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I absolutely loved this show and am sad it's over. I'm glad I decided to start binging it when I did recently because I got to (mostly) catch up with all of you and just finished the finale. I liked this show so much more than Spartacus, which I binged before this. Everyone was great, but I thought particularly that Luke Roberts and Toby Stephens really really developed and grew into their roles, it was pretty amazing, and I'll miss Silver and Flint's friendship and just the whole relationship in general. The series finale was everything I wanted. The scenes between Silver and Flint in it (and episode 9) were tremendous. The final battle was satisfying to me. Especially Jack going after Rogers and then being joined by Flint, and Flint's fight with Billy. At first, I expected more of a lead-in to Treasure Island, but now that I've thought on it, it was pretty perfect. Yeah the Billy thing is confusing BUT there's no surety that he stays marooned there and that Ben Gunn doesn't get marooned there later. We should remember that a lot of time passes between where this ended and TI (which is why I almost expected a time jump in the finale at some point) and there's certain things that haven't happened yet. For example the map that Flint made that someone already brought up, the body that Flint leaves as a marker to the treasure, and the stockade that Flint and his men built and abandoned that all shows up in TI. As for Billy specifically, there's quite a many people who now know the location of that island, and those people know a treasure is buried there. And as we saw in that final scene with Jack, why wouldn't we expect at least one of those people to come looking and therefore rescue Billy so he can get his rear end to England later and start drinking himself to death and expecting people he wronged in his past to come looking for him. Conversely, Ben Gunn also knows the location of the island and about the treasure, and there's no reason he couldn't end up marooned there at some point. One of the only things I found confusing was the name Skeleton Island, I don't remember the island being named in the book. Anyway, this show reminded me how much I enjoyed the mythology and history of Caribbean Pirating, so much so that I'm actually going to read Charles Johnson's (or is it Daniel Defoe's?) A General History Of The Pyrates (awesome that they included it at the end there in the finale and I love that they kind of made a point about its accuracy with Jack's monologue.) and this thread's recommendation of Under The Black Flag. This show also got me to replay Sid Meier's Pirates which is still a lot of fun and holds up, but that soon got replaced by Assasin's Creed IV: Black Flag which I am currently deeply in love with. The sea shanties, the open sea, the familiar historical characters, and I've probably battled and boarded hundreds of ships by now and I'm still not bored of it. Speaking of, it's an interesting synchronicity that Black Flag came out about a year before this show did, and yet they share a lot of the same historical characters and even plot points about Nassau. For example, in the game (and this isn't really a spoiler since it's actual history and in this show) Woods Rogers does order a blockade of Nassau and you help Charles Vane by escorting the fireship to break the blockade and escape. And that's just one example. (Though as of yet, Black Sails Anne Bonney is far superior to Black Flag, and Rackham is um...not what I expected and doesn't quite fit all the history.) I'm going to guess that the reason for these coincidences is simply that they both used the same source material (the only source material really) and that's--again--A General History Of The Pyrates, which is also directly referenced in Black Flag. So if you haven't played either of the games I mentioned and like games then you should check them out. By the way, and I know ya'll don't want to hear this, but in the history Woodes Rogers is released from prison and becomes Governor Of Nassau for a second time and dies there due to ill-health while still Governor. He was also one of the sources of information for A General History Of Pyrates...which makes you wonder what kind of biases might have crept into the work.
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Apr 7, 2017 03:34
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MiddleOne posted:Anyone mind steering me in some direction on how to watch/read/listen to Treasure Island? As for watching, this is the one I managed to find that I'm going to watch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Island_(1990_film) It's apparently darker than the other ones (which are more kid oriented (as is the book), not that this one wasn't) and also just maybe it has some actors you've heard of before... Also, if you have an Android phone/device (or maybe even Apple ones) Google Books/Play has Treasure Island for free. I really do hope they do a Treasure Island thing with these creators and cast though, that would be wonderful. I'm not sure how they'd do it because it'd require aging and that can be dodgy. But then again, like I said in my previous post, there's a lot of time that passes between end of BS and TI. They could do something in-between like how Billy gets off (heh) and Ben Gunn gets on the island, how Billy and Silver get to England, Rogers coming back to Nassau, Jack's demise and Anne and Mark's--I mean Mary's--valiant battle while Jack and everyone else in the crew is too drunk to fight, and the stuff with Flint on the island I mentioned before. Especially (to me anyway), why Flint changes his mind and does things like the map and body landmark to make it so someone else can find the treasure. Not to mention Flint lives out the rest of his days as an alcoholic and dies from it. Longbaugh01 fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Apr 7, 2017 |
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Apr 7, 2017 04:21
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Shockeh posted:I like to think they both lie - By the time of Treasure Island, Billy is using Ben's name and vice versa. So when the pirates encounter Ben in the tavern in Britain, he says he's Billy Bones (and then has a stroke over Long John Silver) and the guy marooned on the island is Billy, saying he's Ben trying to avoid Flint/John. Not bad, has anyone ever noticed Billy on the show having a tattoo of his name on his arm anywhere? He apparently has one in TI. Another thing that just occurred to me, the use of the Black Spot by Billy and his men in Nassau is actually really awesome because it ties into TI when Billy receives a Black Spot himself and has the second stroke that actually kills him. One more thing I didn't get it until now is that Billy's backstory of basically being enslaved for 3 years for handing out pamphlets makes his actions at the Underhill plantation make a lot more sense in retrospect.
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Apr 7, 2017 11:02
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PaybackJack posted:It really is amazing how Silver turned the corner. Everyone hated him in the first season and he was dismissed as a babyface hero that was being thrust into the spotlight by the producers. However he was so well written and the actor did such a great job that he won the crew over as he won the fans over. I wonder if that was part of his long term scripting that he shows up and is a little overexposed in the beginning so as his role diminished, we'd forget a little about him so by the time he started his ascent to power our initial hatred for him would have tempered. It'd be fairly brilliant if they purposefully made him more obnoxious in the early going just so that his character gradually winning the audience over mirrored him winning the men over in the show. If that's part of what you're saying. But yeah, this show more than most others in my recent memory had characters that I really felt like they went on a journey and that where they ended was so different from their start. Especially Silver and Flint, but even Billy, Jack, Anne, Max, Eleanor, and even Woodes Rogers in his limited time. It's pretty crazy when I stop to think about it, and I'm not even sure how they pulled it off compared to other shows. Most shows never get this close, and a lot of them when they end feel like main characters have remained pretty static. Notable exceptions (of shows that are over) would be like Breaking Bad or Mad Men. Any other show I can think of is still on the air or is not really that recent.
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Apr 7, 2017 12:59
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I'm reminded that I really did want to know what John's back story was. I know the point is it doesn't matter because it's a lot about reinvention, but I still really want to know.
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Apr 8, 2017 00:41
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