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

As soon as the throne got melted it was pretty obvious that they'd have to choose a king with the vision to bring his own seat

haw!

I dont understand why everyone's mad because of Tyrions "Bran has the best story" thing. He didnt mean "Bran's story arc was awesome hes the best!" he meant he had *everyone in the words stories stored in his mind*.

i just thought it was unbelievably corny

On that I think we all agree.

When Jon and Tormun went back norf, I'd take Tuomas's caper one step further and say they shoulda been confronted in the forest by Benjen and Lady Stoneheart.

the whole ending wasn't as bad as lost, and the show never set itself up to leap off a platform on its face as lost did, but this season is as bad and stupid an ending of a series as i've seen since lost. harsh to say that but it honestly is so uneven and silly as it ends.

the wildly imbalanced tone, the 90-minute character-only episodes versus 90-minute battles, the immediate deaths followed by 45 minutes of talking, the sudden bran is king appointment etc, it's just been a fucking laughably shit last six episodes, and that's after season 7 and maybe 6 were at best episode one big battle episode 10 a second one with nothing happening in between.

yet again, somehow, they eschewed any action in favour of a denouement that was as boring as return of the king, except return of the king at least was a bad half hour at the end of a three and a half hour movie. the absolute waste of time. i found myself surprised there was about 50 minutes go when they'd already ended any significant narrative about 10 minutes in.

glad it's over, good first few seasons and entertaining along the way but time to get on with our lives.

Yeah for me the pacing was the most jarring part.

We spent an entire fucking season yawning away sitting around in Mereen and in one episode, Dany dies and suddenly its X weeks later and everyone's sitting around going 'ok so whos running the place now then I guess we better do something' and no riots from dothraki or unsullied....

...and um, was there like *anyone* left in Kings Landing to even rule?

yeah, spent about three or four seasons dawdling around the place, especially dany. then for whatever reason they decided to end this one in six episodes when they'd built up enough slack that they had to rush through deaths of major villains or characters as if there was never any significance to them to begin with.

the bran is king scene was about as stupid as i've seen on television, like the show has always flirted with the new adventures of hercules but mainly in dorne, great they returned to that aesthetic in the finale.

Along with the profound existential threat posed by the night king, the threat of the longest winter in memory turned out to be another dud. There was barely even any snow on the ground and thick green foliage on the trees in the background during the election scene

night king dead = no endless winter

pretty standard fantasy stuff tbh

I’m not talking about the endless winter, just the really long, non-magical, especially brutal one they kept hyping which ceased to be much of a concern in the end

just a garbage end to a garbage season for a show that had several very good seasons is how i bran the broken it down to an extent

I always assumed the extra long winter did actuall = night kings schtick, just no one attributed it to that because no one believed in him/dragons/cotf etc anymore (re Old Nans stories).

heres my question

how come Brienne is still wearing her armor for like, going to meetings & stuff
all that nice royal furniture being chewed up! plus surely uncomfortable af

for me it's hard to fault Brienne for anything, she is so awesome (I say this not having seen the last season)

oh i agree, she’s awesome

the seasons on Westeros are inherently magical, yes

Unless there's a scientific explanation for decades-long winters of variable length

https://splinternews.com/thank-you-for-the-content-slop-hbo-1834887867

I feel like the above linked piece is a much better distillation of all the whining than anyone else is likely to accomplish on this thread or elsewhere

The scientific american blog post about sociological vs psychological storytelling was really good though, everyone should read that

on to chernobyl, his dark materials and the third season of that stupid westworld show

the teen junkie drama they advertised at the end looked like it has an outside chance of being interesting.

expecting television to give you more than basic titillation is like asking for a rollercoaster to make you think

it’s because it’s all on widescreens now and a couple of episodes of The Wire and Mad Men got all aspirationally into folks’ head space that we forgot what teevee really is

I think there have been enough truly great TV shows from the past few years that expectations are indeed maybe too high, but at the same time, same TV shows prove that it is possible to be exceptional, which makes anything less often disappointing.

expecting television to give you more than basic titillation is like asking for a rollercoaster to make you think

this post was not by who I thought it was by

I believe it was Scientific American who said it was a great modern TV tragedy that they reduced the season length from 10 to 7 (or 6) and I agree!

The weird (I guess) issue I had with a lot of Season 8 consistency was all the Lion-oriented interior decoration. You wouldn't think that the staunchly "I didn't fuck my brother" queen might retain the sigil of her departed king and "father" of two deceased monarchs? I.. guess not?

Why would she? The lion is her sigil.

By now she knows everyone knows she's knobbing her brother so no need to keep up that pretence any more.

http://i.imgur.com/z7iHD54.png

It's possible to think this was crap even after lowering all expectations - the assumption that you yourself treat TV with the lack of respect it deserves but anyone criticising this show in fact expects it to be high art is practically sociopathic in its insularity.

I think the idea of a West of Westeros the gutther advrntures of Arya Stark or whatever they'd call it has the potential to be quite interesting if done right. Though hate to see potential squandered.

& just hope she hasn't gone and sailed off the side of a flat earth. I take it the planet Westeros is on is supposed to be a globe though.

It's a banana

Eye of Macumba theory still holds

The whole episode felt like a rushed first draft of a script that no one bothered to ask any difficult questions about. Say what you like about the rest of the season at least it worked as blockbuster entertainment but this was just a clunker. The meeting of the new small council was probably the best thing about it because it was probably the only time I felt like I was watching characters I recognised and not pieces being shuffled up and down a board.

Kind of think that the writers might have nailed the landing if they'd a) had writers who could write dialogue and b) worked the last season's worth of story into two - allowing the last two episodes' worth of plot to play out over a whole season. That way they could have shown Cersei's downfall and Dany's descent into tyranny properly and worked some actual conflict and peril into Tyrion's imprisonment and Jon's situation. And used Varys properly. As it was it was just rushed and the less said about the murder scene and its aftermath the better.

Also Bran Stark if you can warg into a dragon then maybe do so before it's used a weapon of genocide? Then again who am I to question the good and rightful King of Westeros.

tbf it's never confirmed Bran intends to or is really capable of warging Drogon and it was a relief that when he said perjsps he could find him it didn't cut to a bunch of warged crows flying east out of Kings Landing

The alternative is the dragon decided to melt down the Iron Throne out of a mixture of grief and stop-the-madness while deciding to just let Jon go, which is somehow worse.

I just assumed the dragon let him go because he was a Targaryen

But yeah, it seems like the first part is true - and very stupid

The throne was stupid and that is reaon enough for it to be melted by anyone with the power to do so.

Also, half the dialogue was characters over-explaining the writers' own rushed character decisions, like Jon and Tyrion banging on about how the signs were there about Dany all along.

Nice to see Edmure again though, love that dude.

there is a funny tension in a show that got big off sudden intense twists and popcorn moments ending with a seer in charge, perfectly calm and able to look back in time to check he's posting as he always has

it was so bad that it would have been better if the last scene was ned stark having a shower in 1994 and realising it was all a dream.

Late doors Bran was such a weird character, a deus ex machina with no real plot function. Everything he did could have been done by someone else quite easily (Sam, Arya, whoever).

They should really have done a reprise of the final episode of the first season, with Jon in the Ned position, but Arya no longer standing idly by. Then she could have gone west to escape the wrath of the unsullied. And the big question for everyone else should be who gets to tell *this* story and how do you tell it. Arghh.

what I tried to type earlier was

I think the idea of a West of Westeros the further adventures of Arya Stark or whatever they'd call it has the potential to be quite interesting if done right. Though hate to see potential squandered.

but typing on phone not great.

I assume that there are no immediate plans to further follow any of the surviving characters though. & certainly see that as a more interesting possibility than following Jon Snow into the reclaimed North of the Wall though that might have possibilities too.
Further adventures of Tyrion in righting some longstanding wrongs might have some possibilities. Or Sansa Queen of the Free North.

But I like the idea of the explorations of a single female in the Uncharted territories of the world they live in. Though could see the drawbacks in terms of a woman's perceived place in the medieval world. Could be good though.

As for spinoff ideas, someone pointed out that the final scene with Drogon was him flying eastwards with Dany's body. So maybe he's returning to Essos to the area where he's originally from? But said area also has magicians (like Melisandre) who can bring the dead back to life... So if they really wanted to, they could do a sequel series where a pissed off, resurrected Daenerys declares war on Westeros. I doubt they're gonna do that, but since they didn't show what happened to her body, maybe they were intentionally keeping the door open, in case someone wants to do such a sequel?

an idea just awful enough to work!

there is a funny tension in a show that got big off sudden intense twists and popcorn moments ending with a seer in charge, perfectly calm and able to look back in time to check he's posting as he always has

There's a bit of a horrific implication with Bran saying "why do you think I came all the way here?" after Tyrion makes the plea for him to become the king. It could suggest that Bran foresaw everything that was gonna happen, including Dany destroying King's Landing and Jon murdering her, so neither of them could become the new ruler, thus opening the door for him. But if he saw all of that, then that means he decided not to warn anyone about the massacre and let it play out, just so the others would see Dany needs to be killed. Which doesn't seem like a good omen for what kind of a king he will be.

In fact, there is (of course there is) a whole "Bran is evil" fan theory, according to which Bran deliberately told Jon about his true parentage, knowing that the truth would get out, that it would destabilise Daenerys, leading to her lash-out and subsequent death, and that Bran's endgame was always to become the king.

Bran can't see the future but they could've done a couple of shots of him en route to KL with his eyes whited out the whole time as he watched the immediate past in almost real time (can he see things just moments after they happened? ugh).

the two-faced raven

& just hope she hasn't gone and sailed off the side of a flat earth.

This would totally be a great show, have her off exploring exotic lands of what she believes is a flat earth. And maybe it is a flat earth! Make it kind of a lighthearted quippy adventure, where she meets new peoples and creatures. And then, on the cusp of cancellation after its first season and shortened second season, she finds a portal, and that portal takes her to ... modern round earth times! She opens a detective agency and solves crimes and mysteries. But it turns out she's not alone, and other people and creatures magical and medieval have made it through the portal in the past as well and formed a council of evil, which will become her arch nemesis.

Also, Bran would somehow give her the power to communicate with pets. But we'll never find out what ultimately happens, because this second spin-off will be cancelled after the first season. And then they can reboot Game of Thrones.

modern round earth times!

i do enjoy the implication here that the round earth is a recent development

Allegedly.

like don cupitt's insistence that galaxies were only ~70 years old

Bran can't see the future but they could've done a couple of shots of him en route to KL with his eyes whited out the whole time as he watched the immediate past in almost real time