HBO's adaptation of Game of Thrones - Thread 2. There are a lot of nerds.

more canny maneuvering

Gendry and Sansa imo

Reading that list is a good prep for reminding oneself what the hell was going on when we last heard from GOT. What the hell was going on anyway?

Nephew-Aunt fuckin, undead ice dragon iirc

genuinely rooting for the Night King tbh

Yeah, someone has to put a stop to this dialogue.

Rooting for Arya or the Night King. The show was terrible last season.

Show was never better as when and should have continued as Arya and the Hound wandering a war-torn countryside getting into adventures like Lone Wolf and Cub.

the medieval brutality and hopelessness and absurd but compelling cruelty of the first four seasons seems very far away now, it's definitely turning into Avengers: Westeros at this point. I did enjoy last season, the scope and spectacle is just a good time imo, but it's not nearly the same show.

otm, though of course a decent chunk of those first 4 seasons was a total slog

maybe and yet it all felt part of a carefully thought-out narrative that was closing off any means of escape for so many characters we liked in ways that were really actually shocking and not in ways that seemed cheap or unearned.

no I agree with that. two very different feelings and the former was rarer. but the thought of watching s2 again with no fast forward option fills me with dread

glad to hear i'm not alone in thinking last season felt like padding and soap opera. Perhaps in closing they'll step up their game to the heights of s3 and s6... if i'm remembering correctly.

I still hate that they gave the Night King an implied "personality" that also would suggest a human like motivation.

They cut to his and buddy's faces for their reactions to things the heroes are doing, they're wearing new clothes... all of it just not how I would have approached those characters. They wouldn't even be characters if it was up to me. They'd be these barely humanoid elemental zombie-alien-ice sculpture creatures, and their approach would be akin to a storm front, but they themselves would be barely visible (the zombies would remain at the face of the threat). I'd only reveal them clearly at the most climactic point in whatever battle is about to happen, and they'd look fucking horrifying but most importantly would not have any expressions.

Instead I'm afraid I'll eventually see the Night King start to visibly panic the moment Jon musters up the strength to push their swords back towards HIS face instead, during the epic final duel. Then some chaos- wait what's that? Did NK stab Jon? Oh god, look as his face. It's all over, Jon is done for. NK smirks. Camera slowly pans down. What's this? It turns out it was NK that was stabbed by Jon! NK's face drops, looks up at Jon, eyes roll back and his lifeless body plummets from the top of the Chrysler Building.

at this point I just want to be spoiled on the whole thing so I don't even have to think about it as a phenomenon tbh

Cue police sirens

xp

*Jack McCoy comes out of retirement to prosecute the Night King*

Jon: "Winter. Is. Finished."

Sunglasses drop.

night king's broken body on the pavement, slow close up on the mouth, v/o whisper: "You... know... nothing... Jon Snow. There... is... another...."

I’m doing an epic rewatch now and things were still really good as of season 4. Sometime soon after (probably when the show went past the books) it starting sliding, though. This past season was an unmitigated disaster (note that I don’t like the avengers). Still looking forward to the action movie ending of course

I’ve just made it to season 4 on my rewatch and enjoying it very much so far.

I just finished watching the whole thing for the first time. Watched seasons 1-4 around Christmas and 5-7 the past few weeks. Knowing nothing about it going in, I didn't feel any consistent dips in quality until sometime during Season 6, although yeah, Season 7 seemed to take it right off a fucking cliff.

I dunno I found the unabashed corny Hollywood spectacle of 7 more satisfying than some of the desparate flailings for tone and direction of the immediate post-book era. It still has nothing on the dark richness of 1-4, obviously.

Season 6 was the nadir, that interminable Arya storyline.

That was also the one with Dany and friends just sitting around a throne room for an entire season, right?

Yeah that storyline may have also involved a dispute with Meereenese plumbing contractors or I may have imagined it.

afair the last two or three seasons have followed the template of a big opening episode, nothing happening besides people moving around/being stuck for 6/7 episodes, then a huge battle or showpiece episode, then another finale with some musing and arch looks, maybe a 2-minute teaser of something interesting then season ends.

i for one look forward to the climactic reveal, in the closing moments of the final episode, of the statue of liberty half-buried in the ice beyond the wall

I have fonder memories of season 6, but I think it’s just because of that incredible finale

Dany is such a shit character and basically all of her plotlines are terrible, except for soome of the more interesting/charismatic figures in her periphery

The arc from trophy bride to slaver torching badass was a great storyline. Very downhill from there admitedly (and that was four seasons ago).

Deeply satisfying finale imo would be Jon Snow stirring from deep sleep in the Vermont B&B he operates

I dunno I found the unabashed corny Hollywood spectacle of 7 more satisfying than some of the desparate flailings for tone and direction of the immediate post-book era. It still has nothing on the dark richness of 1-4, obviously.

― chap, Thursday, March 7, 2019 1:13 PM (fifty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I didn't mind that season 7 had "corny Hollywood spectacle". I was expecting that in what I knew was leading up to the climax of the show. It's that the characters didn't feel the same. No one sounded as smart. The dialogue was so much more expository.

Also, their ability to traverse long distances in short amounts of time was beyond belief. It got that stupid old Moby song stuck in my head "here we are now going to the west side. here we are now going to the south side. etc."

Man, nearly 8 years since the last book. If I were GRRM I think I'd be feeling really trapped in this thing.

I'm sure something will come out once the series is over.

He's probably waiting until the show is over so he can rewrite the ending and "fix" decisions from the showrunners he might not have liked.

He's still been putting out something nearly every year, a lot of it prequel-related.

Looking back I'm amazed he managed to convince them that with the gaps between books going 2-2-5-6 that he'd be able to bring it back and release not one but two more books before the TV show ended.

Dany is such a shit character and basically all of her plotlines are terrible, except for soome of the more interesting/charismatic figures in her periphery

― bhad bundy (Simon H.), Thursday, 7 March 2019 13:57 (one hour ago) Permalink

This.. Her storyline has been terrible since Day 1 and repetitive since Season 2.

emilia clarke is just such an outrageously bad actress

and yes, the character is also terrible.

I like her character -- not as much as I like some of the others, but definitely more than say, Jon, who I don't dislike, but who I find less interesting because his story is such a fantasy trope, and he's a bit wooden. I don't want to make a feminist issue of this, because I don't disagree re Emilia Clarke's acting, and that can definitely get in the way of liking a character.

The most interesting arc for Daenerys would for her to actually become the main antagonist but that seems very unlikely at this point.

she could get zombified and become the Night Queen

a role perhaps better-suited for emilia clarke's unique screen presence tbh

Arguably the low points of the entire series are Dany addressing people in high Valyrian

Did my iPhone auto-capitalize that, lol

It is known

Because you can't flip to another browser tab and still keep half an ear open for whatever exasperatingly glacial plot point might have moved along?

This past season was an unmitigated disaster (note that I don’t like the avengers).

― Karl Malone, Thursday, March 7, 2019 12:08 AM

Avengers?

I still think the fourth season was great.

The most interesting arc for Daenerys would for her to actually become the main antagonist but that seems very unlikely at this point

yeah I'm sure I said this at some point seasons ago but her going mad/evil would have been so much more interesting than her nobly overcoming obstacles over and over every season

I still wonder if the big reveal is the huge plot point/character from the end of Dance of Dragons they dropped from the series