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!

[Le Cygne]

14 hours ago, SeanF said:

What frustrates me in the end is the sheer wasted potential, with so much money, so many good actors, and such commitment from all the people working on it.

Right up to the end, a lot of the scenes were really quite amazing (and the music was great) - had they only remembered to tell a story and provide dialogue.

The sack and burning of Kings Landing would have been outstanding - had there only been a credible reason for it.  And, it would have been so easy to supply that credible reason.  Daenerys might have accepted the surrender, only for someone to let off a crossbow, or bolt, accidentally or on purpose, which injures her or Drogon, leading her to conclude it's just another betrayal;  or she burns the Red Keep, which triggers off wildfire across the capital;  or (the one I'd favour) Cersei keeps her soldiers inside the city, and both sides get bogged down in terrible street fighting, leading Daenerys to conclude that the only way to win is to unleash dragon fire on soldiers and civilians alike.  That would keep the decision to kill thousands of civilians a deliberate and conscious one on her part, but provide a militarily sound reason for it (People are then free to argue over the morality of it).

Realistically Dany would have precision dragon blasted Cersei in season 7, and liberated the city. They robbed the audience of a satisfying one-on-one showdown after building it up.

Ditto for Arya. She could have taken Cersei out, and used her ultimately useless faceless man skills, and had the showdown built up to in her own arc with Cersei (the Night King was in Jon's arc).

Arya and Dany could have teamed up, too. Arya looked wondrously at Drogon, then nothing. Instead, they turn Arya, who loved to meet new people, into a xenophobic asshole.

Instead they went with batshit bells bullshit and Arya Ninja Turtle. I mean, how simple is it to follow through on what was built up to all along, but nope.

In the end, both Cersei and Littlefinger, long time villains the audience wanted to see taken down masterfully by the right characters in the right ways, go out like sniveling mice.

[SeanF]

4 hours ago, Le Cygne said:

Realistically Dany would have precision dragon blasted Cersei in season 7, and liberated the city. They robbed the audience of a satisfying one-on-one showdown after building it up.

Ditto for Arya. She could have taken Cersei out, and used her ultimately useless faceless man skills, and had the showdown built up to in her own arc with Cersei (the Night King was in Jon's arc).

Arya and Dany could have teamed up, too. Arya looked wondrously at Drogon, then nothing. Instead, they turn Arya, who loved to meet new people, into a xenophobic asshole.

Instead they went with batshit bells bullshit and Arya Ninja Turtle. I mean, how simple is it to follow through on what was built up to all along, but nope.

In the end, both Cersei and Littlefinger, long time villains the audience wanted to see taken down masterfully by the right characters in the right ways, go out like sniveling mice.

For sure.  The real LF would never beg for mercy.  He'd have plausible-sounding answers to all of Sansa's charges.  And Sansa would have been getting into hot water herself by bringing up her aunt's death.

At the very least, you would have expected Arya to be interested in Daenerys, before forming a judgement.

[Heartofice]

18 hours ago, SeanF said:

What frustrates me in the end is the sheer wasted potential, with so much money, so many good actors, and such commitment from all the people working on it.

Right up to the end, a lot of the scenes were really quite amazing (and the music was great) - had they only remembered to tell a story and provide dialogue.

The sack and burning of Kings Landing would have been outstanding - had there only been a credible reason for it.  And, it would have been so easy to supply that credible reason.  Daenerys might have accepted the surrender, only for someone to let off a crossbow, or bolt, accidentally or on purpose, which injures her or Drogon, leading her to conclude it's just another betrayal;  or she burns the Red Keep, which triggers off wildfire across the capital;  or (the one I'd favour) Cersei keeps her soldiers inside the city, and both sides get bogged down in terrible street fighting, leading Daenerys to conclude that the only way to win is to unleash dragon fire on soldiers and civilians alike.  That would keep the decision to kill thousands of civilians a deliberate and conscious one on her part, but provide a militarily sound reason for it (People are then free to argue over the morality of it).

Agree that right after watching the kings landing episode I was really blown away, I got caught up in the drama and the visuals and kind of didn’t think too much about it. 
 

But it didn’t take long before I remembered how utterly unearned that episode was. Danys character development has been abysmal since she left Mereen and it occurred to me as she was jealously watching people fawn over Jon Snow the previous episode that I had zero knowledge of who that Dany was. I couldn’t really nail down any character traits she possessed and almost all of her actions just sort of happened, without any basis in what had come before.

So while there might have been better, more logical ways for her to burn KL, essentially it all boiled down to the writers deciding at some point they had to make ‘Mad Queen’ happen, so that they can kill her at the end. Clearly Martin has told them the plot points to hit here , but didn’t give them enough for them to make it all make sense. 

[SeanF]

8 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Agree that right after watching the kings landing episode I was really blown away, I got caught up in the drama and the visuals and kind of didn’t think too much about it. 
 

But it didn’t take long before I remembered how utterly unearned that episode was. Danys character development has been abysmal since she left Mereen and it occurred to me as she was jealously watching people fawn over Jon Snow the previous episode that I had zero knowledge of who that Dany was. I couldn’t really nail down any character traits she possessed and almost all of her actions just sort of happened, without any basis in what had come before.

So while there might have been better, more logical ways for her to burn KL, essentially it all boiled down to the writers deciding at some point they had to make ‘Mad Queen’ happen, so that they can kill her at the end. Clearly Martin has told them the plot points to hit here , but didn’t give them enough for them to make it all make sense. 

You don't even need to make it "Mad Queen".  Ruthless Queen would suffice.  Someone doing what's necessary to win, however awful.

Then, you could have her making clear in the next Episode that she  plans to put Sansa, Arya, and Bran on trial for their treason towards her.  Leaving Jon to wrestle with his horrible dilemma.  Either he becomes a kinslayer, or he lets his kin be killed.  I'm not saying it's an ending I'd have enjoyed, but it's an ending that would have made sense.

[Heartofice]

9 minutes ago, SeanF said:

You don't even need to make it "Mad Queen".  Ruthless Queen would suffice.  Someone doing what's necessary to win, however awful.

Then, you could have her making clear in the next Episode that she  plans to put Sansa, Arya, and Bran on trial for their treason towards her.  Leaving Jon to wrestle with his horrible dilemma.  Either he becomes a kinslayer, or he lets his kin be killed.  I'm not saying it's an ending I'd have enjoyed, but it's an ending that would have made sense.

Definitely better. But I get the sense that mad Queen was somewhere in the notes and so they felt the need to follow through 

[SeanF]

40 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Definitely better. But I get the sense that mad Queen was somewhere in the notes and so they felt the need to follow through 

Maybe.  But, there's a widespread tendency in films and TV to equate mental illness with evil.  And, boy, does Daenerys attract all the amateur psychologists on social media.

At the end Daenerys was variously Hitler, Leon Trotsky, Satan and Jesus.

[Cas Stark]

17 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Maybe.  But, there's a widespread tendency in films and TV to equate mental illness with evil.  And, boy, does Daenerys attract all the amateur psychologists on social media.

At the end Daenerys was variously Hitler, Leon Trotsky, Satan and Jesus.

Therein lies the problem.  You can't really go from Abolitionist Jesus to Blonde Hitler in the space of 3 episodes, especially when everyone is acting with their faces instead of speaking dialogue.   

[Le Cygne]

Cogman uses women as plot bombs and props in that episode, like he always does.

Dany was just there for Arya and Sansa to fight with someone new after they almost killed each other. Arya was just there to strip for the camera out of nowhere. Sansa was just there to prop up Theon again by saying Jeyne's lines. Brienne was just there to redeem Jaime, who betrayed her so completely.

None of this means anything because he never sees them as having a life of their own.

[The Dragon Demands]

22 hours ago, SeanF said:

Then in episode 4, they tried to cram half a season's worth of material into one episode.

The conflict between Daenerys and the Starks, over Northern independence, could have been made interesting, and both sides portrayed sympathetically, had it played out over several episodes, with negotiations being tried and breaking down.  As it was, they tried to show Daenerys simultaneously cracking up under pressure, and being the victim of treachery, and the traitors being justified, and it did not work.

Yup.

it was funny watching people who defended the show through seasons 5 and 7, finally unable to defend that

[The Dragon Demands]

They wrote the scripts for season four before Indira Varma was cast - or soon enough after that they simply didn’t have time to alter the scripts 

[The Dragon Demands]

3 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

Therein lies the problem.  You can't really go from Abolitionist Jesus to Blonde Hitler in the space of 3 episodes, especially when everyone is acting with their faces instead of speaking dialogue.   

( savage grin )

[Mindwalker]

Regarding Arya: IIRCm in season 1, she admired and wanted to emulate some historical dragon riding Targaryen woman warrior... So her behaviour towards Dany makes even less sense.

[kissdbyfire]

15 minutes ago, Mindwalker said:

Regarding Arya: IIRCm in season 1, she admired and wanted to emulate some historical dragon riding Targaryen woman warrior... So her behaviour towards Dany makes even less sense.

But that’s “so season 1”! The show runners can’t remember what they did in the previous season, let alone s1, all those years ago! Hell, they can’t remember what they did in the previous episode, and sometimes even the previous scene!

[The Dragon Demands]

yeah

[The Dragon Demands]

yeah

[SeanF]

18 minutes ago, The Dragon Demands said:

I'm watching the Blu-ray commentaries for Season 8.

Episode 8.1 is writer Dave Hill and production designer Deborah Riley.

In the first five minutes, Hill claims that the four writers "rewatched every episode of the past seven seasons, to make sure of every plot thread we needed to wrap up" (sigh)….you think of things like not explaining what happened to Dorne in any detail.....

You realize that their vision is skewed; they're not "lying", but that narrow-minded: I think they meant "plot threads, for the *core seven cast members*" (and even that was still flawed).  Thinking "what stuff for Arya should we address?" and not "what's going on with Brienne, Jorah, Yara, etc.")

…..what I'm upset about is that we never got a "real" interview with these writers, in which an audience Q&A or moderator is....bold enough to ask followup questions, or point out that they haven't accurately answered something.  They get asked a question, they give a response, end of discussion - and they realized a while ago that they can give bizarre, nonsensical answers, and NO ONE will challenge them.

Anyway it's intriguing and funny that Riley does react to Hill by, in a polite voice, saying "really? I didn't know.  You prepped like that?" -- and I can't tell if she's being matter of fact, or incredulous that it doesn't seem like they did real "research" on the prior seven seasons.  In the "Last Watch" documentary you can see Riley getting increasingly disillusioned with Benioff & Weiss.  

Hill is just another personal assistant that Benioff promoted up, and an enthusiastic member of the "dudebro club"; much like Austin Film Fest....cheerfully remarking that *they had Deborah Riley build the entire Winter Town set*.  As a fully realized set.  Which took weeks of work to build.  And he even points out "we had Riley build an entire set, knowing we'd only use it for one scene; another one of our "how to drive Deborah crazy" moments I guess"......and she's sitting there.  

This is reality.  And it's not a matter of money or even the raw amount of work, it's shocking in terms of a *schedule*; when you see Riley in the "Last Watch" realizing that regardless of budget, to achieve things that Benioff and Weiss want, on this scale, but *in this timeframe* is logistically impossible.  This is not the first time the writing staff have seemed blissfully unaware of their total, crippling lack of logistical management skills.

Perhaps they did, but they showed no sign that they understood what had been happening.

[The Dragon Demands]

yeah

[Cas Stark]

If they had only spent 20% of the wasted time on stupid sets for one scene that no one can appreciate because of the 'natural lighting' on the story, the plots and the writing, the show might have actually been the quality product it was credited as for so long.

[SeanF]

13 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

If they had only spent 20% of the wasted time on stupid sets for one scene that no one can appreciate because of the 'natural lighting' on the story, the plots and the writing, the show might have actually been the quality product it was credited as for so long.

The funny thing is that you can read any number of fanfics which come up with far better plots, credible storylines, and tighter writing for Seasons 7 and 8.

[The Dragon Demands]

 

yeah