Another entertaining Hardy film is Legend, in which he plays both Kray twins.

He lives near me (Richmond, London) and I see him a lot around there with his wife. I'm far too cool to get starstruck so when we pass each other I pretend not to know who he is (csb).

sick brag bro,


also another good films.. One is lawless where he plays a drunkard badass(the badass brother the other two brothers wake up when they want to sort things out with enemies with the fists)

The drop
Warrior is obviously great apart from mma-nitpickery which im sure we got plenty of in these forums. Also very watchable for the bromance, i mean, those trapz, gotta love those trapz.



Just seen ep02, thoughts?

I do have a minor nit with Ep1 - the overuse of dramatic music every time he was traveling, riding a horse or whatever, bugged me a little. Hopefully that isn't the same in every Ep.

Otherwise loved it - seems promisingly intellectual. Slow starting pace to the plot is appropriate given the mystery & mood they are building.

Also love Jonathan Pryce and the rest of the East India board. Hopefully they don't meet their fates too quickly.

Noticed some suspicious eye contact between Delaney and the stenographer dude. Must be some relationship there.

rewatch scene again, he was staring on the side. look to the left of the stenographer.

I don't see anything

That's the spirit!

Locke was written and directed by the same guy as the showrunner for Taboo

Siiiiick!

Locke was great too, amazing they could make that work.

It doesn't look like anything to me

I must be hard to please.

I haven't been all that impressed by Hardy's acting in this series.

I almost didn't make it past the first 15 minutes of the first episode.

I've been quite put off by the historical inaccuracies in the second episode. The treaty negotiations in Ghent were not attended by top US government members. The negotiations were not about settling a boundary between Canada and the US out to the Pacific coast. At the time, nether Canada nor the US stretched farther west than Lake Superior. The land border from the Rockies to the Pacific coast wasn't decided until 1846, and the coastal water boundary off the west Coast in 1872. Ownership of land at Nootka Sound would have had no effect on the Treaty of Ghent or US-British relations. It would possibly have been involved in territorial disputes between Britain. Spain and Russia, which all had colonial or trading claims in the area. Indeed, in the 1780s and 1790s, a series of incidents between Spanish and British vessels resulted in a succession of three conventions between Spain and England, in which for the first time Spain agreed to end its attempt to enforce a trading monopoly on the whole Pacific Coast up to Russian territory. A British fur trader had bought some land in the area from the indigenous inhabitants (there was no treaty), and Spanish Colonial Authorities authorized an expedition to seize and fortify the area. While American traders were also active in the area, unlike the Russian, Spanish and British governments, the US government had made no territorial claims in the area, and would not do so for another generation.

And finally, there is the matter of the East India Company. It never operated further east than Japan. It was subject to greater government control than has been depicted in the first two episodes,. Its flag at the time looked nothing like the one depicted flying in front of the building in the show, but rather much like a US flag except with a Union Jack in the canton. British commercial and administrative interests west of Lake Superior up to the Rockies would have been in the hands of the Hudson's Bay Company, and no single British entity would have held British interests west of the Rockies.

^^ I don't believe they intended this show to be a documentary. Its a show about a fictional character loosely based on historical events. I'm not sure why you were under the impression that this was going to be historically accurate. Maybe if they were touting Ken Burns as a consultant but this is a Ridley Scott joint. Gladiator wasn't historically accurate either...still a great movie.

I have no problem with any sort of historical inaccuracy, but uh, as a show, this ain't real good so far. It's incredibly slow and boring and it appears to think casting universally beloved movie star Tom Hardy as the main character can go towards the narrative work of making us sympathize with him.

Why the **** does he care who owns that land? I get that he does care, he cares super deeply, but I don't as the viewer. When he's refusing to even read the EIC's offer I'm not proud of him for standing up for his principles because I don't know what principle he's standing for.

Also maybe I'm just dumb but in the big meeting didn't the EIC records nerd say Hardy left England when he was 13 in 1798, and then went to Africa was he was like 17 in 1802?

First off, casting Tom Hardy to be in his late 20s is pretty optimistic, he's clearly pushing 40.

But more importantly, how does everyone recognize him if he's been away for 16 years? How does he have underworld connections and ****?


But if you want to get REALLY into the anachronism weeds, I don't think he could maintain that haircut and stubble with the barbershop technology available in the early 19th century.

its 3 eps in brah, you hardly knew much about anyones motives in any of the other tv-show you might have watched that tries to be "better" than the rest. Ie not **** like arrow, the flash and smallville

lol at being pissy they havent shown the reasons why he gets premonitions/visions/seem super knowledgeable about stuff hes not supposed to know. Its 3 episodes in. 3.


3.

we had to endure 6 seasons of lost before we got to know what the ****ing smoke monster was

You've seen a 3rd episode?

Who, not really what or even why, or why he turned back to mortal when Jack pulled out the Island's magic butt plug.

'twas aired on the Beeb Sat 21 imo

Oh. It's a Tuesday show in #1

Wut. Other people have gone over that we're only 2 in Trumperica, but literally establishing the conflict?

No, that's an acceptable mystery. That's like, well, to use your example Arrow's guy gaining all his abilities on the island. Him knowing spy codes is cool, it hints that he did spy ****.

(but note Arrow used liberal amounts of flashbacks, Taboo is all present day)

Yeah but it took one episode for them to establish that there was a smoke monster. We're talking about the motives of the MAIN CHARACTER, the protagonist.

When you want the audience to be engaged you need to establish the stakes of the dispute. As of 2 episodes in, Hardy's character is just a big weirdo who does odd things and has an unusually large number of friends for being a big weirdo.

I'm not sure why he doesn't just let the EIC dispute go since he's clearly rich as hell from African diamond stuff, but OK, that will be explained. But since they aren't doing flashbacks, all these hints and rumors of the terrible deeds and amazing adventures the main character did just makes me wonder why they didn't make the show about that **** instead of Hardy mumbling through his return to London.

that's what counts

In 3rd episode you'll figure out his motives and what his end goal is. I think show could be good or could be meh, at least we have some good actors. Right now I like the show but I'm expecting more in episodes to come, I'm not going to watch just because of good actors. I had same thoughts about Billions after couple of episodes and sloppy writing never got better and I quit, I hope it's not the case with Taboo!

So you wrote all that and had not even seen the third ep ? Ok

America Second!

[ You're probably right about that. But the's another genre that may apply. Perhaps you've heard of it. It's called historical fiction.

Much good historical fiction gets the main historical facts right, and changes only those points needed for exposition of its fictional storyline. It doesn;t goout of its way to get thigs wogn if it doesn't need to. And there's another genre (or perhaps a subgenre of the former): alternate history - one which presupposes a changed past for the purposes of exploring the possible consequences of the imagined change.

Why bother to set a story in an historical context and bring up all sorts of references to historical events, people and institutions only to tell lies about them? Why not use fictional people and organizations instead? I think it's sloppy, lazy, ignorant writing. In some hands it would be deliberate historical revisionism (cough-cough, Mel Gibson.) Perhaps further episodes will reveal some plot-driven necessity for the historical inaccuracies. I don't have any respect for shows which deliberately set out to smear hsitorical people or organizations.

Gladiator was more historically accurate than Taboo has been so far, IMO. It mostly restricted changes to major plot points needed for the story arc. And the changes are not too far off the reality. (Commodus killing his father rather than just succeeding him at a young age, and being killed in the arena by a gladiator rather than in his bath by a wrestler.) Beyond that, it succeeded in giving good general portrayals of the apparent nature of the two Caesars and the tenor of the times. Gladiator generally succeeded in avoiding gratuitous error, other than those typical costuming and technical matters which plague nearly all historical movies.