House of the Dragon (Game of Thrones) Thread

[Tigerstyle]

The show was still great fight me irl

[Bobfoc]

The show ended up developing a narrative style that mimicked bad wrestling booking. It became more about creating "moments" than about maintaining logical storytelling with believable consequences to the characters' actions.

This was especially apparent in the Winterfell battle against the army of the dead. The Dothraki charging into the darkness and getting obliterated looked great, but everyone could see how tactically stupid it made the humans look. It was like the time WWE wanted Shane McMahon to jump off the cell at Wrestlemania, but they didn't have a good idea of how to get to that point, so they just spurted out a setup that made no sense as soon as it began. Then, much like with the Dothraki, it turned out that the result of the match didn't matter anyway because Shane got the winning stipulation prize and the Dothraki were still mostly intact.

Then you've got Dany's murderous rampage, which was like one of Kane's sudden "RAAAH I'M A MONSTER" heel turns out of nowhere. Yes, we got to see something spectacular, but it came at the expense of narrative cohesion.

For the most part, the actual ending points for the characters weren't all terrible. If you'd told me years ago that Tyrion would be Hand, Davos would be Master of Ships, Sansa would lead The North, Sam would be a maester and Jon would go back beyond The Wall, I wouldn't have been surprised at all. Bran being King could make sense with the right build-up and explanation too. The issue was that, as noted before, the writers had no idea how to get to those end points without the source material to guide them, and the result was a scattergun mishmash of cobbled together explanations that fell apart under the smallest amount of scrutiny.

[SeanDMan]

14 minutes ago, Bobfoc said:

The show ended up developing a narrative style that mimicked bad wrestling booking. It became more about creating "moments" than about maintaining logical storytelling with believable consequences to the characters' actions.

Sadly, this seems to be how people write television these days. It's all about these big spectacles, rather than the build. The plot serves to get us from moment to moment as opposed to be to properly build and tell a story.

[Bobfoc]

Any time someone promotes their show or film with the word "epic", I'm put off. It makes me think of bombastic special effect showcases, rather than well-crafted stories. Game of Thrones was at its best for me when it focused on smaller scale events between characters.

I think the only battle I really liked was in Blackwater, and that was particularly effective because we only saw short glimpses of the actual fighting, with the dialogue between characters on each side taking greater precedence. The fact that GRRM himself wrote the episode was no doubt a big factor in how well it turned out.

[Gazz]

That quote Benji posted is correct, since the finale, I have had zero interest in rewatching the series. Quite an accomplishment.

[Jimmy]

11 hours ago, SeanDMan said:

Sadly, this seems to be how people write television these days. It's all about these big spectacles, rather than the build. The plot serves to get us from moment to moment as opposed to be to properly build and tell a story.

I don't necessarily agree with this. I think that's just separates fine TV and great TV. 

I think any TV show is dangerous territory when it's trying to please and appease its audience, which is something I felt from GOT in the last few seasons, like it was aware of its fandom and all that. 

I always subscribed to Joss Whedon's mantra of "don't give the people what they want, give them what they need." 

That said, the last season of GOT did neither. 

[Roster Depth Sicko No. 2]

How many years do you think we have until there's an attempted reboot?

[livid]

It's a big world so probably awhile since they're working on spinoffs. Unless those fail, there won't be a "need" to. 

[Roster Depth Sicko No. 2]

I forgot they were even doing spin-offs, the hype for those is going to be non-existant.

[Bobfoc]

I find it hard to see a reboot happening for years and years, if ever. As @livid suggested, there's so much room for spinoffs that HBO can milk it for a long time if its popularity doesn't tail off dramatically.

Speaking of spinoffs, what ideas have people come up with over the last year? I'm particularly keen on series that focus on a small number of characters and really go to town on developing them.

That said, I'd also love to see something akin to The Crown, only based on the life of Aerys II. Have each series cover a different time period and chart his gradual descent into madness. You could start with the Tragedy at Summerhall and then cover his role during The War of the Ninepenny Kings, his budding friendship with Tywin, his coronation and his outlandish promises that came to nothing. Then you could really explore the tensions that developed between Tywin and him, as well as Aerys' lust for Joanna Lannister. You've also got the difficulties Rhaella had with childbirth and the irrational punishments he imposed on those involved.

The Defiance of Duskendale could then take up a good few episodes, perhaps even a full series. You'd get to see Ser Barristan being amazing, Tywin being ruthless and Rhaegar possibly making plans for his ascent to the throne, along with the all-important breaking point for Aerys' sanity.

The Year of the False Spring would follow, and we'd see some of the pivotal moments that shaped the events to come. Jaime Lannister is named to the Kingsguard, Tywin resigns as Hand, Varys joins Aerys' court and Aerys begins to order the stocking of wildfire beneath the city. This series would end with the Tourney at Harrenhal, setting up Robert's Rebellion.

Then, of course, you'd get the series about Robert's Rebellion that so many people had wanted. Hopefully, everything will have been built up effectively by this point and we'd see everything from a more complex point of view. People who didn't read the books could see that Aerys wasn't always mad, but that the seeds of his descent were in place early in his life. Personally, I hate the theory that he lost his sanity because Bran meddled with time because it cheapens the impact of all the under significant events in his life.

[gunnar hendershow]

20 hours ago, Benji said:

I've mentioned this a bunch since the show ended whenever the ending comes up but it's exceedingly apparent that 1) GRRM may not completely know how he wants the series to end (he's written the equivalent of 1.5 books in 20 years) and, 2) The showrunners were blindsided by GRRM's outline. They had really made a show with a massive fandom and wanted to give that fandom gifts but those went completely contrary to logical storytelling based on character motivations and themes.

Also HBO deserves some blame for really wanting a non-fantasy show in a story whose endgame was always going to be 100% fantasy.

So we wound up with years of build being thrown away and characters acting completely against their own build-up because the showrunners didn't really get *anything* thematic about the story and instead thought the popularity was in the twists. As GRRM got away from alot of that in the most recent books they had to keep finding shit to do to keep it "interesting" while also following some level of an outline. Just an overall terrible combination of events.

Spoiler

I maintain Bran becoming king as Westeros embraces a future built on knowledge instead of power makes *so much sense* thematically but they never once even portrayed that as a possibility in the show. Whereas in the books the importance of knowledge instead of power is repeatedly pointed to.

 

 

[livid]

1 hour ago, Jericode said:

I forgot they were even doing spin-offs, the hype for those is going to be non-existant.

Nah once people get a taste when the first teaser comes out, as long as it doesn't look like horseshit (and it shouldn't because this is HBO we're talking about), the interest will come back. 

To the larger point about there being no lasting impact from the show, I just think that's generally how things kinda work in pop culture now. There's been a rise in Endgame callback memes with the "we're in the endgame now" stuff related to coronavirus but other than that, people don't really talk about Avengers that much anymore either and that was the epic culmination of 20 movies. There's just so much stuff coming out all the time (minus the summer movie season now) that it's hard to really reflect on things that already came out like culture has done in years past. 

Edited May 23, 2020 by livid

[gunnar hendershow]

2 minutes ago, livid said:

Nah once people get a taste when the first teaser comes out, as long as it doesn't look like horseshit (and it shouldn't because this is HBO we're talking about), the interest will come back. 

To the larger point about there being no lasting impact from the show, I just think that's generally how things kinda work in pop culture now. There's been a rise in Endgame callback memes with the "we're in the endgame now" stuff related to coronavirus but other than that, people don't really talk about Avengers that much anymore either and that was the epic culmination of 20 movies. There's just so much stuff coming out all the time (minus the summer movie season now) that it's hard to really reflect on things that already came out like culture has done in years past. 

This is important. Media just doesn't have staying power anymore because there's always something new. Heck, Tiger King was 2 months ago and all the Carole Baskin memes are already gone.

[GhostMachine]

Jason Momoa and Peter Dinklage are doing a vampire movie together (one of them will be playing Van Helsing). I've seen articles talking about them `reuniting'. Did they ever have any scenes together on GoT? Can't call it a reunion if they never even worked together on the show.

[Meacon Keaton]

Sure they can. 

[Hellraiser]

One of the big underlying problems with the show was that D&D decided not only that the show would end in season 8, but also that were were going to get shorter seasons because they wanted to be done with the show to make a Star Wars trilogy. Instead of letting the characters and the world they inhabit arrive at the destination they had in mind organically, they had to bent the character's actions around the destination. That is why for example a whole bunch of characters that previously were defined by their cunning and intellect suddenly had to take a bunch of stupid pills and make bad decisions because it was convenient for the plot. Also the destination they were provided by GRRM via his outlines simply doesn't make sense for the characters in the show since they have developed a live of their own and are essentially different characters from their book counterparts. If you had more competent people in charge of the show who didn't want to get it done as quick as possible that probably wouldn't have been as big as a problem since they would've found a way to have everyone arrive at the destination that would make sense for these characters. But unfortunately we got D&D.  

Edited May 23, 2020 by Hellraiser

[GhostMachine]

What I hated about the finale the most was Dany going evil being rushed. Saw it coming, but she literally went evil in one episode rather than it being a slow burn.

That, and the Night King was...underwhelming. He was clearly either a wimp or coward because he would never actually fight anyone, and Arya took his punk ass out rather quick.

And did they even realize putting Bran on the throne means he'll be king for centuries, not decades?

 

[gunnar hendershow]

11 minutes ago, GhostMachine said:

What I hated about the finale the most was Dany going evil being rushed. Saw it coming, but she literally went evil in one episode rather than it being a slow burn.

That, and the Night King was...underwhelming. He was clearly either a wimp or coward because he would never actually fight anyone, and Arya took his punk ass out rather quick.

And did they even realize putting Bran on the throne means he'll be king for centuries, not decades?

 

Yeah that's a huge benefit of Bran, there will be no battles over a throne anymore. Westeros has embraced a future built on knowledge instead of power. That's a core theme that D&D absolutely missed.

[GhostMachine]

Another thing I hated that I forgot to mention: Cersei got a better death than she deserved. After all the horrible things she did, she should have gone out more like the way Baelish did, rather than just being instantly crushed. The fans got robbed big time on that one.

[Tigerstyle]

As a book reader I always knew Dany was the big bad - her obsession with death makes it so obvious.

But not making Bran the third dragon rider (extremely powerful warg and ‘you’ll never walk but you’ll fly’) and absolutely rushing the final two seasons was treachery.

They really should’ve at least had the standard 10 episodes a season, give the core characters the arc and ending they deserve.

It was still good, but I’m a mark.