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Is the quality of this season low?


Mordor

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21 hours ago, Lady Rhodes said:

Some people have valid grievances against the show for changing storylines and plotlines with varying degree of success. I am willing to give the writers a pass on much of this - for the sake of clarity and continuity on a TV show, I get the need to cut and combine.

My big beef is the shortened seasons for 7 and 8.  I think both seasons have been piss poor, frankly, with their narrative storytelling and I think it completely boils down to condensed episodes.  I have ranted about this before, but things like characters having conversations around dinner, traveling, etc. MADE the earlier seasons of the show.  I think that is why Episode 2 of this season is one of the strongest of the past few years (since Season 4, I'd wager) because it went back to the shows roots of slow, small, intimate moments.

The shortened seasons have led to lazier storytelling, in my opinion.

This is literally like people complaining about a restaurant "The food tastes terrible, and the portions are so small."

The shortened season haven't led to lazier storytelling, the shortened season is because of lazy storytelling.  D&D can't write clever and realistic dialogue, all they can do is write filler dialogue that's mostly dick jokes.  That's why you see a huge rehash of earlier season dialogue, that's why you have all the important conversation take place off camera.   They shortened the season because they didn't want to work at writing any of that dialogue, so they filled the season with action, filler dialogue based on nostalgia and jokes.

Lengthening the seasons would not have solved the problem, it would have just meant 3 to 4 more hours of filler.

 

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3 hours ago, Elayis said:

I disliked "The Long Night" as much as any Rant & Raver here, but from a casual fan perspective it's a generic, fan pleasing episode where the good guys win, Arya gets her "girl power" moment and the deaths were expected and a long time coming.

With "The Last of the Starks" however, the character assassinations have hit warp speed. Jaime left Brienne heartbroken, Jon ditched Ghost, everyones plotting to overthrow Dany and Rhaegal & Missendei were brutally killed out of nowhere. 

It's not hard to see that fans had a more visceral reaction to episode 4, as it seems purposefully designed to shock, depress and anger people.

For me, this was the last straw. I've been a hatewatcher for years now, but this was the moment that poisoned any remaining goodwill I had for the early seasons. I can't see myself ever watching this show again once it's finished.

I presume if you're posting here then you are a big fan of the books.

If you hate the show that much, why don't you stop watching it now? You clearly hate this season, and it's unlikely the ending will satisfy you, why spoil the ending on yourself, when you could wait until GRRM finishes the series and get the well woven ending that you crave?

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43 minutes ago, mrtommcandrew said:

I presume if you're posting here then you are a big fan of the books.

If you hate the show that much, why don't you stop watching it now? You clearly hate this season, and it's unlikely the ending will satisfy you, why spoil the ending on yourself, when you could wait until GRRM finishes the series and get the well woven ending that you crave?

With how much things have diverged starting from Season 5, more than 50% of "the ending" being spoiled doesn't really work for me. There are a lot of plots that have been cut from the TV show, and many, many things that have been changed along the way. 

But, a lot of book fans watch the show because it's quite hard to engage in discourse about the book series without being up to date with what happens in the show. Do I know that it's almost certain that the Children were responsible for the Others in the books now? Yes! Do I think that Ellaria will stab Doran and rule Dorne unopposed? No, but the show's worth watching for other reasons.

Anyway, I and many other book fans are not wholly of the mindset that "it's bad because it wasn't in the books." The show fails to be internally consistent with plots such as the Sansa Marriage Strike, Ellaria's coup in Dorne, and the logistical mess that has been Dany and Cersei's battle plans this season. 

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Not only low quality,  but rushed in story.  First, as others have mentioned, the music and the visuals and even the CGI are all fine.  But stories are being rushed at us, discussions are being held off-screen, motives are hard to know and sometimes things do not make sense.  And with all that, D&D made jokes about the Starbuck's cup left in a scene. Like we were all in it, in not having good staff who could find such a glaring error, but we will still watch because we are captive viewers and who really cares.

I care and I have to believe that Martin cares too.

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I mean when they outright go and say in the after the episode that Dany "Forgot about the Iron Fleet" I mean that's just them admitting that they are shit at writing right? I mean what kind of retarded excuse is that, she forgot about her enemies? In what world does that happen when a person is involved in a war. 

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7 hours ago, ShimShim said:

I mean when they outright go and say in the after the episode that Dany "Forgot about the Iron Fleet" I mean that's just them admitting that they are shit at writing right? I mean what kind of retarded excuse is that, she forgot about her enemies? In what world does that happen when a person is involved in a war. 

Yes, imagine Generalfeldmarschall Von Rundstedt forgetting about General Patton while trying to take Antwerp… :bang:

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On 5/7/2019 at 2:12 PM, lakin1013 said:

Not only low quality,  but rushed in story.  First, as others have mentioned, the music and the visuals and even the CGI are all fine.  But stories are being rushed at us, discussions are being held off-screen, motives are hard to know and sometimes things do not make sense.  And with all that, D&D made jokes about the Starbuck's cup left in a scene. Like we were all in it, in not having good staff who could find such a glaring error, but we will still watch because we are captive viewers and who really cares.

I care and I have to believe that Martin cares too.

I'm surprised the story is rushed, considering that they had two years to work all these out.

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22 hours ago, Nowy Tends said:

And rated 6.7 on IMDB. What an achievement.

It already dropped to 6.5 and I think it'll be sinking lower still. I guess they couldn't hide ridiculous plot jumps anymore for the general crowd. I still remember all the calculations to justify Beyond the wall and the teleportation travel. Now it's just too much to glance over and the fan service falls flat on its face.

4 hours ago, Angel Eyes said:

I'm surprised the story is rushed, considering that they had two years to work all these out.

The technical execution took two years but I believe the storyline was always flimsy and they didn't really work that long on it.

I could even imagine D&D wishing it was just one episode. Hear me out: the NK and his WW arrive at WF. The 2 dragons are just left out and they leave open a path towards Bran. The NK strolls in and Arya kills him. Goes a lot faster if they really guide the NK towards Bran. Jon and Dany immediately fly off to KL and they just burn everyone, they're a lost lot anyways. They declare themselves co-regents of the Seven Kingdoms. Voila! It's not good writing but their main intent is there (ridiculous as it is).

Unfortunately they couldn't shorten it like that so they have to add a lot of filler and padding. And D&D are bad at it. Red herrings, dropped prophecies, plot armour, it's all there to stretch it to 6 episodes. And the viewer just keeps on paddling!

Over and over again I see people clamoring for more episodes. You don't get much out of a squeezed lemon, it only leads to more frustration. If there were other writers, sure it could be an amazing 10 episodes, but not with these two burned out writers and HBO just let them stay on. I would have replaced them after season 4. You see in their interviews they just want to leave as fast as possible.

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On 5/7/2019 at 4:57 PM, mrtommcandrew said:

If you hate the show that much, why don't you stop watching it now? You clearly hate this season, and it's unlikely the ending will satisfy you, why spoil the ending on yourself, when you could wait until GRRM finishes the series and get the well woven ending that you crave?

Probably the best advice. Not only because of spoilers for book readers but in general. Because doing something you don't like (but can freely chose to stop at any time) takes up too much time and energy. But i didn't follow that advice myself, so i'm not saying "i did better". I kept watching out of curiosity where the story goes despite not liking various things of the TV adaption since the beginning. I regret it but it was my own inconsequence.

About the quality all has been said. At times too much focus on visual effects and the narration suffered even more than before. It's ironical that the time taken to develop important story moments and character progression was at it's peak in the beginning and now falls short at the end. But considering all the characters in the books and the different settings the story takes places at, for a TV adaption that may have been too much complexity to begin with.

For me one of the biggest issues is that "badass" scenes or "being badass" became more and more important. Now it affects everything. Violence being portrayed as "cool" in certain situations is contradicting the whole purpose. The design of certain characters, the way they acted and talked and how the overall dialogue developed was painful (more and more towards the end).

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ultimately people wanted a degree of happiness in the ending and characters remaining true to their arcs. you can make arguments for all of them and how they acted this season - but it is too depressing and after years of brutal experiences for all the characters, we wanted some hope - especially after the green shoots in season 7.

some characters need treating differently - gently and with care...

all of the characters have been shafted - dany at the top.

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I actually like this season better than 5-7, although we still have the finale to contend with. There’s still a lot of glaring problems, but I prefer the character moments to watching Dany give yet another speech to an adoring crowd, or Arya sweep floors, or Cersei drink wine and smirk into the distance.

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20 minutes ago, robasp2 said:

Lol, I just read 150000 people signed a petition in change.org to reshoot Season 8 with "competent" writers.

Heh, I love that. And it's 300.000 now.

Aside from that that will never happen: for me it also is too late. The cat is out of the bag. We know how the story ends now.

Since D&D claimed show and book have similar endings - only somewhat different ways to get there - it seems GRRM has envisioned his series to end like this too. Which means the whole 'bittersweet like Lord of the Rings' - claim was never in the cards. Instead the series is a pure tragedy. Several tragedies rolled into one story really. Like Romeo & Juliet combined with Apocalypse Now.

What I am aiming at: I don't really want to rewatch an improved version of it. Having seen it once was sad enough.

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6 minutes ago, Amris said:

Heh, I love that. And it's 300.000 now.

Aside from that that will never happen: for me it also is too late. The cat is out of the bag. We know how the story ends now.

Since D&D claimed show and book have similar endings - only somewhat different ways to get there - it seems GRRM has envisioned his series to end like this too. Which means the whole 'bittersweet like Lord of the Rings' - claim was never in the cards. Instead the series is a pure tragedy. Several tragedies rolled into one story really. Like Romeo & Juliet combined with Apocalypse Now.

What I am aiming at: I don't really want to rewatch an improved version of it. Having seen it once was sad enough.

You mean almost 450k have signed the petition. 

https://www.change.org/p/hbo-remake-game-of-thrones-season-8-with-competent-writers

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14 minutes ago, Amris said:

Heh, I love that. And it's 300.000 now.

Aside from that that will never happen: for me it also is too late. The cat is out of the bag. We know how the story ends now.

Since D&D claimed show and book have similar endings - only somewhat different ways to get there - it seems GRRM has envisioned his series to end like this too. Which means the whole 'bittersweet like Lord of the Rings' - claim was never in the cards. Instead the series is a pure tragedy. Several tragedies rolled into one story really. Like Romeo & Juliet combined with Apocalypse Now.

What I am aiming at: I don't really want to rewatch an improved version of it. Having seen it once was sad enough.

Haha.

Yup it's never gonna happen and I doubt I'll watch it too.

But it shows how many people absolutely hate the writers.

Everyone has realized the cast, acting, cinematography, etc are top notch as usual except the pathetic story and dialogues.

Wonder why HBO didn't replace them for Season 7 itself.

Apparently they were fed up and didn't want to do 10 seasons.

Then assign it to someone who is interested. Damn you HBO

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