Game of Thrones “The Door” Review: Hodor

The Children of the Forrest on Game of Thrones

Photo Credit: HBO 

A bunch of thoughts on “The Door” right after I look after I make you a new fir coat…

“Hodor”

-Hodor

RIP Hodor/Wyllis.

Never in a thousand years did I think I would be near tears watching the death of Hodor, yet here I sit utterly devastated. Sure Hodor was a beloved character but more for a much needed of internet driven humour than anything else. I did enjoy me some Hodor jokes but never saw him as a character to really take as a player who would occupy any sort of big emotional portion of the show.

Boy how wrong I was. The death and tragic origin story of Hodor/Wyllis was one of the best scenes that Game of Thrones has ever done. It was the most tragic example of civilian casualty we have ever seen take place on the show. One of the things that fantasy stories tend to ignore when telling their epic stories are the little guys. We always get the stories of the giant overarching battles for kingdoms and empires but never get to a peek into the existences of every day people whose lives could be ruined by the epic battles that occur. Hodor is the biggest innocent casualty we have ever seen on Game of Thrones to date, a man who had everything taken from him because of “the greater cause.” It was pretty clear from the moment we saw part of Hodor’s backstory that we were ultimately going to get to the reason he lost the ability to say anything other than Hodor and turns out it was more tragic than anyone could have imagined. Turns out that Hodor did not just meet his end from holding the door so that Bran could escape the white walkers but it is through Bran’s magic link to the past that Hodor initially looses almost all forms of speech as well. Turns out that Bran’s powers can actually have an effect on the past in devastating fashion as we see poor Wyllis become overwhelming by the screaming in the present only to have a seizure and be left with the ability to say a mumbled version of “hold the door” i.e. Hodor. Hodor was just a simple stable boy looking to have a great life in Winterfell, but because he was dragged into this mess he found himself voiceless and eventually dead.

The final sequence of “The Door” was yet another fantastic example of the grand cinematic gestures that Game of Thrones does so well. The arrival of the White Walkers and their zombie army was terrifying, and the action that followed was gut wrenching. The death of Hodor that climaxed the sequence was so perfectly handled, a perfect example of how well Game of Thrones can mine a massive amount of emotion out of a side character in a single grand gesture. As I mentioned at the top the tears were nearly flowing as Hodor was tragically stabbed to death as the tragic score swelled in the background. I did not expect any big final scene this season to top Dany emerging from the fire last week, but the tragic death of Hodor may have done the trick.

The rest of “The Door” was just a breezy episode of Game of Thrones that advanced multiple plot points nicely. I am still really enjoying this newfound alliance between Sansa and Jon as they continue to plot taking over the north this week. After largely being a secondary player in her own torture last season it seems that Sansa is taking her fortune back into her own hands in a most satisfying manner. Her conversation with Littlefinger was both painful and empowering as Sansa seems to no longer be a prisoner to the pain of her captor. Sansa may have lived through a lot of hell with Ramsey, but she is now in full control and is not giving it up anytime soon.

We got some bits and pieces from afar as well. Tyrion employing the help of the priestess of the Lord of Light is an interesting development in the continued building of support for Dany. It also gave us a nice little tidbit of Varys’ past giving us more of a sense of what makes him tick. We also got a continued look at the battle for leadership on the Iron Islands. Yarra and Theon don’t end up winning the battle for leadership but they seem to have won the war as they get their revenge by stealing most of the fleet to end their end of the episode.

At the end of the day though “The Door” will be remembered for its final scene and the tragic end of Hodor. It has been nice knowing you Hodor you shall be missed.

Some other musings:

• I still don’t know exactly what they are doing with Arya. This week she has to kill an older actress and witness the death of her father in play form yet again. I am enjoying the individual moments of Arya’s plot line well enough but I hope we are headed towards some kind of conclusion sometime soon.

• This was the first episode in a while with no Kingslanding and no Ramsey. With the show continuing to feature so many characters I hope that the show continues to pair down the amount of characters in each episode in order to give each character a larger amount of focus per episode.

That’s it for this week. I need to go and recover now…

That’s just me though. What did everyone else think?

Game of Thrones “Book of the Stranger” Review: How to make friends and influence people

My newest network pitch: A Jorah and Daario buddy cop show!

Photo credit: HBO 

Some quick thoughts on Sunday’s superb episode of Game of Thrones right after I spend many years perfecting my ail…

“Many will die no matter what we do… Better them than us.”

-Olenna

Well that’s one way to get a whole colony of people to bow at your feet.

After spending what has felt like decades being stuck in Meereen and subsequently in the Dothraki colony we finally get some much needed Dany plot progression. Both George RR Martin and his adapting contemporaries Weiss and Bennioff have taken way too much time letting Dany toil away in nowhere land essentially taking the audience looking for any sort of payoff hostage. It’s been one of the most frustrating aspects of the show’s run, Dany is one of the most interesting characters that the world of Westeros has to offer and having her waisting away in places that are not allowing her to be in contention to the iron throne has been one of the show's weaker points.

As such the sigh of relief I uttered when Dany managed to lite all the Khals straight to Game of Thrones hell could have been heard from miles away. Beyond just the necessary shock it provided Dany’s sizable leg of the show, on its own the scene was just fantastic. It was yet another one of those grand filmmaking gestures that Game of Thrones does so magnificently. Another perfect mix of great visuals and big storyline exclamation points. It is impossible to not feel satisfied watching thousands of people bow to Dany finally allowing her story to actually progress.

Better yet is that Tyrion seems to be doing a mighty fine job of tying up her loose ends in Meereen. Tyrion the diplomat was in full display in “Book of the Stranger” as we get to see him actually able to manage a comprimise with the masters of Meereen.  Tyrion’s negotiating not only provide more scenery for the great Peter Dinklage to chew but it also suggests that this show will not be sticking around the great pyramids of Meereen which is a huge relief. Dany should ultimately prove her leadership skills outside of a city in the Free World and the show wrapping up its loose ends in Meereen while at the same time proving just how great an advisor Tyrion can be is a fantastic way to push us onwards.

Dany’s leg of the story was not the only one to receive a much needed move forward though, as we finally got to see Sansa and John Snow be reunited for the first time in six whole seasons. It turns out that Jon’s revival was entirely used an excuse to get him off of the wall, and to be honest I am not too opposed to that. Is it a little bit cheap as a storytelling device? Sure, but the way that we got to see Jon’s disenfranchisement with the events of the wall last week and the satisfaction to be getting closer to giving our buddy Ramsey Snow his just deserts quelled most of my complaints. It will be interesting to see how the show will handle the story on the wall, an arc that remains extremely important, when it lacks its central character. Quite the balancing act is going to be required to keep the audience engaged in the wall while Jon Snow is off being the supreme conqueror of the North and I’m curious how the show will make it work.

Jamie and Cersci’s revenge tour also got rolling this week. After briefly stalling last week due to a lack of support, Jamie and Cersci managed to use so mutual High Sparrow hatred in order to patch up things with the Tyrells. I’ve been really enjoying the slow burn of the Lannisters vs the High Sparrow and it seems to be heading towards its climax at the perfect pace. I’m getting ready to move on from the same old tyrannical reign of the High Sparrow (who continues to walk the line of being right yet completely hateable very well) and the new found alliance between the Tyrells and the Lannisters seems like a good place to begin the arc's finale.

“Book of the Strangers” provided some much needed juice to the sixth season of Game of Thrones. We finally got a move on story arcs that have been static for way too long and got the continuation of parts of the show that have only become more intriguing. On top of it all it gave us some great movements of filmmaking grandeur chief of much involved a lot of fire and whole city of people bowing. After the questionable death and sudden revival of Jon Snow and an overabundance of sprawl at the beginning of the season "Book of Stranger” has put Game of Thrones back on the path to greatness in a most satisfying manner.

Some other musings:

• Meanwhile in the Iron Islands Theon returns just in time to endorse his sister as leader. I’m not entirely sure where we are going with it yet but it definitely seems like it has a lot of potential.

• Ramsey continues to be evil in Winterfell. Big surprise. This included one hell of a letter to Jon and Sansa which does not feel very leader like at all.

•  With all the network cancellations this weekend can we get a season of the Jorah and Daario buddy cop show ordered? I’m setting my series recording now!

That’s all for me this week! Hopefully there will be more weeks where I can review the show night of!

That’s just me though. What did everyone else think?

Captain America: Civil War Review: Let’s be friends

 Captain America's team sprints into action in Captain America Civil War

I don’t want to be that guy, but I guess I’m going to have to be. In order for a Superhero film to work for me in 2016 it has to do something more than simply be there. Allow me to elaborate. There is a lot of pop entertainment that floats around in the either just waiting to be consumed. It comes in all forms whether and it is a constant bombardment. This creates an environment where it can be difficult to occupy any sort of brain space, something can capture interest for an instance only to be upended as quickly as a blink. It takes something more than just a piece of normal pop entertainment to remain in the consciousness long enough to make a true impression especially if it is a part of a field as overstocked as the superhero genre.

Let’s get this out of the way I liked Captain America: Civil War, it’s just nowhere near as good as it thinks it is nor does it live up to the ambition that is thrown onto screen. Civil War clearly wants to be something more than your average piece of pop entertainment, it tries to tickle with ideas of Greek tragedy, and post 9/11 imagery, but at the same time it has to be a film that appeals to enough people to make an astronomical amount of money. It’s a balance that can be achieved, but must be done so organically. Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight which remains the gold standard of the “superhero genre” is the perfect example. It’s a film that doesn’t feel like it is making compromises to tell its story while at the same time manages to play by at least some of the rules of the genre. Even Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a film that manages to fit its around the genre organically, creating a fun and tense mix of superhero and espionage that never feels like it’s being held back by having the popularity magnet of Marvel splashed on it.

The main issue with Civil War is that it does not tie all of its elements together organically and as such feels constrained by what it has to be. There are at least 4-5 different films worth of material that are crammed into its two and a half hour running time and none of those films are completely served. It leaves the film a little bit empty, characters are not developed in a way that feels whole and complete, the motivations that set the film off are flimsy at best and laughable at worst, and while the climax is impactful in the moment even seconds later the holes that allowed the film to get there make themselves readily apparent. The biggest example of this for me are the motivations of the two leads, Captain America (Chris Evans) and Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.). The reasons why either takes the side of the UN’s proposed restrictions are explained by single triggering events rather than character arcs. We never get to see Stark actually struggle with the consequences of the Avenger’s actions he just heads full long into the bill because of a confutation with a woman near an elevator. I know we had Iron Man 3 in which Tony does struggle with a bit of PTSD but the filmmaking language of Civil War chalks up his action to this single confrontation instead of using the character development in the previous film to explain his motivations. The same applies to Cap who never really has his beliefs reinforced save for one line from another character midway through the film. I would not have all that much of a problem with this if the film tries to tie each of these events as a part of character arc progressions but the filmmaking language of Civil War seems to treat the initial incidents as full stops instead of pieces of the puzzle. These full stops leave holes within the fabric of the storytelling, and lessening their impact in the long run.

This lessening of impact is especially felt as the film reaches its major climax. I will not go into spoilers, but the final conflict that ultimately drives the climax of the film is very well done in the moment but feels more and more empty when analyzed alongside the rest of the film. The storylines that gets us to the final moments of the film are muddied because of how busy the film is and none of the character arcs are fully defined. It makes for a very intriguing scene in the moment but one that fails to be as impactful as it wants to be. The pieces that should allow the climax to be as impactful as they could be are either missing or are completely underserved leaving emptiness as the impression that the film ultimately leaves behind.

I did have a lot of fun in Civil War, but even so all of the film’s poppier moments feel a little bit underserved. There is only one real fun and creative action sequence in the film, and while that one sequence is really great it feels like there could have been so much more. It also feels like I never quite get enough time to hang out of with these characters. This is a good thing in one since, my longing to hang out with these characters means that the Marvel crew has done a good job of making them likable. At the same time, it means that each of the characters are being undersold. I want my hour long episode tracking some of the early Spiderman adventures climaxing with him getting the call, or a fun establishment of Black Panther, or the episode where we get too old for this crap Hawkeye. It’s not even that I want stand alone films for these character but I want them to be more developed within this interesting overarching storyline. When all these arcs are as shallow as they it really lessens my interest in the overall plot of the film even if I am having fun watching the proceedings.

Captain America: Civil War is a fun film but one that never does anything well enough to leave a lasting impression. The film fails to have the focus that made its predecessor as good as it was, and doesn’t have the depth to reach as far as the Nolan Batman films. It leaves an experience that only feels like it goes halfway on all of its fronts. Ultimately emptiness is the primary feeling that Civil War leaves and sadly it will be yet another Superhero film that does not occupies my interest for too long.

Grade: B-

-Frederick Cholowski