Hacker News Reader

Comment by techdragon | Hacker News Reader

I’m really not seeing any connection to office space beyond… toxic workplace culture… and I mean that’s kind of a thing in a lot of movies, so I’m really not sure why they bothered to draw the connection to Office Space at all.

Does look interesting though. The use of a camera focus shifting looks to be stylistically interesting and a good way to follow along with the characters mental mode switching.

I’m kind of hoping this is just a 1 season “long movie” and we get a nicely wrapped up story, because I’m struggling to see this concept really managing more than a season and a half before it feels like they would just dragging it out.

View on HN

I am guessing the author was lead to this thought because near the end of the trailer is this Office Space esque quote: "what is it we actually do here?" (similar to "What would you say ya do here?" by Bob Slydell)

Also, in Office Space, Initech is bureaucratic and top heavy with management and push over employees that seem to accept the mistreatment until the last straw: management hires consultants to downsize the company. That decision starts a chain of events that eventually causes Milton to burn down the company and retire to the tropics with the stolen money. In Severance, I am guessing there will be a similar existential crisis for the business which arises from management smashing one moral barrier too many in the course of trying to achieve greater profitability.

> I am guessing the author was lead to this thought

The author of the article (assuming, as is usually the case, they aren't also the author of the headline) doesn't mention Office Space at all.

> so I’m really not sure why they bothered to draw the connection to Office Space at all

Because the body of the article mentions The Office and the headline writer doesn't know the difference? (Office Space isn't mentioned in the body at all.)

It really doesn't sound like Office Space at all. Maybe more like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind crossed with Vanilla Sky and the classic sci-fi novel Dayworld (That future world of 7 people each living one day with the rest in suspended animation, but the main character lives all 7 days...)

Peter asks the hypnotist if he can make it so that he doesn’t know that he’s at work. The new series explores that scenario.

clicks. lots of people know Office Space, no one knows Severance. so you draw a connection between something people are familiar with.

> lots of people know Office Space

Do they really? I expect most people on HN to know it, but I’m not so sure about the general population. It’s one of my favourite movies and I often found myself referencing it in office settings, but had to stop because nobody got them, not even once. Most people hadn’t heard of it, and the few who had seen it didn’t like it.

I think Mike Judge is an absolute genius, but none of his movies have performed well commercially. Maybe they lack mass appeal, most people simply never experience toxic work environments, or they do, but fail to recognise it as such. Or the movies were just under-marketed. Whatever the cause, these things aren’t exactly household names.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com