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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 Fattest Leech

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...I wonder all the time how things would have played out if there was no pandemic, which sort of put news reporting about this on pause. No one making public appearances to be barraged with questions. Since Season 8 aired, they basically just made one heavily scripted appearance at the Emmys....that's it. Then the pandemic hit. 
 

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2 hours ago, Count Balerion said:

yeah, bad enough asking GOT actors about it. actors in HOTD have nada to do w/ it.

i expected season 8 to be bad in the sense of being sloppy and illogical. i did NOT expect dany's character to be completely ruined.

Jon's character too.  He was made spineless, weak, and stupid, before finishing as a kinslayer.  That answers TDD's question about why the final season flopped (on top of all the other problems. ) People who were invested in Jon were appalled by what they did to him (obviously, there's a big overlap between fans of both Jon and Dany).  Jaime's character was trashed, too, and he had a reasonable-sized following. 

In terms of how it ended, only fans of the Stark siblings, or Tyrion, or people who passionately loathe Daenerys had reason to be happy (and many of them disliked the show for other reasons) .  That's a limited segment of the fandom.

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5 hours ago, SeanF said:

Jon's character too.  He was made spineless, weak, and stupid, before finishing as a kinslayer.  That answers TDD's question about why the final season flopped (on top of all the other problems. ) People who were invested in Jon were appalled by what they did to him (obviously, there's a big overlap between fans of both Jon and Dany).  Jaime's character was trashed, too, and he had a reasonable-sized following. 

In terms of how it ended, only fans of the Stark siblings, or Tyrion, or people who passionately loathe Daenerys had reason to be happy (and many of them disliked the show for other reasons) .  That's a limited segment of the fandom.

Exactly. They took it too far and ruined the most popular characters. They could get away with it in s5 and s6 because popular characters like Stannis, Ser Barristan and the Blackfish weren't loved by the majority of the audience like Jon, Dany and Jaime were.

S8 had so much wrong with it but it is usually the destruction of beloved characters that usually hits the hardest. 

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8 minutes ago, Ghostlydragon said:

Exactly. They took it too far and ruined the most popular characters. They could get away with it in s5 and s6 because popular characters like Stannis, Ser Barristan and the Blackfish weren't loved by the majority of the audience like Jon, Dany and Jaime were.

S8 had so much wrong with it but it is usually the destruction of beloved characters that usually hits the hardest. 

They could at least have tried to give the audience good, cheesy, fun in later seasons, even if the quality did not match that of the first four seasons.

I can remember looking forward to Season 7 on DVD, having seen highlights online, and then thinking at the end "is that it?"  I realised that the highlights which I'd seen online were the only parts worth watching (the Field of Fire, poisoning the Freys, Olenna's confrontation with Jaime, and Cersei's confrontation with Ellaria).  I kept scratching my head over why people rallied to Cersei after the massacre at the Great Sept;  why was there this reluctance to hit the Red Keep and end the war;  why weren't Jon and Dany actually negotiating with each other at Dragonstone;  why were Sansa and Arya apparently on the point of killing each other;  why did they agree the stupid wight hunt, and how on earth can Gendry and Dany travel at the speed of light;  why did they trust someone as untrustworthy as Cersei?  

But, sunk cost and all that, I thought they would pull out all the stops to make Season 8 good.  And, was I wrong.  

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9 hours ago, SeanF said:

Jon's character too.  He was made spineless, weak, and stupid, before finishing as a kinslayer.  That answers TDD's question about why the final season flopped (on top of all the other problems. ) People who were invested in Jon were appalled by what they did to him (obviously, there's a big overlap between fans of both Jon and Dany).  Jaime's character was trashed, too, and he had a reasonable-sized following. 

In terms of how it ended, only fans of the Stark siblings, or Tyrion, or people who passionately loathe Daenerys had reason to be happy (and many of them disliked the show for other reasons) .  That's a limited segment of the fandom.

There’s a joke that Catelyn wrote the ending so that all the Stark kids get what they want while Jon gets the boot.

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On 6/3/2021 at 2:39 PM, Count Balerion said:

EC: "he just doesn't like women, does he? he keeps f***ing killing them."

The same could be said of Tyrion. Tyrion to Jon about Dany: "I loved her too, though not as successfully as you." Another creepy Benioff/Weiss line.

So Shae, Dany... if you don't love Tyrion, you get killed. Sansa didn't love him, either, but Benioff/Weiss had already killed her for him, a time long ago.

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51 minutes ago, Le Cygne said:

The same could be said of Tyrion. Tyrion to Jon about Dany: "I loved her too, though not as successfully as you." Another creepy Benioff/Weiss line.

So Shae, Dany... if you don't love Tyrion, you get killed. Sansa didn't love him, either, but Benioff/Weiss had already killed her for him, a time long ago.

Jon killed Daenerys, not Tyrion. Though Tyrion bears some measure of responsibility for persuading Jon to do it.

As far as who Sansa loves, I’m not sure outside of Joffrey and we all know what happened with that. By the end of ASOS Sansa’s seemingly accepted that no one loves her and she’s trying to make stuff up in her head to stave off loneliness, like the UnKiss.

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11 hours ago, SeanF said:

Jon's character too.  He was made spineless, weak, and stupid, before finishing as a kinslayer.  That answers TDD's question about why the final season flopped (on top of all the other problems. ) People who were invested in Jon were appalled by what they did to him (obviously, there's a big overlap between fans of both Jon and Dany).  Jaime's character was trashed, too, and he had a reasonable-sized following. 

In terms of how it ended, only fans of the Stark siblings, or Tyrion, or people who passionately loathe Daenerys had reason to be happy (and many of them disliked the show for other reasons) .  That's a limited segment of the fandom.

Tyrion used Jon to kill Dany, which destroyed Jon. Jon was the chump of the century.

Lots of Stark fans were not happy, too. It's more like sunk costs, you might say, well, at least they didn't die, or at least they aren't being actively tortured... but that's not saying much. They were all empty and alone.

Making Sansa, who they gutted, queen of the extras is pretty damn empty. They gave her a tiara to buy her silence for the hatchet job they did on her. It's not that easy to buy the silence of the viewers, though.

They hated Jon, too, they used the Sandra monster to destroy his story. There are a ton of complaints about that in the episode rants threads in season 6. Then Arya joined in to rob him in season 8.

The Jon and Arya relationship that they cheated to show again in a single moment in season 8 when they parted was one of the best ones in the books, and that was gutted to the detriment of the overall story.

And supporting characters of the Starks, like Sandor for Sansa, and Gendry for Arya, and Val for Jon, were robbed of their relevance when the Stark stories were destroyed. There was a snowball effect.

As for Jaime, he and Sansa had it the worst of it of the mains, I think. Jaime was gutted to build up Cersei. Sansa was gutted to build up Tyrion. Rather than let them make choices of their own, the show cut them off at the knees.

One could go on... Basically no one was happy with how the show ended.

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The tried to whitewash Varys because they destroyed his story. They simplified Jaime until there was not much left. ( he did charge a dragon and Dany, rather futilely) Tyrion was gutted. They limited skin changing because it’s expensive and difficult to portray.

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Regarding skinchanging, that was a huge loss to the story. They didn't like magic, they tried to cut as much as possible. The showrunners of a fantasy adaptation didn't care for fantasy.

They showed skin changing with Orell, it was cheap and easy. His eyes changed (easy to show), and they showed the eagle, then people talked about it happening. Done.

They could have shown it with Arya and Jon, with some key shots that didn't require special effects. Cut to "wolf" dogs among smaller trees, cut back to the characters, talk about it.

They certainly could have made it play into season 8, that was a big complaint. They said how Bran was soooo special, but they didn't show it in any meaningful way.

Expense is a poor excuse for a show like this, that wasted so much money on things nobody could see, that had no lasting relevance to the overall story at all.

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2 hours ago, The Dragon Demands said:

I'm really annoyed they cut out both Arya and Jon Snow being skinchangers. Didn't they love "Badass Arya"? Why not focus on her more like that?

Perhaps to them, more physical stuff is cooler, like jumping Snowy Darth Maul is cooler than sharing minds with animals. Though by that token Cersei should have had an epic duel with Arya…

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yes weird. maybe to save on CGI? though they were wasteful in other ways.

it is odd that starks, despite getting a "good" ending, all end up apart. well whether jon gets a good ending is doubtful. he did get several mnutes of no dialogue at the end, which i *guess* is good?

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6 hours ago, Prince of the North said:

They were set up for practically no-brainer success if they'd just stuck to doing things "by the book" (both literally and figuratively).  But they went out of their way and worked very hard to squander it all.

Indeed, the book scenes are often written like screenplays, there's so much there than could have been lifted straight out. They had plenty of time, and a huge budget.

Time was the thing they needed, and they had it. Filming it in a movie or even a few movies, that was the thing that couldn't be done. They had every possible resource to do this.

They are the ones who cut the episodes and seasons short, they could have gone on for years, HBO wanted them to, and GRRM himself said he wished they would have.

Changing basic things for no reason makes no sense, he'd worked it all out for them. They should have been creative in the way they presented the story, but stuck to the story.

LOTR extended version captured the essence of the story in about 11 hours. That's one normal season of GoT. GoT wasted so much time all along, then cut things short.

Someone who knew what they were doing could have done a nice job of capturing the essence of this story in the years they were given, with the vast resources they were given.

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6 hours ago, The Dragon Demands said:

I'm really annoyed they cut out both Arya and Jon Snow being skinchangers. Didn't they love "Badass Arya"? Why not focus on her more like that?

It would have definitely added to her badassery. And it could have been shown. They could have let the acting, the reactions, tell much of the story. "These faces" was just another empty line.

Making excuses for these showrunners is a silly thing to do. A talented filmmaker has many ways of telling stories. It doesn't have to be literal and spelled out. Things can be suggested.

To say that this or that is not possible is to ignore the many who show things on film creatively all the time. Film is a very rich medium for telling stories, if you know what you are doing.

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On 6/5/2021 at 7:37 PM, HoodedCrow said:

They were already having trouble with coherence. Having skinchanging would require a lot of point of view changes.

By the way, do you think GRRM was influenced by the Once and Future King?

In that love and desire (romantic, familial, etc.) causes trouble for everyone? Yes, multiple cases. As Lancelot's love for Guinevere causes the downfall of Camelot:

  • Rhaegar's love for Lyanna (if it was indeed love) causes the downfall of his family and the decimation of hers,
  • Catelyn's love for her children leads her into being duped into starting a war and later freeing Jaime, her family's only bargaining chip, leaving nothing to hold his family back from killing her, Robb, and Talisa,
  • Robb's love for Talisa (show only) directly causes his death because he broke the marriage pact with Walder Frey,
  • Sansa's love for Joffrey blinds her to his vile nature so that once she realizes what he is, she's trapped in an abusive relationship,
  • Jaime's brotherly and romantic love for Cersei led to him committing treason by siring three children on her and later led to his death because he was unwilling to let her die in King's Landing;
  • Tyrion's love for Shae blinds him to the possibility that she would betray him,
  • Loras and Renly's mutual devotion causes them to declare the latter King, unnecessarily complicating the succession crisis.
  • (Show only)Brienne's love and loyalty to Renly drive her to seek petty revenge against the wounded and defenseless Stannis, nearly causing her charge Sansa to be captured and tortured to death.
  • Ned and Jon's desire to protect the innocent (Robert's "children" in Ned's case, everyone in Jon's case) leads directly to their deaths. In the former case Ned's choice to play fair with Cersei directly causes his death.
  • (Show only) Jon's love for Daenerys blinds him to what she could do if in the worst emotional state.
  • (Show only) Ellaria's love for her paramour Oberyn leads her to murder an innocent young girl, overthrow Oberyn's family, and eventually the deaths of her paramour's daughters, including her own daughter Tyene (plus probably hers)
  • Conversely, Bran the Three-Eyed Raven, the man who loves nobody, winds up on top.
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