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!

[Count Balerion]

dorne chapter: one reason the Ds did dorne was that they've got their "approach to life" figured out -- appparently meaning all the free love. one of the showrunners says "we didn't get bonus points" for being strictly faiithful to the books, and that where they had a choice between staying close to the books and "what's good for the series", they went with the latter.

martin wanted lady stoneheart in, b/c she shows how death changes ppl. the D-chaps "can't go into details" about this decision, because of spoilers -- never mind that they've already spoiled a fair bit! direwolves are hard. nymeria becomes, so to speak, her own person, like arya (in the books arya's tie to nymeria is so strong that she can see through her wolf's eyes across the narrow sea.) why all this is in the dorne chapter i'm not sure.

needless to say, they had real scorpions; the "70 live horses" syndrome. the book does not mention that they filmed the bad fight scene in a UNESCO heritage site. the WASHINGTON POST complained dorne was the same thing over and over again. the fight scene was complex b/c GOT had set a "high bar" (really?). it seems the book does mention "Night for Day". obara's breastplate was "... um ... tweaked". no comment!

there weren't a lot of ways to cram in dorne; but it's important b/c of the sex. also for the "organic reason" that they have to have diversity. (the show was rather rubbish at diversity, so this feels like an ex post facto justification.)  but the showrunners conclude they shouldn't have included it b/c there wasn't time. no comment to that either. oh hang it. not having time  was their choice.

 

[Le Cygne]

On 12/28/2020 at 6:23 AM, Ghostlydragon said:

I do wonder if the real reason Sansa was given to Ramsay was as punishment for rejecting St Tyrion. Obv Sansa couldn't be with Tyrion because of book 3 and where Tyrion ends up later, but when they had the chance to change things was this their chance to punish Sansa for rejecting him?

For all their talk about making Sansa a player (because obviously learning politics in the Vale isn't interesting) and wanting an important recognisable person in Theon's story, were they really just bitter that an attractive girl didn't want their self insert and had to pay for it?

Of course they would never admit that but is it true?

Yes!

On 12/28/2020 at 3:01 PM, The Dragon Demands said:

@Ghostlydragon I don’t think so.
 

The driving factor was always “give the biggest, meatiest scenes to the core actors so they’ll win Emmy awards, which means that vicariously WE win Emmy awards”.  
 

Was that an added bonus?  I’ve seen no hard evidence.  But this is why you have FULL WRITERS ROOMS, so one narcissistic man-child doesn’t project his personal whims onto the characters!

But they weren't "meaty" scenes at all. After praising St. Tyrion, she said and did nothing. They literally used her as a body. They faded to black without showing her face. They had a rapist say rape makes her a woman, something even the worst pieces of trash have never done, and they refused to allow her the dignity to refute that, even if only to the audience. That was never challenged, and in fact, they did it again in season 8, when they made her thank a rapist for making her a woman.

It's true they can't write and they made the characters = the actors out of sheer laziness and ineptitude, but let's not overlook, they cut Sansa's own story to body-swap her for Ramsay's silent victim number 20 (while glorifying Ramsay, who they called a "bad-ass"). They could have written Sansa great scenes, BUT THEY DID NOT. They could have let her have her own story, where she bested Littlefinger, playing the Game of Thrones. Those would have been the kind of scenes that win Emmys.

Why didn't they use Arya as Fake Arya, if it was to give out Emmy moments, they like Arya better. Because Ramsay's silent victim number 20 is not Emmy moments. Just because they say something in an interview or in commentary, that doesn't make it true. They lie, a lot. A lot of time, they are just making excuses for their nastiness.

[SeanF]

2 minutes ago, Le Cygne said:

Yes!

But they weren't "meaty" scenes at all. After praising St. Tyrion, she said and did nothing. They literally used her as a body. They faded to black without showing her face. They had a rapist say rape makes her a woman, something even the worst pieces of trash have never done, and they refused to allow her the dignity to refute that, even if only to the audience. That was never challenged, and in fact, they did it again in season 8, when they made her thank a rapist for making her a woman.

It's true they can't write and they made the characters = the actors out of sheer laziness and ineptitude, but let's not overlook, they cut Sansa's own story to body-swap her for Ramsay's silent victim number 20 (Ramsay, who they called a "bad-ass"). They could have written Sansa great scenes, BUT THEY DID NOT. They could have let her have her own story, where she bested Littlefinger, playing the Game of Thrones. Those would have been the kind of scenes that win Emmys.

Why didn't they use Arya as Fake Arya, if it was to give out Emmy moments, they like Arya better. Because Ramsay's silent victim number 10 is not Emmy moments. Just because they say something in an interview or in commentary, that doesn't make it true. They lie, a lot. A lot of time, they are just making excuses for their nastiness.

Sansa was thanking “badass” Ramsay not just for rape, but for torture that left everything but her face disfigured.  They really are two pieces of shit.

[Le Cygne]

4 hours ago, SeanF said:

Sansa was thanking “badass” Ramsay not just for rape, but for torture that left everything but her face disfigured.  They really are two pieces of shit.

Yeah, they did that, too. They weren't content to just leave it vague, or end it after they punished her initially (which they certainly could have done). No, they made it endless torture, to the point months later, she couldn't even EXIST without great pain. And they had her spell out the torture in detail, to Littlefinger of all people. They take Sansa hate to quite the extreme.

She gained nothing, he played her in that scene, and he continued to play her. They had her say how stupid she was, even when someone finally told her to stop playing into his hands, she said she was a slow learner, then she honored his "love" for her after he was dead, then thanked him for sex trafficking her and thus making her a woman. They are so nasty.

What they did to her was a Sansa hater's wish list. We've all seen the Sansa hate threads. She didn't appreciate Tyrion so she must pay. Sansa rejected their beloved self-insert, so they made her pay. The proof is in the scene where she honors St. Tyrion, and right on cue, the despicable ones they were playing to said "well, she should have appreciated him"!

[SeanF]

19 minutes ago, Le Cygne said:

Yeah, they did that, too. They weren't content to just leave it vague, or end it after they punished her initially (which they certainly could have done). No, they made it endless torture, to the point months later, she couldn't even EXIST without great pain. And they had her spell out the torture in detail, to Littlefinger of all people. They take Sansa hate to quite the extreme.

She gained nothing, he played her in that scene, and he continued to play her. They had her say how stupid she was, even when someone finally told her to stop playing into his hands, she said she was a slow learner, then she honored his "love" for her after he was dead, then thanked him for sex trafficking her and thus making her a woman. They are so nasty.

What they did to her was a Sansa hater's wish list. We've all seen the Sansa hate threads. She didn't appreciate Tyrion so she must pay. Sansa rejected their beloved self-insert, so they made her pay. The proof is in the scene where she honors St. Tyrion, and right on cue, the despicable ones they were playing to said "well, she should have appreciated him"!

They were all over the place.  Sansa was brutally tortured, but her torture made her a mature woman, and was ultimately good for her, because it got her her crown.

Sansa, by the end, in the show,  had become a scheming, selfish, woman.  Portrayed correctly, that would have been very sad, showing someone so brutalised that she saw only two alternatives;  either you have a boot ground into your face, or you grind your boot into the face of others.

Or, she could have broken free.  But the two stooges thought Cersei and Littlefinger were role models.

[Le Cygne]

1 hour ago, Count Balerion said:

there weren't a lot of ways to cram in dorne; but it's important b/c of the sex. also for the "organic reason" that they have to have diversity. (the show was rather rubbish at diversity, so this feels like an ex post facto justification.)  but the showrunners conclude they shouldn't have included it b/c there wasn't time. no comment to that either. oh hang it. not having time  was their choice.

LOL, sex is what 13 year old boy showrunners call random boob shots. The "bad pussy" line was important!

(Bronn was another of their self-inserts. Any opportunity to have women adore him or Tyrion was important.)

[Wall Flower]

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

They were all over the place.  Sansa was brutally tortured, but her torture made her a mature woman, and was ultimately good for her, because it got her her crown.

Sansa, by the end, in the show,  had become a scheming, selfish, woman.  Portrayed correctly, that would have been very sad, showing someone so brutalised that she saw only two alternatives;  either you have a boot ground into your face, or you grind your boot into the face of others.

Or, she could have broken free.  But the two stooges thought Cersei and Littlefinger were role models.

I found show Sansa really unlikeable by the end. Among some of things I really hated were her character

- betraying Jon's secret without a second thought

 - bitching in the crypts about Dany and her army while they were outside risking their lives to protect Winterfell

- telling her uncle to sit-down and shut-up at that final council and then laughing uproariously at the mere of idea of small folks having a say in government.

As you say, it could have worked if they'd portrayed the character as becoming understandably more distrustful as a result of her experiences, with her push for northern independence coming out of that but they didn't have the skills to tackle that kind of character depth. Instead her scheming and undiplomatic rudeness was vindicated as magic prescience of Dany's true nature as a bargain basement Hitler and implausibly rewarded with independent queenship despite her brother being king of Westeros.

 

[Le Cygne]

3 hours ago, SeanF said:

They were all over the place.  Sansa was brutally tortured, but her torture made her a mature woman, and was ultimately good for her, because it got her her crown.

Sansa, by the end, in the show,  had become a scheming, selfish, woman.  Portrayed correctly, that would have been very sad, showing someone so brutalised that she saw only two alternatives;  either you have a boot ground into your face, or you grind your boot into the face of others.

Or, she could have broken free.  But the two stooges thought Cersei and Littlefinger were role models.

So basically the stooges (and Cogman makes three) were saying all the darkness is awesome! Then the darkness isn't really dark, since there's no light for contrast. This is an unstory.

There is no no existential crisis leading to enlightenment. There is no enlightenment. There is no dark night of the soul, from which to emerge triumphant. Darkness is awesome.

There is that discontinuity with the first part of the story, though, when dark stuff wasn't celebrated. Ned should have been singing when they cut off his head. Thank you, Joffrey!

[Mystical]

4 hours ago, Wall Flower said:

- betraying Jon's secret without a second thought

 - bitching in the crypts about Dany and her army while they were outside risking their lives to protect Winterfell

- ... and then laughing uproariously at the mere of idea of small folks having a say in government.

Actually none of that happened but I guess it's a matter of interpretation.

2 hours ago, Le Cygne said:

So basically the stooges (and Cogman makes three) were saying all the darkness is awesome! Then the darkness isn't really dark, since there's no light for contrast. This is an unstory.

Well just look how they treated things like revenge, rape or family murder. Those are all awesome things that have no consequences of any kind. Family murder is fun and empowering (just ask Ramsey and Euron). Rape is empowering. Revenge is bad ass and puts a smile on a person's face. Yay.

[SeanF]

2 hours ago, Le Cygne said:

So basically the stooges (and Cogman makes three) were saying all the darkness is awesome! Then the darkness isn't really dark, since there's no light for contrast. This is an unstory.

There is no no existential crisis leading to enlightenment. There is no enlightenment. There is no dark night of the soul, from which to emerge triumphant. Darkness is awesome.

There is that discontinuity with the first part of the story, though, when dark stuff wasn't celebrated. Ned should have been singing when they cut off his head. Thank you, Joffrey!

D & D’s take on the story seems to have been that it was all about bad people trying to outwit each other, and that evil is good.  

[Nevets]

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

D & D’s take on the story seems to have been that it was all about bad people trying to outwit each other, and that evil is good.  

Except for those, like the Starks, who had honor.  Those either died a richly deserved death or saw the error of their ways and turned evil.

[SeanF]

53 minutes ago, Nevets said:

Except for those, like the Starks, who had honor.  Those either died a richly deserved death or saw the error of their ways and turned evil.

Honour was stupid

[Le Cygne]

13 hours ago, SeanF said:

D & D’s take on the story seems to have been that it was all about bad people trying to outwit each other, and that evil is good.  

Yep. They held up evil Cersei as the good example.

Cersei was just a girl who needs the comfort of a man, they said. Cersei only died because Dany didn't have the comfort of a man. So many great messages.

(And they made Dany forget the man who would have murdered anyone who murdered her... which was the case with Viserys, who threatened to do so.)

[Rhodan]

On 12/28/2020 at 8:57 PM, The Dragon Demands said:

To be clear they had nothing to do with the grisly murder. If anything it’s poetic justice on the level of “if you work with corrupt people don’t be surprised if they do something cartoonishly evil - as in cartoonishly stupid”

Of course, I know. Lets just say I had not much love for the project from the get go... And then it went from bad to brutally worse in real life. 

[Le Cygne]

This is the time of year when many are enjoying their annual extended edition LOTR rewatch.

Crickets for GoT, other than the bad ending example, or the butt of a joke about something bad.

[Ran]

These is a rant thread about the TV show. Keep it on topic, please.

[Angel Eyes]

8 hours ago, Le Cygne said:

Yep. They held up evil Cersei as the good example.

Cersei was just a girl who needs the comfort of a man, they said. Cersei only died because Dany didn't have the comfort of a man. So many great messages.

(And they made Dany forget the man who would have murdered anyone who murdered her... which was the case with Viserys, who threatened to do so.)

She didn’t forget him, remember what she said back in Season 7 about what she had to go through to get to where she was?

[Count Balerion]

may not come as a surprise to ppl in this thread; but certainly interesting ... Game of Thrones Ending Cost HBO Half of Its Adult Viewers | CBR

[divica]

On 12/30/2020 at 7:17 PM, Le Cygne said:

This is the time of year when many are enjoying their annual extended edition LOTR rewatch.

Crickets for GoT, other than the bad ending example, or the butt of a joke about something bad.

This is one of the biggest failures of the show.

Something like the LOTR movies created a fandom and people watched those movies yearly for 10 to 15 years. LOTR became a simbol for fatansy projects and made people want to read the books despite knowing the story from the movies.

 

GOT did the exact oposite. It killed it fandom. Very few people want to re-watch the show. At most it became a symbol about what not to do. And if it brought more fans for the books it is people that hope the book story is diferent than the show. However, on the whole I would risk that more people lost interest in the books overall.

[Cas Stark]

2 hours ago, divica said:

This is one of the biggest failures of the show.

Something like the LOTR movies created a fandom and people watched those movies yearly for 10 to 15 years. LOTR became a simbol for fatansy projects and made people want to read the books despite knowing the story from the movies.

 

GOT did the exact oposite. It killed it fandom. Very few people want to re-watch the show. At most it became a symbol about what not to do. And if it brought more fans for the books it is people that hope the book story is diferent than the show. However, on the whole I would risk that more people lost interest in the books overall.

I agree.  The terrible, and stupidly short, final season, combined with the terrible and short season 7 and the poorer quality from 5 onward, killed the show for rewatching and even probably for new viewers.  A good, even a high end mediocre ending I am sure we would have seen tons of blogs and articles about introducing my father/mother/sister/husband/wife to GOT during the pandemic....or 'I rewatched GOT during the pandemic and here are my new insights' type of stories, as well, it would have continued to be a bonanza for HBO.  Instead, it has fallen totally off of everyone's radar.