Streaming TV
Released by AMC
Starring: Paul Dano, Aaron Eckhart, Katie Chang
The Plot: Maddie finds a stranger online who knows everything about her late dad. This puts her into a world of uploaded intelligence that can bring back the dead.
Anime Drama: Pantheon is anime adjacent, putting colorful and clean characters into a highly detailed world. The art form suggests there will be gun fights and mechs, but the story delivers on a cyber thriller with complex relationships and intrigue. The strength of Pantheon is the immaculately detailed world, although the animation style reminds me of King of the Hill.
Acting in the Network: The voice talent has 25% of Batman’s villains heading the project. Katie Chang’s voice adds youthful energy and hope to the ensemble. The voices supplied by Eckhart and Pano are strong showstoppers. Pantheon stays in the middle between soap opera antics and Neuromancer topics.
The Main Sci-Fi Draw: Pantheon thrives on uploaded intelligence, the ability to put the brain of loved ones online. The evil company, Logorythms, intends to use the technology for sinister means; a new type of cyber slavery. When Maddie finds that her father is on a server, she needs the help of Caspian and her mom to fight the mega tech company.
Why is this bingeworthy?: An animated project has no right to present such philosophical topics for critical thinkers, but they are doing it better than most live actions. Aside from the great voice acting and beautiful world, the story elements reward those who love hard science and the suspense is worthy of “just one more episode.”
The Truth: Pantheon discusses a topic that billion dollar corporations are dabbling in. The problem of mortality and how technology can benefit us. Humanity dreams about living forever and the only hope rests in experimental technologies. Pantheon wrestles with defining a human even if they are only data on a computer. As successful as technology can get with transferring the human brain to data, the core truth of Christians/Jews is that God created us in a body with a soul. How technology impacts the soul is up for debate.
Final: Pantheon is binge worthy because of the acting, suspense, and beauty. While live action series have been producing series that talk about this topic, Pantheon is worth a look over the competition.
8 Gigs out of 10
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The Checkpoint Blog 