They gave the game away with the conversation between Arya and Melisendre. You just knew she was going to do something significant after that, though I didn't quite expect her to do the deed itself.
Also, was there any sign of Ghost? I don't remember him being around after the initial charge. Thought maybe he was dead, but I didn't see him around when the dead rose either.
Are you seriously thinking in-universe? I don't watch the show (I'm only in the thread because every local streaming service recognized a one in a lifetime chance to grab new subscribers and spammed ads offline), but I looked the list of deaths upthread and I don't see how this puddle of piss is in any way immersive.
I read the first and half the second book during night shifts in a bank's custserv, saw where it was going character-wise early on and persevered mostly because the bank clamped down on internet use and the book wasn't bad enough to risk downloading something better. Martin writes good prose - not stellar, but certainly good. (Then I graduated.)
The TV show promised blood and guts, what I saw was an indistinguishable collection of soyfaces. Half an episode was enough.
I grew up reading (children's) fairytales and historical fiction, the two genres where you know how it's gonna end from page 1. Didn't watch much tv, because tv was worse. Book adaptations in particular sought to hammer in every Very Important Lesson implied by the books plot in direct fourth-wall-breaking speech, and adult theater actors hamming it up, walking all over the child actors and making a drunken farce out of what was meant to be a serious story (for children).
The first fantasy book I read was a revelation. Get this, one of the three protagonists, an impoverished young man with great aspirations, kind, honorable, keenly aware of the injustice in the world, sets out to fight Ultimate Evil (as appropriate for epic fantasy)... and ends up fighting the idiotic hereditary bureaucracy of the nominal good guys. And then he fights a villain and dies. Permanently. And there was another character, the opposite of the dead hero, a cynical atheist who had Very Important Lesson written all over him (the writers are hardcore Christians). He lasted an admirable time and was eventually killed not by a monster but by his own hubris... except waitaminute not so fast motherfucker PLOT TWIST he's alive and powered up and gets to rub it in everyone's faces! A whole new world opened for the 12-year-old me at that moment.
(I must say the books are rather old and would hardly be revelatory in CURRENT_YEAR. But back then? Dude, whoa.)
So Game of Thrones has a problem. It has designated protagonists and piled up secondary characters' deaths, but protagonists cannot suffer permadeath or degradation, and their trials look like a troon's misgendering against the backdrop of rape and slaughter. There's no suspense, and because the plot is jerked here and there to compensate, no anticipation either. The hacks shot several versions of the ending, just gonna put on the tinfoil hat and say the "real" ending will be picked according to critical reception, part of the hack duo's acquihire-like gamble.
Anyone who'd been invested in the show, I sympathize but you should've seen this coming. I only wish it could've sparked the creation of better fantasy shows. How come they spend upwards of 10M per episode and can't hire a concept artist? What is this third-tier f2p videogame shit? The zenith of tv was when Roney stabbed an alien god with a construction crane and it's been downhill ever since. Fucking zoomers.
Wanted to go more in-depth about how autistic the battle was, because talking about pre-gunpowder battles gets me hard as a rock.
This is not an enemy that they've never seen before. Jon Snow has seen wights World War Z themselves over and on top of defenses in the past. None of what happened during this battle should have come to a shock to anyone. They would have known the wights were capable of climbing up and over each other to attack infantry formations from the front and above by simply crushing them under their weight. Knowing this, putting massed infantry formations outside the castle walls made no sense whatsoever.
The battle begins and the Dothraki get their dumb swords turned into neato lanterns, because the show really wanted to masturbate all over itself by showing us the scene of the lights going out in the darkness. The scene fails, because anyone with half a brain would realize that throwing light cavalry pel-mel into the darkness like that was fucking stupid. If an actual human being was in charge of the army, and not a writer with a Bachelors in Intersectional Feminism, you would have wanted to pull the cavalry back and away from the castle. At worst, they can attempt to draw some of the White Walker army away from the castle. At best, they can wait until an opportunity presents itself to charge the army in the rear or flank.
Also, arm them with lances or more recurve bows, holy fuck.
You would then not want to put your most experienced and veteran troops in a position to get cut off. You do this by putting them on the fucking walls of your fucking castle. You know, the fucking thing purpose built to allow a smaller force to destroy a larger force. YOU HAVE A FUCKING CASTLE, THE FUCK ARE YOUR DUDES DOING OUT IN THE FIELD?
Let's assume Jon Snow had actually stayed awake when Ned taught him battle strategy and kept his army inside his fucking castle. That instantly increases the likelihood of victory. To increase it even more, we're going to assume that they dig a trench around the castle that is deeper and wider than what it is. Something that can't be filled up by three dead wights. An actual fucking moat for their actual fucking castle, holy fuck, why does it not have a moat?
Since you saved your army from being zerg-rushed in the beginning of the battle, you now have significantly more men to defend the walls. Since the undead have no archers, in a situation like this you would want men up on the parapet stabbing down with pikes and spears to kill the undead before they can even reach the battlements. Assuming Winterfell was designed by someone with half a brain and the walls actually had machicolations, you'd just want to stab down through the machicolations. Since half your army is still alive, your men can rotate out on the walls as they get fatigued.
Since White Walkers have Tom Brady arms, you'd keep your dragons behind the walls. A particular spot on the walls getting really hammered by wights? Simply have the dragon pop its head over the wall, torch them, then pull back. Rinse and repeat. Keep your artillery behind the walls, since they are indirect weapons, and lob munitions over the walls into the mass of the undead. Don't park them outside like a spazz. If you have time to build trebuchets, you have time to build ballistae. Use them if the Night King tries to attack the castle from the air or 2v1 his ass with your own dragons.
Finally, put Bran in the fucking crypt. The whole plot of putting him out in the Godswood was just mental masturbation and nothing else. The Night King knows where he's at, at all times. Why the fuck wouldn't you put him in the crypt? If he's gonna be coming for him first, make the Night King enter the crypt. In the crypt, the 20 Ironborn would have had only one avenue of attack to defend -- rather than getting swamped from all sides.
We had all this fucking build up to bring an army capable of defeating the dead to Winterfell and it didn't fucking matter, because the writers are fucking stupid.
I haven't seen the 3rd episode yet, but it sounds like it's going to suck. I also recently discovered allegedly leaked Martin's note from 1993 about the books plot summary and strategy to keep readers involved, and it makes sense. The Jon-Arya-Tyrion love triangle would be more entertaining, instead of Danny in it, nothing like pedo-incest to keep shit controversial.
From HBO perspective, there is little reason to tie anything well, because they need to focus on new, more profitable projects, not 6 episodes of the last season. If anything, good case of blue balls and a promise to explain shit later works (manual release) could help launching some spin-off and keep fandom interest up. Isn't that the part of the secret formula to keep people watching?
The debate on why shit was done this way will rage on and there is no real answer. Even Martin himself was filling shit up, so does he even have those books in his head already or he needs to sit down and work it all out? I believe that Martin's writing is a lot like most sci-fi sitcoms were written, a plot line was developed in loose terms, then all the technical terms filled in together with details and subplots, from top down. So really, no matter how shitty the episode is, it's just an execution of some idea that HBO wants to get accross. Sure, the delivery may suck, but there is no difference between fanfiction and the "real story", because "real story" doesn't exist.
The first fantasy book I read was a revelation. Get this, one of the three protagonists, an impoverished young man with great aspirations, kind, honorable, keenly aware of the injustice in the world, sets out to fight Ultimate Evil (as appropriate for epic fantasy)... and ends up fighting the idiotic hereditary bureaucracy of the nominal good guys. And then he fights a villain and dies. Permanently. And there was another character, the opposite of the dead hero, a cynical atheist who had Very Important Lesson written all over him (the writers are hardcore Christians). He lasted an admirable time and was eventually killed not by a monster but by his own hubris... except waitaminute not so fast motherfucker PLOT TWIST he's alive and powered up and gets to rub it in everyone's faces! A whole new world opened for the 12-year-old me at that moment.
(I must say the books are rather old and would hardly be revelatory in CURRENT_YEAR. But back then? Dude, whoa.)
So Game of Thrones has a problem. It has designated protagonists and piled up secondary characters' deaths, but protagonists cannot suffer permadeath or degradation, and their trials look like a troon's misgendering against the backdrop of rape and slaughter. There's no suspense, and because the plot is jerked here and there to compensate, no anticipation either. The hacks shot several versions of the ending, just gonna put on the tinfoil hat and say the "real" ending will be picked according to critical reception, part of the hack duo's acquihire-like gamble.
if the leaked 1993 note from Martin was genuine, he spells out his trick to keep audience involved by killing off well developed characters, keeping no one safe.
This is nothing new. Ivanhoe. First battle, dude wasn't killed but he sure was knocked out of the battle by a midget.
Yeah, but at least he went out like a beast. Seriously, if anything disappoints me the most is how no one is talking about how Jorah basically tanked through every single iteration of the attack. True, there was a bit of deus ex machina with him saving Dany, but in the end he was basically the only character that wasn't pressed to the wall or shitting themselves.
They gave the game away with the conversation between Arya and Melisendre. You just knew she was going to do something significant after that, though I didn't quite expect her to do the deed itself.
Also, was there any sign of Ghost? I don't remember him being around after the initial charge. Thought maybe he was dead, but I didn't see him around when the dead rose either.
Thankfully Ghost can be seen in the trailer for the next episode, around the 18 second mark, he's in the crowd at the mass funeral pyre.
Thinking about it some more, I think what disappointed me the most wasn't that it "subverted my expectations," but rather by how lazily it was done. The Red Wedding worked because if you followed the hints and paid attention to the underlying alliances, when it happened, it made sense. It was a "all the pieces fall into place" kind of moment. It felt solidified.
With this though, it just felt incredibly ridiculous. It felt like it was built entirely on the idea of looking cool but not really paying attention to the "how does this work?" part. How did Arya get there? Wasn't she just concussed? Did she walk that off?
It's like if you were watching Empire Strikes Back, and you're at the scene where Luke's arm is cut off and he's dangling there, Darth Vader at the other end of the catwalk. "No, Luke. I am your--"
And then Chewbacca stealths in behind Darth and flings him off the side.
Yeah, but at least he went out like a beast. Seriously, if anything disappoints me the most is how no one is talking about how Jorah basically tanked through every single iteration of the attack. True, there was a bit of deus ex machina with him saving Dany, but in the end he was basically the only character that wasn't pressed to the wall or shitting themselves.
Thankfully Ghost can be seen in the trailer for the next episode, around the 18 second mark, he's in the crowd at the mass funeral pyre.
Thinking about it some more, I think what disappointed me the most wasn't that it "subverted my expectations," but rather by how lazily it was done. The Red Wedding worked because if you followed the hints and paid attention to the underlying alliances, when it happened, it made sense. It was a "all the pieces fall into place" kind of moment. It felt solidified.
With this though, it just felt incredibly ridiculous. It felt like it was built entirely on the idea of looking cool but not really paying attention to the "how does this work?" part. How did Arya get there? Wasn't she just concussed? Did she walk that off?
It's like if you were watching Empire Strikes Back, and you're at the scene where Luke's arm is cut off and he's dangling there, Darth Vader at the other end of the catwalk. "No, Luke. I am your--"
And then Chewbacca stealths in behind Darth and flings him off the side.
As I said before. Subversion only works if you replace the thing you are removing/changing with something else of equal or greater dramatic/comedic/whatever weight
The Red Wedding worked because it abruptly shifted the narrative in a whole different direction and replaced the conventional medieval fantasy story you expected with something far darker and more impactful, and it was integrated in a way that looking back at previous chapters/episodes you can clearly see the roads leading to the event and thus it does not come out of nowhere without foreshadowing and feels both natural and deeply satisfying in a narrative sense.
This episode did not work because it abruptly killed the narrative by immediately ending the apocalyptic and mysterious threat that had been present since the first scene of the series by having a character now little more than an one note mary sue be able to kill by extension the entire army of the dead by knifing its leader, and thus the narrative is replaced by absolutely fucking nothing and focus shifts back to the tawdy melodrama that this apocalyptic event was supposed to replace
Frankly they should have kept Tommen alive as both her puppet king and her main humanising element since her love for her children has been probably the most integral part of her character since Season 1, all while he despises her for what she did and she slowly realises that even having ultimate power, all her enemies dead or worse, and everything else she has always wanted has not given her the happy ending she needed.
I don't think Cersei every loved her children, she just loves titles. She lived through them, it would never have been appropriate for her to be anything more than queen mother with her children still alive. I wonder with the prophecy if she unconsciously or consciously wanted her children dead.
Anyway, I really wanted this to be an episode that I could watch over and over again like "Winds of Winter".
Winds of Winter is the GOT I wish we had all the time.
HBO should have seized the rights to Dragon Riders of Pern, real lost opportunity. Especially since they can properly show dragons for TV shows now. Years ago WB had so many issues trying to depict a dragon on a budget for the Pern series and it never made it past a pilot.
HBO threw a shiton of cash at GOT and look at what we ended up with, I bet a huge chunk was spent on coke, weed & hookers. Dragon Riders of Pern would be a hack job as well, don't expect anything else.
HBO threw a shiton of cash at GOT and look at what we ended up with, I bet a huge chunk was spent on coke, weed & hookers. Dragon Riders of Pern would be a hack job as well, don't expect anything else.
I hate to disagree but, HBO was doing a pretty good job while they had book material.
The real problem happened when the books stopped and the show turned into what HBO does best, Sex and the City style story for the lowest common denominator.
I found it ridiculous that the corpses in the crypt were able to break out of their stone tombs. They're tough but I don't remember them being strong enough to break through rock. Now I'm wondering how wights work because I assumed they needed recently deceased corpses, I guess there's no expiration date so they're free to use centuries old desiccated mummies?
I also felt that Melisandre quoting Syrio to be quite a hamfisted way to make a callback since I can't think of any reason why she would know to say that.
Sam's arrogant insistance on being on the frontline, Christ. He admitted a bunch of times that he's not a fighter, he should have just accepted Jon's suggestion.
I thought Arya was going to bite it and Sansa would have to put her down. I knew the crypt scene would happen but I was also expecting everyone to get attacked by dead Stark cameos.
Overall, I liked the action but all the flaws mentioned here can't be ignored. Will add more thoughts when they come to me.
I hate to disagree but, HBO was doing a pretty good job while they had book material.
The real problem happened when the books stopped and the show turned into what HBO does best, Sex and the City style story for the lowest common denominator.
The Fat Man told the producers how the books, and by extension, the character arcs, end. Also, there's a lot of things that were pruned/changed in the early seasons, like zombie Catelyn and Jeyne Westerling. Arya is still connected to/learning to warg Nymeria, Jon kinda sorta wargs into Ghost. Mance Rayder is stilt alive (although glamored by Mel).
I don't necessarily mind editing when its a series this long with a huge cast, it was poorly done in the last three seasons. The Pern series is even larger and not only spans a medieval setting with dragons and dolphins it has an advanced space faring element as well. I am not sure if something like it could be adapted to work within the confines of HBO (or any other network) without getting Rome'd.
Also, the first seasons worked because no one knew if GOT would be successful and HBO would continue funding it. It probably would have gotten the Rome treatment as well had it not had the luck to air right as social media was taking off and there was an avalanche of Tumblr/Facebook/Twitter posts littering the internet. Even the Hillary campaign referenced it (remember this?).
Besides hookers & blow is something they budget for, it's called production costs.
I thought Arya was going to bite it and Sansa would have to put her down. I knew the crypt scene would happen but I was also expecting everyone to get attacked by dead Stark cameos.
Was anyone else disappointed that Rickon wasn't brought back to life and let loose in the crypt forcing Sansa to kill him? Would've made all that crypt nonsense at least mildly entertaining.
This was definitely my favourite shot of the episode
Going to have to watch it a second time tonight, as even with the curtains closed this morning I was struggling to make out what was going on half the time.
Although they won, aren't they now completely screwed? They lost almost their entire army whilst Cersi has just sat at home with her feet up.
This has been by far the best post-book season of Game of Thrones. I'm actually surprised how much heat they've been getting for this, solely because the two prior seasons should've destroyed any expectation that Benioff and Weiss could out-write Christopher Paolini.
It that way, it's actually been kind of a blessing that Martin stopped at book five of seven for the Song of Ice and Fire. If this was what they offered after six or seven seasons of following Martin rather than four or five, I'd say this was a failure comparable to Buffy season seven. If it weren't for the story elements they clearly got from Martin (R + J = T, HOLD THE DOOR!), and payoffs only Vince Russo could've fucked up ("The Door", "Battle of the Bastards"), I'd put season six of GoT below season seven of Buffy.
If Benioff and Weiss fuck up A + J = T (which is looking more likely each passing week), I'll spend the rest of my life seeking to produce a gay porno about the life of the Prophet Muhammad, just to frame them for its creation.
If Benioff and Weiss fuck up A + J = T (which is looking more likely each passing week), I'll spend the rest of my life seeking to produce a gay porno about the life of the Prophet Muhammad, just to frame them for its creation.
At this point, I just hope Cersei and the rest of the Legion of Doom can pull something out of their asses. But considering how the killed Littlefinger and the Night King, I'm not expecting much.
