icemann on 14/5/2019 at 05:28
I was referring to Samwell Tarly. Always sounded like "House Tully" to me. I'd just not bothered to look up the spelling.
He warned John, after discovering the fate of his father and brother.
Sulphur on 14/5/2019 at 05:54
...
Anyway, Dany's at least had some logical/moral (if ultimately poorly thought through) reasoning for her flame-outs in the past. This one, I can see what they were trying for (betrayed by fate and love, undermined by her family history and her own poor choices, goaded by loss and jealousy), but it's been haphazardly executed in the broadest possible strokes without any actual introspection serving to bring the conflict within her character into relief.
Somewhere, somewhen, someone forgot: even on TV it is always the smallest moments that lend the largest ones their power.
demagogue on 14/5/2019 at 11:40
I've watched ep5 now.
I'll give my general impression.
It reminds me in high school we'd read these ancient epics, and while it had heroics and action, they were more reciting the heroics than actually visualizing them and it was all buried in dense poetics and obscure practices. So you had to decipher what was going on... And I remember just making these lists of plot points, just to get a handle on the story, and thinking after struggling for pages through particularly dense passages where my patience is at its limit to dig deeper, ok, well whatever. That's enough. That passage checks that plot point. This is where the story is now. Moving on.
For this episode I'd say 1/3 of it was sincerely memorable / touching / or satisfying scenes that meant something in the context of the whole, and the remaining 2/3 was, ok, well whatever. That checks that plot box. So this is where we are now. Moving on.
Starker on 14/5/2019 at 12:55
Oh wow, high school? Did they force you to read Beowulf or something?
I didn't start reading that kind of stuff until I was well into my first year of uni as an English major.
demagogue on 14/5/2019 at 13:03
Nah I really meant college (it's been a long time!), but it wasn't important enough to get the "Last edited by" loser mark slapped at the end of my post. :sweat:
Nameless Voice on 14/5/2019 at 13:12
I feel like they've spent all their effort on cinematography in this last season, to the detriment of everything else.
They even made all the episodes an extra 20 minutes long, and then stuffed most of that extra screen time with overly-long cinematic scenes rather than anything actually useful that helps to develop characters or plot points.
The battle of Winterfell is probably the biggest example of this - they spent so much time making it look nice that they never even stopped to think how ridiculous all of the tactics were (let's put our entire army and siege weapons outside the castle and let them get killed first, rather than actually using our walls!), then spend huge amount of time with long, lingering shots of the devastation. It's bad when I'm wondering when the episode will be over because they've dragged out those scenes for so long that I'm getting bored, when they could have spent that time showing something more interesting and plot-advancing.
The rest of it follows the same trend. The basic plot points mostly make sense, but they lack the context to make them believable, and then they rush through them to make more time for fancy visuals.
Starker on 14/5/2019 at 13:16
Yeah, it's amazing how boring Gilgamesh can be for being one of the most important texts of human history. Kind of makes you wish there was less of it preserved. Just joking of course.
We did have a lot of fun with Iliad though, as a good portion of it was spent on discussing the Greek society and stuff like the (un)manliness of Hector (who is supposed to be the greatest warrior in the war).
Anyway, having the latest plot point "spoiled" for me, it looks like I was right about the series taking a turn towards becoming a poor fanfiction. Kind of sounds like the recent idea of adapting the Lord of the Rings as a revenge story -- it might even be entertaining, but it misses the whole point of the books and the characters in it.
rachel on 15/5/2019 at 22:45
:laff: :laff: :laff:
[video=youtube_share;eVyxnMM3ldc]https://youtu.be/eVyxnMM3ldc[/video]
demagogue on 17/5/2019 at 08:40
As we barrel into the last episode, this is the meme about this season (the last 3 really) that's been speaking to me recently. :sweat:
Inline Image:
http://i63.tinypic.com/ax1n43.jpgI don't have very high hopes, but I'm curious what they consider wrapping this whole thing up at this point.
We've come a long way in just the last three episodes!
If I'm optimistic about anything, it's that the story will still be wrapped up well by the books.
Even in the truncated version we're seeing now, I can see the promise of the story told the right way.
(And I think if GRRM can't finish it off, he's taken steps to ensure that somebody will.)
Thirith on 17/5/2019 at 08:49
Oh, I have my issues with the Breaking Bad ending. Mainly I thought that the penultimate episode would have made for a better, braver, more coherent ending. I don't hate the finale we got, it's an enjoyable hour of TV, but I am kinda disappointed by it.
