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[SPOILERS thru S7] Where did the show go wrong?


Katerine459

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 2/26/2018 at 4:38 AM, Beardy the Wildling said:

Don't criticise the wight polar bear, D&D really, really wanted it, even though everyone in the CG department thought it was stupid!

They really wanted that polar bear.  They prioritized that instead of giving us Ghost.  I bet more people would rather have Jon, Sansa, Arya and Bran interacting with Ghost especially since he is the only direwolf at Winterfell.  At least we saw Nymeria.  That is at least something.  Personally, I would love a direwolf reunion between Ghost and Nymeria.  When was the last time they saw each other.

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35 minutes ago, goldenmaps said:

They really wanted that polar bear.  They prioritized that instead of giving us Ghost.  I bet more people would rather have Jon, Sansa, Arya and Bran interacting with Ghost especially since he is the only direwolf at Winterfell.  At least we saw Nymeria.  That is at least something.  Personally, I would love a direwolf reunion between Ghost and Nymeria.  When was the last time they saw each other.

Ghost has been AWOL for two seasons now.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I think the show went wrong by combing too many plots and/or characters. I think they knew early on they were only doing 7-8 seasons, so they had to cram so much and cut other things. ..

Plus, it is just plain difficult to put what is mostly internal monologue (POV characters) on screen.

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On 11/5/2017 at 3:33 AM, Faera said:

On reflection, I think one of the biggest mistakes the show made was not taking a proper hiatus at any point during its production. I think after S4 they would have benefitted from taking a year out to really think how they were going to deal with the fact they were going to catch up and surpass the books before GRRM could finish. They still would have had to proceed with the story without The Winds of Winter but they would have had time to think about how they were doing to do it. S5 and 6 were sorts of based on plot points from A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons, both of which they could have told simultaneously, as both books are taking place roughly around the same time.

A lot of the problems with the flaws in logic probably could have been ironed out had they had more time to really think through things.

Actually, the one thing I really blame GRRM for is that he didn't tell D&D about where he intended for the characters to go as soon as he agreed to let them go the adaptation. I feel that if D&D knew where the story was supposed to be heading from the beginning then they would have had a better shot at writing a more consistent adaptation.

Where I feel D&D failed is that they decided to throw out large parts of AFFC and ADWD. I think they fell into that group of people who felt these two books were a departure from the main storyline.

I think GRRM had faith the D&D would have faith in the story and use more of what was actually written. And I think D&D didn't have faith that those two books would be relevant and threw out much of those two books. This is where GRRM telling them where the story was meant to end from the beginning would have helped immensely. imo

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On 26.2.2018. at 1:38 PM, Beardy the Wildling said:

Don't criticise the wight polar bear, D&D really, really wanted it, even though everyone in the CG department thought it was stupid!

Truth to be told, even the books mentions a wight bear.

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I think season 5 should have had a couple characters sit out:  Brienne, Podrick, Sansa, maybe Bran, and Sam/ Gilly should have been gone until season six after like episode three of season five.  Is it practical to keep starring actors on standby and shelve them for a season?  Not really but I would have taken quality iron islands and queenmaker plots if the trade off was we didn’t see Brienne and Podrick wandering around and Sansa’s character being de-developed.  

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 2/13/2018 at 8:24 PM, dbunting said:

First off if you don't think book readers went into this with high expectations and had visions in their heads of what Jon should act and look like, and how Jaime should act then you are not being realistic. In the book forums you can see volumes of discussions about Sansa, from the same source material, and get 50 different views on how she should be or act in the next book.That is what I am referring to when I say people had this built up in their heads of what they want to see.

In order for there to be a debate as you put it, then someone has to be on each side. Otherwise it's just people spouting off in agreement correct? So as a fan of the show, in a show thread, you would think I could come here and express a view, same as you.

As to your comment that all I care about are numbers, I showed one single number as evidence to support my comments that the show hasn't "gone wrong" or jumped the shark so to speak. The fact that viewership is still climbing supports an arguement that the show is on the right path, for what it is. It isn't the books, never was supposed to be and never will be. They are simply source material for an adaptation.

My apologies for the late reply. Just came back, and saw that this thread was revived at some point during my absence. A lot of interesting stuff got said, but I particularly wanted to respond to this one.

You're correct that 50 different book readers will come up with 50 different interpretations of, say, Sansa's character and what we expect to see of her in the next book. However, that's not the same thing as implying that there is no such thing as, "in-character" or "out-of-character" for Sansa.

There are many, many things that fall under the umbrella of "in-universe logic," and all of them are important. And none of them are being paid any attention at all, by the show writers, unless they fall under the umbrella of "visual effects." This is a problem.

Some of these things are actual in-universe facts, that are being utterly ignored by the writers. The oft-mentioned example of the impossible distances covered in 7.6. Plus the ridiculously short time it took Sam to travel from Oldtown to Winterfell, in a horse-drawn buggy with a woman and an infant, in winter.

And some of them are a bit more ambiguous, but are still important. Being in character. I mentioned this in my original post, but I'll rephrase here: as a writer or as a reader/viewer, you should always be able to think of any given character as an autonomous person. Autonomous people decide for themselves what they are going to do, and how they are going to act. That means whatever they do, however they react to whatever situation they're faced with, has to be consistent with their established way of thinking and their established motivations. When they don't do that, we're left wondering who these people are. And then it's impossible to care. And when it's impossible to care, then there's no reason to watch the show.

Here are some things, off the top of my head, that are established, that the show writers decided to ignore in favor of plot (or, as the case may be, in favor of just maneuvering them into situations where the actors might show an expression that the showrunners enjoy seeing):

  • Tyrion is smart and cunning. He also knows Cersei. He knows, better than anybody, that Cersei always looks at anything in terms of whether she could benefit by using it against her enemies.
  • Tyrion and Cersei do not trust each other. At all. They have a LOOOONG history of not trusting each other.
  • Arya is a human being, not a... pod person.
  • The Faceless Men are a death cult, and they have secrets they'd be interested in keeping secret.
  • Speaking of Arya and the Faceless Men... stab wounds to the gut take time to recover from, in this universe.
  • Littlefinger is a cunning man, who is primarily motivated by three things: survival, lust for Catelyn/Sansa, and power/wealth. Everything he does is to further one or more of these things. He'd want Sansa to like him. And, as others mentioned, if he declares for the North, he'd want the North to be as strong as possible.
  • After Sansa fled KL, Cersei wanted Sansa found, because she believed Sansa conspired to kill Joffrey. Anybody connected with Sansa would be under high suspicion. If Littlefinger had given Sansa to the Boltons, this would connect Littlefinger to Sansa. If Cersei had simply sent a raven to Winterfell to demand Sansa from the Boltons (who were in Winterfell because the Lannisters put them there), there would be a high risk that the Boltons would simply... comply. Then Cersei might have learned about Littlefinger's involvement with the Purple Wedding. LF would not have wanted that to happen. Not to mention, Sansa would end up right back in KL where she started, which would render the entire Purple Wedding pointless, from LF's POV. This isn't a complaint about the show being different from the books. This is a complaint that Littlefinger's actions made no sense, given his motivations.
  • Jon is someone who cares very, very deeply about his vows.
  • As others mentioned, Jon was at Hardhome, and saw what happened there, and as the foremost expert on White Walkers, he'd know that trying to abduct a wight would be suicide.

These are just the examples I can think up at midnight on a work night. :) But it really all boils down to this: the writers don't think of the characters as autonomous people, so much as pawns to push around a board. The result of this is that, even the bulk of viewers who don't think about these things and primarily enjoy the spectacle, find that they don't care about the characters or the world, nearly as much as they did in S1. This is because, whether they're aware of it or not, their suspension of disbelief is constantly being broken. And while there are many subjective standards for what makes writing "good" vs. "bad," this isn't one of them. This is a serious (not tongue-in-cheek) fantasy show. Constantly breaking suspension of disbelief in a serious fantasy show is something that any good writer would strive to avoid. But the showrunners do not care. That's a problem.

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7 hours ago, Katerine459 said:

My apologies for the late reply. Just came back, and saw that this thread was revived at some point during my absence. A lot of interesting stuff got said, but I particularly wanted to respond to this one.

You're correct that 50 different book readers will come up with 50 different interpretations of, say, Sansa's character and what we expect to see of her in the next book. However, that's not the same thing as implying that there is no such thing as, "in-character" or "out-of-character" for Sansa.

There are many, many things that fall under the umbrella of "in-universe logic," and all of them are important. And none of them are being paid any attention at all, by the show writers, unless they fall under the umbrella of "visual effects." This is a problem.

Some of these things are actual in-universe facts, that are being utterly ignored by the writers. The oft-mentioned example of the impossible distances covered in 7.6. Plus the ridiculously short time it took Sam to travel from Oldtown to Winterfell, in a horse-drawn buggy with a woman and an infant, in winter.

And some of them are a bit more ambiguous, but are still important. Being in character. I mentioned this in my original post, but I'll rephrase here: as a writer or as a reader/viewer, you should always be able to think of any given character as an autonomous person. Autonomous people decide for themselves what they are going to do, and how they are going to act. That means whatever they do, however they react to whatever situation they're faced with, has to be consistent with their established way of thinking and their established motivations. When they don't do that, we're left wondering who these people are. And then it's impossible to care. And when it's impossible to care, then there's no reason to watch the show.

Here are some things, off the top of my head, that are established, that the show writers decided to ignore in favor of plot (or, as the case may be, in favor of just maneuvering them into situations where the actors might show an expression that the showrunners enjoy seeing):

  • Tyrion is smart and cunning. He also knows Cersei. He knows, better than anybody, that Cersei always looks at anything in terms of whether she could benefit by using it against her enemies.
  • Tyrion and Cersei do not trust each other. At all. They have a LOOOONG history of not trusting each other.
  • Arya is a human being, not a... pod person.
  • The Faceless Men are a death cult, and they have secrets they'd be interested in keeping secret.
  • Speaking of Arya and the Faceless Men... stab wounds to the gut take time to recover from, in this universe.
  • Littlefinger is a cunning man, who is primarily motivated by three things: survival, lust for Catelyn/Sansa, and power/wealth. Everything he does is to further one or more of these things. He'd want Sansa to like him. And, as others mentioned, if he declares for the North, he'd want the North to be as strong as possible.
  • After Sansa fled KL, Cersei wanted Sansa found, because she believed Sansa conspired to kill Joffrey. Anybody connected with Sansa would be under high suspicion. If Littlefinger had given Sansa to the Boltons, this would connect Littlefinger to Sansa. If Cersei had simply sent a raven to Winterfell to demand Sansa from the Boltons (who were in Winterfell because the Lannisters put them there), there would be a high risk that the Boltons would simply... comply. Then Cersei might have learned about Littlefinger's involvement with the Purple Wedding. LF would not have wanted that to happen. Not to mention, Sansa would end up right back in KL where she started, which would render the entire Purple Wedding pointless, from LF's POV. This isn't a complaint about the show being different from the books. This is a complaint that Littlefinger's actions made no sense, given his motivations.
  • Jon is someone who cares very, very deeply about his vows.
  • As others mentioned, Jon was at Hardhome, and saw what happened there, and as the foremost expert on White Walkers, he'd know that trying to abduct a wight would be suicide.

These are just the examples I can think up at midnight on a work night. :) But it really all boils down to this: the writers don't think of the characters as autonomous people, so much as pawns to push around a board. The result of this is that, even the bulk of viewers who don't think about these things and primarily enjoy the spectacle, find that they don't care about the characters or the world, nearly as much as they did in S1. This is because, whether they're aware of it or not, their suspension of disbelief is constantly being broken. And while there are many subjective standards for what makes writing "good" vs. "bad," this isn't one of them. This is a serious (not tongue-in-cheek) fantasy show. Constantly breaking suspension of disbelief in a serious fantasy show is something that any good writer would strive to avoid. But the showrunners do not care. That's a problem.

I thought breaking the suspension of disbelief was the whole point of ASOIAF, with Martin deconstructing everything about a high fantasy series. 

Don’t forget Stannis burning Shireen.

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3 hours ago, Angel Eyes said:

I thought breaking the suspension of disbelief was the whole point of ASOIAF, with Martin deconstructing everything about a high fantasy series. 

Don’t forget Stannis burning Shireen.

That's... not what suspension of disbelief is about. Suspension of disbelief, in fantasy, is about being able to believe, at least during the time that you're engrossed in the world, that this is an actual world with actual people. It's a very different world from ours, but it's an actual world (at least while you're engrossed in it).

GRRM pays meticulous attention to this, making sure that everything follows rules (geographical, historical, political, etc.), and making sure to get inside the heads of all his characters (even the non-POV characters) so they do what they would actually do in a given situation. This is precisely how the series became so loved. Lots of fantasy series have dragons and something like White Walkers. ASOIAF is in another category because GRRM pays such meticulous attention to internal logic, consistent and complex worldbuilding, character thought and behavior, and a natural progression of events.

You mention deconstructing everything about high fantasy. But he's not deconstructing everything about high fantasy... only the high fantasy tropes that get in the way of suspension of disbelief. Plot armor. Cut and dried good and evil. Wars being started solely by one person's eeevil scheming. Lack of consequences. These are the tropes he gets rid of, and he does it because they interfere with suspension of disbelief, because that's not how humanity (something that's shared between the real world and the world of ASOIAF) operates.

The showrunners, however, not only don't pay attention to this, they don't seem to even understand, or care, about the concept of "internal logic." Witness their mocking viewers for having a problem with the impossible - within the world of ASOIAF - distances covered from north of the Wall to Dragonstone, when people are ok with dragons. People who don't understand the fundamental difference between those two things, have no business taking on a property that's so popular precisely because it was written by somebody who pays meticulous attention to internal logic.

Yeah, Stannis burning Shireen. That's another one. :| Thanks for reminding me.

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17 hours ago, Katerine459 said:

That's... not what suspension of disbelief is about. Suspension of disbelief, in fantasy, is about being able to believe, at least during the time that you're engrossed in the world, that this is an actual world with actual people. It's a very different world from ours, but it's an actual world (at least while you're engrossed in it).

GRRM pays meticulous attention to this, making sure that everything follows rules (geographical, historical, political, etc.), and making sure to get inside the heads of all his characters (even the non-POV characters) so they do what they would actually do in a given situation. This is precisely how the series became so loved. Lots of fantasy series have dragons and something like White Walkers. ASOIAF is in another category because GRRM pays such meticulous attention to internal logic, consistent and complex worldbuilding, character thought and behavior, and a natural progression of events.

You mention deconstructing everything about high fantasy. But he's not deconstructing everything about high fantasy... only the high fantasy tropes that get in the way of suspension of disbelief. Plot armor. Cut and dried good and evil. Wars being started solely by one person's eeevil scheming. Lack of consequences. These are the tropes he gets rid of, and he does it because they interfere with suspension of disbelief, because that's not how humanity (something that's shared between the real world and the world of ASOIAF) operates.

There's plenty famous examples of stories that employ exactly those tropes and still somehow succeed at being "believable in the moment".

Why? Because the things that happen there appear natural to the mind, particularly imagination and false world models.
Lots of people IRL have the sense of having "plot armor". Good vs. evil has a strong presence in our culture for religious reasons if nothing else, and some mastermind being behind all events is consistent with certain religious views and extreme conspiracy theories. Etc. .

 

Quote

The showrunners, however, not only don't pay attention to this, they don't seem to even understand, or care, about the concept of "internal logic." Witness their mocking viewers for having a problem with the impossible - within the world of ASOIAF - distances covered from north of the Wall to Dragonstone, when people are ok with dragons. People who don't understand the fundamental difference between those two things, have no business taking on a property that's so popular precisely because it was written by somebody who pays meticulous attention to internal logic.

 

I haven't followed the most recent interviews, but it's very possible that D&D have said some absentminded bullshite at some point.

However it's also possible they've been misinterpreted and said something more cogent, who knows.

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34 minutes ago, Nowy Tends said:

Yes they did. Have a look to The Dragon Demands videos…

Ah ok, I'll go an catch up then - although he's actually the one I primarily had in mind when talking about "misrepresentation", as he kept mentioning how Benioff told that female interviewer to "watch something else if they didn't like [Sansa rape or some other specific controversy thing]", and then I watched the clip and it turned out to be an even mellower response to a general "so some people have a problem with the violence and perversion right?" question.

Or something like that, not 100% sure about the specific details; although this one's plausible since John Bradley has used the same argument in some panel, and possibly a couple other actors.

Cool name btw lol!

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On ‎08‎/‎11‎/‎2017 at 4:59 PM, Faera said:

Season 6 felt like a bit of a slog for Sandra and Carol, to be honest. Sure, both stories ended with epic battle and blowing up of the sept respectfully that gave us excellent visuals but we went through a lot of pain to get there. Especially with Sandra, I still don't understand why she didn't just tell Kit Harrington about the Vale Army coming when their little brother's life was at sake.

This show reduced everyone in the Great Sept and poor little Rickon to death fodder. That annoyed me.

I get the feeling that both of them events came from GRRM himself.

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GRRM said something in an interview that I found a bit disappointing - calling the political "war of the roses" plot in Westeros something that the characters "are preoccupied with" while "the real issues" i.e. the ice and fire, the Others and Daenerys, "go unnoticed as a result".

Seemed to imply that the pol plots didn't have any major significance in the end, even though I expected them all to pay off somehow (i.e. by different characters still assuming different positions and goals in the finale that's infomed by their previous relations, and various religious beliefs perhaps as well) - but if they're not supposed to, then ehhhh, them all being disposed of by the mad queen who's then gonna be counterproductive when all the ghouls arrive kinda makes sense and something that could happen in the books.

Or GRRM didn't mean it in the way it appeared, in which case of course none of that applies.

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10 hours ago, StepStark said:

I get the feeling that your feeling is 100 percent wrong.

After the tWoW sample chapters I have the feeling the context is completely different and something goes horrible wrong in the Lannister-Tyrell alliance. If this is due to Aegon spies (like Varys) or something else remains to be seen. But Tyrell's host is charging south towards Storm's End. And with the sept destroyed and Tommen dead, he could switch sides.  And then there is the Myrcella travelroute through the Kingswood. and Arianne.

The show isn't even in the same universe at this point. 

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On 4/28/2018 at 7:40 AM, Pink Fat Rast said:

GRRM said something in an interview that I found a bit disappointing - calling the political "war of the roses" plot in Westeros something that the characters "are preoccupied with" while "the real issues" i.e. the ice and fire, the Others and Daenerys, "go unnoticed as a result".

Seemed to imply that the pol plots didn't have any major significance in the end, even though I expected them all to pay off somehow (i.e. by different characters still assuming different positions and goals in the finale that's infomed by their previous relations, and various religious beliefs perhaps as well) - but if they're not supposed to, then ehhhh, them all being disposed of by the mad queen who's then gonna be counterproductive when all the ghouls arrive kinda makes sense and something that could happen in the books.

Or GRRM didn't mean it in the way it appeared, in which case of course none of that applies.

Or maybe you're just misinterpreting his words, sorry to say. Because politics can't not have major significance at this point, given how much the landscape has changed because of the political fighting, but it is true that Daenerys is even bigger issue, not necessarily because of her but because of Dotrakhi and everything else that comes with her, and the Others are the biggest issue and the main conflict of the entire series, as they were presented from the start. But that doesn't mean that the politics is going to be proved meaningless or resolved by some absurd act as in the show. I'll be seriously disappointed to the point of abandoning the series if anything even similar to "Cersei kills all of her enemies by some huge explosion in the Great Sept" happens in the books.

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