Originally published at: The trailer for Medieval looks intense | Boing Boing
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Yes and…
Gone Mediaeval is an excellent history podcast!
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Also recommended:
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Oooo nice! And of a theme!
Thank you!
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Another medieval movie where gray-complexioned people dressed in gray living in gray castles go about chopping each other up and getting filthy. While the chopping part is probably pretty accurate I’d love to see a movies set in the period that wasn’t so … monochromatic. People’s clothing had color for crying out loud. (Don’t even get me started on medieval movie costumes and armor.)
That said: Michael Caine.
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The mix in that trailer was atrocious… crank the volume to barely hear the dialog, only to be immediately rendered unconscious when someone so much as looked at their weapon.
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I think it’s kind of like statues from classical antiquity. People have become so accustomed to them being all white that they find it weird and fake to see them the way they actually were, ie. painted and decorated.
Also, in this case I think there may be an element of fear of not being taken seriously if the outfits have color. Because these are srs movies dammit, they gotta look like srs movies. All mud and grit, blood is the only color!
As a one-time medievalist I’m not expecting a lot of accuracy from this, as with any other medieval themed movie or series… I just hope it’s not going to be as painful as some. More than anything though, I’m getting accustomed to medieval type movies and shows (including fantasy) that look like they were shot in my hometown’s forest area, Central Europe being apparently a favored shooting location.
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If only they were also used as central European locations rather than standing in for England. Because to Hollywood (and Americans in general) the Middle Ages are set in England by default. Maybe in France, but only during the hundred years war when the English were there or, if they’re being generous, in Scotland.
Of course this isn’t the case here, where the story is actually set in central Europe but I have noticed this a lot because building styles just aren’t the same, so you can always tell when something was shot in historic buildings but of the wrong region.
I noticed this recently with the British Musketeers TV show. They did go to the trouble of finding baroque buildings to represent 17th century France but the style of half-timbering is so Central European it couldn’t have been shot anywhere else but in Germany, Czechia (where it was shot) or Poland. Another one was the Daisy Ridley Hamlet adaption Ophelia which I liked, but which for some reason represents the Danish sand-dune-built castle Elsinore as a wooded mountain fortress. And the interiors are, again, central European rather than Southern Scandinavian when they’re not sound stage sets.
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i agree. while watching Moon Knight last night the sound mix was so bad i got a blister on my volume changing finger. these guys should have to watch their product on a regular tv without a SOTA sound system before it goes out.
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Even though it is fantasy, GoT had a lot of color (books had a lot of descriptions of enameled armor, too). I always appricated that.
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Perhaps it’s because for the target audience it’s basically “anything that looks unfamiliar” (since if it’s familiar it can’t be authentically fantasy/medieval /s), and for the visual designers Eastern/Central Europe is vaguely unfamiliar enough while still being recognizably Europe, re: general flora/fauna, buildings for those who don’t understand architecture, etc.
It’s kind of like the concept of diversity. BBC’s recent Dracula miniseries sucked (ha ha) for many reasons, but the thing that made me low-key boggle was the vampire killer nuns in Budapest (not, in fact, shot in Budapest, the city can apparently stand in for every Central/Eastern European city except for itself 
). They had Asian nuns, black nuns… but no Romani nuns, perhaps because they wouldn’t register as a different ethnicity for US/western viewers. Even though here “diversity” in this context would start with including Romani people.
Yes, I’ve been noticing this in the past years, and I always wondered if it’s because the audio is mixed to home theater systems, not regular TV…
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I misread that, and suddenly had Tom Baker’s voice in me 'ead:
Way too long since I’ve played this on PSP.
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Another Hollywood film centered around the vapid, empty lives of hussys…what, what? Oh…Hussites!. OK then. Count me in.
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