Quote (MGS4BestGameEverMade @ 16 Jun 2014 18:24)
Things that annoy me with the show (haven't read the books, just GoT wiki) is the lack of background information, at least visualizing certain events instead of just saying a few words about them. I might have missed out as I paid very little attention in the first two seasons but...
One example is:
What makes Jaime Lannister such a great warrior? Throughout season 1 there was NOTHING but gloating from him claiming to be the greatest fighter/warrior/swordsman/dueler in all of Westeros. He still constantly reminds people he used to be the best there was. Yet, where's the proof of this?
If I'm not incorrect he became a knight / man of the king's guard at age 15, which is the youngest since A.L. and some Targaryan held the previous record at age 16 who was long considered one of the greatest warriors in history.
But other than that what we've seen is:
* Jaime not being able to defeat Eddard Stark until one of his men stick a spear through his legs, the fight could have ended either way.
* Jaime getting his ass handed to him against a woman; although Lady Brienne is an accomplished warrior and Jaime was most likely sleep deprived, hungry and dehydrated against a well-nourished in shape Brienne.
* Jaime becoming absolutely useless without his right hand. If he is so great, why can't he use his left hand? Roger Federer might be right handed, but I'm sure he'd knock out all but the best using his left hand...
Well, in the books he's recognized as ONE OF the most talented fighters ever, but the problem is outside of tournaments we've seen very little of it once he joined the kings guard, and the best rarely fight the best so we don't really know for sure where he ranks.
The thing about his fight with ned stark is that ned is definitely recognized as one of the finest fighters in the world, he's battle and war hardened, he's a general who leads from the front, as this retarded land tends to do, and weilds his 2 handed valyrian steel sword very very well. If anything, managing to put pressure and putting ned into the defensive is more impressive than any tournament victory, and he might very well have won anyway without that intervention.
As for the 2 handed thing though, it was far better explained in the novels. Aria's old sword dancing teacher put it best,m the westeros dance is a lumbering one where everyone tries to overpower each other with little finesse or technique. Since Jamie isn't that big, he's probably deadly because he's one of the few who use speed and dodging on top of being strong. None of these guys really are master swordsmaen, they never practice ambidextery, and they're so backward anyone who's severely injured is considered crippled for life and good for nothing. This fits into westeros as a fantasy medieval world set in the dark ages, such as was shown often by how superstitious they are, including toward dwarves, whom usually get killed at birth because they're bad luck. That chain tyrion looked like a genius for thinking of for the siege of blackwater bay? It's been standard defense of closed ports here since like the 1500's.
Another thing jamie said in the books was that just the fact of having to think of how to do a technique from his off hand is making him too slow to fight anyone but beginners, just from that like quarter of a second's delay. He's got to train everything so the reverse becomes muscle memory again. The same holds for top athletes, in hockey for example, defensemen playing their off side perform very bad, even the stars.
The problem with putting so much background information is the show would be very boring very fast. Things that take 4 lines in the books would require 10 minutes of elaborate talk on the show, which would slow the pace and make it even harder for the casual audience to remember who's who because of the information overload.
This post was edited by StephanePare on Jun 16 2014 11:42pm