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

xpost Heh, that's pretty dumb. It's a show with magic and dragons and people coming back from the dead as zombies and ... not zombies. If they can't find ways to surprise people, boy does that betray a lack of creativity.

today my 4 yo has been saying 'I'm going to make a dragon breathe fire on you' which is making me concerned he could hear GoT from his bed last night.

otoh it's exactly within his character arc as a tyrant

Game of Cribs

Anyway, the showrunners are off to kill all the Jedi again uh wait

https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-first-star-wars-films-after-rise-of-skywalker-will-1834749699

(Old news on the one hand but they're next up, is the point.)

That definitely supports the "they rushed this to suit Lucasfilm's timeline / their desire to make truckloads of money" theory

I want to live in a world where the executives at Disney, ink still wet on their contract with these two dipshits, watch episode 5 in horror, looking at each other while mouthing, “what have we done.”

These guys are perfect for Star Wars. Can’t wait for Jar Jar Bink’s heel turn.

xp really hope they give them the opportunity to do something other than lightsabers and order of knights intrigue, because these dudes are really burned out on that shit

HBO is printing money with this shit people apparently hate - just like Star Wars - so I don't think anyone at either Disney or HBO is wringing their hands over how bad these idiots are.

xp

I mean large chunks of this thread are "this is awful! Also why isn't there more of it"

"please sir may I have another" etc

well they've already fired Josh Trank, Colin Trevorrow and Lord & Miller off Star Wars movies in the past couple of years so it's not like they have any compunctions about ditching directors

but they probably still think they're good, yeah

this is ilx, everything is awful here. The show is okay now, perfectly good spectacle and scope and all that. the issue is that it once was actually great (S1-S4) and compared to what it once was it just feels a bit empty and rushed. One of the better qualities of the earlier seasons was the narrative intelligence (all from Martin).

i would say 1-4, 5-7, and 8 alone are three separate levels, give or take. tho maybe 7 could be lumped in with 8 as the shit years.

Series 6 was really fucking boring.

8 is better than 7

That too.

maybe in the sense of 'things happening'

These guys are perfect for Star Wars. Can’t wait for Jar Jar Bink’s heel turn.

― Mazzy Tsar (PBKR), Tuesday, May 14, 2019 8:36 AM (fifteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

already happened

let's go ahead and lump in 7 with 8 as the shit years

i for one am very happy this is on its last episode and will not be watching season one of any of the spin offs. let's see what survives.

I think it's 1-4, based on the first three books. 5-6, sorta but not quite based on and wrapping up GRRMs work, and 7-8 doing Benioff and Wise's ideas and turning into complete shit as a result.

i'm not sure how IMDB ratings play out over time, but the last two episodes are rated waaaaaaaay below the rest of the series.

I don't think Star Wars is reconsidering hiring these two, but I think this season is really hurting HBO. Who is excited for the prequels now? And their other idea, 'Confederate', was shot down right out of the gate.

i watched a dialogue scene between Cersei and Ned from S1. the conversation is taken largely from the novel, and the differences are really uh stark in terms of quality vs the dialogue in recent seasons. Lena Headey remains great but she had so much good material to work with in those early years, and it's been so long since Sean Bean was around it's easy to forget what a good central character he (briefly) made.

the spin offs

i am actually kind of excited about these, cautiously optimistic at least. there's a really rich universe to work with, and with D&D off doing star wars shit hopefully whoever is in charge will be enthusiastic about running a show that trillions of people watch

There were plenty of episodes in that middle stretch that did little to advance the plot OR any real character development and were just about moving the pieces around the board to where they eventually needed to be. Dany sentences a few peasants to death, Arya does some shadowboxing with another novice who may or may not be trying to kill her, etc.

Well considering Jane Goldman is in charge of the only spinoff with a pilot, I'm not optimistic myself

i am actually kind of excited about these

I’m sure that if the remaining books ever come out someone will redo the series “the right way”

perhaps on showtime lol

but I think this season is really hurting HBO.

this is crazy

i'm pretty much GoTted out at this point; could use a year or three to rest.

yeah, but that's pretty much the standard length of time between GoT seasons these days anyway

I’m sure that if the remaining books ever come out someone will redo the series “the right way”

oh for sure. the reboot of the entire series in 2035 or so seems inevitable

and, it will be better

i don't know why i made that prediction. let me rephrase

and, it might be better

overall, i think maybe...but the first several seasons of this series would be difficult to top.

it's true, but i'm sure that's what they said about battlestar galactica back in 1978, too

i don't have much confidence in anything getting in the next 50 years, except for the general quality of television entertainment

getting ^better^

with one of the heroes of OG Battlestar returning as a villain in the reincarnation i guess maybe we can look forward to Isaac Hempstead Wright playing The Mountain in the next version.

the only upside is that completely different creatives are handling the spinoffs

reboot should be anime

https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Ferikkain%2Ffiles%2F2017%2F10%2FScreenshot-17.jpg

https://pm1.narvii.com/6381/9cf7a527913db18663f9ce107888bd121f850e8b_hq.jpg

reboot idea: live action, but all the battle/dragon scenes are anime

The whole "subverting expectations" meme... I think everything revolves around this central problem. It feels like they treat every event like a cartoon that is about to cut to commercial break. Whether it is a huge moment or a small one in the midst of a battle, they prioritize misdirection over everything else. So you have a major narrative upset like Arya jumping out of nowhere to totally dismantle expectations and kill NK or you have a minor scene where someone gets stabbed or hopelessly surrounded and later they're fine/got away somehow off screen. There is no detail too small or large for them to not be absolutely compelled to trick the audience. I heard someone say they just want to pack the episode full of water cooler talk moments and don't really care if it makes sense because it can be explained away by offscreen events or characters "forgetting" something etc. Not exactly an original thought just a longwinded way of saying that for once I feel like the nerd masses are more right than ever with their current griping.

unfortunately a fuckload of tv relies on that kind trickery

i think the decline of the show is directly tied into accommodating the expectations of the bulk of the audience who came on board after the show was at its best.

https://i.imgur.com/vW95qEp.jpg

the vast majority weren't even watching at the beginning. as it became more and more of a phenomenon, the kind of show referenced on late-night show monologues and with "Game of Thrones day at the ballpark!" promotional tie-ins, it inevitably got shittier as the writing and action reoriented itself toward the lowest common denominator viewer. kind of like the new star wars movies and the marvel movies and all that shit - they are reliably kind of entertaining and reliably not total failures. they are reliable Just Good Enoughs

but I think this season is really hurting HBO.

the at&t acquisition and re-prioritization of what shows get made probably hurt HBO a lot more!

but so far, they seem to be still releasing new stuff that I like. maybe they're just releasing things that were already in production? in any case, GoT has been an amazing cash cow and driver of subscriptions for the network and I have no idea how it could be hurting them, unless zero people subscribed just for GoT, watched absolutely no other content (that they'd continue the subscription in order to keep watching), and drop the subscription immediately when the series ends. if they wanted to be total dicks they'd have figured out how to stretch the season across another month to get the extra income!