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Excessive Fan Service, Part II


Pontius Pilate

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8 hours ago, Armand Gargalen said:

After they run out of source material, they had many different ways to continue the story. It is easy to see that they made a conscious decision to pay lip service to the fandom, trying to make as much money out of the show as possible, and with little regard to artistic quality. 

That's a great point and I do agree with you. If they were true artists who cared about the integrity of the story we would definitely have something better than what we currently have.

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The show has diverge from the text.  I don't like that but that is the choices that the show producers made.  However, I still believe that both text and show will arrive at the same ending:  Daenerys Targaryen on the Iron Throne and the founding of the new Targaryen Dynasty.  She is the kind of strong leader that the land needs to get it through the long night. 

The show does exhibit many instances of a lack of continuity but most other shows have done that.  Even big movie franchises, like Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter novels and its adaptations have been guilty of this.  There is nothing to worry about as long as these lapses do not affect the final ending. 

I guess we will know more tonight as we get closer to that ending with each passing episode. 

 

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On 17/08/2017 at 7:17 PM, Lord Okra said:

I understand people aren't happy with certain parts not moving (WW walking in circles) but we simply do not know how GRRM is going to explain this stuff himself (or if he ever will do so).

Maybe the reason he can't get the next two books out is because he, himself, is at a loss on how to bring all the pieces together for the big finish without running into the same issues the show is running into (storylines get stuck in place while the other pieces need further development).

Perhaps he's simply stuck when it comes to figuring out how this happens so he decided to work on other stuff until some solution comes to him.  I suspect this has a lot to do with why he can't finish the last two books.

D&D can't simply wait until a solution presents itself to how this happens or that happens.  Why are the WW not moving towards the wall all season?  What are they doing up there that's taking so long?  D&D decide not to even address it probably because GRRM hasn't even figured that out himself yet really and it doesn't really matter in the tv show.

They are using the cards they were dealt.  The blame falls squarely on GRRM because when this series started 8 years ago D&D surely expected to have at least a rough draft (with the editors) of the final books prior to this year.

And the show is still hitting on all cylinders.  Episode 4 was as good as any episode so far.  The intrigue and drama is still kicking along making for some great tv.

The characters are developed.  We don't need much more of that.  All we need are the resolutions so we can wrap it all up.

No, the blame falls equally on D&D and the show writers as they can't write for s***. They write awful dialogue and awful plot lines full of gaping holes and inconsistencies that make zero sense. Even when they had the books to go off, they were still creating their own crap instead of using what was in the books which was better than they could ever hope to come up with. They got good reception from the invented scenes they put in Season 1 (which is the only season that was overall done right in my opinion) and so got carried away and started ramming more and more of their fan fiction down our throats. GRRM takes as long as he takes, he shouldn't have to rush just because of the TV show. His story will be still be told the way he wants it to be told and it will take as long as it takes. If the showrunners want to press on and write their own story then they need to take responsibility for the quality of it. Take Jaime for example, the showrunners took their own decision to significantly alter his arc as written in the books - the superior arc from the books is something they could have easily adapted exactly as it was written. But they chose to go a different way. The shows full of these terrible decisions they chose to make 

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On 8/17/2017 at 1:47 PM, Lord Okra said:

The show is firing on all cylinders right now anyway.  Anybody complaining about the story telling on this show isn't really watching it imo.

The story telling is outstanding in show and has been the entire time.

I completely agree.

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On 8/16/2017 at 5:32 PM, Satoshi Takeda said:

 

  1. Brienne vs. Arya.  This was an awful scene that violated not only the logic within the show's plot but common sense in general.  Let me take you back to the previous seasons and remind you of the Waif and her superiority over Arya.  Arya had no chance against the Waif.  Are we to believe that one of the best warriors in Westeros can't fight as good as the Waif!  So now Brienne is no longer as good a fighter as the Waif!  That illogical scene was put there to bring delight to Arya's fans and it did just that, but it made for a very poor story.  Worse than last season when Arya got stabbed and miraculously survived.  She survived and ran a marathon through an obstacle course!
  2. Dany vs. Jon.  How stupid is it to sail all the way to Dragonstone and expect a total stranger to buy your story that the dead are coming?  Very stupid.  Any person with a little bit of sense would have brought more than words.  Dany is right up there with Jon.  A little cave painting that may have been the doodlings of bored primitive people on a rainy day was enough to convince a very rational person.  It doesn't make sense.  For that matter, a logical man like Tyrion gives a silly reason for believing Jon.  Too much fan service again to make Jon look good.
  3. Sansa is a leader now!  Common HBO.  There is nothing in Sansa's past to prepare her for leadershipNothing.  Too much fan service just to appease those who were complaining when Sansa got raped two seasons ago. 
  4. HBO is too scared of complexity.  Which is the reason why they have dumbed down the story.  That is a shame.  Westworld had a complex plot that people did not understand until the end.  Yet, people still watched and enjoyed.  HBO, please do not shy away from complexity.  It's ok for the viewer to get confused once in a while. i
  5. Tyrion hatched a plan to fish for wights!  And he did this to convince his sister to do, what exactly?  Anybody who knows Cersei, the woman who blew up a sept full of people, would think this plan is crazy.  What's even crazier are the fools who bought into that plan.  What's the dwarf trying to do, kill everybody!  And this is the smartest guy on the show!
  6. Bronn and Jaime makes it back to King's Landing in one piece.  That plain was covered with Dothraki riders.  Those two had less chance of getting away than a fat chicken in a village of starving people.  At least one of those men should have died and one badly burned.

I don't know if I have all of these answered in my head, but there are at least a few that I do.

1. We have no idea who "The Waif" actually is. She has the face of a young girl, but that may not even be her face. And Arya trained against her while blind, eventually being able to best her without eyes. I don't know in a real battle if Arya could beat Brienne, but I think that scene was more to show how good Arya has become at fighting using all the lessons she's learned from different people (Syrio, the Hound, the Waif) and I enjoyed it, anyway.

2. Dany trusts Tyrion, and Tyrion trusts Jon. He spent time with him at The Wall, he knows he's not crazy or a liar. Going off Tyrion's knowledge of Jon as a reasonable and good person, I can see why Dany didn't thoroughly trust him until he showed her the drawings in the caves, and then completely believed him.

3. Sansa was raised to become the lady of a great house. I'm not sure how anyone would see that as "nothing to prepare her for leadership."

4. HBO doesn't have the same time for complexity that the book does. It has to work for TV and be compressed into one-hour episodes.

5. They were trying to figure out a way to convince Cersei, who can mobilize armies and convince the rest of Westerors, that the threat from the WW is real. It's not an easy thing to do, but Jon has seen a wight trapped before. Not the smartest plan, but it was the only one anyone came up with at the time.

6. Ugh. Yeah. I was sure at least Jaime would be taken prisoner as leverage against Cersei. I didn't like the way that went, but it also didn't bother me so much. Someone had to go back and tell Cersei she's done for, and Jaime has more parts to play in the war between Dany and Cersei, IMO.

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On 8/16/2017 at 10:32 PM, Satoshi Takeda said:

 

  1. HBO is too scared of complexity.  Which is the reason why they have dumbed down the story.  That is a shame.  Westworld had a complex plot that people did not understand until the end.  Yet, people still watched and enjoyed.  HBO, please do not shy away from complexity.  It's ok for the viewer to get confused once in a while. 

     

I take serious issue with that, and i reference The Wire, The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, Six Feet Under, Deadwood, Generation Kill and many others to refute it. This isn't HBO's fault in the slightest, in fact, HBO wanted the show to run several more seasons, even though the motives may be money-related it still gave D&D a chance to form a fully fleshed out and complex story, they decided not to, not HBO.

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1 hour ago, Starkistbeforethedawn said:

I take serious issue with that, and i reference The Wire, The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, Six Feet Under, Deadwood, Generation Kill and many others to refute it. This isn't HBO's fault in the slightest, in fact, HBO wanted the show to run several more seasons, even though the motives may be money-related it still gave D&D a chance to form a fully fleshed out and complex story, they decided not to, not HBO.

I agree with this. The fault for the major storytelling flaws of the tv series lie with D&D, not HBO. 

Part of the fault also lies with GRRM for not giving them a clearer vision of where the story and individual main characters are headed.

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