Kiss Me First
| Television series | |
|---|---|
| German title | Kiss Me First |
| Original title | Kiss Me First |
| Country of production | United Kingdom |
| original language | English |
| year | 2018 |
| Production company |
Balloon Entertainment Kindle Entertainment |
| length | 46 minutes |
| Episodes | 6 in 1 season ( list ) |
| genre | Science fiction , mystery , thriller |
| Director | Misha Manson-Smith Tom Green |
| idea | Bryan Elsley |
| script | Bryan Elsley |
| production | Bradley Adams |
| First broadcast | April 2, 2018 (United Kingdom) on Channel 4 |
First publication in German |
June 29, 2018 on Netflix |
| occupation | |
Kiss Me First is a British science fiction - television series by Bryan Elsley a virtual reality game, the live-action scenes and CGI combined. The six-part first season aired on Channel 4 on April 2, 2018 and was released on Netflix on June 29, 2018 .
Production and broadcast
Kiss Me First was written by Bryan Elsley , creator of Skins - Hautnah , who also acts as executive producer , based on the original novel I am Tess by Lottie Mogach . In January 2016, Netflix acquired the series for release outside the UK , where it was to be broadcast on Channel 4's E4 youth channel. The online game and its virtual world was still called Agora at the time. The series was produced by Elsley's production company Balloon Entertainment and Axis Studios produced the animation by Kindle Entertainment. Misha Manson-Smith and Tom Green directed the film.
The shooting in London and Croatia took place from December 2016 to the middle of the following year. In Croatia, the Krka National Park served as the filming location for the lakes and waterfalls, which can be seen in animation in Red Pill and in real-life scenes in the last two episodes.
On March 22, 2018, it was announced that the series would air on Channel 4 on April 2. There it ran in six episodes until May 7th. Netflix released a trailer on June 15 before the series hit the streaming platform on June 29.
action
Leila Evans encountered in the Virtual Reality - MMORPG led to suicide Azana in the secret place Red Pill a group of players to leader Adrian, the more members. In real life, she befriends the player Tess and tries to stop Adrian, who attaches his previous deeds to her.
Episode list
| No. | German title | Original title | First broadcast country | German language first publication (D) | Director | script |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | She did something | She did something | 2nd April 2018 | June 29, 2018 | Misha Manson-Smith | Bryan Elsley |
| Leila Evans, who has recently lost her mother, plays as Shadowfax a virtual reality - MMORPG called Azana. The Avatar Mania takes you to a secret, idyllic location in the game, Red Pill, to which a group of players has withdrawn. Their leader Adrian, who created Red Pill, initially expelled them from the place. Leila and her new roommate Jonty are visited by Tess, the player in Mania, and invited to a club. After the party, Leila goes to Tess's house, where she enters the game as Mania. She sees Adrian making the Avatar Calumny jump off a virtual cliff; meanwhile his player Cyril jumps from the roof of his house. | ||||||
| 2 | Make it stop | Make it stop | April 9, 2018 | June 29, 2018 | Misha Manson-Smith | Bryan Elsley |
| Leila tells Tess that she got her mother, who wanted to die voluntarily, strong pills so that she could die of an overdose. Tess moves in with Leila after her roommate throws her out. Since the avatar Calumny has been deactivated, Leila visits Cyril's place of residence and learns of the suicide through his mother . At the virtual cliff, she confronts Adrian, who pushes her off the cliff. Shadowfax wakes up in a childhood memory with her mother. | ||||||
| 3 | Off the track | Off the rails | April 16, 2018 | June 29, 2018 | Misha Manson-Smith | Rachel Hirons & Bryan Elsley |
| Ruth Palmer, the creator of Azana, who was convicted of the murder of her husband and business partner, is released. Leila learns in Red Pill that Tess once tried to kill herself. She meets with her ex-teacher to hack Azana and discovers at home that Adrian is spying on her via her webcam. She makes contact with the player of the Avatar Denier, Ben Graham, who lives in a children's home with an educator who abuses him. Ben kills himself and the educator Ted in a car using a bomb. After Tess is abandoned by her lover because Leila blackmailed him into doing it, Leila saves her from an overdose. When she learns of Ben's death on the news, Leila blames Adrian and destroys Tess' VR equipment. | ||||||
| 4th | Friends betray us | Friends Let Us Down | April 23, 2018 | June 29, 2018 | Tom Green | Laura Deeley & Bryan Elsley |
| Leila and Adrian search independently for the missing Tess. In Red Pill, Adrian assigns the Avatar Force, who has a relationship with Jocasta in the game, to travel to London to stop Leila. Together with her teacher, she finds evidence of Adrain's hacking, who has already leaked a video from a surveillance camera of how she spoke to Ben before his death. She drives Jonty to Ruth Palmer, who refuses to help her. Kyle, the player behind Force, visits Leila at her workplace and then visits Jocasta, where he finds out that she is a boy in real life. Leila receives a package from Ruth Palmer that will help her gain access to areas of Azana with Mr. Adams. While she's in the game, Kyle kills Mr. Adams. When Leila comes home, Kyle stands at her door and offers his help to find Tess. | ||||||
| 5 | The witch is coming | The witch is coming | April 30, 2018 | June 29, 2018 | Tom Green | Jamie Brittain & Lauren Sequeira |
| Tess is in Adrian's house with Tomiko, the player behind Tippi. He uses a sound recording to lead them to a lake that looks exactly like Red Pill. Tomiko is hurt that Adrian mentions Tess in particular. Leila and Kyle stop at a hut at night, where they sleep together until he calls her Jocasta. She knocks him down and escapes with the car. When she arrives at the house, she tries to convince Tess to go with her. Adrian tells Leila that he is Ruth's son and that she is in a multiplayer fighting game. She realizes that he instructed Tomiko to kill Tess at the lake. While Leila knocks Tomiko down, Tess goes diving in the lake and is attacked by Kyle underwater. Leila stabs him and apparently drowns, while Tess can save herself to the shore. | ||||||
| 6th | You can't go home | You Can Never Go Home | May 7, 2018 | June 29, 2018 | Tom Green | Laura Deeley & Bryan Elsley |
| Jonty discovers Tess in Leila's house and brings her to Ruth Palmer. They are then shown to the company's headquarters by Azana agent Saul Green. There it is believed that Leila is behind the suicides, as Tomiko portrayed it in the press. Leila wakes up tied up in a dark room, where Adrian torments her with visions of her alleged deeds. After resisting him, she realizes that she was inside virtual reality. When she returns home, she hacks into Azana and exposes Red Pill to the public. There she speaks to Adrian one last time while Ruth watches. Meanwhile, Jack wakes up from a coma in a hospital. | ||||||
Cast and dubbing
The German synchronization emerged after dialogue books by Wolfgang Seifert and Carsten Kukla and the dialogue director of Anya Borchers by the CSC Studio in Hamburg.
| role | Figure in the game | actor | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leila Evans | Shadow fax | Tallulah Haddon | Katharina von Keller |
| Tess | Mania | Simona Brown | Nadine Schreier |
| Adrian | Matthew Beard | Robert Knorr | |
| Cyril Niemec | Calumny | George Jovanovic | Martin Brücker |
| Ben Graham | denier | Samuel Bottomley | Piet Nowatzky |
| Kyle | Force | Freddie Stewart | Nils Rieke |
| Jack Innes | Jocasta | Misha Butler | Daniel Kirchberger |
| Tomiko Teshima | Tippi | Haruka Abe | Franciska Friede |
| Jonty | Matthew Aubrey | Henning Nöhren | |
| Azul | Philip Arditti | Christos Topoulos | |
| Mr. Adams | Mark Straker | Robin Brosch | |
| Ruth Palmer | Geraldine Somerville | Marion Elskis | |
reception
Kiss Me First received moderate ratings, scoring 50% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 18 critical reviews . Isaac Feldberg from Entertainment Weekly and Hanh Nguyen from IndieWire awarded the grade C +. Nguyen criticizes the storytelling as cloudy and the characterization of the characters as lazy. The virtual world of Azana is beautiful, but boring and not attractive; besides, it doesn't seem necessary for the plot.
The series is compared in the reception with Black Mirror and the film Ready Player One about a virtual reality, which was also released in 2018. Oliver Buckley of Ready Steady Cut dubbed it Ready Black Mirror One and wrote that it was more interesting than the film because it actually asked meaningful questions instead of just being a celebration of remembrance with one pop culture reference after another. Like Black Mirror, they warn of the dangers of technology. Chris Evangelista from Slashfilm and Kahron Spearman from Daily Dot write that Black Mirror meets Ready Player One (or vice versa ). However, the series sometimes comes off worse in comparison: For Jacob Oller it combines the worst aspects of the two and Vanessa Schneider headlines for puls that it is "Black Mirror on the outside, hollow on the inside."
For Daniel Fienberg of the Hollywood Reporter , the series tackles Black Mirror's most pervasive topic : "that the technological developments that are supposed to bring people together and create a new sense of community are actually alienating us from others as well as from our own identities." The first episodes explore mental problems and "what happens when vulnerable people who are too aware of the real world find themselves in a virtual environment where every emotion is heightened." Samantha Nelson of The Verge analyzes the unusual approach to the Gamer culture. While gamers are mostly portrayed as smart kids or young men obsessed with science fiction , comics or the internet, there are hardly any nerd references in Kiss Me First and Leila doesn't get through special gamer skills or the virtual world to protect, to the place Red Pill. You just find a community of very lonely people who need help. Leila is closest to a nerd, otherwise the group includes the mentally unstable Tess, a burdened veteran, a boy who experiences abuse, a queer neglected child. They don't meet in Azana to fight or to show the skills of their avatars, but rather talk about their problems in a beautiful place, flirt and promise to meet in real life as well. Azana seems inspired by World of Warcraft , but instead of the game mechanics , the series focuses on the sense of community that social video games deliver. “[These] bring people together who are looking for a distraction from their often very different lives. How they interact can be as complicated as any relationship built without pixels. And who they really are typically bears little resemblance to what their avatars look like. "
Web links
- Kiss Me First in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Leo Barraclough: Netflix, Channel 4 pick up virtual world thriller 'Kiss Me First' from Skins' Writer . In: Variety . January 14, 2016. Accessed March 25, 2020.
- ↑ Filming begins on C4 thriller Kiss Me First . In: Channel 4 . December 21, 2016. Retrieved March 25, 2020.
- ↑ MOM MIA! Croatia fast becoming Europe's top film location hotspot . In: wtm . September 5, 2017. Accessed March 25, 2020.
- ↑ Kiss Me Fist Press Pack . March 22, 2018. Accessed March 25, 2020.
- ↑ Katrin Hemmerling: Kiss Me First: First trailer for the Netflix series . In: Robots and Dragons . June 15, 2018. Retrieved March 25, 2020.
- ↑ a b Kiss Me First. In: synchronkartei.de. German dubbing index , accessed on March 24, 2020 .
- ↑ Kiss Me First at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- ↑ Isaac Feldberg: Netflix's Kiss Me First is a romantic sci-fi thriller for the VR generation: EW review . In: entertainment Weekly . June 29, 2018. Retrieved March 25, 2020.
- ↑ Hanh Nguyen: 'Kiss Me First' Review: Netflix's cyber-thriller is a bleak and toothless mess of virtual reality . In: Indie Wire . June 30, 2018. Retrieved March 25, 2020.
- ↑ Oliver Buckley: Kiss Me First Review . In: Ready Steady Cut . June 27, 2018. Retrieved March 25, 2020.
- ↑ Chris Evangelista: 'Kiss Me First' Trailer: Netflix's New Series Looks Like 'Ready Player One' Meets 'Black Mirror' . In: slash film . June 15, 2018. Retrieved March 25, 2020.
- ↑ Kahron Spearman: VR drama 'Kiss Me First' is 'Black Mirror' meets 'Ready Player One' . In: Daily Dot . June 29, 2018. Retrieved March 25, 2020.
- ↑ Vanessa Schneider: Black Mirror on the outside , hollow on the inside . In: puls . July 11, 2018. Retrieved March 25, 2020.
- ^ Daniel Fienberg: 'Kiss Me First': TV Review . In: Hollywood Reporter . June 29, 2018. Retrieved March 25, 2020.
- ↑ Samantha Nelson: Netflix's Kiss Me First has an unusually personal take on gamer culture . In: The Verge . June 29, 2018. Retrieved March 25, 2020.