With the foremost of 1899, Netflix has delivered the sector to one of the craziest series of the year. Within mins of this ancient horror story, a nice tale about passengers touring America devolves into chaos.
Of direction, this show isn’t based totally on any actual story. That’s constantly the case in terms of a thriller so convoluted and formidable that it makes Lost look sane. But you’ll be surprised to research that 1899 is rooted in reality. Which fact is the one true truth that remains to be visible? Mild spoilers in advance.
Is 1899 Based on a True Story?
This Netflix original starts offevolved with a fairly simple premise. A group of vacationers around the arena take a steamship from London bound for New York City. But whilst Captain Eyk (Andreas Pietschmann) realizes that they may be able to keep an extended-missing ship — the Prometheus — this journey goes from hopeful to terrible. We’re talking bizarre panels that result in not possible fields, puzzling triangle-based languages, mass suicide, and a delivery business enterprise that time and again begs its captain to sink his vessel. As insane as 1899 turns into, its roots are primarily based on the very actual European migrant disaster.
Also known as the Syrian refugee crisis, this worldwide occasion took place as a response to the Syrian Civil War, the Kosovo War, and the War in Afghanistan. Throughout 2015, 1. Three million human beings fled from those affected regions and asked for asylum from international locations in Europe. These refugees had been, in large part, Syrian. However, migrants from Afghanistan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iraq, Eritrea, and the Balkans came to the continent. It marked most people soliciting asylum in an unmarried 12 months considering World War II, and this big shift modified those international locations’ politics.
You can see traces of this event in 1899. As much as this series is about its primary mystery, it’s also approximately how a collection of people from differing cultures can collectively face a waking nightmare.
“The whole European perspective became vital for us, not best story-wise but also the manner we were going to produce it,” Jantje Friese told Deadline in 2021. “It needed to be a European collaboration, not simply forged but additionally group. We felt that with the beyond years of Europe being on the decline, we desired to give a counterpoint to Brexit and to nationalism rising in one-of-a-kind international locations, to go lower back to that idea of Europe and Europeans running and developing collectively.”
In the equal interview, Friese also explained that it became crucial that those characters from diverse nations cannot speak English. “We desired to explore this coronary heart of Europe, where absolutely everyone comes from someplace else and speaks a specific language, and language defines so much of your culture and behaviour,” Friese stated.
So we understand the origins of this tale changed into inspired by reality. What about the Kerberos itself? Is there an actual world counterpart to this vessel?
It appears as though the solution to this one is no. Throughout the 12 months of 1899, there were several shipwrecks, 30 of which had been from the United Kingdom. But 1899 isn’t exactly a shipwreck state of affairs. The series focuses more on the disappearances of Prometheus and, later, the Kerberos. There was one United Kingdom ship that disappeared in 1895, the SS Java, which turned into later renamed Lord Spencer. During a voyage from San Fransico to New York, it went missing, and some have claimed it collided with Prince Oscar. That’s approximately where the connections between 1899 and the actual world quit.
Is 1899 Based on a Book?
This question is far less difficult to answer. No, 1899 isn’t based on a book, comic, film, or another piece of pop culture. It’s a wholly original concept from the gloriously original minds of Friese and Baran bo Odar. And who said that new thoughts are useless?