HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones - will this be just for nerds? (NO SPOILERS PLEASE)

yes yes I got sucked in by the couple of "Stannis not being a complete cunt" scenes & i guess hadn't banked on him burning his own daughter, feel free to point and laugh :(

poor shereen
i was not prepared for that

ok I know the unsullied are more yr en masse fighting unit etc but when someone says PROTECT YR QUEEN maybe more than 3 surround her ffs?

i thought the dragon stuff was p dope, idgaf abt the effects as much.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFbp1CzVW6U

Honestly, I'm not completely sure why everyone thinks this scene looks "terrible". Maybe it's because that shot of her face as she flies away has that green screen backdrop feel by default but besides that I'm not sure anything about this is objectively that badly done. I give this scene a score of "got away with it".

http://csm.info.pl/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/aphex-twin-mask-370x215.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/a2ObDsh.png

lollll

xxp it's perfectly fine, ppl just have no capacity for wonder in this jaded age smdh

i admit that i just have a problem with flying dragons. the 'daenerys rides the dragon' moment has been obvious ever since people started calling her Mother of Dragons, and i've been dreading it ever since. there's something just unspeakably cheesy about it. but that's just me. but beyond that, there's also her terrible acting. i thought it was getting a little better over the last year but now we're back to square one.

someone has betrayed you!
*makes the daenerys face*
your army has conquered a city!
*makes the daenerys face*
you're riding a dragon and it's amazing!
*makes the daenerys face*
you realized you forgot to report a substantial amount of income on your taxes! you might be in trouble!
*makes the daenerys face*

ive always thought emilia clarke basically been good - & i ride w the targaryens 4 lyfe despite the quagmire of her current storyline - but she hasn't been like, forceful since season 3 and the first few episodes of season 4. the scene w/ tyrion in "hardhome" was her first really rich scene this season and ppl could argue that stemmed more from the dialogue itself than how emilia clarke was reciting it

someone has betrayed you!
*makes the daenerys face*
your army has conquered a city!
*makes the daenerys face*
you're riding a dragon and it's amazing!
*makes the daenerys face*
you realized you forgot to report a substantial amount of income on your taxes! you might be in trouble!
*makes the daenerys face*

brb, setting this to a house beat

Perhaps maybe her face seems to be so distinctive and same-y because of her distracting cartoony eyebrow work.

xpost
these are also things that paul yells during the outro of hey jude

danerys flying the dragon reminded me of harry potter quidditching or w/e

I think the usage of cgi is probably only going to increase as the show goes on, so it might have these difficulties more often.

perhaps the actress playing daenerys will be replaced by cgi
and a house beat

Unless dragons and white walkers die off unexpectedly soon

via amon: http://gfycat.com/MajorEarnestGraywolf

memes

Emilia Clarke has always been terrible, and the dragon riding scene was the cherry on top of a turd cake.

The green screen with Tyrion watching her fly away was lolzy too.

what if she was nude all the time? just spitballin

I was wondering about the row of spikes on the dragon's back where she ended up sitting. Maybe in juveniles they're soft and bendy.

yeah was thinking like an iguana

Yah those spikes iddn't look great

I wonder if Armin Van Buuren is pissed off that the week he releases his banging remix of the theme tune is the week they burn a kid alive.

it does maybe feel like the writers are thinking "how can we top the shock of the red wedding" and Sansa / Shareen is what we got

i thought my good old friend The Maester's criticism was on point:

What bothers me about the scene is that it’s based on a character acting in a way that’s counter to how he’s been depicted all series. Stannis has been depicted as one of the greatest generals in the realm. He held the Storm’s End against a one-year siege by eating rats. So if the device that gets Stannis to the place where he’s desperate enough to burn his only daughter and heir alive2 is (1) some snow and (2) a sudden and convenient ineptitude at doing war stuff, that feels off to me. Stannis, “the greatest military commander in Westeros” per Davos, is in enemy territory, on the march toward a belligerent castle, and for some reason (i.e., to make this scene happen) he doesn’t have scouts out or watchmen guarding the camp or have his army — made up largely of professional mercenaries who themselves should know better — in the state of alertness necessary in a war. Also: Ramsay is now a ninja. I don’t buy it.

i just watched How to Train Your Dragon 2 two days ago (which sucks btw) and the dragon riding in that was more believable.

let's put our worst actor on top of a CGI dragon called drogon, what's the worst that could happen

They annoy a few ppl who like to complain about the trickiest CGI shots on TV - that is the worst that has happened.

stannis have watchmen they were mentioned in the episode even, they failed due to im guessing low morale, and snow aka winter weather has decided a lot of wars like for instance the second world war, and all the greatest military commanders in history have eventually lost usually due to overreach which is what stannis is currently doing as has been amply explained and dempstrated, the maester is subscribing to an overly deterministic world view, wldve prob called napoleons defeat in russia unrealistic

but the maester has read the books so he is like a god to me. he knows things! he knows!

Stannis has never been depicted using magic and shit to get an unfair military advantage

feel like he shd just stick to explaining book things like this is really not strong work

Crackpot theory: A few years back, when Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss met with George R.R. Martin in Santa Fe so that the author could map out his story to its end — beyond what exists in the books — Martin, in the great tradition of J.J. Abrams, Carlton Cuse, and every writer everywhere whose job is to literally make things up as they go along, just kind of told B&W a bunch of bullshit. I mean, not total bullshit. That’s harsh. But, like, he’s sure of the solid brickwork of those story points, with the gaps mortared together with some yada yada. Again, that’s a writer’s job. And, really, who among us would not go so far as to build a 700-foot-tall wall of bullshit once the six- and seven-figure checks started flying to and fro? Is Martin going to be like, “No, I don’t really know the ending. I guess I’ll give the money back.” Do you really think the whole reason he hasn’t finished the books is because he writes slowly?

xpost - I feel like Stannis views himself as a tragic, biblical-style character, and sacrificing his daughter is just the latest in his series of trials and hard choices that he has had to make in order to save humanity or whatever.

i mean hes not writing the books because hes famous and busy now and wld rather ball around the world is a much more resonable answer thats backed up by reality than he cant come up with the story

bad writers expounding on how writing works<<<<<<<

concepcion (netw3rk/the maester) is def reaching to find really authoritative sounding reasons why he didnt like the scene when he could've just said "i didnt like it" but hey where be the clicks in that

(tbf any other explainer column that had such an ultimate conclusion would prob resort to the same tactics, i don't think concepcion is a full-stop bad writer more like trying too hard)

writing is magic / game of thrones is magic / someone hire me to write episode recaps jk id rather work in the fighting pit

concepcion (netw3rk/the maester) is def reaching to find really authoritative sounding reasons why he didnt like the scene when he could've just said "i didnt like it" but hey where be the clicks in that

― slothroprhymes, Tuesday, June 9, 2015 2:01 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i mean he cldve just said it felt like it came out of left field, which wldve been fair, instead he was all "the timing matters because context matters." and "Of course bad things happen on Game of Thrones. But when you arrive at those things through contrivances, it cheapens the shock. It’s about consistent storytelling." which is bad writing

i thought the scene was good tho

his general point is correct i think - that it was a rushed event in the context of a crap episode. i agree the scene itself was good but some of the blending of storylines this season has been awful. last week's ep was the first time they got it right.

Yeah early on I argued myself that just a little more desperation between the scene where he establishes his dedication as a father and the scene where is he burns his daughter alive would have helped. Not a huge criticism just figured it would have worked better.

feel like theres an inherent unexamined tension between the legions of amateur plot experts and their constant refrain of this episode was bad

A certain kind of recapper is obsessed with proving, at great length, that plot developments he doesn't like are objectively bad storytelling.

lag∞n otm

yeah i mean to some extent we all think about things that way but hardening those views into some sort of empirical theory of plotcraft is just lame and anhedonian especially coming from ppl who clearly have no idea what the heck theyre talking abt

the av clubbing of criticism

wait hold on a sec

who are the legions of amateur plot experts forming an empirical theory of plotcraft? also can there be a spinoff show about them because it sounds like they're up to big things

various critics, various folks on this borad

theyre everywhere... including this thread... v spooky

yeah people should stop criticising the plot of got until they've made five seasons of game of thrones themselves