"A Game of Thrones" Spoiler-Ridden Catch-All of Doom - books and HBO show

*Legion* wrote:
Badferret wrote:

Or, maybe I should just take them at their word and they mailed it in.

I don't blame the showrunners for being tired of doing this project.

I do blame them for selfishly ruining the project rather than handing it off to someone else.

It was in good shape at the end of season 6. Instead of deciding on the terrible two truncated season schedule, that was the time to gracefully hand it off.

I would have been interested in seeing what Cogman did with it. He tends to write some of the best episodes (IMO) and would have made a great showrunner. I think they've also suffered from not having enough diversity in the writer's room and in their director roster - particularly this season.

Grenn wrote:

Anyone else maybe think Bran was Warging that horse at the end? Possibly taking her where she'll need to be?

That would be pretty cool. So no, that's probably not what was happening.

PurEvil wrote:
Grenn wrote:

Anyone else maybe think Bran was Warging that horse at the end? Possibly taking her where she'll need to be?

That would be pretty cool. So no, that's probably not what was happening.

I feel the level of writing has fallen so, that if this was the case, we would have seen a 3 second cut to rolling-eyes Bran and back to Arya approaching the horse.

Gremlin wrote:

Personally, I'm waiting for A Song of Ice and Fire: Brotherhood

Hah! Boyfriend has been saying the same thing.

ShynDarkly wrote:

Mad Dany ... I get it ... bit of a heel turn, but I get it. Rest of the soldiers?!

Somebody else complained about this as well, but I thought it was completely in keeping with the books. GRRM, repeatedly hits on the point that war is not kind to civilians and that the average Stark solider is just as capable of brutality as a Lannister soldier and the book and show have shown us that the Dothraki consider rape and pillagea a right.

But, this does highlight a different shortcoming of the writing. They should have had Tyrion and company specifically remind Dany as well as Jon of the realities of the sacking of a city, rather than his generic pleas to think of the children.

It's like watching a high school football team try to put on a production of Hamlet, where they've lost the actual text of the play and are just working from someone's half remembered read through of the Cliff's Notes outline.

If D&D were tired and done with this, why couldn't they go find a different show runner? This season is so half-assed, it's annoying.

Are we supposed to think the final straw for razing the city was Jon not wanting to kiss Dany, even though he confirmed his loyalty otherwise? That's what the turning point looked like to me.

Also, from an effects perspective, this TV show showed the chaos of war view better than almost anything I've seen since Saving Private Ryan. Especially from Ayria and Jon's POV's.

Good:
- Arya & Hound
- Hound vs. Mountain
- Dr. Frankenstein (?) unable to control the Mountain, getting killed by him.
- Iron Fleet and Golden Company being completely useless against a dragon. It was silly how they were supposed to be any meaningful threat (only underscoring how stupid last weeks kill of a dragon was)
- I'm fine with Jaime going full 'evil' Cersei fanboy again. It drastically changes his arc, but that is fine. He couldn't let Cersei go after all. We have seen his struggle (well, and the rape, not to forget. Of the two, he was the one who could not let go) and assumed he was breaking free, but no, he lost.
- The episode was kinda pretty. It does make a difference when you can see what is happening.

Bad:
- Dany goes full Targaryan. Lets completely destroy the place you wanted to rule. Unless this was what she meant by breaking the wheel. Is she a Secret Anarchist? At least that would make a tiny bit of sense - but not the story they decided to tell.
- No really, sure they have shown her as crazy for most of the season, and they can fall back on the 'lots of Targaryans are crazy'. Dany has been incompetent from the very beginning, but not even the Mad King was crazy at this level. She was winning, dammit. The storyline of Dany going completely mad might probably have worked in the books, with the glacial speed of GRRMs writing. Here it felt too random, and at the wrong moment. Maybe if Cersei had been hiding among the civilians, there would at least have been some kind of reasoning for a revenge mass-murder?
- Euron has been terrible the whole way through, but manged to outdo himself in the end. Complete waste of storyline. Good job getting outperformed by the Dorne storyline.

Ugly:
- Ser Gregor
- Character progression and any sense of a coherent story

Overall: Thought it was better than the last few episodes. Maybe not saying much. At least it felt like an episode that could have worked, if the build up had been better.

Maybe it had been better if they had ended the series right after this episode?
It didn't matter before, who sits on the Iron Throne. Now it surely doesn't matter, since it ought to be buried beneath the largest pile of rubble the world has ever seen. I am pretty sure, whatever they do next week, it will only be further downhill compared to just ending it today.

Saw the Next week clip, which I usually avoid.

Spoiler:

Oh, my hope 2 weeks ago, that killing the Night King would not prevent winter from spreading might come true after all. Long Night is coming. Westeros is not exactly in a state to survive a long winter.
It could also be ash. Please, don't let it be ash.

jowner wrote:

They could of killed the 2nd Dragon in this episode and that's the last catalyst. No pause either. Dragon goes down and she goes bonkers nuking the city indiscriminately.

Or ring the bell for the fake surrender and Cersei kills the 2nd Dragon as they get close to the red keep with a scorpion ambush.

Yeah, would have been better. After the Tyrion&Jaime talk, I really thought Jaime would teleport back to Cersei, and tell her how they could ring the bells to make Tyrion believe they had surrendered.

That quote is weak. Like rumor weak.

It was really pretty. I have to give props for the cinematography. And the costuming, props, effects, and acting.

MannishBoy wrote:

That quote is weak. Like rumor weak.

Let me have my hope!

The Dany bit wasn't as well done as it could have been but it was pretty good. You have to figure at this point, everyone loves Jon which is in stark (hah!) contrast to her reception as a beloved liberator on the other continent. And don't forget how brutal she was over there: trapping her betrayers in a vault, having her dragons munch things, and total burnination.
And then you add in:
seeing thousands of Dothraki being annihilated by the dead army in 20 seconds
Jorah dying protecting her to his last breaths
Missandei is stolen and beheaded (captured isn't strong enough a word here)
One of her dragons dies, becomes undead and wreaks havoc on the wall and the living
Another dragon dies in cheap brutal ambush
Her ships are ambushed and destroyed
Tyrion fails her a handful of times, and betrays her by passing on Jon's secret
Varys betrays her
Jon is the truer heir who then further weakens her by letting his heritage secret out
She feels the fool for being coerced into trusting Jaime

As far as the show, damn them for making me sympathize with Jaime and Cersei for even just a few seconds.
Cleganebowl gets brownie points for playing out unexpectedly. It wasn't about the result, it was what took place. Though f*ck me if the zombie mountain couldn't survive that. (maybe the fire got him)
Dany's turn was more about the development of the likely rift between Jon and Greyworm.

My bet?: Dany kills Jon, Arya then kills Dany, Sansa gains and rebuilds the Iron Throne. Or Sansa stays in the North and Kings Landing becomes the new Harenhold(sp?) There is bale fire lying around and we saw some going off when Dany torched the city.

side note:
f*ck Euron and his plot armor!
The leader of the Golden Company had zero plot armor

fangblackbone wrote:

f*ck Euron and his plot armor!

I heard it's Valyrian Steel!

The leader of the Golden Company had zero plot armor

He spent it all on horse plot armor dlc

/sarcasm

: D

fangblackbone wrote:

As far as the show, damn them for making me sympathize with Jaime and Cersei for even just a few seconds.

I am super curious about this because it is 180 degrees from what I felt.

The Golden Company was a check box they seemed to want to fill, then get rid of as unceremoniously as they did Dorne.

PurEvil wrote:
Grenn wrote:

Anyone else maybe think Bran was Warging that horse at the end? Possibly taking her where she'll need to be?

That would be pretty cool. So no, that's probably not what was happening.

Bro, you're killing it on this thread!

Btw after looking back and seeing that I'd actually posted on page one of this thread, I read a bunch of it and saw that I actually posted in it for yeeeeeaaars. Funny how we were all worried back then about GRRM finishing the books, and what HBO would do when they ran out of material (rightly so, in both cases).

Lotta (apparently) former Goodjers were posting in this thread back then. I miss some of those peeps.

MannishBoy wrote:

The Golden Company was a check box they seemed to want to fill, then get rid of as unceremoniously as they did Dorne.

Nah, Dorne and the Sand Snakes was something it really seems like they honestly thought was good. Like they were sure people were going to embrace these #fierce warrior grrls and they'd get some of that YAS KWEEN love Dany had from the fanbase in earlier seasons. And then then when they got blind-sided by the overwhelmingly negative actual fan reaction to Ellaria and her brood's idiotic decisions, horribly-choreographed fight scenes, cringe-inducing dialogue, and general unsympathetic viciousness, the writers just went "Crap! OK, fine," and swept them off the board as quickly and definitively as possible.

The Golden Company, on the other hand... I really don't know what the purpose of even the couple minutes of screen time we spent on "Oooh, Cersei is bringing in the Golden Company." Some more of the usual Lannister redshirts redarmors would have served the purpose last night just as well. Seems like it was just another contrived attempt to create an illusion of suspense about whether Dany's side would win.

Also, were those Dothraki that were doing the charging on horses and yelling in the beginning of the battle? I thought they all died. The northmen don't seem the "high pitch yelling" type to me.

maverickz wrote:

Also, were those Dothraki that were doing the charging on horses and yelling in the beginning of the battle? I thought they all died. The northmen don't seem the "high pitch yelling" type to me.

There are still, inexplicably, some Dothraki left. You could see them in the ranks of Targ troops before the battle started, and a couple of them were riding through the streets randomly cutting down civilians in one of Ary's POV scenes. (The closed captioning said "Dothraki ululating," which is a great word you don't hear very often.)

Make way for the Queen of Ashes!

Not much to add.
I really enjoyed the episode, but I had to do some mental gymnastics due to how rushed these last 2 seasons were.
I'm not mad anymore. I'm just waiting for the final episode and reigniting my hope for the rest of the books to be published, preferably while I still draw breath. Come on, George!

maverickz wrote:

Also, were those Dothraki that were doing the charging on horses and yelling in the beginning of the battle? I thought they all died. The northmen don't seem the "high pitch yelling" type to me.

In the previous episode, it was said half of the Dothraki survived.

garion333 wrote:
Fedaykin98 wrote:

I hope the Star Wars execs are crapping their pants right now. Episode 8 sucked so they replaced Rian Johnson with JJ Abrams and then hired D&D to make some future films - I'm sure that seemed like a slam dunk hire of proven quantities at the time, but now they look like a couple guys who can do good work adapting excellent material, but that's all.

Fwiw, those execs loved Episode 8 so much Rian Johnson is getting his own trilogy.

And JJ Abrams didn't replace him, Colin Trevorrow was set for Ep IX but the Star Wars execs came to their senses that Jurassic World is actually a terrible film.

D&D's stuff is so far out that they still have time to dump them. Hopefully?

It wasn't Jurassic World that convinced them. Book of Henry is the guilty party.

Middcore wrote:
maverickz wrote:

Also, were those Dothraki that were doing the charging on horses and yelling in the beginning of the battle? I thought they all died. The northmen don't seem the "high pitch yelling" type to me.

There are still, inexplicably, some Dothraki left. You could see them in the ranks of Targ troops before the battle started, and a couple of them were riding through the streets randomly cutting down civilians in one of Ary's POV scenes. (The closed captioning said "Dothraki ululating," which is a great word you don't hear very often.)

In the battle of the dark, you could see a bunch running back to the lines just before the tide rolled over the Wildlings and Unsullied. How so many survived with trained horses by the end is anyone's guess, still.

Oh my God, I forgot Book of Henry existed but one review of it I ran across is the funniest film review I've ever read. I have to try to find it now but I have no idea what website/publication it was from.

The Iron bank must really be reeling over this loss from their loans. They have no one to collect from. It’s be interesting if they just stopped giving any loans to any Westerosi and let them founder, then move to take over their lands as recompense.

BlackSheep wrote:

The Iron bank must really be reeling over this loss from their loans. They have no one to collect from. It’s be interesting if they just stopped giving any loans to any Westerosi and let them founder, then move to take over their lands as recompense.

On the other, insurance companies won't have to pay claims due to their "acts of dragons" clauses.

But that is what he would say if the books were finished and it was a secret!!

Spoiler:

The books will never be finished.

It seems absurd to me that I need to state this. The world is round,

Except that you do have to say that nowadays. Cause it's not true!

garion333 wrote:

Except that you do have to say that nowadays. Cause it's not true!

I still think the final shot of the show should be a slow pull back to reveal that the entire thing is taking place inside a malfunctioning generation ship.