Altered Carbon is the latest new series to stream on Netflix and is a Sci-Fi/Cyberpunk thriller that looks gorgeous and is thrilling at the same time. Just by watching the trailers, you can see that it is heavily inspired by Blade Runner and other Sci-Fi films. However, this isn’t a bad thing, Altered Carbon takes this notion and runs with it pretty well while also creating its own universe and characters.

Here is the trailer if you are interested:

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhFM8akm9a4[/embedyt]

Now before anyone mentions anything, there will be spoilers for the first episode down below.

Altered Carbon starts by throwing you right into the action, where we meet two criminals with guns, one is a woman (we don’t learn her name) and a guy by the name of Takeshi Kovacs (Will Yun Lee) who are ambushed by an armed forces group, they look like stormtroopers if they were scarier. The criminals put up a good fight, but are killed in the end. This scene was very tense at times and was full of action. Definitely a great way to start a pilot.

We then cut to 250 years into the future where we see Takeshi Kovacs (Joel Kinnaman) being reborn. However, he is in a different body and is having a hard time adjusting to his new environment. However, not only has his body changed, so has the world around him. It’s here that we get to see the CGI and set design really kick in. The world of Altered Carbon is visually stunning and it stands out enough that it doesn’t come off as a copy of Blade Runner (There’s going to be a lot of comparisons that so just a warning).

It’s after that stunning revelation that Kovacs is picked up by Kristin Ortega (Martha Higareda) who is a police lieutenant who picks up Kovacs and escorts him to a wealthy estate where we learn that Kovacs was hired to try and solve the murder of Laurens Bancroft (James Purefoy) who has already been reborn into a new body. However, Bancroft still wants to find out who wants him dead. It’s this conflict that is the driving force for the rest of the episode, as Kovacs spends his time thinking about taking the case for him to finally agree to at the end of the episode.

So far, Altered Carbon presents a beautiful world and some really good acting. However, the story feels pretty scarce and doesn’t explain everything clearly and it may come off as a lot of showing but not telling. Given that it is only the first episode of the series, we can cut it some slack. Let’s just hope that the story will pick up and gain more momentum while exploring more of the beautiful world around it.

8.5/10