Rant & Rave Season 8 [Spoilers]: When you are cool like a cucumber, as evil as the mother of madness, but never as perfect as the pet!

[Cas Stark]

I am still dumbstruck by how bad this episode was and how it destroys so much of Jon and Dany's story, and it didn't even look good.  It was so dark people can't even say they loved for spectacle because you could not see shit for at least 60% of the ep.

[kissdbyfire]

21 minutes ago, LynnS said:

Orphan Black.  Geez that was good.

Damn good! I miss it... Tatiana Maslany, omg. I would often forget all those characters were played by one actor only. Love her! 

Side rant, to stay OT: when they say WMD everyone thought it was the dragons, but it’s really Arya!

[Vaith]

48 minutes ago, The Knight in Motley said:

Thanks for all these comments, I've lost interest even in hate watching the show.

I did go watch the clip of Arya killing the NK.  for the first 20 seconds I was sure the poster had dubbed in some shitty music to try to hold of getting flagged as long as possible, Nope, that was the actual soundtrack...

Why do we need 3 more episodes?  Arya kills Cersei, the end.

Or Dany could fly Drogon to the RK and get him to chomp off Cersei's head

[LynnS]

24 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Damn good! I miss it... Tatiana Maslany, omg. I would often forget all those characters were played by one actor only. Love her! 

Side rant, to stay OT: when they say WMD everyone thought it was the dragons, but it’s really Arya!

OMG is right! Helena- 'no i didn't burn down the fish people's farm - Donnie and Allison burying bodies in the garage, not to mention Donny's scottish dance - Krystal Goderich, the conspiracy between the make-up industry and the Dyad institute.  

Tatanya was a tour de force.  Holy cow she played nine different characters and I didn't have a hard time believing any of them were indidviduals.  Just genius.   

 

[divica]

10 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

I am still dumbstruck by how bad this episode was and how it destroys so much of Jon and Dany's story, and it didn't even look good.  It was so dark people can't even say they loved for spectacle because you could not see shit for at least 60% of the ep.

I am dumbfounded when I read that it was a great battle to watch. The visibility was so bad that sometimes I wasn t even sure which character I was seeing or when the characters moved too fast the screen seemed blurry… And the dragon fight was just awfull. I could neither see nor understand who was each dragon and how they were fighting each other…

The battle in castle black was at night and was much better visually!

[kissdbyfire]

@LynnS, seems I’ve used up my quota of “likes”. Pls consider your post liked a lot!

[The Fattest Leech]

Really, showrunners? REAAALLLY???

• “Big as hounds,” sighed showrunner Dan Weiss when EW asked about the ice spiders. “Didn’t we talk about that for 30 seconds? ‘Ice spiders’ sounds good. It would look good on a metal album cover. But once they start moving, what does an ice spider look like? Probably doesn’t look great.”

  It’s actually very difficult to realistically render extra large versions of existing creatures. In some respects, it’s easier to create a creature that doesn’t exist — like dragons — because viewers don’t automatically compare what they’re seeing to a familiar real-life version. That’s one reason we haven’t seen more direwolves on the show as there’s something a bit off-feeling about a super-sized wolf strutting around (sorry, Ghost).

  We did, however, get a dragon-on-dragon ariel battle, plus zombie, giant and direwolf action, so it wasn’t as if the episode wasn’t teaming with supernatural creature epicness. https://ew.com/tv/2019/04/29/game-of-thrones-winterfell-battle-where-are-the-ice-spiders/

[Leticia Stark]

So.... what the hell was the purpose of the Azor Ahai theory? 

Jon's entire arc being about the WW's only for him to be robbed at the last minute. 

[lakin1013]

At some point in the episode, Jon sees the NK.  The NK sees Jon and almost smiles, as he turns around to face Jon.  That was when NK raised his arms and we knew what he was going to do.  My memory tells me that he TURNED to face Jon, meaning he heard Jon approaching.  Not 5 minutes later in this same episode, Arya drops down or across or up from under the NK and kills him.  What are we to make of that?  The NK antenna only works with men?  bastards?  used-to-be bastards?  Since Arya went to assassin school, she is quieter?  Off camera, she showed the NK her almost-degree in stealthy killing?

There is no LOGIC here and it drive me crazy as a viewer.

[Leticia Stark]

1 hour ago, Bael's Bastard said:

Doesn't show-Daenerys have green eyes? Arya's gonna kill Daenerys

Emilia Clarke has blue eyes.

[kissdbyfire]

9 minutes ago, The Fattest Leech said:

We did, however, get a dragon-on-dragon ariel battle, plus zombie, giant and direwolf action,

Did they now? I must have missed it because everything was so fucking dark. What a joke... the show is a joke, but the Ds take on things and their explanations are even more so.

[divica]

8 minutes ago, The Fattest Leech said:

Really, showrunners? REAAALLLY???

• “Big as hounds,” sighed showrunner Dan Weiss when EW asked about the ice spiders. “Didn’t we talk about that for 30 seconds? ‘Ice spiders’ sounds good. It would look good on a metal album cover. But once they start moving, what does an ice spider look like? Probably doesn’t look great.”

  It’s actually very difficult to realistically render extra large versions of existing creatures. In some respects, it’s easier to create a creature that doesn’t exist — like dragons — because viewers don’t automatically compare what they’re seeing to a familiar real-life version. That’s one reason we haven’t seen more direwolves on the show as there’s something a bit off-feeling about a super-sized wolf strutting around (sorry, Ghost).

  We did, however, get a dragon-on-dragon ariel battle, plus zombie, giant and direwolf action, so it wasn’t as if the episode wasn’t teaming with supernatural creature epicness. https://ew.com/tv/2019/04/29/game-of-thrones-winterfell-battle-where-are-the-ice-spiders/

LOOOOOL

direwolf action is ghost runing for 5 secs and disapearing?

A dragon fight nobody can understand?

A giant killed by an extremelly hurt 10 year old girl?

And what about the ww? other dead creatures?

this makes me just sad

[Vaith]

37 minutes ago, The Fattest Leech said:

Really, showrunners? REAAALLLY???

• “Big as hounds,” sighed showrunner Dan Weiss when EW asked about the ice spiders. “Didn’t we talk about that for 30 seconds? ‘Ice spiders’ sounds good. It would look good on a metal album cover. But once they start moving, what does an ice spider look like? Probably doesn’t look great.”

  It’s actually very difficult to realistically render extra large versions of existing creatures. In some respects, it’s easier to create a creature that doesn’t exist — like dragons — because viewers don’t automatically compare what they’re seeing to a familiar real-life version. That’s one reason we haven’t seen more direwolves on the show as there’s something a bit off-feeling about a super-sized wolf strutting around (sorry, Ghost).

  We did, however, get a dragon-on-dragon ariel battle, plus zombie, giant and direwolf action, so it wasn’t as if the episode wasn’t teaming with supernatural creature epicness. https://ew.com/tv/2019/04/29/game-of-thrones-winterfell-battle-where-are-the-ice-spiders/

Ah yes, I am sure a 1.5x as big wolf is clearly comparable to a 100x as big spider in terms of animation difficulty, and the viewers would find something off about them not being as realistic as real life giant spiders

[LynnS]

47 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

@LynnS, seems I’ve used up my quota of “likes”. Pls consider your post liked a lot!

I am enjoying the Rant and Rave thread and your commentary.  Just saying... if anyone is looking for something to fill in the in between time, you won't be disappointed.

[Lucky7]

Yoooo, Tyrion really did nothing for 3 seasons straight. Trying to remind us of Blackwater when he was an actual character. He did nothing except tell Dany to open the fighting arena, try to stop slavery by allowing slavery which Dany is categorically opposed to (and didn't work anyway cuz she came back), legit not trying to be funny, I don't think he did anything in Season 7 except make dick jokes and talk to Cersei (which was futile).

 

Talking bout some damn "we might be able to see something they can't" mofo it's too late! Trying to formulate battle plans when the shit already started. 

 

NK was robbed. He was playing 4D chess, they were playing Connect Four smfh. 

[Le Cygne]

Seeing a bunch of "it was disappointing" articles, here's another:

The long trail of unanswered clues and red herrings leading to the fight against the Night King makes his fall at the end of the Battle of Winterfell even more disappointing. For several seasons now, Jon Snow has implored enemies to set aside their differences and join forces against the "real" danger approaching from beyond the Wall, a cause that united wildlings, Lannisters, Starks, and Daenerys' armies. Even the Lord of Light had some sort of divine stakes in the battle for all the assistance he gave to the living in Sunday's episode. Yet after almost a decade of attention given to the threat of the Night King — from the opening of season one with the Night's Watch encountering White Walkers beyond the Wall to the breach of the Wall at the end of season seven — Game of Thrones' "big bad" was reduced to a nonissue less than halfway through season eight.

This is significant because it turns our attention, and the show's, back south. Game of Thrones' focus shifts from a battle between humans and the dead to the battle between humans and humans — a battle we'd been explicitly told by the protagonists was insignificant due to the more existential threat of the White Walkers. The remaining three episodes of Game of Thrones now feel like clean up — surely Cersei will be defeated, and Jon and Daenerys rule together — while the Battle of Winterfell is reduced to an unsatisfying bait-and-switch. Whatever Game of Thrones had been trying to say, either about the inevitability of death or the power of the living, is now lost again to squabbles over a crown...

The problem isn't that Cersei is now the real big boss in Game of Thrones — it's that over eight seasons, the show prepared us for a climax with the Night King, with the unspoken assurance that there was so much left to learn. And on Sunday night, that was the biggest and most disheartening twist of all: There wasn't.

https://theweek.com/articles-amp/838179/game-thrones-blew

[Le Cygne]

Here's another:

Even more tellingly, Game of Thrones failed to live up to the emotional stakes it set for itself... I hope that was all you wanted from those characters, because they spent the entire episode grunting and swinging semi-uselessly at the wights on the walls of Winterfell...

And when "The Long Night" did punctuate the battle, it leaned toward a cheesy emphasis on heroism that would have been unthinkable on this show just a few years ago. Yes, 13-year-old Lady Mormont gets killed—but she takes down one of the most powerful wights in the Night King’s army on the way...

In total, "The Long Night"—like last season’s similarly spectacle-laden, similarly disappointing "Beyond the Wall"—is yet another sign that late-stage Game of Thrones is willing to cut corners and break its own rules as it races toward its ending...

And that leads us to the deeply anticlimactic death of the Night King. As the Night King prepares to kill Bran—the closest thing we have to a motive for this eight-season White Walker campaign—Arya rushes up, seemingly out of nowhere, and manages to stab the Night King with a Valyrian steel dagger. The Night King dies instantly. And so does everybody else in his army, because the Night King is the sole power source keeping the rest of the White Walkers and wights alive.

After almost 70 episodes of buildup: Is that all there is? Can the death of a single White Walker—even the first and most powerful White Walker—really wipe out the greatest existential threat Westeros has ever face? Is this really a worthwhile payoff to a thousand mumbly Jon Snow speeches about the only war that matters?...

Now that they’re gone, the mystery of the White Walkers—which stretches all the way back to the very first scene of the series—just feels like the product of a writing session where somebody said "we’ll figure this out eventually" and never came back to it. What did the White Walkers really want? What were they doing in those thousands of years beyond the Wall? Why was the Night King turning human babies into White Walkers? What was the deal with the symbols they left everywhere?

I guess Game of Thrones’s final answer is: Who cares? They’re all dead now. On to the Iron Throne.

https://news.yahoo.com/game-thrones-season-8-episode-130136194.html

[Sandor Is Kane]

It's been obvious since the end of the fourth season that the plan is to use liberal pandering and fan service as crutches to limp across the finish line, but what I don't understand is how the people this is aimed at don't feel completely patronised.

I'm not sure that I'll bother watching the final three episodes. I couldn't care less about Boris Yeltsin and her ribald, Ricky-from-Trailer-Park-Boys-looking lover. It's one thing to take a character as psychotic as Euron and basically write him as Bluto, but quite another to expect us to see his demise as a fitting climax to a journey that's been eight years in the making.

The most frustrating thing is how pointless so many of the characters' arcs now feel, especially Jon and Bran. It would have been better if the whole Night King/Bran 'I am Quaid' theory had been true.

[Le Cygne]

Funny...

NEW YORK—Discussing their astonishment mere hours after the premiere of the highly anticipated episode, Game Of Thrones actors told reporters Monday about the moment they read the script for the zombie battle in “The Long Night” and realized they had definitively wasted their careers. “Right away, when I finished the script, I felt this sense of immense loss at throwing away the prime of my life performing in a make-believe world of CGI dragons and giants,” said series regular Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who described feeling stunned when discovering that he had squandered day after day of his precious existence freezing his ass off in Belfast-based shoots just to play a mediocre role in an emotionally incoherent series that had stretched on for years too long. “I’ll never forget when [showrunner] David Benioff sat me down and told me the fate of the Night King and I thought: Who gives a flying fuck? What am I still doing on this show? Jesus Christ, I actually cried.” At press time, several cast members told interviewers about having their breath taken away after learning their characters survived the battle and that they still had to film three more episodes of this goddamn thing.

https://entertainment.theonion.com/game-of-thrones-actors-reveal-reading-script-for-zomb-1834388057

[Vaith]

Not about Season 8, but a good vid. I don't know why I didn't watch this video before, but I think it's pretty good. However I'm still going to say that I don't know what people were smoking if they thought Season 5 and 6 were passable and that Season 7 was particularly egregious.