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4 minutes ago, Pink Fat Rast said:

Well they did con their way into being showrunners with minimal TV experience, and as I just said above, they conned HBO into greenlighting a full-blown fantasy show under the pretense that it wasn't one - or, more precisely, that it wouldn't escalate into one by the end, even though they were planning just that (and got HBO to go along given the high success).

 

They said sth about walking a tight rope and not having "too much fantasy" in there, because that would be perceived as tropey/gimmicky by "everyone outside the fantasy fandom" and they wanted to reach a more universal viewership or something;

however:

1) one wouldn't guess that from the late seasons, and just how "tropey" the fantasy stuff ended up being - Bran and Arya storylines in particular, but everything else too;

1a) neither would one guess that from the pure *amount* of fantasy and mysticism esp. in s6-8 - so it seems like they weren't following their own stated intentions while actually doing the show, and it's just sth from their interviews?

2) this kinda echoes Martin's own statements about the books and how "even at the end it won't be as much magic as in typical fantasy" - maybe they kinda amplified that attitude in those statements, but it's not like it came out of nowhere.

 

Also there's that weird thing I never fully got, how the whole show team (them and at least some of the cast) somehow started imagining themselves as being the ones who were breaking through the "fantasy ghetto" - while constantly talking about Lotr which was... a commercial and critical ultrahit that won an entire Oscar year?

Like how much wider could the audience get lol - other than winning over some fringe "fantasy haters" I guess.

 

So yeah lots of confusion and cognitive dissonance all over the place - I don't really get much of this tbh

I think D&D kind of forgot that fantasy/sci-fi wasn't a genre for "nerds" anymore, it was globally enjoyed by millions of people. Can you name more popular franchises like LOTR, Star Wars and Harry Potter?

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36 minutes ago, Firefae said:

I think D&D kind of forgot that fantasy/sci-fi wasn't a genre for "nerds" anymore, it was globally enjoyed by millions of people. Can you name more popular franchises like LOTR, Star Wars and Harry Potter?

Well they forgot it and some castmembers and a lot of the fans and journos and commentators etc. - some kinda strange collective delusion thing, I don't really get it.

Lindsay Ellis said how "that was true for the cinema world but not the TV one" - don't get that either, are those 2 that separate?

And the Gendry actor said how he was initially reluctant to tell his colleagues/buddies/idk how he got cast in some sorcery show "with dragons" - and *then* it got popular and vindicated; 

even though his s1-2 had no dragons, he was a smith who first stared down Boromir (i.e. a flop character from a flop movie) and then got imprisoned by a pillager army - but I guess he wasn't remembering that during the interview? Everyone's got dementia, what do I know :o

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1 minute ago, Pink Fat Rast said:

Well they forgot it and some castmembers and a lot of the fans and journos and commentators etc. - some kinda strange collective delusion thing, I don't really get it.

Lindsay Ellis said how "that was true for the cinema world but not the TV one" - don't get thag either, are those 2 that separate?

And the Gendry actor said how he was initially reluctant to tell his colleagues/buddies/idk how he got cast in some sorcery show "with dragons" - and *then* it got popular and vindicated; 

even though his s1-2 had no dragons, he was a smith who first stared down Boromir and then got imprisoned by a pillager army - but I guess he wasn't remembering that during the interview? Everyone's got dementia, what do I know :o

For some reason this show gets associated with dragons very fast. They actually don't appear that much, particularly in the first half of the show and they only serve the plot of one storyline until season 7. Is "dragons" just a code for high fantasy?

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8 minutes ago, Firefae said:

For some reason this show gets associated with dragons very fast. They actually don't appear that much, particularly in the first half of the show and they only serve the plot of one storyline until season 7. Is "dragons" just a code for high fantasy?

Dungeons&Dragons seems to be the main franchise associated with the "pre Lotr fantasy ghetto" so maybe lol - but maybe some1 here knows more about this stuff and can post sth about it; 

the whole periphery hype / fandom around this show, the emergence of early memes like the dragon talk etc., isn't really an area I'm that familiar with.

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2 minutes ago, Pink Fat Rast said:

Dungeons&Dragons seems to be the main franchise associated with the "pre Lotr fantasy ghetto" so maybe lol - but maybe some1 here knows more about this stuff and can post sth about it; 

the whole periphery hype / fandom around this show, the emergence of early memes like the dragon talk etc., isn't really an area I'm that familiar with.

I think in the early days the show was kind of promoted as "The Wire set in Middle Earth" and of course way early on there was talk about how this show was not afraid to kill characters of, hence the whole "you win or you die" and "all men must die" taglines. The Red Wedding propably was the straw that kicked off the show into pop culture canon, and the global phenomenon that followed.

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28 minutes ago, Firefae said:

I think in the early days the show was kind of promoted as "The Wire set in Middle Earth" and of course way early on there was talk about how this show was not afraid to kill characters of, hence the whole "you win or you die" and "all men must die" taglines. The Red Wedding propably was the straw that kicked off the show into pop culture canon, and the global phenomenon that followed.

At some point, although not sure whether it was a thing pre Red Wedding, Daenerys (along with the growing dragons and all the great things they're gonna do to change the world etc.) turned into sort of a political(ly charged) heroic symbol in general pop culture, and incl. among people who'd never seen the show - wonder if that may've been connected to the disproportionate dragon hype lol, not sure.

 

And, yeah that whole "Wire/Sopranos in middle earth" (the latter was also D&D's official pitch to HBO) was the worldly non-fantasy Braveheart side of it, probably drawing in fans of historical fiction and crime shows etc. - although I'm not sure if there's really any similarities to Sopranos in there tbh? Some bits echoed 24 a bit (the shocking episode endings esp.), other than that "Braveheart+Spartacus+Tudors" seemed to be a much more fitting description lol

(And btw, this came up in another thread here, but for all the Lotr comparisons made by Grrm and 2D, other than the battles I can't really see many direct resemblances here either - seems like whenever they picked another show/movie to hype GoT, they kept picking the ones least similar to it lol; haven't seen the Wire yet though, so who knows)

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On 8/13/2021 at 5:06 PM, Pink Fat Rast said:

That seems to be an unfounded myth buzzphrase, I don't see how it's true at all  - looks like they were just generally scatterbrained, lazy and tired, across all the storylines.

True.

But no, they have explicitly said that they didn't care about the magic and the prophecies and the themes and deeper meanings. Instead, they wanted to focus on the realism of the story: politics, war, geography, etc.

For all the good that it did/

21 hours ago, Firefae said:

There are some people who think Benioff is a pathological liar and a narc, and that they conned their way into making this show. I wouldn't be surprised.

Benioff is a narc and they did con their way into making this show.

Things may be a little different now but if D&D were not affluent, connected youthful white guys, they would have never gotten this opportunity. They don't have much of any experience in anything pertaining to what you would need to be a showrunner: not in writing, not in directing, not in producing, not in adapting, not in camerawork, not in stagecraft and VFX. Nada.

Yep. Nor would they have ever gotten carte blanche and they would've lost their jobs or been demoted instead being given numerous passes. The show had been controversial and criticized for a while. It would've been much harsher had they looked different, had different connections or a different background.

I'd even go so far as to venture that if it was one single unknown person (instead of a unknown duo) who approached Martin or HBO with the desire and wherewithal to take on the show, they would've been denied.

Only the biggest of the big names (Peter Jackson, Alfonzo Cuaron, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Martin Scorcese, Mel Gibson, etc.) would've gotten the go-ahead but that was impossible given how busy they all are.

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18 hours ago, Pink Fat Rast said:

Lindsay Ellis said how "that was true for the cinema world but not the TV one" - don't get that either, are those 2 that separate?

To her credit (and that of many others who worked on the show), that statement is very true.

  1. Cinema and TV were two very different worlds up until about 2012. Walking Dead and Game of Thrones as well as the advent of Netflix and the disappearance of Blockbuster helped usher in a golden age. Now, thanks to COVID-19, cinema and TV are two sides of the same coin.
  2. TV fantasy - particularly the "dungeons, dragons and doom" type - was undeveloped and scorned. Buffy was the exception not the rule and Buffy had been over and done with for 10 years. And Buffy was very niche and didn't even fall into the medieval magical fantasy category. A closer parallel would be Xena or those other old sword & sandal TV shows from the 80s....which were camp. Xena was cool but again: not dungeons and dragons.
  3. Although cinema was the place for high fantasy, almost all of the biggest fantasy hits of the late 20th and early 21st history revolved around space operas and family-friendly magical epics. Not even cinema would touch the medieval aesthetic, much less the dungeon and dragons thing. The closest thing to it was LOTR...a step in the right direction but still more family-friendly than the typical dungeon and dragon tale.

So yeah. People like Lindsay Ellis have a big point.

18 hours ago, Firefae said:

For some reason this show gets associated with dragons very fast. They actually don't appear that much, particularly in the first half of the show and they only serve the plot of one storyline until season 7. Is "dragons" just a code for high fantasy?

Well, the big moment in the finale of the first series revolved around the triumphant return of dragons. So yes, the cornerstone of the show became dragons.

And yes: dragons are a staple in high fantasy.

On 8/13/2021 at 5:05 PM, the Other Wolf said:

I apologize. 

I could have reacted to you questioning my knowledge of this better.

I could have also stated it was a book only forum in order to help others understand the root of my post. Especially since it was bound to be moved.

I thought highlighting the section referencing the show followed by my comment was pretty straight forward and not meant as veiled or passive aggressive. 

:cheers:

I apologize too. And yes, I understand lol...

We're good now. No bad blood :)

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16 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

True.

But no, they have explicitly said that they didn't care about the magic and the prophecies and the themes and deeper meanings. Instead, they wanted to focus on the realism of the story: politics, war, geography, etc.

For all the good that it did/

Benioff is a narc and they did con their way into making this show.

Things may be a little different now but if D&D were not affluent, connected youthful white guys, they would have never gotten this opportunity. They don't have much of any experience in anything pertaining to what you would need to be a showrunner: not in writing, not in directing, not in producing, not in adapting, not in camerawork, not in stagecraft and VFX. Nada.

Yep. Nor would they have ever gotten carte blanche and they would've lost their jobs or been demoted instead being given numerous passes. The show had been controversial and criticized for a while. It would've been much harsher had they looked different, had different connections or a different background.

I'd even go so far as to venture that if it was one single unknown person (instead of a unknown duo) who approached Martin or HBO with the desire and wherewithal to take on the show, they would've been denied.

Only the biggest of the big names (Peter Jackson, Alfonzo Cuaron, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Martin Scorcese, Mel Gibson, etc.) would've gotten the go-ahead but that was impossible given how busy they all are.

Their performance at the Austin Film Festival was gob-smacking, where they essentially admitted they blagged their way into the job. They thought they were being charming and self-deprecating, whereas they just confirmed the worst suspicions people had of them.

"The Wire in Middle Earth" is not a bad way of looking at earlier seasons, and once you look at them that way, you can see how crude the politicking had become in later seasons.  Mistakes had consequences in earlier seasons.  Now they didn't, if the show runners didn't want them to.  Tell replaced show.  We were told Tyrion was brilliant, but shown he was a moron.  We were told how intelligent Sansa was, when her diplomatic skills were non-existent, and she actually offered very little in the way of useful advice.  People trusted Cersei even though she showed herself to be repeatedly untrustworthy;  and she could blow up her enemies and face no political consequences.  Dany's and Jon's negotations never progressed beyond "bend the knee", v "we're independent, now come and fight for us."  Military strategies and tactics became stupid, simply in order to hit plot points.

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1 hour ago, SeanF said:

Their performance at the Austin Film Festival was gob-smacking, where they essentially admitted they blagged their way into the job. They thought they were being charming and self-deprecating, whereas they just confirmed the worst suspicions people had of them.

"The Wire in Middle Earth" is not a bad way of looking at earlier seasons, and once you look at them that way, you can see how crude the politicking had become in later seasons.  Mistakes had consequences in earlier seasons.  Now they didn't, if the show runners didn't want them to.  Tell replaced show.  We were told Tyrion was brilliant, but shown he was a moron.  We were told how intelligent Sansa was, when her diplomatic skills were non-existent, and she actually offered very little in the way of useful advice.  People trusted Cersei even though she showed herself to be repeatedly untrustworthy;  and she could blow up her enemies and face no political consequences.  Dany's and Jon's negotations never progressed beyond "bend the knee", v "we're independent, now come and fight for us."  Military strategies and tactics became stupid, simply in order to hit plot points.

All very true. And did D&D have a no network interference clause in their contract, much like the Simpsons did?

I know these guys have huge egos and think they can do anything and better than others, eg deciding they needed no writers room as they could do better, but how was that even allowed to happen? Two nobodies (just a guy with a rich daddy) with no experience of running a TV show were given all the power and never replaced, even when them ending the show early caused real damage to how it could end. They effectively had complete control over the TV version of the Lord of the rings but at least Peter Jackson had experience and knew how to work with others.

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6 hours ago, Ghostlydragon said:

And did D&D have a no network interference clause in their contract, much like the Simpsons did?

I don't know. Good question.

Maybe @The Dragon Demands can answer that question.

6 hours ago, Ghostlydragon said:

I know these guys have huge egos and think they can do anything and better than others, eg deciding they needed no writers room as they could do better, but how was that even allowed to happen? Two nobodies (just a guy with a rich daddy) with no experience of running a TV show were given all the power and never replaced, even when them ending the show early caused real damage to how it could end.

Um...my mind is sketchy on the details but I believe that they did have a writer's room at the beginning. GRRM was part of that writer's room if I can recall correctly.

Something happened during seasons 3 and 4 though.

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3 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

I don't know. Good question.

Maybe @The Dragon Demands can answer that question.

Um...my mind is sketchy on the details but I believe that they did have a writer's room at the beginning. GRRM was part of that writer's room if I can recall correctly.

Something happened during seasons 3 and 4 though.

Ah ok. Other than GRRM writing 1 episode a season for the first 4, I just assumed he was able to write what he wanted and that the only changes were completely different scenes that he didn't write at all, e.g. showing Theon get mutilated in the episode he write in s3, even though someone else wrote that for what I imagine GRRM presumed, would be a different episode and not in his one at all; and possibly the scene in s2 where Bronn fondles a prostitute in front of all his fellow soldiers for some reason.

Other than that though, I thought it was pretty much just D, D, Cogman and Hill.

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On 8/17/2021 at 8:58 AM, SeanF said:

Their performance at the Austin Film Festival was gob-smacking, where they essentially admitted they blagged their way into the job. They thought they were being charming and self-deprecating, whereas they just confirmed the worst suspicions people had of them.

They'd been saying that for years - the crux being that they were presenting it as "we learned along the way", a talented amateur underdog success story i.e., while in reality they kept all the weaknesses that they started out with.

Gonna reply to some other stuff in a moment, battery's dying lol

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On 8/16/2021 at 4:25 PM, BlackLightning said:

True.

But no, they have explicitly said that they didn't care about the magic and the prophecies and the themes and deeper meanings. Instead, they wanted to focus on the realism of the story: politics, war, geography, etc.

For all the good that it did/

Ok where did they say that then?

 

Things may be a little different now but if D&D were not affluent, connected youthful white guys, they would have never gotten this opportunity. They don't have much of any experience in anything pertaining to what you would need to be a showrunner: not in writing, not in directing, not in producing, not in adapting, not in camerawork, not in stagecraft and VFX. Nada.

Yep. Nor would they have ever gotten carte blanche and they would've lost their jobs or been demoted instead being given numerous passes. The show had been controversial and criticized for a while. It would've been much harsher had they looked different, had different connections or a different background.

I'd even go so far as to venture that if it was one single unknown person (instead of a unknown duo) who approached Martin or HBO with the desire and wherewithal to take on the show, they would've been denied.

 

I don't know to what extent this is true for the way they were accepted and started out, but after the show became a critical hit (staying that way until s7) and then quickly nr1 commercially, it was no wonder why they were kept on - small local criticisms here and there, and the possibility that they might disappoint at the very end, sure, but the gamble seemed quite reasonable.

 

Quote

her credit (and that of many others who worked on the show), that statement is very true.

  1. Cinema and TV were two very different worlds up until about 2012. Walking Dead and Game of Thrones as well as the advent of Netflix and the disappearance of Blockbuster helped usher in a golden age. Now, thanks to COVID-19, cinema and TV are two sides of the same coin.

Idk the Sopranos is typically credited with "beginning a golden age", and then 24, Alias and Lost were known for both production value spectacle and being cultural hits;

and maybe it's because I tend to hang out where people like "genre" stuff, irl student circles and various online forums, but I've never really seen such a divide throughout the 00s - Trek/Wars tended to have the same overall audiences for example, and generally TV/cinema productions of similar genres were discussed in the same breath; Bond/Alias, Dogma/Constantine/Supernatural, the mafia stuff obviously anyway etc.

So idk what warp bubble was I living in?? :o

 

Quote
  1. TV fantasy - particularly the "dungeons, dragons and doom" type - was undeveloped and scorned. Buffy was the exception not the rule and Buffy had been over and done with for 10 years. And Buffy was very niche and didn't even fall into the medieval magical fantasy category. A closer parallel would be Xena or those other old sword & sandal TV shows from the 80s....which were camp. Xena was cool but again: not dungeons and dragons.

Well Xena was lower-budget, and that was the pre-'00s TV;

but then were there any high budget greek mythology A movies back then? The one I can think of seeing were well made B movie productions, like Odysseus with Assante...

Conan is sword&sandal but not greekmyth - and the 1st movie is certainly very earnest and non-camp for an adaptation of such a source material (ghost scene aside);

forgot what else, but yeah lots of B movies back then not above Hercules/Xena in any way...

 

Quote
  1. Although cinema was the place for high fantasy, almost all of the biggest fantasy hits of the late 20th and early 21st history revolved around space operas and family-friendly magical epics. Not even cinema would touch the medieval aesthetic, much less the dungeon and dragons thing. The closest thing to it was LOTR...a step in the right direction but still more family-friendly than the typical dungeon and dragon tale.

So yeah. People like Lindsay Ellis have a big point.

Well they say Lotr broke out of "the fantasy ghetto" - sword&sorcery that is, period setting stuff;

so what were the big TV flops that tried to cash in on Lotr, or / no one even trying to because "TV audiences hated it"? Guess I didn't catch any of that lol

 

"Cinema medieval aesthetic" well the worldly parts of early GoT were all done very much in the style of various historical productions, tv/cinema alike - most primarily Braveheart/Tudors and Gladiator/Rome; but I guess only they combined it with fantasy/horror, successfully? But that includes cinema as well?

 

Still confused... but then again I do have huge knowledge gaps either way, so

 

 

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