As a book reader, I thought the Hodor thing was pretty emotional for me. Fairly powerful if you let yourself buy into the moment and the concept. I think Kristian Nairn and young Hodor actor did a good job. I have had the misfortune of seeing people have both, a seizure and an epileptic fit, and it felt accurately disarming / disturbing.
That said, the execution of other things in this episode felt all over the place. The Children of the Forest just don't feel or look special / foreign enough. I'm sure they spent a good deal of time on makeup, prosthetics, and casting for facial features, but they don't pay off on screen. I just see young chicks in Halloween makeup. Plus, the fireball grenades and skeleton shit needs to go. I don't even care if that's faithful to something George is writing... It completely breaks the immersion of the show, just like it did at the end of season 4. After Hardhome, it all looks like a big step backwards.
And I see people praising Bender but there were way too many jarring shots. There was definitely and overuse of overhead angles that came out of nowhere and didn't make much sense. Besides recognizing the spiral pattern use in the Children of the Forest's rock grotto, I didn't get much out of them and they came off as distracting. The overhead shot for Arya's stave fight with the Waif (why the fuck is the Waif so goddamned badass in the show?) didn't inform me of anything. And they already established Ring Out perimeters in a previous episode.
It's also nice gesture that they tried to bring back the creepiness and mysteriousness of Varys' backstory from the books, but they already made an almost joke scene out of that sorcerer getting crated to King's Landing a few seasons ago, so that scene with the Red Priestess just fell completely flat for me. Dramatic music and potent stares can't help erase the past.
And yeah, queue the internet now making Bran responsible for every off-screen event that happened in the history of Westeros.
That said, the execution of other things in this episode felt all over the place. The Children of the Forest just don't feel or look special / foreign enough. I'm sure they spent a good deal of time on makeup, prosthetics, and casting for facial features, but they don't pay off on screen. I just see young chicks in Halloween makeup. Plus, the fireball grenades and skeleton shit needs to go. I don't even care if that's faithful to something George is writing... It completely breaks the immersion of the show, just like it did at the end of season 4. After Hardhome, it all looks like a big step backwards.
And I see people praising Bender but there were way too many jarring shots. There was definitely and overuse of overhead angles that came out of nowhere and didn't make much sense. Besides recognizing the spiral pattern use in the Children of the Forest's rock grotto, I didn't get much out of them and they came off as distracting. The overhead shot for Arya's stave fight with the Waif (why the fuck is the Waif so goddamned badass in the show?) didn't inform me of anything. And they already established Ring Out perimeters in a previous episode.
It's also nice gesture that they tried to bring back the creepiness and mysteriousness of Varys' backstory from the books, but they already made an almost joke scene out of that sorcerer getting crated to King's Landing a few seasons ago, so that scene with the Red Priestess just fell completely flat for me. Dramatic music and potent stares can't help erase the past.
And yeah, queue the internet now making Bran responsible for every off-screen event that happened in the history of Westeros.
