“Zulu’s Sir, thousands of 'em”
“That is Santa Ana?”
etc.
I was glad to see Egret die. I thought she was irritating-- personality-wise and accent.
You know nothing, John Mace.
I decided to make a GQ topic about the giant arrow scene:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=17448682#post17448682
What’s going on at about 25 seconds into this video?
If it’s taken down - during the scene where they released the scythe, you see the scythe cutting across the wall, obliterating the climbers. Then you see the scythe from further back - at equal level height with it, but perhaps 150 feet back.
But you see the backs of some people in the shot. The camera is essentially 500 feet off the ground, 150 feet north of the wall, looking south. Are those people floating in mid-air? Who are they supposed to be?
Edit: I guess it’s supposed to be people watching from the ground, but the perspective seems way off.
Magic.
Any other questions?
This is obviously the case.
Ha, I was expected Sam to walk in & find Gilly standing over his corpse.
Very much my reaction – this is what Helm’s Deep would look like if the Ents switched sides. Complete with Oliphaunts.
But this episode had more stirring speeches than 9 hours of LOTR.
Re: the ones complaining about an entire episode devoted to a single battle. Yeah, what is that…2 in 4 years? Damn!
I’ve always been bored with scenes set at the Wall and beyond (especially Sam), but I loved this episode (especially Sam).
OK, this week’s nerdulent obsession: how does the elevator work? How does a little kid throwing a lever make it go up? At some point, somebody somewhere has to hoist a shit-load of counterweight, right?
They could have a few buckets that each weigh the equiv of one or more men. In that way, a kid could flip a leverl and use one of the buckets to lift some men to the top.
After using all the buckets, they would have to get some people to lift the buckets back up to the top. It’s not ideal, but it would work when they were short of men - like in the middle of a battle.
Just to be clear:
Each bucket would act as a counterweight. Each one would contain the weight (maybe with water or snow or whatever is handy) of one or more men. Some men would have to lift each of the counterweights (buckets) to the top of the wall during a peaceful time. Then, when needed, the kid could assign one of the buckets (depending on how many men he needed to lift) to the lift and then, when he flipped the lever, it would lift the elevator containing the appropriate number of men.
Hope that explains it.
There are people turning cranks at the top and bottom. I’m sure there are counterweights all over the place
Count me among those who appreciated an episode that stayed in one place.
Hope you stuck around for the end credits - the music was a powerful slab of doom, the familiar Game of Thrones theme reworked in a way that said “you think things are bad now - just watch”.
I didn’t hear that. But it sounds very exciting.
I’m hoping for an exciting finale. I’m one of those who was very disappointed by this recent episode. I don’t think any episode that is absent Tyrion is very satisfying. But I suppose that is just my personal opinion.
This would’ve been a great episode of another series, but I ended up wanting to see the plot advance in other parts of the world. We only get 10 of these a season, and I’d rather see plot advancement than action that that doesn’t move the plot significantly.
Even Blackwater was significantly more plot-heavy than this one. Stannis was considered a dire and serious threat to the Crown, and he ended the episode defeated and nearly powerless. The Lannisters and Tyrells formed an alliance. There were character scenes with characters we cared about much more - Tyrion’s leadership, Cirsei and Sansa, etc. In comparison, nothing much has changed. Mance’s probing attack was repulsed, most of the Night’s Watch are dead, and Mance can attack tomorrow and probably be successful.
Still, I have to give it credit for directing and production values. That’s top notch stuff for TV, worthy of a film.
Was I the only one who wondered how Ghost would know who were the bad guys to rip to shreds and who were the good guys to leave alone?
You could include plot advances elsewere but (a) it was one night (as battles tend to be), and (b) the audience loses involvement and has to re-engage. I think the idea here was to be sucked into the ebb and flow - the narrative - of the battle.
To change pace for a moment, they used the fat lad becoming a bit of a hero and also getting the girl, and also gave the red-head a couple of final scenes (the camp fire and her death).
Person I recognize fighting person I don’t.
And “recognize” can include both scent as well as appearance.
But yeah, it does appear there are a few individuals / species in the world of ASOFAI that are more sentient than any non-human animals on earth.
Definitely, not enough direwolf action. I kept expecting him to show up to save Jon but I guess that wildling he took out was pretty tasty.
Those direwolves are all pretty darn smart … well, except for Lady.
I agree that Sam got all the best lines and they made the episode more bearable.
I wasn’t too happy about the whole episode being spent on the battle for a lot of the same reasons everyone else has already mentioned and also because last week was gory enough. Although, I have to admit I did squeal a bit in awe, excitement and fear when they unleashed the ice scythe. At first I thought they were just cracking parts of the wall to knock the climbers down and I thought that was kind of smart, then the pendulum starts to swing and I thought “Oh, shit” and then I squirmed around in my chair trying to look and not look at the same time. And then they switched to the other view and I was a bit relieved to only see the bloody smear until they had to show random body parts hanging off the wall.
But still not enough direwolf.