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Game of Thrones Season 8 |OT| A Song of Icy and Fiery Fandom

Airbus Jr

Banned
Nice background of the lore and worldbuilding. If we ever get a remake 10 or 20 years from now, I wonder if they could use the same language. In terms of if it's copyrighted somehow.



...and I knew them all by name!" lol


There wont be any remake

Do you know how expensive Game of Thrones Season 8 is?

HBO have many other upcoming show to run
 
ONE MORE SLEEP! Man I am hyped for tomorrow. Just keep telling my heart to keep beating a little longer. Can't wait to see what they went with. Whatever happens, the ending if this show will leave a big hole I need to fill. Am early in my Westworld watch, maybe that will do it for a bit
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
There wont be any remake
OK Nostradamus, this will be one of the very few pop culture phenomenons that will never ever be milked for all its worth, even after all the unfinished source material is complete.

No Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood or DBZ Kai or Hawaii 5-0 or Fuller House or Twilight Zone or Magnum PI or Spiderman or The Office or Lord of the Rings treatment for this IP! Purity!
Do you know how expensive Game of Thrones Season 8 is?
That's irrelevant. Profit is profit. HBO wanted to throw even more money at this thing. Cost wasn't stopping GoT at all. It was D&D's hasty running away to Star Wars to go fuck up that franchise more.
 

JimiNutz

Banned
I'm excited enough.
This season has felt rushed and has been very poorly written at times but it's still entertaining to watch and I'm interested in seeing the aftermath of Daenerys' fire vagina. Hopefully she burns some more people.
 

AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
Right now I have zero hype. I hope tomorrow that changes.

I thought you absolutely loved the last episode? Are you really not excited, being in that position? I'm curious, more than anything. Going in with low expectations is always a benefit.

this will be one of the very few pop culture phenomenons that will never ever be milked for all its worth

It already is. There's three spin-off shows in the works.
 

Jon Neu

Banned
I thought you absolutely loved the last episode? Are you really not excited, being in that position? I'm curious, more than anything. Going in with low expectations is always a benefit.

I did. I also loved the second episode and some parts of the rest of the episodes. They are entertaining and sometimes even epic.

But overall, the show is just meaningless at this point. All the profecies are meaningless, all the world building was meaningless, all the important characters are meaningless, I feel like I don't care what happens because nothing makes sense anymore and the show has betrayed it's own build ups and inner consistency.

And I'm sure the last episode is going to be fun, but at the same time, is also going to be void of meaning.

And it's fucking depressing.
 

AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
Indeed. Which is why I find the notion that they'll never remake this series very misguided.

Oh yeah, I could absolutely see it. Hell, it took someone 15 years to decide to remake LOTR after the trilogy concluded.
 

AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
But overall, the show is just meaningless at this point. All the profecies are meaningless, all the world building was meaningless, all the important characters are meaningless, I feel like I don't care what happens because nothing makes sense anymore and the show has betrayed it's own build ups and inner consistency.

Wow, that's fascinating - I'd only seen your posts about how much you loved episode 5. I don't think I've seen anyone who loved that one but disliked the show overall now. Are you in my camp of "everything except the main plot is fantastic" then? The performances, sets, costume, music, effects (the practical ones) are all stunning, the rest.. eh.
 

JimiNutz

Banned
I did. I also loved the second episode and some parts of the rest of the episodes. They are entertaining and sometimes even epic.

But overall, the show is just meaningless at this point. All the profecies are meaningless, all the world building was meaningless, all the important characters are meaningless, I feel like I don't care what happens because nothing makes sense anymore and the show has betrayed it's own build ups and inner consistency.

And I'm sure the last episode is going to be fun, but at the same time, is also going to be void of meaning.

And it's fucking depressing.

Although I'm still interested to see how it ends I definitely agree with a lot of this.
So much wasted potential.
 

Raynes

Member


I'm surprised even H3H3 are dissapointed with the show and they covered some solid points about why it has been sucking. It seems GOT was something fans invested a lot of thought and time into. It wasn't just mindless entertainment, but we were given a mindless final few seasons. It seems like it's now the mainstream opinion that this ending sucks balls, huge wasted potential and D&D are so far up their own asses. They need to disowned by the entertainment industry. But that's not going to happen.
 
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Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
A good point that video makes at 40:08 about the shitty writing is how prior to the battle at Hardhome, Jon convinced the rest of the Wildlings to come down south of the Wall to live and find a better life, yet now they want to fuck off back north. I doubt that The Others are the only shitty things about living north of The Wall.

 

greyshark

Member
I could buy the idea that while John sees life up North as intolerable, the Wildlings prefer it up there. Really the major reason they agreed to leave the North in the first place was the White Walker threat, so them returning now that it’s over makes sense to me.
 

RedVIper

Banned
I could buy the idea that while John sees life up North as intolerable, the Wildlings prefer it up there. Really the major reason they agreed to leave the North in the first place was the White Walker threat, so them returning now that it’s over makes sense to me.

This isn't true.

They wanted to come south of the wall.
 

greyshark

Member
Because they didn't want to live in a frozen hell.
They wanted good lands south of the border so they could settle down, I'm 100% positive this is explained in the show.

The wildlings repeatedly rejected Southern culture throughout the show - everyone from Mance to Ygritte to Tormond found he idea of “bending the knee” intolerable. Sure they acknowledge quality of life is better in the South, but I don’t see them willingly integrating with the Southerners.
 
What was the point of the special weapon that Arya got made? She used it mostly like a spear and dropped it mid fight with the wights. Didn't even use it to kill NK.
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
The wildlings repeatedly rejected Southern culture throughout the show - everyone from Mance to Ygritte to Tormond found he idea of “bending the knee” intolerable. Sure they acknowledge quality of life is better in the South, but I don’t see them willingly integrating with the Southerners.
There are people who live the wildling life south of The Wall too. Like the mountain clans in the Vale, or to a lesser extent, the mountain clans in the Northern Mountains.
 

greyshark

Member
There are people who live the wildling life south of The Wall too. Like the mountain clans in the Vale, or to a lesser extent, the mountain clans in the Northern Mountains.

While their way of life may be similar, those clans still have to “kneel” to a lord, whether at the Vale or Winterfell.

EDIT: I take it back, looks like my statement above only is true for the northern clans, not the clans of the Vale. Either way I don’t think it’s that big of a stretch for them to go back to where they’re familiar.
 
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Rentahamster

Rodent Whores

What started out as a Twitter thread got this guy an article in Wired. Well played. I agree with most of what he's saying here. Good analysis.



And honestly, it's not as simple as good writing versus bad. No season that knights Brienne can be entirely bad. The problem is that the writing has changed, and it's changed in a way that breaks important rules the show had previously set for itself. I think I know why.
It all comes down to how stories are crafted, and for that, we need to start with two different types of writers: plotters and pantsers. Plotters create a detailed outline before they commit a word to the page. Pantsers prefer to discover the story as they write it—flying by the seat of their pants, so to speak. Both approaches have their advantages. Since plotters know the story in advance, it's easier to create tight narratives with satisfying conclusions. But that amount of predestination can sometimes make characters feel like cogs in service of the story. Pantsers have an easier time writing characters that live and breathe. They generate the plot by dropping a person with desires and needs into a dramatic situation and documenting the results. But with the characters in charge, pantsers risk a meandering or poorly paced structure, and they can struggle to tie everything together.

Then, with the start of season 7, they shifted their focus from telling the unfolding story of an entire world to concluding a particular tale set within it. They gave themselves a fixed endpoint—13 episodes to the finale, and no more.

In so doing, the showrunners moved as far to one end of the plotter/pantser continuum as Martin is to the other. They weren't trying to resolve every character arc or pay off every last bit of world-building. They knew the destination Martin had in mind, they understood the dots they had to connect to get there, and they wanted to maximize fan entertainment along the way.

That's why Game of Thrones feels different now. A show that had been about our inability to escape the past became about the spectacle of the present. Characters with incredible depth and agency—all the more rope with which to hang themselves—became whatever the moment needed them to be. They took uncharacteristic actions and made uncharacteristically bad decisions so the required events could unfold with the appropriate stakes. Characters were spared the deaths they'd sown so they'd be available for later scenes. Organic consequences gave way to contrivance. Gone was the conflict between complicated people with incompatible goals. Grey morality turned black and white. Characters rushed through their foreshadowed arcs for the thinnest of reasons, or in some cases reversed their arcs entirely. The characters just weren't in charge anymore. The ending was.

Still, the approach to storytelling changed in the third act, and an audience can feel that happening. We fell in love with one kind of show, but that's not the show that's ending. No amount of spectacle or fan service is satisfying if we don't buy how the characters got there. Treating the journey as equally important to the destination is how you get conclusions that feel earned, and it's how characters stay alive after they've met their fates.
 

ruvikx

Banned
The Bells was fucking awesome. Burn it all down. Bloody fantastic.

I agree about it being fantastic (hoping you're not being facetious or sarcastic either). I find the neo pseudo writing experts who've apparently declared Game of Thrones "broken" sort of amusing, but I wish they'd just be honest: the 1 million or so who've signed the petition against season 8 really just didn't like where the story went. That's all.

Jaime going back to Cersei? They didn't like it. Daenerys becoming the villain? They didn't like it. These are not "broken" character arcs, they're just twists & decisions they didn't like.

Game of Thrones
feels different now. A show that had been about our inability to escape the past became about the spectacle of the present. Characters with incredible depth and agency—all the more rope with which to hang themselves—became whatever the moment needed them to be. They took uncharacteristic actions and made uncharacteristically bad decisions so the required events could unfold with the appropriate stakes. Characters were spared the deaths they'd sown so they'd be available for later scenes. Organic consequences gave way to contrivance. Gone was the conflict between complicated people with incompatible goals. Grey morality turned black and white. Characters rushed through their foreshadowed arcs for the thinnest of reasons, or in some cases reversed their arcs entirely. The characters just weren't in charge anymore. The ending was.


As I wrote earlier, when Tyrion walked into the same inn as Catelyn Stark & she arrested him (thus starting the entire conflict between the north & the Lannisters), it was a major contrivance to get the war the writer wanted. But who cared? The ride was fun & people still had their fantasy. But when their favourite characters went in a direction they didn't like, kaboom, that fantasy was ruined for them personally.

It's sort of amusing how the two biggest entertainment products of the year so far (Avengers Endgame & Game of Thrones, i.e. both fantasy fiction) elicit such different critical reactions. Game of Thrones is subjected to the most nitpicking & over-analysis of its writing to an extent in which my eyes bleed (fans literally declaring it broke some "narrative rules" they plucked from thin air), whilst Avengers (with time travel as a plot convenience to defeat the big bad guy!) faces no such scrutiny. Why? Because people got their power fantasy for their favourite characters in Endgame whilst Game of Thrones stayed true to its themes (absolute power corrupts absolutely) & didn't deliver a Marvel ending.

Since Sunday we've faced a barrage of people screaming in our faces (I'll paraphrase) "it's shit, shit, shit & if you don't agree you don't know what good writing is". Well, I think it's freaking awesome & the Bells was one of the most visceral & intense moments in TV ever. Criticism is essentially a necessary part of entertainment of course (it basically can serve to make future products better) but the level of venom (freefolk reddit is a smouldering crater of hyperbole & outright insanity) directed at Game of Thrones is just "unnatural" & at odds with what we've actually seen on screen. The main criticism which could be taken seriously (i.e. there wasn't enough time dedicated to showing Daenerys fall into madness) can be rejected based upon the fact a normal movie is about 2 hours long & often features far more twists (Season 8 of GoT is over 7 hours long), whilst the suddenness of her unilateral decision was also the entire point (a tyrant with a WMD is capable of the worst, always).
 

Geki-D

Banned
Meh. I guess some people just don't care about writing and plot so long as they get their flashy visuals on screen and plenty of murder. HBO should quickly throw together a 7th episode where Jon jangles some keys in front of a camera for an hour. I'm sure the titillating sound and reflective lighting will please the people who just want sound and light on their TV whilst they shove Domino's Pizza into their faces.
 

ruvikx

Banned
Meh. I guess some people just don't care about writing and plot so long as they get their flashy visuals on screen and plenty of murder. HBO should quickly throw together a 7th episode where Jon jangles some keys in front of a camera for an hour. I'm sure the titillating sound and reflective lighting will please the people who just want sound and light on their TV whilst they shove Domino's Pizza into their faces.

It's funny, but I haven't actually seen any criticisms of the writing which clearly explain why it's such a disaster or it broke narrative/storytelling rules. Certainly compared to every other piece of schlock on TV or at the movie theatre (even the timeless Lord of the Rings is loaded with plot conveniences & contrivances to get characters where the writer wanted). With regards to GoT there's lots of gesticulating & grand statements such as "foreshadowing is not character development!"... i.e. nothing more than their loathing of Daenerys' arc hidden behind a pompous (& nonexistent) neo-narrative "rule" angry fans created themselves since Sunday.

One popular recent youtube video critique of GoT begins with a straight-up "Daenerys would not have done that". Well guess what? She did. If she'd become queen & dropped chocolates & flowers on the people of Kings Landing whilst riding Drogon, that would have been a serious betrayal of the lore/themes & characters thus far, but even then, it would have still just been a direction which I didn't agree with. I wouldn't have freaked-out & convulsed whilst screaming it's "bad writing".
 

Tesseract

Banned
ONE MORE SLEEP! Man I am hyped for tomorrow. Just keep telling my heart to keep beating a little longer. Can't wait to see what they went with. Whatever happens, the ending if this show will leave a big hole I need to fill. Am early in my Westworld watch, maybe that will do it for a bit

westworld is better than game of thrones
 

Kadayi

Banned
It's sort of amusing how the two biggest entertainment products of the year so far (Avengers Endgame & Game of Thrones, i.e. both fantasy fiction) elicit such different critical reactions. Game of Thrones is subjected to the most nitpicking & over-analysis of its writing to an extent in which my eyes bleed (fans literally declaring it broke some "narrative rules" they plucked from thin air), whilst Avengers (with time travel as a plot convenience to defeat the big bad guy!) faces no such scrutiny. Why? Because people got their power fantasy for their favourite characters in Endgame whilst Game of Thrones stayed true to its themes (absolute power corrupts absolutely) & didn't deliver a Marvel ending.

Since Sunday we've faced a barrage of people screaming in our faces (I'll paraphrase) "it's shit, shit, shit & if you don't agree you don't know what good writing is". Well, I think it's freaking awesome & the Bells was one of the most visceral & intense moments in TV ever. Criticism is essentially a necessary part of entertainment of course (it basically can serve to make future products better) but the level of venom (freefolk reddit is a smouldering crater of hyperbole & outright insanity) directed at Game of Thrones is just "unnatural" & at odds with what we've actually seen on screen. The main criticism which could be taken seriously (i.e. there wasn't enough time dedicated to showing Daenerys fall into madness) can be rejected based upon the fact a normal movie is about 2 hours long & often features far more twists (Season 8 of GoT is over 7 hours long), whilst the suddenness of her unilateral decision was also the entire point (a tyrant with a WMD is capable of the worst, always).

Agreed totally. I'm frankly flabbergasted at the number of people giving Endgame a pass for some of the completely moronic aspects of it, Does GOT have issues? Absolutely, but nothing that probably couldn't have been addressed with another season to simply to tackle the pacing issues. As you rightly say I think a lot of the 'criticism' in large part comes down to general unhappiness at the direction the show has taken when it comes to character arcs. I find the annoyance at Jamie for instance quite astounding, as if somehow him ultimately relapsing and returning to Cersei was such an unlikely thing. My view was always that when he saw the wight at Kings Landing he knew it posed a real threat and wanted to participate. The hookup with Brienne was very much of the moment. It was never a case of him choosing to go north for her.

westworld is better than game of thrones


giphy.gif
 

Jon Neu

Banned
As I wrote earlier, when Tyrion walked into the same inn as Catelyn Stark & she arrested him (thus starting the entire conflict between the north & the Lannisters), it was a major contrivance to get the war the writer wanted. But who cared? The ride was fun & people still had their fantasy. But when their favourite characters went in a direction they didn't like, kaboom, that fantasy was ruined for them personally.

This isn't true. As somebody else already explained, that inn is literally in a crossroad that pretty much everybody who travels through the north has to pass by. That wasn't a major contrivance at all, it was actually a nice way of setting some world building, both geographically and within the medieval nobility world Game Of Thrones is set in.

Most people complains because Game Of Thrones was actually a superb and clever written show in which characters and plots felt realistic inside a medieval fantasy world. And now is just dumb espectacular shit that doesn't make any sense and in doing so, takes away all the build ups and world building from the previous seasons.

t's sort of amusing how the two biggest entertainment products of the year so far (Avengers Endgame & Game of Thrones, i.e. both fantasy fiction) elicit such different critical reactions. Game of Thrones is subjected to the most nitpicking & over-analysis of its writing to an extent in which my eyes bleed (fans literally declaring it broke some "narrative rules" they plucked from thin air), whilst Avengers (with time travel as a plot convenience to defeat the big bad guy!) faces no such scrutiny. Why? Because people got their power fantasy for their favourite characters in Endgame whilst Game of Thrones stayed true to its themes (absolute power corrupts absolutely) & didn't deliver a Marvel ending.

Game Of Thrones is subjected to a greater standard, because it was a far better, more intrincated and more inteligent product than Avengers. It's precisely when GoT has become Avengers, that the show has went to the toilet.

Sure, some people complain because Danny is evil now, but most people have been complaining since seasons ago.
 

Silent Duck

Member
55 pages, so I’m pretty sure somebody may have already mentioned this, but here it is anyway. It seems like they’re cramming two seasons worth of storytelling into six rushed episodes.

The following is pure speculation on my part: I know they had two years to make this season, but how easy could it have been to decide what to keep (and what to let go) in what is essentially a Reader’s Digest version of what should be a much longer story? Probably not very easy.

I don’t know why they decided to cram everything into only six elongated episodes instead of taking their time. Maybe the actors didn’t want to be tied up for two more years? Maybe HBO didn’t want to pay for it anymore? Maybe D&D’s hearts were two sizes too small? Whatever the reason, we got what we got.

Not exactly happy about it. But the again, It’s not the end of the world either. With rare exceptions (The Shield), tv series very rarely stick the landing IMHO. Well, onto something else now.
 

Kadayi

Banned
Nobody in their right mind would start a series that is showing no signs of being finished anytime in the next 10 years.

I'll read the books when the show is a distant memory and the story has a conclusion.

Same. I'd be loath to tell people to get into the books until GRRM actually concludes them. For all its faults at least the TV series will have an end, as is it's not unlikely that the book series will remain unfinished because GRRM prefers to do anything an everything that takes him away from having to write himself out of the mess he's gotten himself into.
 

Ownage

Member
I agree about it being fantastic (hoping you're not being facetious or sarcastic either). I find the neo pseudo writing experts who've apparently declared Game of Thrones "broken" sort of amusing, but I wish they'd just be honest: the 1 million or so who've signed the petition against season 8 really just didn't like where the story went. That's all.

Jaime going back to Cersei? They didn't like it. Daenerys becoming the villain? They didn't like it. These are not "broken" character arcs, they're just twists & decisions they didn't like.




As I wrote earlier, when Tyrion walked into the same inn as Catelyn Stark & she arrested him (thus starting the entire conflict between the north & the Lannisters), it was a major contrivance to get the war the writer wanted. But who cared? The ride was fun & people still had their fantasy. But when their favourite characters went in a direction they didn't like, kaboom, that fantasy was ruined for them personally.

It's sort of amusing how the two biggest entertainment products of the year so far (Avengers Endgame & Game of Thrones, i.e. both fantasy fiction) elicit such different critical reactions. Game of Thrones is subjected to the most nitpicking & over-analysis of its writing to an extent in which my eyes bleed (fans literally declaring it broke some "narrative rules" they plucked from thin air), whilst Avengers (with time travel as a plot convenience to defeat the big bad guy!) faces no such scrutiny. Why? Because people got their power fantasy for their favourite characters in Endgame whilst Game of Thrones stayed true to its themes (absolute power corrupts absolutely) & didn't deliver a Marvel ending.

Since Sunday we've faced a barrage of people screaming in our faces (I'll paraphrase) "it's shit, shit, shit & if you don't agree you don't know what good writing is". Well, I think it's freaking awesome & the Bells was one of the most visceral & intense moments in TV ever. Criticism is essentially a necessary part of entertainment of course (it basically can serve to make future products better) but the level of venom (freefolk reddit is a smouldering crater of hyperbole & outright insanity) directed at Game of Thrones is just "unnatural" & at odds with what we've actually seen on screen. The main criticism which could be taken seriously (i.e. there wasn't enough time dedicated to showing Daenerys fall into madness) can be rejected based upon the fact a normal movie is about 2 hours long & often features far more twists (Season 8 of GoT is over 7 hours long), whilst the suddenness of her unilateral decision was also the entire point (a tyrant with a WMD is capable of the worst, always).
Not being facetious, it was by far the best GoT episode of the season and at the top of the series. Didnt see it coming.

Red Wedding and Bells are tag team my top two. Might watch it again before tonight.
 

Fox Mulder

Member


I'm surprised even H3H3 are dissapointed with the show and they covered some solid points about why it has been sucking. It seems GOT was something fans invested a lot of thought and time into. It wasn't just mindless entertainment, but we were given a mindless final few seasons. It seems like it's now the mainstream opinion that this ending sucks balls, huge wasted potential and D&D are so far up their own asses. They need to disowned by the entertainment industry. But that's not going to happen.


At least they're going to star wars, something many people already soured on.
 

Tesseract

Banned
Agreed totally. I'm frankly flabbergasted at the number of people giving Endgame a pass for some of the completely moronic aspects of it, Does GOT have issues? Absolutely, but nothing that probably couldn't have been addressed with another season to simply to tackle the pacing issues. As you rightly say I think a lot of the 'criticism' in large part comes down to general unhappiness at the direction the show has taken when it comes to character arcs. I find the annoyance at Jamie for instance quite astounding, as if somehow him ultimately relapsing and returning to Cersei was such an unlikely thing. My view was always that when he saw the wight at Kings Landing he knew it posed a real threat and wanted to participate. The hookup with Brienne was very much of the moment. It was never a case of him choosing to go north for her.




giphy.gif

it's noticeably smarter at least, imo, not gonna derail the topic with reasons why i believe this
 
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