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!

[divica]

41 minutes ago, The Dragon Demands said:

I must stress that it’s only a theory 

By the way, you should add that cersei actualy ordered people into the red keep and we do have several shots of a mass of people entering the red keep.

[Cas Stark]

Count me as one who thought her having a miscarriage wasn't a bad idea.  She would have had hope for another child, then hope lost, it could have been a reason to make her go crazy and Lena could  have gone to town on Cersei in final meltdown mode...oh yeah, except she never went crazy.  I can't think of a single decision they made for season 8 that wasn't terrible, from turning the Northerners into asshole xenophobes, filming the biggest battle of the show in the dark, Dany's 10 minute long descent into villainy, Jon saying 'she's my queen 24,000 times and nothing else, Arya killing the Night King, Jon kissing Dany and then stabbing her, Cersei having almost no lines for the whole season and prior season, the totally dead Dothraki army that rejuvenated itself, the insane lack of dialogue, the final scene of yuks and brothels.... Other than a tiny handful of great CGI scenes and  maybe the 'before the battle' part where Brienne get's knighted the entire season was trash.   

**Amazingly, Arya killing the Night King in ep. 3, people were still giving the show the benefit of the doubt???? and trying to convince themselves that this made sense.  

[Ghostlydragon]

52 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

Count me as one who thought her having a miscarriage wasn't a bad idea.  She would have had hope for another child, then hope lost, it could have been a reason to make her go crazy and Lena could  have gone to town on Cersei in final meltdown mode...oh yeah, except she never went crazy.  I can't think of a single decision they made for season 8 that wasn't terrible, from turning the Northerners into asshole xenophobes, filming the biggest battle of the show in the dark, Dany's 10 minute long descent into villainy, Jon saying 'she's my queen 24,000 times and nothing else, Arya killing the Night King, Jon kissing Dany and then stabbing her, Cersei having almost no lines for the whole season and prior season, the totally dead Dothraki army that rejuvenated itself, the insane lack of dialogue, the final scene of yuks and brothels.... Other than a tiny handful of great CGI scenes and  maybe the 'before the battle' part where Brienne get's knighted the entire season was trash.   

**Amazingly, Arya killing the Night King in ep. 3, people were still giving the show the benefit of the doubt???? and trying to convince themselves that this made sense.  

Absolutely. And with Jaime gone, Cersei would have nothing left to lose and would have gone completely out of control, no doubt with Euron sharing his own dark impulses.

But nope. We got nothing. And Lena in full Carol mode right at the end.

It really makes no sense. Cersei only made it this far because Lena was D&Ds favourite yet they completely wasted her just cos they clearly like changing things on the spot for no good reason.

[SeanF]

4 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

I still can't understand how anyone, the actors, showrunners, HBO executives, anyone could have thought that season 8 would be a success, even with the blind eye that fans had turned to the show becoming ever more stupid, how could they have thought that Dany turning evil in the space of 2 episodes, and then Jon killing her in some totally cliche, stupid, reverse Romeo/Juliette scene wouldn't be gag and rage inducing?  Not even giving her a final dying line(s).  Its amazing, with so much riding on a successful final season, that we got what we got.

 

They really did leave no stone unturned in their determination to make the final season trash.  Error was piled upon error.

[SeanF]

5 hours ago, divica said:

To me this just shows they needed to have a scene of danny becoming the final villain and jon killing her. And they decided that in that scenario danny wasn't bad enough. Basically they needed to respect some bullet points from grrm and din t know how to do it… witch is just sad...

The thing is Dany did not need to be bad enough.

Jon killed her because he feared what she would do to Bran, Sansa, and Arya, not because of what she did to Kings Landing.  If she had to die for that reason, there is no reason to have her go batshit and strafe civilians for no reason. The destruction of the Red Keep would have proved she was prepared to follow through on her threats.   I guess it would have made Jon look bad, but then, they had already trashed Jon's character throughout Season 8 anyway.

[Angel Eyes]

20 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

Count me as one who thought her having a miscarriage wasn't a bad idea.  She would have had hope for another child, then hope lost, it could have been a reason to make her go crazy and Lena could  have gone to town on Cersei in final meltdown mode...oh yeah, except she never went crazy.  I can't think of a single decision they made for season 8 that wasn't terrible, from turning the Northerners into asshole xenophobes, filming the biggest battle of the show in the dark, Dany's 10 minute long descent into villainy, Jon saying 'she's my queen 24,000 times and nothing else, Arya killing the Night King, Jon kissing Dany and then stabbing her, Cersei having almost no lines for the whole season and prior season, the totally dead Dothraki army that rejuvenated itself, the insane lack of dialogue, the final scene of yuks and brothels.... Other than a tiny handful of great CGI scenes and  maybe the 'before the battle' part where Brienne get's knighted the entire season was trash.   

**Amazingly, Arya killing the Night King in ep. 3, people were still giving the show the benefit of the doubt???? and trying to convince themselves that this made sense.  

Speaking of Arya killing the Night King:

I found an idea in a video by Chris Stuckmann, that I thought would be interesting. He suggests that if the showrunners were so insistent on having Arya kill the Night King, they could have had Bran sacrifice himself and Arya take his face; when he goes to kill "Bran", "Bran" sticks him with the Valyrian Steel knife and Arya reveals herself. It's a shame since her skills as a Faceless Man aren't used after the Season 7 opener.

[Cas Stark]

29 minutes ago, Angel Eyes said:

Speaking of Arya killing the Night King:

I found an idea in a video by Chris Stuckmann, that I thought would be interesting. He suggests that if the showrunners were so insistent on having Arya kill the Night King, they could have had Bran sacrifice himself and Arya take his face; when he goes to kill "Bran", "Bran" sticks him with the Valyrian Steel knife and Arya reveals herself. It's a shame since her skills as a Faceless Man aren't used after the Season 7 opener.

Well, they can't do that because Bran has to become king.  It would have been better if they did whatever GRRM intends, or if they couldn't pull that off, then let it be Jon and Dany working together, so that Jon's entire story is not undercut by him not getting the kill. If something is done well it is still satisfying even if it isn't a surprise for the audience, or you can have surprising elements even within the context of an event that is widely expected. 

[Le Cygne]

On 5/18/2020 at 4:19 PM, Ghostlydragon said:

Exactly. There is absolutely no way Cersei could be allowed to live but all these people that Tyrion "I wish I had enough poison for the whole pack of you" Lannister was desperate to keep alive would never have been harmed if Dany simply promised the common people that nobody would be harmed if they would open the gates and bring Cersei out for execution, otherwise there would be a sack of the city. That would be the humane way to deal with things. Not that starve the people to initiate a riot stupidity.

You'd think that Jaime would then 'go to the queen and beg her to surrender peacefully'.

Yeah, this. This is what logically would have happened.

Also, I love the bold. Consistency is apparently for eighth graders, too. Too bad eighth graders weren't writing the show.

[Le Cygne]

On 5/20/2020 at 11:41 PM, SeanF said:

I guess it would have made Jon look bad, but then, they had already trashed Jon's character throughout Season 8 anyway.

I agree with your point but wanted to comment that they trashed Jon long before season 8.

They always had this petty jealousy of Jon, like they did of Jamie, since the women in the audience liked them. This was ramped up in season 6.

If you look at the rants threads from then, many were complaining about how dumb they made Jon after the invasion of the body snatchers stole Sansa from her own story.

Jon is a gaping fool who is manipulated left and right by Sandra, then finally manipulated into kinslaying by a kinslayer. And he just screams while a ninja turtle saves the day.

Authors carefully choose to put certain people in certain storylines. The author carefully decides what characters interact and how this happens to tell their story.

Enter Benioff/Weiss. Here's a female body and we don't like her anyway, so let's just plop her body here. Thus years of careful plotting in the books is destroyed.

And they screwed Jon over even before then.

In season 5, he dies for Olly instead of Arya. That's incompetent screenwriting (they established in season 1 how much he cared about Arya then dropped it until season 8).

They passed up a chance they were given to follow up with Arya, for Olly. Olly is a flash in the pan. Arya is gold. They do that a lot, undermine something important for nothing at all.

They are given gold and instead say let's go with a handful of dirt instead.

They love the handful of dirt because they made it up themselves (Talisa, Olly, Sandra, Pod the Sex God, etc.) So they run through GRRM's story like a bull in a china shop.

[SeanF]

1 hour ago, Le Cygne said:

I agree with your point but wanted to comment that they trashed Jon long before season 8.

They always had this petty jealousy of Jon, like they did of Jamie, since the women in the audience liked them. This was ramped up in season 6.

If you look at the rants threads from then, many were complaining about how dumb they made Jon after the invasion of the body snatchers stole Sansa from her own story.

Jon is a gaping fool who is manipulated left and right by Sandra, then finally manipulated into kinslaying by a kinslayer. And he just screams while a ninja turtle saves the day.

Authors carefully choose to put certain people in certain storylines. The author carefully decides what characters interact and how this happens to tell their story.

Enter Benioff/Weiss. Here's a female body and we don't like her anyway, so let's just plop her body here. Thus years of careful plotting in the books is destroyed.

And they screwed Jon over even before then.

In season 5, he dies for Olly instead of Arya. That's incompetent screenwriting (they established in season 1 how much he cared about Arya then dropped it until season 8).

They passed up a chance they were given to follow up with Arya, for Olly. There's no payoff with Olly. They do that a lot. They undermine something important for nothing at all.

They are given gold and instead say let's go with a handful of dirt instead.

They love the handful of dirt because they made it up themselves (Talisa, Olly, Sandra, Pod the Sex God, etc.) So they run through GRRM's story like a bull in a china shop.

It's shocking, when you look back at it.

I regret that I (sort of) despite my acceptance of all your criticisms, somehow thought they would pull out all the stops to make Season 8 good.   Well, we got good CGI, and outstanding music, but characterisation and plotting were thrown down the pan.

[Le Cygne]

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

It's shocking, when you look back at it.

I regret that I (sort of) despite my acceptance of all your criticisms, somehow thought they would pull out all the stops to make Season 8 good.   Well, we got good CGI, and outstanding music, but characterisation and plotting were thrown down the pan.

Sometimes I would say things like surely they will follow up and fix mistakes. Surely. (Don't call me Shirley!) We basically dared them to do the right thing. And they failed spectacularly.

Like surely you won't take away Sansa's choices about who she's with, then never let her be with anyone at all. Surely you won't use the final season to justify your ridiculously bad mistakes.

Surely you won't turn Cersei into "just a girl who needs the comfort of a man" and have her death be yet another villain anticlimax. Surely you learned when everyone hated the death of Littlefinger.

Surely you won't let Jon just stand by and scream in the climactic battle with his series long adversary. Surely there will be some meaning to his journey other than ending up where he began.

Surely you won't close with Tyrion arranging chairs and talking brothels because that's not only boring as hell but also a really nasty message about women to go with all the zillion other ones.

Surely you won't turn Dany, a well-loved character, into Satan. Surely.

And so on... That people had ideas based on the story about how things would go, then realized they just threw the whole story away in the end... don't regret that. It shows how much they failed.

[SeanF]

30 minutes ago, Le Cygne said:

Sometimes I would say things like surely they will follow up and fix mistakes. Surely. (Don't call me Shirley!) We basically dared them to do the right thing. And they failed spectacularly.

Like surely you won't take away Sansa's choices about who she's with, then never let her be with anyone at all. Surely you won't use the final season to justify your ridiculously bad mistakes.

Surely you won't turn Cersei into "just a girl who needs the comfort of a man" and have her death be yet another villain anticlimax. Surely you learned when everyone hated the death of Littlefinger.

Surely you won't let Jon just stand by and scream in the climactic battle with his series long adversary. Surely there will be some meaning to his journey other than ending up where he began.

Surely you won't close with Tyrion arranging chairs and talking brothels because that's not only boring as hell but also a really nasty message about women to go with all the zillion other ones.

Surely you won't turn Dany, a well-loved character, into Satan. Surely.

And so on... That people had ideas based on the story about how things would go, then realized they just threw the whole story away in the end... don't regret that. It shows how much they failed.

So many people say, a year on, and in the middle of a pandemic "What's the point of rewatching?"

Why would anyone want to re-watch the stories of Jon, or Dany, or Jaime, or Sansa, or Tyrion, knowing this is where they end up?

[Cas Stark]

2 hours ago, SeanF said:

It's shocking, when you look back at it.

I regret that I (sort of) despite my acceptance of all your criticisms, somehow thought they would pull out all the stops to make Season 8 good.   Well, we got good CGI, and outstanding music, but characterisation and plotting were thrown down the pan.

I don't think anyone, including those ranters who had been criticizing the show harshly since at least season 5, thought that 8 would be the clusterfuck it turned out to be, for exactly that reason, a good season, even a season that was up to 5 or 6 seasons mediocre w/a few good things, would have let the show end as a triumph, all of its flaws would have continued to be glossed over.  Season 7 was also almost pure trash and it wasn't even severely criticized.  So, surely, the biggest show arguably in TV history, would not be a literal train wreck, trash from beginning to end, that would be impossible.  

[The Dragon Demands]

yeah

[Mystical]

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

Why would anyone want to re-watch the stories of Jon, or Dany, or Jaime, or Sansa, or Tyrion, knowing this is where they end up?

I actually wouldn't mind a re-watch of the first 4 Seasons even if some stuff in those just doesn't work. But I'm very good at compartmentalizing and able to put S5-8 out of my mind. And I understand not everyone can do that. IMO it's made easier by the fact that the end of S4 actually feels like an ending of a book, if you will. All the characters are in new situations or off to new locations.

The Starks: Sansa is in the Vale with LF. Arya off on a boat to Braavos. Bran finally arrived at the Tree. Jon is gaining prestige/power at the wall. Tyrion also leaves Westeros. Trouble arrives for Dany in Slaver's Bay. The Tyrell/Lannister power struggle starts kicking into high gear.

It's like pretending that a second book never came out because it was written by someone else. Or a sequel to a movie that was absolutely garbage just doesn't exist. That's how I see S5-8.

[Cas Stark]

8 minutes ago, Mystical said:

I actually wouldn't mind a re-watch of the first 4 Seasons even if some stuff in those just doesn't work. But I'm very good at compartmentalizing and able to put S5-8 out of my mind. And I understand not everyone can do that. IMO it's made easier by the fact that the end of S4 actually feels like an ending of a book, if you will. All the characters are in new situations or off to new locations.

The Starks: Sansa is in the Vale with LF. Arya off on a boat to Braavos. Bran finally arrived at the Tree. Jon is gaining prestige/power at the wall. Tyrion also leaves Westeros. Trouble arrives for Dany in Slaver's Bay. The Tyrell/Lannister power struggle starts kicking into high gear.

It's like pretending that a second book never came out because it was written by someone else. Or a sequel to a movie that was absolutely garbage just doesn't exist. That's how I see S5-8.

I agree, I've rewatched all or parts of 1-4 several times.  I have never rewatched seasons 5-8, outside of the ep. where Cersei blows up the Sept, the loot train ep and 'the bells' for CGI drogon.

You could almost make the case that 1-4 and 5-8 are two different shows, 1-4 is the densely plotted, snappy dialogue, striking and realistic characters that made the show famous.  5-8 is ?something else? a very expensive vehicle for a handful of affecting scenes. 

[Angel Eyes]

On 5/23/2020 at 12:00 PM, Le Cygne said:

Yeah, this. This is what logically would have happened.

Also, I love the bold. Consistency is apparently for eighth graders, too. Too bad eighth graders weren't writing the show.

Consistency is for more than eighth graders. The NFL loves it, and it was one of the biggest knocks on Eli Manning that he wasn’t particularly consistent. As a lifelong Giants fan, I would know.

[SeanF]

9 hours ago, The Dragon Demands said:

The Euron actor recently did a podcast in which he allegedly makes blunt criticisms of the TV show, as in the year since the finale, he actually read all the books (or rather, listened to them on audiobook).

Unfortunately, the podcast is in Danish.  Does anyone know Danish well enough to make cited quotes from this?  Or know other people who in turn known Danish?

https://www.reddit.com/r/naath/comments/gop1w3/spoilers_main_euron_greyjoy_speaks_out/

@Ran @Linda

One poster has made this translation:-

“”I got into the books late and when I started I read the about Crow’s Eye (Euron Greyjoy) to get a feel of who my character was. And I was about to explode.  He is the coolest character ever. He is demonic. He is merciless he has magic. He has killed everyone. He has no moral. He cut out everyone’a tongues and they accepted it. . He dranks Shade of the Evening so his lips are purple he has an eye patch. Fuck yeah! I get to have an eyepatch!. Mads Mikkelsen did ten roles with eyepatches and now I get mine! . And then I get to the meeting with Dan and David and they say: “It’s too cliche. No eyepatch. And no blue shade”. And I don’t want...I was just hired for the world’s biggest tv series so I don’t want to be like “Eh guys...” So I just go “Yes yes “ and then I get the role and he is just a semi horny pirate” He goes onto talk about his first scene which the host remarks was good. To which Pilou answers: “That was quotes from the book. That’s what was so annoying. We did the first scene, which is quotes from the book and then we do the King’s Moat” He proceeds to make an exasperated fart like noice here. You know the sound you make to symbolise something you love getting absolutely recked. And then he says: “And then we basically rebooted the character in season seven and eight and I thought: “Everyone hates this character anyway, so I might as well have fun”. He continues thus: “I loved it until season five. After that I became a part of it and I have only seen my own scenes in after editing” . I didn’t care anymore and I didn’t want to watch it” He proceeds with: “I’ve started to listen to the books and think “Holy fucking shit. This is good. What have we done”. The host also proceeds to point out that Tyrion’s dialogue has gone to shit too. You’re very welcome

[SeanF]

14 hours ago, Le Cygne said:

I agree with your point but wanted to comment that they trashed Jon long before season 8.

They always had this petty jealousy of Jon, like they did of Jamie, since the women in the audience liked them. This was ramped up in season 6.

If you look at the rants threads from then, many were complaining about how dumb they made Jon after the invasion of the body snatchers stole Sansa from her own story.

Jon is a gaping fool who is manipulated left and right by Sandra, then finally manipulated into kinslaying by a kinslayer. And he just screams while a ninja turtle saves the day.

Authors carefully choose to put certain people in certain storylines. The author carefully decides what characters interact and how this happens to tell their story.

Enter Benioff/Weiss. Here's a female body and we don't like her anyway, so let's just plop her body here. Thus years of careful plotting in the books is destroyed.

And they screwed Jon over even before then.

In season 5, he dies for Olly instead of Arya. That's incompetent screenwriting (they established in season 1 how much he cared about Arya then dropped it until season 8).

They passed up a chance they were given to follow up with Arya, for Olly. Olly is a flash in the pan. Arya is gold. They do that a lot, undermine something important for nothing at all.

They are given gold and instead say let's go with a handful of dirt instead.

They love the handful of dirt because they made it up themselves (Talisa, Olly, Sandra, Pod the Sex God, etc.) So they run through GRRM's story like a bull in a china shop.

Compare "Ed, fetch me a block," with "Olly, get my sword."

[Timm]

On 5/20/2020 at 7:38 PM, The Dragon Demands said:

For those curious about it, these are the two videos I recently made using clips from the Blu-ray commentaries:

I'm posting them in reverse order, because the one from 8.5 is a short 3 minute watch, while the 8.4 one is almost half an hour, and actually 3 separate clips intercut with my own comments.

 

The basic theory is this: 

 

(Huge snip)
 

I like this theory, that they had a half decent plan, that they then self sabotaged.

But why? 

With regards to Cersei and her vanishing pregnancy, they do have form. It may have been an accident that they set up Gendry as the true born heir, but set him up they did, and then they ignored what they had done (except perhaps a final nod, where he is legitimised).

How many children did Scarlett o'Hara have?