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Echo Chamber posted:The show at least has the excuse of nominally being about a historical Italian. I think there's also the excuse that the show is about playing with the contrast between a grounded perspective on an unfamiliar culture and the appeal of the "exotic orient" that's natural to adapting the story of Marco Polo. BCBUDDHA posted:But my 2014 mind just can't wrap my head around it. Going to assume, for my peace of mind, that this is a troll.
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Dec 19, 2014 01:45
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Sir Kodiak posted:I think there's also the excuse that the show is about playing with the contrast between a grounded perspective on an unfamiliar culture and the appeal of the "exotic orient" that's natural to adapting the story of Marco Polo. I'm giving Marco Polo a pass because he's clearly famous and it's entirely possible his story alone was originally the hook of the show before his character got upstaged by Kublai Khan, Chabi, and Sidao.
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Dec 19, 2014 01:59
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Echo Chamber posted:I wouldn't go that far. A good storyteller should be able to make any story compelling, without having a white dude play the audience surrogate. A grounded perspective from an Asian character also shouldn't be hard. I don't want more stuff like The Last Samurai or The Flowers of War. I'm willing to view some of the more outrageous elements, like the incredibly-adept blind kung fu monk, as a way of communicating how strange Marco Polo would view these things given that there was no popular representation of them prior to his accounts. A POV character that grew up in that environment would call for a more naturalistic presentation. It makes sense to heighten things in order to convey Marco Polo's experience and using Marco Polo as the POV makes sense if they wanted (as I imagine they did) to heighten things. And, yes, it helps that he's a real and famous person.
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Dec 19, 2014 02:08
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I'm Asian American, and I would've accepted having an obligatory white guy focal point as an unfortunate cost of doing business if the actor was anything even approaching halfway decent. Sadly, he was not. I'm a little annoyed that the show has Khutulun throwing a wrestling match to Byamba, and not just because she's a far more interesting character than he is. The historical Khutulun not only died undefeated, on the one occasion where she was under pressure to throw a match with a particularly appealing suitor, she was unable to, and not only did she kick his rear end she utterly humiliated him.
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Dec 19, 2014 03:20
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Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:That would be pretty dope. Red Cliff is also on Netflix and it's pretty amusing. Red Cliff is loving awesome. Does Netflix have the full two movies or the heavily truncated American piece of poo poo?
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Dec 19, 2014 03:41
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One white guy. In a western production. Who loving cares. Koreans do western movies which inexplicably have a bunch of asian people in it. It's so the home audience - where they make most of their money - have characters to relate to. And it's totally fine if you're not some self-hating white-guilt ridden hipster trying to prove how edgy you are by constantly pointing out white privilege and how lovely white people are The real beauty of this series is getting more representation of the most underrepresented race of actors. And benedict wong is pretty drat amazing.
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Dec 19, 2014 07:19
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Stuporstar posted:Red Cliff is loving awesome. Does Netflix have the full two movies or the heavily truncated American piece of poo poo? The American one. But it's still great. The opening battle with Zhang Fei's facial expressions is one of the best things I've ever seen on film. e: poo poo sorry, didn't realize I put sig on. Iseeyouseemeseeyou fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Dec 20, 2014 |
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Dec 19, 2014 07:33
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So from a few pages back there were some posts about how it was weird the Italian actor for Marco Polo had to learn English for the show, whereas the asian actors were from all over the world and speaking English with different accents. In some ways I think that may have been a conscious choice on the casting director's part. I grew up on Chinese historical court dramas (cheesiness factor is huge) so for me watching the Song dynasty court drama was hard to get through since they were all speaking English. I get that using English for an English audience is the obvious choice. So if English is the sub for whatever main language is going on in the two sides, then Marco Polo sucking at the language is to be expected. But yeah it doesn't forgive his poor acting.
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Dec 19, 2014 16:28
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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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If they'd tried to cover all of that they would have had to drastically slow the pace of the plot, which I think would be a net negative. It's impossible to cover everything, so they focused on the elements that affect Polo. You're correctly identifying that there's a number of characters we don't have an emotional investment in, but that really stems from how little we get about how these things are affecting Polo. The problems are with how broadly brushed a character he is, and how poorly acted, not the amount of information we have about secondary characters.
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Dec 19, 2014 20:29
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Mars4523 posted:I'm Asian American, and I would've accepted having an obligatory white guy focal point as an unfortunate cost of doing business if the actor was anything even approaching halfway decent. Sadly, he was not. I'm black, and I'm VERY tired of obligatory white guy focal points but I also would have been willing to accept it if Lorenzo Richelmy weren't so totally devoid of charisma and the character of Marco weren't so boring. The whole Kokachin crush subplot was also really tiresome (I'm tired of obligatory romance too). quote:I'm a little annoyed that the show has Khutulun throwing a wrestling match to Byamba, and not just because she's a far more interesting character than he is. The historical Khutulun not only died undefeated, on the one occasion where she was under pressure to throw a match with a particularly appealing suitor, she was unable to, and not only did she kick his rear end she utterly humiliated him. The series does Khutulun a huge disservice in a couple of ways. One is the way you described, the other is the casting. Claudia Kim is stick-thin and conventionally cute, two of the last traits I would expect a badass warrior to have, and she's not a good enough actress to seem imposing/fearsome on any level. Also, the scene where she mounts Marco is really stupid and makes it difficult to take her seriously later on.
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Dec 19, 2014 21:18
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YeahTubaMike posted:Also, the scene where she mounts Marco is really stupid and makes it difficult to take her seriously later on. This. I was positive she was allying with, then using Byamba as a ploy to protect Polo as setup for a stupid love triangle - but nope, just wanted to taste some white meat I guess. Ignoring that as a strong leader of the western horde who supposedly gained 10,000 horses with her wrestling matches, she would have had lots of experience with westerners, probably even off-screen bringing Slav craftsmen, hired German miners, etc. as tribute and human trade goods.
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Dec 20, 2014 02:19
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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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Sober posted: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. Judging by the way Khutulun was behaving, I seriously doubt she was a virgin when she mounted Marco.
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Dec 20, 2014 02:40
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enraged_camel posted:Judging by the way Khutulun was behaving, I seriously doubt she was a virgin when she mounted Marco. Being a peasant girl with a long term, shall we say, dedicated boyfriend, it shouldn't be a forgone conclusion that Kokochin was a virgin either.
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Dec 20, 2014 02:59
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The pigeon egg test is flawless.
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Dec 20, 2014 03:01
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being white owns. i'll be walking down the casbah and bam! half a dozen muslin chicks start begging me to save them from their virginity.
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Dec 20, 2014 03:44
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Sober posted: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 04:03
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Subcomputer posted:This. I was positive she was allying with, then using Byamba as a ploy to protect Polo as setup for a stupid love triangle - but nope, just wanted to taste some white meat I guess. I'm cynical enough that I just immediately (correctly) assumed that was a "hey audience, you're supposed to think Marco is sexy too!" scene. quote:Ignoring that as a strong leader of the western horde who supposedly gained 10,000 horses with her wrestling matches, she would have had lots of experience with westerners, probably even off-screen bringing Slav craftsmen, hired German miners, etc. as tribute and human trade goods. Exactly. There was nothing interesting about Marco that she knew about aside from his foreignness, and she wouldn't have any reason to be particularly captivated by that. That scene just made her look like a dumb horny teenager. Also, Byamba is objectively like a hundred million times hotter than Marco, so her choice is that much more nonsensical. Seriously, where has Uli Latukefu been all my life? 
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Dec 20, 2014 07:24
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YeahTubaMike posted:I'm cynical enough that I just immediately (correctly) assumed that was a "hey audience, you're supposed to think Marco is sexy too!" scene. Except for the fact that Marco Polo was unlike any other white guy who had visited those lands before. He was fluent in many languages, had seen an obscene number of far-off lands, was a gifted storyteller, and possessed many other skills that made him a person of interest to Kublai Khan himself. Seriously, the guy was the modern-day equivalent of a super-celebrity, and everyone had heard of him. So of course chicks wanted to bang him. quote:Also, Byamba is objectively like a hundred million times hotter than Marco, so her choice is that much more nonsensical. Seriously, where has Uli Latukefu been all my life? Byamba also looks like every other guy in the village, and he's not even the best wrestler. Marco, on the other hand, is exotic, and his worth isn't measured by his wrestling prowess since he's an outsider.
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Dec 20, 2014 07:38
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For what it's worth, Marco should be terrible at English because it's not supposed to be English. The other characters should be speaking a mix of Mongol, Chinese, Tibetan, Turkic, and Iranian languages with countless dialects and Marco should be having an hard time keeping up.
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Dec 20, 2014 07:47
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enraged_camel posted:Judging by the way Khutulun was behaving, I seriously doubt she was a virgin when she mounted Marco. Khutulun's enemies alleged that she and her father had an incestuous relationship and that this explained her resolve not to marry. In order to protect him from these rumors, Khutulun decided to marry one of her father’s followers, without wrestling him.
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Dec 20, 2014 07:59
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enraged_camel posted:Except for the fact that Marco Polo was unlike any other white guy who had visited those lands before. He was fluent in many languages, had seen an obscene number of far-off lands, was a gifted storyteller, and possessed many other skills that made him a person of interest to Kublai Khan himself. While that might be actually true, the show does a really bad job of showing it. quote:Byamba also looks like every other guy in the village, and he's not even the best wrestler. I feel like maybe they could have added like 45 seconds more flirtation between them to flesh this out. She literally jumps his bones, seemingly out of nowhere.
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Dec 20, 2014 08:46
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Just caught up with this show because I thought it was going to be similar to Spartacus. Not impressed, but not upset either. Two episodes left and I look forward to both. Sidao is annoying, but he's supposed to be. His best scenes are when he fights Hundred Eyes or comments on fighting Hundred Eyes. My only problem with the foot-binding is that anyone would find it offensive considering that the majority of the women in the court were probably bound. Khublai Khan owns, don't think I need to say that though, everyone already knows it. Marco Polo's crap English makes sense if you assume that no one is actually speaking English. Sex scenes were a little boring, but like I said, I heard it was similar to Spartacus so my expectations might have been too high.YeahTubaMike posted:
I chalk this up to her being a lusty steppe warrior and Marco being a piece of exotic strange. If their genders were flipped I doubt anyone would be questioning this scene. It's not like she has to pick Byamaba or Marco - she can have both if she wants and she's been raised in a culture where great warriors have harems of dozens or even hundreds of lovers. This is one of those characters that I wish was more prominent in the show, but then I also wish they got an actress that could pull off the part of an undefeated wrestler a bit more convincingly. Is anyone really upset that Brienne of Tarth isn't ridiculously attractive in a show with a hundred other beautiful women?
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Dec 20, 2014 08:47
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YeahTubaMike posted:I feel like maybe they could have added like 45 seconds more flirtation between them to flesh this out. She literally jumps his bones, seemingly out of nowhere. Do people really have a problem with this? She's supposed to be a strong, female warrior. She decided to sleep with a guy she found physically attractive. What more justification do you need?
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Dec 20, 2014 08:53
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Ithle01 posted:My only problem with the foot-binding is that anyone would find it offensive considering that the majority of the women in the court were probably bound. The offense was due to her age. They would normally be bound pretty much from day one. By doing it to a seven year old Sidao was obviously just torturing her, which drew the reactions.
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Dec 20, 2014 09:02
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Thanks to the folks who mentioned Vikings. I've been marathoning it for several hours now.
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Dec 20, 2014 09:45
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Azhais posted:The offense was due to her age. They would normally be bound pretty much from day one. By doing it to a seven year old Sidao was obviously just torturing her, which drew the reactions. I still don't get it. Have you never seen someone being tortured on TV?
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Dec 20, 2014 10:06
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FuriousxGeorge posted:Thanks to the folks who mentioned Vikings. I've been marathoning it for several hours now. I looked but it's not on Netflix. Are you watching it on iTunes?
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Dec 20, 2014 10:08
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enraged_camel posted:I looked but it's not on Netflix. Are you watching it on iTunes? Don't know if this is where they're watching it, but it's on Amazon Prime.
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Dec 20, 2014 10:10
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Yeah I signed up for the Prime trial to get some free shipping for last minute gifts.
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Dec 20, 2014 10:12
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qbert posted:Do people really have a problem with this? It just seemed really random and stupid, and I didn't buy the "omg white guy, must have  " thing. Then again, I don't buy Claudia Kim as a strong warrior either, so it's possible I'm just generally inclined to dislike the way Khutulun is depicted in general.
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Dec 20, 2014 16:52
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I kind of wanted to see some badass horse archery in that final siege since that is what they were pretty famous for. Overall a fun show that had some amazing performances and visually was a lot of fun to watch. The main character I felt was kind of weak with marco polo but other then that everyone else was pretty good. I don't really know a lot about this time period and would like to learn more. I'm curious if anyone has any decent audio books or podcasts to check out on this time period(mongol empire/steppe people in particular).
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Dec 20, 2014 19:47
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Ithle01 posted:\ This and as mentioned before the fact Marco is supposed to be a super sexy explorer of the world celebrity and intellectual poet, to the point where Kubai Khan was fascinated by him endlessly and had to have him in his court. While I think most the people in this thread don't think this way thankfully, it's weird as hell to hear the criticisms about having a nominal white protagonist in a series entirely made up of a diverse and mostly well written cast, many of whom get more screen time and one of whom outright takes over as the series actual protagonist by the second episode. Either white hipster self loathing, shame, and guilt really are self destructive or the fact the problem is a lot of people want to focus on that fact and not that the one of the first series to take an extremely brave move like this suffers from less than stellar writing. It's a good show and a brave one, but it could have been great and I wonder if that's the actual reason for the backlash. NutritiousSnack fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Dec 21, 2014 |
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Dec 20, 2014 21:57
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NutritiousSnack posted:This and as mentioned before the fact Marco is supposed to be a super sexy man explorer of the word celebrity and intellectual poet, to the point where Kubai Khan was fascinated by him endless and had to have him in his court. The reasons vary from person to person, to put it rather bluntly. To elaborate in some more detail though: I think the primary cause behind many people's disdain to even having Marco Polo be the main character, nevermind Richelmy's performance in relation to say, Benedict Wong's, or the strength of the character themselves, is that it seems like a compromise in the story. Ie, 'we're going to do a drama about the Mongolian Empire! ...except we're gonna do it in relation to this white guy'. This is particularly an issue for critics who have more of an eye towards a work's place within wider culture and what it does that's unique, so something like Marco Polo - big budget series from the seeming next generation of entertainment distribution - coming short of its potential in such a regard can be frustrating. They may even feel its insulting to the audience, because they take it to infer the creators think audiences are dumb enough that they can't possibly understand another culture except through 'their' own eyes. Add in the seemingly cliche and/or racist 'white guy becomes a master of a foreign culture's iconic arts' elements, and there's enough for a critic to stir up controversy over, especially since the notion of having top billing should make this character the most important, so random white guy merchant should be more important to the audience than the nominal ruler of the largest land empire in history. Yet personally, whilst I do think the show really would have been better serviced if it was built more specifically around Kublai and such, with Marco Polo an important side character, I do kinda feel that the above mindset doesn't quite fully apply. Or that at least, it would be harder to apply if the writing had made more prevalent (or obvious, though it is sometimes anyway) the fact that Marco Polo simply being 'white' wouldn't actually make him all that more relatable to the (nominally American WASP) audience by default. Its like saying that being African would make someone from Lesotho inherently relate to someone from Ethiopia, or Sierra Leone. Or that a Mongolian man and Chinese woman would be more familiar with each other's cultures because they're 'Asian'. Marco Polo is a 13th century Italian (and even then, only from a geographical sense), nominally Catholic, at a time where democracy is an oddity and slavery is an institution, yet even then, one different from what is to emerge in later centuries. Him being trained to be a master of various Mongol disciplines is to make him of better use to the Khan, and Ahmad tells him straight that its basically what every direct slave and servant of the Khan has to do, or else be tossed aside after the exotic fad wears off. So I suppose from my perspective, if Marco Polo is a generic white guy protag, then its less an inherent issue of the character, and more because of the series not having better writing.
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Dec 20, 2014 23:44
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Dr. Pancakes posted:I kind of wanted to see some badass horse archery in that final siege since that is what they were pretty famous for. Overall a fun show that had some amazing performances and visually was a lot of fun to watch. The main character I felt was kind of weak with marco polo but other then that everyone else was pretty good. I don't really know a lot about this time period and would like to learn more. I'm curious if anyone has any decent audio books or podcasts to check out on this time period(mongol empire/steppe people in particular). Jack Weatherford's two, "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World" and "The Secret History of the Mongol Queens", are fair starts and available in audio. From there it goes easily into more specialized stuff though, I've got J. J. Saunders "The History of the Mongol Conquests" on my next list. There's a fair amount of easy access stuff out there really, but if you want to get into actual say perceptions of steppe people, why only nomads were allowed to learn Mongol and settled peoples' specialists were traded like good breedstock to improve their human herds then a lot of material falls flat. If you want full on descriptions of how Kaidu is at this time involved in a series of wars between the Jochids and Hulagu's Ilkhanate, oppressing the Chagatai khanate etc that Kublai will eventually be pulled into you're stuck with "The Secret History of the Mongols" - which is an awesome read, but all the cheaper versions leave a bunch out because it is also a very big read.
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Dec 20, 2014 23:59
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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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Oh yay a show that features foot binding.
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Dec 21, 2014 02:22
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enraged_camel posted:I still don't get it. Have you never seen someone being tortured on TV? Sure, but if you can't see how torturing a small child could put someone off a show, then you what you really don't get is other human beings.  Also, I'm up to episode 7, and yet again, their failure to explain some poo poo before it happens has made me go WTF again. This time it's Hundred Eyes just walking away from a fight with Sidao after being ordered to assassinate him. I'm guessing the next episode will fill me in, but this show has a real loving problem with setting up the plot dominos in an order that doesn't make the characters look like loving morons who do things that seem, at the time, inexplicably stupid. Edit: and I suppose I should explain what I found so utterly stupid before someone chimes in with, "But you just don't get it! The assassination was just a ruse to make a map of the wall!" First off, that is what is so loving stupid: using a stealth mission to cover a stealth mission. Second, they send the white guy to stand around drawing the loving wall, and no one ever notices because plot reasons. Oh, was Hundred Eyes supposed to provide a distraction, while in a completely different part of town? These people don't seem to understand the concept of patrols, and how a the guards coming to Sidao's aid would not be the same guards who might catch Marco standing on a loving bell tower. Ok, so lets say Sidao knows Kublai Khan would send someone to draw the fake gap in the wall. This plan still doesn't make any loving sense from Kublai Khan's point of view. Is Marco the only person in the empire who can draw? Yeah, right. So the only reason to have Marco Polo on that mission is for plot reasons, because the writers need to find some excuse to have him thrown in jail because they otherwise can't come up with any other loving reason for him to tell the Khan about trebuches. Whenever something is overly convoluted, defies all common sense (like just sending a less conspicuous dude to map the wall), and is done only for plot reasons, that is bad writing. Also, the only reason to stage a fake assassination attempt is to fool the audience. Also bad writing. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 08:23 on Dec 21, 2014 |
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Dec 21, 2014 04:12
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enraged_camel posted:I still don't get it. Have you never seen someone being tortured on TV? I apparently misread the whole thing, I thought he was complaining about why the people in the show were appalled when binding was a thing.
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Dec 21, 2014 04:14
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