I can only pray that one day my tongue will be touched by the Pentecostal fire that @SecretAsshole channels so effortlessly.
I do admit, it is a gift. The only gift I have, but a gift none-the-less.
Jeez man, you keep delivering such awesome posts about this clusterfuck show. Much appreciation!
The more I think about it, the more I believe the conspiracy theory that Disney paid D&D enough money for several lifetimes to sink HBO's flagship franchise and thus devalue HBO's streaming service so that people may shift towards Disney's when it launches. It's the only way to explain such systematic destruction of every character arc and plot line. If that's not the case, D&D need to be sent to the same Hollywood Hell that Josh Trank got sent to after Fan4stic, because GOT S8 was about as bad as that film in terms of honoring it's characters.
Also, another nitpick about the finale. Drogon flew off with Daenerys' body, so did Jon seriously turn himself into Dany's army and tell them he killed her (instead of lying and saying she flew off somewhere), and did Dany's army seriously not execute him on the spot? Also, Jon took the black as punishment? Why would Grey Worm view that as acceptable, as he probably barely knows what the Night's Watch is, and why does the Night's Watch exist, considering the White Walker threat is gone and the Wildlings seem to be at peace with the North? This finale truly is the worst, and can only be explained by absolute idiocy or corporate sabotage.
No problem dude. Also, don't ever try to make any sense out of the ending or anything in season 8. Nobody else did.
This absolutely.
The other thing is this. You can have the best acting, the best VFX, the best cinematography, and the best costumiers, and the best set designers and stage managers money can buy, but if the writing is sub-par, all you're doing is polishing a turd.
Personally, I think the reason behind all these hugely flashy set pieces and action sequences and battle sequences and Drogon melting the throne and an infinite zombie horde human pyramiding themselves over the walls of Winterfell was more often than not to prevent you from engaging your brain and thinking, "hang on, what the fuck, this makes no sense" until it's too late to change the channel.
EDIT: For me, the ultimate holy grail of television is the single- or double-handed episode. If you can do an episode of anything with just one or two characters in it, preferably in one single continuous scene, and make it thunkful and engaging, you win. Breaking Bad managed it with "4 Days Out." Classic black comedy One Foot In The Grave did it once per season ("Timeless Time", "The Beast in the Cage," "Rearranging the Dust," "Jury Service" - particularly impressive that one because it was just Victor on his own rattling around at home yet it was funny as fuck.)
If they'd dedicated an entire episode to Jon and Dany thrashing out how they were going to square him being secretly a Targaryen who was higher in line to the throne than she was, being related to each, and their continued romantic imbroglio, and how she could be certain he wasn't going to betray her, and he could be certain she wasn't going to stab him in his sleep before he could betray her, and how they would spin it to the lords of the North to prevent them from fucking off home, and how she could spin it to the Dothraki and Unsullied to keep their loyalty, and how they needed to keep a united front to face the Night King and his million zombies, that would have been more impressive than almost anything else. I think both Kit and Emilia could have acted well enough to deliver it also. But alas, it was not to be.
The funniest thing is Mauler timed all the walking and non-speaking in the last episode. 57 minutes. 17 minutes of dialogue. In a SERIES finale. They wrote 17 fucking minutes of dialogue in the last episode of an eight year series.
As mentioned, the things you're talking about are 'bottle episodes'. They weren't traditionally done because of characters or anything, but really due to budgetary constraints that forced that sort of creativity. I forget if 'Fly' in Breaking Bad was one of those things. But I remember from listening to the podcast they did from every show (if you REALLY want to learn how it is in writing shows and a writers room, listen to Vince Gilligan on those podcasts, they're amazing) they had this one directing talent do it. Also, Vince Gilligan wanted to kill Aaron Paul off in Season One, have Walt Jr. get killed, and Walt torture a guy, saw style. Reminder, he's the show runner. You know what the other writer's said? "What the fuck are you doing you weirdo, fucking no." He had people there to tell him what was good, what was bad. It NEVER became ego like with D&D. Vince Gilligan was so fucking humble on those podcasts you could really tell he has a passion for what he does. Hire him to do GoT. He would fucking be absolute perfection. The dude knows character development. He knows how to keep themes, plots and arcs straight. He knows he needs to be reined in and have reliable people behind him make a show good.
Not obsess about a fucking zombie polar bear and subverting expectations. Jesus fucking christ. He did subvert my expectations with the finale, by making Walt not an absolute cunt. Just a regular one. (And that's how you subvert expectations you stupid fucking faggots).
GoT never really had any constraints when it sky-rocketed to popularity. I'm sure there were limits. But D&D were fucking obsessed with an undead polar bear for some fucking reason. Ret.ards are attracted to re.tarded things, unsurprisingly.
@Secret Asshole also Westwood?
Goddamn it, Westworld. I'm still pissed about Deadwood. I didn't like Season 2 of Westworld. I feel like they ruined The Man in Black by just making him comically evil, Japan World was a fucking time sink and it felt like they were in a mad fucking scramble to get the fuck out of the Western setting as fast as possible. Same shit that happens with HBO series. They write complex characters, get in a corner or they're too crowded in a series with too many plots, or needed to get out of the Western setting for budget reasons, and simplify motivation to where it doesn't make sense. They also ended his story in a fucked way that doesn't make a lot of sense (or really, any), but the writers wanted that poetry, you know, the rhyming George was talking about? So they wrote it in anyway, even though it fucking logically doesn't connect and you know they won't revisit. And if they ever do its going to have to be in a way that doesn't even seem to mesh with the themes of Season 3 by getting far away from the park. They're probably going to 'forget' about him.
Or the robots took over the world and Delores is getting petty revenge and is being petty, so if that's the case robots aren't any better than humans and it basically fucks over this entire morality tale that humans are horrible, but if robots are equally horrible the whole thing becomes nihilistic and pointless? I don't fucking know. Like I said, they just wanted that poetry and wanted a 'mystery box'. It wasn't so much as subverting expectations as, 'We want to do this cool thing, but this cool thing makes no thematic, narrative or story sense, but its poetry and it rhymes so we're doing it anyway'. I just saw through them at that point and gave the fuck up. The look of Season 3 also looks WAY too modern-day to where we're getting 'Robots indistinguishable from humans' level. Also they seem to want to go 'cyberpunk' without really fully committing to it (Aaron Paul being a criminal at the edges of society, the future being a dystopia). I know its super early and there was only a teaser, but that is my feeling on it. Also I never really gave a shit at the world outside and I thought it was a cool theme that future Earth is this mysterious place where we don't know much about. But that's all gone since they ran full sprint out of the park.
On another 'subverting expectations note', I know most here don't care about weaboo shit, but the massively popular Attack on Titan writer absolutely loves GoT. The television show. The season eight, television show. So I'm guessing he's going to end his massively popular series by cratering it into the fucking ground ten miles wide by 'subverting expectations'.
How many massively popular franchises will be claimed due to 'subverting expectations'? Star Wars, Game of Thrones and probably Attack on Titan. Do corporations ever learn? Hrmm....Sci-fi, Fantasy and Anime. All nerd shit. Maybe we've been wrong all along. Maybe we need to crater all of this shit so we get the normies and Twitter faggots out. Crash the plane with no survivors. No franchise left unscathed. Let the nerds go back to their shit and normies do whatever they fuck they do. We need the MCU to crater itself thanks to 'subverting expectations'. Its been too audience pleasing. They need someone to fuck them in the ass. I hear Rian Johnson is out of a movie trilogy. Maybe he could direct some of your comic movies, Disney.
www.reddit.com
