Be Excellent To Each Other

Yeah, LOTR was shite!

Seriously though, are you kidding? Yeah, it's self-indulgent and the songs/poetry are there to be completely skipped, but it remains a seminal work of high fantasy. THE seminal work of high fantasy.

Seminal as in "seminal fluid", yes.

It's wank, Jon.

I love fantasy and sci-fi, but Tolkien gives fantasy a bad name. It's gobsmackingly tedious badly written shite.

It's a little verbose, but "badly written shite" definitely ain't what I'd call it. Can we get a hivemind opinion from the board, please? STAT!

Please stick up any paragraph from the books. Go on. It doesn't even have to be a poetry, Bombadil or over-expansive back-story paragraph.

And it'll be crap.

He got there first, basically. That's the reason he's so fucking venerated - he created "fantasy epic", due to being a fucking weirdo. And for some reason this means that everyone overlooks the reams of tedious shite in his books. "oh yes, it's brilliant except for that bit. And that bit. And that bit, oh, and definitely that bit too. But, you know, it's allegorical.". The Silmarillion sealed that analysis in fucking amber, by the way.

The great thing about the films, and why the films are so good, is because they effectively act as the editor he should have bloody well had the first time round.

Mr Chris is having a little play, methinks.

I'm really not.

You compare LOTR to some of the awesome epic fantasy stuff ( George RR Martin being the extant example, Erikson being another) and it's fucking shite. If Erikson, Martin, Feist, Tchaikovsky, Jordan, Hobb, Abercrombie, Rothfuss (Christ, Rothfuss! he's only written one book so far and he's the finest fantasy writer in history) or countless others had been writing at the same time as Tolkien, he wouldn't have had a bloody look in.

It's almost literally like the Bible for some people. It doesn't matter that a load of other people have come up with the same idea, or much, much, much, much better ones, NO. THIS IS THE FONT OF ALL TRUE FANTASY.

lolwut?

You can totally start a thread about the books, we're trying to talk about the TV series. Thanks.

1000%

Somebody already did, i think it was WTB...

I would link to it, but I am iPad impaired at the moment.

I enjoyed reading LOTR, and I don't really like high fantasy as a general rule.

Very few people were, of course. But feel free to get a mod to split the interesting stuff out into another thread.

Mr Chris is....



...wait for it...


Entirely correct. LOTR is a big pile of flowery horse manure.*waits for the universe to implode*

Don't worry, it's probably just a one off. Apparently you can give monkeys typewriters & eventually they'll write LOTR or something, they'd probably do a better job as well.

Is slagging off LOTR the new yo-yo?

for the record, I like Lord of the Rings.

Now, about Game of gnomes. Have I misunderstood, or is
Also, I fancy the blonde chick who's married the mentalist. That is all.

Oh, no it's not all.

Oh also, what is the guy who plays the man in the Kings court who owns the whorehouse been in before?

Eastenders, wasn't he?

Grrr, I want to carry on watching this, but so does Mrs T. She wants to wait till the series is over so we can take a run up...

The Wire. He was the politician type in S3/4/5. And you're not wrong:

Yep, that's what I know him from. Thanks.
I hate that wee prince. Their whole family are pretty annoying, except for the Imp, who's awesome.

Peter Dinklage is an awesome actor. If you haven't seen it, seek out The Station Agent.

I'm enjoying this more than I expected to. Peter Dinklage, Ned Stark's youngest daughter and Sean Bean doing his Sean Bean Schtick are all massively entertaining.

It's a long way from being perfect, though. OH MY GOD SO MUCH EXPOSITION. Fairly irritated by the continuing shorthand of someone being fat as an indicator of weak moral character as well, but this show's hardly alone in that.

Is the only case where that could be true not the king though? I woud say there are plenty of characters with weak moral character in the show and the two that spring straight to the top of my head aren't fat.

I also find the aforementioned politician bloke from the Wire (Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish), woman-who-married-pseudo-Genghis-Khan (Dany Targaryen), and disgraced-westerner-played-by-bloke-from-Doctor-Who (Ser Jorah Mormont) great to watch too, and with intriguing histories and interesting arcs ahead of them. There's stories I'm less into, like the whole Wall guardians story (why the hell don't they wear hats, by the way?), but overall I'm really enjoying it.

Oh, and the doddery old bloke on the King's Council is interesting too. I'm sure he knows more than he's letting on.

Great credits sequence too.

The three fat characters in the series I can think of are the king, the spymaster and the guy they've just introduced in episode 4 who really is the ne plus ultra of the trope. But yeah, it's probably fair comment that there are more dodgy people in this series than most.

The three fat characters in the series I can think of are the king, the spymaster and the guy they've just introduced in episode 4 who really is the ne plus ultra of the trope. But yeah, it's probably fair comment that there are more dodgy people in this series than most.[/quoteI've not seen last nights episode yet, I forgot there had been one on! I'll look forward to watching that tonight
I'm enjoying the wall story, if only because overtime someone says winter is coming, Jen gets all freaked out and mutters along with them, before turning to me Ames rating she can't wait for winter looking forward to seeing the scary bastards.

It's ok I have watched a few episodes, i'll stick with it for a while.

Really quickly, because it's off topic, but the LOTR books are rubbish.

Carry on!

A glorious film.

P.S. I have nothing to say about Game of wotsit since I've never seen it, but just had to post to big up The Station Agent.

Just watched to E5, its a good show.

Not sure why HBO feel the need to have tits and arse in almost every episode though.

Maybe thats why its a premium channel

I'm still really enjoying this.

Episode 7: The Game Is On! I can see things getting very messy now, even messier than before.

Incidentally I noticed on Wiki that screenplay for episode 8 has been written by the author of the books, the only episode of the 10. Perhaps because he's the only one that can handle the incoming shitstorm.

Certainly in the excessive nudity stakes!

Interested now.

Unless you mean Sean's Bean.

Still really enjoying it.

As an avid reader of the first three books (didn't read the 4th as I couldn't be arsed to wait 7 years for it), I must watch this.

Stupid Virgin not carrying Sky Atlantic.

Queer as folk is where I know him from.

ALSO: This is pretty great. I've been wanting to read the books for ages now, they're on THE LIST. The series is meant to be very close to the books, with GRRM even writing 1 episode a season. So maybe I won't have to bother? But I downloaded the whole thing over the weekend and watched them with the GF. Annoyingly, I must have downloaded Ep7 an hour after it was put up for downloading, or something, so now I have to wait a week. I CANNOT WAIT. I must know what happens to the gammy legged Seen-been.


On-topic-off-topicness: Brandon Sanderson, author of best books ever and something to do with the wheel of time but I haven't read that so I don't care, once wrote an article on his site about 'HATING' Tolkein.

GRRM has written the next episode I believe

Yup. It's got a number of annoying flaws but I'm having such a generally good time that I can forgive it with not much more than a reproachful "REALLY, Game Of Thrones?" in the moment. The last two episodes have both been dynamite, to the point that I barely noticed that neither of my two favourite characters had appeared in Episode 7.

In the sixth episode, did anyone else spot that

I certainly didn't. My wife, on the other hand...

The imp is by far my favorite character

Sublime: http://arrestedwesteros.tumblr.com/

(spoilers)

He's my favourite character in the books.

I still haven't bloody watched this. I assume I'll be waiting for the DVD boxset

I like it, but I do think there is starting to be too much nakedness....Also, it's a bit sick and pervy. I find it uncomfortable viewing, at times.

It's based on a set of fantasy novels. Fantasy novels tend, by and large, to be sick and pervy. GoT in particular has a lot of sex and unpleasantness in it. Sometimes not even at the same time.

Also "too much" nakedness? I don't recognise this as a concept.

The faux-lesbian scene in this weeks episode was well past the line of good taste and into "for the sake of it" territory, IMO.

Who and who? I don't recall any faux lesbianism until book 3 or 4.

The scene was:


(this is a very minor spoiler, with no significant plot details)

Ah, I see.

Well, I tend to agree with you then. Why would they even be doing that?