Nautilus

I was skeptical of the series at first but it is a really good watch a mix of believable characters and adventures all based around Nemo and crew wanting revenge. The thread is through each episode of them going on a journey to find treasure to pay for their individual reasons for revenge. The end of the season is neatly tied up and leaves it ready for the beginning of season 2 Just enjoy being entertained old style looking forward to season 2 hopefully it's picked up and all the original characters are on board and maybe pick up some old and new characters along the way. Hence the reason for the 7 stars.

I like it! So, I said it. And I am going to explain why I like it.

In a TV world where there is not much offered in terms of variety, it is nice to see this kind of genre coming to life. I mean, do we really need another crime/police/lawyer/doctor/fire fighting series? Is the zombie scene not fully explored? Are the Marvel, DC and Star Wars series not too much by now? Do we need another spin off of some series just because the executives think we will watch it anyway so they can make some more money with the same idea? My answer would be; NO!

Nautilus is a great adventures series and has no real connection, story wise, with the original 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea story by Jules Verne. They focus on the Nautilus and its Captain, Nemo, and his merry mix of crew and passengers. So, just relax, watch, enjoy.

First things first, I don't remember much of the original, reading it in translation when I was a kid. So whatever discrepancies there are in the series with original (of which, I'm sure, there's aplenty), I can't tell. Judging the first season as "based on something", it's a very decent adventure with distinct characters and a straightforward plot and narrative. I liked the character design and portrayal, and most of the acting too. Scene and gear design is also great, IMO - the Nautilus is sleek and swift, the Dreadnought is heavy and menacing, insides of both are also accordingly delicate and utilitarian. It looks great, and complements the story greatly too.

The main downside, as I see it, is the script - not in terms of storyline but in terms of character relationship dynamics. At times, it's unbelievably cringy and stereotypical, with all the cutout mistrust and disdain for no reason, it's just too teenage and cartoonish for the otherwise realistic-looking settings. I mean, it's obviously fantastical and unreal, but it's at no point deliberately magical or superpower-like or anything. Also the ending is a bit too abrupt and haphazard.

I'm not sure there will be season 2, but season 1 is fairly finalised - with a promise of more, of course, but as an extra, not as a cliffhanger. It's a decent watch for a plain but exciting adventure.

I haven't read the book/s so I don't know how faithful the TV series is to it.

What drags the rating down is, among other things, that the dialogue is sometimes quite stilted and convoluted.

The personal portraits are very simple and the character development too obvious and easily guessed. They are forgiven a little by the fact that it is the Victorian era when you think that it is a little like what they were then.

It is unrealistic, yes of course it is a sic fi written 150 years ago but you can do a better job of making it all believable anyway. Above all, the technical solutions, even if they would work in theory, feel rather MacGyver, and the battle scenes (there are few of them, but they exist) sometimes feel like Indiana Jones, so very unrealistic, something that worked in the 80s but feels quite passé today . Then they are constantly in trouble, it feels kind of illogical to continue such a journey if they are constantly at risk of dying, in the end you hardly care, as you are thrown straight from one danger to another without them building up the threats enough beforehand.

The Computer Generated Imagenary is not always that good and is used far too much, a lot would have worked better without using it so much. You hardly get a sense of the sea, even though it takes place under and on the sea, this could have been done so much better, perhaps by actually filming a bit under the sea, including real creatures living in the sea, etc. That's probably the saddest thing about the whole series, what you'd hoped it would really capture, but no unfortunately they don't succeed at all here. Almost everything feels studio made and then put on Computer Generated Imagenary. It might not be like that, but that's the feeling you get.

The series rarely get really tense and you have a hard time empathizing with the characters.

What still makes it worth watching is that it is interesting to see a series that takes place in a different environment, there is an element of adventure and in between it glimmers and becomes quite good.

You also get a bit of the political aspects that existed then, even if you only get glimpses of it (and they are not completely historically correct, but you still get the idea), it is interesting to see the Indian freedom root/independence movement at that time, also some other historical perspectives even if they are often too obvious.

Worth seeing the series? Yes, it is entertaining, but hardly a masterpiece.

20,000 Leagues Under The Sea is one of my favorite books of all time. As a movie and book lover, I have no mercy for filmmakers who take too much liberty when adapting wildly known works. Even though it is not an adaptation per se, since here we only focus on Captain Nemo, the character himself is the main interest of the original story. Therefore screwing this up would be the same as screwing up Jules Verne's masterpiece.

And after watching the whole series, I'll put it with simple words:

It is BLASPHEMOUS as an adaptation but ENJOYABLE as entertainment material.

Captain Nemo's backstory as a fallen indian wealthy Prince is accurate but...that's it. Really. Apart from that, everything else is pure invention like how he built the Nautilius or how he assembled his crew. There are no women in his original crew but in modern society that would not slide, so they had to include that one typical smart independant woman to serve as a love interest and as a sort of challenger for Nemo's genius. Surprisingly, as much as I hate the modern feminism agenda in modern filmmaking, I realy liked the main female character. Instead of being that arrogant I-know-everything-more-than-anyone-else type that we all hate, they pulled off a character that has a nice balance betweem being feminine and intelligent. Nice job...for once.

The rest of the cast is a nice heterogenous mix of cultures and ethnic backgrounds, that in the context of the story does not feel forced like other films and series we see today.

The acting is descent and the cinematography could have been better if they focused more on the beauty and the wilderness of the ocean instead of the inside of the submarine. I didn't find the CGI to be as terrible as I some other viewers think. There were great and you can see that they put a lot of effort in the underwater sequences.

As a complete fanatic of the original book, I actually enjoyed it but I had to give in after the first episode and admit that it won't be a faithful backstory of our beloved Captain Nemo and his Legendary Submarine.

My advice for you is to watch it as a high-budget fan fiction and not as an actual adaptation. That way you'll get through all episodes without any high expectations and just enjoy the journey with the characters.