You’re being deliberately obtuse here. My issues with the show is that they have forced well written and intelligent characters into stupid situations to fulfil a need to have a certain amount of “cinematic” feel. The stuff with Dany last episode was farcical.
Television Game of Thrones (TV) • The watch has ended
- Thread starter ha_rooney
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You’re being deliberately obtuse here. My issues with the show is that they have forced well written and intelligent characters into stupid situations to fulfil a need to have a certain amount of “cinematic” feel. The stuff with Dany last episode was farcical.
I think it's more that they saw Dany burning people alive and crucifying others without any sign of remorse as just and right and now that it's being shown as proof as her decent into madness they can't accept it. They equate it with Ned beheading the Nights Watch deserter even though he obviously did it with a heavy heart and they showed him explaining to Bran why he had to do it.
That particular scene was to set out the character of the Stark family. 'He who passes the sentence must swing the sword'. Honour, responsibility but compassion too. The salt of the earth.
Dunno about being obtuse but can’t say I’m hugely surprised at you turning out to be someone who prefers their narrative to be utterly black and white, with one dimensional heroes and villains and no nuance or shades of grey.
That will be obvious to anyone who is familiar with your football forum contributions over the years
I think there was a way to make her madness seem rational. Whether she killed deserving people or not earlier, her method of burning them, crucifying them certainly were cruel and not as merciful as a quick death via beheading. She also seemed to delight in such executions in a self-righteous manner and was way too assured of her morality and higher position over others.
But Dumb and Dumber pretty much dumbed down the length of the show's final stretch to 13 episodes and rushed through everything with the velocity of wildfire started by a mad Targaryen ruler.
Season 2 and 3 can fall into the over-rated category, but seasons 1 and 4 are some of the finest TV ever made.
I note that there is a certain contingent of posters trying to dumb this show down as 'Tits and Dragons' and downplaying the decline in quality, and basically saying 'book nerds' have their knickers in a twist, but I just think its a ploy to play devil's advocate and be annoying. A lot of people fecked off with this show are not even book readers.. but just people with certain standards of how they expect a narrative to unravel and used to the high standards of the earlier seasons. Then you've got the type of viewer who barely engages with the show at anything beyond a very superficial level and they're probably the only fans who don't care about the decline which is probably where you fall into judging by your posts on the topic so far. That doesn't mean you lack the ability to assess the decline but it is more you couldn't give two shits really about the show and therefore it means you aren't really giving a serious opinion.
For me there is no doubt GOT at its best is a legendary TV show which catered to everyone and had all the qualities one would associate with near-perfect TV and the current season is so far off the pace in this regard it is astonishing.. you're talking GOAT contender TV show, to arguably one of the worst final seasons of a big TV show ever. It will go down in history for bombing so hard.
I guess my issue lies with the artistic presentation which, in the last two seasons, is closer to Marvel than to Martin's original work. Visually it's stunning but the tone of the series has definitely changed a lot. I'm not one of the people who will refer to D & D as "dumb and dumber" since Benioff has written two books i thoroughly enjoyed (one of them, the 25th Hour, became an excellent movie too) but i can't help but feel that they really missed a trick here.
I didn't expect the show to end with Daenerys becoming a benevolent ruler and restoring order in Westeros. Dany's character development from a "breaker of chains" who would break the wheel (her own words) into the Mad Queen is a development that could definitely make sense on the show. In fact, it is a development that seems much closer to Martin's worldview than to any LotR-like "happy ending". A worldview where the darkness that resides in the human soul and the absurdity of violence upon which each phase of human civilization has been built steadily lead a civilization to ash.
Some of my favourite scenes in the show where the ones with Tyrion and Jorah travelling through the ruins of Valyria, a civilization that once stood great and proud but now lies forgotten in debris with death being the only thing that has survived. That was back when the writers still had the time and the will to portray the show's worldview on screen and not on the next week's "previously on GoT". So, you're right that Dany will become a psycho, Jamie will be a loser, Jon will be an incompetent sap. And in the background, Stannis will always be burning Shireen alive and all the great buildings in KL will be burnt to the ground.
After the original material ran out, the narration became more minimalistic, more "1+1=2". This has hurt the show in the same manner in which the writing has hurt the second season of Westworld. The characters lose their depth, their "three-dimensional" status, and become just symbols that represent just one thing. The problem with GoT is that its characters were never like that. Despite Daenerys becoming the Mad Queen always being in the cards, her transformation seems plausible because it is in tune with the heart and soul of the story overall but it was completely out of sync with everything we've been watching up until the main characters started talking about it in the last two episodes. You could see this particular outcome but it was handled with very little grace. This should have been an episode that would make TV history. And not just for its special effects.
Sorry about the rant, just my two cents on the matter.
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Yeah I don’t disagree with you here Pogue. It’s well in line with her character and she’s been portrayed - she’s been well capable of it.
I think where I agreed with the video were some of the silly writing to “fast forward” her to that point during this season. Like “she (& Tyrion them all) forgot about Eurons ships” - just to have another dragon killed & Missandei captured etc.
My flatmate just started GOT and I binged both season 2 and 3 with him just to see if they were overrated and let me tell you the early seasons of GOT were the best shit ever made. Every episode was pure gold.
I can’t really relate to this post at all, for me the three characters you mention have lost all their complexity. By being honorable to the point of pure boredom, Jon loses the earlier complexity which had him break his vows. By becoming a pure evil child-murdering psychopath, Dany loses all her moral ambiguity. As for Jaime, tying his entire identity and destiny to his sister, to the exclusion of everything else, obscures the decisions he made which shaped his “Kingslayer” identity, which had nothing to do with his sister. There was actually a lot more to Jaime than his relationship to Cersei in earlier seasons; now however they’ve dumbed him down to a simple guy who is a slave to this relationship.
This applies to Tyrion as well. He was loveable and clever in earlier seasons, but could also be cunning, cruel and brutal when it served his purpose. Now he’s just this guy who goes around urging everyone to do the right thing, no matter how stupid the consequences.
Yeah I agree. I loved Ned and I'm firmly stuck in camp Stark in part because of his character. He was an Island of morality in a sea of deceit and decay. His death crushed me but help me understand the concept of the show.
My favourite character now is Arya and for completely different reasons. I realised early on that the trauma she has been through has affect her sanity and that she is now a morally challenged character. I love that about her as much as I grieved the loss of her innocence in the early seasons. Her duo with The Hound cemented her place in my heart as they were comedy gold for several seasons.
I also realised early on that Dany was Morally challenged. I just didn't take to her character or story arc as much as I did Arya's. Maybe if she had had The Hound as her sidekick instead of Barristan and Jorah I'd have liked her more.
Now as I said my favourite character is Arya but if they completely screw her over in the last episode I'll be Game of Thrones strikes again and take it on the chin.
I’m kind of trolling at this stage tbh. I’m sure the writing is flawed. Just disagree with some of the issues being taken with it. Of course, it doesn’t help that I’ve no idea what you mean by “Kingslayer identity”. Should I have picked that up from watching the show? Or is that something which is more emphasised in the books? I definitely didn’t pay much attention to plot subtleties in earlier seasons. I just found all the exposition a bit boring. Always wanted them to fast forward to the next bit of hacking and slashing.
She could've done with some of Sandor's realism instead of Jorah's blind devotion.
"Westeros isn't going to worship you, you dumb bitch."
Yep. I would pay to see season 2-5 Dany with The Hound as her only adviser. She would have turned out more ruthless but less self righteous about it.
This is Jaime's most important scene in the entire show, he's describing the event in his life which shaped his entire "Kingslayer" persona. It's the moment we begin to understand that he's more than the cartoon villain his enemies believe him to be. Yet now we're meant to believe that this is a man who is a helpless slave to his love for his sister, incapable of real independent action.
(The above is also I think some of the finest writing and acting in the show, and a pretty good example of how the show has declined in recent seasons).
That's fine, people watch these things for different reasons, and get enjoyment from different aspects of it. For me the battles, tits and dragons have been the least interesting aspects of the show, there's plenty of other stuff I can watch for those.
Seven hells this series has been butchered
That actually made me LOLz. What a pairing that would have been.
Really?! I need to update my Netflix list pronto!
I'm in the same boat. Two people talking for 5+ minutes have always been the highlight of the show for me. It sounds arsey and pretentious but that doesn't mean I don't love the spectacles of Hardhome, BotB, the loot train etc. I just love the character stuff more.
Something like this...
Gripped me much more than Arya's stealth section in the library in episode 3 for example.
More to the point, I think there's a failure to understand that the earlier seasons were far more in-line with television serialisation, whereas the last couple have effectively been aired as a group of movies - each season is about 7 hours long, which is significantly less than the LOTR franchise and about the length of the average cinema trilogy. That distinction may not be as clear as, say, the difference between the Start Trek TV shows and the Star Trek movies, but it is the kind of shift in mindset you have to watch with now.
I also think that a lot of book readers watched the early seasons with the narrative already in mind, and the show only served to illustrate the main points, leaving character thoughts/motivations something they could refer to as words written on the page. Without the books to lean on, those same book readers have increasingly had to rely on a more film theory approach (which is not as pretentious as it sounds - it's what we all do when we watch a feature film). The newer experience is going to mean a change in the way the show feels for them, whereas it's remained fairly consistent for the rest of us.
Plus, there's the fact geeks don't like their niches going mainstream. They've been able to create a new in-group by vehemently railing against the counter-culture they used to be a part of. Unlike something the MCU, GoT is loved by everyone, not chiefly nerds.
The internet is the worst.
GoT has always been popular though right from the very beginning. It certainly had more people watch it as the show progressed this is true, but it always had a very big fan base initially. So i'm not sure that argument is right, we all loved the early seasons, the show started getting criticised with the Sand Snake plotline in Season 5.
Agreed. I love that scene, one of the best in the show.
The internet is the worst says man with 15,000 posts on an internet forum, unironically.
This criticism doesn’t make sense to me - it’s just book nerds - then why does everyone I speak to offline who has never read the books and is barely into the fantasy genre at all detest the final season and feel miffed.
They’ve cocked this season up pure and simple and any attempt to dress it up as oh it’s you as the viewer who needs to adapt and it’s because it’s more like a movie now etc etc doesn’t bear any weight IMO.
There’s plenty of one off movies out there which tell an entire story which makes sense and entertains equally and gets excellent ratings etc They’ve had 6 episodes of decent length to make a good ending (yes in some ways that isn’t enough time) but it is more than the average movie and they’ve made a pigs ear of it in terms of narrative and pacing. Most of the characters endings have fallen flat and there is no sense of satisfaction or logic in most of their conclusions and even the ones that do make sense haven’t been executed effectively.
Danaerys going mad makes sense, way it is executed is shite - likewise Jaime going back to Cersei. Flip side they’ve completely cocked up likes of Jon and Bran to name but a few. It’s simply not good tv if we are looking at it from a quality control perspective which you could never say about the first four seasons.
I'd say it's the opposite if anything. A lot of fans who are pissed off are ones who would argue the last few seasons have moved away from that well-written moral ambiguity into the realm of poor writing where characters decisions are illogical and don't make any sense relative to the characters that have been presented, and the way viewers perceive them.
Jaime going back to Cersei is fine if it's written well, the problem is that we were literally told an episode ago Cersei wanted to kill him - why does he go back to her when he previously abandoned her for breaking a promise to their enemies? It doesn't make sense. Similarly, Daenerys going mad and turning into an evil psychopath is a natural plot progression for the show to take; the problem is it happened over an episode. And Jon being a dopey, incompetent sap in principle isn't a bad thing - the problem is that everyone around him argues he's this incredible, highly-skilled and charismatic leader when the writing doesn't show that.
This applies to a lot of other characters. We're told Sansa is the smartest character on the show but she's done nothing to demonstrate this. Varys is meant to be a masterful schemer but dies because he betrays Daenerys in open, plain sight, even though he's served evil kings before. Tyrion is similarly meant to be smart but has spent the last two seasons acting as an idiot.
None of that's fans annoyed about a lack of moral ambiguity - it's just basic complaints about writing. Even in stuff that's not trying to be serious and morally ambiguous, generally having characters whose actions are consistent and logical to the writing is, like, a basic requirement of the work being somewhat decent.
"I only meant to say..."
"That the woman who murdered my mother, father and brother is dangerous? Thank you for your wise council."
Sansa being sassy towards Littlefinger was always fun.
"That the woman who murdered my mother, father and brother is dangerous? Thank you for your wise council."
Sansa being sassy towards Littlefinger was always fun.
It is when you are facing a massive war during winter. What are you looking for in a show like this? Do you want her to write the seven kingdoms version of the Iliad?Genius stuff.
She's mostly stating basic stuff that the other characters around her should know: it's winter so people are going to need lots of food, and because they don't have enough food, they're going to need more. It's a development on the girl she is in Season 1, but the show has given us very little evidence thus far to suggest she's a particularly capable or adept schemer. Her taking down of Littlefinger is meant to be presented as this, but the only reason she beats him out is because Bran literally tells her he's a cnut and that she should trust her own sister ahead of him. Even though she should already know the type of person he is considering he sold her to the Boltons.
I have no problem with her being regarded as competent, but she's done nothing on the level of early schemers like Littlefinger or Varys who largely engineered continental conflicts for their own ends.
Both of them ended up dying with nothing while she could still end up with her arse on the Iron Throne. It's not about short term gains but longevity.
Well yes, but that's because the writing for them became progressively stupid at the show went on as well. Varys literally wandering around a beach telling Jon to betray Daenerys openly when he's been built up as a careful schemer being case in point. Their stupidity doesn't make Sansa particularly intelligent. She's still done nothing to demonstrate herself as being a particularly impressive schemer beyond the level of any average ruler, and yet the show again wants us to believe she's the most intelligent person in Westeros.
If she is an repressive schemer should the likes of you and I see her moves?
You should see the end results. There's one episode to go and little to indicate she's got some grand plan which is going to be remarkably impressive or which will take everyone aback. And the show has been written for the past few seasons in a way where characters don't really scheme all that much anymore, they just state things openly to each other for the most part because subtext has been stripped away in the writing.
I'd say her handling of Daenerys was alright - she'd learned from trusting people too much previously to be a lot more guarded and demanding when it came to the north's future. But again while that demonstrates some intelligence, it does nothing to show she's anywhere near the most intelligent character on the show or a masterful schemer. Again, what actual scheming has she done?
After the death of her aunt she persuaded the Knights of the Vale to get behind Littlefinger which led to them turning up to support the North in the BotB. Then at the trial of Littlefinger she along with her sister and brother played the Knights to back her over Littlefinger.
She didn't have to work hard to convince them though, they had a literal demigod present who was able to inform everyone that Littlefinger had murdered their lord and that he'd been responsible for orchestrating the war of the five kings.
A real player will use every advantage they have got.
This fits really well. Metallica soundtrack to the KL attack.
Omg @Redlambs
I've been binge watching the seasons again to get my gf caught up. She watched the last episode that aired and I kid you not at the end she said
"I bet that horse is the faceless jagger guy to help arya"
I've been binge watching the seasons again to get my gf caught up. She watched the last episode that aired and I kid you not at the end she said
"I bet that horse is the faceless jagger guy to help arya"