Rome - Season 2. Starts tonight!

[GlassJaw]

This weekend's episode looks really good - Brutus's army squares off against Marc Anthony and Octavian.

 

[sckeener]

Still so great. I wish the younger Octavian actor could have been used, his guile and brilliance was more convincing to me, but this is still good.

Yeah, I liked the younger actor too. There was wit behind his acting. You felt like he was superior to those he talked to and yet able to inspire them.

This weekend's episode looks really good - Brutus's army squares off against Marc Anthony and Octavian.

yup, it looks sweet! How many legions is Anthony up to? Octavian has 4 and Brutus has 20....I can't wait for this smack down.

I must say this season is much more to my liking. It has scenes that I would love to do in a game. Admittedly some of them would have to be resolved in one session. I can't imagine how much trouble I'd get in if I kidnapped the children of my players only for them to find them several sessions later in a slave pit abused and used.

 

[GlassJaw]

It has scenes that I would love to do in a game.

I agree. I would consider this show to be my main source of inspiration for gaming right now, especially combat. I'm running a Conan campaign (with the Conan ruleset) and I try to describe combat in a similar fashion - brutal and bloody.

 

[sckeener]

I agree. I would consider this show to be my main source of inspiration for gaming right now, especially combat. I'm running a Conan campaign (with the Conan ruleset) and I try to describe combat in a similar fashion - brutal and bloody.

I tend to run story games, so the plots and intrigue are good for me. My fiancé remarked last night that "All these men are just pawns in a play between Servilia and Atia" and she couldn't believe that none of the men saw it.

 

[Morrus]

I tend to run story games, so the plots and intrigue are good for me. My fiancé remarked last night that "All these men are just pawns in a play between Servilia and Atia" and she couldn't believe that none of the men saw it.

Well, the problem is, in real life Atia wasn't like that at all. She certainly wasn't involved with Mark Antony. They can't make major changes in the actions of the men, because they are so well known, so they keep the men the same but change the women, and that's the impression you get. Historically, that wasn't the case at all; so the men don't see it because it's not how it happened, and having them see it would change the way they acted and require a complete rewrite of Roman history for the TV show!

A highly fictionalized version of Atia is a major character in the HBO/BBC 2 television series Rome. Rather than a pious and loving individual, she is portrayed as a licentious, self-absorbed, and manipulative schemer whose sexual escapades included Mark Antony.

 

[sckeener]

Well, the problem is, in real life Atia wasn't like that at all. She certainly wasn't involved with Mark Antony. They can't make major changes in the actions of the men, because they are so well known, so they keep the men the same but change the women, and that's the impression you get. Historically, that wasn't the case at all; so the men don't see it because it's not how it happened, and having them see it would change the way they acted and require a complete rewrite of Roman history for the TV show!

Well that certainly explains a bit of it...

makes me wonder about Livia Drusilla Augusta since she was also considered in a good light.

the ancient sources generally portray Livia (Julia Augusta) as a woman of proud and queenly attributes, faithful to her imperial husband, for whom she was a worthy consort, forever poised and dignified.

 

[Wayside]

What else are they going to do? Try to outwrite Shakespeare?

I thought they might adapt Shakespeare's version, actually. "Yet Brutus says he was ambitious, and Brutus is an honorable man." I can just imagine the sarcasm in James Purefoy's delivery--that speech would've been perfect for his Antony.

Or they could've gone with the historically accurate version which they ended up describing anyway. It would've been nice to see Antony's more calculated and eloquent side, since the show thus far has portrayed him as a somehwat flat character.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Trying as a screenwriter to deal with and "improve upon" a scene penned so famously by the greatest playwright to have ever lived is a date with certain doom. No thanks.

As it happened, the real issue with Rome this season is a lack of funding. Whenever a scene calls for extras - you can be sure that the production will not do it. Given the mob of Rome that was supposed to react to the speech - well - we got MA and the after glow of "that German slut from the kitchen" instead

Like it or love it, the production budget on the show saved some poor writer from certain disaster in the eyes of half the viewers

 

[shilsen]

Trying as a screenwriter to deal with and "improve upon" a scene penned so famously by the greatest playwright to have ever lived is a date with certain doom. No thanks.

I think the easiest solution would have been to just use Shakespeare's speeches.

Your comment above made me think of a little piece of trivia. There's an early Shakespeare film (Reinhardt's A Midsummer Night's Dream, maybe) where they actually added some extra dialogue, so the credits say "Script by William Kenyon and William Shakespeare." That's some good company

 

[Wayside]

Trying as a screenwriter to deal with and "improve upon" a scene penned so famously by the greatest playwright to have ever lived is a date with certain doom. No thanks.

Heh, yeah. What the hell was Hermann Broch thinking when he wrote The Death of Virgil?

Shakespeare is probably the most important, if not the best, of all English dramatists, but writers adapt other writers all the time (the idea that one "improves" on another, or that one would even attempt to, generally misses the mark). That we see Shakespeare as being somehow above such adaptation ultimately says more about our schools than about the plays themselves.