Black Mirror (Science Fiction anthology TV Show)

Netflix Reveals 'Black Mirror: Bandersnatch' Is a Movie

'Black Mirror: Bandersnatch' Synopsis, Runtime, Cast And Crew Revealed In Leaks

Yesterday, savvy fans discovered that Netflix had created a title card for its upcoming film, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. This followed a leak earlier in the month indicating that Black Mirror would offer new content on Dec. 28.

Now, users on Reddit have crowdsourced some of the biggest leaks yet about Bandersnatch -- some of which, if true, all but confirm that the latest installment in Black Mirror will be an interactive film.
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Knowing my luck, I'll probably get everyone killed.
 
I played along with this out of curiosity. As much as I admire the ambition I can't help but think this just lead to an unsatisfying result. I was initially skeptical about the level of control you actually had over this and I was more or less right.
 
jmc said:
I played along with this out of curiosity. As much as I admire the ambition I can't help but think this just lead to an unsatisfying result. I was initially skeptical about the level of control you actually had over this and I was more or less right.
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I've done the Tangerine Dream vs. Tomita choice, like, 8 times. The greatest moral quandary of all.

Had to stick with Tangerine Dream because then at least he says "thank you" to the store clerk.
 
The permutations are pretty crazy. Even the cereal choice comes back!

Sugar Puffs has the better ad.
My overall impressions are that this is really, really cool. And the execution and the details are great, really impressive, makes me wonder if Brooker and Slade have some decapitated heads lying on their desks. The moments of meta humor are also quite fun.

I've already burned quite a lot of time on it and it still feels like I haven't found the path that pushes through to a third act. If I've pretty much exhausted the forward possibilities of the story then I guess I'm a little disappointed in that aspect because it does feel cut short--and yet it also feels like the movie/game keeps hinting that there's more and to "try again," so I imagine I will be giving this another run-through very soon from the beginning. Whatever path I was on last time had me in loops. Each with interesting details and endings but yeah, I think doing a new run through might help me avoid whatever knot I tied at the end there. There were a couple options from my first run through that I never got back to on the second go, so I have to wonder if there isn't a longer path in there somewhere.

Very addictive but at a certain point you do weary of watching the same scenes over again, even in there truncated versions. The interface works great but it is hard to skip around too much without losing yourself. Now excuse me while I dump some tea on my TV.
P.S. Not entirely satisfying but the "O Superman" ending is quite beautiful. You'll know it when you see it.
 
Neat gimmick, but it ultimately resulted in an unsatisfying episode that just left me wanting a Black Mirror season 5 instead.
 
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The Shape said:
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A worthy experiment, but more gimmicky than anything. I actually think there was an opportunity to push the morality onto the viewer more by making the choices more and more extreme and have those choices have genuine consequences. In the end it amounts to a meta commentary on who's really in control, which just ends up being a bit trollish. That said, I think there's a foundation here for something to come from this. I'm not sure what it is, but it's an interesting experiment that has potential.
 
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I loved/am loving this

Took me about an hour to get to an ending and an hour 45 mins to get to the/an "absolute" ending. Took my dumb ass like 5 minutes to get to the first restart loop though...

The complaint that it's too gimmicky is really silly to me. I mean obviously it's gimmicky. That's the whole reason for this existing. And I like how they did it in a meta clever way. But different strokes and all that.
If you're not onboard with the gimmick? Then cool. That's your opinion.

But saying this doesn't play enough with morality, doesn't have consequences, or give you enough choices? Depending on your choices down to the cereal box at the beginning: (vague spoilers)
people get into fights, people experiment with drugs, people get sent to jail, people die...the whole villain(s) of the story change depending on your choices
I don't understand what else would you want to happen to the characters.

There are so many choices and curves this takes. And that's only after me messing around for 1h45. I don't know how far people wanted it to go, but it seems sufficiently expansive for me.

Already playing through it fully again
 
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I liked it enough. At one point, it felt like the writers wanted you to go a certain way anyway like you make one choice and things eventually go the direction as if you chose the other.

I haven’t looked up the number of possible endings. My first time through, I reached my end but it allowed me to pick a different choice or watch the credits. I chose the other one and the story had a different ending that lead to the credits with no other options but to start the whole thing all over.
 
I really enjoyed it. Not sure that I saw "everything" but I will go back and experiment some more.
 
I like Bandersnatch and definitely relate a lot to Stefan. I think he may similarly have aspergers.
 
I dug it a lot and this definitely has huge potential especially in the thriller and horror genre. I love how extremely meta it got towards the end.

I think I've seen all the deadends and the endings and there is a true ending which was interesting.
 
Well, apparently there are 5 hours of footage contained with this thing, millions of possible path permutations, 5 main endings but 13 different variations depending on which paths you took, and Netflix had to develop a couple new programs just in order to make the thing work the way it does. I mean, it sounds like a logistical nightmare that might have threatened to drive its creators as mad as Stefan in his darkest timeline, ha. Thinking about what every stage of production must have been like--to plan this, and to make sure you got all the necessary footage, and then the editing, dear Lord...

'Black Mirror's' Interactive Film: How to Navigate 'Bandersnatch'

It's certainly true that--despite the ways in which it tries to tie its own unsatisfying nature into a sort of meta commentary on the illusion of free will--it does feel a tad disappointing and abrupt in terms of the sort of massive wall of choice loops you hit at about 30 minutes in with about 3 of the main 5 endings essentially just being variations on each other. I did really appreciate the "O Superman" ending and the Pearl ending, though, and I'm glad I spent enough time with it to find those (and the Netflix endings, while atom-bombing the 4th wall, are fun). However, yeah, it would have been great if they could have given you at least one path through that wall to have another 10 minutes or so of forward narrative, even if they could only give you a couple closed loop choices and maybe, like, one split ending in that final thread. Just feels like there was some build up to a last act that never comes, no matter how you try to get to it--and the script built in a thematic excuse for that but it doesn't change that it feels like there's a good bit of unrealized potential here.

But now that Netflix/Brooker have the foundation in place, maybe they'll do a "patch" version or a Bandersnatch 2 sometime in the future that can kind of go those lengths to give a more fleshed-out and complete narrative. That Hollywood Reporter article states that Netflix has already started talking to some other creators about whether they'd be interested in doing this sort of interactive film thing. Feels like something where you're almost going to need a creator like Brooker to even half pull it off, but who knows, maybe Brooker's pioneering of some of this stuff with Netflix will help ease other creators into the process and start them with some of the tools necessary to make it work.

I had a lot of fun with it so I hope we get more content that builds on this foundation. There were moments where I was truly entranced by this intersection of film with algorithm (my goodness, the path-specific "return to movie" montages) and I probably watched the aftermath of Tangerine Dream vs. Tomita eight times just to pick up on the very subtle differences in the following scenes (I mentioned this earlier but pick Tangerine Dream and he says "thank you" to the store clerk in a shot that looks virtually identical to the shot in the Tomita path). When you realize how these changes continue and coalesce as you loop your paths in different ways, man, yeah. I'd love to see more like this.
 
Thought this was pretty great to watch and choose various scenarios and endings!
 
Has anyone tried autoplaying it? Does it just randomly pick the options?
 
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