The Expanse S04E03 'Subduction' - FULL REACTION!

That is such a great explanation, thank you!

Sonny Mike Olsen

Yeah, Amos pegged Murtry, he's a killer and he enjoys it. I agree, he should have tried incarcerating them instead of outright execution.

bwr

Everything with Mars makes so much sense, thank you for explaining that, especially if the show doesn’t delve into it. I do, however, understand that we have the god perspective, and that Murtry isn’t in the wrong from his own perspective. But I still don’t trust him at all, he is way too trigger happy, even though he is rightfully angry and (maybe) scared. In my opinion he should’ve tried a non violent approach first - but then again, it wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining/exciting as what we are getting with him at the moment. All the character motivations and such make total sense, so I wouldn’t change anything at all 😄

Sonny Mike Olsen

Just to expand, on the whole politics of Avasarala vs Gao (which may feel like the weakest plot line of this season). It's not a spoiler since the book goes much further in detail about the reservations Avasarala has towards the Ring. Part of it is truly the fear of triggering another Eros incident with weird Protomolecule tech they don't understand, but the real reason is what's happening on Mars. As it was commented by Chrisjen's husband earlier, Mars was built upon generational thinking. Entire generations being raised to serve the common goal of the society so that their grandchildren might one day inherit a paradise. To this end, nothing is wasted on Mars. Everything is built upon the premise of efficiency. The moment the Ring gate opened, a good majority of Martians suddenly lost their drive entirely. After all why bother doing work on a dead rock for a hundred years, when they could colonize a habitable planet immediately? Now imagine the most well run company suddenly losing entire divisions of irreplaceable workers. It's a cascading domino effect, where their economy/social structure is on the brink of collapse and the government is busy building this "everything is fine" propaganda to keep the population in check. This is eerily similar to the collapse of the soviet union, and suddenly rogue generals started trafficking in illegal weapon sales for personal gains. Avasarala knew that if she gave the green light on those 1300 habitable worlds, Mars would be a ghost town within a year, while still possessing tremendous amount of tech and weapons that could conceivably end up anywhere. This was the principal deterrent to enforce such a brutal stand off for limited access, so they can "control" the demise of Mars in a more structure manner. The show however only scratched the surface on this, and though it did highlight the issues on Mars through Bobbie, it never made the connection to Avasarala which was one of the main focal point of her arc in book 4. As far as Murtry is concerned. Sonny needs to understand that we have the god perspective on seeing everyone's motives and understand the big picture. Under the limited information Murtry has, he's not entirely in the wrong. As Chief of Security, he was sent to ensure the safety of RCE employees, 23 of which got allegedly blown out of the sky by terrorist cells of the OPA. Once he had evidence of their plot, he wasn't about to "have a talk" with their administrator which would prove he was listening in on them illegally. All that would have done was make the Belters more careful in their plotting. He shot Coop because he was the alpha of that group, and thought that killing the leader might dissuade the others for challenging him. The fact they directly plotted to kill them made the situation simple for him. It was kill or be killed. Not saying he's a "good guy" but you can't really blame the way he acted just like how Ashford thought he was doing the right thing.

Unbeheld

"That fucking guy!" is the best description of Murtry I've seen!

Another reason for the aspect ratio switch is to give it a callback to the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns, the book and this season on Ilus has a Western flavor, as the first season had sort of a Film Noir flavor.

bwr

Amos gave Murtry a nick name Morty that is one of the reasons for the name. Also the reason this was one of my favorite books was the glimpse you see of the creators technology. Later on in the season I will tell you about what I think that planet does once we are out of potential spoiler territory!

Matt Bradley

Sonny, I never even noticed the aspect ratio thing my first watch. You have a keen eye for that apparently. I found this explanation though --IT DOESN'T CONTAIN SPOILERS -- The new, planetary focus will be marked by a stylistic change proposed by The Expanse cinematographer Jeremy Benning. "We chose to shoot all of the stuff on Ilus in anamorphic, 2.39 to 1 — it's a very wide aspect ratio," Shankar said. "So every time you're on the planet, it actually opens up, so you feel the vista is much larger. You watch the show and it seamlessly switches back and forth from 16:9 and 2.39." A widescreen aspect ratio of 16:9 has become high definition standard, while the wider 2.39:1 anamorphic format is more commonly reserved for theatrical movies.

Bryan-P