Game of Thrones post-mortem

[Chimpzy]

You know the saying from Public Enemy (they started it) or Snap: Don't Believe the Hype.

“I must not hype. Hype is the mind-killer. Hype is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face the hype. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the hype has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

Yes, I stole this from Dune and changed a word. Doesn't make it any less true tho, so deal.

 

[BrawlMan]

“I must not hype. Hype is the mind-killer. Hype is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face the hype. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the hype has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

Deja vu must be kicking in. You used the fear is the mind killer paraphrase quote before on V1.

 

[Chimpzy]

Deja vu must be kicking in. You used the fear is the mind killer paraphrase quote before on V1.

I did. And I'll continue using it. Because it must be said.

 

[Samtemdo8]

This right here, was the moment that I feel was the beginning of the decline of Game of Thrones. Not that it was a complete downward plunge from here, but it overtime it got worse from here.

All the hype and setup about Yara attempting to save Theon from the Boltons, pointless. Becuase its not what happened in the books, even though by this point in the TV show, it had already deviated enough from the books that it feels like events should pan out differently.

Exhibit 2 was the cartoonishly evil Karl Tanner from Gin fookin Alley.


Heck, even how he died in the show was a bit too silly, Jon stabbed in through the mouth from behind with his sword. A bit too specific huh Jon? You couldn't just stab him in the chest? Or even try to lop off his head, no you somehow got your sword neatly through his mouth.

 

[Agema]

I think the Battle of the Bastards broke me.

So, that Stark spawn starts running, and Ramsay Bolton misses him with a bow about 5 times before finally hitting him lethally at, I dunno, 100-200 yards? I don't think so: bows aren't very accurate. Never mind what an idiot Snow is for putting himself at so much risk.

Then the cavalry charge into combat, in what most be just about the most crazy and ineffective way to waste expensive troops imaginable. Cavalry are for flanking, and exploiting weaknesses in the line, etc. Then everyone else charges into battle, there's a general slaughter, and suddenly this huge wall of bodies develops. As of course has never happened in any battle in history, ever. Then to the deliver a coup de grace, Bolton sends in his heavily armoured spearmen on a wide flanking manoeuver to surround Snow's forces. Those would be the heavily armoured spearmen, probably quite slow, you'd normally expect right in the middle of your frontline as a shieldwall because they'd be perfect for the job of a solid centre and are vulnerable to being outflanked, but for some mysterious reason have been left in reserve.

This was merely a foretaste of the even more stupity/insanity at the Battle of Winterfell, where Snow et al. found some truly amazing tactics to accomplish the unnecessary slaughter of his own troops.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I could never get into Game of Thrones. Tolkien ruined fantasy for me, just as Sopranos ruined TV. There's nowhere to go from there.
Also GoT always struck me as a cousin to Lost, another show I can't stomach seriously. Too much mystery box nonsense, too much riding on shock and novelty, and no roadmap other than the whims of the creators and their audience. I knew it was gonna peter out pathetically from day one.

 

[Breakdown]

There are bigger and more important problems with the last few seasons of GOT, but one thing that doesn't get talked about much is just how visually dull the series got. It's supposed to be a feudal society where every family has its own colours. But by the end all the characters just wear black, or other colours so dark they look black. So generic looking.

 

[Samtemdo8]

I could never get into Game of Thrones. Tolkien ruined fantasy for me, just as Sopranos ruined TV. There's nowhere to go from there.
Also GoT always struck me as a cousin to Lost, another show I can't stomach seriously. Too much mystery box nonsense, too much riding on shock and novelty, and no roadmap other than the whims of the creators and their audience. I knew it was gonna peter out pathetically from day one.

Eeeeh....

I am in to Fantasy worlds that are just as good and well developed as Tolkien's mythos.

As for the Sopranos, well yeah and to this day I feel no other gangster movie can match the sheer acting and dialoge of the Sopranos. Like I wish for a gangster movie directed by David Chase with Al Pacino and De Niro.

But to say it ruined TV in general (as in no other TV show can match it).....yeah that's a bit much.

 

[deleted20220709]

DELETED

 

[Samtemdo8]

I have two instances before the last two seasons that broke the show for me:
1. The whole revelation of why Hodor is Hodor. Yes, it is probably ripped straight from the mouth of GRRM, but the way it was handled in the show felt so melodramatic that it veered into straight up Narm territory for me.
2. The utterly inane, downright stupid reason for Sansa to marry Ramsay Bolton. When I first saw the scene where Littlefinger sets her on the task I was flabbergasted, this is a show that just a season ago spelled out that hereditary rule is male only. Marrying Ramsay is not a way back in for the Starks, it would only serve to legitimize the Boltons. Yet it is framed as Sansa going in to re-establish the Starks in the north. That the whole set-up then turned out to be only so that Sansa could be another victim of Ramsay's was when I definitely felt that the showrunners had plunged into the deep end and instead of admitting they can't swim flailed around while saying it was all part of their plan to sink beneath the waves.

Season 7 just proved it all, with the sudden omission of all the things that made GoT kinda good before, like the fact that distance matters, that logistics factored into planning and that a lot of time was spent seeing characters scheme so that viewers got invested in the execution of the schemes. Instead we got teleporting navies, supersonic dragons and "shocking moments" that didn't feel shocking because there was no build up to the supposed twist. It was both a very rushed and a very plodding season, managing to do a lot of interesting things (the capture of Highgarden and Casterly Rock) off-screen without build up so that we could get more shoots of Jon and Dany faffing about in what was a love story without chemistry or any real romantic moments (no, posturing awkwardly doesn't count, nor does flying dragons).

Season 8 was just a disaster from start to finish, to the point that I got the distinct feeling that D&D no longer cared and just shat something out to be done with their commitment to HBO. It is a small comfort that it was so poorly received that all their other directing and writing gigs got canned from it, ensuring that two talentless hacks will never be showrunners for something important again (and that they will never run something as sensitive as Confederate, considering their poor track record with representation and sensitive social justice issues on GoT).

Can I ask what did you thought about Season 4 in relation to my above post as to where I think the show began to decline?

 

[deleted20220709]

DELETED

 

[Hawki]

I could never get into Game of Thrones. Tolkien ruined fantasy for me, just as Sopranos ruined TV. There's nowhere to go from there.

I can't comment on Sopranos, but to state that there's nowhere to go from Lord of the Rings is dubious.

It's not as if there's some kind of conspiracy in the fantasy genre, but a lot of stuff has taken inspiration from LotR, and the fantasy genre stagnated because of it. I mean, if you're making the argument that no fantasy work can ever surpass Lord of the Rings? Maybe. I dunno, never is a long time. But it's a bit close to the idea that fantasy automatically means elves, dwarves, orcs, and whatnot, and that isn't true. It's especially less true if you consider fantasy beyond the Western canon.

 

[Samtemdo8]

The only good scene in that White Walker battle in Season 8.

 

[MrCalavera]

I get being surprised at how bad the grand final turned out, but it don't get the shock. Setting the surprising incompetence of showrunners(They even admitted it!) aside, GoT stopped being actually good like halfway through. I, luckily, came back to it out of sheer curiosity and mostly had fun watching people lose their minds and post all those DaeNero memes.

Was there ever any other show that didn't stick the landing so embarassingly, its fanbase practically disapeared overnight? Closest one i can think of is "Dexter", but it's still far cry from this gigabotch.

 

[Hades]

These days there is a lot of talk of D&D being complete frauds without any skill or talent, and who were just lucky to have made it that far. There are some merits to those claims with one of them having an ultra rich father who's capable of pulling great strings just about anywhere.

However I'm hesitant to fully go along with that line of thinking. The very reason that the later seasons stung so much for people is that the first seasons really were great, seasons that were made by the very same people that made the much maligned later season. Its true that they had Martin's books to work from but great works have been adapted terribly before and the first seasons were certainly not a terrible adaption.

D&D do come off as a bit unqualified but some base talent simply must have been there or the first seasons would have been as terrible as those that followed. Rather then talent I think its a lack of drive that failed the later seasons. They just really wanted to leave and go do Star Wars on time.

 

[deleted20220709]

DELETED

 

[Gordon_4]

Honestly the biggest lesson I'm taking from Game of Thrones ending the way it did is that as an author you don't sell rights to an incomplete work for adaptation, and as a producer you don't buy rights to an incomplete work.

 

[Palindromemordnilap]

Honestly the biggest lesson I'm taking from Game of Thrones ending the way it did is that as an author you don't sell rights to an incomplete work for adaptation, and as a producer you don't buy rights to an incomplete work.

Or at the very least be sure that the author of the incomplete work can finish their series faster than you can finish yours

 

[SupahEwok]

Honestly the biggest lesson I'm taking from Game of Thrones ending the way it did is that as an author you don't sell rights to an incomplete work for adaptation, and as a producer you don't buy rights to an incomplete work.

Why not? Both sides have made a load of money out of the deal, and it ultimately hasn't hurt either Martin's or HBO's prestige given that, as this thread demonstrates, most people blame the showrunners over the network.

 

[MetalDooley]

Or at least, it would have been like watching a car crash, if I could actually see what was on my screen. Im sure if I was watching on some 4K OLED TV in a perfectly dark room, I would have appreciated it more, but all I saw was smoke and a shaky cam.

If you're referring to the Long Night episode I watched that on a good size 4K tv, that's set up to have the best picture possible, in a completely dark room and still couldn't make out what the hell was going on. That was the point I tapped out. The show had been building up to that battle for 7 and a half seasons and that was what they gave us. Bollocks to that. What annoyed me even more was all the fanboys/girls defending it saying shit like "oh it wouldn't have been realistic if it had been lit up". Screw realism. It's a battle between an army led by a fireproof woman who controls dragons and her allies which include a fire witch who can resurrect the dead, a crippled boy who can see the past and who can possess animals and humans, an assassin who can wear other peoples faces and a guy who was brought back from the dead by the aforementioned witch versus an army of zombies led by Ice Satan. Realism went out the window a long time ago. Lord of the Rings managed to do a nighttime battle where everything was still visible and make it look pretty good

Never bothered watching the last 3 episodes. Read the synopsis online and tbh I'm glad I didn't waste another 3 hours of my life