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The Bard of Banefort
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Chapter 18:

  • Originally there were going to be four Sand Snakes: Obara, Nymeria, Tyene, and Sarella. After debating between keeping Nymeria or Sarella, they chose Nymeria.
  • Sending Jaime to Dorne was Cogman's idea.
  • In a concession that will make someone who frequents this site very happy, D&D did seem driven at least in part by a desire to get the most screentime they could out of Indira Varma.
  • There are a lot of weird moments in this chapter where one of the suits will say the director wasn't happy with the scene, then the director will say that they don't remember being unhappy but that it rained a lot that day, then one of the Sand Snakes will say they don't recall there being that much rain, just some drizzle.
  • The nipples on Obara's breastplate had to be digitally removed.
  • The fight scene was supposed to be shot at night, but they couldn't get permission to film at the palace at night. The stunt doubles also dropped out at the last minute, so they could only use what choreography they actresses themselves could do. 
  • Not mentioned: Benioff’s creepy comment comparing Dorne to Brazil.
  • There were more scenes in S5 that were eventually cut. 
     
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11 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Sending Jaime to Dorne was Cogman's idea.

D&D really liked Dorne in AFfC and really wanted to feature it, but they didn't know how to do it because they weren't going to introduce Arianne and Arys Oakheart and all that. So Bryan came up with the idea that they could skip that part of it by having Jaime go. 

Then it turned out that what D&D liked about Dorne was not what a lot of fans liked about Dorne...

 

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Chapters 19 and 20:

  • "Game of Thrones didn't really do 'themes.'" Oh, James, you troll.
  • Hibberd goes on to say S5 did have a theme: religious fundamentalism. And the showrunners are about as delicate and nuanced on the subject as you'd expect.
  • GRRM confirms the Faith of the Seven is based on Catholicism.
  • Jonathan Pryce was one of the only actors allowed to tweak his dialogue.
  • There are a lot of stories about Diana Rigg being quippy and sassy, and it's clearly supposed to reflect well on her. But I don't know, guys, she sounds kind of insufferable to me. Maybe I'm just not that charmed by actors.
  • According to the index, this is the only time Barristan is mentioned, and it's just snippets of the interview he did after being killed off, talking about how disappointed he was and that he shouldn't have read the books, since it just set him up for disappointment. Hibberd says "McElhinney's (Barristan) reaction wasn't entirely unique either" before including this quote from Benioff:
    Quote

    One person argued with us on the phone for a half hour and then wrote a long letter why it was a mistake and still talks about it on whatever dumb forums he's on. But most people are great even when they're disappointed.

    Now, perhaps Hibberd was just trying to help McElhinney save face here, but the phrasing suggests this was someone other than him. Who could it be? (And where can I read these forum posts? ;))

  • Bryan Cogman refused to watch Shireen's death scene. (If I remember correctly, Nikolaj couldn't watch it either).

  • George basically confirms that the three leeches Melisandre used to kill the three rival kings was just a show, and that she had already seen their deaths through a vision. 

  • Neil Marshall regrets turning down the offer to direct Hardhome. It was Kit's favorite battle from the show.

  • When the Night King rose his hands at the end of Hardhome, it was supposed to mimic the conductor of a symphony, but the showrunners admit it came across more like "come at me, bro."

  • Benioff on the Night King:

    Quote

    I don't think of him as evil; I think of him as Death. And that's what he wants--for all of us. It's why he was created, and that's what he's after.

    Furthermore, NK's actor thinks he was driven by revenge.

  • Cersei's Walk of Shame was inspired by a mistress of Edward IV's who had to do a walk of penance wearing only a thin shift. Prior to hiring a body double, Lena requested she do the same. (Side-tangent: In retrospect, it is kind of silly that the queen would be required to do a penance walk completely naked. I know GRRM likes to ramp things up for dramatic effect, but he also talks a lot about realism. Anne Boleyn was despised by the public--mobs of people had tried to kill her plenty of times--but her public execution caused a huge backlash because she was still the queen. It's weird that no one in King's Landing objected to a queen being subjected to this).

  • Trolls accused Lena of being "less of an actress" for using a body double, and said that she personally picked a double with a great figure to stand in for her (in reality, she wasn't part of the casting process).

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2 hours ago, Ran said:

D&D really liked Dorne in AFfC and really wanted to feature it, but they didn't know how to do it because they weren't going to introduce Arianne and Arys Oakheart and all that. So Bryan came up with the idea that they could skip that part of it by having Jaime go. 

Then it turned out that what D&D liked about Dorne was not what a lot of fans liked about Dorne...

 

I remember one of the Ds had that cringy quote comparing Dorne to Brazil. It seems like “hot people” was their big takeaway haha.

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I feel like they're still talking about McElhinney. I don't know of any actor who openly participated on a forum (though I believe a couple admitted that they lurked here when they were trying to land roles or were prepping for the first season), but McElhinney's nephew worked on the show as a crew driver, and I recall he tweeted some stuff that hinted at his uncle's disappointment, so maybe that's what they heard?

Met McElhinney at Castle Ward a few years back, he was very pleasant. We chatted a bit about his having directed a theatre production in Sweden (in Gothenburg, in fact, if I remember right). I recall telling him I really enjoyed his performance as Barristan, and wished the character had stuck around longer, and he of course said he wished he had too.

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*sigh* Well, we're here. The one I've been dreading all along. Chapter 21: RamSan. This is going to be a long one, so strap yourselves in:

  • Hibberd claims that this is the scene that caused the most backlash on GOT (again, FCKAD kind of acts like the response to S8 never happened) and that the backlash shocked everyone at HBO. Since he had so much BTS access on this show, I'm inclined to believe it really did effect the trajectory of the show in ways that other controversies hadn't. Hibberd is particularly delicate with how he presents this chapter, which I'll give him credit for--he seems to realize that this isn't something that most people reading the book are going to be swayed on. Because of that, however, HBO's reaction to the controversy is dressed up in a way that, having watched it happen in real time, doesn't quite accurately reflect how it was at the time. HBO reverted back to the "pearl-clutching' attack that they had always used up until then. Iwan and Sophie gave pissy interviews insulting the fans. D&D refused to even address it (more on that in a moment), and most of the executives dismissed the backlash and, along with the writers, fell back on the "historical accuracy in a fantasy series" excuse. Gwen and Natalie were rolled out to defend the show (more on that in a moment too). What ended up working against them was that the culture changed--we finally reached a point where calling people prudes wasn't enough to shut them up. So while I think Hibberd is trying to be as conscientious as possible here, he's also not being totally truthful.
  • George was not happy with the change, to the point where Hibberd says outright, "Martin wasn't on board with season five's changes to Sansa's storyline." GRRM focuses mainly on the plot in his critique, saying that he can't imagine Littlefinger ever giving up his prized possession to a psychopath like Ramsay. And in turn, part of this chapter is the writers trying to explain away such a nonsensical decision ("Ramsay's not known everywhere as a psycho").
  • George originally wrote Jeyne Poole into "The Pointy End," but she was taken out by the showrunners. 
  • Originally, the plan was for the episode to end with Sansa entering the bedroom and the door closing behind her, but Cogman thought that was a cop-out. He also says they focused on Theon's face because they thought that would be more tasteful than the alternative. He is generally respectful about the whole ordeal, however.
  • Not mentioned: D&D sending Sophie flowers on the day they shot the wedding, congratulating her on her big day.
  • The only quote from D&D is them expressing irritation that some people claimed Sansa's S6 arc was written to make up for S5, since they swear this was always their plan. It makes you wonder why they included her dramatic "Darth Sansa" scene at the end of S4 then if that's the case. The simplest answer that I can think of is that they did it because Sansa dyes her hair and adopts a new identity in the books. This is almost like a microcosm of what they did with Dany in S8 and adds further weight to the theory that her dark turn is indeed from the books--they included it because it was something that happened/is going to happen, even if it didn't fit with the rest of the plot.
  • Some of the producers echo D&D, saying they don't think that people would have been so upset if they knew what came next for Sansa, but that just shows that they never really understood why people were upset in the first place. There was no logical or narrative reason for Sansa to be assaulted (she'd already suffered plenty, and they ended S4 with her finally taking control of her life). And as Jessica Chastain pointed out, a woman doesn't need to be tortured to become strong. Speaking of which. . . 
  • Hibberd quotes critics more in this chapter than any other before, or presumably after. This not only includes Chastain, but also women from numerous websites and magazines.
  • And yet, we are then treated to quotes from Emilia, Gwen, Maisie, and Natalie defending GOT, and a long quote from GRRM defending the depiction of sexual violence in the story. Frankly, it feels manipulative, especially knowing some of the greater context. Gwen is always eloquent, and Maisie is quite fair ("I think everybody's allowed to be upset by what they're upset by") but Emilia's not the most consistent person on this (she's defended GOT vigorously in some interviews and then claimed she was mistreated and manipulated in others), and including a quote from Natalie Dormer telling people not to watch the show if all they want is escapism is hilarious considering she asked to be killed off after her character married to a teenage boy (well, she says it was to work on other projects, but if you look at her IMDb, she wasn't doing much else at the time. Plus other interviews she's given have indicated that she was not thrilled with the Tommen/Margaery pairing). It's worth mentioning that throughout the book, a lot of quotes are from different years and then spliced together thematically, but you would only know that if you were following the show while it was airing.

And lastly. . . 

  • George says he's never received pushback for Jeyne's ADWD subplot. Well, never fear, George, because I'm here to fix that! (*dons cape*) Jeyne's marriage to Ramsay was a step too far. As book fans, we revere this series and the author, and there is this idea among fans that something being dark and serious somehow makes it more legitimate, and pushing back on that means you aren't mature or tough enough for this series. I've been around long enough now to disagree. Jeyne's whole arc--getting sold to a brothel where she is whipped and "trained," then sold to Ramsay as a fake-Arya all by the tender age of thirteen--is pure torture porn. It's dark and miserable for the sake of being dark and miserable. It's not about showing "the horrors of war." How could it be, when the marriage takes place outside of the context of war, and after all the Starks are believed to be dead? And much like with how not a single person in King's Landing seemed to mind that their queen was being publicly shamed, how is it that not a soul at Winterfell speaks up about Ramsay's clear abuse of the girl they believe is that last remaining Stark, or that Roose allows it to happen when he knows that everyone's watching? Remember when Helaena died and all of KL rose up in revolt? Or how the Dornish still want to go to war to avenge Elia and her children? Cersei and fArya aren't just women, they're symbols of something much bigger than themselves. Maybe something will be revealed in the next two books that retroactively makes this plot worthwhile, but for now, I can't get behind it. 

Whew. That was a lot.

 

 

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4 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Chapters 19 and 20:

  • "Game of Thrones didn't really do 'themes.'" Oh, James, you troll.
  • Hibberd goes on to say S5 did have a theme: religious fundamentalism. And the showrunners are about as delicate and nuanced on the subject as you'd expect.
  • GRRM confirms the Faith of the Seven is based on Catholicism.
  • Jonathan Pryce was one of the only actors allowed to tweak his dialogue.
  • There are a lot of stories about Diana Rigg being quippy and sassy, and it's clearly supposed to reflect well on her. But I don't know, guys, she sounds kind of insufferable to me. Maybe I'm just not that charmed by actors.
  • According to the index, this is the only time Barristan is mentioned, and it's just snippets of the interview he did after being killed off, talking about how disappointed he was and that he shouldn't have read the books, since it just set him up for disappointment. Hibberd says "McElhinney's (Barristan) reaction wasn't entirely unique either" before including this quote from Benioff:

    Now, perhaps Hibberd was just trying to help McElhinney save face here, but the phrasing suggests this was someone other than him. Who could it be? (And where can I read these forum posts? ;))

  • Bryan Cogman refused to watch Shireen's death scene. (If I remember correctly, Nikolaj couldn't watch it either).

  • George basically confirms that the three leeches Melisandre used to kill the three rival kings was just a show, and that she had already seen their deaths through a vision. 

  • Neil Marshall regrets turning down the offer to direct Hardhome. It was Kit's favorite battle from the show.

  • When the Night King rose his hands at the end of Hardhome, it was supposed to mimic the conductor of a symphony, but the showrunners admit it came across more like "come at me, bro."

  • Benioff on the Night King:

    Furthermore, NK's actor thinks he was driven by revenge.

  • Cersei's Walk of Shame was inspired by a mistress of Edward IV's who had to do a walk of penance wearing only a thin shift. Prior to hiring a body double, Lena requested she do the same. (Side-tangent: In retrospect, it is kind of silly that the queen would be required to do a penance walk completely naked. I know GRRM likes to ramp things up for dramatic effect, but he also talks a lot about realism. Anne Boleyn was despised by the public--mobs of people had tried to kill her plenty of times--but her public execution caused a huge backlash because she was still the queen. It's weird that no one in King's Landing objected to a queen being subjected to this).

  • Trolls accused Lena of being "less of an actress" for using a body double, and said that she personally picked a double with a great figure to stand in for her (in reality, she wasn't part of the casting process).

I did think Jonathan Pryce acted his part wonderfully well.  But, D & D missed the point of what motivated the sparrows.  They aren’t motivated by hatred of homosexuals or other religions.  They are protesting noble misgovernment.

Cersei’s penance walk resembles the treatment meted out to women who slept with German soldiers, in the immediate aftermath of WWII.  Men were frequently stripped naked, as a means of shaming them, prior to their execution, in medieval societies.  But, it was rarely done to women, let alone highborn women.

Dorne?  Well, the less said the better.

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WRT Sansa, I just can’t find any plausible reason for her to marry the son of the man who murdered her mother and brother.  IIRC, that’s the point at which @Ranbailed out. I’m 

As to a “dark turn”, in TWOW, I can really only think of two possibilities, (a) she plays an active part in SR’s demise (b) she is at least nominally in charge of an army that sacks The Twins, and slaughters them to the last woman and child..  Killing LF would not be a dark turn.

At least in the show, Sansa became a worse  person, following her experiences at Winterfell.  So, yes, some of her fans would not have been mollified by her future arc

I agree, it’s unrealistic to expect Roose to tolerate Ramsay’s treatment of “Arya”.  Ramsay is stupid, but Roose, while just as evil, is highly intelligent.  There might be no concept of marital rape in medieval societies, but forcing a highborn woman into sex with dogs and torturing her would have been considered utterly deviant.

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5 minutes ago, SeanF said:

WRT Sansa, I just can’t find any plausible reason for her to marry the son of the man who murdered her mother and brother.  IIRC, that’s the point at which @Ranbailed out. I’m 

As to a “dark turn”, in TWOW, I can really only think of two possibilities, (a) she plays an active part in SR’s demise (b) she is at least nominally in charge of an army that sacks The Twins.  Killing LF would not be a dark turn.

At least in the show, Sansa became a worse  person, following her experiences at Winterfell.  So, yes, some of her fans would not have been mollified by her future arc

I agree, it’s unrealistic to expect Roose to tolerate Ramsay’s treatment of “Arya”.  Ramsay is stupid, but Roose, while just as evil, is highly intelligent.  There might be no concept of marital rape in medieval societies, but forcing a highborn woman into sex with dogs and torturing her would have been considered utterly deviant.

I meant that Sansa dyes her hair brown in AFFC and takes on the identity of Alayne Stone. D&D had her be Alayne for like three episodes, then she married Ramsay.

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Chapters 22 and 23:

  • When Kit first found out Jon is killed, he wasn't sure if it was for good, if he was coming back, or if this was another prank. He ultimately concluded that Jon probably wouldn't be killed off before it was revealed who his mother was.
  • The showrunners decided they wanted to keep Jon's resurrection a secret not only from the press, but from the cast and crew too. The only person Kit was allowed to tell was his now-wife, Rose. He even had to give a big farewell speech on the last day of filming S5. (He did end up telling the rest of his family the secret and some of his castmates from Castle Black, since they were worried they'd be out of a job now).
  • Most of the cast believed Kit that he was gone for good, except for Liam Cunningham, who told him to fuck off.
  • Kit made a joke on one of the late night shows about Belfast being kind of a dump, which offended some of the crew, and he had to make amends.
  • During the filming of S6, Kit lived apart from the rest of the cast and didn't go out much. 
  • In the S6 scripts, Jon was only referred to as Lord Commander or LC. Carice Van Houten says that some people on set started referring to Jon as "Little Clit."
  • It's starting to become clear just how emotionally draining and stressful Kit's time on the show was for him. Having to keep up the ruse was a struggle for him, especially having to spend the better part of two years denying that he was coming back. Which leads me back to this question. . . why are spoilers that big of a deal? Sure, Kit still wouldn't have been able to come right out and say that Jon was coming back, but they could have let just say "you'll see" (sort of like how George likes telling us to "keep reading"). Weiss even admits in this interview that most people don't go looking for spoilers and therefore avoid them. Considering how so many people were shocked by the Red Wedding despite it being in the books and all over the internet for over a decade, I don't think they needed to go to such extreme lengths to keep the secret.
  • For whatever reason, Hibberd devotes several pages to Arya's Braavos chase. The director admits that it didn't turn out quite the way he wanted it to, but the tone is still approving overall. 
  • Maisie was very firm on wanting Arya to rediscover her humanity, which is something I remember from interviews she did while on the show (and which conflicts with how the showrunners thought Arya was a badass for endlessly murdering people).
  • George drops another book spoiler: Hodor isn't going to literally hold a door shut in the books, but defend the exit of the cave with the sword he stole form the crypts.
  • They considered bringing Hodor back as a wight but decided against it.
  • Kristian can remember distinctive "Hodors" that he delivered over the years and which ones he liked best.
  • Hibberd hints that GOT may have included more mini-stories--like the one with the Hound and Brother Ray--if the show went on longer.
  • They originally wanted Ray Winstone to play Brother Ray.
  • Brief mention of Ian McShane's "tits and dragons" remark, which "surprised" the showrunners.
  • They forgot to tell Jonathan Pryce that he died in the S6 finale before the table read.
  • Margaery's last line was originally "you fool, she beat you."
  • Lancel's actor singed his eyebrows during his death scene.
  • Confirmation that the Mountain was originally going to rape Septa Unella. 
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Chapter 24, The Battle of the Bastards:

  • Sophie was told to stop washing her hair intermittently during S6, since Sansa was on the road. Ironically, I thought Sansa looked her best that season (in part because that was the season without Michelle Clapton's ugly-ass costumes).
  • Hibberd quotes a critic who claims BOTB was "possibly the best episode of television in history," which. . . yeah. And these are the same people who wonder how we ended up with S8. 
  • There's a lot of insight from Miguel Sapochnik in this chapter since he planned most of the battle itself.
  • The showrunners credit the Japanese movie Ran and the battle between the Romans and Hannibal of Carthage for inspiration, but not Helm's Deep, which BOTB is clearly modeled after.
  • The producers gave MS twelve days to shoot the battle. He asked for 28 days. After some negotiating, they settled on 25. 
  • Shooting the parley scene before the battle was difficult because the horses got bored and wouldn't stand still.
  • The field was a gigantic muddy mess. Hundreds of tons of gravel had to be laid by hand because vehicles would have left marks. MS only used the bathroom once a day because trudging through the mud took so long.
  • The scene where Jon is nearly trampled and emerges from the pit was a last-minute addition after having to cut a different sequence that would take too long to film. The original scene involved Wun Wun emerging from a body pile to save Jon from a horseman about to stab him.
  • Cogman sees Jon as someone who feels like he's living on borrowed time and didn't deserve a second chance at life. Post-resurrection, he feels a lot of shame. Cogman insists this proves that Jon didn't come back exactly the same as before.
  • The showrunners say that when Jon is beating Ramsay, he's embracing savagery and nearly loses himself but stops when he sees Sansa. . . because he thinks she should get to kill Ramsay instead. This isn't new information, but I still find it so confounding and thematically weak. Watching the scene onscreen, Jon clearly stopped because he didn't want his sister to see him beat a man to death. But apparently what they were really going for was, "It's Sansa's turn to be the badass!" Again, the "bro" element.
  • Ramsay's death was initially more graphic.
  • Listening to them talk about how Sansa has been permanently damaged forever by Ramsay makes me think I went too easy on them in the RamSan chapter recap.
  • Sansa's smile at the end of the episode was improvised.
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40 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Chapter 24, The Battle of the Bastards:

  • Sophie was told to stop washing her hair intermittently during S6, since Sansa was on the road. Ironically, I thought Sansa looked her best that season (in part because that was the season without Michelle Clapton's ugly-ass costumes).
  • Hibberd quotes a critic who claims BOTB was "possibly the best episode of television in history," which. . . yeah. And these are the same people who wonder how we ended up with S8. 
  • There's a lot of insight from Miguel Sapochnik in this chapter since he planned most of the battle itself.
  • The showrunners credit the Japanese movie Ran and the battle between the Romans and Hannibal of Carthage for inspiration, but not Helm's Deep, which BOTB is clearly modeled after.
  • The producers gave MS twelve days to shoot the battle. He asked for 28 days. After some negotiating, they settled on 25. 
  • Shooting the parley scene before the battle was difficult because the horses got bored and wouldn't stand still.
  • The field was a gigantic muddy mess. Hundreds of tons of gravel had to be laid by hand because vehicles would have left marks. MS only used the bathroom once a day because trudging through the mud took so long.
  • The scene where Jon is nearly trampled and emerges from the pit was a last-minute addition after having to cut a different sequence that would take too long to film. The original scene involved Wun Wun emerging from a body pile to save Jon from a horseman about to stab him.
  • Cogman sees Jon as someone who feels like he's living on borrowed time and didn't deserve a second chance at life. Post-resurrection, he feels a lot of shame. Cogman insists this proves that Jon didn't come back exactly the same as before.
  • The showrunners say that when Jon is beating Ramsay, he's embracing savagery and nearly loses himself but stops when he sees Sansa. . . because he thinks she should get to kill Ramsay instead. This isn't new information, but I still find it so confounding and thematically weak. Watching the scene onscreen, Jon clearly stopped because he didn't want his sister to see him beat a man to death. But apparently what they were really going for was, "It's Sansa's turn to be the badass!" Again, the "bro" element.
  • Ramsay's death was initially more graphic.
  • Listening to them talk about how Sansa has been permanently damaged forever by Ramsay makes me think I went too easy on them in the RamSan chapter recap.
  • Sansa's smile at the end of the episode was improvised.

As a fight, the B O T B was fine.

What was stupid was Jon throwing away his plan, and going for a wild charge against people who massively outnumbered them.  Jon, who by then was a seasoned commander, was made into a fool.

Worse was Sansa not even mentioning the Vale Knights.  At the time, @old gimlet eye, an ex-soldier, said most commanders, in such a setting, would have hanged Sansa for her behaviour.

Yes, they wanted a shock, but it makes Sansa look treacherous, and Sophie Turner said she did it because she wanted the credit for victory.

And Sansa’s integrity could easily have been preserved, and plenty of dramatic tension generated, by having her tell Jon, and then riding through the night to alert the Vale knights.  It would have been like Waterloo, with Jon’s/Wellington’s forces grimly holding on, while waiting for the knights/Prussians to arrive.

 

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46 minutes ago, SeanF said:

As a fight, the B O T B was fine.

What was stupid was Jon throwing away his plan, and going for a wild charge against people who massively outnumbered them.  Jon, who by then was a seasoned commander, was made into a fool.

Worse was Sansa not even mentioning the Vale Knights.  At the time, @old gimlet eye, an ex-soldier, said most commanders, in such a setting, would have hanged Sansa for her behaviour.

Yes, they wanted a shock, but it makes Sansa look treacherous, and Sophie Turner said she did it because she wanted the credit for victory.

And Sansa’s integrity could easily have been preserved, and plenty of dramatic tension generated, by having her tell Jon, and then riding through the night to alert the Vale knights.  It would have been like Waterloo, with Jon’s/Wellington’s forces grimly holding on, while waiting for the knights/Prussians to arrive.

 

Why would Sansa have been hanged? She was a noblewoman, not a commander. Wouldn’t the assumption be that she convinced the Vale to join at the last moment?

There are very few quotes from Sophie so far, and I think that’s because she often gave such bizarre interviews. FCKAD concerns the showrunners more than the actors, but some actors are featured much more prominently than others (in his Reddit AMA, Hibberd said that he enjoyed interviewing Kit, Emilia, and Gwen the most, and they’re the three I’d say have been quoted the most so far). It’s very surprising how little has been said about the Lannisters. Charles Dance has been quoted a grand total of one time, which is especially surprising considering how complimentary he’s always been towards the show.

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6 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Why would Sansa have been hanged? She was a noblewoman, not a commander. Wouldn’t the assumption be that she convinced the Vale to join at the last moment?

There are very few quotes from Sophie so far, and I think that’s because she often gave such bizarre interviews. FCKAD concerns the showrunners more than the actors, but some actors are featured much more prominently than others (in his Reddit AMA, Hibberd said that he enjoyed interviewing Kit, Emilia, and Gwen the most, and they’re the three I’d say have been quoted the most so far). It’s very surprising how little has been said about the Lannisters. Charles Dance has been quoted a grand total of one time, which is especially surprising considering how complimentary he’s always been towards the show.

Sophie Turner gave that explanation at Comic-Con in 2016.

OGE’s point was that withholding vital information from one’s commander is considered a very serious offence in armies. At no point was Jon ever told of the possibility that the Vale Knights might join them.

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2 hours ago, SeanF said:

Sophie Turner gave that explanation at Comic-Con in 2016.

OGE’s point was that withholding vital information from one’s commander is considered a very serious offence in armies. At no point was Jon ever told of the possibility that the Vale Knights might join them.

Yeah, a lot of people wanted there to be some deeper meaning behind that (including Sophie, by the sound of it), but I always thought it was just done for dramatic effect.

And to the writers’ credit, Sansa never did try to usurp Jon. Her fear when Arya threatened to expose her in S7 was that the northern lords would desert Jon, and she tried and failed to crown him king of Westeros in S8. In retrospect, all the will-she-betray-him speculation was just hype.

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I was originally going to post the next two chapters together, but it's easier to just do them separately. Here's Chapter 25:

  • D&D originally wanted to adapt the end of GOT in movie format, but this was shut down by HBO, who said their subscribers would feel ripped off.
  • Hibberd points out that D&D always planned on seven seasons, and I have to agree. For all the talks that they just wanted to move on to other things, I remember reading this back before they even surpassed the books.
  • HBO desperately wanted GOT to go on longer, but D&D refused, and the network wasn't willing to risk bringing in new showrunners. D&D had several reasons for wanting to end the show where they did: cast members were getting scooped up by other studios and wanted to move on to other roles (it's ironic that most of the S8 cast hasn't hit it big, but none of them could have known that at the time); some of the cast had health problems and injuries they were nursing, such as Emilia's brain aneurysms (Hibberd doesn't mention any of the casts' mental health/substance abuse issues, but I have to wonder if that was a concern as well); an obsession with Breaking Bad and trying to emulate it; and a fear that they would damage the show's reputation if it went on for too long. 
  • One reason why HBO agreed to eight seasons was because of their reputation for allowing creators to maintain a certain level of independence. I wonder if that's starting to change now; not just because of GOT, but also Sam Levinson's alleged lunacy, and all the GOT spin-offs. Like it or not, by launching a GOT Cinematic Universe, HBO is now less like Showtime and more like Disney+.
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The fact that quite a toll, emotionally, was taken on the actors is the one thing that worries me about the criticism of Season Shit.  OTOH, it's clear that some of them absolutely loathed the script for Season Shit, so it makes it worse that D & D should have subjected them to this. I doubt if many people thought that Jon was dead for good, so what was the point?  One of their practical jokes?

WRT Michelle Clapton's costumes, they're basically knocks-offs of the cenobites in Hellraiser.

WRT Braavos, it was simply ridiculous to give Arya superpowers, such as the ability to survive a stab wound to the stomach, and falling into a germ-ridden canal, with just a night's sleep.  Stomach wounds are always the deadliest, even with modern surgery, and almost no one survived them in medieval times. As to poisoning an entire House, at the start of Season 7, how did she manage that?  Were the Freys so evil that they kept buckets marked "Acme Poison" about the place, for her to pick up?

 

Edited by SeanF
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5 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I was originally going to post the next two chapters together, but it's easier to just do them separately. Here's Chapter 25:

  • D&D originally wanted to adapt the end of GOT in movie format, but this was shut down by HBO, who said their subscribers would feel ripped off.
  • Hibberd points out that D&D always planned on seven seasons, and I have to agree. For all the talks that they just wanted to move on to other things, I remember reading this back before they even surpassed the books.
  • HBO desperately wanted GOT to go on longer, but D&D refused, and the network wasn't willing to risk bringing in new showrunners. D&D had several reasons for wanting to end the show where they did: cast members were getting scooped up by other studios and wanted to move on to other roles (it's ironic that most of the S8 cast hasn't hit it big, but none of them could have known that at the time); some of the cast had health problems and injuries they were nursing, such as Emilia's brain aneurysms (Hibberd doesn't mention any of the casts' mental health/substance abuse issues, but I have to wonder if that was a concern as well); an obsession with Breaking Bad and trying to emulate it; and a fear that they would damage the show's reputation if it went on for too long. 
  • One reason why HBO agreed to eight seasons was because of their reputation for allowing creators to maintain a certain level of independence. I wonder if that's starting to change now; not just because of GOT, but also Sam Levinson's alleged lunacy, and all the GOT spin-offs. Like it or not, by launching a GOT Cinematic Universe, HBO is now less like Showtime and more like Disney+.

GOT could have been done in Seven seasons, had the pacing been better.  @Ranhas commented on the fact that, after cutting out big chunks of AFFA and ADWD, they then had to pad them out again.

I'll comment in more detail later, but IMHO, Season 7 was almost as bad as Season 8.

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Alright, things are heating up. We're getting to the really dumb parts now (in retrospect, S7 probably was the dumbest season). Highlights from Chapter 26:

  • Even though they were willing to pay for more seasons, doing two shorter seasons saved HBO quite a bit of money in terms of the actors' salaries. Main actors were paid for every episode in a season whether they appeared in every episode or not, so now they were only getting paid for thirteen episodes instead of twenty.
  • Hilarious quote from David Benioff about Jon meeting Dany: 
    Quote

    That scene wasn't so much about instant chemistry, it's about two monarchs coming together and the conflict between them. So it's fun that there wasn't chemistry. He's annoying and she's annoying, and somehow we've got to try to make peace.

    You're right, Mr. Benioff. Jon and Dany had no chemistry. At any point.

  • Emilia called their meeting "the Battle of the Stares."

  • Liam Cunningham refused to hit on Missandei. He said it would make Davos look like a perv creeping on a much younger woman.

  • Jacob Anderson confirms that Grey Worm still has the pillar, just not the stones (he also makes an off-hand comment about there being a ton of dick jokes on the show).

  • When Jacob first auditioned, Grey Worm and Missandei were supposed to be brother and sister.

  • Hibberd claims Grey Worm and Missandei's love scene was "the most widely praised sex scene in the show," and honestly, he's right. But that just serves as a reminder of how deeply un-sexy this sex-obsessed show was.

  • After having his scenes in S6 cut back, Pilou wanted to reconceptualize Euron. It was his idea to turn him into a rock star pirate.

  • Pilous had once worked as Nikolaj's nanny.

  • More stories of on-set injuries, including Gemma Whelan, who hurt her back.

  • The scene of Yara making out with Ellaria was originally supposed to be Ellaria kissing Theon. Then it was supposed to be Yara and Ellaria, with Yara making a eunuch joke and insisting Theon join in. Only it turned out they had already used that eunuch joke at some other point beforehand, so they just stuck with the two ladies :rolleyes:

  • A surprising amount of time is spent on the Sand Snakes in this books. There’s more about them than Ned, Robb, or Tywin.

  • Nikolaj seems to be one of the only people on the show who thought about the morality of the characters. I remember him talking about how Dany burning people alive was disturbing, even if it she was killing villains. Here, he talks a bit about how even though Olenna was his enemy, he was still killing an old grandma with poison.

  • "One thing that Game of Thrones never did was stunt casting." Oh, there are some people who would disagree with that.

  • They weren't sure how the Wall was going to come down, and decided on a dragon since they didn't want to introduce "new deus ex machina pieces." I'm not sure what that means for the books, but it might indicate that the Horn of Joramun is legit.

  • They received a lot of flak from fans about the show's pacing, especially concerning the wight hunt. Although the showrunners are a bit defensive about it, Alan Taylor admits that the show needed an "underlying realism" and that he wishes he could have fixed that. 

  • According to Peter, Tyrion was in love with Daenerys (he says Tyrion loved Jon too, but that was presumably in a platonic kind of way).

Edited by The Bard of Banefort
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