Okay, NOW Have We Seen The Most Wildly Unrealistic Thing Ever on GoT???

[xjlxking]

17 minutes ago, triton333 said:

Well, they needed more than two more seasons to do all this stuff properly and avoid these glaring plot problems, or at least the full 10 episodes for S7&8. Too much screen time spent on slow-moving, long drawn-out storylines in past seasons, such as Dany faffing about in Meereen, to having to squeeze everything left in in far too few episodes now.

At that rate, Jon Snow would probably be 35+ by the time they finish. Each actor will ask for a huge pay raise and before you know it, the entire shows budget is going to actors

[xjlxking]

4 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

But the wildlings don't have iron. So, as long as the NK didn't get south of of the wall, he has no steel chains.

 

Lmao

dude!

is it not possible that one chain arrived there many years ago? 

Why is the thought of the NK having chains impossible for you to believe but not that fact that he has an entire armor set for all his walkers?

 

[Tagganaro]

9 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

But the wildlings don't have iron. So, as long as the NK didn't get south of of the wall, he has no steel chains.

 

I think I can explain it away as the boat chains from Hardhome.  There were definitely a ton of boats there- can't recall if there were large chains used to dock the ships there but at least it's plausible.  

I can't tell if there was a reason they had the wights use chains or if it was just another stupid oversight- no need for chains if you just have the Night King raise his arms like he did in hardhome and Viserion comes flying out of the water.

[darmody]

1 hour ago, Lord Okra said:

they've conditioned the audience for 7 years to accept that time passes between scenes....sometimes a month or more passes even.....yet here, on the GoT forum.......where the experts reside........they still haven't picked up that this is just the way the show has been for a LONG time because they aren't going to fuddle around on the road all the time.

There are two separate issues, here. Everyone knows Game of Thrones isn't 24, and they know time passes between things we see. If the show has conditioned the audience to accept anything, it's not that basic fact shared by almost every tv show of this type. Rather, we've been conditioned to accept a certain pace for events happening between scenes, between episodes, and between seasons, unless informed otherwise. 

Within those boundaries, there's plenty of room for fudging. But many people, myself, included, don't care for the sudden acceleration of pace in the last couple of seasons. Especially this season. It strains credulity, given what we've been conditioned to accept.

Last year's finale, for instance, featured a roundly mocked instance of apparent space-time jumping when Varys showed up on Dany's ship sailing for Westeros, just a few show minutes after we saw him in Dorne. Since time passes offscreen, we know it's possible the latter scene could've been far enough in the future for him to have made the trip to Dorne and back without us seeing. Or Tyrell or Martell ships met Dany's fleet in the middle of the ocean. Either way, viewers weren't used to such extreme travel in such a short span of show without forewarning. The show's depiction of time sped up considerably all of a sudden, and as such rang false. 

That's issue one: the audience's subjective feel for duration. Beyond the Wall violated my trust on that account, because I have no real feeling for how far the Snowicide Squad marched, how long Gendry ran, how long the gang waited on that rock, etc. Judging by what I saw of the sun, I'd guess it all took place within a day. That's impossible, considering how long it would take Dany to arrive. But I'm jumping ahead to issue two.

Suffice to say concerning issue one, the mere fact that time is passing does not give the show carte blanche to depict any old sequence of events it wants. It has to feel a certain way for the audience, and if you don't warn them that you're messing with their sense of time, they might not follow you. They may rebel. In this episode, it's clear from the director's comments that they deliberately left the timeframe vague so as to fudge the specifics, because they didn't care about it making sense. Lots of viewers noticed. That's a breach of trust, no matter what you think we've been conditioned to expect. 

Issue two, the more important issue, is that the "time passes between scenes" explanation doesn't apply when there's a hard timeframe at play. The Gendry to Eastwatch-ravens to Dragonstone-dragons to frozen lake sequence occurs simultaneously with Jon & Co. being surrounded and the lake slowly refreezing. There's no wiggle room there. You can't time jump events offscreen for one part of the story to match with events in the other part. That may be true of events at Winterfell in this episode, which could be happening anytime within a larger, more forgiving frame. (Sansa's line about it being a few weeks since she heard from Jon is the only hard reference to relative duration we're given.) But events in the Jon-Dany storyline go together. 

We aren't told many things, including exactly how far Gendry has to run, what his average pace on that terrain would be, how fast the ravens can go, how fast Dany can stand to ride on Drogon, how long it should take for the water to freeze, what's up the Night King's sleeve, and so on. But given our best guesses, it was an utterly ridiculous sequence, and time passing offscreen cannot possibly excuse it. 

[Lord Okra]

2 minutes ago, darmody said:

There are two separate issues, here. Everyone knows Game of Thrones isn't 24, and they know time passes between things we see. If the show has conditioned the audience to accept anything, it's not that basic fact shared by almost every tv show of this type. Rather, we've been conditioned to accept a certain pace for events happening between scenes, between episodes, and between seasons, unless informed otherwise. 

Also, we generally accepted events in different locations to be occurring within the same general time frame, unless informed otherwise. For instance, Dany's story in the East didn't take place 25 years after the War of the Five Kings. Within those boundaries, there's plenty of room for fudging. Many people, myself, included, don't care for the sudden acceleration of pace in the last couple of seasons. Especially this season.

Last year's finale featured a roundly mocked instance of apparent space-time jumping when Varys showed up on Dany's ship sailing for Westerod when we just saw him in Dorne. Since time passes offscreen, we know it's possible we could have been far enough in the future for him to have made the trip to Dorne and back without us seeing. Or Tyrell or Martell ships met Dany's fleet in the middle of the ocean. Either way, viewers aren't used to such extreme travel in such a short span of show without being warned the show's depiction of time had sped up considerably. So it rang as false. 

That's issue one: the audience's subjective feel for duration. Beyond the Wall violated my trust on that account, because I have no real feeling for how far the Snowicide Squad marched, how long Gendry's ran, how long the gang waited on that rock, etc. Judging by what I see of the sun, I'd guess it all took place within a day. That's impossible, considering how long it would take Dany to arrive. But I'm jumping ahead to issue two.

Suffice to say concerning issue one, the mere fact that time is passing does not give the show carte blanche to depict any old sequence of events it wants. It has to feel a certain way for the audience, and if you don't warn them that you're messing with their sense of time, they might not follow you. They may rebel. In this episode, it's clear from the director's comments that they deliberately left the timeframe vague so as to fudge the specifics, because they didn't care about it making sense. Lots of viewers noticed. That's a breach of trust, no matter what you think we've been conditioned to expect. 

Issue two, the more important issue, is that the "time passes between scenes" explanation doesn't apply when there's a hard timeframe at play. The Gendry to Eastwatch-ravens to Dragonstone-dragons to frozen lake sequence occurs simultaneously with Jon & Co. being surrounded and the lake slowly refreezing. There's no wiggle room there. You can't time jump events offscreen for one part of the story to match with events in the other part. That may be true of events at Winterfell in this episode, which could be happening anytime within a certain frame. (Sansa's line about it being a few weeks since she heard from Jon is the only hard frame of reference we're given.) But events in the Jon-Dany storyline go together. 

We aren't told many things, including exactly how far Gendry has to run, what his average pace on that terrain would be, how fast the ravens can go, how fast Dany can stand to ride on Drogon, how long it should take for the water to freeze, what's up the Night King's sleeve, and so on. But given our best guesses, it was an utterly ridiculous sequence, and time passing offscreen cannot possibly excuse it. 

Sure it can excuse it.

Actually, the lake freezing thick enough for the AoD to walk back out on it would imply that significant time has passed.  I mean, in the real world it takes days in the coldest of weather to create ice that would hold 100's of people out on it safely.  If he ice could form at all...cause any wind will keep the ice from forming pretty much in reality.

Thankfully, this is tv though.....

There was no such hard time frame mentioned in the show at all.   As far as we know they showed them sleep one night out of 5 that they were actually there.  Gendry can get back 3 times faster than the group got to where they are now.  One man running is 3 times faster than 1 man walking while pulling a 200lb sled.....easy.  Since they only showed them walking for one day.........he can make it back in less than a day.....since it was just half the day or so......he can make it back in a few hours......see how that works?

But there is no hard time line in the show, that doesn't exist.  An unknown (to the viewer) period of time has passed.  How much time....enough for Gendry to run back and the ravens to go south/come north......

 

[darmody]

1 minute ago, Lord Okra said:

Sure it can excuse it.

Actually, the lake freezing thick enough for the AoD to walk back out on it would imply that significant time has passed.  I mean, in the real world it takes days in the coldest of weather to create ice that would hold 100's of people out on it safely.  If he ice could form at all...cause any wind will keep the ice from forming pretty much in reality.

Thankfully, this is tv though.....

 

That's a poor excuse, because it causes you to bump into other time problems:

1). How long do we expect Jon & Co. to be able to survive out on that little rock in the freezing cold with no shelter and no fire besides Beric's sword. Not only survive, actually, but be healthy enough to fight zombies at the end of it. 

2). How long is it plausible for the Night King to just sit there? And if he's waiting for the dragons, as I think he might have been, that leads to all other sorts of storytelling problems. 

 

[John Meta]

On 8/20/2017 at 10:30 PM, Cron said:

You think you've seen teleporting?  

You think you've seen jetpacking?

Don't make me laugh.

706 just upped the ante to a whole new level, never even imagined before, I think.

While Jon & Company are confronting the Army of the Dead, Gendry is sent to run back to Eastwatch, where a raven is sent to Dany on Dragonstone, then Dany hops on a dragon, and flies all the way back and makes it in time to save the expedition to capture a wight???

Face it, friends.  Reasonable continuity in terms of travel through time and space is out the window.

Completely out the window.

If you think that is bad, you should watch the Lord of the Rings. Frodo Baggins makes it from the Shire all the way to Mount Doom in about 5 hours. I know because I looked at the clock when he was leaving the Shire and it was 5pm. When he arrived at Mount Doom two movies later, I looked at it was 10pm. It was then I knew that all timing continuity in movies was out the window.

[darmody]

7 minutes ago, Lord Okra said:

There was no such hard time frame mentioned in the show at all.   As far as we know they showed them sleep one night out of 5 that they were actually there.  Gendry can get back 3 times faster than the group got to where they are now.  One man running is 3 times faster than 1 man walking while pulling a 200lb sled.....easy.  Since they only showed them walking for one day.........he can make it back in less than a day.....since it was just half the day or so......he can make it back in a few hours......see how that works?

But there is no hard time line in the show, that doesn't exist.  An unknown (to the viewer) period of time has passed.  How much time....enough for Gendry to run back and the ravens to go south/come north......

 

It's not mentioned explicitly, but it's obvious that the two sequences--Jon on the rock on the one hand and Gendry-ravens-dragons on the other--occur simultaneously. They have to. There's no other way. 

However long it takes Gendry, that must fit with how long Jon is on the rock. That's the hard time frame to which I refer. We don't know how long it is, exactly. We can make educated guesses, and all the good ones demonstrate it's ridiculous. 

In any case, the show obviously didn't care whether it made sense. They employed a vague sense of time passing to distract the audience from their storytelling incompetence. 

[sweetsunray]

As for Okra's repititive complaint about people who are critical.

Yes, I am a very critical viewer. I barely watch series, and loads of 90s fantasy was straight up repetitive trope crap where the rules changed and altered with the author's need. I like movies and series that are smart and intelligent viewing and require me to ponder and pay attention. I dislike movies and series where I know who's the murderer or what's gonna happen after 15 mins. And it's not enjoyable to those watching with me either, 'cause I end up predicting the clue or end. I can't shut of my brain and don't want to shut of my brain for mindless entertainment.

I was utterly done with fantasy by 2000, and for inexplicable reason had skipped George's series and didn't know about it. So, around S3 I finally decide to watch GOT, because it was portrayed as a realistic and mature approach of fantasy. And it was a smart show, not so predictable, but still seeding things in a clever logical way. The first three seasons convinced me to read a fantasy series again (other than rereading Tolkien or Tad Williams), but by S5 it started to become clear that they started to throw out and ignore parts of the world building that made it gritty and not-so-easy in the first place for the characters within the story, and thereby destroying that realistic and mature approach. That's why for me the show jumped the shark for me in S5 when they had Brienne declare "let's just go around Moat Cailin." D&D were cheating.

And that's qutie hypocritical, because D&D themselves didn't want all the Stark children to be wargs, etc... they removed the telepathy "magic" on purpose of the story by their own words to make it "more realistic" and less a magical story. But when it comes to the physical world setting they cheat like there's no tomorrow. I would actually mind it much less if there was magic used to make a trip take shorter time than realistically possible, than I have with trying to pretend that the timeline of last episode is realistic but wave at it to fuzz it. 

No you can't go around Moat Cailin, and military characters conveniently don't forget to scout, and ravens don't fly 200 mph, the WW and wights don't have chains just because D&D can't come up with better stuff and refuse to expand the writing team when clearly they're totally tired of the series. The show now is everything what it was not initially or what drew me in. And yes I hate watch it.

[Lord Okra]

7 minutes ago, darmody said:

That's a poor excuse, because it causes you to bump into other time problems:

1). How long do we expect Jon & Co. to be able to survive out on that little rock in the freezing cold with no shelter and no fire besides Beric's sword. Not only survive, actually, but be healthy enough to fight zombies at the end of it. 

2). How long is it plausible for the Night King to just sit there? And if he's waiting for the dragons, as I think he might have been, that leads to all other sorts of storytelling problems. 

 

1) up to a week, the injured one already died so I'm guessing that took a full day (probably longer really).  They are wearing clothing that allows them to be North of the Wall.  Could they stay there for weeks?  No.  They even discuss this.....we won't be able to survive here much longer.....that Jon/Jorah convo implies time has passed as well....does it not?  He wouldn't say we can't survive here much longer without food/shelter on the first day would he?  To me, that's implausible.

2) Until he is ready.  He could just be waiting for them to die.  He could be waiting for the ice to be refrozen.  Is he in a rush or something?  He's going to miss winter?  Maybe the answer is the simplest one and the one implied by the scene itself.....he was waiting for the lake to freeze back over.

 

[Lord Okra]

3 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

As for Okra's repititive complaint about people who are critical.

Yes, I am a very critical viewer. I barely watch series, and loads of 90s fantasy was straight up repetitive trope crap where the rules changed and altered with the author's need. I like movies and series that are smart and intelligent viewing and require me to ponder and pay attention. I dislike movies and series where I know who's the murderer or what's gonna happen after 15 mins. And it's not enjoyable to those watching with me either, 'cause I end up predicting the clue or end. I can't shut of my brain and don't want to shut of my brain for mindless entertainment.

I was utterly done with fantasy by 2000, and for inexplicable reason had skipped George's series and didn't know about it. So, around S3 I finally decide to watch GOT, because it was portrayed as a realistic and mature approach of fantasy. And it was a smart show, not so predictable, but still seeding things in a clever logical way. The first three seasons convinced me to read a fantasy series again (other than rereading Tolkien or Tad Williams), but by S5 it started to become clear that they started to throw out and ignore parts of the world building that made it gritty and not-so-easy in the first place for the characters within the story, and thereby destroying that realistic and mature approach. That's why for me the show jumped the shark for me in S5 when they had Brienne declare "let's just go around Moat Cailin." D&D were cheating.

And that's qutie hypocritical, because D&D themselves didn't want all the Stark children to be wargs, etc... they removed the telepathy "magic" on purpose of the story by their own words to make it "more realistic" and less a magical story. But when it comes to the physical world setting they cheat like there's no tomorrow. I would actually mind it much less if there was magic used to make a trip take shorter time than realistically possible, than I have with trying to pretend that the timeline of last episode is realistic but wave at it to fuzz it. 

No you can't go around Moat Cailin, and military characters conveniently don't forget to scout, and ravens don't fly 200 mph, the WW and wights don't have chains just because D&D can't come up with better stuff and refuse to expand the writing team when clearly they're totally tired of the series. The show now is everything what it was not initially or what drew me in. And yes I hate watch it.

You quit fantasy and don't really watch the show but you type up 500 word posts about a fantasy based tv show you barely watch?

Tell me, I'm just curious.  Is there a tv show or a genre of tv shows you do enjoy still?  You know, something you are actually watching multiple times when an episode airs?

If so, shouldn't you be there?

I'm glad that D&D cut a ton of the magic and fantasy stuff.  Truly.  And I'm glad they left some of it in the series.

This stuff is entertainment.  If you aren't entertained then you are doing it wrong (cause you shouldn't be watching anymore by now)  If you are entertained then why sweat the little stuff?

 

[sweetsunray]

33 minutes ago, xjlxking said:

Lmao

dude!

is it not possible that one chain arrived there many years ago? 

Why is the thought of the NK having chains impossible for you to believe but not that fact that he has an entire armor set for all his walkers?

 

I'm not a dude.

The armor of the walkers is made of ice. It's part of their package.

The chains are human made and we know it weren't wildlings who made them. And it's D&Ds responsibility not to flip me out of a scene. I was looking forward to the wighting of the dragon scene, because for the show I'm TeamWW, and the chains ruined it for me. The writers should have shown us the WW getting the chains where they got them from, not just make them up when D&D required them to have chains. It would have been a far more intruiging thing to see than the epi 1 shot of an army of wights with giants shuffling along, when they're not even using those giants later on.

There continuity is shit.

[Lurid Jester]

8 hours ago, Being Daenerys Targaryen said:

Haha! That's why we are here... Help each other seeing things we couldn't or didn't see... Just like Bran and the ravens... Now he's flying...

You were totally right. I totally missed the part with the ravens leaving Winterfell and flying to the Wall. I must have been looking away, or something.  I thought for sure Bran was just warging ravens already north of the wall.  

[Lord Okra]

18 minutes ago, darmody said:

It's not mentioned explicitly, but it's obvious that the two sequences--Jon on the rock on the one hand and Gendry-ravens-dragons on the other--occur simultaneously. They have to. There's no other way. 

However long it takes Gendry, that must fit with how long Jon is on the rock. That's the hard time frame to which I refer. We don't know how long it is, exactly. We can make educated guesses, and all the good ones demonstrate it's ridiculous. 

In any case, the show obviously didn't care whether it made sense. They employed a vague sense of time passing to distract the audience from their storytelling incompetence. 

It made perfect senses and your own post shows that with these statements.

1.  It's not mentioned explicetly (how long they are on the rock.....could have been 32 hours to several days from what they show)

2.  We don't know how long it is (agreed, you destroy your entire second paragraph position inside the said paragraph)

3.  They employed a vague sense of time passing (yes, yes they did.....they gave a sense that time had passed)

 

[xjlxking]

Just now, sweetsunray said:

I'm not a dude.

The armor of the walkers is made of ice. It's part of their package.

The chains are human made and we know it weren't wildlings who made them. And it's D&Ds responsibility not to flip me out of a scene. I was looking forward to the wighting of the dragon scene, because for the show I'm TeamWW, and the chains ruined it for me. The writers should have shown us the WW getting the chains where they got them from, not just make them up when D&D required them to have chains. It would have been a far more intruiging thing to see than the epi 1 shot of an army of wights with giants shuffling along, when they're not even using those giants later on.

There continuity is shit.

Armor of the walkers is not made of ice. I'm not including the books here as the books described the armor differently. 

I'm just surprised that you find the use of chain so bad;  I totally can agree on the pacing, passage of time, but the access of chain is  not of any significance. Why is hard hard to believe that in the spam of 12,000 years, the white walkers did not find one ship with chains? Perhaps this is chain that they had from their first long night. 

I guess it would put you mind to rest if they showed next episode the walkers having a fortress of solitude in the land of always winter 

[Yoren Luck]

1 hour ago, xjlxking said:

At that rate, Jon Snow would probably be 35+ by the time they finish. Each actor will ask for a huge pay raise and before you know it, the entire shows budget is going to actors

unlike other shows where actors aren't paid?

[Lord Okra]

7 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

I'm not a dude.

The armor of the walkers is made of ice. It's part of their package.

The chains are human made and we know it weren't wildlings who made them. And it's D&Ds responsibility not to flip me out of a scene. I was looking forward to the wighting of the dragon scene, because for the show I'm TeamWW, and the chains ruined it for me. The writers should have shown us the WW getting the chains where they got them from, not just make them up when D&D required them to have chains. It would have been a far more intruiging thing to see than the epi 1 shot of an army of wights with giants shuffling along, when they're not even using those giants later on.

There continuity is shit.

So you want a chain background scene.

Sounds cool.  Can you play it out for me? 

We show the WW digging through snow where they discover some chains?

Who gives a frick about where the chains came from.....seriously.

 

 

[xjlxking]

Just now, Yoren Luck said:

unlike other shows where actors aren't paid?

huh?

I'm saying actors will demand a higher pay. Look at Friends, 80% of their reported budget was used for just the actors. 

[sweetsunray]

5 minutes ago, Lord Okra said:

You quit fantasy and don't really watch the show but you type up 500 word posts about a fantasy based tv show you barely watch?

Tell me, I'm just curious.  Is there a tv show or a genre of tv shows you do enjoy still?  You know, something you are actually watching multiple times when an episode airs?

If so, shouldn't you be there?

I'm glad that D&D cut a ton of the magic and fantasy stuff.  Truly.  And I'm glad they left some of it in the series.

This stuff is entertainment.  If you aren't entertained then you are doing it wrong (cause you shouldn't be watching anymore by now)  If you are entertained then why sweat the little stuff?

 

Where did I say I don't really watch this show? I watch the show.

I said I barely watch shows and movies that are predictable in general. I also explained I quit fantasy in general 17 years ago, except rereading the good stuff I already had. I explained I began to watch the show when S3 was being shown (I caught up by binge watching self-bought DVDs), exactly because I was informed it was a realistic form of fantasy.

So, you completely failed to have read or understand my pervious post.

In other words: I have watched and rewatched this show up until S4 several times, advized others to watch it, picked up the books, but S5 and S6 were so horrible I only watched it once. And I have watched every episode of S7. My point was that initially the show was up to my personal standards, but hasn't been anymore since S5.

I'm not glad that D&D cut a ton of magic claiming to want to be realistic to then replace it with absolute nonsense, because now they're stuck with logistical issues because of it. And how do they solve it: by completely ignoring it and fudging the realism they claim to want to hold on to.

I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm an adult and free person, not a child with you as my father censuring what to watch or not. And I'm enjoying myself mightily on this forum.

[Yoren Luck]

6 minutes ago, Lord Okra said:

It made perfect senses and your own post shows that with these statements.

1.  It's not mentioned explicetly (how long they are on the rock.....could have been 32 hours to several days from what they show)

2.  We don't know how long it is (agreed, you destroy your entire second paragraph position inside the said paragraph)

3.  They employed a vague sense of time passing (yes, yes they did.....they gave a sense that time had passed)

 

all of your defenses for this episode seem to assume that this show had to be written and filmed exactly the way it was.  I think most people are saying that these plot points could have been better done, or avoided entirely through easy rewrites rather than having to make your audience suspend disbelief.

 

I swear, the more this show goes off the rails, the more triggered its defenders are getting.  People can enjoy the show while still criticizing its logical inconsistencies, poor dialogue, and blatant plot holes.  You don't need to make it your life's work to defend this garbage