Jon Snow: The Bastard Returns

[IFR]

10 hours ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

Two big problems with the Confederate show idea: 1) D&D are very bad at dealing with nuance in general and slavery in particular judging by GoT. 2) There's zero chance slavery would have lasted until today as it did in the 19th century because of the mechanization of agriculture, particularly since the 1930's- one tractor does the job of at least dozens of men (slaves or not), so chattel slavery would have to end by that time, if not earlier. 

Wrt point one, D&D are absolutely capable of nuance. I think in seasons 1-4 of GoT and occasionally in season 5 there was plenty of nuance. Maybe it didn't achieve the gold standard of nuance that you see in The Wire,  Mad Men and The Sopranos, but there was far more nuance in GoT at that point than almost any other show, and especially more nuance than most shows airing today. Most shows I've been watching lately can't resist transplanting the latest in cutting edge 2022 morality and mindlessly grafting it on all of their characters. That's not nuanced - it's insulting. 

Would D&D fumble the issue of slavery? Possibly on their own, but I will note again they were merely the biggest names attached to the property. Nichelle Spellman, who is a talented writer that has written for shows like The Good Wife and Justified has demonstrated capability in nuance. It's possible she would have made invaluable contributions in this area.

Wrt point two, that's precisely what has the potential to be interesting. I would disagree first that slavery would not continue on. Laborers in underdeveloped countries are ruthlessly exploited to the point where for me "work" and "slavery" start to lose their distinction. And most people are complicit with this system. Mechanization does not by any means assure a non-enslaved society. In fact, lots of sci-fi posit societies truly reverting to slavery in the near future. Expanded efficiency in production has not historically resulted in a lighter work load.

This all has quite a bit of potential, and I would say something that explores these ideas is more worthwhile to me than another generic Marvel or Star Wars show that Disney contemptuously defecates on us, or a Jon Snow spin-off, which to my mind has virtually no potential.

Could it have misfired and just been a grotesque mockery? Maybe, but that's the average show today, and I would have been interested to see if it resulted in something good. 

[Spockydog]

6 hours ago, IFR said:

Wrt point one, D&D are absolutely capable of nuance. 

Yeah, with about as much nuance as Littlefinger telling a prostitute to play with someone's arse.

 

[SeanF]

14 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Yeah, with about as much nuance as Littlefinger telling a prostitute to play with someone's arse.

 

Not to mention “I’m going to fuck the tits off this one”, or “You want a good girl, but you need the bad pussy”, and the happy sex slave offering it for free to Tyrion.

[Werthead]

On 6/17/2022 at 8:28 PM, KalVsWade said:

I also suspect that GRRM does not actually have a lot of say in it at this point; he probably signed a contract for HBO to develop spin-offs a while back, and what they are is not particularly up to him.

Certainly GRRM's original 2007 deal with HBO and the second re-up (around 2013 I think) stipulated that GRRM had power of veto over spin-off TV projects set in Westeros, just as HBO had power of veto over GRRM taking Westeros-set projects to other channels/networks. No project could proceed without GRRM signing off on it.

I believe the last re-up of the deal a couple of years ago was for vastly more money than the original ones and included various stipulations over the spin-offs, but I can't see GRRM agreeing to lose his creative veto. There's no real reason to (what, does he have a burning need to buy four more railroads?) and he clearly wants to retain the quality levels to some degree.

More likely, another writer came to him and HBO with a take on a post-GoT Jon Snow story that he thought was genuinely interesting and worthy of at least being explored further. If this turns out to be a limited series, I think that's more likely. Harington is unlikely to want to do another show requiring him to spend another 6-9 months a year rolling around in mud with long night shoots, especially if his MCU character has a larger role moving forwards.

[Ran]

Let's keep it to discussing this spinoff news rather than litigating GoT again.

As to whether George has a veto or not, assuming he does have one, how much does it really matter? HBO can suggest, for example, that they might spike some of the other projects in development to please Discover+'s bean counters... but you know, if you okay this Jon Snow idea they're excited about, it'll go a long way to hedging their concerns.

I basically don't think we can take anything for granted beyond what has been reported.

[Padraig]

The veto discussion is an interesting one.  Fair points made.

HBO seems to have given the idea of prequels a fair shot. Good will may have been earned.  Exercising any veto at inception would seem ungracious.  You need to at least see a more detailed pitch, even if initially skeptical.

But yes, hard to know anything for sure.

[Zorral]

Ya, a series that shows African Americans still enslaved in 2022 and treated as they were treated in 1860 is exactly what a whole lot of people with African ancestry really want to see.  Some White people and other racists and bigots probably would just lurve to look at that, in the same way males just lurved all that nekkid female enslaved sex workers on GOT.

There is no value of any kind in 'exploring' these scenarios, but only harm and real ugly toxic stuff.  Not even micro aggression against entire groups of people, but out-and-out deliberate, scornful desire to create pain and grief.

This is Juneteenth in the USA.  Here where I live it's also early voting in our primary.  There are African American women reporting on their early voting, literally sobbing, that they are so determined to vote, no matter how hard the reichlicans are making it for them, doing everything they can to take away the vote of their ancestry, again making them non-person, non-citizens as it was before 1863.  They are so aware that many of them, in our capitalism 'carcel system are literally worked as slave labor even now -- and they sure can't vote.  The slavery system in the US was quite, quite different,  quite 'peculiar' as the liked to describe it, than it is / was elsewhere -- and still different from the conditions that make virtually enslaved labor in other parts of the world to produce your chocolate and coffee and palm oil.

That anyone would like to shove this stuff as entertainment upon this country, valorizing those who are slaveowners, is just incomprehensible to people who have history, thoughtfulness and empathy.  Because creating narratives in which the protagonist is evil, still pushes the audience to identify and pull for that protagonists.  The only reason anybody would want to do this is because they deliberately wish to cause pain and humiliation on a vast public national scale.

 

[IFR]

13 hours ago, Spockydog said:

Yeah, with about as much nuance as Littlefinger telling a prostitute to play with someone's arse.

 

I mean, you can be disingenuous if you want to be. I'm not going to point at Martin's "fat pink mast", "Myrish swamp" or "I am of the night" and pretend that these lines somehow undermine the entirety of his work.

GoT had the largest cast on television, and everyone was given a personality. Grand Maester Pycelle in any other show would be some background nobody, but for this minor character he had many dimensions and was a really good character.

Ygritte's entire runtime in the show was only 51 minutes, and yet she had many dimensions, and was an extremely memorable character. Joffrey clocked in at 70 minutes and Tywin Lannister at 78 minutes. All of these characters had a profound impact on the story, and were extremely detailed. That's nuance, and it takes a great detail of talent to accomplish that. Take something like Wheel of Time and compare the screen time of Rand al'Thor (158 minutes), and he has the personality of a wooden block. 

Tying this to the Jon Snow spin-off, I read an article recently by David Simon that declared that making something like The Wire is no longer possible with current HBO (link to the interview below). And if HBO really is going to humiliate themselves with a Jon Snow spin-off, I believe it. Game of Thrones, which for a while was a very good deconstruction of the fantasy genre, is becoming just another Marvel or Star Wars universe.

So I hope that this show implodes in a big way. I want shows that are bold, and try to do something new. I want The Wire, Deadwood, Rome, the early years of Game of Thrones, not this generic nonsense that HBO is trying to push on us.

David Simon and Ed Burns interview

[Ran]

Again, stop talking about GoT. This thread is about the proposed spinoff.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

On 6/18/2022 at 2:27 PM, SeanF said:

The great thing about history is how detailed research can either confirm received wisdom, or completely overturn it.

For example, thanks to ongoing discoveries in South Eastern Turkey, we now know that organised religion predates agriculture, by thousands of years.  The earliest temples date to 13,000 years ago.  Yet it was axiomatic, not too long ago, that organised religion did not exist among hunter-gatherers.

Gobleki Tepi is fascinating stuff…

[Macklunkey]

Can't wait for Jon to meet Ygritte's sister or cousin, Ygrotte.

[Darryk]

18 hours ago, IFR said:

Tying this to the Jon Snow spin-off, I read an article recently by David Simon that declared that making something like The Wire is no longer possible with current HBO (link to the interview below).

After reading the interview I'm not sure he does enough to justify that claim.

HBO is still producing stellar television. Succession is the best show on TV at the moment IMO, and right after GoT ended they released the excellent Chernobyl.

The part where he says "they can't make something that steps on anyone's toes" may be true but that's true for culture in general at the moment.

[Week]

53 minutes ago, Darryk said:

The part where he says "they can't make something that steps on anyone's toes" may be true but that's true for culture in general at the moment.

How, why, and by whom are the questions that are typically being asked that weren't before. That represents progress IMO. If anything, that view is a 'by whom' and 'why' may not include the typical background, experience, or ideology of those making shows/movies in the 80's and 90's.

[Kalbear]

The notion that people can't make anything that steps on anyone's toes is obviously bullshit.

I think it's accurate to say that some toes are less steppable than others. I don't think for a second that you can't make something like the Wire right now; We Own This City is proof enough of that. 

[IFR]

3 hours ago, Darryk said:

HBO is still producing stellar television. Succession is the best show on TV at the moment IMO, and right after GoT ended they released the excellent Chernobyl

I think looking at the shows that HBO is currently developing lend more credence to Burns' claim.

A bunch of Game of Thrones knockoffs, a remake of a video game, a remake of True Blood, Hellraiser, etc.

There is clearly a trend, and that is an attempt to compete in a world where subpar shows like The Witcher, Stranger Things, Obi-Wan, and Bridgerton get massive viewing numbers.

Chernobyl was excellent, and I really liked We Own This City. However, I think it's a legitimate concern that shows like this will become less frequent.

[Darryk]

2 hours ago, Week said:

How, why, and by whom are the questions that are typically being asked that weren't before. That represents progress IMO. If anything, that view is a 'by whom' and 'why' may not include the typical background, experience, or ideology of those making shows/movies in the 80's and 90's.

To be honest I don't really know what the quote from him means: “Now, it’s got to be ‘Game of Thrones.’ It’s got to be big. It’s got to be disconnected from stepping on anybody’s toes,”

I don't know who the "anybody" he's referring to he is, I just assumed he meant studios are more scared of offending people or something. But then what he says doesn't make any sense cause GoT definitely stepped on people's toes.

I don't really agree with anything he says in that article.

[Darryk]

4 minutes ago, IFR said:

I think looking at the shows that HBO is currently developing lend more credence to Burns' claim.

A bunch of Game of Thrones knockoffs, a remake of a video game, a remake of True Blood, Hellraiser, etc.

There is clearly a trend, and that is an attempt to compete in a world where subpar shows like The Witcher, Stranger Things, Obi-Wan, and Bridgerton get massive viewing numbers.

Chernobyl was excellent, and I really liked We Own This City. However, I think it's a legitimate concern that shows like this will become less frequent.

Well we've got to wait and see whether the "Game of Thrones" knockoff is good or not. It's gonna suffer from the damage that the brand has take but it could also be a new Rome, which is still my personal favorite HBO show.

Last of Us might be good too. Dismissing it just cause it's based on a video game is being rather elitist.

Aside from that he can't just ignore all the great stuff HBO is making, like Succession.

The more I think about it the more I think he's being melodramatic and doesn't have a leg to stand on. The reason no one's making an exact show like The Wire anymore is cause they feel they can't top it, so they're exploring other subject matter.

PS. I wouldn't include Stranger Things among subpar shows.

[RumHam]

It's also a bit weird because as I understand it The Wire barely got renewed each season (until it didn't) because like the head HBO guy liked it. It wasn't successful at all then, and that it even got a second season was kinda a fluke.

[Ran]

3 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Aside from that he can't just ignore all the great stuff HBO is making, like Succession.

Who exactly is Succession stepping on the toes of? 

3 minutes ago, RumHam said:

It's also a bit weird because as I understand it The Wire barely got renewed each season (until it didn't) because like the head HBO guy liked it. It wasn't successful at all then, and that it even got a second season was kinda a fluke.

I think that's actually part of what he's talking about. Passion projects that keep going because someone believes in it, even if recognition only comes years after the fact, was something HBO could do. There's no real evidence that the post-AT&T HBO is interested in anything like that.

[IFR]

20 minutes ago, Darryk said:

I don't know who the "anybody" he's referring to he is, I just assumed he meant studios are more scared of offending people or something. But then what he says doesn't make any sense cause GoT definitely stepped on people's toes

I think he means it has to be bombastic but sterile, like what Game of Thrones became toward the end.

15 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Well we've got to wait and see whether the "Game of Thrones" knockoff is good or not. It's gonna suffer from the damage that the brand has take but it could also be a new Rome, which is still my personal favorite HBO show.

House of the Dragon may be good, but it doesn't seem like it will be anything new. It seems like it will just be focused on the politicking side of Thrones (which was the best part of it, but again, this isn't new).

15 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Last of Us might be good too. Dismissing it just cause it's based on a video game is being rather elitist.

If the creators are to be believed, this will be a loyal remake of the video game. It may have a good story, but it's nothing new.

When The Wire came out, there was nothing like it. Same for Deadwood, Rome and Game of Thrones. HBO seems to now be relying on very familiar content, instead of paving their own path.