Game of Thrones

[Devise 4,475]

25 minutes ago, Phil said:

 

It was over seasons, not two episodes! Having re-watched the entire series before this final season, I can say it was definitely over a few seasons. The itch was always there. They just blunted laid it down on the line over the last two. 

 

Yeah people often forget that Dany acts like a spoiled teenager for much of the series. Sure she does so with righteous means, but the moment she doesn't get her way she generally was pretty reckless/rage driven. As you say above, several times advisors had to stop her from doing basically what she was willing to do to Kings Landing. Her perspective was always "side with my enemies, or me, your choice." That was as close as she got to mercy. I don't think it's a stretch to think that character, while all the people she trusts/loves comes crumbling around her gets emotional and burns a city out of spite. 

 

But I do agree @Tyler with your point that even if the end result was good was still paced badly. The fact that even 10-15 minutes this episode dedicated to her slow descent and reactions to all her grief/losses would of sold this angle so much more speaks wonders about what the show is doing with all it's extra minutes. Aka, spectacle, and wasting time on characters ilke Euron. 

[Devise 4,475]

4 minutes ago, Tyler said:

 

Nah she literally went from "we need to fight the dead to save the realm" to "we need to burn an entire city alive" in two episodes. Remember she was destroyed by the idea that her dragons would kill innocent people in I think S6. It's awful writing because they want to get it over with.

 

Nah I'm pretty sure whenever Dany burned anyone at all, the show would rarely ever show her and instead show the hordes of people both dying and reacting to the dying in a panic as if to imply "I'm scared of this lady more than I respect her." With her it's always been means, not intention. 

Edited May 14, 2019 by Devise

[BOOM 8,758]

George RR needs to finish the damn books so we can find out how it's all supposed to end properly. Not the HBO version. 

[Tyler 885]

2 hours ago, BOOM said:

George RR needs to finish the damn books so we can find out how it's all supposed to end properly. Not the HBO version. 

 

I think this is the ending he intends to have. The difference is it will be executed ten times better. I actually like the Danerys is actually shit because I never liked her character, but if the last two seasons had been 10 episodes each I think they could have developed the thought better. 

 

I also still don't get why Tyrion is so stupid all of a sudden but oh well.

[Victor 10,946]

6 hours ago, Beketov said:

just feels rushed because HBO wants to move onto other things

Annoying thing is it wasn't forced at all, apparently HBO offered them ten episodes.

 

The writers became tired and wanted to move on and you can tell because the dialogue really went to shit in the last few seasons. And that's basically professional negligence.

[Beketov 9,026]

6 hours ago, Positivefan036 said:

 

the itch to go burn Cersei at the Red Keep sure

 

But at the end she was just burning everything for no reason with 0 military targets involved. To go from caring about saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of slaves that delays her trip to Westoros to doing that needs a lot more buildup than what GoT gave us. 10 episodes would have been much better for showing her descent into madness

This.

 

I’m okay with her going mad queen but the signs were not as obvious for it as they needed to be. The foreshadowing was more so done as “with me or against me” which doesn’t really add up to “burn a million innocent people.” Like there was a time when she locked up the dragons, her children, because Drogon killed a single child. To go from that to Burn them all feels like a bit of a stretch. The city was surrendering, it was her’s. She has no reason to go after anyone but Cersei yet she chose to murder every living thing without plot armour (Arya anyone) instead of taking the throne which has supposedly been her intention.

 

I think what they were going for was in fact the death or treason of everyone close to her driving her over the edge, that makes sense. I just don’t think they flushed that out nearly well enough. Her actions, while sometimes cruel, had noble intentions for 7 seasons. This was just flicking a switch to straight mad out of nowhere.

[Phil 5,119]

6 hours ago, Tyler said:

I also still don't get why Tyrion is so stupid all of a sudden but oh well.

Haha yes you do - you've said it a million times in this thread - the writers are not RR Martin.

 

It apparently took Martin weeks to write just a paragraph of Tyrion. He said it was draining. But he perfected what he wanted Tyrion to say. 

 

These writers are just like - fuck it, lets make him into a whiny idiot. 

[BOOM 8,758]

Well it's almost over now, so lets just hope that they've put some effort into the finale and the result is worthy of the previous quality seasons that the majority of us have enjoyed. 

[Devise 4,475]

Yeah the issue is so much can be telegraphed now. Like I'm going to go out on a limb and say Arya is the one to kill Dany. At first it was just the green eyes connection from the Lord of Light lady but Dany had that one about the prophecy of a Kingslayer slaying the Mad Queen or whatever. It didn't really dawn on me until last night that like...Arya killed the Night King, so she is also a Kingslayer so yeah..that is probably pretty obviously going to happen. 

 

For me, like I'm not always calling out the obvious writing as a good thing, I just mean it's clearly intentional. It doesn't excuse it of being bad when it's bad and honestly doesn't elevate it when it's being good. In the earlier seasons the obvious stuff of Thrones has oft been the worst, because they don't really ever break the 4th wall in a way for commentary to work with it. It's why it ends up feeling like foreshadowing and not like...plot development. 

 

That said to me the idea that the writers have given up and that they are intentionally writing obviously to salvage anything they can out of the pacing of the final season are not mutually exclusive points. Like it feels like the writers sat down, realized they had no time for nuance, or little save for some staggered scenes in the slower episodes this season, and said fuck it, make it cleanly connected to all the foreshadowing and make it obvious. Check the boxes, done. Like I think the real criminal here is whomever thought this season should be 6 episodes. Even as rushed as Season 7 was the writing just wasn't as cliche/ham-fisted all the time like it is now. It's like when I brought up re the obvious part about Jamie acknowledging his villain aspects with the scene with Brienne. Just because they connected the dots there to make the narrative of him going to Kings Landing make sense doesn't mean I think the writing was good. God didn't Brienne give some "Stay, stay with me." Cliche far. It wasn't a well written scene, but the themes/points were still obvious enough to work. At the end of the day stuff like that to me just feel phoned in. Sure we could work to make this entire scene make more sense, but who care we don't have time we gave enough of a reason why the audience could leap to Jamies conclusion from here so good, done, moving on. Which like I said, that is such a bummer for a show that did wallow in the building scenes so much. 

[Beaviss 4,957]

To be honest everyone is going to upset no matter how it ends. Most people have an idea on how they would do it or how it should end but forget all the little inklings and things the characters have said in the past.

 

People want Jon Snow on the throne and unfortunately the only way to do that is to kill off Dany. Sure you could have killed her in a battle etc but there is no shock value in that. I'm happy with how the season has turned out so far does it undo some things that the book and the show has lined up? sure it does. Does it ruin the whole story? no. I read all the books (that were out) before the show even was announced and im happy with the show. They writers didn't get the space they wanted to do what they wanted so they had to condense it and squeeze as much out of it as they could. Which I think they did a pretty damn good job giving even the minor characters (Clegane, Onion Knight etc.) some airtime.

 

Is this season a masterpiece? No. Is it very good? Yes.

 

8/10

[NotAVHLM-GM 1,858]

I want Tyrion on the throne

[Victor 10,946]

5 minutes ago, Green said:

I want Tyrion on the throne

Technically he's next in line at the moment if we kept passing it down the Lannister line and ignored Gendry becoming a Baratheon on the grounds of that being done by an usurper.

[BOOM 8,758]

Is there even an iron throne left to sit on? 

[Phil 5,119]

4 hours ago, BOOM said:

Is there even an iron throne left to sit on? 

way to spoil the surprise. 

[DollarAndADream 3,356]

On 5/13/2019 at 5:17 PM, Beketov said:

 It’s fine wanting to show their downfalls but don’t just spring it up out of nowhere because that makes no sense and just feels rushed because HBO wants to move onto other things.

 

It's not actually HBO. HBO wanted 2 more seasons of 10 episodes each. The directors, Weiss and Benioff are leaving to do a KOTOR Star Wars trilogy, so they said they can do it in 6 big episodes.

 

I agree with you.

 

Dany going mad and Jaime going towards Cersei isn't what is surprising. That's definitely fine and within their characters. There just wasn't enough character development to put them there.

 

Dany has always been fine with lighting people on fire, but millions of innocents? Blowing up the Red Keep would have been believable, but just turning on millions of innocents is just out of left field. I mean, the girl locked up 2 of her dragons when they killed 1 innocent person. She's always been fine with scare tactics, but not on a massive genocidal scale like that. They should have given her like 2-3 episodes of going crazy or something. This wasn't really Mad Dany either. She decided to do those things to King's Landing. She wasn't hearing voices in her head, etc like Aerys did.

 

Jaime is just rushed as fuck. His character arc took 7 seasons to get to this point of finally turning away from Cersei, and in like 1 episode he just decides fuck it. He bangs Brienne and bails on her. I guess she wasn't very great in bed. I'm fine with him deciding to go back to her, but it's just the pacing is off.

 

Not to mention that Tyrion has gone from like a genius to an idiot in the past 2 seasons. Being ambushed by Euron the first time, trusting Cersei on 2 separate occasions to side with the living. Dany has lost so many lives based on Tyrion's decisions.

[Beketov 9,026]

3 hours ago, DollarAndADream said:

I mean, the girl locked up 2 of her dragons when they killed 1 innocent person.

And not even the dragons that killed the girl. Drogon did it and she didn’t know where he was at the time.

 

3 hours ago, DollarAndADream said:

This wasn't really Mad Dany either. She decided to do those things to King's Landing. She wasn't hearing voices in her head, etc like Aerys did.

I mean we don’t strictly know what she did or didn’t hear. The bells definitely triggered something because she was specifically aiming for military targets before they went off. I did read an interesting theory that because many Targaryans are known to have the green sight maybe Dany and Aerys were somehow linked in a similar fashion to what happened with Hodor. The last time a Targaryen heard those bells they were constantly repeating “Burn them all” which is exactly what she was doing. Probably not the way it’s going but the theory is interesting.

 

3 hours ago, DollarAndADream said:

Jaime is just rushed as fuck. His character arc took 7 seasons to get to this point of finally turning away from Cersei, and in like 1 episode he just decides fuck it. He bangs Brienne and bails on her. I guess she wasn't very great in bed. I'm fine with him deciding to go back to her, but it's just the pacing is off.

Way way way off. Jaime pisses me off more than Dany really. She always had a bit of crazy in her, just usually reserved for her enemies. Jaime’s redemption has been a slow burn but staying with Brienne should have been the culmination of it. The only reason for him to go back to Cersei should have been to kill her, not comfort her.

[BOOM 8,758]

You're welcome... 

 

 

[DollarAndADream 3,356]

12 hours ago, Beketov said:

Way way way off. Jaime pisses me off more than Dany really. She always had a bit of crazy in her, just usually reserved for her enemies. Jaime’s redemption has been a slow burn but staying with Brienne should have been the culmination of it. The only reason for him to go back to Cersei should have been to kill her, not comfort her.

Yeah, that's kind of what I mean. Like, I can see him eventually going back to her, but it would need a big story arc. I can see it happening because of how much he loved her.

 

At this point in the show though, he should have been going back to kill her, if anything. It makes no sense to go be with her. Especially considering she literally just sent Bronn to kill him and Tyrion like 2 episodes ago.

[Beaviss 4,957]

12 hours ago, Beketov said:

I mean we don’t strictly know what she did or didn’t hear. The bells definitely triggered something because she was specifically aiming for military targets before they went off. I did read an interesting theory that because many Targaryans are known to have the green sight maybe Dany and Aerys were somehow linked in a similar fashion to what happened with Hodor. The last time a Targaryen heard those bells they were constantly repeating “Burn them all” which is exactly what she was doing. Probably not the way it’s going but the theory is interesting.

 

Im a fan of this theory

[Devise 4,475]

33 minutes ago, DollarAndADream said:

Yeah, that's kind of what I mean. Like, I can see him eventually going back to her, but it would need a big story arc. I can see it happening because of how much he loved her.

 

At this point in the show though, he should have been going back to kill her, if anything. It makes no sense to go be with her. Especially considering she literally just sent Bronn to kill him and Tyrion like 2 episodes ago.

 

As much as I wanted to see him kill Cersei as well, and as bad as the writing was in the scene his line about himself being a hateful person before leaving Brienne in the previous episode is pretty much as close as any of us are ever going to get to closure/reason from the show for the decision. The show doesn't really play in grey anymore, he clearly saw himself as a villain and felt his fate deserved to be linked to Cersei's. Yes he tried to save her much of the actual episode, but you could tell he sort of knew the odds were unlikely they were walking out, progressively as it built and the stakes kept getting worse the closer he got. 

 

Honestly I don't even think a big story arc would of been needed, it would of been better of course, but even dedicating 10-15 minutes before the passage of time to show him and Brienne together to build to the turn would of worked. As Tyler said in a previous post it pretty much all comes down to the directors refusing to do the proper amount of seasons/episodes for all this wrap up. Yes Season 7 wasn't as strong but it was clear even without George R the show was best when it stuck to tried and true, and tried and true does mean a longer drawn out pacing. The jump forward in time aspects of this season in particular I think have just become too jarring for the style of character development Thrones was known for, especially with them trying to also nail all these big final battle beats and larger scale episodes.  

[DollarAndADream 3,356]

2 hours ago, Devise said:

 

As much as I wanted to see him kill Cersei as well, and as bad as the writing was in the scene his line about himself being a hateful person before leaving Brienne in the previous episode is pretty much as close as any of us are ever going to get to closure/reason from the show for the decision. The show doesn't really play in grey anymore, he clearly saw himself as a villain and felt his fate deserved to be linked to Cersei's. Yes he tried to save her much of the actual episode, but you could tell he sort of knew the odds were unlikely they were walking out, progressively as it built and the stakes kept getting worse the closer he got. 

 

Honestly I don't even think a big story arc would of been needed, it would of been better of course, but even dedicating 10-15 minutes before the passage of time to show him and Brienne together to build to the turn would of worked. As Tyler said in a previous post it pretty much all comes down to the directors refusing to do the proper amount of seasons/episodes for all this wrap up. Yes Season 7 wasn't as strong but it was clear even without George R the show was best when it stuck to tried and true, and tried and true does mean a longer drawn out pacing. The jump forward in time aspects of this season in particular I think have just become too jarring for the style of character development Thrones was known for, especially with them trying to also nail all these big final battle beats and larger scale episodes.  

Yep. It's definitely shitty that the directors decided to take one of the biggest TV shows of all time and cut it down by like.....14 episodes. HBO wanted 20, and they gave them 6 long ones. Now they're going to a Star Wars trilogy. Apparently there's a rumor that Disney is having second thoughts on that as well now with the reactions to S8.

[Phil 5,119]

13 hours ago, BOOM said:

You're welcome... 

 

 

I've been watching his reviews since Season 4 haha

[Phil 5,119]

11 minutes ago, DollarAndADream said:

Yep. It's definitely shitty that the directors decided to take one of the biggest TV shows of all time and cut it down by like.....14 episodes. HBO wanted 20, and they gave them 6 long ones. Now they're going to a Star Wars trilogy. 

 

If this is true then that is DEVASTATING to hear. Also explains everything.

[Phil 5,119]

So.. the Game of Thrones was just musical chairs and the winner was the one sitting down the whole time...

[Devise 4,475]

Considering all the issues this season had, that finale was likely way better than it had any right to be. I know some people may still have issues with this ep, but I think there was some very well done things and as someone who was totally Team Ned/Team Stark since season one, I'm at least happy because somehow I got the payoff I wanted after 8 seasons of watching the actual only fucking good characters in this world suffer through shit. And get screen time dedicated to it. I was honestly not expecting anything short of every character dying so the more traditional wrapping up of the plot lines and then just hard stating with the camera shots at the end of the episode that the shows main character threads were Jon, Arya, Sansa and Bran worked for me. 

 

I think it's why I will ultimately not only like the finale but rate this ep of thrones relatively high, there was seasons upon seasons of journey that they payed off there for those four characters that felt really good, and in many ways almost disconnected from the events of the rest of the season. I was also a fan of Drogon burning the chair. Whose to say if Drogon did that of his own accord or Bran was just warging into him. The show decided, ultimately to leave Bran and his power as vague and mysterious as possible. The fact that somehow he became King, vaguely hinted at still having power yet....(let me go find that dragon for you, leaves) is an odd choice. I feel like for a lot of the audience the lack of explanation on the religious/magical aspects of the show that have had impacts has been jarring. I can't tell if that is just the shows lack of going into detail either, or if the books are also like that as I've only read some of the first book.

 

Anyway, if you hated the Starks or weren't Team Stark because they felt like the obvious hero characters I feel for you, but for me the show felt like an up and down journey both in terms of plot lines and overall quality, that ultimately subverted my expectations enough that I earnestly didn't think we'd see the level of "happy ending" we kind of got for the characters that I felt deserved it the most.