Hacker News Reader

Comment by huhtenberg | Hacker News Reader

Better casting choices would've certainly helped.

The acting of several lead actors is really bad. Avasarala (the "undersecretary"), Bobbie (the "marine"), Jim Holden - they all portray characters in a way that is utterly unconvincing. Every scene with Avasarala is a scene that can't end quick enough. She looks like a bad impostor. Bobbie is miscast so severely it's on par with the "bitchy teenager" Anakin from Ep2 and Ep3. Holden's facial expression for determination is that of a man about to cry. In fact, he looks like his dog just died in most of the scenes.

The story and the universe is excellent, the rest of the cast is really good, but it's not enough to balance it all out.

View on HN

> Holden's facial expression for determination is that of a man about to cry. In fact, he looks like his dog just died in most of the scenes.

Hahahaha, this is too true. Bobbie is also terrible. But Avasarala I thought was really well cast.

But in general it felt like we got straight-to-dvd type D-level actors (think about crappy movies like The Human Race) in a B+ level setting (writing, CGI, set design etc). I was really confused at first as to whether this was a serious series with a relatively big budget for science fiction, or something that evolved out of a college film project.

Never really knew what to think. Like, I enjoyed Miller as a character. But I also cringe everytime I see his fedora. It feels like they do a lot of the hard things right, but somehow go out of their way to mess up some of the easy things.

I will agree about Bobby but Avasarala is by far one of the best characters. The best casting decision obviously is Thomas Jane's character.

She looks like she's in a Bollywood movie. Over the top cocky confidence that's not really justified by anything that she is conveying through acting.

Jane - yes, agreed. Excellent choice. Alex, Amos, Naomi are all good too.

I've only partially watched the series so far, but I have read the books. It's a key point of Avarasala's character that she is pretty competent (and lacking patience) as shes basically portrayed as the one running the show on Earth. That said, without the monologues and the comparison to the public power in the book, I can see how that goes way too far into arrogance.

I also found the casting of the show underwhelming. The sci-fi is terrific, but the casting made it hard to get into. The storytelling I found good enough. I bet it's hard to get a cast together that can work well enough in all those close quarters scenes with lots of choices

Reply on news.ycombinator.com