#they have ruined every ounce of beautiful acting setting characters and plot | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

grump-the-deer · 4 years

Text

stuff about HDM ep 8 + overall season thoughts

in other words.....

FINALE TIME BITCHES

this episode was INCREDIBLE. A+++, perfection.

this is what I expected from the get-go, and what I got a lot of the time.

we got some great exposition + bonding double time with Asriel, some excellent portrayal of Asriel and Marisa’s relationship, plenty of dæmons being cool and adorable respectively (Pan and Salcilia running around playing anyone???), some STUNNING visuals, an epic little fight scene with the fire-hurlers and the zeppelins, some great culmination for Iorek and Lyra’s relationship, good ol’ Thorold development, some more Lyra & Roger development (ESPECIALLY the tent and end scenes - Roger’s death KILLED ME OH MY GOD) - just the perfect fuckin meal.

this was exceptional. round of applause for HDM.

(except the Will being 15 thing. what? why is he so old? he could pass for a tall 13- or 14-year-old. that makes it a little weird. I hope Lyra is supposed to be like 13 now then, idk. that’s still a pretty big difference at that age.)

I really have to wonder though - if they show they can do the above stuff perfectly, why didn’t they do it before???

the Bolvangar episode still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. this episode proves that they can make intercision horrific and emotional, and make it mean something with the dæmons interacting. Salcilia and Roger had good reactions - hell, Lyra reacting to remembering almost being separated from Pan was more emotional than the actual scene itself!! Roger’s death was HEARTBREAKING, thanks to his and his dæmon’s reactions!

they put the dæmons in enough, especially in speaking roles, that even when they weren’t around you didn’t really forget about them. I could always do with more background dæmons, but I can absolutely understand budget restraints - so long as you put them in enough. we need to feel they have an emotional impact on the characters. we need to feel like they ARE characters. not accessories.

Pan was a character in this episode. the things he says and do make an impact on the story. he was not a character in the Bolvangar episode, despite the fact that that was the MOST IMPORTANT episode for him to be around and active in.

they can do it right, but they didn’t. this series would be wonderful if they cut out that episode and reshot it and replaced it with a better take. hell, even just the intercision scene. it wouldn’t be perfect, but it would work.

so, overall:

HDM season 1 was a spectacular ride. the dæmons and bears look fantastic (when they’re actually in the shots), the voices are spot-on, the actors do a phenomenal job, and the writers actually added some interesting extra material and development.

some highlights for me are:

- Iorek and Lyra’s relationship. they got it absolutely perfect, if not better than the original. Iorek is perfectly stoic and bearlike and resolute, but Lyra earns his respect and even adoration, as best a bear can. it feels organic and has plenty of development scenes. just heartwarming.

- Lord Asriel all around. really awesome take on him, James MacAvoy loves him to pieces I can tell. he’s way better than the original, and that’s saying something. he’s got a lot more heart and I feel more connected to him despite him being a complete mad genius.

- Mrs. Coulter, for the most part. she’s got a bit of shaky characterization with Lyra towards the end - I’m not really certain of her motivations at the end - but generally she’s fascinating to watch on screen and absolutely horrible. I love her and I love Ruth Wilson as her. she’s positively uhinged. they did some really bold stuff with her character and her relationship with Lyra and I enjoyed every minute of it.

- Farder Coram ended up being great. he and Lyra are always a pleasure to watch interact. he really grew on me as soon as he started getting characterization, particularly with Serafina and the story of his son.

- the cinematography, lighting, set design, and graphics. I couldn’t ask for anything more. they went above and beyond and the framing and this world and its creatures look AMAZING. 10/10. hats off to the animation team in particular, of course.

- the acting. the acting is absolutely brilliant. particular standouts include Dafne Keen as Lyra, of course, James MacAvoy as Lord Asriel, Ruth Wilson as Mrs. Coulter, the voice of Iofur Raknison, and Farder Coram. honorable mention for Will, because he gets the character down so incredibly well.

- the respect for the source material. we’ve seen it blow up once with the Golden Compass movie, but this production obviously has every ounce of loyalty to the original. well, almost every ounce. the stuff they added ended up working very well and feeling organic to the original, and the stuff they kept, especially the verbatim lines, was delivered exceptionally. it’s clear they really care about the story they’re giving us.

- the opening credits are the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. a beautiful tribute to the magic of this series’ themes and world.

and some notably bad stuff, a couple that almost come close to ruining it for me:

- Lee Scoresby. an absolute mess. one moment he’s true to the original character and being sarcastic and selfish, and the next he’s stealing pocketwatches for funsies, yelling out his dangerous motivations in the middle of a town infested with armed Magisterium soldiers, and cooing over Lyra like she’s his flesh and blood and he got injected with Mother Hen Juice. he’s genuinely stupid. his characterization is all over the place. his “development” with Lyra is either nonexistent or rushed, and the only thing he actually does for the plot is fly the damn balloon for about 5 minutes tops. Hester is his only saving grace, and even she can’t do it all. I’m sorry Lin, I really love your work in Hamilton, but this was really disappointing. and I have to blame the writing mainly. they wouldn’t let Lin act a character, they had to shape the character around him. and the whole thing suffered for it.

- the intercision, and dæmon relationships. the Bolvangar episode wasn’t terrible overall, but it did not build up well to the intercision scene, and the episodes around it didn’t help either - especially the previous one. Billy’s death was not sad for me, because the middle of the show did not utilize dæmon relationships with their humans and dæmons as actual characters. we didn’t see them interacting enough with their people to matter consistently to us. the first couple of episodes did this bonding beautifully, even with budget restraints to how many dæmons could be in a shot, and how frequently they could come up. they showed us just enough for us to care about them and what they mean to their humans, particularly Pan and Lyra, and conveniently kept them out of frame when they weren’t necessary to the dialogue between humans.

they can do it properly, but they chose to let it fall by the wayside towards the middle, and it really shot the show in the foot. almost irreparably, I’d wager. Bolvangar, for all its masterful horror trope usage and suspense, was not nearly horrific enough nor emotional at all, thanks to the lack of buildup. we did not care about dæmons and their humans beyond knowing the humans are basically dead without them. there was no feeling behind the threat of Lyra and Pan getting split apart, other than Lyra becoming a shell. the focus was on Lyra and Mrs. Coulter’s relationship, which I don’t have a problem with - but not at the cost of Lyra and her dæmon. you know, the very FIRST line of the books? the main theme of the entire book? arguably the whole SERIES? dæmons as souls, as a person’s sense of free will and consciousness? kind of important to develop an emotional attachment to, don’t you think?

- the Gyptian leads (sans Farder Coram). Ma Costa was passable. she did a lot of crying and a lot of being desperate and pining for her son, and not a lot of kicking ass, proportionally. she didn’t come off as a strong boat mother at the center of her family with sway in her community. she came off as a wiry and lost soul who is somewhat capable but more interested in being depressed and worried. she did get to shine when she killed the Bolvangar doctor, but that wasn’t enough for me.

John Faa was boring. he was a hardass and only every so often came across as the original jovial, caring, but no-nonsense King of the Gyptians. most of the time he was just telling someone not to do something or insisting someone do something. no real personality other than being serious.

Billy Costa had no real character. a waste, considering we’re supposed to care about his death.

Tony Costa was alright. he was kind of a loser, which I guess is okay. I liked capable Tony and his gobbler-fightin’ gang from the books better though. he had a couple good moments with Lyra, and Benjamin was a good addition.

- the themes of belonging. I don’t like how they changed the message about Lyra belonging in different groups. the point isn’t that she can “be anyone she wants to be” - that’s not how real life works, or should work. she can live with the gyptians and like them, but Ma Costa in the books asserts that she can’t be a gyptian, because she’s not part of their ethnic group. a similar message was overlooked with the bears - Iorek gave her the name Silvertongue because of his deep respect for her and what she had done for him, not because she was “one of us bears” now. she isn’t a bear, she’s a human.

the point is that she doesn’t have to be something to find an emotional home with the people themselves. it’s about what she builds, surpassing what she is - which is a product of two twisted, misguided people - taking what’s given to her and making it into something beautiful of her own volition. it’s a very nuanced theme and it’s basically thrown aside in this adaptation in favor of pseudo-colorblindness theory that origins don’t matter and you can stuff yourself anywhere you please. it’s not a deal-breaking point and most people probably won’t pay attention to it, but it’s worth mentioning anyway.

so overall, the show was really really spectacular. a ton of fun, beautifully crafted, with a few hiccups and one major major issue. the dæmon thing gouged out a good chunk of the enjoyment for me, and the integrity of the actual story too. a huge huge blunder on Jack Thorne’s part. I’d like to say they recovered from it, because they did do a pretty great job wrapping things up, but it still lingers in the back of my mind as a big blemish on an otherwise incredible work.

I have high hopes for the future seasons though, when dæmons aren’t around as frequently and less characters are on screen, so there will be more time and budget available to be devoted to them, particularly Pan as a character. they’ve shown they can handle this material skillfully, and I have a good amount of faith in them. I can’t wait to see what else they do with the concepts I’ve come to adore so much.

#hdm #hdm spoilers #his dark materials

20 notes · View notes

boltsandashes · 5 years

Text

Game of Thrones - The Bells

Alright, so. My day so far has been waking up to find my parents’ basement flooded, then spending my entire monthly income at my car’s yearly inspection.

And then I got home and watched this episode.

And. I have some thoughts.

Spoilers starting after this.

So I.... did not like this episode. I didn’t hate everything in it. There was some spectacular acting, a few really great character moments. Jaime and Tyrion’s scenes are always brilliant and this was no different, even though I didn’t love the context of this one. Tyrion telling Jaime how grateful he was for him left me tearing up.

Jaime’s reunion with Cersei was also beautiful. Even after everything they’ve been through and done to each other, the way she just broke, seeing him, really made me feel for her. Her last moments too, they were heartbreaking.

I love how the woman we focused on at the start of the episode appeared to help Arya later.

I also really enjoyed the majority of the Clegane fight. (Though... maybe this is me coming from a zombie fandom, but eventually I was shouting for Sandor to just stab him in the brain!! Apparently that wouldn’t have helped, but you’d think it would’ve been a much more obvious choice than a shoulder, just in general.)

Finally, I loved the last Sandor-Arya conversation, and the way they cut between him fighting and her trying to survive later. There were some really great elements in this episode, and I feel like I just listed a lot.

So it’s kind of amazing that overall the episode was just... so goddamn painful to watch. The way they handled Dany was pretty unforgivable. I understand that they’re sending her down the Mad King route, but they shouldn’t be. It’s so out of keeping with how she used to be. It’s so disrespectful to her journey. It’s like watching an entirely new character.

Varys

Varys’ death was horrible and not in the way that Game of Thrones sometimes used to be horrible, where awful things happened but it was thematically satisfying or built to some larger purpose. It didn’t build to anything. No one cared when it happened (or at least, cared in a way where it changed any character motivations or actions). It’s not what signaled to anyone that Dany was going off the rails; everyone continued to follow her just as stalwartly as before. It led to nothing. Added nothing. I’m convinced it only happened because Melisandre made a quick prophecy last year that Varys would die, so they felt the need to clumsily throw it in. And that’s so deeply sad for such a significant character, such an interesting and complex character, to go out in a way that meant absolutely nothing in the end.

(Side note: we saw him writing letters about Jon’s true ancestry at least a day before the one he burned. Killing him didn’t stop the word from getting out, or shouldn’t have. Did no one think to care or question this? No follow up? ...Possibly it’s something that will somehow matter in the next episode and I hope so, because I still want Varys to have mattered. But after what happened in the rest of the episode I don’t see something like a letter mattering much anymore.)

The Fleet

This is just plain plot armor shining through and it irritates me. Last episode, Drogon and Rhaegal faced off against the fleet. Rhaegal was killed, and Drogon forced to retreat. This episode Dany destroyed the fleet, along with all the scorpions King’s Landing had set up, with absolutely no difficulty. You can’t set them up as being some huge threat to her in one episode and then, with no alteration in power or strategy, just have her crush them immediately afterward.

(And... this isn’t exactly about the fleet, but Dany pretty much proves here that she could fly all over the city without much difficulty, so why, why why why, wouldn’t anyone suggest her just flying into the Red Keep, bypassing all the soldiers, and taking out Cersei, leaving everyone else alive? Considering how important a minimal death count was, you’d think that would be the obvious strategy.)

Euron

So... I don’t know what popular opinion is on this character, but to me he’s always been just such a non-character. I can’t even explain it except that every time he’s on screen has always felt like wasted screen time. What I can say is that his fight with Jaime seemed so forced and out of character for him? Like the writers realized that since they’d been setting up a rivalry there they needed to have them fight at some point, so they just squashed it in while the world was already ending, and when it really made no difference.

You know what would’ve made more sense? For Euron to climb out of that water, see that the city was falling and Jaime was going to save Cersei, and say “yeah have her, man. She won’t be a queen anymore once the day’s done, what use is she to me now?” And then, if the writers felt like they still needed to fight, he could’ve gone for the dingy and Jaime could’ve gone after him then, since it was his and Cersei’s only way to escape.

And that would’ve been much more in keeping with Euron’s character, and highlighted the differences between Jaime, who actually loved Cersei and was willing to go back in to save her, and Euron, who only wanted her because she was the queen.

...All I’ve got to say is I’m glad Euron wasn’t actually the person who killed Jaime Lannister.

Jaime

I hated what they did with Jaime last episode. I don’t hate that he went back for Cersei. Honestly, when they said at first that he was planning to stay behind in Winterfell that felt desperately out of character to me, and I was excited when we saw him gearing up to go back. But then he said that he was going back to be with Cersei. As in... just drop every ounce of character growth we’ve seen from him over the series, stand by her side again and watch the world burn.

But I would’ve been so happy with his entire character arc, and his fate, with one easy tweak. Jaime’s motivation should have been trying to get Cersei to surrender in the first place. It’s so frustrating to me because that’s what Tyrion gets him to do anyway in this episode. It makes sense for Jaime to want to protect Cersei, who he’s spent his entire life in love with. It makes sense that he’d want to try and end the war without any more bloodshed than necessary, since he cares about people on both sides now. It doesn’t make sense for him to just snap like he did, decide “screw the rest of the world, I’m gonna go be evil again.” It just... doesn’t.

Nothing would’ve had to change, story-wise, with this tweak. Jaime could have gotten captured trying to get to Cersei. Tyrion goes to visit him, asks “why are you going back to her?” and Jaime says “I was trying to get her to stand down. If there’s a way this can end with her still breathing, I have to try.” And then Tyrion helps him escape. (Maybe in this version Jaime tells Tyrion to pass some last message along to Brienne.) He still goes to try and convince Cersei to surrender or leave with him, but gets there too late. The plot continues as it was, without severely damaging Jaime’s characterization and growth. Easy fix.

Daenerys (and Grey Worm)

Alright, this is the big one. I’m not going to go into detail on how awful that entire segment was. I just... it’s too much, I can’t. But I am going to talk about how that could have also been made much better with one small tweak.

They should have saved Missandei’s death for this episode.

If this is the route they wanted to go down –– Dany losing it, the city burning –– then I could have actually gotten on board with it. But there needed to be a reason. Not just “Dany’s suddenly crazy and bloodthirsty.” Not “Grey Worm’s just kind of an asshole now.” And yes, while you could say that their motivation was still anger over Missandei’s death in the episode, there’s a huge difference between an in the moment snap reaction and one that happens days later. So let’s rewrite just a smidge. Missandei’s still a prisoner at the start of this episode. Dany starts out the episode being fairly reasonable, and agreeing with Tyrion that if they hear the bells, she’ll accept the surrender.

The battle begins and the fighting goes on for a bit. Missandei’s there with Cersei watching the battle, maybe commenting proudly that there’s no way Cersei will win. Daenerys is the true queen and soon the people will realize that. When the bells sound and the soldiers stand down, Dany’s elated. Maybe meets Jon’s eyes across the battlefield and they share a smile. The war’s won, and not many people had to die. It’s everything she’s ever dreamed of.

But then Cersei, in a fit of panic at having lost and the vindictive rage that she’s so known for, drags Missandei out onto a balcony, meets Dany’s eyes, and slits her throat.

Dany, horrified and grief-stricken, takes flight with Drogon again. Grey Worm, heartbroken and enraged, raises his spear and kills one of the surrendered troops. Chaos breaks out. We cut to Dany, see her crying as she ruins the city, as all her dreams shatter around her with no way to fix it. She’s still falling apart, but her actions are understandable. We empathize with her, even as we’re horrified by what she’s doing.

This one change would have completely altered the spirit of the episode, without changing the content of it much at all. This would’ve given us multidimensional characters, understandable motivations, and the heartbreak of seeing Dany rise so high and crumble so completely right before our eyes. Instead of what we ended up with, which was just... demonizing her, honestly.

She deserved a lot better than this. The entire show did.

And... that ended up being so much longer than I’d expected. I’m sorry for the ramble, I just had a lot of feelings on this. Please reply to this or message me with your own thoughts, I’d love to hear what everyone thinks <3

#and now back to your regularly scheduled walking dead content #game of thrones #got spoilers #game of thrones spoilers #got: the bells #b&a opinions #jaime lannister #daenerys targaryen #cersei lannister

12 notes · View notes