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[Book Spoilers] The Duel


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I liked how quickly the tables turned, one second Oberyn is standing over Gregor victorious, going on with his pointless "you killed Elia" and smiling to Ellaria, the next he is on his back screaming while his eyes are gouged out.

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Loved the fight scene. There weren't too many cuts for me, but the editing itself was choppy. A sign of poor direction really... But still good enough to carry the story and get the point across.

Im glad they didn't stretch out the fight. Oberyns yelling would have gotten so annoying.

I love that he targeted tywin while yelling though. Was that in the book?

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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 disagree Ran... I personally felt that the cutting in the scene brought the perfect amount of tension. It also allowed for the stunts to be pulled off in an unprecedented fashion for the show. If they filmed it by static camera, it would have lost its impact.

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The fight was really well done- but I did think (or at least hoped) they'd devote a lot more time to it. They dragged feet with a few things, though I did think the whole beetle speech was entirely characteristic of someone about to die. Arbitrary conversation taken to rambling to keep the mind off of what is essentially your impending doom. Talking about something completely off topic, but somehow having it connect to the situation.



The only thing I disliked was hearing Oberyn cry out, totally justified in that situation of course... but in the books, he died blindsided getting punched, silently. He was probably too stunned, potentially brain-dead, by the first punch to even completely feel the pain of what was happening. This way, it was like Gregor got his satisfaction as much as Oberyn, making him scream, being on top for the end. I know it's nitpicking, but damn it fucked me up. I also don't like how many times Oberyn got knocked down in that short amount of time, it threw the build up out of whack. Oberyn had some close calls in the fight, yeah- but for the most part it was all like "Yeah, he's got this, he's gonna win- OH MY GOD HE'S GOT IT, YES!!!... fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-" It kind of foreshadowed his doom a little bit in a way, where as the book completely shocked. It is probably different from the view of an Unsullied.



Otherwise, I loved it. It devestated me even worse than the books did. Really. With Arya, I felt that the Wushu she was doing was a little out of place with her suddenly being Zhang Ziyi from Crouching Tiger- but with Oberyn, it was just fuckin awesome. That choreography was almost Yen Woo Ping levels of awesome, Donnie Yen levels of awesome, but a lot more realistic looking.


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When does "too many cuts" = "static camera"?



This thing looks like it was cut twice as fast as, for example, the Achilles vs. Hector final fight in Troy (not my favorite fight scene in the world, but given that spears are used at the start, it gives a sense of the sort of ideal cutting when weapons can traverse a long distance).



And it's definitely much, much faster than the greatest sword fight ever put to film (aka the finale of Rob Roy, which also happens to be a pretty pitch perfect model for how the scene plays out in the books.) That one's chock full of tension without needing to cut the action into near-incomprehensibility.



And then the decision to go with all the wushu flourishes like somersaults -- stuff that it's quite obvious Pascal wasn't doing, and from the video they released I'm pretty sure we see his stunt double working on the scene with Thor -- meant these crazy crane shots all the time. It was a lot of baffling directorial, editing, and choreography decisions.


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Rewatching the scene, I think the real problem is all the reaction shots. That's what's really disrupting the flow of the whole thing. Gotta have them, but it sacrificed the fluidity of the fight.

It'd have been nice to do a lot of it in say one shot, where the camera circles around and then at key moments like when oberyn stabs gregor, the camera could whip pan to Tyrion and flow back to oberyn shouting his stuff... But this is still tv and there are limits to production... Though, unrelated, the opening tracking shot at moles town that lasted like 2 min was done very well

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I'd have to second the cutting issue. You (or perhaps only I) can see the cuts, and they are annoying. At times, it really felt as if they had cut large portions out of the fight, so this was really bad cutting.



But now I must really go to sleep.


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Some things I went nuts over--



Oberyn's "no, no, no..." got across a ton of his character. He wasn't toying with him in the "this is teh funsies!" sense, but doing what he could, what he dreamed of, to not devolve into complete sputtering rage. He wasn't thoughtless--he was glancing down at the Mountain as he railed at Tywin, but he made one wrong move, drifting a bit too close to Gregor's arm, and as Bronn prophecized,that was the end.



His screams! SHIT MAN! I don't care how much of a badass you are, you're screeching like a nutcase if your eyes are getting gouged out. Death is a leveller.



Ellaria's scream! Hit me SO much harder than the book version. I KEENED when she looked so proud--earlier she was nervous, but then she was like "you go babe, get your vengeance." Then her horror...fuck!



Oberyn letting himself get pushed around just a bit, to give him an advantage. It reminded me of that study about people who are a bit sauced having a better chance of surviving a car wreck. He really was like a snake.


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There's definitely a lot of reaction shots. They could have compressed some of these by simply showing two or three characters in one shot -- i.e. Ellaria and Tyrion together, Jaime, Cersei, Tywin together -- instead of doing individual reactions for each actor, but for whatever reason they preferred the individual shots.


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If you watch the 'Learning the Moves' video on YT they explain that the fight was filmed in stages to allow Pedro to get his breath back and speak his lines.

This is why books will always be superior to tv and film. Production will always have complications... Like actors needing to breath oxygen... Damnit Pedro!

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I loved it. I loved how Pascal's tone steadily grew as the fight went on. I'll probably need a couple of days to let it stew, and probably another viewing of the episode, but I think it's up there with one of the best duels on TV.


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Most complicated fight scenes are filmed in stages. I think mostly they meant that some of the stages were simplified to give him more time to get lines out, rather than suggesting they were doing something unique.


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