HBO's adaptation of Game of Thrones - Thread 2. There are a lot of nerds.

I give this show quite a lot of good will especially when there are conflicting emotions, motivations etc contributing towards major characters' decisions but literally everything the writers say makes it incredibly difficult to keep indulging this good will. they are so stupiddddd

You can discern Martin's hand in the larger plot points. I mean he almost certainly told Benioff and Weiss that Daenerys should eventually succumb to her Targaryen heritage and destroy King's Landing, but they had just had no idea how to arrive at that point in a coherent or dramatically satisfying fashion

I think I found the way to describe it: These last few seasons of GoT has been nothing more, nothing less, than an old tv-show falling apart due to turnover behind the scenes. It stopped being based on GRRMs writings, and it fell apart. It's a bit like the gas leak year of Community. Or, y'know, it's just like countless other long-running tv-shows, which loses it's sense of the characters and runs out of plot to tell. It just feels worse because it's PREMIUM TV and it's ENDING ON IT'S OWN TERMS, and so these things aren't supposed to happen. I remember watching that episode of The Simpsons where Homer is raped by a panda, and it felt the same way like the show had definitely gone off the rails. But imagine if that had been the penultimate episode, that it had all been FORESHADOWED and the SEEDS HAD BEEN PLANTED, and then it turns out the story was leading to Homer getting raped by a panda. Not just that episode, but all of the show, would have felt ruined.

the whole rage attack thing might have worked better if they'd had the dragon killed in the same episode

Or if they'd bothered to write Missandei as anything other than a paper thin character who's done something more in the last few seasons than stand around in throne rooms.

yeah i mean dany definitely cared about the dragons more than any of her redshirt assistants

Been reading a couple of defenses saying, duh, her turn was totally telegraphed! And then they cite something from the previous episode or maybe the one before that.

Show should have ended with her on the throne, a benevolent ruler. And then after the screen goes to black a card pops up over the sound of fire crackling saying "Moments later, she and her dragon soon destroyed the city in a fit of rage." And then they could do a where-are-they-now montage.

"Jon Snow, Killed in Winterfell By His Own Troops."

"Tormond is now President Tormond."

Etc.

“I don’t think she decided ahead of time that she was going to do what she did,” Weiss says. “And then she sees the Red Keep, which is, to her, the home that her family built when they first came over to this country 300 years ago. It’s in that moment, on the walls of King’s Landing, when she’s looking at that symbol of everything that was taken from her, when she makes the decision to make this personal.”

How about: she hears the bells ringing, realizes she's won, can't accept that, and decides to destroy everyone in a massive act of self-hatred.

you feel sorry for the actors when you think that's actually a thing they made her 'act' for that weird close-up

In retrospect I think they wrote Dany's "turn" very well, the only complaint I have is exactly what Matt DC wrote... that Missandei was not written meatily enough for me to care about her death, or for me to believe that it was a significant motivating factor in Dany subsequent "turning". Grey Worm's, sure.

There is an episode from Season 5 or Season 6, before they started "getting things done", where Grey Worm, Tyrion and Missandei are sitting in a boardroom in Myreen (I think). The scene lasts two, three minutes, just of Tyrion trying to introduce his drinking game to a couple of teetotallers. Varys finally enters in to end this terrifyingly boring and insignificant scene. There was another similar scene, either same episode or around the same time, where Sam and Gilly are sitting in a wagon talking about how great their baby is and how excited they are to be going to Oldtown. These were the moments that threatened to spoil the series for me, they felt like scenes from Ten-Forward in Star Trek, just people sitting around talking and talking. Characters are better developed by placing them into action situations... we learned more about Joffrey, Arya and Sansa in that riverside scuffle in Episode 2 than we did in any of these conversational pieces.

All this is to say... I wasn't a fan of the way the show ran "exposition" in Seasons 5 and/or 6, and I'm finding the clipped pace of Seasons 7 and 8 to be a nice relief, although a far cry from the graceful unfolding of Seasons 1-4

But... they wasted an entire episode of characters sitting around talking about boring stuff before the battle against the night king? And instead of Dany doing something, they spent half this episode establishing what the sound of the bells would mean, so that her madness would be completely unsullied by circumstance... There's still been so much bad exposition, it's just combined with mindless action :(

Danny's autocratic tendencies have been telegraphed since the Mereen scenes at least.

Westeros is an autocracy, so everyone's autocratic tendencies have kinda been out in the open since season one...

without Jorah around to talk her down I think this shit was inevitable

I can't wait for the legions of furious nerds with their Twitter campaigns for GRRM to "save the series" with the remaining books to explode in rage flames when he still turns Dany heel in those too. Probably more slowly and less awkwardly, but still. These Dany stans are weird.

Enjoying the Twitter theory insistent that GRRM has been effectively "held hostage" by D&D, hated the series and has both books ready to drop immediately after the series wraps.

initially proposed by Ian McElhinney tbf!

Was it? I didn't see that part!

this was the best episode of this show in a long time imo. i think the Dany turn was rushed, but wasn't some unbelievable, out of the blue move. felt very GRRM.

Actor Ian McElhinney, who played Barristan Selmy on Game of Thrones until the character was killed off in 2015, claimed (falsely, it appears) at a convention called Epic Con back in April that Martin has already completed the final two books, and he agreed to wait and publish them after the show finished:

“George has already written Books 6 and 7, and as far as he’s concerned there only are seven books. But he struck an agreement with David and Dan, the showrunners on the series, that he would not publish the final two books until the series has completed. So if all goes well, in another month or two we might get Books 6 and 7, and I’m intrigued to know how Barristan, for instance, ends up going through those final two books. George, I talked to him during Season 1 and he did say to me that Barristan had a very interesting journey. But unfortunately I didn’t get to play all of that, so we’ll have to wait and see.”

actually, now that I think about it, maybe he picked it up from Twitter himself. But he certainly gave it more traction

Just saw the episode last night. Hoo boy, did these idiots top themselves! The first time Tyrion mentioned the bells, I turned to my wife and said, “Dany is going to ignore the bells.” Then Tyrion proceeded to say it to everyone like 15 more times because the showrunners think everyone who watches this show are mouthbreathing dim-bulbs, which we all are.

Managing to make Cleganebowl be a letdown takes skill: wait until the penultimate episode and have literally no other stakes, not even that the Mountain was protecting Cersei. And why did the Hound not kill Cersei as she tiptoed by after basically telling Arya, “I got this.” Oh I know, so we can be let down by the Cersei and Jamie buried alive love scene no one wanted. Also why did the Hound wait 2 week’s until they arrived at a burning Kings Landing to convince Arya to go home?

Euron was the thinnest character of all time next to Missandei but he needed ten minutes of screen time.

Dany’s performance against the Sons of the Harpies, the Night King (twice), and Euron the first time really set up that she had the ability to pull off the destruction of KL with a single dragon. Surprised she didn’t walk the dragon through the streets of KL up to the Red Keep and yell Dracarys! Lol at the explanation that she saw the Red Keep and made it personal by not destroying the Red Keep.

The execution on this show makes Lost look like the Sopranos.

She really wanted to make it personal. So instead of going after Cersei, the woman who had heard her so much, she decided to just fly around and kill people she didn't know for a few hours. Really personal, can't get more personal than that.

Like if Rambo made it personal in First Blood by calling in a bunch of drone strikes on Portland.

lol

they explained the bells so much I was trying to work out what dastardly scheme Tyrion had dreamed up to *actually* do when the bells rang

GRRM’s foreshadowing in the last book is all about Dany realising that “dragons plant no trees”, that her destiny is to be a conqueror and that is where it leaves off - that’s a train of thought that you could see proceeding to a brutal sack of Kings Landing.

Have to say, very much not here for the “sensible men characters were keeping Dany from herself!” I mean, Jon is an idiot, Tyrion gives terrible advice and Jorah was motivated by his blue balls as much as anything a lot of the time!

I'm glad I only started watching this show a few months ago so it feels more like a trashy fantasy drama that was very into caring about who these people are and their machinations are and has become a differently-trashy fantasy drama that's more focused on what ridiculous things those characters can do (while ignoring some of the previous characterization and machinations)

Just because they showed some character traits that might suggest tyranny, ie wanting to be a ruler, wanting power etc, doesn't mean that this isn't a sudden shift. There's a pretty big disconnect from the shows first few seasons in which it attempted, however badly, for the characters to have agency and develop slowly within the context of a plot that expanded in some sort of unison with their decisions and actions, and this six episode projectile plot puke.

I don't know why they didn't go for a 10-episode season, give it all a bit more room, make some more money etc. But the quotes etc from the writers are so ridiculous that it seems they were just burnt out, narratively.

I think they screwed up by not keeping all the character threads in play, or underdeveloping the ones that would better explain the current status quo.

Jon seems really glitchy and underdeveloped now, but if you're binging the show, he was pretty functional about twelve hours ago.

(which is yeeears because of the show release cycle)

as one of the previous links says, she's always been motivated by 'the throne is mine' and 'i am saviour of the people' which come into direct conflict when she believes the only way to get and keep the throne for good is to have everyone fear her rather than rely on fickle 'love'

I want some scene with her being all "Dogs drool, dragons rule!" and Jon exclaiming "Wolves! They're wolves!!"

wasn’t there some fan theory about dragon-sized wolves? could be a good match-up

idk i think she'll give some cool/calm speech about how it was all for their own good, and how from here on out she'll protect westeros etc etc

I read an article that pointed out how worried the show runners seem to be about having their plot twists "figured out" by the internet, so they seem to be deliberately not doing character development with Dany so that people can still be all WTF when she mad-queens out

Does feel a little like the bells's just gone for playtime and all they have time left to write is "then they killed the baddie, then they killed the other baddie, then the good queen turned into a baddie and killed everyone THE END"

xpost Heh, that's pretty dumb. It's a show with magic and dragons and people coming back from the dead as zombies and ... not zombies. If they can't find ways to surprise people, boy does that betray a lack of creativity.

today my 4 yo has been saying 'I'm going to make a dragon breathe fire on you' which is making me concerned he could hear GoT from his bed last night.

otoh it's exactly within his character arc as a tyrant

Game of Cribs

Anyway, the showrunners are off to kill all the Jedi again uh wait

https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-first-star-wars-films-after-rise-of-skywalker-will-1834749699

(Old news on the one hand but they're next up, is the point.)

That definitely supports the "they rushed this to suit Lucasfilm's timeline / their desire to make truckloads of money" theory

I want to live in a world where the executives at Disney, ink still wet on their contract with these two dipshits, watch episode 5 in horror, looking at each other while mouthing, “what have we done.”

These guys are perfect for Star Wars. Can’t wait for Jar Jar Bink’s heel turn.

xp really hope they give them the opportunity to do something other than lightsabers and order of knights intrigue, because these dudes are really burned out on that shit

HBO is printing money with this shit people apparently hate - just like Star Wars - so I don't think anyone at either Disney or HBO is wringing their hands over how bad these idiots are.

xp

I mean large chunks of this thread are "this is awful! Also why isn't there more of it"

"please sir may I have another" etc

well they've already fired Josh Trank, Colin Trevorrow and Lord & Miller off Star Wars movies in the past couple of years so it's not like they have any compunctions about ditching directors

but they probably still think they're good, yeah

this is ilx, everything is awful here. The show is okay now, perfectly good spectacle and scope and all that. the issue is that it once was actually great (S1-S4) and compared to what it once was it just feels a bit empty and rushed. One of the better qualities of the earlier seasons was the narrative intelligence (all from Martin).

i would say 1-4, 5-7, and 8 alone are three separate levels, give or take. tho maybe 7 could be lumped in with 8 as the shit years.

Series 6 was really fucking boring.

8 is better than 7

That too.