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!

[SeanF]

5 minutes ago, Le Cygne said:

Honestly I don't remember how season 6 ended, it's hard to delineate the sea of stupidity by season breaks. I've thought the show sucked since season 2 (and I had strong suspicions it would in season 1, based on super poorly thought out - aka not thought out at all and totally clueless about the story and ANY story - changes).

They kept changing things in ways that were not only offensive to me as a woman and human being, but really really really stupid in terms of storytelling, they consistently made really bad moves any time they changed things, putting the wrong people together or saying or doing the wrong things, then it all coming to nothing at all.

It's been clear to readers all along they were screwing up, but I do think the media has been at least low level criticizing them from day one, and at various points, very loudly objecting, however... as commercial enterprises were riding the gravy train. They made money off promoting the show, and keeping access for interviews.

So yeah, lots of people in the media knew it was crap. Some said so all along. Lots of them, however, would criticize then turn around and say the show is awesome. Some never bothered with the criticism at all (looking at you, James Hibberd, who was rewarded with the most access of all). The almighty dollar.

Then in the end, there was nothing holding them back, as the gravy train ground to a halt. All the viewers knew it was crap, so they started playing to that.

As I've said before, I kept hoping.  Stupidly, as it turned out.  I can read all sorts of comments I made in previous seasons, agreeing with you and others about various stupidities, but as you said, it was an example of sunk cost fallacy.

But yes, "play with her arse" was a very early indication of where D & D would go once they started to write their original stuff.

[Le Cygne]

Most of the ones who emerged as the usual voices at the various media outlets in effect became paid fans. They certainly weren't acting as critics or journalists. They weren't looking at the show objectively.

The lure of the money to be made off this show changed everything, there was this emperor's new clothes thing going on with the media, the emperor(s) were buck naked and in the end, they finally stopped denying it.

Read this review - he sure had them pegged - and it only got worse. Would have been nice to have seen good criticism like this all along, but instead there were mostly puff pieces, basically fan pages.

https://www.slantmagazine.com/tv/game-of-thrones-season-one/

[The Dragon Demands]

David Benioff at Austin Film Fest panel: "The great thing is, if I stay silent long enough, other people will answer questions for me"

 

 

[The Dragon Demands]

yeah

[Le Cygne]

On the bright side, how everyone feels is something that can't be measured. (Also the trend is toward none of it matters at all.)

[SeanF]

I'll be honest, I did find the destruction of the Great Sept really gripping, like the baptism/execution scene at the end of The Godfather.  And, there was plenty of fanservice, with Dany sailing West, and Ramsay being fed to dogs, and Walder Frey being fed his sons in a pie.  But.....I expected Cersei's actions to have consequences in the following season, and for her to be swiftly kerb-stomped, leaving plenty of time to resolve the conflict with the White Walkers.

[The Dragon Demands]

Actually it was a reasonably large scale survey some statistics grad student did.

and just, observationally - you do see a lot of people who liked Battle of the Bastards

people don’t have a long memory

[The Dragon Demands]

yeah

[Le Cygne]

6 minutes ago, SeanF said:

I'll be honest, I did find the destruction of the Great Sept really gripping, like the baptism/execution scene at the end of The Godfather.  And, there was plenty of fanservice, with Dany sailing West, and Ramsay being fed to dogs, and Walder Frey being fed his sons in a pie.  But.....I expected Cersei's actions to have consequences in the following season, and for her to be swiftly kerb-stomped, leaving plenty of time to resolve the conflict with the White Walkers.

I guess my point is, I want a show to be a story, where the characters have a journey, and they evolve as characters, and their journey takes them to new places, and they are part of an overall story, and it's meaningful.

And every single episode of this show took things further and further away from anything resembling a story.

[The Dragon Demands]

On 1/28/2020 at 4:14 AM, Many-Faced Votary said:

There is a huge amount of cognitive dissonance when it comes to Game of Thrones. The most obvious way in which this manifests is book projection from those who have read ASoIaF, especially onto the show characters who bear virtually no resemblance to their analogues, but this is only symptomatic of a larger problem.

GoT has been undeservedly treated as sacrosanct, with fans going out of there way to make excuses that usually wouldn't even work given the internal logic (or, more accurately, lack thereof) of the show and which are usually unwittingly debunked by the showrunners, critics falling over backwards in order to kiss D&D's asses, and Emmys thrown at the show for the seasons that should only ever have won technical awards.

——-

[SeanF]

25 minutes ago, The Dragon Demands said:

Actually it was a reasonably large scale survey some statistics grad student did.

and just, observationally - you do see a lot of people who liked Battle of the Bastards

people don’t have a long memory

I did not like the Battle of the Bastards that much.  Principally, because I like battles to make sense.  Jon showed that he was unfit to command, and Sansa was at best, grossly incompetent, at worst, actively malicious.  In real life, anyone who withheld information from her commander the way that Sansa did would land in very hot water.  A lot of Northerners would want Sansa to be strung up, if the truth came out. Hundreds, maybe thousands, died because of her behaviour.  The best fight in the story was the Battle of Blackwater, scripted by Martin.

 

26 minutes ago, Le Cygne said:

I guess my point is, I want a show to be a story, where the characters have a journey, and they evolve as characters, and their journey takes them to new places, and they are part of an overall story, and it's meaningful.

And every single episode of this show took things further and further away from anything resembling a story.

Oh, I know you're right.

[Le Cygne]

46 minutes ago, SeanF said:

The best fight in the story was the Battle of Blackwater, scripted by Martin.

Agreed.

(Agree about your rant about Battle of the Bastards, too. The whole I Spit On Ramsay's Grave plot was disgusting. The battle itself didn't make sense, either.)

What a contrast is Blackwater, and while this is our thread to say what's bad about the show, to me, Blackwater was so good it showed how bad the show is.

It didn't really fit with the rest of the show. Suddenly, the characters are like real people, and there's a  STORY. Things make sense, and make you think.

With another hour to set up and follow up, it could be a mini movie, and stand on its own. That's how good it was.

(Oh, minus the stupid stuff Benioff/Weiss added, like Bronn with his full frontal prostitute. And I wish they had let GRRM have free rein.)

[Cas Stark]

37 minutes ago, SeanF said:

I did not like the Battle of the Bastards that much.  Principally, because I like battles to make sense.  Jon showed that he was unfit to command, and Sansa was at best, grossly incompetent, at worst, actively malicious.  In real life, anyone who withheld information from her commander the way that Sansa did would land in very hot water.  A lot of Northerners would want Sansa to be strung up, if the truth came out. Hundreds, maybe thousands, died because of her behaviour.  The best fight in the story was the Battle of Blackwater, scripted by Martin.

 

Oh, I know you're right.

Yeah, I have to agree, even though I thought BoB was insanely over praised because of a handful of painterly type shots, I could not enjoy it because everything about it...set up w/Sansa, MIA Vale army, terrible 'battle' moves....was so totally insane and stupid. It was praised I guess because it was BIG and also, sadly, because Sansa betraying Jon and the North was heralded as some feminist Girl Power BS, just like when the Sand Snakes killed their cousin and uncle to avenge their other uncle's death, um yeah, whatever, was treated as some empowering moment.

I also do find that A LOT, really a lot of entertainment these days is wildly over praised.  There was a time when a 70% RT score would almost guarantee I would like a movie, and today, even a 95% score cannot guarantee that it is even mediocre. And GOT because of its global popularity and the detailed plotting of the first few seasons had a really large bandwagon type of effect, where the more you praised it and wrote about it the more clicks you got.  Even here on this fairly purist book board people who criticized the show's terrible plotting were routinely shouted down.  

[Nowy Tends]

2 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

I also do find that A LOT, really a lot of entertainment these days is wildly over praised.  There was a time when a 70% RT score would almost guarantee I would like a movie, and today, even a 95% score cannot guarantee that it is even mediocre. 

Agreed. Example: The Witcher, highly praised by so many people when it's average at best…

[Le Cygne]

14 minutes ago, Nowy Tends said:

Agreed. Example: The Witcher, highly praised by so many people when it's average at best…

Ugh. At best. They almost outdid GoT in terms of gratuitous female nudity. I think the main female character was naked at least as much as she was clothed. And the main male character never showed below his upper chest.

Even in the bath, even when having sex, he was carefully concealed. The men in an orgy scene wore panties! We were laughing loudly at that. It was like, this is GoT all over again. Benioff/Weiss probably insisted on it.

They slammed them about it here: https://www.datalounge.com/thread/25192334

[SeanF]

22 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

Yeah, I have to agree, even though I thought BoB was insanely over praised because of a handful of painterly type shots, I could not enjoy it because everything about it...set up w/Sansa, MIA Vale army, terrible 'battle' moves....was so totally insane and stupid. It was praised I guess because it was BIG and also, sadly, because Sansa betraying Jon and the North was heralded as some feminist Girl Power BS, just like when the Sand Snakes killed their cousin and uncle to avenge their other uncle's death, um yeah, whatever, was treated as some empowering moment.

 

 @OldGimletEye was very good on the shortcomings of the Battle of the Bastards (and is an ex-soldier).  It's surprising how many shows and films depict ludicrous battle scenes, when there are so many writers who can advise them how battles develop.   

[Le Cygne]

11 hours ago, SeanF said:

 @OldGimletEye was very good on the shortcomings of the Battle of the Bastards (and is an ex-soldier).  It's surprising how many shows and films depict ludicrous battle scenes, when there are so many writers who can advise them how battles develop.   

He was very good! I will look for it.

I found this:

 

[The Dragon Demands]

Elio and Linda said in their reaction video that they think that the books are moving towards that ALL Seven Kingdoms will break up.

 

[The Dragon Demands]

yeah

[Ran]

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