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Elenorflower
Gondor
Jun 7 2013, 6:41pm
Post #227 of 293
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Have you read Fellowship of the Ring? he's the best bit in it. imo. He is probably my favourite character. I wish they had filmed him.
(This post was edited by Elenorflower on Jun 7 2013, 6:48pm)
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Lusitano
Tol Eressea
Jun 7 2013, 6:51pm
Post #228 of 293
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The incest scene lasts a few seconds out of a 55 minutes episode, and they are both dressed.Hardly an interminable calvary. Incest happened quite a bit in those times and today as well, particularly with twins. You seem to have an aversion to a few seconds of bare breasts and bottoms, cheeky conversations etc...And its your taste, i respect that. But it is a shame because it is enough to make you disregard an hour of footage that doesnt deal with that. Seeing the disembowled and butchered bodies of people in Hannibal doesnt put you off? Of both those things, i would rather look at naked bodies than disfigured, horror corpses, lol. Theres probably 3 or 4 unnecessarily gratutious or over long sex scenes..but they are few...the whole package of Got, far outweighs this stuff, imo. I appreciate Hannibal as well, mainly becuase of the actor, though it doesnt captivate me in the way that only medieval fantasy stories do. Sure, but Mythic stories, for me, either they are exceptionally good, as is the case of Tolkien and a few others, or they just become repetitive and cliched. I love historical novels, realistic historical fiction, fantasy worlds, epic sagas, interesting characters...if you add great performances by skilled actors, evocative music, beautifull cinematography and composition, good writing...then its a love affair for me. There are dozens of average tv shows every year...few stand out as exceptional and unique. Despite its flaws, something like got is very rare. I didnt feel as if Martin is deconstructing, as much as i feel hes providing a mirror of real history set in a fantasy world. And it doesnt patronize me, which is quite good. And i couldnt help myself " I think I'm semi-ready to give GoT another chance" Good girl :P My suggestion : get the first two seasons and watch them in one swift marathone! It will give a broader perspective. Elessar : he went to HBO, cause they are the only network that doesnt shy away from art to satisfy focus groups and its a place where you have more freedom to deal with adult material, complex characters or bold stories that dont have to be cliched or reduced in their humanity- with its bad and good sides- because some executive feels people cant handle it. Martin is a sadist? I dont agree. Hes dealing with historical realism, not disney bedtime stories or childrens tales. A writer that writes a novel realistically depicting the sacking of Rome by the germanic tribes, is he also a sadist? : massive raping, murder, treasons, conspiracies, beheadings, heads on spikes at the front gates, etc were things that were part of medieval life. His choices to kill off certain characters are intelligent decisions because they completely change things and affect the story in a way that allows for a really unpredictable, surprising, challenging and never boring read or watch. And it also provides an opportunity for other chracters to take the stage. And again, houses, princes , kings, were killed and destroyed in the past. Thats history, not sadism. "Tolkien's work must have not made a big impact on him" Yes it did. He is constantly mentioning how it affected him. He is a child of Tolkien, in a way. He just didnt set out to copy him, like so many others have. Middle Earth is warm, and magical, spiritual and cozy. Westeros is Europe during the Middle Ages with the mythical and fantastical creatures such as dragons, trolls, whights brought to reality. Middle Earth is more heart warming , but Westeros is wicked :P Finally, on the cinematic front, as has been and is commented elsewhere, it is very revealing that a television show whose budget is far more modest than Hollywood financed productions, puts a 500 million dollar movie like TH to shame, IMO. One looks like a beautifully photographed film, the other a Narnia-video game cartoon, which at 48 fps 3D, is closer to listening a musical score playing over an HD feed of a security camera than Lawrence of Arabia, IMO. Hardly surprisng if you consider the philosophy behind the camera, directional choices they took and the names of the people in the cinematography departments and diretcional jobs. Neil Marshall, wow. Sulime : "The psychological states of the characters, especially children characters were not at all convincing " Compared to nowadays, no it doesnt. But these are children from those days, when girls married at 14 yeasr old and boys killed at 14 -15. Completely different worlds. There was no adolescence. Actually, they even age the characters up. In the books, Daenerys is 13 in the first book. Salmacis i agree with you. This is definitely not comfort fiction, not Cinderella or some such medieval fairytale where white knights are a cardboard verison of Good and witches have bad acne and throaty voices, lol. IMO, those stories and characters serve as ideals we aspire to. Not as a depiction of real world characters. Tolkien and Martin both serve a purpose : one made me a nerd, the other keeps me a nerd lol. Also, becuase it is inevitable that GOT will catch up to Martin...is this the first book adaptation that will finish before the book series is completed? Elenorflower : and Croacia! Ive been to Dubrovnik and it is a delight to be reminded of all those little places, corners and walls. When you see a forest, mountain ranges, hills, caverns...all real, with just one or two minor exceptions. Nothing beats shooting nature and on real locations. And it pays off. Nothing looks fake. No hairstyles, noses, sets...etc... Very high quality production values. " I once had a Christmas dinner like one of those books, I gorged on flesh and wine and then puked my guts up, disgusting but strangely satisfying" Is your favourite character Lurtz from the movies? Tauriel : her hair looks a bit fake, as if she received a modern hair do. Porbably the saturation is exaggerated.
Vous commencez à m'ennuyer avec le port!!!
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Semper Fi
Rohan
Jun 7 2013, 6:58pm
Post #229 of 293
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I slept through Bombadull part, lol
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Glad they removed him form the movie. I thought that part stopped the book cold. he had a blondie wife and sang a lot, no? Can`t remember how he helped the Fellowship.
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Lusitano
Tol Eressea
Jun 7 2013, 7:26pm
Post #231 of 293
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but i heard him say the Red Wedding was partly inspired by Scottish events : the Black Dinner. Its even more frightening to think on these events if one considers that similar stuff happened in real life.
Vous commencez à m'ennuyer avec le port!!!
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Semper Fi
Rohan
Jun 7 2013, 7:47pm
Post #232 of 293
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Supposedly real life is always worse
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TV and movie censorship couldn`t take real life even if they show some creative kills and torture.
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Lusitano
Tol Eressea
Jun 7 2013, 7:57pm
Post #233 of 293
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I suspect most people watch films or tv to escape real life, however, for awhile, it almost became a rule d' oir, that something that tries to accurately portray real life, tends to be frowned upon. Fortunately, this is not the 60's, so people have a lot more freedom of choice and are more demanding in some ways. That said, i suspect the Red Wedding will have a strong effect on what it is possible to show on a televised fictional series.
Vous commencez à m'ennuyer avec le port!!!
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Lusitano
Tol Eressea
Jun 7 2013, 9:15pm
Post #235 of 293
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what it was, or who was in it, or what it did. I was merely pointing out that i do not wish to spoil anyone.
Vous commencez à m'ennuyer avec le port!!!
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Aitieuriskon
Lorien
Jun 7 2013, 9:29pm
Post #236 of 293
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ASoIaF is worth reading, but...
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"Hes dealing with historical realism, not disney bedtime stories or childrens tales." Have to disagree with you here. As much as I enjoyed the books (apart from #4), ASoIaF still feels incredibly contrived. I suppose it's because Westeros is given no proper historical outline; major events and dynasties are constantly alluded to but never fleshed out. The idea of warring houses drawing on the War of the Roses gives the books a complicated political structure, but the the motivations and histories of the houses could be summed up in a sentence or two. The "words" that are supposed to supply the ideologies of each house are there, but any deep ideological motivation is absent (apart from Stannis' faction). The handling of the individual religions is equally superficial, but I feel that most fantasy authors have trouble dealing with that anyway. I suppose Tolkien and Martin dealt with it in completely opposite ways: Tolkien left out the institution of religion while he made a kind of "religious" cosmology to Arda, whereas Martin kept his world's cosmology largely separate from the individual religious institutions he created. Which gets at another major difference between the two worlds, and one which makes Tolkien preferable to Martin for me: he writes as if his story was actually composed within the universe he created and therefore has a more authentic, inspired feel (in my opinion), than Martin, who writes in the style of a historical fiction author rather than a historian. I prefer reading history to historical fiction, though I appreciate both, and thus I enjoy both Tolkien and Martin. However, being written in the style of historical fiction certainly gives Martin no more sense of "historical realism" than Tolkien. They're both pretty far from what archaeology and the manuscript tradition tell us about how things happened "back in those days". If you allow me to make a sweeping generalization about historical paradigms, Tolkien is just closer to how ancient man (more so than medieval man) explained past events and phenomena, while Martin is closer to how modern man projects his own ideology onto the past (giving it the sense of historical fiction, in which characters are given motivations logical to modern sensibilities but likely differ significantly from reality).
"After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of 'truth', and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear." Professor Tolkien, 1951
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The Grey Wanderer
Lorien
Jun 7 2013, 10:16pm
Post #237 of 293
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Other than rescue the Hobbits from the Barrow Downs?
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I first encountered the hobbit as a boy of 11 and, as I have never been described as either a romantic or a poet (certainly not at that age!), the whole old forest sequence up through the hobbits' departure from his & Goldberry's home was part of what I considered the slow part of the book (along with the party) & didn't always read on my re-readings of that time in my life - but the Barrow Downs - there he is critical to the story and that sequence better explains where the hobbits got their swords than the cheesy bit where Aragorn just happens to have lugged along four swords that he doesn't remember to give to the hobbits until they reach Weathertop. Also why Merry's sword is so useful against the witch king. Now that I am much (much) older, I can appreciate the romantic side of it and his relationship with Goldberry. Tom is a slightly odd fit in LOTR since it is unclear who and what he is, and I am not really sure why Tolkien stuck him in - perhaps to tie more of his works together since stories of Tom were published even before the Hobbit. For those that love middle earth, the "Adventures of Tom Bombadil" are a must for what additional insight they add to Tolkien's world.
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Salmacis81
Tol Eressea
Jun 7 2013, 10:54pm
Post #238 of 293
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Tolkien definitely does have some grey characters...
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Feanor, Turin, Boromir, Denethor, and Thorin come to mind, and I guess maybe Saruman to an extent, even though he's pretty much 100% bad by the time the story starts. Bombadil certainly seems to me to be a "good" character, going by Tolkien's general theme that nature=good and industrialization=bad. What I find intriguing about Bombadil is his enigmatic origins - he doesn't seem to fit in with what we know about Tolkien's world, and yet there he is (which I think was deliberate on Tolkien's part). As for Martin's characters, I think Jaime Lannister is the best example of how interesting his characters can be - you want his head on a pike at the beginning of the story, but he slowly becomes a sympathetic character as the story drags on, to the point that you actually start to root for him after a while. Theon Greyjoy is another character with a great evolutionary arc, although it definitely goes the opposite direction of the Kingslayer.
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Semper Fi
Rohan
Jun 7 2013, 11:10pm
Post #239 of 293
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Tolkien characters are broad, even grey ones are broadly grey
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Martin ones are more in-depth and it also helps that everyone is un-PC one way or the other. That`s always fun. Tolkien is superior world-builder but Martin has livelier characters.
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Tinkerbell
Lorien
Jun 7 2013, 11:20pm
Post #240 of 293
(5712 views)
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That could be an intriguing creation, I suppose. A subtle devotion of Tauriel's. But I wonder if this production is really interesting in subtle nuance. Then again, i'm not so sure it is even within their grasp to handle subtletly...doesn't seem to suit the purposes. Alas, Tauriel could very well be that intriguing change of pace to the story. But i dont see it working in the execution, though no fault of the actress by any means.
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Salmacis81
Tol Eressea
Jun 7 2013, 11:47pm
Post #241 of 293
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The known history of Westeros/Essos is not nearly as fully-realized as that of Middle-earth, but I'm also not certain how much unpublished "history" Martin has lying around in notes or drafts. Remember that The Silmarillion was not published until after Tolkien's death. I wasn't around when LOTR was first released, but it's highly likely that readers weren't aware of just how fleshed-out things that were mentioned only in passing, like Gondolin or Elbereth, actually were. Tolkien apparently kept working on some of those stories until the the end of his life, so it was left to his son Christopher to make sense out of all the available drafts and notes, and publish a final cohesive narrative. I've spoken with some Tolkien fans who believe that some of The Silmarillion shouldn't even be considered canon, because of Christopher Tolkien's involvement in putting it together (not my personal opinion). One reason I think Martin's world comes off as much less grand is the fact that Martin's chapters are all based on specific point-of-view characters. Important non-POV characters like Robb Stark and Stannis Baratheon pop in and out of the story as the POV characters change from chapter to chapter, which is much different to how Tolkien structured his stories. Yes, Tolkien detailed different journeys in different chapters as the main characters split up and went their own ways, but it isn't based on a single character's POV like Martin's chapters are. I think Martin's maybe gone a bit far with the constantly branching-off story lines, and I'm only up to ASoS book. (I hear it gets even more complicated from here on out.) Another major difference is that Martin does not have Tolkien's penchant for going on about the environment/landscapes in a photographic manner. I think that makes Martin's world seem less thought out, but I feel he makes up for that in his characterizations.
(This post was edited by Salmacis81 on Jun 7 2013, 11:52pm)
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Salmacis81
Tol Eressea
Jun 7 2013, 11:48pm
Post #242 of 293
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100% agree with everything you said...
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Semper Fi
Rohan
Jun 8 2013, 12:00am
Post #243 of 293
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For me, the most irritating thing about Taureil is faux-feminism and dubious appeal
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Faux-feminism: Her actions are driven by her love for a guy. How backwards. Must everything women do be for and about men? Worse, this character is written by a woman (I assume from declarations that "Tauriel is Boyens Mary Sue" that Boyens created her, not PJ) who should know better than saddle her with a sexist "a man is a true driving force behind her actions, ambition, motives,etc". So all this "strong woman" posturing is, of course, smoke and mirrors because all she wants is to be loved and pressumably does what she does to attract his man`s attention. So an attention seeker, not a strong person. Just ugh. Dubious Appeal: The character sounds extremly juvenile (reckless, unwise, all she needs is love) yet is played by an actress who is too old (in her 30s) to appeal to teen girls who already have idols of their age or slightly older (Jennifer Lawrence, Kristen Stewart, Emma Watson, Chloe Moretz, Shailene Woodley,etc). They won`t trade those relatable stars and YA characters they play (Hunger Games, Divergent, Twilight,etc) for someone who could be their mom. OTOH, considering that the character is described as immature albeit in other words that cannot be too appealing to mature women even if played by a mature woman.So that leaves adolescent boys who only care about hotness. So under the mask of gender equality this is really selling eye candy for boys only.
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Semper Fi
Rohan
Jun 8 2013, 12:10am
Post #244 of 293
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Great call on POV and how that shrinks the universe
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Everything you said is on the money especially "Another major difference is that Martin does not have Tolkien's penchant for going on about the environment/landscapes in a photographic manner. I think that makes Martin's world seem less thought out, but I feel he makes up for that in his characterizations." Tolkien has a penchant for making the world grand in many ways including that everything is a part of a much bigger history. But Martin characters are much more dynamic, many times shocking and always fun. It also helps that HBO did a bang-on job with casting. I mean, not that LOTR and Hobbit didn`t do a good job but TV show actors have much more to do than those in movies with very broad characters who spend equal amount of time watching their doubles fight in front of the green screen or having their characters CGI`d for craziest moments.
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Elenorflower
Gondor
Jun 8 2013, 12:28am
Post #245 of 293
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Tolkiens female characters seem so much more modern and equal than this actually modern made up character Tauriel. She seems like a step backwards. If she is indeed only there for the hot factor and as a love interest.
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Semper Fi
Rohan
Jun 8 2013, 12:34am
Post #246 of 293
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I like about Galadriel that her hubby is such a non-entity
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She`s trully a character that doesn`t do things because of guys or for guys.
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Salmacis81
Tol Eressea
Jun 8 2013, 4:14am
Post #247 of 293
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Every time I read something about Tauriel, I see Boyens saying something about how the writers needed to inject femininity into the story. I think Tauriel is Boyens attempt at inserting a "strong" female character into a story she feels is sorely in need of a strong female. I guess elevating Galadriel to "most powerful being in Middle-earth" isn't enough for Boyens...
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Semper Fi
Rohan
Jun 8 2013, 4:41am
Post #248 of 293
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Didn`t she force Eowyn to cook a soup in order to impress Aragorn
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and then have Aragorn tame her horse although a Rohan Princess should be perfectly capable herself and then have Aragorn save her from some secondary Orc after she defeated the Witch King and, you know, shouldn`t have a problem defeating secondary Orc? Not to mention over-emphasize on pining for Aragorn as the only motive for sneaking into battle whereas reasons were more complex in the book than just unrequited love for the new guy in town. Plus making her aware of the fact he was taken but throw herself at him at any opportunity. One would think the goal isn`t to inject feminity or strong characters for the matter but weaken, cliche-rize and simplified already strong, unique and complex ones. Jealousy, much? The point of Eowyn in the book was to defy traditional role of women as sitting on the margins of major political events waiting to feed returning hungry men. Soup-making contradicts this by a million because it`s a return to woman-in-the-kitchen stereotype. The point of the character was also that she could take care of herself and didn`t need a prince charming to save her, which inability to tame her own horse and especially being saved by the said prince from some made up mini-villain completely obliterate. Again, one can excuse a male writer for pushing for sterotypes but we are talking about a female writer who sent the originally quite modern character back into Dark Ages. Fascinating. And now from the same brainiac comes reckless and unwise Elfette driven into merciless killing spree by her love for Legolas. Or something along the lines of "she`s a killer because she isn`t high-born like him so she thinks body count will impress him". Well, I have to vote for body count over soup-cooking as a way of winning good man`s heart. Nevermind that it`s already been done in Chronicals of Riddick but that movie was terrible so nobody remembers. It`s an imporovement over soup. I`m not srakastic here. I can`t stomach the soup nonsense. Long live the body count!
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Yngwulff
Gondor
Jun 8 2013, 5:07am
Post #249 of 293
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It was her dead brothers horse which was spooked from seeing too much war. Her soup was horrrible ... even Gimli wouldn't eat it. As a highborn noble of Rohan, she probably never saw the kitchens very often. Her shield arm was broken and her sword arm was all but useless from stabbing the Witch King plus sucumbing to the Black Breath, thus making her vulnerable to the orc. She fought well up til then .. even slaying the winged mount of the Nazgul. But yeah, although an ass kicking elf maiden is not out of the realm of possibility, why was one really necesary? Does it hold some key plot twist which is necesary for the story to flow or continue? No, it soes not. It's an extraneous character that one could call token or even PC with a possible gratuitous love scene or two to boot despite her being a killer elite.
Take this Brother May it Serve you Well Vote for Pedro!
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Escapist
Gondor
Jun 8 2013, 5:09am
Post #250 of 293
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I am pretty sure that most actors/actresses wear lipstick ... and a lot more ...
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all kinds of eye make-up all kinds of foundation shades lots of hair products etc.
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