[Spoilers] Rant & Rave without Repercussions - First We Take King's Landing Edition

[Le Cygne]

So let's talk about what we dislike about the show.

How about the characterization, the plots. The inconsistency, the lack of logic. No meaning and depth. Shock and filler, instead of good stories.

Lots to talk about there.

[Le Cygne]

1 hour ago, TheCasualObserver said:

I assume their definition comes from a cinematic sensibility. The Battle of the Bastards was very cinematic, but made bugger all sense, either in terms of characterization or logistical possibility. 

The outlier is Troy, the 2004 film Benioff scripted. Troy had huge battles scenes, massive stars and an often remarked upon budget, but it was hampered by trite dialogue and an awkward amount of condensing the source material into a derivative plot. The ten year epic of the classic Iliad became a three day battle on a beach, and the Gods and their pivotal role in human lives was... completely removed.

The more I think about it, the closer the similarities get.  

A good yarn is a story that draws you in, on its own merits. Try telling the story without bells and whistles, would it not only be compelling, but memorable, when stripped to the bare essentials... Would the listener be enchanted, or stop and say... but that doesn't make sense. The latter for this show.

[The Dragon Demands]

Actually the poisoning scene and the hand slapping scene were in two separate episodes

[sweetsunray]

1 minute ago, The Dragon Demands said:

Actually the poisoning scene and the hand slapping scene were in two separate episodes

Hence, both very disappointing episodes

I also was shocked to learn that GRRM had to remind the writers that Jaime would get his ass kicked after losing his sword hand. I wonder whether that's why they had Arthur Dayne become a bidexterous character able to wave swords with both hands. So, they can ignore that sword issue with Jaime and make him 2nd best sword wielder again after Brienne in S7.

[sweetsunray]

12 minutes ago, El Guapo said:

Just for the record It didn't happen in a studio setting during filming.

It is still a bad scene though.

 

Indeed, it's still a bad scene, and the source of inspiration (regardless where it took place) explains to me why GoT has become more and more some cheap B horror movie combined with American Pie #8. This is not what I started watching and kept watching with enjoyment the first several seasons, what brought me to the books, and just as I had finished the books and was all caught on with the seasons they go that route... Ugh.

[TheCasualObserver]

35 minutes ago, Le Cygne said:

A good yarn is a story that draws you in, on its own merits. Try telling the story without bells and whistles, would it not only be compelling, but memorable, when stripped to the bare essentials... Would the listener be enchanted, or stop and say... but that doesn't make sense. The latter for this show.

If nothing else can be said about the danger twins, it's that they know how to stick bells and whistles on hollow projects, and GOT and Troy are both excellent examples of that.

What's curious is that so many publications take the show seriously as a piece of cultural commentary, far more so than they did in season 1 when the comparison would still be worthy. I can barely understand why characters do things in a watsonian sense, which constantly leaves me questioning why the writers made these decisions, but that's an attitude that many or even most of the audience simply don't share.

Sometimes I worry that I'm simply out of touch, but when the characters, the politics ad the plot make little or no sense to me, I cannot see GOT as anything more than schlock. 

[Queen of Procrastination]

So I just read this interview with Finn Jones: http://www.vulture.com/2016/12/finn-jones-game-of-thrones.html

while he is friendly towards D&D, there is also some critical stuff in it: 

Quote

Here's what I think would be interesting: What would have happened to Loras if the Sept hadn't been blown up? He would have been scarred, he would have been stripped of all of his titles, and I think he would have made a really incredible character. He would have turned into this kind of vengeful, war-torn warrior, because he's lost everything — his love, his title, his looks. All of the things that made him this arrogant, gleaming young knight have been taken from him. It would have been really interesting to see what would have happened next, because you've got this really powerful warrior still inside him. I think he would have gone on a revenge path. He could have become a really serious bad ass, like what we're seeing happen with Arya. That would have been really interesting to play, you know? But Daenerys is coming to town, and HBO needed to wipe out a bunch of characters so that they could get on with the story and finish it. [Laughs.] "Okay, we have to kill a bunch of people. Let's just blow up the whole Sept! Alright, that's eight down …" It was a very creative way to get rid of a bunch of us, wipe the slate, and make room for Daenerys. Otherwise, it could just go on forever and ever and ever! 

 

[Queen of Procrastination]

7 hours ago, TheCasualObserver said:

If nothing else can be said about the danger twins, it's that they know how to stick bells and whistles on hollow projects, and GOT and Troy are both excellent examples of that.

What's curious is that so many publications take the show seriously as a piece of cultural commentary, far more so than they did in season 1 when the comparison would still be worthy. I can barely understand why characters do things in a watsonian sense, which constantly leaves me questioning why the writers made these decisions, but that's an attitude that many or even most of the audience simply don't share.

Sometimes I worry that I'm simply out of touch, but when the characters, the politics ad the plot make little or no sense to me, I cannot see GOT as anything more than schlock. 

Same here. 

The show got me into the books and I mostly liked the first couple of seasons, but now I feel like there are just shocking and epic moments left, but the way in which these moments come to pass make no sense at all. I can't understand most characters, either. 

What bothers me probably even more than reviewers not seing the writing mistakes, are reviewers who recognise the big mistakes and handwave them. To give you one example: I listened to  podcast of three German critics who discussed Episode 6.9. and they were talking about Sansa a lot and none of them could figure out why she hadn't told Jon about the KotV, but then they said: "We are  nitpicking here, the episode was fantastic and such minor details shouldn't matter , so we still give the episode a 10/10."

I just thought: "This isn't nitpicking and this isn't a minor detail. You are a critic, so it is your damn job to be critical and find flaws. If there are flaws like these you have to deduce points for this. You can give the Episode a 9 or 9,5 which is still better a better grade than you give most other shows." 

Of course I personally wouldn't rate Episode 6.9 so high. However, I just think that even when they love the episode, they have to deduce points when you recognise such massive flaws.

 

@sweetsunray : Season 6 already brought Jaime's Season 1 personality back, so maybe they just bring his Season 1 swordfighting  abilities  back in Season 7....

 

 

[TheCasualObserver]

8 hours ago, Lady of Whisperers said:

Same here. 

The show got me into the books and I mostly liked the first couple of seasons, but now I feel like there are just shocking and epic moments left, but the way in which these moments come to pass make no sense at all. I can't understand most characters, either. 

What bothers me probably even more than reviewers not seing the writing mistakes, are reviewers who recognise the big mistakes and handwave them. To give you one example: I listened to  podcast of three German critics who discussed Episode 6.9. and they were talking about Sansa a lot and none of them could figure out why she hadn't told Jon about the KotV, but then they said: "We are  nitpicking here, the episode was fantastic and such minor details shouldn't matter , so we still give the episode a 10/10."

I just thought: "This isn't nitpicking and this isn't a minor detail. You are a critic, so it is your damn job to be critical and find flaws. If there are flaws like these you have to deduce points for this. You can give the Episode a 9 or 9,5 which is still better a better grade than you give most other shows." 

Of course I personally wouldn't rate Episode 6.9 so high. However, I just think that even when they love the episode, they have to deduce points when you recognise such massive flaws.

 

@sweetsunray : Season 6 already brought Jaime's Season 1 personality back, so maybe they just bring his Season 1 swordfighting  abilities  back in Season 7....

 

 

But that's the thing - if all the emphasis from the writers, actors, production company and the rest of the media was centered on the scope and scale of the battle, it wouldn't bother me, because I can recognize that in the show. When you spend the money, put together a great stunt team, hire a competent director and let them put together an action sequence, the result is some impressive television. But people weren't just focused on the battle or the action.

D&D boasted about the tactics; but the tactics were idiotic.

Everyone cheered when Jon became king; but Jon has been grossly incompetent at everything for two seasons at least.

Everyone cheered when Sansa became an "empowered feminist", but Sansa is neither empowered nor a feminist.

The purpose of Sansa killing Ramsay is to prove that she is strong and capable, and spit in the faces of those who criticized what they did to her last year. The problem here is that they took a book character who's decency is bone deep, and morphed her into the protagonist of I spit on your grave... and got an emmy for it. It's not just poor writing; I find it morally repugnant.

But to make matters worse, "Sansa the badass" isn't even a badass. The need for a battle where the bad guys are winning right until the last minute makes Sansa grossly incompetent, and the reason was to keep the audience in the dark about the vale knights. This was a failure because even positive reviews of the episode admitted that there weren't many surprises here. We are left with a character who decided on a whim not to inform her brother of impending reinforcements, and it was pure, unadulterated luck that those reinforcements arrived in time, not Sansa or her strategic thinking.

I don't understand how GOT can try to claim they have written a character arc I find awful, and fail to actually write that arc in the end, only to get an emmy for it anyway.

[Le Cygne]

57 minutes ago, TheCasualObserver said:

D&D boasted about the tactics; but the tactics were idiotic.

Everyone cheered when Jon became king; but Jon has been grossly incompetent at everything for two seasons at least.

Everyone cheered when Sansa became an "empowered feminist", but Sansa is neither empowered nor a feminist.

The purpose of Sansa killing Ramsay is to prove that she is strong and capable, and spit in the faces of those who criticized what they did to her last year. The problem here is that they took a book character who's decency is bone deep, and morphed her into the protagonist of I spit on your grave... and got an emmy for it. It's not just poor writing; I find it morally repugnant.

But to make matters worse, "Sansa the badass" isn't even a badass. The need for a battle where the bad guys are winning right until the last minute makes Sansa grossly incompetent, and the reason was to keep the audience in the dark about the vale knights. This was a failure because even positive reviews of the episode admitted that there weren't many surprises here. We are left with a character who decided on a whim not to inform her brother of impending reinforcements, and it was pure, unadulterated luck that those reinforcements arrived in time, not Sansa or her strategic thinking.

Excellent summation. There's nothing left of the book character, there hasn't been for a long time. I miss book Sansa.

This article got it right:

Quote

The show has depended more and more on viewers to inexpertly paper over many of its massive missing facts and motivations...

It reminds me of clotting, this ritual: Fans crowd to the gaping hole in the plot wound and stanch it with possible solutions. Sadly, there was no solution to find. Game of Thrones wrote Arya as just that dumb: She behaved stupidly, got stabbed for it, took a poppy-nap, got her host killed, did some nifty parkouring after discovering she was invincible, sliced a candle. Jaqen announced Arya was "no one" for reasons no one understood, and that was the end.

Arya's arc didn't just get derailed, it got drunk. Someone at HBO wanted a cool chase sequence so badly they mistook speed for catharsis and trampled the whole Braavos plot.

And here we are again, faced with another Stark daughter trapped in an episode so pumped about its (truly) amazing action sequences that it might be requiring weird things of its characters. Sansa's behavior leading up to this episode is incredibly damaging and oddly unexplained. Why keep Jon in the dark? Is this advancing her arc, or is it, like Arya's, contorting a character to suit the battle's needs? (Everyone loves a last-minute cavalry charge, after all.)

The show's opacity on this point muddies its stakes. We don't understand what Sansa knows and what she doesn't, which makes it hard to understand how responsible Sansa was for the horrific carnage and the eventual victory. Is she the architect of her revenge (and Jon's near-death) or a lucky beneficiary of Littlefinger's good timing? These are crucial questions, and the answers matter because one of these possibilities makes her the villain. It's as if we've been saddled with Schrodinger's Sansa: she's either Dim and Virtuous or Evil and Cunning. Right now — to everyone's confusion — she's both...

Here's the thing: These are not compatible scenarios. Either Sansa planned Littlefinger's late arrival — in which case she's responsible for the carnage and for recovering Winterfell, or she didn't and gets no credit for the victory. She just got lucky. I worry — I really do — that Game of Thrones, by eliding the horrific compromises she'd have had to make offscreen to make this work, is awkwardly trying to make her virtuous and a great planner, a feminist powerhouse who might still be a force for good. The Battle of the Bastards made that structurally impossible. I hope they see that. I hope they don't try to make her both.

http://theweek.com/articles/631406/game-thrones-sansa-problem

This next article does what the above article said, "inexpertly papers over many of its massive missing facts and motivations," ascribing a message about revenge to the show that does not exist. And he fails to note that in the books, Ellaria and Sansa, with their own forms of resistance, conveyed that message so clearly and so well, but the show destroyed their characterization and storylines for Kill All The Weak Men and I Spit On Ramsay's Grave. Look at show Sansa in the finale, she doesn't reflect on her sadistic Ramsay-style revenge kill, that she was so hell bent to do, she risked the lives of family and countless others. She just mutters, Sorry I didn't tell you!, and it's on to the next contrived revenge plot.

http://www.vulture.com/2016/06/sansa-revenge-is-nothing-to-smile-about.html

[Queen of Procrastination]

2 hours ago, TheCasualObserver said:

But that's the thing - if all the emphasis from the writers, actors, production company and the rest of the media was centered on the scope and scale of the battle, it wouldn't bother me, because I can recognize that in the show. When you spend the money, put together a great stunt team, hire a competent director and let them put together an action sequence, the result is some impressive television. But people weren't just focused on the battle or the action.

D&D boasted about the tactics; but the tactics were idiotic.

Everyone cheered when Jon became king; but Jon has been grossly incompetent at everything for two seasons at least.

Everyone cheered when Sansa became an "empowered feminist", but Sansa is neither empowered nor a feminist.

The purpose of Sansa killing Ramsay is to prove that she is strong and capable, and spit in the faces of those who criticized what they did to her last year. The problem here is that they took a book character who's decency is bone deep, and morphed her into the protagonist of I spit on your grave... and got an emmy for it. It's not just poor writing; I find it morally repugnant.

But to make matters worse, "Sansa the badass" isn't even a badass. The need for a battle where the bad guys are winning right until the last minute makes Sansa grossly incompetent, and the reason was to keep the audience in the dark about the vale knights. This was a failure because even positive reviews of the episode admitted that there weren't many surprises here. We are left with a character who decided on a whim not to inform her brother of impending reinforcements, and it was pure, unadulterated luck that those reinforcements arrived in time, not Sansa or her strategic thinking.

I don't understand how GOT can try to claim they have written a character arc I find awful, and fail to actually write that arc in the end, only to get an emmy for it anyway.

Yes, I agree with everything you wrote  and have made some of these points elsewhere. My point was that some reviewers found that there were some flaws, but than handwaved them, because they found that"the Episode was so awesome". It's bad when critics don't see some of the very obvious flaws, but I find it even worse when they see some of the flaws and then ignore them.

I found that pretty much the entire Northern storyarc of the last two seasons was terrible written and did a disservice to the characters in it. 

And yeah there is nothing feminist or empowering about the show. Season 6 was just less obviously sexist than the seasons before, which isn't exactly praiseworthy. 

I stopped taking the Emmy awards seriously when "20 good men" and "bad p*****" were judged Emmy worthy. 

 

[Queen of Procrastination]

2 hours ago, Le Cygne said:

Excellent summation. There's nothing left of the book character, there hasn't been for a long time. I miss book Sansa.

 

 

Same here and I wasn't even a fan of the book character. I didn't hate her, but I didn't like her very much either. However, tastes differ and the great thing of GRRM's books is that they have so many differet characters that we all find someone we like. 

I'm not sure if the showrunners really thought they improved her book character, but if this was the case they achieved the opposite with me. I have started to appreciate book! Sansa more, because of how rerribly she has been changed in the show. 

 

[SeanF]

In one way, the battle of Winterfell in Episode 9 was well done.  It's a good battle sequence, and we get a sense of how a competent medieval commander (in this case Ramsay) could control events, and how the different arms of battle (cavalry, archers, spearmen) worked effectively together.

The problem with it is that it makes Jon and Sansa out to be a pair of muppets, who got very lucky, against the odds, and fighting against a commander who knew what he was doing, when they both had very little idea what they were doing..  Jon had worked out a sensible defensive battle plan, on the basis that his army was outnumbered.  He promptly ignored his own battle plan, and nearly led his forces to disaster.  Sansa, on the other hand, concealed from her commander that several thousand friendly cavalry were in the vicinity, something which he might just have needed to know, so he could factor it into his plans.

[TheCasualObserver]

3 hours ago, SeanF said:

In one way, the battle of Winterfell in Episode 9 was well done.  It's a good battle sequence, and we get a sense of how a competent medieval commander (in this case Ramsay) could control events, and how the different arms of battle (cavalry, archers, spearmen) worked effectively together.

The problem with it is that it makes Jon and Sansa out to be a pair of muppets, who got very lucky, against the odds, and fighting against a commander who knew what he was doing, when they both had very little idea what they were doing..  Jon had worked out a sensible defensive battle plan, on the basis that his army was outnumbered.  He promptly ignored his own battle plan, and nearly led his forces to disaster.  Sansa, on the other hand, concealed from her commander that several thousand friendly cavalry were in the vicinity, something which he might just have needed to know, so he could factor it into his plans.

Let's not get carried away praising how the battle played out. Infantry are supposed to hold the enemy in place whilst cavalry encircle them and hit them in the flanks. Ramsay wastes his cavalry in a frontal charge, then compounds the mistake by having his archers fire into them, an act straight out of Braveheart, not history. He then uses a magical wall of corpses and a phalanx to gradually encircle his enemy, who obligingly do nothing to stop him. I appreciate that the episode depicted different types of soldiers on a battlefield, but the execution still left a lot to be desired. Above all else the battle worked as a visceral piece of television, and I can give them props for that.

People will argue until they are blue in the face about why Sansa didn't tell Jon about the imminent cavalry. Whatever the in universe reason you come up with, the truth will always be that they wanted the Vale Knight's arrival to be a surprise, an utterly futile gesture since there was no other way the battle could end; people assumed that the Vale knights would show up to save the day and watched to see if that would be proven wrong. It wasn't. 

[Le Cygne]

Also lost in all of this was that Littlefinger always planned to do exactly what he did, invade with the Vale troops. He said so in season 5, so it was him driving the action.

[The Bear Who Knocks]

Could have tied all this up in a way less messy way last season but of course that wasn't possible because they wasted S5's budget on a battle that is never bought up again, all for Mr.Snow at the expense of everything else.

[Meera of Tarth]

1 hour ago, The Bear Who Knocks said:

Could have tied all this up in a way less messy way last season but of course that wasn't possible because they wasted S5's budget on a battle that is never bought up again, all for Mr.Snow at the expense of everything else.

Oh yes hardhome.....and because of the reviews now are making s7

Spoiler

all about wights and wws.....

Why don't they put some incest between the ww's too? In theory it's what people like (or they think they like)

NK: Jon, I am your father

Jon: How many fathers do I have?

NK: Don't ask, we were all living a "together" at that time.

NK: Have you met my daughter?

Jon: Who is that?

Spoiler

NK: You and your spouse will like her.

 

[Le Cygne]

Many of the more outrageous parts could be partially or even entirely false.

https://www.reddit.com/r/freefolk/comments/5hi7u0/kit_left_belfast_earlier_today_spotted_with/db2zwj2/

(he's talking about the spoilers)

[Queen of Procrastination]

@The Dragon Demands

No, your memory is not falling apart. It was in the EW interview Sophie Turner gave after the episode aired.

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/05/17/game-thrones-sansa-wedding

Quote

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What was your reaction when you got the scripts and realized what was going to happen this season? 
SOPHIE TURNER: Last season [Thrones director] Alex Graves decided to give me hints. He was saying, “You get a love interest next season.” And I was all, “I actually get a love interest!” So I get the scripts and I was so excited and I was flicking through and then I was like, “Aw, are you kidding me!?” I thought the love interest was going to be like Jaime Lannister or somebody who would take care of me

 

[TepidHands]

Ah, Alex Graves. What a joker.