On June 02 2014 18:09 Sterlymobile wrote: The longer the battle went the more scared I was for Oberyn. I kept waiting and waiting for a close up scene to come up when Oberyn would stab him in the head/face because that's how the meaningful deaths usually occur. But the tables turned. Good choreography tho, I wonder if Pedro did it himself or not.
Yeah he did all himself, they got a Wushu master in to train him and he practiced in his apartment with a curtain rod lol (read this in an interview about an hour ago.)
Stannis, THE RIGHTFUL FUCKING KING, gets no airtime.
i know... Thank god.
lol? educate yourself. Stannis, Caesar, and Blackfish are the only worthwhile characters left on this show. Of course all that while they're worth is spent on insipid bullshit in Essos.
And GRRM is no more complex than Disney. It's just Disney on its head: the bad guy always wins. Everyone who tries to hold the Lannisters accountable for their actions gets murdered, and the Lannisters get everything they want. It's just as banal as a fairytale ending, except you can't feel good about it.
-Oberyn tries to avenge the rape and murder of his sister and her children: gets murdered. Lannisters win. -Ned tries to stop the Lannisters from putting an incestuous bastard on the throne: gets murdered. Lannisters win. -Robb tries to avenge his father's bullshit execution: gets murdered. Lannisters win. -Stannis personally leads an assault of King's Landing to finally give the Lannisters their comeuppance. Ha, ha: bullshit magic superweapon out of nowhere. Lannisters win.
Might as well be called House Mary Sue.
It wouldn't be so bad if they weren't one dimensional mustache twirling villains. Tywin is supposed to be pragmatic instead of evil, but he wants to kill one of his greatest assets, a brilliant son, just because he's shorter than everyone else. DIFFERENT MUST DIE is an uninterestingly evil and simplistic character motivation.
I think we all know how it will all end by now. Once all men, white walkers, dragons and gods have died, we will have the ultimate and final confrontation between the ghost grass of Essos and the winter snow.
the ending of that episode was one of the most brutal things i've ever seen, they played up oberyn as a smooth guy who is just always in command and control of the situation (the actor did this so well) so when he's like screaming in agony at the end it's a big shocking moment
This was disppointing ... not due to the death of Oberyn/the fact that he lost, but because all that buildup for the whole season was ... in vain. I mean, we literally get a new character at the start of Season 4 that wasn't mentioned at once before, everybody tells us that he is such a great fighter, fu**** and know poisons* and he gets a truckload of screentime - and then it culminates in a duel vs another "great fighter" that we didnt see since Season 1 ... Sorry, that's just plain bad storywriting for me =/ (Why wasn't Dorn mentioned more in the earlier seasons ? Why didn't we see the Mountain at all for such a long time while theHound/Arya or Danny get loads of repetitive scenes? Just 1mins for a reminder that the Mountain is a badass, e.g that's not as forced as the one in S4E07)
Of course there is the possibility that GRRM salvages this b/c now Dhorne (spelling?) hates the Lannisters even more and that the King of Dorne wages war (openly or covertly) now, but why introduce a whole Kingdom in Season 4 ? Got into a dead end after Season 3, wrapping everything up fast-forwardish, killing Robb and thus the Stark-Lannister-plot, and then just restarting the story on another level with another enemy ? bleh... More reasonable would be that there will be no charges (it was Oberyns free will to participate in that trial, thus his fault to get killed) and then I'm wondering : What use was all that storypart ? Just to get rid of Tyrion ? Then GRRM could have made Bronn fight and lose him as well ...
On June 02 2014 16:54 Gchzr wrote: Guys... things like today's chapter make me wanna read the book... Is it possible to start in a book and avoid reading what i've seen in the serie? I mean, can i start reading the third book? or the fourth... or even the second?
I wouldn't. I haven't read them, but I think the storyline is a bit different.
Also I don't know your taste in literature, but I read a few pages of the first book and I thought it was horribly written. As much as the show's quality is excellent, Martin's writing is flat and dreadfully boring, in my opinion.
Personally, I think of the books as an excellent material to make a great show and that's basically it. But maybe I'm difficult.
(I hope I didn't break any rule about this thread: hopefully everyone understands that having not read the books, both Gchzr and I discuss this here not to be spoiled).
Im going to write an incredibly successfull book series...
every single likeable character will die horrible deaths.
all of the villains will love forever, and rape the corpses of the dead heroes.
Then the villains will kill eachother..
the only thing left alive will be a 20 yr old sociopath who likes to rape the corpses animals/small children, and he will rule the entire world. It will be a huge success... since that is all it takes to become a successful fantasy author apparently.
i hate this show.
HOW was oberyn in the gray area? Because he wanted to kill the guy who raped/killed his sister, along with her children?
How is that a gray area? I think most people would say its justified to want to get revenge for the brutal rape and murder of your family members?
Yeah Joffrey getting 304 scenes of being complete evil is obviously countered by him dying to poison in 2 minutes of show time. Im actually done watching GoT. The only thing that matters is "tricking" the audiences expectations, instead of Reek being found out and having some actual tension, we have random soldier kill the leader and wallah everythin solved. How convenient. Plot points. Starks have gotten raped in every fucking scene since the beginning, daenarys plot line is as bad as a Spartacus sub plot. The only thing different between M Night Shyamalan and R R is one guy got called out sooner than the other. For how intricate and uncompromising GoT is in the details, its strangely manufactured. Not going into the finer details, but R R will make entire story arcs just to fuck the audience. No worries. Boardwalk empire had the same bullshit, started strong but then killed off every worthwhile character because oh like its the 21st century.
Arya and Tyrion prolly magically get under Ramseys control and become Stench and Mump and after 12 episodes of torture they finally duel to Ramseys amusement and Mump, (Arya,) kills Stench dead, then smiles up to Ramsey who then has her killed because Mump cant have any pleasure!? Then rapes her dead body with Reek playing a sad violin song. See now that will probably happen.
What's up with so many being so salty, so many tears about so-called unfairness, 'GRRM only kills off good/likeable characters, omg... what a stupid gimmick. So manufactered', lol.
The flow of the story has almost always been 'plausible'. There's not a single thing in the whole series that I can think of that can be categorized as 'jumping the shark'. And whenever it looks like the story is jumping the shark out of nowhere, for example Joffrey's sudden death, afterwards, everything is handled and nicely tied up together. Everything has a nice build up, everything has a plausible reason, etc.
Also, the characters aren't handled as 'good', or 'evil' per se. They're handled as characters bound to their situations, and act inside those boundaries. The show follows the story of the books, and I'm pretty sure that changing major plot points isn't an option for the show writers, so when a character seems to act a bit 'out of character', or a part of the story seems to be bad in the show to you, then that's maybe not because the story/the writer is so 'bad', but because the show failed to deliver it in a way that is likeable to you.
If you wanna judge GRRM's story, read the books... also, judge the show with the right attitude, not with your 'Disney'-shoes on.
TL;DR: - the story seems to be completely plausible by me - GRRM doesn't favour any characters in my opinion - the conversion of the books to the show is probably not representative of the books
Its not that the characters are "good" morally, its that the interesting and complex characters get shafted and we are left with one note characters ---- Joffrey for basically 3 seasons as the main villain or whatever was repetitive beyond belief, and Daenarys had what 6 fucking episodes showing / Hey lets underestimate you because you are a chick oh wait free slaves nice / 6 fucking episodes of the same thing.
5+ episodes of Shae bitching to tyrion over the exact same issue. 4+ Gruesome torture episodes for Theone, (there are pretty cool directors tricks to show characters change in one scene rather than half a dozen. Good ole montage, or how about a quick cut like Shoes up to Mowhawk in Taxi Driver.)
I would have said Theones last scene woulda been ok, but there was another one exactly like it which again was manufactured to set up "My brother is dead." Its still a fantastic show, but for every sweet Tyrion speech we have to watch 5 well written characters get some Deliverance action. If True Detective was GoT the last 3 episodes would have been Rust being tortured by the Yellow King. Because we need to see him suffer he's an interesting character after all.
By the way, I bet a bottle of very good rum with my best friend that Tyrion would survive this season, and I'm getting seriously worried.
Something tells me he cannot die, that he is not a killable character, and for some reason, despite Martin's "nobody is safe" policy, I still believe it.
It's just that he's by far the most likable and colorful character in the whole thing, and I can really hardly imagine the show without him...
I don't know who could save Tyrion now. Tywin was pretty straightforward in sentencing him to death. Even though Tywin can't be too happy with Tyrion dying.
The only two friends Tyrion has left are Bronn and Jaime. And we already know that Bronn wouldn't risk his life for him again.
So either Jaime runs off with Tyrion or Tywin arranges something behind the scenes, that Tyrion is brought to the wall or sth.
Its not that the characters are "good" morally, its that the interesting and complex characters get shafted and we are left with one note characters ---- Joffrey for basically 3 seasons as the main villain or whatever was repetitive beyond belief, and Daenarys had what 6 fucking episodes showing / Hey lets underestimate you because you are a chick oh wait free slaves nice / 6 fucking episodes of the same thing.
5+ episodes of Shae bitching to tyrion over the exact same issue. 4+ Gruesome torture episodes for Theone, (there are pretty cool directors tricks to show characters change in one scene rather than half a dozen. Good ole montage, or how about a quick cut like Shoes up to Mowhawk in Taxi Driver.)
This. There is so much repetitiveness to ensure that everyone "gets it", which could have (at least partially) have been spent building up stuff like "the Mountain, that dude from the tourney in Season 1, is really a bad-ass-fighter" or Olenna not just casually explaining to her granddaughter that she poisoned Joffrey =/
On June 02 2014 18:56 Talaris wrote: This was disppointing ... not due to the death of Oberyn/the fact that he lost, but because all that buildup for the whole season was ... in vain. I mean, we literally get a new character at the start of Season 4 that wasn't mentioned at once before, everybody tells us that he is such a great fighter, fu**** and know poisons* and he gets a truckload of screentime - and then it culminates in a duel vs another "great fighter" that we didnt see since Season 1 ... Sorry, that's just plain bad storywriting for me =/ (Why wasn't Dorn mentioned more in the earlier seasons ? Why didn't we see the Mountain at all for such a long time while theHound/Arya or Danny get loads of repetitive scenes? Just 1mins for a reminder that the Mountain is a badass, e.g that's not as forced as the one in S4E07)
Of course there is the possibility that GRRM salvages this b/c now Dhorne (spelling?) hates the Lannisters even more and that the King of Dorne wages war (openly or covertly) now, but why introduce a whole Kingdom in Season 4 ? Got into a dead end after Season 3, wrapping everything up fast-forwardish, killing Robb and thus the Stark-Lannister-plot, and then just restarting the story on another level with another enemy ? bleh... More reasonable would be that there will be no charges (it was Oberyns free will to participate in that trial, thus his fault to get killed) and then I'm wondering : What use was all that storypart ? Just to get rid of Tyrion ? Then GRRM could have made Bronn fight and lose him as well ...
Im guessing the only reason they told us the bold part is because his influence on the show probably is far from finished. They wouldn´t have made him so "cool" if he was only going to die like that without getting more shit done.
Im really looking forward to the next two episodes, something is definately up!
On June 02 2014 19:06 urboss wrote: I don't know who could save Tyrion now. Tywin was pretty straightforward in sentencing him to death. Even though Tywin can't be too happy with Tyrion dying.
The only two friends Tyrion has left are Bronn and Jaime. And we already know that Bronn wouldn't risk his life for him again.
So either Jaime runs off with Tyrion or Tywin arranges something behind the scenes, that Tyrion is brought to the wall or sth.
Plot armor =/ Perhaps we'll just see even another new, never mentioned guy... or perhaps losing a duel to the death does not mean that the champions patron suffers the same fate as the champion all of a sudden (hey, it was never said that it does ! *cynical*) but just that he is guilty - and then Tywin just sends him to the Wall like arranged with Jaime =/