is there any static left? Hell, since we're at it, what keeps molecules together? Have electric charges been replaced by something else? If so, and in fact those mysterious amulets just regulate this state, it means people can be alive only around them.
Next. How does that woman communicate using her computer? It would mean that an entire network runs continuously from her house to her counterpart. That means, the entire line has electricity running smoothly between her computer, to whatever router she is using, to her counterpart's computer (assuming a simple setup) is allowed to have electricity (otherwise the signal would die as soon as it got out of the range of her amulet).
Halfway through the pilot I was truly hoping that at least the Bieber- double would die in agony and soon after came the simply horrible hotel fight where I saw the evil henchmen pause for almost an entire minute to give the wonder-soldier time to stare in disbelief at his teen niece. Almost a minute the brain-dead henchmen just stand there not taking a shot. Even in cheap C-movies they at least try to give something to do to the henchmen to give the good guy a break (eg: moan as they stand, pick themselves up, slow-motion take, etc), but not here!
And in the end we are fed the incredibly cheap cliffhanger of the doctor typing on a dismembered computer. Why dismembered, may I ask? If she simply didn't keep her old computer in one piece and was forced to build one from scrap, what exactly prevented her from finding/making a case too, just to keep those precious components that remind her of a more civilized time, safe?
Watching something like this should lead to "what-if" scenarios, help you identify with more or less complex characters that beg you to care for them. Making a series out of something like this would allow the writers to embed details that allow characters to grow and plots to capture the audience for at least a season. And much like it is with meeting a new person, the pilot of series is expected to offer a perspective of what is to come.
But we have none of that in "Revolution", which is a truly awful series under all aspects.
The series would have us believe that a cataclysmic event left the world without electricity. This is fine, it is a bold premise that demands to know "how could this have happened", since it seems to defy any reason. The writers hint of a future answer and this is good.
What is bad? All that follows make no sense. We are given a 10-years after world, with decrepit ruins of the civilization.
Wait ... what, ruins? In my country we have blocks of flats that are over 50 years old and still stand strong without any maintenance whatsoever (sure, they look like crap, but they stand and are inhabited).
Next. Henchmen firing muskets? Why? You don't need complex technology to make bullets for the mechanical repeating rifles. They had those in the wild west before electricity. (FAQ on this is false: yes, making modern ammo is difficult without electric machinery but that doesn't equal revert to musket - in fact revert to musket poses huge problems because even if ammo can be anything, you need to first manufacture the weaponry as existing weapons have rifling bores, moreover to make simple rifle bullets you don't need the same process as the more modern ammo and they would still be compatible with a lot of modern guns).
Next. Can these characters be any less likable? A hot-headed teenager and her brother, a Justin Bieber-lookalike?
Next. Lacking electricity, how can people be alive? (most cellular processes require electricity - passing electrical charges along, brain processes are completely dependent on this) How can anything be alive? If you rub some material on your hair, is there any static left? Hell, since we're at it, what keeps molecules together? Have electric charges been replaced by something else? If so, and in fact those mysterious amulets just regulate this state, it means people can be alive only around them.
Next. How does that woman communicate using her computer? It would mean that an entire network runs continuously from her house to her counterpart. That means, the entire line has electricity running smoothly between her computer, to whatever router she is using, to her counterpart's computer (assuming a simple setup) is allowed to have electricity (otherwise the signal would die as soon as it got out of the range of her amulet).
Halfway through the pilot I was truly hoping that at least the Bieber- double would die in agony and soon after came the simply horrible hotel fight where I saw the evil henchmen pause for almost an entire minute to give the wonder-soldier time to stare in disbelief at his teen niece. Almost a minute the brain-dead henchmen just stand there not taking a shot. Even in cheap C-movies they at least try to give something to do to the henchmen to give the good guy a break (eg: moan as they stand, pick themselves up, slow-motion take, etc), but not here!
And in the end we are fed the incredibly cheap cliffhanger of the doctor typing on a dismembered computer. Why dismembered, may I ask? If she simply didn't keep her old computer in one piece and was forced to build one from scrap, what exactly prevented her from finding/making a case too, just to keep those precious components that remind her of a more civilized time, safe?