Movie trivia that I like.

Just a short post about little nuggets of movie trivia that I always liked. Noting fancy, just fun to know.

The Rocketeer.

Lila Finn was a stuntwoman. Who, at the wonderful young age of 82, took on a small part in the (best comic book movie of the 90s, nee, ever) The Rocketeer. She basically falls down when the Rocketeer passes her without breaking a hip. But what I love about her is something she said at the time in an interview about falling down some stairs:

"Well, you're only falling a few inches at a time, so it's not all that bad."

I can't refind the interview I watched way back then (and the quote is probably inaccurate) but nevertheless, I love her completely.

A clockwork orange

Malcolm McDowell was making A Clockwork orange under Stanley Kubrick. Now we all know that Kubrick was a perfectionist. So in one scene poor Malcolm is to be spit upon. So take after take he is in his hospital bed and the other actor spits in his face. After about twenty takes of this Malcolm goes up to Stanley and asks him: 

“Am I doing anything wrong, is there something I need to improve?”

“No, dear boy you are great. I just want the spit to travel down your nose and dangle on the end.”

“Ow...eh...alright.”

After forty takes they finally got it. 

Mr. Holmes

Mr. Holmes is a non-canon story about Sherlock Holmes. So it wasn't written by Arthur Conan Doyle. A bit of fun movie trivia about this movie is that it deals with a ageing Holmes at the end of his life trying to solve one last case. One day he goes into a cinema to watch a movie adaptation of one of his adventures/ Watson's stories. In this movie-within-the-movie he/Holmes is played by Nicolas Rowe. The same actor who portrayed Holmes in another non-canon film about Holmes's first adventure: Young Sherlock Holmes.

So as a nice bit of trivia we have the actors playing in both the last and the first non-canon Sherlock Holmes movies in one movie. Nice touch.

Godsend 
I noticed that the classroom in Godsend (around the 35:00 mark). Is the same as in the game Shiver. Computer games do this all the time. The school in Silent Hill –for instance- is based on the school in Kindergarten Cop. However, this was the first time I actually noticed something.

Jaws

To end this little article with two well known bits of trivia from the movie Jaws.

For starters it is well known by now that the shark hardly ever worked. Which turned out to be a great ‘happy accident’ because Spielberg was now forced to keep the shark from appearing until the final act. A trick he later used again with the evil dinosaurs of Jurassic Park.

So, as Richard Dreyfuss has told in various interviews, the usual message coming from the speakers around the island where the movie was shot was: 

“The shark isn’t working. Repeat. The shark isn’t working.”

Which was great for him because that allowed him to continue his nap.

But one day the speaker said something differently:

“The shark is working. Repeat. The shark is working…but the boat is sinking.”

I can just imagine it.

The second bit of trivia from the movie Jaws is that Dreyfuss’s character was originally supposed to die in the scene wherein he’s swimming around in the shark cage. To shoot this scene Spielberg needed a small human inside a small cage. That way the real-life shark used in this scene would appear bigger.

So they lowered a small person in a small cage, in a small wetsuit, with small flippers, into the water. But they forgot the little fact that a small person uses the same amount of oxygen as an average sized person. So this poor fellow saw this gigantic white shark approaching and –panicking- immediately drained all the oxygen from his downsized/scaled oxygen tank.

Gasping for breath he was pulled back to the surface while the shark had a field day with the miniature cage (which –because it was smaller- couldn’t handle the shark’s attack and got destroyed). Once the shark was done they pulled the, what remained of the, cage out of the water and joyfully inquired whether the man wanted to do another take. He refused and that’s the sole reason why Dreyfuss’s character survived the movie.*

*This bit of trivia has kind of gotten a life of its own. Like an urban legend it has grown more spectacular over time. But I still like this version.

The joy of radioplays (and the power of voice acting)

I like to go running. And, like any sport, you have to do it a lot to get any benefit from it. So, after a while, my MP3-player started to replay the same old songs I heard numerous times before. But then I discovered audio books and I was merrily on my way again. Getting my health up and 'reading' some literature. Best of both sides.

But recently I fell in love with radio plays.

I was born way after the nineteen fifties. So I never experienced the 'power' of radio plays in an Orson Welles kind of sense. But 'people' still do them to this day. Especially the British Broadcasting Company, or, the BBC.

Good omens

In short the story about Good Omes is pretty much a parody of the movie the Omen. The son of Satan (the anti-Christ) is born. But due to a mislaid baby the boy grows up outside of any nether realm influence. He grows up a normal boy. That is, until his powers start to manifest himself.

I fell in love with radio plays the minute I listened to (one of my favorite books) Good Omens. Apart from hearing the voice of the late Terry Pratchett for the last time it also gave me actors performing individual parts with heart and feeling.

In an (good) audio book (e.g. Lenny Hendry's Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman) the reader performs all the parts with his/her own set of acting skills. But when a male reader is voicing a young girl it still feels off. You want a girl to play the part of the girl. You don't want the same narrator performing all the voices (even though Steven Fry did quite well on the Harry Potter books). And that's where radio plays come into play. Here we actually got actors performing the parts. In Good Omens a (probably lovely) girl played Pepper with the feistiness that her character demanded.

When you look at the behind the scenes pictures, 

BTW,you can easily spot which child is who. 

They are mirror-images of their book selves.

One example of the things I liked most about the radio play of Good Omens was how this young actor chewed all kinds of radio-scenery when he spoke the line "When my friends get here!".

Imagine the scene about a young boy, a normal boy, who suddenly grows into immense power of knowing everything and being able to change everything. There are four horsemen of the apocalypse on their way and he knows it. He knows, deep down inside, that he is about the end the world as we know it.

But he is still a normal boy, sitting with his friends in a quarry, playing around until he grows dark and speaks in childish -yet medieval wicked- manner "When my friends get here!".

His pals (greatly acted as well) are scared sh*tless and me -running along- am too.

It carries a far greater punch when you hear somebody who sounds like the character act a line than when a narrator acts it. This boy nailed it perfectly and all I could do was download another BBC radio play.

Something wicked this way comes and Koudelka

The next was Something Wicked this Way comes and -again- it is far better than the audio book I listened to previously. The opening alone (the first ten minutes) are brilliant in acting and writing. But this also brought back a remembrance about voice acting.

When I was sixteen I played the game Koudelka. This game is set almost a century ago when a group of people break into an old abandoned monastery to find the horrors within.

Now, this isn't the best game in the world (the fighting system pretty much destroyed it), but it did contain -for the first time I ever heard- some of the best voice-acting dealing with serious themes instead of “shoot this!” or “aargh I’m hit!”. Take this scene for instance. The group is resting and...drunk. And the main character Koudelka tells her friend the horrors of her youth (around 9:30).

Truth be told it sounded better (acted) in my memory but still for a game industry than only just started to incorporate human voices in computer games this was a leap. This scene isn't some general shouting to shoot somebody. This scene contains emotions of loss and grief. Those emotions have to be acted.

Now that computer games have better graphics they are more like a cartoon or movie. The voice becomes less important. the (e)motions of the face take the upper hand. So, I argue, in 'ye old days' computer games were more like radio plays than nowadays. But I digress.Anyway, now I downloaded Neil Gaiman's 'Neverwhere' (a great play, just look at the cast!).

The downside of radio plays

Radioplays do have one tremendous downside though. Namely: Action driven sequences. There's a whole phone line chase that takes place in Good Omens that just doesn't work (don't bother me about the details. Listen to the book.). It hardly even works in written form. It would look great on the movie screen, but we're not there yet*. So action - be it the Moby Dick hunt, that messed up freefall jump from Angels and Demons. Action sequences don't work well in radio plays. They work better in written form, audio book form (because the narrator can simply read the lines) or -per above example- videogames. But then we're too close to movie adaptations.

So, to end my rambling I pretty much want to make two points (apart from: When you go out running don't listen to coaches or music; pick a book). First, a book becomes so much better when it is acted out**. When a girl is played by a girl and an old man by and old man. Second, a performance by sound can give quite a punch if it is acted correctly. Sometimes when I'm running and listening to a play I stop and stare into the distance because what I just heard moved me. Made me stop running.

* They\ve been working on a Good Omens adaptation for years now.

** I wanted to mention this point in the article but I decided not to. Yes a radio play is different from a book because it is an adaptation. So you don't hear the exact lines the author has written. In an (unabridged) audio book you will hear each and every line. But I argue that, if you really want to read a book and make it your own by interpreting each and every line and using your own imagination*** , you'd better 'read' the paper. This because a narrator will always (in adversely) steer your interpretation (with, for example, tone of voice or pause).

*** Whenever I read a book my mind is filled with all kinds of creatures to fill the slots of the characters. I remember reading the first Harry Potter novels pre-movies. Harry was portrayed by a boy I knew at school (who was black by the way). Ron was me with red hair (truly blood red). And Hermione was a cartoon girl I once saw on the telly. This changed when the actors where cast.

Mixed tape movies - Carnival

In the eighties it was the-thing-to-do to make a mixed tape (like a mp3 but touchable, always in need of a pencil and most definitely cooler). On it you would make a little playlist of all the cool songs. Now the trick was to make each song correspond with the rest of the tape. In this post I will try to do the same with movies.

Every once in a while I will select a general topic and select movies to accompany it. As you can see the more child-friendly movies are at the start of the day, but  when night falls: ‘here be monsters’. Please feel free to give suggestions of other unknown movies.

One rule though: Auteur themes like ‘Shakespeare’ or ‘James Bond’ are not allowed. ‘Spy-movies’, naturally, are.

Theme: Carnival

The first theme I’m going to tackle is Carnivals. Why? Simply because I came up with this ‘mixed-tapes’-topic when I noticed that a lot of movies I watched at the time were about carnivals. Now, I don’t know why. Maybe it is about the mystery of it all, maybe it is about ‘being on the road and free’. Anyways, here’s my mixed tape of carnival movies. 

08:00-10:00

Pete’s Dragon:  A wonderful song and dance movie from Disney to start the day with. True, the story is far too sweet for my taste, but the villains and their songs are so deliciously naughty. A child will love the animation of the dragon. The adults will snigger at the villains and their attempts to capture Elliot the dragon.

10:00-12:00

The thief lord: A sweet children’s movie that actually plays with the age-old notion of kids wanting to become adults and adults wanting to be children again. A magical carrousel can make this happen. And it is all set in beautiful Venice with an Oliver Twist vibe to it.

12:00-14:00 

Something wicked this way comes: The darkest children’s movie on the list. Again the question of growing up, growing down and, again, a magical carrousel to make this happen. But this time the villain has control of the device. Making people’s wishes come true, for a price. Children will probably hide behind the pillow, but adults will be in awe of Jonathan Price’s superb turn as a complete demon of a man.

14:00-16:00

The seven faces of Dr. Lao: Slowly turning to the older children, this is a fun little tale of a one-man carnival coming to an ol’ western town. Dr. Lao plays seven characters to teach various townsfolk a valuable lesson. In the end all is well and that is just as it should be.

16:00-18:00 

Goosebumps and the nightmare room: (My Name is Evil) Let’s end the children’s part of our program with some genuine children horror. Carnival, all kinds of creepy things and children in peril. Wonderful stuff to keep them up at night. 

18:00-20:00
Cirque du freak: A carnival consisting of real vampires and other mythological freaks. Too bad the movie did so poorly at the box-office that the sequel was never made. Nonetheless it is a very good start of a franchise that keeps the tweens in awe. And hey, maybe they’ll start to read the rest of the books afterwards...

20:00-22:00 

Viva Maria!: A bit of a gamble this one. Is it a carnival movie, or is it a circus movie? Anyway it is a great fun movie that, though bloody at times, has some fascinating things going for it like a shoot-around-the-corner rifle and the main villain (somewhat) happily walking around without a head.

22:00-00:00

TV-series Carnival : Of course this one has to be on the list. I suggest everybody watches the two seasons.*

Carnival is a great TV-show that mixes mythology with the dustbowl and life in the depression era. True –since it’s HBO- the sex stuff can be a bit distracting (and sometimes it feels it’s simply there to make the quota). But past that there’s a nice, slow burn, story of right and wrong, heaven and hell going on.

00:00-02:00 

Dead silence: Nobody likes this movie but me. So, since I’m writing this, here it is. A wonderful little (classical) horror story of a demon-like ventriloquist trying to kill everyone the main protagonist ever loved. And the main protagonist trying to find out the truth. James Wann and Leigh Whannell did one last twist ending in this movie and never did it again since. Which is the way to go if you want to prevent being pigeonholed.

I guess people were expecting more Saw like mayhem (even though the first two Saw movies aren’t bloody at all) and were disappointed when the blood didn’t spout to the ceiling. Their loss, I’ve got a wonderful supernatural thriller to watch over and over.

02:00-04:00

The funhouse: Now we are in the realm of true horror. It is a classical B-movie with bad acting and fake blood all round. But who can turn away from a ride in the funhouse with a demented killer on the loose. 

Honorable mentions: I didn’t include Das cabinet des dr. Caligari because –even though it is a great movie- it is more known for its usage of expressionism nowadays than the carnival angle. I also didn’t include circus movies like Dumbo, The greatest show on earth, Trapeze or Freaks because I really wanted to stick to small time carnivals. So how about my first post, are there any movies I should have mentioned?

*This show actually marked the end of my losing streak. For years I’ve been watching TV-shows that got cancelled right when they got interesting (e.g. Nowhere man). After this I caught Breaking Bad and –wonder oh wonder- they made it to the end.

5 ways computer games play with my emotions.

Computer games differ from movies and literature in the way that a lot of the events happen to you the player. Not John McClane, not Harry Potter. No; silly old you behind the keyboard or joypad. So that’s a great way for game-designers to play with a person’s emotions. Here’s my little top five of computer games that managed to make me do and feel things I normally wouldn’t have (done).

5. Forcing me to be a villain.

This is the easiest one on the list. Simply create a level in which you, the player, have to do a truly heinous act to be able to continue the game. There are several examples nowadays. Like –as a terrorist-  shooting civilians in Call of Duty. Or torturing a person in the latest Grand Theft Auto.

This is the easiest of them all. And I don’t really like it. But the game forces me to do it if I want to continue and (eventually) finish the game.

A more ‘open’ choice was given in the first Fable game. The whole premise is that the player can just as easily become a villain as a hero, depending on the choices the player makes throughout the game. In the end, however, these choices were rather black-and-white. Kill the good guy/kill the bad guy. A more nuanced or deceitful choice would have made the games far more interesting. Which is the main critique the game got at the time.

Interestingly enough, in the game Saboteur, I can drive my car over -God knows how many- civilians,  shoot them even, and at the end of the game I’m still the good guy. So, strangely enough, this ‘forcing me to be a villain’ only works when the game emphasizes the fact that I am playing a villain.

As a final thought: In Silent Hill 3 you go around the gameworld killing monsters. Then, late in the game, a character named Vincent mentions that those weren’t monsters at all. That you were in fact killing innocent people. He’s only joking. But that would have been an interesting twist. Going in the game thinking you are the hero, end up becoming the villain.

4. Forcing me to love.

“Aeris lives”. Anybody who knows what this means can read on. The rest, continue to the next paragraph.

In Final Fantasy 7 Aeris dies. Murdered by Sepiroth (that bastard). At the time I didn’t understand why it hurt me so much as it did until I understood what had happened. Real life happened.

Imagine your first true girlfriend or boyfriend. You invest time in the relationship. You are still trying to figure out if the two of you are going to be together forever. You hang out, cuddle, kiss until BAM a drunk driver kills her/him. That’s what happened in Final Fantasy 7. I had spent hours leveling her character to get a strong member for my party (plus I always preferred the more feminine girl over the more tomboy Tifa-character. So I often picked her for my party.) and without warning she got stabbed.

So part of me was struck because I lost the girl I really liked. But another part of me was shocked because I just spent hours invested in her that – in the end- were unneeded.

Naturally the second time you play this game you don’t spent a lot of time levelling Aeris, she’s going to die anyway. As it turns out Tifa is a lovely girl also.

3. Forcing me to be a pervert.

Silent Hill: the room. Like any other Silent Hill game is a horror-story which –partly- involves you killing monsters but with one fun twist: For large chunks of the game you are stuck in your apartment unable to get out. After five minutes in that apartment the walls really start closing in on you. You can’t turn on the telly, you can’t read a book, in short; you are bored stiff. So you start looking out the window, spying on your neighbors.

Then you find a whole in the wall to your (attractive) next door neighbors’ bedroom and you start spying on her. Anything for some human contact.

What happens later on in the game is even more fun. Like Hitchcock’s Rear Window, your next-door neighbor is in danger. And you are incapable of helping because you are still locked in your room. This creates tension because –through your voyeurism- you’ve become attached to your neighbor and now there’s a danger that you might lose her; lose the human contact.

I thought I bought a horror-videogame but as it turned out the game explored my peeping-tom side which I didn’t know I had.

2. Forcing me to flee.

I like to take thing head on. If there’s a problem I want to deal with it right away. Now, I’ve been perilous situations several times in my life  and each time I noticed about myself that I was reviewing the situation. “Can I do this? Can I do that?”

The point is, even in extreme situations there is a choice: you can either fight or flee.

Now; take the game Clock Tower. In this particular game they take away this choice. There is only one choice: flee.

The game is simplicity itself. You are a girl named Jennifer. Locked in a mansion (without a front door apparently) trying to get out. There is demonic child chasing you holding a large pair of gardening scissors. Each time you hear him coming your need to run and hide. And that’s the only thing you can do –run and hide.

Knowing that heightens the tension. You are constantly afraid the scissorman is coming for you. Forcing you to find another hiding spot. Forcing you off your quest to find the exit of the mansion.

The same happens in the last act of the aforementioned Silent Hill: the room. Suddenly evil spirits start to come out of the walls of your apartment. This boring room you were locked in suddenly becomes a dangerous place to be with a fun fact: you can neither (truly) fight, or flee. Panic!

1. Forcing me to be God.

S.O.S. by Vic Tokai. A capsized ship. 2100 souls on board. You’ve got one hour to escape a bring as many survivors with you as humanly possible (seven in total) or the ship will sink. Play it alone, you can get to the boiler-room/ exit within ten minutes – five even if you try really hard. But then the ending will tell you that you died.

Now, if you want the best ending you’d better get some survivors with you. And herein –as the Bard would tell us- lies the rub. Because each survivor has his or her own problem. So sometimes a survivor doesn’t want to go with you just as readily as you’d want. It takes time to convince him/her.

Example: two girls. One is deaf and in shock, the other one won’t go with you if the first one doesn’t go. How to get them? By spending several minutes writing and trying to convince the deaf-and-shocked girl to come with you. Several minutes you don’t have.

So the next time you play the game you decide not to take these two girls along because they take too much time. Instead you only take the ‘easy’ ones. So you find yourself walking past these girls while they (or at least the talking one) scream at you to help them. It’s like playing God. You get to decide who is to live and who is to die.

Room: A review

A five year old boy Jack and his mother Joy (Brie Larson) have been living in a locked room for all his life. His mother serving as a slave to their tormenter Nick, who comes by for nightly visits whilst Jack sleeps in the closet. One day Jack's life gets turned upside down when he escapes and he and his mother try to readjust to normality.

Room isn't a pleasant movie to watch. I expected a movie about somebody suffering though this kind of horror for quite a while now. With all those creeps getting caught left and right the past few years it was bound to become a movie. But still I sat down and watched it. And am I glad I did. Because this isn't a movie about the horror, it's about freedom.

Thankfully, Room doesn't focus primarily on the horror show that the real life cases feed into our imagination. We -the audience- know what’s going on, but the director never outright shows us. He makes the right decision by letting us connect the dots and imagine the rest. Such a way of dealing with delicate subject material requires two things: a script that allows room for imagination and strong performances.

The script part is simple. Every written word is perfect. It might be a bit 'seen this before' (especially once they escape the room). But then again, we humans aren't that complex a creature. I think it would damage the movie tremendously if the script required characters to do unnatural actions. And yet, in one scene, it does exactly that. But because it is treated as such a 'last ditch attempt' it becomes believable.

You know those plans that you toss out early because you already see a million potential problems on the horizon. Like going fishing on a leaky boat without a lifejacket. If you have time to prepare. Sure you'll fix the boat. But if you are desperate you might 'chance all those things that could go wrong'. And this movie does brilliantly simply because you -the viewer- knows/sees everything that could go wrong. So it creates tension.

Then the acting. Well -for starters- this is Brie Larson's show. She is the rock the movie is based upon and she gives one heck of a performance. Before and after the Oscars it was no question that she would win the golden statuette. Her son is equally impressive for a child actor. But, since the script doesn't need the Jack character to fully comprehend the situation it allows for his performance to be subdued. Which -I think- is a good thing.

But all the actors are great in this movie mainly because of the story required from them. Two examples:

For starters, the cop. Little Jack escapes and is rescued by a friendly man who calls the police. The female officer starts to question Jack whilst her colleague is pretty much willing to throw in the towel. But she doesn't stop. You see this character thinking and connecting pieces. And when, suddenly, Jack gives a workable answer her face lights up as she realizes what to do.

A very small part with some great motivation behind it: The audience wants the boy and his mother to re-find each other. We also want the villain to be caught. This cop is the person the audience relies on. And by making her such a caring and smart woman it doesn't just fill the cathartic cup but it puts a cherry on top.

Another example. A story starts out with a situation and some characters. The Poseidon Adventure: -for example- a ship capsizes and characters have to get out. In Room a young girl is kidnapped, raped into motherhood and eventually released back to her parents. How would they react to their grandchild? How would I react?

The always great William H. Macy plays the father who has problems looking at his grandson. You might blame him but you can also -most definitely- see his dilemma. This is a man who, from the first time you see him, absolutely loves his daughter. No question there. But a grandchild from a monster who destroyed his child's, his own and his wife’s life? How does one deal with this? Macy gives a heck of an answer in his short but memorable performance.

To end with the shots. It's fairly simple. Room is a low budget movie with small tight medium close-ups. Some annoying hand-held camerawork but nothing too distracting. I would have preferred a better, cut-clear sense of how small the Room was in the beginning of the movie. But I think this is a deliberate choice of the filmmakers; to emphasize the lack of space at the end of the movie. I don't really know whether I fully agree with this choice, but that's fine. It's a story about the characters.

One little nitpick though. Maybe it's me but somewhere in the back of my mind I had a million possible escape routes planned for the characters. Now, I'm perfectly aware that I haven't suffered through Joy's trauma and whatnot. But somehow I still have a little problem with the idea that this villain could keep her contained for so long. But then again, as I said, I cannot have an earthly idea of what I'm talking about.

In short Room is a fascination movie to watch. It is dark. And maybe it'll frighten people into a dimmer view of the world. But at the same time it is a amazing tale that shows us the freedom we take for granted every single day.

The Stark kids are doing quite well (off screen).

Accompanying the previous article just a quick thought that went through my mind. The Game of Thrones Stark kids are doing quite well in other projects. I mean, in the show none of them are having the greatest times of their lives. Two are currently dead, one is blind, one is crippled in a cave with a creepy tree-dude, one got castrated and more, one keeps on meeting abusive boyfriends and one has been gone for two seasons. Happy times.

But the actors are making quite the careers for themselves.

Sophie Turner has been bombarded as the new Jean Grey in the upcoming X-men movie. Hopefully with some nice telekinetic schizophrenia, because Jean Grey only became truly interesting when she started to become Phoenix.

Maisie Williams did an inspiring one-woman show in Cyberbully, single-handedly pissed off Doctor Who and she’s going to kill zombie-things in the upcoming adaptation of The last of us. Still, I hope she finds the time to try a bit of stand-up comedy because she's hilarious in interviews.

Art Parkinson just survived an earthquake in San Francisco and he is Dracula's son - how many people can say that? Later this year he’ll follow his onscreen brother in another Laika production. Plus in the next season he is still shacking up with Tonks (I mean Natalia Tena). Lucky bastard.

Isaac Hempstead Wright is lacking a bit doing only a voice in Laika's The Boxtrolls. Who knows, maybe school comes first.

Richard Madden got the red wedding of his chest by becoming a rather charming prince charming in Cinderella. Finally a wedding that went right. And he’s been working nicely in Klondike and other projects.

Alfie Allen, repeated his I'm-a-bad-guy-but-can't-really-handle-the-consequences routine in the surprisingly effective John Wick. And his upcoming movie is called Pandemic –I don't know what that's going to be about but I can guess.

And Kit Harrington, finally, is still continuing his quest to broaden his horizon with comedy (Seven days in hell) and spy-action (Spooks). As long as he picks betters scripts than Silent Hill 2 and Pompeii he could go far.

And yes- dear chap- I can't wait for you to cut your hair. But remember if you do follow in Josh Holloway's (Sawyer in Lost) -footprints the next part you are going to get is five minutes and then you die in the next Mission Impossible. But then again, you're Jon Snow, you can't die.

Game of Thrones: or why I disliked season five but will keep on watching it.

-Spoilers obviously-

Just at the start of season six of Game of Thrones I’ve come to terms: I didn’t like season five. I’ve thought about it long and hard but I have to agree with the many, it wasn't the best season ever. Now I won’t stop watching like ‘the marysue’ did. Nor do I fully agree with the arguments they gave. But that's fine. Nothing better than to disagree on something. But I do wish to talk a bit about season five. So here it is. 

Hodor is Hodor

Whenever I explain this notion of fantasy to someone I use the 'afterlife tube station' 

from Harry Potter. Here's Harry in a world that only exists in his mind with Dumbledore

telling him again and again not to care for the 'baby' under the bench.

'The baby is crying!'-'Don't you mind it'.

'But it's crying!'-'Don't you mind it.'.

Who would not care for a crying infant? Simply by denying help J. K. Rowling

creates a wonderful weird scene for all the right reasons. And way less grounded by 

the boundaries of simple dragons or firebolts.

The first reason for my dislike of season five is the lack of Hodor. I mean, 'If Hodor dies, we riot' right? He's my pillar of stability in de murderous world of Westeros.

But -joking aside- with him the storyline of Bran. It delves into, what I like to call, ‘deep fantasy’ . This isn’t just dungeons and dragons the boy is dealing with. This kid has visions of three-eyed ravens, imaginations of flying and he can warg into a wolf and who-not.

With Bran there is truly a sense of magic returning to this world of Westoros which somehow strikes me harder than seeing an army a deadites attacking a wildling village (without a doubt the best episode of the season). I really missed his magic storyline. It returned a bit with Ayra's house of nasty people, but overall it were mere glimpses we got. Thankfully next season Bran and Horor are back fighting the Lannister's wizard style. 

Dorne

My next little problem with season five was the whole Dorne storyline. I think we can all agree that it wasn’t up to scratch. The fight choreography was abysmal (especially after Oberyn’s fantastic choreography a season previous) –so I never feared those Sand Snakes And basically all that I expected to happen, happened.

The scenery looked great. And I'm a big fan of actor Alexander Siddig. So there's a lot of potential but it just didn't show this season.

The same goes for Jonathan Price's character. Great to have him on board. Now please let him chew all kinds of scenery -for me- playing the dastardly villain he can play so well. They (the famous ‘they’) didn't but then again, here's hoping.

The scripting

To sidetrack a bit to the script. Usually the script in Game of Thrones is close to perfection. However, this season they messed up a bit. Two examples:

First, I hate (with a vengeance) coincidental coincidences in movies and series. So Jorah spotting Tyrion Lannister in a bar and kidnapping him (without the Spider knowing by the way). No sorry, I don't buy it.

Game of Thrones has been pretty good at hiding these blatant coincidences as 'happenings' (Ayra and the hound meeting Brien, Bran seeing Jon, and others). But this one was so 'in your face' obvious that it felt rather more like sloppy writing than a great flow of the story. But, then again, I must mention, I haven't read the books this far yet maybe it was in it.

Second, There's the finale/pacing of the episodes. I could also place this in editing since I don’t know what went on during post-production.

We ended one episode with Barristan Semly dying in a rather unimpressive manner that left me a bit bewildered. I mean, such a great fighter dying like that? 

Maybe, again, it was the choreography. But something didn’t feel right. It felt like he died far too unceremoniously than his character should have deserved. Especially since those gold mask-villains come across a bit like stormtroopers rather than dangerous foes. And one simply does not get killed by cannonfodder.

But the best example of this argumentation happened a few episodes later the moment the show killed poor little Shireen. I means this was the sweetest child in the whole of Westeros and her father killed her. I wanted him dead (by Davos’s fingerless-hand preferably) the minute I saw it happen.

But the showmakers didn't stop the show there for me to grief. No, they continued into a long spectacular scene of Daenerys looking cool on a dragon. I was still furious over the poor girl and therefore couldn't care less about Daenerys. I believe those two scenes should have been switched around.

The episode should have ended with Shireen's death scream. I even believe that this is so obvious that it serves as proof that the show lost its footing a bit by not doing it. Here's hoping that the next season doesn't do something like this again.

Naked bloodshed.

Alright, another little point. The nudity. Ask my teen self about this and I would strenuously deny having any problem with it. But now, being a bit older, more experience it tends to bother me a bit when there's no real function for the nudity. It annoys me in all kinds of HBO shows (Boardwalk empire, Carnivalé) wherein women keep undressing themselves all over the place. If you have to go to the bathroom, take a shower, have sex- please be naked. But don't drop your panties when making cereal. That's basically my down to earth view on nakedness in media.

So why throw it in all the time? Which brings me to the example from season five: the shame sequence. Now, I believe Cersei in the books has to walk around naked as well (like Lady Godiva to some extent). Point is, she didn't have to be naked (for me) to get the message across. People throwing stuff at her was more than enough to shame her. More so -to me- it felt like all those blokes showing their parts to her were merely written in to even out the sex. Some boy parts thrown in to keep the feminists happy as it where.

To me it feels far too constructed and maybe they were better of filming it differently. Sex(uality) is a great tool in visual fiction, but not always. 

I loved the woman's reaction to these kids: WTF!

Talking about sex. I did like the fact that Tommen got lucky. Mainly because of the uncomfortable reactions of a lot of the reviewers on the internet.

In the same vein. Was there any need to make Meryn Trant a pederast? Wasn’t his responsibility for killing Syrio Forel enough to justify Ayra’s (bloody) revenge?

As a side-note to this. I'm not much of a fan of bloodshed. I can take it. It just doesn’t interest me that much. So I’m always a bit worried when the choice is made to show something explicitly instead of suggestive. This, because I’m scared that the creators might want to top it in the next movie/tv-show (like Quentin Tarantino movies getting more explicitly bloodier after ‘Kill Bill’).

Of course the famous Mountain versus Viper episode in season three had scared the bejeezers out of me. So there was a fear that it would be even more explicit in this season. Now, It happened a bit (like the gouging out of eyes and slowly cutting throats - Ayra being naughty again). But I do hope that next season they showmakers cut back a bit on the blood and gore.

Sansa

But it think the main reason why season five left a bad taste in my mouth was that Sansa got downplayed. I always cared for Sansa. She was naïve, sweet, caring, -in short- not made for this cruel world of Westoros. But, she was learning –fast.

Now after years of torment she suddenly gleamed like a black star at the night sky the minute she finished her dress at the end of season four. Awesome!

But then she was tossed into the hands of the evil Ramsay Bolton and all of Sansa’s character-development got thrown out the window .

I figured Sansa, by now would know how to use her desirability as a tool to receive more power. That (scared of course) like Daenerys years before with Drogon she would wrap crazy Bolton around her finger. Instead she became a victim once more.

And to add insult to injury the focus during the wedding night (rape) was placed on poor Theon and thus setting him up as the eventual ‘knight in shining armor to save the damsel in distress’. Just one shot of Sansa's eyes making plans (maybe a scene before or after) was all that was needed to reassure me.

Pretty much the same discussion occurred after the rape between Cersei and Jamie a season before. Now whether this was rape or not I won’t delve into it. The point is, however, that the character Jamie had made such progress in the previous episodes in transforming himself from a despicable kinsmen killer to a caring man that it was a shock to see him force himself onto his sister. Like those previous episodes hadn’t happened. An atoned Jamie suddenly turned back to his wicked former self.

But, then again, Jamie is rather messed up in his head so this turn to his vile old self never struck me much as a destruction of character.

 

I guess I just hate that I now have to wait -don’t know how long- before Sansa musters up the courage to finally kick some behinds.

To sum it all up

In short my dislike of Game of Thrones season five comes down to this: 

Things that should have looked cool failed because: 
A) Were downplayed (Semly’s death). B) Were misplaced (dragons after Shireen).Or C) Were underwhelming (the Sand Snakes fight).

Things that could have been cool failed because they: 
A)Were kept in the freezer (please Price come out and play!). OrB) Were denied previous character development (Sansa’s wedding night).

Things that where cool were ruined by unnecessary violence and sex (The shame sequence, Meryn’s  sexual preference).

And, finally, things that would have been cool but were apparently left out (please throw in Lady Stoneheart- get the ball rolling with some real warlocks and magic). 

But, honesty dictates, that the season also did a lot a lot of things right. The Hardhome fight was awesome. The ‘For the watch’-ending was to be expected but nevertheless cool.  And the battering between Jamie and Bron and Tyrion and Jorah were an absolute blast.

But what have we got to look forward to in season six? Well…

Bran is back all magical and powerful. Hodor is "Hodor". Jon will probably return like some kind of snow zombie. Rickon is returning (hopefully he has some more lines). Gendry has finally finished his rowing trip. Ayra is blind and pissed off. Sansa has escaped (and is pissed off). Theon is still insane but at least on the right side of the law insane. Jamie is back in King's Landing to help his sister. Jonathan Price is going to be more evil against Cersei (who has a ‘Franken-mountain’ at her side). And Tyrion and the spider are reunited to govern a new city. Lots of fun to be had. Oh and Daenerys has control of her dragons once more...

If only they could get a scene in with the Queen of Thorns slashing away with a sword and I'm happy.