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!

[The Dragon Demands]

I made this:

the post-Emmys Q&A: when asked direct questions, Benioff and Weiss keep turning around and waiting for the cast to answer them.  It’s very uncomfortable to watch:

 

[Le Cygne]

I always thought the show was bad. Just thought of something, how they never really showed the most simple things human beings do together. All of the things other shows and films use to great effect.

All the things that happened off screen, like hey, this happened, and I feel like this about it, and how do you feel about it? We wanted to see these conversations, because that's what people do.

The costumes were dreary Romulan military garb, and the jewelry chains or a dog collar with a bizarre "I wanna be Arya except my blade is way smaller" at the end. Nothing pretty, nothing light.

There was nothing sweet, it was just an endless slogfest of horrible. The books had these things, it wasn't just life sucks and then you die (or get to be prom queen at the extras ball after they screwed you over).

All of the little things that would have made them seem human.

The writing was just plain bad, all along, it was pedestrian hackery, like it was written by aliens who don't know what it's like to be human, and never bothered to find out.

No comparison to something good.

The only thing that was ever good about the show was what accidentally made it to the show from the books that they didn't manage to destroy. And even that just made you want to see it done right.

That's what happened. A book series with good writing seeped through the hackery from time to time, then they couldn't even learn from the work they were supposed to adapt, and improvise something passable.

[Le Cygne]

I guess when they said Needle was revenge, that summed it all up.

[The Dragon Demands]

yeah

[SeanF]

12 hours ago, The Dragon Demands said:

Why aren’t people publicly disagreeing with them more?  It took until season 8 got so bad to break the hype?

As Le Cygne put it, it was the sunk cost fallacy.  I wanted to believe the show would come good, even when I ought to have realised that it would not.  

There was just about enough good material, after Season 4, to keep me engaged, even though I knew that the characters were pastiches of their book counterparts.

After Season 1, most of Dany's warmth, humour, and humanity was removed.  She became an icon to be torn down at the end.  After his resurrection, Jon seemed to be lobotomised.  He took stupid decision upon stupid decision.  Tyrion became simply an avatar for D & D.  Bran was a nonentity.  Varys became a pacifist.  Arya was a xenophobic psychopath.  Cersei's last good scene was her confrontation with Ellaria.  Jamie's redemption arc went nowhere.

[Mystical]

15 hours ago, The Dragon Demands said:

Why aren’t people publicly disagreeing with them more?  It took until season 8 got so bad to break the hype?

Because there was no money to be made in criticizing the show. Whether it was professional reviewers on big sites, or even small ones. Fan sites (like watchersonthewall) got extra and exclusive stuff and access. The early Seasons were small enough in viewership so it wasn't a problem then. But once the show blew up, everyone lost their balls, so to speak. There was no money or special treatment to be had when you gave an honest opinion about the show. When S8 came around, everything about it was just so bad that it simply couldn't be ignored anymore unless you wanted to lose every shred of credibility left. And it was the last Season so little harm done.

[The Fattest Leech]

https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/film-tv/a29338462/george-rr-martin-game-of-thrones-season-8-not-faithful/

* as a happy reminder *

From the link:

In a new interview with FastCompany, Martin says of the adaptation process, “It can be… traumatic. Because sometimes their creative vision and your creative vision don’t match, and you get the famous creative differences thing--that leads to a lot of conflict.”

Martin also spoke about the at-times corrosive influence of behind-the-scenes bureaucracy, saying, “You get totally extraneous things like the studio or the network weighing in, and they have some particular thing that has nothing to do with the story, but relates to, ‘Well, this character has a very high Q rating, so let’s give him a lot more stuff to do.”

The Q rating is a measurement of an entertainment property’s familiarity or appeal to audiences. In the familiarity department, Game of Thrones has saturated the culture as much as seems humanly possible, yet season eight tanked in the appeal department. In fact, fans were so incensed that 1.7 million of them signed a petition calling for the season to be remade with “competent” writers.

Martin may count himself among those 1.7 million aggrieved fans, considering his read on season eight: “The final series has been… not completely faithful.”

[SeanF]

9 minutes ago, The Fattest Leech said:

https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/film-tv/a29338462/george-rr-martin-game-of-thrones-season-8-not-faithful/

From the link:

In a new interview with FastCompany, Martin says of the adaptation process, “It can be… traumatic. Because sometimes their creative vision and your creative vision don’t match, and you get the famous creative differences thing--that leads to a lot of conflict.”

Martin also spoke about the at-times corrosive influence of behind-the-scenes bureaucracy, saying, “You get totally extraneous things like the studio or the network weighing in, and they have some particular thing that has nothing to do with the story, but relates to, ‘Well, this character has a very high Q rating, so let’s give him a lot more stuff to do.”

The Q rating is a measurement of an entertainment property’s familiarity or appeal to audiences. In the familiarity department, Game of Thrones has saturated the culture as much as seems humanly possible, yet season eight tanked in the appeal department. In fact, fans were so incensed that 1.7 million of them signed a petition calling for the season to be remade with “competent” writers.

Martin may count himself among those 1.7 million aggrieved fans, considering his read on season eight: “The final series has been… not completely faithful.”

It's the comments from people close to Martin  that I've always found telling.

I think it is pretty much a certainty that Season 8 "was not completely faithful."  

[Le Cygne]

1 hour ago, The Fattest Leech said:

https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/film-tv/a29338462/george-rr-martin-game-of-thrones-season-8-not-faithful/

From the link:

In a new interview with FastCompany, Martin says of the adaptation process, “It can be… traumatic. Because sometimes their creative vision and your creative vision don’t match, and you get the famous creative differences thing--that leads to a lot of conflict.”

Martin also spoke about the at-times corrosive influence of behind-the-scenes bureaucracy, saying, “You get totally extraneous things like the studio or the network weighing in, and they have some particular thing that has nothing to do with the story, but relates to, ‘Well, this character has a very high Q rating, so let’s give him a lot more stuff to do.”

The Q rating is a measurement of an entertainment property’s familiarity or appeal to audiences. In the familiarity department, Game of Thrones has saturated the culture as much as seems humanly possible, yet season eight tanked in the appeal department. In fact, fans were so incensed that 1.7 million of them signed a petition calling for the season to be remade with “competent” writers.

Martin may count himself among those 1.7 million aggrieved fans, considering his read on season eight: “The final series has been… not completely faithful.”

Not completely faithful. Visions that don't match. Conflict.

He's said similar things before, and they have, too. It's just obviously different, and has been for a long time. Butterflies turned to dragons, he said.

It's often the opposite on the show, and characters do bizarre things they'd never do, then more things branch from that. We saw this all along.

[Prince of the North]

3 hours ago, Mystical said:

Because there was no money to be made in criticizing the show. Whether it was professional reviewers on big sites, or even small ones. Fan sites (like watchersonthewall) got extra and exclusive stuff and access. The early Seasons were small enough in viewership so it wasn't a problem then. But once the show blew up, everyone lost their balls, so to speak. There was no money or special treatment to be had when you gave an honest opinion about the show. When S8 came around, everything about it was just so bad that it simply couldn't be ignored anymore unless you wanted to lose every shred of credibility left. And it was the last Season so little harm done.

Yep.  Exactly this.  In the end, it's all about access.  Those who were critical of the show would have their access to the show/actors/producers decreased or cut off completely.  And that simply does not generate clicks, sell magazines, attract eyeballs, etc. and that, in turn, does not sell advertising.  People in the media were free to be critical in S8 because it was going to end anyway so decreased or denied access was not such a worry anymore.   

[Le Cygne]

1 hour ago, Prince of the North said:

Yep.  Exactly this.  In the end, it's all about access.  Those who were critical of the show would have their access to the show/actors/producers decreased or cut off completely.  And that simply does not generate clicks, sell magazines, attract eyeballs, etc. and that, in turn, does not sell advertising.  People in the media were free to be critical in S8 because it was going to end anyway so decreased or denied access was not such a worry anymore.   

They were riding the gravy train. Some called it out all along, but for the most part, it was about what angle made them the most money, and writing fluff about the water cooler show did that.

[Corvinus85]

22 hours ago, Le Cygne said:

I always thought the show was bad. Just thought of something, how they never really showed the most simple things human beings do together. All of the things other shows and films use to great effect.

All the things that happened off screen, like hey, this happened, and I feel like this about it, and how do you feel about it? We wanted to see these conversations, because that's what people do.

The costumes were dreary Romulan military garb, and the jewelry chains or a dog collar with a bizarre "I wanna be Arya except my blade is way smaller" at the end. Nothing pretty, nothing light.

There was nothing sweet, it was just an endless slogfest of horrible. The books had these things, it wasn't just life sucks and then you die (or get to be prom queen at the extras ball after they screwed you over).

All of the little things that would have made them seem human.

The writing was just plain bad, all along, it was pedestrian hackery, like it was written by aliens who don't know what it's like to be human, and never bothered to find out.

No comparison to something good.

The only thing that was ever good about the show was what accidentally made it to the show from the books that they didn't manage to destroy. And even that just made you want to see it done right.

That's what happened. A book series with good writing seeped through the hackery from time to time, then they couldn't even learn from the work they were supposed to adapt, and improvise something passable.

I almost started a rant thread right after the show ended to touch on the whole show and mainly touch on how everything looked, not the writing. But decided not to stir up another nest of... something. 

From the start I've had small issues that were not total deal-breakers but in hindsight, it makes you wonder how much people really cared about the world they were creating (in particular D&D and the directors). 90% of the whole thing did look dreary, without much life in it. 

Two of my main pet peeves are the design of the Lannister armor. Those helmets are sooo stupid - look people, these are our Stormtroopers!!! And the second is the Dothraki arakh - not a great cavalry sword.

[The Dragon Demands]

yeah

[Crona]

8 minutes ago, The Dragon Demands said:

Well...we’ll just have to smash it all down and rebuild it again in our own image, won’t we?

Quislings.  they doubled down on the Long Night prequel just as they doubled down on season 8.  They built a house on sand.

its why I champion the other prequel.

Now, as the old saying goes, it’s time to pay the price.

The other issue is we had a bunch of people make excuses for them. The primary being: the budget, they ran out of book material (false), and the viewers would not understand the story. (Wrong again, never underestimate your audience). 

[The Dragon Demands]

yeah

[The Dragon Demands]

(Double post)

 

[SeanF]

11 hours ago, Crona said:

The other issue is we had a bunch of people make excuses for them. The primary being: the budget, they ran out of book material (false), and the viewers would not understand the story. (Wrong again, never underestimate your audience). 

In earlier seasons, there were times you almost had to make notes, because actions had consequences, even if those consequences did not appear for some time (eg Rob  marrying Talisa).

At some point actions stopped having consequences (notoriously, when Cersei faced no consequences for murdering half the nobility, plus the equivalent of the Pope).

[Crona]

59 minutes ago, SeanF said:

In earlier seasons, there were times you almost had to make notes, because actions had consequences, even if those consequences did not appear for some time (eg Rob  marrying Talisa).

At some point actions stopped having consequences (notoriously, when Cersei faced no consequences for murdering half the nobility, plus the equivalent of the Pope).

Yea, I never got the idea that we couldn’t include the full story because the audience couldn’t understand it, since the reason they got into GOT is because of the complex storyline. 

[Le Cygne]

The more you look, the more you see they worked backwards, to force fit various "cool" ideas they had. You could see them making those decisions every step of the way.

Well, if we do this - what the character would normally do/what a human being would normally do - then it makes it harder to do the "cool" thing we want to do - so scrap that.

It was always all about them, the show was their playground, and they lacked the sensitivity and skills to be good writers, so the bad decisions had piled up into a huge heap by the end.

[Le Cygne]

Also what an immature outlook on life, as reflected by the ending they wrote. Everyone was alone in the end, with the token exception of Sam/Gilly who they never messed up due to lack of interest.

Everyone went their separate ways, if they hadn't already decided to commit suicide for no reason at all. Men were just there to be abused by or use. Women were just there to murder or senselessly die with.

But of course, the forever 13 year olds gave their self-insert Tyrion a buddy, Bronn, and had them yuk it up about brothels, here, have some shell-shocked peasants pretending to enjoy having sex with them.

All the terrible messages to the audience all along, and then this empty ending that nobody liked, that anyone could have told them was all wrong, but they weren't listening to anyone. And nobody at HBO cared.