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Post by Roquefort Raider on Dec 31, 2019 11:31:47 GMT -5
Waiting for the DVDs, I’ve been a year late for every season of Game of Thrones. It was pretty hard to avoid spoilers over the past few years (since we left the books’ plot behind) but I’m glad I made the effort!
After the almost universally negative reaction to the final season, I expected something truly awful. Luckily, it turned out much better than I feared! Events didn’t go quite the way I expected, and I got a very low batting average on the “who’s gonna live and who’s gonna die” game; so while the show ended up predictable in some ways, it managed not to be in others.
In hindsight, the main problem I had with the final season was one of pacing. A lot had to be crammed in just a few episodes, granted, but I think that the dramatic tension would have been better served by combining the different plot lines rather than bringing them to a conclusion independently. As it is, it looks as if Major Plotline A, once resolved, was simply forgotten and had no bearing on Major Plotline B. In a sense, it reminded me of Babylon 5’s fourth season: first we bring the Shadow War to an end, and once that’s done with we deal with the liberation of Earth. Each campaign was gripping in its own right, but the delivery felt a little like someone going down a checklist. There was also not as intense an emotional payoff when X, Y or Z shuffled off this mortal coil, as we were already down the road to see someone else meet their fate. Gotta go fast!!!
Concerning the fate of several major characters: while I would not have done certain things, it’s entirely because I was rooting for as happy an ending for as many characters as possible... I loved those guys. That being said, nobody acted out of character and there were clear hints planted well in advance as to what might happen. Bummer.
Something that was probably unavoidable due to time constraints is that many questions raised during the course of the series remained unanswered. Why did those three dragon eggs finally hatch? Was it just coincidence? What was the doom of Valyria? What’s the deal with the Lord of Light, the Seven, the Three-eyed Raven and the Night King? I’m fine with things being left to our imaginations, but a few words egging us in the right direction would also have been welcomed.
George R.R. Martin said he might change the end of his series (if and when he ever goes back to writing it). That would be a good idea; not so much because I don’t view the TV show’s ending as unacceptable, but because if one is to invest more time in the books, they might as well surprise us.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,202 
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Post by Confessor on Dec 31, 2019 14:14:56 GMT -5
After the almost universally negative reaction to the final season, I expected something truly awful. Luckily, it turned out much better than I feared! Events didn’t go quite the way I expected, and I got a very low batting average on the “who’s gonna live and who’s gonna die” game; so while the show ended up predictable in some ways, it managed not to be in others. My wife and I liked the ending of Game of Thrones very much. I thought it kept you guessing all the way through, deftly defied lazy viewer expectations (as the show always has), and the central characters all ended up in a place that made sense and didn't spoil their journey throughout the previous seasons. In my view, any decent ending to a book, TV show, or film should leave the characaters in a place that doesn't betray or destroy their journey. You should be able to go back and re-read or re-watch the piece and, even though you know where the characters are ultimately headed, it shouldn't detract from their journey. GoT season 8 did that perfectly, I felt. In hindsight, the main problem I had with the final season was one of pacing. Agreed. And that lack of satisfying pacing began in Season 7, I think. Those last two felt rushed to me. But I still enjoyed the hell out of them. |
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Post by beccabear67 on Dec 31, 2019 18:41:08 GMT -5
I didn't think Martin had much to do with the final season(s) of Game Of Thrones. I've seen it all and considered the finale acceptable... mostly... I guess.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jan 1, 2020 20:58:40 GMT -5
I didn't think Martin had much to do with the final season(s) of Game Of Thrones. I've seen it all and considered the finale acceptable... mostly... I guess. He was not involved, apart from having provided an outline of how the series was supposed to end. Of course, it is his privilege to change his mind. The ending made me sad, personally, but that’s because I was hoping for a happy ending with acceptable heartache and not a tragic ending with a few silver linings. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 1, 2020 21:25:08 GMT -5
It wasn’t the ending I wanted but sometimes there is a huge difference between the ending being bad and the ending being different than what you hoped for.
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Post by The Captain on Jan 2, 2020 8:44:51 GMT -5
I could have better accepted the GoT ending if the pacing (and writing) had been better in the final two seasons. Everything was rushed in order to get to the end, so while the first six seasons took us on a journey with the characters, the last two (and especially the last one) were focused solely on the destination. We didn't get to understand the characters' motivations or see things unfold, but rather were just overwhelmed with visual spectacle that turned previously rich and deep characters into chess pieces to be moved about as necessary to get to the endpoint.
Characters that were previously smart became idiots and noble became savages, and this would have been fine IF these changes seemed like natural progression rather than instantaneous because the plot demanded it.
What makes it all the worse is that HBO essentially gave Benioff and Weiss a blank check and as many episodes as they wanted to finish the story, but they had apparently grown bored with the series and wanted to move on as quickly as possible. It didn't help that they ran out of Martin's source material and had to create on their own, where they proved to be quite inadequate.
I'm likely going to be disappointed, but I would love to see Martin finally finish the book series the way he wanted to all along. Even if it ultimately matches the ending of the TV show, in whole or in part, he's such a craftsman that the journey will more than make up for any deficiencies that the TV show created from his outline. I hope he doesn't pull some crazy swerve on all of us to distance the books from the show, because the right story is there, just told by a couple of inferior storytellers.
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Post by Ozymandias on Jan 2, 2020 11:45:44 GMT -5
Pacing problems go back to season 6. While the journey from King's Landing to the Bay of Dragons, took Varys a whole season (the 5th), going back to Westeros and forth took less than two episodes. He leaves Meereen in 6.8 and in 6.10 he's already on Dany's flagship deck, crossing the Narrow Sea a third time in as many episodes. Character problems are restricted to the two final seasons:
Petyr turns out to be a bad player after all, he had me fooled.
Sansa stops being stupid (apparently something you can grow out of).
Dany goes mad, they threw everything at her to justify the desired outcome.
Tyrion goes from excellent Hand of the King, to disastrous Hand of the Queen.
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Post by The Captain on Jan 2, 2020 12:02:05 GMT -5
Pacing problems go back to season 6. While the journey from King's Landing to the Bay of Dragons, took Varys a whole season (the 5th), going back to Westeros and forth took less than two episodes. He leaves Meereen in 6.8 and in 6.10 he's already on Dany's flagship deck, crossing the Narrow Sea a third time in as many episodes. Character problems are restricted to the two final seasons: Petyr turns out to be a bad player after all, he had me fooled. Sansa stops being stupid (apparently something you can grow out of). Dany goes mad, they threw everything at her to justify the desired outcome. Tyrion goes from excellent Hand of the King, to disastrous Hand of the Queen. I don't think Petyr was a bad player, just an arrogant one. He got sloppy because he was dealing with a bunch of kids and he was used to getting things over on adults. Of course, he didn't have to previously contend with Deus ex Brandon who didn't have to drink to know everything. Sansa, I actually get her transformation. She started out as a starry-eyed maiden wishing for her handsome prince to sweep her away, but from the get-go, it was one disappointment and reality check after another. Joffrey was pretty on the outside but a monster on the inside, just like his mother. Petyr tried to seduce her at every opportunity, and when he needed something, he shipped her off to be raped by Ramsey Bolton. She learned from those experiences and people how the world really worked, and she went from being naive (which I believe she truly was, instead of stupid) to using what she had picked up along the way as best she could. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jan 2, 2020 12:48:15 GMT -5
Pacing problems go back to season 6. While the journey from King's Landing to the Bay of Dragons, took Varys a whole season (the 5th), going back to Westeros and forth took less than two episodes. He leaves Meereen in 6.8 and in 6.10 he's already on Dany's flagship deck, crossing the Narrow Sea a third time in as many episodes. Character problems are restricted to the two final seasons: Petyr turns out to be a bad player after all, he had me fooled. Sansa stops being stupid (apparently something you can grow out of). Dany goes mad, they threw everything at her to justify the desired outcome. Tyrion goes from excellent Hand of the King, to disastrous Hand of the Queen. I’m not sure Dany went mad. Oh, yes, she murdered tens of thousands of innocents in King’s Landing, echoing the actions of her crazy father; but she had shown herself to be very ruthless before. Besides, after what Cersei did to Missandei, I can fully get the “burn them all” vibe. Rather than crazy, I would posit that Dany was actually a bad ruler. In the final episode she strongly reminded me of a figure like Lenin, who wants to change the world “for the sake of the little people” but ends up killing more and more innocents in the name of the greater good. Her final speech was basically a Trotskyist call for permanent revolution. That she would execute Varys or Tyrion is not necessarily a mark of madness, but betrays a lack of flexibility. That’s in character, as Dany had proven inflexible from day one. I would suppose that the stress of losing not one but two dragons, plus a very close friend, would have made her even more intransigent. One of the most dramatic aspects of the last episode, an aspect that was sadly underdeveloped for lack of time, was that Jon’s terrible choice might have been unwarranted. He gave in to Tyrion’s fear rather than trust in his lover’s strength. We’ll never know, but it could very well have been that Dany’s way would have led to a better world (or at least one that wasn’t particularly worse than the current one). I doubt it for historical reasons, but be that as it may she did not necessarily have to die to prevent a new fiery holocaust. Tyrion being a poor Queen’s hand, meanwhile, was not out of character. As Geoffrey’s hand, he was in charge of feeding the people (which he was good at) and defending a city (a task that was morally correct). As Queen’s hand, he had to oversee an invasion... something that demands horrible actions, like roasting whole armies alive and decimating cities. That agenda didn’t play to his strengths. Furthermore, Tyrion always had a big heart, and was always prone to give others the benefit of the doubt (despite his cynical demeanour). That quality was ill-suited to a Queen’s hand dealing with the likes of Cersei Lannister. I wonder why the final season had to be so rushed. Surely a few extra hours of talking heads with no CGI can’t be that expensive? |
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Post by The Captain on Jan 2, 2020 13:11:32 GMT -5
I think the final season was rushed because, if you remember, Weiss and Benioff had a deal with Disney to helm the next Star Wars trilogy (even though they later backed out of it due to what they referred to as Star Wars' "toxic fandom"). That deal was signed in February 2018, so they were already looking ahead to their next big thing and were trying to wrap up their last big thing as quickly as possible.
I also believe they wrapped it up as quickly as they did because they came to realize that they, combined, did not have the same storytelling skill as Martin and without his source material to utilize, they were hopelessly overmatched in terms of delivering the same quality as the first 5-6 seasons.
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Post by Ozymandias on Jan 2, 2020 13:46:38 GMT -5
It's not just that things turned out bad for Petyr, that could still fall under the "well played" category (luck has a part to play in every game), but rather that he made big mistakes. I'm not just talking about him not having good intel on Ramsey, but also attending a meeting without escort, when the person he was meeting had every right to be mad at him. Leaving things to chance, isn't being a good player.
I choose "stupid" to describe Sansa's character, because that's what she admitted being. I can live with her learning to lie, which isn't very difficult, or knowing some individuals better than others who haven't met said individuals, but raising her to the status of a trained general, when she struts around Winterfell, basically organizing the defense and amending the work of others... that I can't accept. It just seems like self-justified (on the writers part).
Everything that happens to Dany from the moment she sets foot on Westeros, looks like designed to turn her mad. This is aggravated when she feels abandoned by Jon (yes, on top of Missandei's beheading), to the point where you can even see it in her face.
Tyrion didn't just fail while invading, but also while ruling Meereen. His whole tenure as Hand for Dany was a disaster, not just when judjing and expecting things from his sister when he had no good reason to do so, but in every other aspect too.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jan 18, 2020 20:21:26 GMT -5
Occupied season 3 (on Netflix).
Any political thriller that concludes what seems to be its final season with the viewers going “HOLY F***K!!!” is a success in my eyes.
I didn’t see the ending coming at all, and yet it wasn’t contrived but quite logical. That series is a little gem in its underrepresented genre!
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Post by beccabear67 on Jan 19, 2020 17:03:32 GMT -5
Just ordered the Firefly tv series set... is this universally liked? I think my BF might buy it off me for what I paid ($20 can. including postage, which is something like $14 u.s.)... I'm sure from what I read it's the kind of thing he will like at least as much or more than I probably will (I have the Starlost tv series DVD set, but I'm keeping that).  |
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Post by The Captain on Jan 19, 2020 17:09:45 GMT -5
Just ordered the Firefly tv series set... is this universally liked? I think my BF might buy it off me for what I paid ($20 can. including postage, which is something like $14 u.s.)... I'm sure from what I read it's the kind of thing he will like at least as much or more than I probably will (I have the Starlost tv series DVD set, but I'm keeping that). You have chosen...wisely. This should have been so much bigger than it was, but the morons at Fox bungled it completely from the outset. They didn't show the first episode, where the characters were introduced and the general plot fleshed out, first, because they felt it was "too slow", so they started with the second episode, which of course confused everyone, as it seemed like they were walking into a movie 20 minutes late. |
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Post by berkley on Jan 19, 2020 19:48:29 GMT -5
I liked it a lot. The only mildly negative feeling I had about it (apart from it being cancelled just when it was getting going, of course) was that they slightly overplayed the "western in space" angle for my liking. But that was strictly a matter of personal taste.
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