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FuriousxGeorge posted:I liked the character. He was a competent, entertaining, uniquely weird villain. He was ruling successfully only because he was holding the Mongols back over and over. Even so, everybody wanted to get rid of him but dumb luck hosed it up. That being said, I think the parts of the show that work are when the plot gets up to speed, or the episode ties around a singular event (not counting the Song court scenes, which make it feel like Daenerys territory most of the time - disconnected), and the fight scenes - both the raw kind and the batshit crazy wuxia gong fu stuff - but it absolutely falls flat on most of the characterization side for almost everyone, or when the plot meanders - and it does this a lot. Pretty much the only good ones were also the ones with great performances to make up for the deficiency, probably.
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Dec 18, 2014 04:26
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 03:41 |
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Even if I didn't have a problem with his performance, his characterization at times is really terrible. Or the writing comes along as not trying hard enough or being unclear. Examples include: -his father abandoning him, which has no gravity to the viewer, because at the start I don't know the relationship between his father and Marco. They should've put the quick 3 years of flashbacks - which were pretty bad I might add - before he dumped his son off at court, because at least then it would've effective. -his weird fondness for Kokachin, which is never really explained except I guess he's thinking with his dick, and it doesn't jive with your assessment that he should remain guarded and careful, considering he's pretty much trying to stick his dick in her because he can. You'll have to elucidate to me what else motivated Marco there exactly. He has his moments, most of them with Kublai, then second probably Byamba, and Hundred Eyes on occasion; Khutulun pretty much carried him when they shared their scenes. Everyone else paired off with him was kinda flat performance-wise, but at least with those characters the writing is there.
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Dec 18, 2014 07:44
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Lycus posted:It's a love at first sight thing. That's just thing that they like to do in movies and shows, there's no realistic motivations there.
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Dec 18, 2014 08:28
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Goofballs posted:In the first game of thrones book Tyrion is amazing gymnast who backflips over John Snow or something to show he's really bad rear end despite being midget. Mercifully that aspect of the character got dropped really fast. Can' help but feel it would have made a lot more sense to do that with king fu chancellor. But he's dead. Of course having a low fat chinese Bronn knock off hanging around might have been a bit lazy too. It's weird because they clearly move away from Marco constantly and focus on other characters but they really don't give the other main characters stuff to work with other than to mechanically advance whatever plot they're involved in. For starters Marco's flashbacks right after his father gave him up were really weak, not only on the fact they just jumped 3 years in like 3 separate scenes one after another (Venice to Taklamakan, etc.). And if the point was that Marco's father is a lovely father and they want to build up to him abandoning his son again, it would've made more sense to show he was 'trying' to make up for it before the show showing him throwing his son under the bus. There was no real emotional weight to that scene because for some people they only have that 'oh it's his father' connection and not the baggage associated with their relationship to give more weight to the action and the scene. It sort of made up for it with the branding scene and the episode where Marco is off trying to find the old man while thinking of how to deal with his father and uncle, but they never really delve too far into it. Sidao's felt wasted because he still felt like he was mostly an unsympathetic person right up until the end, even with that flashback of him and his sister at a young age offering some nuance. It was interesting to see him be at the other end of the power dynamic, but you just kinda have to take the word of him and other people that he turned the tables around and basically became some unkillable preying mantis Kung Fu master with Machiavellian-level court scheming somehow. Considering I think the episode was also based around Mei Lin's capture and his reaction to it (or lack of knowledge as to how his assassination attempt and sister's fate) it was really weak to just leave it there hanging when it could've been explored some more. Kokochin also bothered me because there were a few things they could've used the flashback to inform. Nice twist that she isn't actually royalty but there could've been some extra scenes like how she meets her first eunuch guard and more about her and I guess the other servant dude who escaped with her and she keeps handing her jewelery over to. I feel like there was some kind of connection between them that eventually grew out of their circumstance, and it would've been more interesting to contrast the growth of that relationship (love out of dependence or shared circumstance, etc.) to her ultimately having to kill him as she finally accepts her role and continuance in keeping up her facade of being the Blue Princess. I guess it's all really implied but I feel like they missed some opportunities there with the flashbacks that all felt short to me. I'm personally a fan of them as a storytelling technique, so maybe that's just me, but the show really kept trying to ride the fence of trying to get us invested in characters that they didn't really want to really flesh out, offering only scraps to keep us going, but never really anything big or revelatory. I suppose maybe the show isn't too concerned with the character's pasts, which is a valid thing to do, but then they really should have doubled down on the characters and how they developed in the present a little harder.
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Dec 19, 2014 19:24
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Let's not forget the white guy is the one to take away the virginity of two women just like that. White meat and all that.
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Dec 20, 2014 02:37
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Dan Carlin's Hardcore History has a 5-parter, mostly focused on Genghis (Chingis) Khan as well.
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Dec 21, 2014 00:19
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Josh Lyman posted:On Rotten Tomatoes, critics ate 27% positive while users are 92%. The crazy whiplash between dirty raw fighting and the crazy kung fu stunts I think is part of wuxia, which most people unfamiliar with it might see it as off-putting. The nudity is just there to me honestly, sometimes it's overdone like hell but I get why it's there, but it only exists for tone and it's usually an easy thing to knock because it ticks boxes for cable shows, especially when HBO pretty much requires female nudity to be there. The characters are just poorly written for the most part and the plotting is pretty schizophrenic, maybe the critics didn't take to that? I know I didn't. Echo Chamber posted:Well I did what I could and gave the show a modest recommendation to my Facebook friends.
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Dec 21, 2014 09:27
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Pretty sure when Marco and Byamba were talking to Yusuf, he was in fact actually completely honest about everything. He did want out though, so he offered himself in exchange for Marco.
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Dec 22, 2014 08:36
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Rocksicles posted:Are we convinced Khutulun has sex with Marco or just dry humped the gently caress out of him because she is a horny bitch.?
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Dec 23, 2014 06:29
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Vorgen posted:I'm also really upset that this TV show about another time and another place doesn't support my particular brand of sociopolitical dogma. Because as we all know, Genghis Khan was a huge supporter of my particular brand of sociopolitical dogma. Furthermore, not using a historical drama about him as a mouthpiece to further my sociopolitical agenda is a travesty, I tell you, a TRAVESTY! And I will not stand for it. Instead I will let this minor quibble get in the way of liking Asian boobies and kung fu.
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Dec 23, 2014 22:25
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There's a vast difference between Chinese and Japanese rice though.
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Dec 26, 2014 05:11
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"Common sense" dictates that you don't need to really entice women to watch scripted television, it's men that you need to worry about, hence the fact that most cable shows have a disproportionate amount of female frontal nudity over male frontal nudity.
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Dec 28, 2014 19:40
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Dalael posted:I don,t think Marco Polo is as bad as people say, in all seriousness. People say it has bad writing, and it kinda does.. But I have seen so many shows that were worst and received good reviews.
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Dec 30, 2014 02:12
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 03:41 |
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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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