Game of Thrones

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CosmicMonkey
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Game of Thrones

Post by CosmicMonkey »

So, now that HBO's most popular show ever has come to end, what are y'alls thoughts? Both of the show overall, and that -uh- *chuckles nervously* interesting final season.

I have a pretty exhaustive take that I'm writing up, but before I finish it I want to see what the opinions of cinephiles and other people who take film and television as seriously as me.

BillyShears
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Re: Game of Thrones

Post by BillyShears »

Winter came premature. Blecch.

overrated
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Re: Game of Thrones

Post by overrated »

I came to the site to update my review, but this is a good opportunity to expand on that somewhat.

First off this season, and season 7 before it, are terrible. Characters (especially Jon Snow) feel safe whereas in the first few seasons some of the draw of the show was being thrilled about "good" characters potentially dying suddenly. Getting from point A to point B drives the plot in S7/S8 rather than it feeling like characters moving the story along - also made worse by everyone teleporting everywhere (compare the wight-capture expedition taking place in one episode to Jon spending two seasons north of the wall, or the Hound & Arya traveling for most of a season). Dialogue became expository or fan servicey, let's see how many references Tyrion makes to wine or cocks when he's with Varys, or Bronn to whores. And the three big moments - [spoiler]Arya defeating the Night King, Daenerys' heel turn + murder by Jon, Bran becoming king[/spoiler] - all feel unearned, the second moment irritatingly so because given enough time and buildup it would have been satisfying.

Going beyond the last two seasons, I think you can make the case that the clear quality transition was the end of season 4. You had the best battle in the series (the Wall), two of the best 1v1 fights (Brienne vs the Hound, Oberyn vs the Mountain), the drama of Tyrion's trial, and one of my favorite parts of the show, Arya & the Hound wandering around Westeros. Then going into season 5 Tyrion is transplanted to Essos and for the rest of the series becomes a shadow of his former self; you lose Charles Dance as Tywin (my nomination for the best performance of the show); and GOT itself starts catching up and surpassing the books. It starts becoming clear that D&D are not up to scratch in writing the show without the source material, not only that but are often tone deaf about characters and even the theme of GOT - one of them in an interview said themes are for eighth grade book reports, paraphrased.

It's pretty apparent in the last season that D&D were never really fans of the source material, just able to see its value in being adapted. Cutting twenty episodes for S7/S8 down to thirteen is mind-bogglingly idiotic, and indicative that they wanted to finish the show as expediently as possible in order to move on to the Star Wars franchise. If someone who gave a fuck had twenty episodes then the aforementioned second moment would not have felt rushed and out of left field, and the other two could have been reworked as I feel like I could have come up with a more satisfying final season outline in a couple of hours.

I'm not a super fan of ASOIAF/GOT, and it's not like my week was ruined, but there's a sense of this show potentially being the last one that "everyone" watches and for it to go out like that is shitty.

p.s. does anyone else think that [spoiler]Bran becoming king means that Bloodraven/the Three Eyed Raven possessed him and Palpatine'd his way to the throne[/spoiler] and even better D&D are so fucking bad at their jobs they missed this "shocking twist" which they love so much?

paulofilmo
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Re: Game of Thrones

Post by paulofilmo »

i was going to wait til all the eps are available to watch the final season. but by the sounds of it, i shouldn't bother.

CosmicMonkey
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Re: Game of Thrones

Post by CosmicMonkey »

overrated wrote:I came to the site to update my review, but this is a good opportunity to expand on that somewhat.

First off this season, and season 7 before it, are terrible. Characters (especially Jon Snow) feel safe whereas in the first few seasons some of the draw of the show was being thrilled about "good" characters potentially dying suddenly. Getting from point A to point B drives the plot in S7/S8 rather than it feeling like characters moving the story along - also made worse by everyone teleporting everywhere (compare the wight-capture expedition taking place in one episode to Jon spending two seasons north of the wall, or the Hound & Arya traveling for most of a season). Dialogue became expository or fan servicey, let's see how many references Tyrion makes to wine or cocks when he's with Varys, or Bronn to whores. And the three big moments - [spoiler]Arya defeating the Night King, Daenerys' heel turn + murder by Jon, Bran becoming king[/spoiler] - all feel unearned, the second moment irritatingly so because given enough time and buildup it would have been satisfying.

Going beyond the last two seasons, I think you can make the case that the clear quality transition was the end of season 4. You had the best battle in the series (the Wall), two of the best 1v1 fights (Brienne vs the Hound, Oberyn vs the Mountain), the drama of Tyrion's trial, and one of my favorite parts of the show, Arya & the Hound wandering around Westeros. Then going into season 5 Tyrion is transplanted to Essos and for the rest of the series becomes a shadow of his former self; you lose Charles Dance as Tywin (my nomination for the best performance of the show); and GOT itself starts catching up and surpassing the books. It starts becoming clear that D&D are not up to scratch in writing the show without the source material, not only that but are often tone deaf about characters and even the theme of GOT - one of them in an interview said themes are for eighth grade book reports, paraphrased.

It's pretty apparent in the last season that D&D were never really fans of the source material, just able to see its value in being adapted. Cutting twenty episodes for S7/S8 down to thirteen is mind-bogglingly idiotic, and indicative that they wanted to finish the show as expediently as possible in order to move on to the Star Wars franchise. If someone who gave a fuck had twenty episodes then the aforementioned second moment would not have felt rushed and out of left field, and the other two could have been reworked as I feel like I could have come up with a more satisfying final season outline in a couple of hours.

I'm not a super fan of ASOIAF/GOT, and it's not like my week was ruined, but there's a sense of this show potentially being the last one that "everyone" watches and for it to go out like that is shitty.

p.s. does anyone else think that [spoiler]Bran becoming king means that Bloodraven/the Three Eyed Raven possessed him and Palpatine'd his way to the throne[/spoiler] and even better D&D are so fucking bad at their jobs they missed this "shocking twist" which they love so much?



You know this actually captured my feelings on the show probably better than I could have articulated them myself. I'd also like to add that the decision to have the show only be 8 seasons in the first place, was D&D's, not HBO's, as I'm certain the HBO executives would've loved to keep the money train running for even 10 or 11 seasons. In fact, the reason why there were two truncated seasons, is because after season 6 D&D wanted to finish the show in only one season, but eventually were convinced by their writers that it would be impossible and compromised with two 3/4 length seasons. Everything points to the show-runners just being done with the show and wanting to move on to other projects, and while I'm usually the first the criticize the entitlement of fan culture it is still understandable to see how the showrunner's own lack of commitment would be disappointing to the people who invested themselves in the series. Honestly, considering the backlash they've gotten so far, I think the best move for everyone might've just been for them to quit and let one or two of their writers take over. That way, D&D would've been able to go and make Star Wars, and if the final seasons ended up being bad they would only have to take partial responsibility for it.

And like, with more/longer seasons, a lot of the terrible plot points could have been fixed, like: [spoiler]Dany's character arc still needed atleast another season of development to get her to the point where her turn to violence made sense, and some more explanation as to who the Three-Eyed Raven is, what he wants and a clearer outlining of his abilities, might've made the finale with Bran feel more satisfying, especially if they had made it so that he had been LittleFinger-ing all of the events of the book in order to become king out of the chaos, except instead of Littlefinger, you know, it had actually worked.[/spoiler]

I've felt ever since season 5 (when they condensed two books into a single season) that the show has been rushed, but the last season took that to the absolute worst extreme introducing and finishing story arcs that would've taken a whole season or more into mere minutes. Like worst of all- [spoiler]-is the meeting at the end to decide who will be king, it feels almost like it was written in contempt for the show itself; an entire show that has been based (and marketed around) on seasons of intelligent, complex and powerful noblemen and women battling and out-witting one another in order sit on the iron throne and all gets thrown out the window in a five minute meeting.? (and have you ever been to a business meeting? It takes five minutes just to decide who's going to get coffee for everyone)[/spoiler]

And even with an extremely short amount of time to finish the story, the final two seasons ended up wasting a lot of that time on both fan service moments and on romantic subplots between characters that were mostly unnecessary and added nothing new to the either the characters or story.

And I haven't even mentioned the mostly undeveloped characters (re: Euron), story arcs and plot points that are nonsensical and fall apart under any investigation (re: the wight capture expeditions), and prominent usage in Deus Ex Machina moments, that have almost become commonplace in the past two or three seasons.

Honestly, the first four season of Game of Thrones are among some of the best-written (and acted) seasons of television ever made, with a level of intelligence and complexity matched by maybe one or two others, which is why it's such a shame to see the show degrade into the worst of cliched and hackneyed TV writing. I doubt that the ending ever would've been as good as the show was at it's best, as even with the books GRRM is having the same difficulty the show had with trying to bring all disparate characters and story threads together in a cohesive and satisying way, but had the show just been given even another season by someone who actually cared, then maybe it wouldn't have ended with a sour taste.

Most disappointing final season of any show ever? Quite probably.

TheDenizen
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Re: Game of Thrones

Post by TheDenizen »

yeah, overrated nailed it with his post.

Adds
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Re: Game of Thrones

Post by Adds »

I went into the last few episodes with almost no expectations or hopes on who would prevail and was still left disappointed. I don't blame over a million people for signing a petition wanting it re-done. Over 75k people have rated the last episode 1 star on IMDb, dropping the overall score to 4.3/10.

Of course Isaac Hempstead Wright (Bran) thought the ending was a joke when he read the script. It was a mess. I wish Sophie Turner (Sansa) wasn't taking fan backlash as personally as she seems to be. I haven't seen anyone fault any acting at all. They were superb the whole way through even though they were handed a steaming pile of shit.

Women basically drove almost every story line forward in some way, but I honestly think the writers couldn't handle strong female characters on their own. Benioff and Weiss can get stuffed.

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