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[Book Spoilers] The Duel


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There were definitely waaaaay too many cuts.

Going to go through that fight and cut how many cuts there are. This is Bourne-level amounts of cutting, and while it makes sense there -- close-quarters, hand-to-hand combat, often in cramped spaces -- this didn't let the fight breathe at all.

I'm trying to read everything but maybe I can get a quick answer- from behind the scenes I thought the actors did all the moves (I had thought maybe some doubling but the B t S made me think Pascal did it all. Including the aerials?

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To be fair the show's portrayal of the kill is not the far off from the books in terms of realism. I watch a lot of MMA and rarely do you see a fighter landing significant punches let alone a knockout punch from the bottom. When lying on your back, there isn't enough space to throw a hard punch. You just can't put your hips and whole body into it to generate power for the 500 pounds of force required to crush a skull (even with steel gauntlets). However, this is the mountain we are talking about. He basically has the strength of a comic superhero so if GRRM says he can smash Oberyn's head while laying on his back, it isn't too far-fetched to think that he can crush it like he did in the show.


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To be fair the show's portrayal of the kill is not the far off from the books in terms of realism. I watch a lot of MMA and rarely do you see a fighter landing significant punches let alone a knockout punch from the bottom. When lying on your back, there isn't enough space to throw a hard punch. You just can't put your hips and whole body into it to generate power for the 500 pounds of force required to crush a skull (even with steel gauntlets). However, this is the mountain we are talking about. He basically has the strength of a comic superhero so if GRRM says he can smash Oberyn's head while laying on his back, it isn't too far-fetched to think that he can crush it like he did in the show.

True enough... if anyone can do it, it's the mountain.

I'm trying to read everything but maybe I can get a quick answer- from behind the scenes I thought the actors did all the moves (I had thought maybe some doubling but the B t S made me think Pascal did it all. Including the aerials?

I was wondering this exact same thing, but forgot to bring it up. Can anyone give us some insight into this?

They did talk about Pedro being pretty athletic, and that he had started the Wushu lessons before coming to them, as long prep for the role. Would be cool if he did all his moves, but could understand some of the aerials and butterfly kicks being someone else. I pacticed Wushu for a while before I really had those moves cemented.They can be tricky, and you need to be more flexible to do them than one might think. He really did fantastic with that spear, though. He had much of the Compulsory Gun flourishes and movements down pat... all he'd have to do now is kick Gregor in the face with a 360 Crescent kick and land in a split, and we have the new Jet Li.

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I'm trying to read everything but maybe I can get a quick answer- from behind the scenes I thought the actors did all the moves (I had thought maybe some doubling but the B t S made me think Pascal did it all. Including the aerials?

Sometimes some stunts are not done by the actors not because they can't but due to safety. If Pascal breaks a leg during a scene, it's a disaster not due to Pascal being hurt but because production and filming needs to stop. If a scene can be done by someone else, then let someone else do it. If it's needed to see the actor's face, then the actor does it.

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Sometimes some stunts are not done by the actors not because they can't but due to safety. If Pascal breaks a leg during a scene, it's a disaster not due to Pascal being hurt but because production and filming needs to stop. If a scene can be done by someone else, then let someone else do it. If it's needed to see the actor's face, then the actor does it.

Very true. Would love to hear that Pascal was one of those "insisted on doing as many of his own stunts as possible"cases, unrealistic as that expectation is. I love what he did with the role, regardless of how many hop, skips, and jumps he performed himself.

It's when they start bringing in other actors to do your crying, a la Tropic Thunder, that we should be worried about who to credit. Speaking of that, Ben Stiller would have done well as Orson Lannister, if "Simple Jack" is any indication... Imagine him with blonde hair?

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I'm trying to read everything but maybe I can get a quick answer- from behind the scenes I thought the actors did all the moves (I had thought maybe some doubling but the B t S made me think Pascal did it all. Including the aerials?

He did stuff that sort of provided the lead in or out of certain sequences. For example, we see him doing a very slow spear twirling action for his entrance, and we see him do the flourish out of it. The stuff in between is all the stunt man Liang Yang and so they cut it together; the slowness of Pascal's lead-ins and -outs are masked by cutting really quickly.

He may have done some sort of jump or something as a lead into or out of the aerials, but he absolutely did not do anything like those aerial stunts. That takes way more training, and Pascal doesn't have the background.

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Awesome to see those shots of the Wushu athlete... Liang Yang, hmm? I'll have to look him up. I haven't watched Wushu for a while, I wonder if this guy currently competes, or if he ever did? He did a great job.



I guess I was expecting a little too much of Pedro, thinking that he would have the flourishes and twirling down that flawlessly- and at such speeds, with less than a year to train. I still applaud his efforts.



Thanks for the info, Ran.



Edit: Wait, so Gregor really just killed Oberyn's stunt double? The perfect switcharoo! I did kind of think that his head looked a little "off" in the shot where it was being squished! Sneaky bastard.. thought the thumbs and brain matter would obscure our view of the face. So Oberyn is really still alive. Right?


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Decided to go through the fight and try to see how many of the cuts appear to feature Yang. The opening entrance is about 15 cuts, 10 of which are clearly or very likely to be Yang -- the best giveaway is the fact that the sideburn and beard he has are much darker than Pascal's.

And you know, a lot more stuff is Yang than I thought it was, including sequences that seemed fairly straightforward. Stunt parts, I suspect they shot things slow with Pascal and then fast with Yang, and intercut. Other times, for whatever reason, some particular cut looked better with Yang and they went with it when it wasn't too clear that it was the double; I am pretty sure it's Yang we see when the camera is set facing Gregor as he falls to his knee, and Oberyn sidles backwards to the camera, which isn't a stunt shot at all.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Has anyone seen this picture? http://cdn.winteriscoming.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/queen4.jpg (It's from an article of Elizabeth II visiting the GoT sets).


Oberyns duel-armor is on diplay and it has a helmet on it!!! So why in seven hells didn't they use it, when they already have crafted this helmet??? It would have been both according to the books and much more lifelike.


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Interesting! Seems vaguely modeled on John Picacio's rendition of the fight. I wonder if that's why it exists -- someone pointed the armorers to it, "but make it leather instead of scale", they made something... and then someone said, "Oh, we didn't mean the helmet".

I wonder if that means there's a shield floating around as well.

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There also is a video from the queen's visit, where you can see the helmet from the front (best seen at min 15:00 to 15:30).



http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CGuYV2uTOyQ



Edit: I found this official-looking picture: http://38.media.tumblr.com/ae1c08725405a14e810d8e29775ddbef/tumblr_n6q908yTvS1s4pi7to1_400.jpg


It seems, that at one point in production, there was a helmet and a short sword also (which can be seen better here:http://i.imgur.com/4CqBdBY.png), but still no shield with the Martell sigil.



Edit2: The helmet even was on set during filiming of the trial: http://winteriscoming.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/RVEllaria.jpg (you can see the helmet just under the flag of house Martell). But still there is no shield, and likely never was.


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  • 3 weeks later...

To be fair the show's portrayal of the kill is not the far off from the books in terms of realism. I watch a lot of MMA and rarely do you see a fighter landing significant punches let alone a knockout punch from the bottom. When lying on your back, there isn't enough space to throw a hard punch. You just can't put your hips and whole body into it to generate power for the 500 pounds of force required to crush a skull (even with steel gauntlets). However, this is the mountain we are talking about. He basically has the strength of a comic superhero so if GRRM says he can smash Oberyn's head while laying on his back, it isn't too far-fetched to think that he can crush it like he did in the show.

Grrm is not per definition describing it more realistically. To me it seems to be easier (albeit not easy) to crush a skull like he does in the show and virtually impossible to do it as its described in the book. Unless you are a giant perhaps. The strength is not in the arms as you say and lying on the back you cant put your body into a punch and it will be significantly weaker.

Now the most realistic would probably be having a combo, that is him being in the postion he has in the show while crushing his skull with a powerful blow or two like in the book. I do not know how big the Mountain is suppose to be though and is obv restricted by the size of the actor here, though he is huge.

And this is not the part I have the most problem with, but its the fact that the Mountain gets a spear through his belly, if his stomach is pierced he would die within minutes from sepsis, it doenst matter how big he is. I guess he can be lucky and the spear missed all major organs and arteries which still seems unlikely but as its described in the show he coughs up blood which means either it was the stomach or the lungs. Either way he's a dead man, poison or no posion.

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Grrm is not per definition describing it more realistically. To me it seems to be easier (albeit not easy) to crush a skull like he does in the show and virtually impossible to do it as its described in the book. Unless you are a giant perhaps. The strength is not in the arms as you say and lying on the back you cant put your body into a punch and it will be significantly weaker.

Now the most realistic would probably be having a combo, that is him being in the postion he has in the show while crushing his skull with a powerful blow or two like in the book. I do not know how big the Mountain is suppose to be though and is obv restricted by the size of the actor here, though he is huge.

And this is not the part I have the most problem with, but its the fact that the Mountain gets a spear through his belly, if his stomach is pierced he would die within minutes from sepsis, it doenst matter how big he is. I guess he can be lucky and the spear missed all major organs and arteries which still seems unlikely but as its described in the show he coughs up blood which means either it was the stomach or the lungs. Either way he's a dead man, poison or no posion.

Uh, no. He might die from sepsis in hours, but there's no way he would die of it in only a few minutes. He could die in a few minutes from blood loss, but only if a major blood supply was hit.

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Uh, no. He might die from sepsis in hours, but there's no way he would die of it in only a few minutes. He could die in a few minutes from blood loss, but only if a major blood supply was hit.

Perhaps not, I have no clue, it was my sister (nurse) who said so. Might not have been sepsis but that he would die within minutes from a stomach wound. Anyway, the spear through the gut should do it given, I assume, they dont have the tech to fix internal wounds.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Uh, no. He might die from sepsis in hours, but there's no way he would die of it in only a few minutes. He could die in a few minutes from blood loss, but only if a major blood supply was hit.

:agree:

Perhaps not, I have no clue, it was my sister (nurse) who said so. Might not have been sepsis but that he would die within minutes from a stomach wound. Anyway, the spear through the gut should do it given, I assume, they dont have the tech to fix internal wounds.

It would really take some time. I second the post I quoted above. (I have to do with medical affairs.)

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  • 9 months later...

Gave this episode another watch and I'd say in terms of realism the issue is that the show mountain big though he is isn't AS big as the book character who's what 8 foot tall and massivlye muscled? realistically theres nobody they could hire for the show that size who would have the mobility needed and it means the Mountain is a bit more human in terms of what he might be able to do.



As far as the duel itself goes I would tend to agree there were a few too many cuts but then again I think the nature of this fight was a lot more difficult from anything else the show has shown with Oberyn leaping around. To shoot that kind of thing with long takes needs VERY skilled performers and unless the show was going to stick Pascals face onto a Hong Kong stuntmans body for much of it the cuts were probably needed. Even then you would probably have been looking at a much longer shoot than they wanted to do, big HK fight scenes can take days or even weeks.



As far as how the duel went the impression I got was that the show didn't want to play up the "he got cocky" angle too much. If anything I would say just the reverse, he starts off the duel cocky spinning his spear around and playing to the crowd. His initial callout of the Mountain's crimes could be viewed as playing to the crowd and his own ego as well, wanting to be the avenging hero blotting out a slight on family honour. That obviously changes at the end of the duel though as his callouts become more emotional with a sense of unease that were seeing a deeply emotionally damaged man grows. Ultimately its his desire to see Tywin named that gets him killed more than anything else and ironically of course getting himself killed actually results in Tywins death.


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