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Ithle01 posted:Spartacus writing may have been bad, but it was bad in a way that made it, on many occasionas, amazing and it was always aware of how melodramatic and completely ridiculous everything was. Marco Polo, not so much, I'm not saying it took itself seriously (wall painting was great, I don't care what people say) but just that it didn't do what it could or should have done. That's my biggest complaint here, the show could have better and had a lot of opportunities to do so, but choose not to. Dammit, all this talking up of Spartacus as this amazingly ludicrous show makes me bummed that I literally can't watch it because the camera work triggers my migraines that last for days. 
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Dec 30, 2014 06:59
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HA! that's funny because it might be true
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Dec 30, 2014 07:04
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I like this show. But, the people who made Game of Thrones made a show that comes off as more expensive even if it cost less. They are pretty much masters of making a lot out of a little. It's understandable when they don't show a battle, less so when you have tens of millions of extra dollars. The defeat in the trap at the wall would have had a lot more impact if it happened on screen.
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Dec 30, 2014 12:36
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Spartacus wasn't bad. Its first season and the prequel season were the best ones and the writing was so far above anything Marco Polo or most shows. Batiatus was like a vulgar evil poet. He could easily have been a top character in Justified or something like that if it made sense even a little. Also it gave us the MY COCK RAGES ON drinking song.
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Dec 30, 2014 14:33
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For a potential season 2, I can see two opposing directions they should take - either tighten up and focus on Marco, reallocating some of that money on writer management, or realize what they have with Benedict Wong etc. and the cheap Kazakh location, ending up with "The Khans feat. Marco Polo". Having books like "Qaidu and the Rise of the Independent Mongol State In Central Asia" on my shelf waiting in line until I get through other books may have given me a bias though. But seriously, who wouldn't love to see giant Mongol-on-Mongol battles like in Mongol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEIC0IYZSng As far as being historically accurate, there will always be spergs complaining, because no matter what you do someone will say "BUT IBN SHARMUTTA SAID..." but if you include ibn Sharmutta's account, someone else is going to complain "BUT JENDEHZADEH SAID..." If I remember right the Marco Polo book didn't even refer to Khutulun by her name but by a Turkish translation of her name, which shows how much of this was just rumors and legends of awesome people - in his works and in others people's.
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Dec 31, 2014 08:24
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I really want to see Mongol horse archers just do crazy shots like they were rumored to pull off. I want to see a guy ride his horse into the woods and think that he escaped the Mongols when suddenly he gets an arrow to the throat from an archer who shot the arrow through a gap in the branches at a full gallop.
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Dec 31, 2014 16:06
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Did you miss the part on the show where there was zero trees on the Steppe? Infact, if you have a minute. Check out Kazakhstan on google earth and find me 1 tree in the whole country. Rocksicles fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Dec 31, 2014 |
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Dec 31, 2014 16:53
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Rocksicles posted:Did you miss the part on the show where there was zero trees on the Steppe? There was that one tree where they hid the jewelry. 
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Dec 31, 2014 23:53
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Rocksicles posted:Did you miss the part on the show where there was zero trees on the Steppe? To be fair, they're invading east asia anyway, which has a lot more trees. I still want the Mongolian invasion of Japan though.
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Jan 1, 2015 00:55
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The North Tower posted:There was that one tree where they hid the jewelry. yeah i forgot about that one tree.... Challenge stand for finding two trees in the same area.
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Jan 1, 2015 02:08
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Rocksicles posted:Did you miss the part on the show where there was zero trees on the Steppe? I've watched 2.5 episodes, but I understand the steppe doesn't have trees. But I figured China wouldn't be as flat.
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Jan 1, 2015 04:50
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Subcomputer posted:But seriously, who wouldn't love to see giant Mongol-on-Mongol battles like in Mongol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEIC0IYZSng Mongol is a pretty good movie
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Jan 1, 2015 04:50
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Rocksicles posted:yeah i forgot about that one tree.... Challenge stand for finding two trees in the same area. Fun little bit of trivia. The Tree of Ténéré in Niger, was a solitary acacia, that was once considered the most isolated tree on Earth—the only one for over 400 kilometres (250 mi). It was a landmark on caravan routes through the Ténéré region of the Sahara Desert in northeast Niger, so well known that it and the Arbre Perdu or 'Lost Tree' to the north are the only trees to be shown on a map at a scale of 1:4,000,000. The Tree of Ténéré was located near a 40-metre (131 feet)-deep well. It was knocked down by a drunk truck driver in 1973. You got to be loving bad at driving, even drunk, to hit the only tree around for 250 miles.
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Jan 1, 2015 05:03
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Rocksicles posted:
https://goo.gl/maps/RCaxb
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Jan 2, 2015 04:58
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I think what happened is that people expected the show to be "Netflix's answer to Game of Thrones" because of the budget. It underwhelmed the early reviewers. Then it almost became trendy to one-up the previous reviewers by writing even more scathing reviews. I had low expectations going into this after reading the reviews but the show is actually pretty good. It's not in that top tier of television or anything, but a solid B. It really feels like a Starz show so if you like those, you'll probably like this. And if you have Netflix I don't know why you wouldn't at least give a few episodes a shot. The reviews of this show were way too harsh.
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Jan 4, 2015 11:53
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Just got done with the first season. Please rename the show "Kublai Khan and his little bitch Marco"
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Jan 5, 2015 21:17
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Niwrad posted:It underwhelmed the early reviewers. Then it almost became trendy to one-up the previous reviewers by writing even more scathing reviews. I'm convinced this is what happened. I put off watching this for a while on the basis of those reviews, and now I wonder what kind of expectations these reviewers actually had. "It's not as good as Game of Thrones" is honestly kind of an absurd metric. Marco Polo is adapting a factually-dubious historical account written 700 years ago. Game of Thrones is adapting a fantasy fiction series developed over the past 25 years by an award-winning author and screenwriter. Yes, one of these things is going to be a more focused and better-realized television narrative. I totally agree that Marco himself is kind of a boring character, and the story struggled to keep him relevant. And I also agree that the show's caught in a kind of schizophrenic tension between prestige drama and orientalist pulp. But it actually has a ton of extremely well-realized characters (all of whom nonwhite and half of whom female), and a number of really effective dramatic beats. Also, as if this hasn't been said enough: it's insanely beautiful. People talk about the aesthetics of the show as if they're some cute or irrelevant set dressing, but this show looks amazing. The locations, sets, lighting, costuming, makeup, and cinematography are all exceptional. Far better than Game of Thrones, I'd argue.
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Jan 5, 2015 22:50
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Well, if you have all that money, you better hope the show looks good. And it really does. I won't discount that. But the stories are kinda lame and half baked, or aimless most of the time. That is what I think the critics don't particularly like. Game of Thrones is entirely different beast because as it is an adaption of a novel, it veers between having a story and just soap opera levels of just character scenes of episodes, but even then, those all have plots that work on a basic level. One of the big problems when I started Marco Polo was that the stories were kinda all over the place, there wasn't much gravity in some of the big emotional beats they were going for, or just stuff that didn't seem to flat out pan out. The big one between episodes 1 and 2 were the tax collector stuff. It really didn't make any sense for it to be written where Kublai tells him about it in the first episode and you don't do anything until spending the second episode with him. That's really questionable writing at best, because you set it up and then you leave it for another episode, weekly broadcast or Netflix model be damned, that set off quite a red flag. Either make that the first story for Marco in the pilot or push it out to the second one. It would've probably been more interesting if it were written that accompanying the tax collector was part of his training/reporting back to Kublai what he sees - which is in fact what happens, but it's sorta toothless considering Marco is spending the first episode in a training montage and finally being told he can walk free, and then eventually "you can't touch these whores"? The story of Marco accompanying the tax collector, saw him embezzling stuff on the side, got him in trouble and that plot ended with him seeing the guy get trampled to death was at least servicable and probably a better start. Then he'd have that "oh poo poo" reaction to "well I thought this place wasn't as bad as I thought it was, but it is", which would hone the viewer in on making that relatable. It does get told, just to much less effect not simply because it was the pilot and you had to cram everything in (which is what I suspect was the issue but still), but because the payoff is really delayed for something else (the harem of women) which didn't really felt like it had to be there, or should've been put in elsewhere. There are plenty of other episodes that tell a story much better, like the hashishin one, or some of the others, but they're kinda few and far between. I also took issue with them using flashbacks to not really say much, felt pretty wasted considering they could've used it to mine better material from the other characters, instead of having more scenes of Jingham complaining about Marco Polo to someone an extra time.
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Jan 6, 2015 00:08
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The hashshashin storyline was probably my favorite storyline for Marco as a character because I actually got the impression that he was using his traveling merchant background for something useful. I liked that much better than "let me school you about siege engines".
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Jan 6, 2015 00:25
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Lycus posted:The hashshashin storyline was probably my favorite storyline for Marco as a character because I actually got the impression that he was using his traveling merchant background for something useful. I liked that much better than "let me school you about siege engines". It was also a good example of tits out of nowhere goodness.
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Jan 6, 2015 00:26
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Lycus posted:The hashshashin storyline was probably my favorite storyline for Marco as a character because I actually got the impression that he was using his traveling merchant background for something useful. I liked that much better than "let me school you about siege engines". I dunno what the problem people are having with the siege engine bit. He was just recalling that Alexander the Great had some huge gently caress-off siege engines built and that the Khan of Khans, Kublai Khan could definately have some of those fuckers too. Most of the work was done by the Damascan engineers anyway--you even see various middle eastern-looking extras milling around the trebuchets!
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Jan 6, 2015 00:28
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nutranurse posted:I dunno what the problem people are having with the siege engine bit. He was just recalling that Alexander the Great had some huge gently caress-off siege engines built and that the Khan of Khans, Kublai Khan could definately have some of those fuckers too. Most of the work was done by the Damascan engineers anyway--you even see various middle eastern-looking extras milling around the trebuchets! Because it would make a lot more sense if it was most anyone else's idea, since the Muslims had been using them much more recently than Alexander the Great. There's really no character reason to have Marco think of it other than wanting to write Marco as the hero. Lycus fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Jan 6, 2015 |
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Jan 6, 2015 00:36
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The Alexander story is a weak point and would have made much better sense as a crusader story, but leaving the catapult arc out would have annoyed a lot of people since it's one of Marco Polo's claims in the book - he tells them how to build the catapults, and ends the siege. Ignoring the small part that from what other things Marco Polo describes of court life he didn't get there until a few years after the siege ended (making him a liar man), it's within some realm of possibility that it could have worked like in the episode. The swinging counterweight trebuchet is an extremely Middle-Eastern/European weapon, but it was the Europeans who turned it into a monster with some versions firing ridiculous one ton rocks, others normal rocks at less than 30 second reloads. And yet, it apparently wasn't that hard for the Song to go from "HOLY gently caress" to "Hmm, we have something similar based on a swinging arm but it's a small device powered by jerking a rope down instead of dropping a weight which throws small bombs, just maybe..." Of course this ignores the complaints of people such as my otherwise normally educated friend who insists that the whole trebuchet idea is created by tv shows and would only swing the payload in a 180 arc, etc.
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Jan 6, 2015 01:34
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It also probably would've worked a lot better for me if he had pushed the trebuchets before the first battle, but was rebuffed for it being unnecessarily expensive, but then pushed it again to Yusuf with a renewed vigor after his arrest. I would've liked that a lot more than him suddenly remembering trebuchets exist while in jail.
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Jan 6, 2015 01:41
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The imperial siege engineer, who I'd assume is the best siege engineer around, just not getting it was the most annoying part. Oh sure, you're the best guy the Mongols have, but I'm a traveling merchant, so let me tell you a thing or two about building siege engines. It's too big? More counterweight will break the arm? Whatever, dude, I've got drawings and a vague idea of what Alexander did.
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Jan 6, 2015 12:44
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PostNouveau posted:The imperial siege engineer, who I'd assume is the best siege engineer around, just not getting it was the most annoying part. Oh sure, you're the best guy the Mongols have, but I'm a traveling merchant, so let me tell you a thing or two about building siege engines. It's too big? More counterweight will break the arm? Whatever, dude, I've got drawings and a vague idea of what Alexander did. At this point, I think you're just looking for reasons to hate this show. Technologies have been lost and rediscovered times and times again, and back in the days, it was often trial and error. In the show, it all makes sense. The guy's life is ridding on the fact that those Trebuchet will reach the walls. When it doesn't, who cares what the engineer says.. More loving counterweight. What was he supposed to do, admit defeat kneel on a log and wait for his head to be taken off?
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Jan 6, 2015 17:47
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Dalael posted:At this point, I think you're just looking for reasons to hate this show. In most cases this is the source of gooncomplaints about TV shows. GBS is honestly a better place to gently caress around and actually enjoy TV shows and TV show discussions. 
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Jan 6, 2015 18:54
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nutranurse posted:In most cases this is the source of gooncomplaints about TV shows. GBS is honestly a better place to gently caress around and actually enjoy TV shows and TV show discussions. The Spartacus thread is like the only good thread TV IV has ever had.
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Jan 6, 2015 19:28
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Dalael posted:At this point, I think you're just looking for reasons to hate this show. Technologies have been lost and rediscovered times and times again, and back in the days, it was often trial and error. In the show, it all makes sense. The guy's life is ridding on the fact that those Trebuchet will reach the walls. When it doesn't, who cares what the engineer says.. More loving counterweight. What was he supposed to do, admit defeat kneel on a log and wait for his head to be taken off? Nah, I like the show. I think if they embrace their crazy side more (more former hooker assassin and blind monk), it could get even better and turn into a really fun romp. I even liked Ahmed just all of a sudden having a tapestry of him killing Kublai, because this show getting more mustache-twirling villains is a step in the right direction. That part with Marco Polo just out-engineering a presumably really good engineer just bothered me is all.
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Jan 6, 2015 22:26
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Personally, I do rather want the show to get even crazier (in that dark, pseudo-history sorta way). Partly because I also imagine that the final scene (if they ever get far enough to have a proper finale) should be of Marco in a cell in Genoa, reciting his story to his cellmate. "So, did you get all that?" "...Sure."
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Jan 6, 2015 22:32
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Netflix's 'Marco Polo' Renewed for Second Seasonquote:Netflix opened the semi-annual Television Critics Association's winter press tour with a bit of breaking news: Period drama Marco Polo will be back for a second season. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/netflixs-marco-polo-renewed-second-761550 It seems to be popular with viewers and they don't have another show in this genre.
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Jan 7, 2015 20:00
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Looked up what Starz is. ...That explains a lot. Second series should be a lot better then, right?
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Jan 7, 2015 20:48
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Steve2911 posted:Looked up what Starz is. Well, I think there's a chance that the show Marco Polo will still have a white guy named Marco Polo in it, which sounds like a deal breaker for quite a few.
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Jan 7, 2015 23:01
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counterfeitsaint posted:Well, I think there's a chance that the show Marco Polo will still have a white guy named Marco Polo in it, which sounds like a deal breaker for quite a few. Who knows, perhaps they can have Richelmy improve his fluency and claim Marco has gotten better at Mongolian? I dunno. Hopefully the writers will have taken some of their experiences from season 1 to better polish season 2's story, whatever it proves to be.
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Jan 7, 2015 23:07
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Astro Nut posted:Personally, I do rather want the show to get even crazier (in that dark, pseudo-history sorta way). Let me tell you about that one time that Marco Polo as given 2 sisters (twins?) as concubines by the Khan. Since threesomes were too tiring he thaught them to please each other which eventually led them to rebel against Marco since they no longer needed him for sex. Luckily they died for their sins by getting blown the gently caress up along with Marcos house when he indadvertedly invented the cannonball. I swear, not a word of that is made up, that is a thing that happens in the book. 
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Jan 7, 2015 23:11
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Sunning posted:Netflix's 'Marco Polo' Renewed for Second Season I'm thrilled about this. The first season was only ok, but this show has the potential to be completely amazing. Nothing is as frustrating as a network getting gun shy and canceling a show prematurely. And honestly, imagine a plot where Kublai Khan's Mongols invade Japan, get decimated by a storm, and then fight samurai. That sounds *awesome* as goddamn hell. Though I suppose that may be a season 3 thing if they get one, since it's more about the limit to Kublai's ambition. And he has to conquer the Korean peninsula first, I think, but my knowledge of this period of history is poo poo.
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Jan 8, 2015 00:51
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Xoidanor posted:Let me tell you about that one time that Marco Polo as given 2 sisters (twins?) as concubines by the Khan. Since threesomes were too tiring he thaught them to please each other which eventually led them to rebel against Marco since they no longer needed him for sex. Luckily they died for their sins by getting blown the gently caress up along with Marcos house when he indadvertedly invented the cannonball. Count me in for Season 2!
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Jan 8, 2015 02:42
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My initial assumption was that the opening arc would be war against Kublai's cousin, but that might be too similar to the brother arc so maybe they'll gloss over that.
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Jan 8, 2015 02:52
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Democratic Pirate posted:I really want to see Mongol horse archers just do crazy shots like they were rumored to pull off. I want to see a guy ride his horse into the woods and think that he escaped the Mongols when suddenly he gets an arrow to the throat from an archer who shot the arrow through a gap in the branches at a full gallop. With the budget they have I wish they'd show a bit more of the battles too. Even Game of Thrones can do one big battle a season. Hope they drop some $$ on CGI at least and show some big overhead shots + more direct fighting strategies in season 2. Historically Mongols had unique tactics for the age with their horse archer harassment that pretty much annihilated any army they faced. Wish they'd show more of that vs. traditional armies of the time. They pretty much steamrolled everyone because no one knew what to do with massed horse archers. They were totally OP. Archery skill too - they should really show more of why Mongols were so feared and why they were able to control half the civilized world at the time. I'm guessing viewers who aren't history nerds just go "ugh so they wrestle with girls in camps and then they charged a wall on horses, what's the big deal with them". Rad Russian fucked around with this message at 06:10 on Jan 9, 2015 |
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Jan 9, 2015 05:58
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I have to admit it dug at me a bit every time the acted like a walled city was an insurmountable obstacle the Mongols had never overcome before. Also, Polo reinvents that trebuchet based on Alexander? Yeah, OK. Fun, if silly, but it did manage to reign itself from going full retard like Spartacus. Worth watching if you already have Netflix, I'd say.
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Jan 9, 2015 22:37
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