DSGamer wrote:The show never proposed a way out or alternatives. That’s why I eventually grew tired of it. And at the end it took the best hope for breaking the cycle, had her “turn crazy” in order to engineer a “happy” ending. Blah.
I drink up the hate about this show now. Mostly because it never had anything meaningful to say about how the world could be anything other than what it was.
But they broke the wheel! They figured it out. Hereditary rule: that's the source of all their problems! The 8 or so of them just need to huddle up and handpick a king. Then, when that king eventually dies, his replacement will be chosen by... the hereditary rulers of each of the houses.
When will Bran die anyway? Wasn't the last 3ER over a thousand years old?
Maybe if Bran gets hooked up to Weirwood life support, he can last that long. Unfortunately, all the southerners chopped down the Weirwoods in favor of the new gods. Bran would need a new tree planted or move the capital north and possibly interfere with Sansa's rule.
Yeah Rome is definitely one of the "prerequisite" shows for GoT to succeed... "period" costume drama with lots of sexy violent intrigue. Maybe also The Tudors?
It also helps that some of the better actors from Rome showed up in GoT, namely Ciaran Hines aka Mance Raydor.
When will Bran die anyway? Wasn't the last 3ER over a thousand years old?
TORMUND: "They think you're some kind of god, the man that doesn't die."
BRAN: "I'm not a god."
TORMUND: "I know that. What kind of god would have a pecker that doesn't work?"
It also helps that some of the better actors from Rome showed up in GoT, namely Ciaran Hines aka Mance Raydor.
I wanted Mance to say "it's only hubris if I fail" so badly...
*Legion* wrote:DSGamer wrote:The show never proposed a way out or alternatives. That’s why I eventually grew tired of it. And at the end it took the best hope for breaking the cycle, had her “turn crazy” in order to engineer a “happy” ending. Blah.
I drink up the hate about this show now. Mostly because it never had anything meaningful to say about how the world could be anything other than what it was.
But they broke the wheel! They figured it out. Hereditary rule: that's the source of all their problems! The 8 or so of them just need to huddle up and handpick a king. Then, when that king eventually dies, his replacement will be chosen by... the hereditary rulers of each of the houses.
When will Bran die anyway? Wasn't the last 3ER over a thousand years old?
If the Max Von Sydow 3ER really was Brynden "Bloodraven" Rivers as is widely accepted by book readers, then he (as in the guy who looks like Max, born an ordinary mortal, who took the mantle of the 3ER) was "only" about 125 years old. That's a couple decades older than Maester Aemon, who is actually his... *squints* ...grand-nephew?
When the 3ER says he's over a thousand years old I assume he is referring to the 3ER as an entity including all of his human "hosts."
I thought her finally doing away with him and embracing the power of the Dark Side on her fully operational dragon would have aligned with Ramsay's "If you think this has a happy ending..." prophecy.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little bit excited over the prospect of a Darth 3ER pulling the strings from the very beginning to A) find a broken person with a strong lineage to take control of, B) lure him to the tree to complete the transformation process, C) control events so that the entire world was too weak to fight against him, and D) position himself so that Tyrion had the thought that he was the perfect king. Realistically, so little is known of the 3ER that you can't really even say if he's good or evil, just... kind of weird. From what we've been shown, he could be a kinder, gentler appearing Darth Sidious.
SallyNasty wrote:I don't buy that. All those actors and staff were paid for their time and efforts and they don't get a pass just because they worked hard.
A pass from what? What crime did they commit that they need a "pass" from? I have my problems with Season 8, and from what I can tell, Sophie Turner caused exactly zero of them, let alone the veritable army of set designers, makeup artists, costumers, grips, etc.
It's possible to recognize the incredible talent and hard work of the cast and crew while also recognizing that storytelling decisions made several levels above them were maybe not the greatest.
A pass from criticism, was that not obvious? Just because people worked hard doesn't mean the show ended well. Again, i thought it was fine but others can disagree, even if the cast worked hard.
I mostly agree with you, other than I think the actors didn't really do anything wrong. If anything, the acting helped me put up with the crappy decisions from the top.
A pass from criticism, was that not obvious? Just because people worked hard doesn't mean the show ended well. Again, i thought it was fine but others can disagree, even if the cast worked hard.
I think you're conflating the show with the cast and crew. The show doesn't get a pass from criticism, but the cast and crew should get full credit for their talent and hard work, even if the final product was flawed due to circumstances largely beyond their control.
I liked it, I get why season 8 is getting some stick (abit rushed, mainly the Jamie stuff) but the hate it's getting is abit extreme. I mean it's not like it's Mass Effect 3 now is it.
I enjoyed the final moments, those 3 characters getting the endings that their characters deserved. After all this all started with the Starks and ended with them. The last episode was very much understated, I thought it was going to come down to one last battle but they avoided that and gave us the fate been decided in dark rooms instead.
It wasn't the perfect ending, but pretty much no tv show that goes on over multiple seasons acheives that, well apart from Friday Night Lights.
Also Rome? wasn't the dull version of Spartacus?
Top_Shelf wrote:I thought her finally doing away with him and embracing the power of the Dark Side on her fully operational dragon would have aligned with Ramsay's "If you think this has a happy ending..." prophecy.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little bit excited over the prospect of a Darth 3ER pulling the strings from the very beginning to A) find a broken person with a strong lineage to take control of, B) lure him to the tree to complete the transformation process, C) control events so that the entire world was too weak to fight against him, and D) position himself so that Tyrion had the thought that he was the perfect king. Realistically, so little is known of the 3ER that you can't really even say if he's good or evil, just... kind of weird. From what we've been shown, he could be a kinder, gentler appearing Darth Sidious.
I would like to subscribe to your newsletter as this sounds awesome.
I am not confusing anything, I don't believe. Turner said the petition was disrespectful because the cast worked hard. I think the effort of the cast, for which they were compensated, has no bearing on if criticism is valid/respectful. I also think the petition is idiotic and entitled, but not outside the pale.
To be clear, I don't think we actually disagree.
Middcore wrote:Yeah Rome is definitely one of the "prerequisite" shows for GoT to succeed... "period" costume drama with lots of sexy violent intrigue. Maybe also The Tudors?
It also helps that some of the better actors from Rome showed up in GoT, namely Ciaran Hines aka Mance Raydor.
I think it runs much deeper than that. Rome literally built the foundation for GoT as the set was huge and costly (and, yes, as mentioned, lots of violence and nudity). Rome was popular as a show, not quite to Sopranos or GoT levels, but it was popular and won numerous awards. But it was sooooooooo expensive and the producers made a bunch of mistakes. Some of those producers went on to make GoT, which is why GoT starts out looking more like Xena than it does LotR. The budget was originally scaled way back to account for the scope so that it could manage to make it through to the final season, instead of being truncated like Rome (and Deadwood).
But then GoT went and became the most important property on TV, the budget took a leap and the creators decided to truncate it anyway. 
So HBO was asked if we're getting an Arya spinoff.
Nope, nope, nope. No. Part of it is, I do want this show — this Game of Thrones, Dan and David’s show — to be its own thing. I don’t want to take characters from this world that they did beautifully and put them off into another world with someone else creating it. I want to let it be the artistic piece they’ve got. That’s one of the reasons why I’m not trying to do the same show over. George has a massive, massive world; there are so many ways in. That’s why we’re trying to do things that feel distinct — and to not try and redo the same show. That’s probably one of the reasons why, right now, a sequel or picking up any of the other characters doesn’t make sense for us.
I'm guessing she said no.
Link for that quote is here.
At this point one prequel going to begin shooting next month, and another two in the scripting stage.
So HBO was asked if we're getting an Arya spinoff.
Nope, nope, nope. No. Part of it is, I do want this show — this Game of Thrones, Dan and David’s show — to be its own thing. I don’t want to take characters from this world that they did beautifully and put them off into another world with someone else creating it. I want to let it be the artistic piece they’ve got. That’s one of the reasons why I’m not trying to do the same show over. George has a massive, massive world; there are so many ways in. That’s why we’re trying to do things that feel distinct — and to not try and redo the same show. That’s probably one of the reasons why, right now, a sequel or picking up any of the other characters doesn’t make sense for us.I'm guessing she said no.
Great, they keep killing my hopes even after the show is finished.
But yeah, would be very understandable if the actor(s) have no interest in going back.
I'd still be interested in following Aryas storyline (travelling to the West), without Arya in it though. Just following the expedition itself. At least more so than a prequel where the ending is already known.
I'd still be interested in following Aryas storyline (travelling to the West), without Arya in it though. Just following the expedition itself. At least more so than a prequel where the ending is already known.
Maybe that is the push GRRM needs to finish up the series. He has his Wild Cards series to let him keep fresh, and the second part of Fire & Blood, which was mostly written over the years, so maybe a story to work on after SoIaF is over will get him motivated.
Carina asks: So, can Bran see the future or what? Or is there maybe a bowl made of weirwood in Tyrion’s pantry prison that showed Bran how he worked through this all?We know he has brief flashes of future events, like when he saw Cersei blowing up the Sept of Baelor and Drogon flying over King’s Landing, but the show never indicated he can clearly see future events the way Maggy the Frog foresaw Cersei’s fate. And that’s the problem with him telling Tyrion he traveled all that way to King’s Landing to become king. Why? How? Was he a 17-level-chess genius who anticipated that exact sequence of events would happen? Or did Bran know everything that was going to happen before it did?
If it was the latter, uh, he’s super evil. With that ability couldn’t he have stopped Daenerys before she murdered all those innocent people? Or maybe did more to prevent the Night King from killing so many at Winterfell? If so, the only reason not to mention any of this beforehand was that he was playing the long game of thrones and knew he’d end up ruling.
Either Bran was the secret big bad all along or the show did a bad job explaining his powers, making it unclear what he knew and when. The former is pretty cool. The latter, unfortunately, is the right answer.
This is the same point one of the articles on The Ringer was making yesterday. If they hadn't had him say "Why do you think I came all this way?" they could have avoided these unpleasant implications. (Not to mention avoiding the impression that his "I can't be lord of Winterfell, I'm the 3ER" protestations were just because he had his third eye on a bigger prize.) But it seems like they felt they needed that line to make Bran's journey seem more meaningful without considering that it makes him look worse as a character.
Colby asks: What was the point of Jon being a Targaryen? Did everyone forget in the last episode he was technically the rightful heir? Or did they not care? No one even mentioned it.Jon’s birth, which was a huge deal from day one of the story, only really mattered because it made Daenerys furious and threatened, which contributed to her burning King’s Landing.
Otherwise there was really no point to him being Aegon Targaryen. It still should have come up during the Dragonpit council though. Someone definitely should have at least mentioned it. Seemed relevant that a great hero and respected leader was also the legal son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark.
The discovery that Jon Snow was really Aegon Targaryen was as irrelevant to the story as the White Walkers, whose presence and defeat didn’t matter to anyone. Genuinely insane how little both of those stories ultimately mattered.
I will actually defend the conclusion of the series a little here by saying I don't agree with the statement above that the White Walkers didn't matter to anyone. I think they mattered a lot, in the obvious "everybody is going to die" sense and also in the impact they had on some of the characters' development. But with no substantive backstory or motivations of their own, they mattered to the story in the way an impending natural disaster does, not in the way a villain does, which ends up feeling like a missed opportunity.
Also, random R+L=J tangent: it drives me absolutely nuts the way the show acts like the discovery that Rhaegar annulled his marriage to Elia Martell and got hitched to Lyanna absolves him of all blame for the events which led to the war. He still:
1, abandoned his wife and children to go chase a new piece of ass
2, divorced his first wife in absentia and, to complete her humiliation (assuming anybody even bothered to send a raven to tell Elia any of this), got remarried in her homeland
3, put his dick and/or his interpretation of a vague prophecy that required him to have three kids ahead of his responsibilities to the realm as crown prince
4, apparently made no attempt at any point to explain the true nature of his relationship with Lyanna, smooth things over with the Baratheons and Starks, and stop a war (as uphill a battle as that would have been)
5, took up arms to defend his father in spite of Aerys' actions being unconscionable and in spite of the fact Rhaegar was so popular he might still have been able to stop a slaughter if he had claimed the throne himself (as many suspected might happen even before the war)
But Rhaegar was handsome! He played the harp and sang! He wasn't actually a rapist! What a cool guy? No. f*ck Rhaegar. Rhaegar was a piece of shit.
This doesn't make sense because they've setup the mother of all succession wars when Bran dies. This is the same problem all countries all over the real world have. If you have a strong leader and not a strong system, you will have problems when that leader is gone. You have to have a strong system, which they did not setup at the end. They all just laughed at the idea of the strong system.
You mean when Sam proposes democracy? What happens the first time someone claims "voter fraud?" They laughed at democracy because they're, well, nobles who think that makes them better people, but how do you make democracy strong overnight? Democracy depends on taking the gun (well, sword) out of politics, and that wasn't happening.
If there's a problem with the ending, it's that once Dany burned King's Landing and her coalition turned on itself when Two Targaryens Enter One Targaryen Leaves, is a strong system at the center even possible? What army does the central authority even have at this point?
The more I think about it, the ending is that by the time Bran dies, no one will care about being the central authority. Maybe that's the least worst ending possible for when you Alternative British Isles gets invaded by Targaryens and not Normans.
So then we'd be back to pre-Aegon the Conqueror days. Fiefdoms fighting over territory and resources.
Don't forget that Sam cheated to get Jon elected as head of the nights watch.
Been thinking about how I would have ended this. I would have had Grey Worm kill Jon and proceed to take over the 7 kingdoms in a way he felt Dany wanted. After Dany gave that speech I could see Grey Worm and her armies trying to make her dream come true even after her death.
So then we'd be back to pre-Aegon the Conqueror days. Fiefdoms fighting over territory and resources.
Is that necessarily worse than the post-Aegon days? I haven't delved into much beyond the show and the main books, but there were still wars and rebellions, and fights over succession within the Targaryen family.
Been thinking about how I would have ended this. I would have had Grey Worm kill Jon and proceed to take over the 7 kingdoms in a way he felt Dany wanted. After Dany gave that speech I could see Grey Worm and her armies trying to make her dream come true even after her death.
Without a dragon I don't think GW would have had much chance of pulling that off. The show was opaque about how many Unsullied and Dothraki are left after The Long Night but I don't think there are enough left to beat all the levies of all of Westeros, even with a lot of Great Houses' forces depleted by years of war. I mean, GW could win some battles for sure if the Westerosi lords came at him piecemeal but he doesn't have the manpower to hold territory he takes and he's got no way to replace his losses to attrition.
Practicalities aside though I just don't think that would have ever occurred to GW. The more I think about it, the more him acquiescing so easily to the whole "let's pick a monarch and let them decide" idea is believable. The Unsullied were raised as slave soldiers, they're disciplined to the point of being automatons, and even following a master they chose you don't overcome years of conditioning to follow somebody's orders that easily.
maverickz wrote:So then we'd be back to pre-Aegon the Conqueror days. Fiefdoms fighting over territory and resources.
Is that necessarily worse than the post-Aegon days? I haven't delved into much beyond the show and the main books, but there were still wars and rebellions, and fights over succession within the Targaryen family.
You're right in that aspect certainly. But I think the hope would be to make things better. But they aren't, they're the same.
cheeze_pavilion wrote:maverickz wrote:So then we'd be back to pre-Aegon the Conqueror days. Fiefdoms fighting over territory and resources.
Is that necessarily worse than the post-Aegon days? I haven't delved into much beyond the show and the main books, but there were still wars and rebellions, and fights over succession within the Targaryen family.
You're right in that aspect certainly. But I think the hope would be to make things better. But they aren't, they're the same.
Well, except for that whole "there's no longer an army of the dead marching south" thing.
Also, there's the possibility of things getting better. Like I said, I don't remember much as far as the Targaryens making things better. Didn't seem like their continued rule would lead to anything good.
So at the end, neither the Night King nor the dragon family are a factor anymore.
A Song of Ice and Fire?
Been thinking about how I would have ended this. I would have had Grey Worm kill Jon and proceed to take over the 7 kingdoms in a way he felt Dany wanted. After Dany gave that speech I could see Grey Worm and her armies trying to make her dream come true even after her death.
At least do something. Kind of amazing how far the Dothraki and Unsullied came, only to apparently not care that much when their queen was assassinated. The Dothraki must have been Dany's army of the dead, because they disappeared the instant the blade went into her.
Without a dragon I don't think GW would have had much chance of pulling that off. The show was opaque about how many Unsullied and Dothraki are left after The Long Night
There's this many:
Don't forget that Sam lied to get Jon elected as head of the nights watch.
He didn't rig it. He convinced people to vote their bloc by letting them come to the wrong conclusions.
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