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Game of Thrones Season 8


Voice_of_Reason

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2 hours ago, bearrock said:

Pretty sure the Northerners at King's Landing could report back to Sansa about the dragon running roughshod over KL's defenses and let her know we got no chance.  There's no moral ambiguity here.  Writers could have gone the moral ambiguity way, but they went out of their way to ensure that there was no question (lannister soldiers even threw down their weapons).  Short of a big flashing "Dany is now evil" sign (well, there was the Targaryen Nuremberg banner), what more do you need?

The writing is the problem.  They did their best to say “look everyone she’s evil now!” (because the plot outline said so) but they didn’t undo the difference between her style of rule and the noble ruling class.  The nobles of Westeros basically treat the commoners as livestock.  If a noble murders a whore?  No one cares.  Rapes someone, or a dozen someone’s?  No one cares.  Flays them for fun?  All good.  Hunts them with dogs for his own amusement?  Dad might warn them to not over do it.  Starves a population while throwing a lavish wedding?  Well they shouldn’t have been poor.  

 

For seasons if you looked past the the pretty veneer of the nobility you could see the reality of what Westeros was.  The writers in their rush to make the Dragon Queen the bad guy, forgot to undo the major difference between her and the ruling classes she overthrew.  In the end Westeros was not substantively changed.  The wars were for nothing.  The lives lost, were lost for nothing. In the end it was all just another squabble between nobles houses.  

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I know this has likely already been covered but it was interesting to me how 2 of the 3 dragons were taken out in relatively conventional ways, yet the remaining dragon seemed to be wearing an invisibility cloak or something because it was flying back and forth in the same place and the soldiers seemed to have ample time & chances to strike it with those death spears.  

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37 minutes ago, NoCalMike said:

I know this has likely already been covered but it was interesting to me how 2 of the 3 dragons were taken out in relatively conventional ways, yet the remaining dragon seemed to be wearing an invisibility cloak or something because it was flying back and forth in the same place and the soldiers seemed to have ample time & chances to strike it with those death spears.  

 

I thought that was totally believable. If you have all the time in the world to line up your shots and are not risk of being burned alive, you can take one of them down. The second the first shots missed and the first ship exploded, all bets are off. People are going to start panicking, firing wildly, abandoning their posts, etc. That was a weapon of fear as much as anything.

 

Anyway, I've given this some thought and it finally occurred to me what GOT is.

 

It's one-man's Choose Your Adventure Book gone completely awry. At every stage of this, Martin basically asked himself, "Should Jon go north with the wildings or try to escape?" And at each point, he made the choice that took the story further and further away from his center. And he did those over 5 books and 50 billion words as opposed to one book and 100 pages.

 

Eventually, these adventrues became so far-flung that they no longer had any narrative strand holding them together.

 

Pulling those strands back is what the tv show has had to do for the past 2 and a half years. All in all, It did it as well as can be expected while still trying to be entertaining.

 

I rewatched the episode last night but started right after Drogon flew away. Everything after that was kind of fantastic as all these characters - some of whom where children when all this **** started - had to ask themselves, "Ok....what now?"

 

Sansa telling her uncle to sit may be the comic highlight of the entire series. That dude spent his entire show run in a dungeon.

12 hours ago, Bacon said:

What galls me about debating Dany's motivations and mindset is that we really shouldn't have to. It was a (profoundly stupid) creative choice to have Dany go AWOL for much of episode 5 in order to help the audience experience (and I quote D&D) "the horrors of war" through the eyes of characters we don't care about.

 

 

I honestly don't understand a lot of you as, like, people.

 

The most brilliant thing they did was never cut back to Dany after she literally decided to burn them all. We weren't going to learn anything from her, and we might have found the whole experience "cool" instead of terrifying had we seen it from her perspective. Making her into an unseen monster was a great decision.

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3 minutes ago, Lombardi's_kid_brother said:

 

I thought that was totally believable. If you have all the time in the world to line up your shots and are not risk of being burned alive, you can take one of them down. The second the first shots missed and the first ship exploded, all bets are off. People are going to start panicking, firing wildly, abandoning their posts, etc. That was a weapon of fear as much as anything.

 

Anyway, I've given this some thought and it finally occurred to me what GOT is.

 

It's one-man's Choose Your Adventure Book gone completely awry. At every stage of this, Martin basically asked himself, "Should Jon go north with the wildings or try to escape?" And at each point, he made the choice that took the story further and further away from his center. And he did those over 5 books and 50 billion words as opposed to one book and 100 pages.

 

Eventually, these adventrues became so far-flung that they no longer had any narrative strand holding them together.

 

Pulling those strands back is what the tv show has had to do for the past 2 and a half years. All in all, It did it as well as can be expected while still trying to be entertaining.

 

Martin's increasing delays in finishing books after releasing the first three in four years pretty much confirms this.

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13 hours ago, Momma There Goes That Man said:

 

Basically all of the show’s problems are related to not having enough time which is directly D&D’s decision. So they are entirely to blame for the shortened seasons which led to the lazy half asses writing or the general rushed feeling and storylines and character arcs that just weren’t fleshed out like they should have been

 

They needed at least 6 more years to tie up all the BS threads that Martin started.

 

I really can't remember what happened in what season, but you people hang on my every word. Was it Season 5 that I really hated? There was one season where literally nothing happened over the entire season. Everything at the wall was boring. Everything with Dany in the desert was boring. Was that the season where Bran didn't even appear? Tyrion had gotten himself kidnapped for the sixth or seventh time. Jorah was off doing nothing of note. And it just seemed like we were going to be stuck in place forever.

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29 minutes ago, Lombardi's_kid_brother said:

Eventually, these adventrues became so far-flung that they no longer had any narrative strand holding them together.

Story lines drifting apart, often very far apart, and the converging much later on is fairly standard for sci-fi or fantasy book series. 

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3 hours ago, Yohan said:

 I've tried to rewatch many of those, and can't get through them again. The exception is Deadwood, which I did recently, because of the movie coming out and it's only 3 seasons.

 

I rewatched Breaking Bad recently.  Awesome series.  I got up to season 5 but thats when it starts to break down (harhar) with some "jump the shark" type moments, which get even worse in season 6. 

 

The Sopranos is pretty much a soap opera, which is easy to pick up at leave off because theres not much continuing storyline season to season. 

 

The Wire I rewatched all the way through.   That was great all the way through.

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48 minutes ago, Lombardi's_kid_brother said:

 

They needed at least 6 more years to tie up all the BS threads that Martin started.

  

 I really can't remember what happened in what season, but you people hang on my every word. Was it Season 5 that I really hated? There was one season where literally nothing happened over the entire season. Everything at the wall was boring. Everything with Dany in the desert was boring. Was that the season where Bran didn't even appear? Tyrion had gotten himself kidnapped for the sixth or seventh time. Jorah was off doing nothing of note. And it just seemed like we were going to be stuck in place forever.

 

Yes that was season 5.   If I remember right it was basically politics in Kings Landing / Mereen / the Wall, Arya training in Braavos, Sansa rape scene.  Towards the end we have Cersei naked walk scene and Dany on Drogon Falkor type scene.   I could be mixing it up with books 4 and 5 that season it mostly covered.   (condensing those books into one season was one of D&Ds wiser moves)

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1 hour ago, Destino said:

The writing is the problem.  They did their best to say “look everyone she’s evil now!” (because the plot outline said so) but they didn’t undo the difference between her style of rule and the noble ruling class.  The nobles of Westeros basically treat the commoners as livestock.  If a noble murders a whore?  No one cares.  Rapes someone, or a dozen someone’s?  No one cares.  Flays them for fun?  All good.  Hunts them with dogs for his own amusement?  Dad might warn them to not over do it.  Starves a population while throwing a lavish wedding?  Well they shouldn’t have been poor.  

 

For seasons if you looked past the the pretty veneer of the nobility you could see the reality of what Westeros was.  The writers in their rush to make the Dragon Queen the bad guy, forgot to undo the major difference between her and the ruling classes she overthrew.  In the end Westeros was not substantively changed.  The wars were for nothing.  The lives lost, were lost for nothing. In the end it was all just another squabble between nobles houses.  

Did people really expect massive changes?  I always thought it would end with Jon or Dany (up until the past season or so) or both on the throne basically doing what other rulers had done before but better.  I kind of assumed the whole point was that no matter how much you want to change things you have to deal with the world around you.  (As made clear by Dany’s struggles in Essos and Ned’s stubborn and sometimes self defeating insistence on duty)

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3 hours ago, Chew said:

With so many people feeling letdown by the final season, is anybody going to rewatch the series in maybe 5-10 years from now?

I've rewatched all the big boys (Sopranos, Wire, Breaking Bad, Dexter, The Shield, Deadwood, etc) 5+ years after the finale aired.  I like to give it some time before watching epic shows again so they can age a bit and I've forgotten about most of the smaller details from the story.  That said, I'll probably rewatch GoT in like 2025.  


I've already started a rewatch. Wife wanted to watch again since she just went through the series for the first time. We watched the first episode yesterday. It's still unbelievable how well done it is as well as the rest of the earlier seasons. I feel a bit disappointed at things now though knowing how it ends. 

 

The Wire and the Expanse are my next two new series. Seen Breaking Bad 3x, Mad Men 3x, GOT 4x. HMT 2x, (that was brutal), The Shield 1x. Never got into Dexter. Just recently saw a trailer for Deadwood and that is added to the list too. 

 

 

 

 

53 minutes ago, Lombardi's_kid_brother said:

 

They needed at least 6 more years to tie up all the BS threads that Martin started.

 

I really can't remember what happened in what season, but you people hang on my every word. Was it Season 5 that I really hated? There was one season where literally nothing happened over the entire season. Everything at the wall was boring. Everything with Dany in the desert was boring. Was that the season where Bran didn't even appear? Tyrion had gotten himself kidnapped for the sixth or seventh time. Jorah was off doing nothing of note. And it just seemed like we were going to be stuck in place forever.

 

They could have it done it so much better with at least two complete final seasons. 

 

But yeah it's season 5 that you are thinking of, which I quite liked. Cersei and Margery dealing with the High Sparrow. Dany learning to govern in Mereen and eventually riding Drogon to escape the fighting pits. Jon leading the Wildlings past the Wall, Hardome and being murdered. Arya training in Bravos and Sansa in Winterfell with Ramsey. 

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2 hours ago, Destino said:

In the end Westeros was not substantively changed.  The wars were for nothing.  The lives lost, were lost for nothing. In the end it was all just another squabble between nobles houses.  

 

Which could be a lesson he leaves in the books. The futility of and evils of war. the show hasn't really dove into that because the wars and big battles are grand moments and usually are celebrated.

3 hours ago, FanboyOf91 said:

tl;dr House Stark won. You the real MVP, Sansa.

 

The last book was originally going to be called "A Time for Wolves" which he changed to "A Dream of Spring". It seems the Stark characters running things and getting pretty good endings in the show is an accurate portrayal of his planned story ending for a long time.

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27 minutes ago, Destino said:

Story lines drifting apart, often very far apart, and the converging much later on is fairly standard for sci-fi or fantasy book series. 

Not like this.

 

There is a reason Martin can't finish these things, because he literally cannot finish these things. It can't be done without writing 5 more books that essentially reverse everything he has done previously.

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I think we established long ago that these wars were for nothing. Robert started a rebellion thinking the woman he loved was kidnapped and raped when she was actually eloping.

 

I did not want the show with Jon or Dany on the Iron Throne and the re-establishment of some Targaryan dynasty that seemed like a nightmare anyway. (It never occurred to me why I should care that Jon was a Targaryan aside from the fact that Dany cared. The Targaryans were assholes. I didn't particularly want them back).

 

Any ending that was not that would satisfy me, and this was a reasonable attempt at changing the system. The nobles actually choosing a king is a pretty huge leap forward from a hereditary dynasty. (Whether that remains in place or not is for Book 14 to be written in 2136, I suppose). The fact that women are playing a role in this world is interesting now. Some pretty major families are gone or permanently changed. Europe wasn't all that different after the Black Death....except it was changed irrevocably. England wasn't all that different at the end of the War of the Roses. Except it was changed irrevocably. This stuff happens in fits and starts.

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20 minutes ago, Lombardi's_kid_brother said:

I think we established long ago that these wars were for nothing. Robert started a rebellion thinking the woman he loved was kidnapped and raped when she was actually eloping.

 

I did not want the show with Jon or Dany on the Iron Throne and the re-establishment of some Targaryan dynasty that seemed like a nightmare anyway. (It never occurred to me why I should care that Jon was a Targaryan aside from the fact that Dany cared. The Targaryans were assholes. I didn't particularly want them back).

 

Any ending that was not that would satisfy me, and this was a reasonable attempt at changing the system. The nobles actually choosing a king is a pretty huge leap forward from a hereditary dynasty. (Whether that remains in place or not is for Book 14 to be written in 2136, I suppose). The fact that women are playing a role in this world is interesting now. Some pretty major families are gone or permanently changed. Europe wasn't all that different after the Black Death....except it was changed irrevocably. England wasn't all that different at the end of the War of the Roses. Except it was changed irrevocably. This stuff happens in fits and starts.

GoT spinoff where common folk rise up: The Westerosi Spring

 

 

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I just wanted Tyrion  to finish off his joke "I once brought a honeycomb and a jackass into a brothel..." The tallest Lannister tried to tell that joke 3 times, and all 3 times he was cut off.

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3 hours ago, Lombardi's_kid_brother said:

Making her into an unseen monster was a great decision.

 

Making a character with nearly a decade of development into an unseen monster with unclear motivation and a choppy arc in order to a direct a hollow genre exercise is easy, that's for sure. Not sure about brilliant. 

 

I'm here to watch the rise and fall of these characters, not Hacksaw Ridge set in Westeros. 

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With all of the glowing reviews of Madmen, I may have to try watching it.  I think I watched the first episode (or at least part of it) several years ago.  From what I remember, it seemed like a bunch of guys in suits having boring conversations.  Is it a series that takes a while to get interesting, or does it hook you in the first few episodes?

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23 minutes ago, Nerm said:

With all of the glowing reviews of Madmen, I may have to try watching it.  I think I watched the first episode (or at least part of it) several years ago.  From what I remember, it seemed like a bunch of guys in suits having boring conversations.  Is it a series that takes a while to get interesting, or does it hook you in the first few episodes?

 

I struggled through it a bit until near the end of season one. Episode 12 with the Nixon/Kennedy election results really hooked me and I didn't start losing interest until season 6 or so. I did finish it, but for me it peaked around season 4-5.

 

Unless you're a huge fan of early 60s American culture, it does take a while to grab hold because it's such a character driven show with tons of relationships and arcs to follow. Once you're in though, it earns your attention with lots of strong symbolism, social parallels and careful character development. 

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31 minutes ago, Nerm said:

With all of the glowing reviews of Madmen, I may have to try watching it.  I think I watched the first episode (or at least part of it) several years ago.  From what I remember, it seemed like a bunch of guys in suits having boring conversations.  Is it a series that takes a while to get interesting, or does it hook you in the first few episodes?

 

Yes and no, there are definitely a lot of very interesting story arcs and the series gets better as it goes.  with that said, the characters and their development throughout the series (along with it being a very interesting time in history IMO) are why I loved that show so much. I was into it from the first episode so it's possible you might just not enjoy that kind of series. I will say the show is absolutely hilarious at times and this was more apparent than it was during the original run when I rewatched it earlier this year.

 

EDIT: I was hooked from the beginning all the way through the end but @Bacon probably summed it up better than I did.

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