Game of Thrones - series/season 7

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Re: Game of Thrones - series/season 7

Postby mentalist (slight return) » 01 Sep 2017, 02:23

I do hope Yara makes it out alive after all this. I could just imagine Theon dying will rescuing her. Maybe she can end up killing Euron.
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Re: Game of Thrones - series/season 7

Postby fange » 01 Sep 2017, 04:29

mentalist (slight return) wrote:I do hope Yara makes it out alive after all this. I could just imagine Theon dying will rescuing her. Maybe she can end up killing Euron.

^
Yep, this would be the "nicely tied up" ending.
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Re: Game of Thrones - series/season 7

Postby Thang-y » 19 Sep 2017, 21:04

Rayge and I just watched the last episode. We've been avoiding looking in here.

Yes, the sped-up pace was rather noticeable and and very poor. It's almost like we're getting the precis but with some dull bits. And a teeny bit more mainstream, just a teeny touch of the Hallmark about it. With guts. I hope there are lots of extra scenes when the dvd comes out.

Much bigger budget on the costumes as well this series. Faaaabulous effects, love those dragons.

I guessed who Jon's father was when the dragon was nice to him.

Why the fuck was a lot more dragon glass not used?

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Re: Game of Thrones - series/season 7

Postby pcqgod » 21 Sep 2017, 21:50

Kings Landing has some bizarre topography. Rocky shores on one side, wide green flat fields on the other, then Monument Valley not far down the road.
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Re: Game of Thrones - series/season 7

Postby Geezee » 30 Apr 2019, 09:45

Really enjoying Season 8, and I wasn't really expecting to. There was a degree of fatigue setting in, and the hype was getting a bit too ridiculous - but as soon as the first episode started I started really getting into it again.

<spoilers>

That said, I'm very disappointed in the showpiece episode (Long Night). Mainly it is down to my own expectations - GoT to me is at its best when it is subverting the genre standards (even if it hasn't done so for quite some time). For 8 seasons, it has been building painfully slowly up to the final battle against the Night King, and while it dedicates an entire episode to one battle, it still felt as if the whole battle ended far too prematurely. Effectively, while there are some deaths, all of the main characters emerge unscathed, and the Night King is dead. I had expected two things to happen - firstly, instead of the main battle, I expected/hoped(!) the army of the dead to target the crypt first, and slaughter everyone in there. I think it would have been a great, jaw-dropping piece of cinema. Secondly, I've ultimately been expecting the army of the dead to kill everyone in the whole series, and that the Game of Thrones ends with the Night King on the throne, where he belongs. Again, it would make for incredible cinema, and also thematically would make for quite a significant story - ultimately, we can't fight our way away from our own deaths, particularly when we reduce ourselves through petty squabbling and ambition. I've also heard some interpretation that the white walkers symbolised our futile fight against climate change/nature - again I think that is quite telling, but requires everyone's sacrifice to make the point.

As it stands, we now have a few more episodes that presumably will focus on the ambitions, battles and personal rivalries of the main characters which feels like quite an anti-climax. For sure that is still interesting, and GoT has definitely always been interesting with its political intrigues. But I was hoping for something truly ground-breaking, and it feels to me like they've copped out - it's now pretty safe viewing, even if it might end with twists and perhaps morally questionable people on the throne and a trail of deaths of main characters.
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Re: Game of Thrones - series/season 7

Postby Penk! » 02 May 2019, 06:31

Geezee wrote:Really enjoying Season 8, and I wasn't really expecting to. There was a degree of fatigue setting in, and the hype was getting a bit too ridiculous - but as soon as the first episode started I started really getting into it again.

<spoilers>

That said...


An interesting point of view and I do agree that the latest episode was a letdown.

I thought that episode two, the eve of battle, was incredibly tense and powerful and served as a strong reminder of what's at stake and how the characters are affected.
But then the battle went all Hollywood. When they weren't dousing everything in darkness, smoke and flame so you couldn't see what was happening, you could just get brief glimpses of all the major named characters somehow surviving (and in some cases - Gendry, Pod - proving themselves as laughable BATTLE HERO MASTERS) while everyone else got slaughtered (apart from the two, Theon and Jorah, whose arcs had quite clearly been resolved). It's not that I want to see everyone die, or necessarily to see the Night King win, I just felt like our disbelief was being strung way too far out and the show had completely abandoned the uncompromising and unpredictable nature that made its name. I think it would have been really strong to just kill off Jon or Dany, for example, just when we were getting a hint of a conflict between them due to Jon's revelation of his true identity; or kill the Hound and deny everyone the "Cleganebowl" they wanted; or have Tyrion and Sansa take their own lives while under attack in the crypt (I did think that was what was going to happen but instead they... what? Ran a few yards and then it was all over?). In real life, people die in battles and leave unfinished business.
It also felt pretty anticlimactic that after this story has been building and building for eight years and has provided two or three of the biggest setpieces the show has had, we now have three more episodes of power squabbles and personal vendettas to get through. Sure, in the beginning that was actually the biggest draw, but they've got the balance very wrong between the spectactular and the intimate, I think. The potential end of the world and zombification of all humanity couldn't help but feel a tad more important than who gets to sit on a throne that usually spells death for its possessor within a year or two anyway.


Still, here's hoping they've saved some shocks and twists for the last episodes!
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Re: Game of Thrones - series/season 7

Postby ` » 02 May 2019, 15:04

The Night King proved so easy to despatch he should have been played by Audley Harrison

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Re: Game of Thrones - series/season 7

Postby pcqgod » 03 May 2019, 02:27

I thought "The Long Night" was intense. But I've definitely felt that the show has lost something by turning into pure, classic fantasy rather than the dark political story rooted in real life issues that it had been for the first 6 or so seasons. My only complaint about s.8.3 is that the Lyanna and Arya"moments" were too similar.
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Re: Game of Thrones - series/season 7

Postby Geezee » 07 May 2019, 11:12

mmm...it's struggling to salvage itself I feel. I found the surprise attack and Cersei storylines to be quite weak - and Bronn's intervention was so random and laughable. Both Tyrion and Jon are remarkably naive as well - and if you are going to place so much emphasis on the importance of Jon revealing his true heritage then a) I'd have preferred for them to spend a bit more time on his moral dilemma and b) actually showing the moment that he reveals the truth (via Bran) and in particular the corresponding reactions of Sansa and Arya.

It was nice to see Varys up to no good again (or perhaps very much up to good depending on your perspective). He's been quiet for a long time.

Ultimately, it feels they are fast-forwarding too much to the end - it's clearly an enormous task, but they are doing themselves a disservice by maintaining too many characters when half of them could and probably should have been killed off by now. When they suddenly reach King's Landing, it was very jarring to suddenly be back in the hands of Cersei, when we haven't seen her for over two episodes - the storylines in Kings Landing have been too sparse to develop any compelling counterpoint to the invasion from the north. There are so many things they could be handling better - there's a lot of talk of Danaerys supposed mental deterioration...I don't know there is much evidence of that, but if she is gradually going bonkers it would make for an interesting storyline that again could and should be handled better. And again I do feel they should have resolved all this internal squabbling before the Long Night (or have the squabbling as part of that battle). It feels like they've got it the wrong way around.


Either way, it is all still good fun, and I do at some point look forward to perhaps revisiting this series and see what I make of it at some point in the future.
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Re: Game of Thrones - series/season 7

Postby Geezee » 14 May 2019, 09:30

Well, I enjoyed that ("The Bells"). On its own, it stands out as one of the great episodes. A great battle scene, great drama, and some truly unexpected twists. It seemed to be building towards an ultimate trap against Daenerys - that Tyrion was once again fooled, that he kept emphasising that the bells will signal the end of the battle...but that these would be a trap. Instead, the bells do indeed ring but instead they signal the start of breathtaking slaughter. And I absolutely understand that fans will complain about this (and from what I understand already have) - that there has been no build-up to Daenerys' madness, that she has gone from hero to despot in the blink of an eye (and indeed I complained about this in the last episode). But it made for a very compelling battle/slaughter - and I'm hoping there is more to come here. There was notably very little screentime for Daenerys herself during the battle - the dragon just starts spraying fire more and more aggressively, and at a certain point it does so indiscriminately, without any insight into Daenerys' thinking. It seems like it would turn into a stand-off between her and Cersei, instead she kills everyone but Cersei. But there seems to have been more that was going on - notably about Varys' betrayal with the little girl - and I'm hoping the final episode will provide some better/more insight here into what Daenerys was doing.

For sure there are weaknesses, particularly if you are hoping for continuity. While the reunion between Cersei and Jamie was perhaps surprisingly moving (to me), it made very little sense. Jamie’s abandonment of her was so final, and her betrayal in the fight against the living dead so complete, that his sudden turn back to her in the previous episode was completely baffling – it would perhaps have been justifiable if he’d actual had ulterior motives, that he was going back to kill her or save the city from slaughter. Or, there should have been far more signals that he was turning back to his previous ways. And her embracing of him is similarly curious given the strength of her character and the fact that she’d just sent someone out to kill him(!). If Cersei is really dead, which seems to be the case, I really don’t understand what she did to deserve her treatment in this season – effectively her arc was completely cut out of this season. It’s a shame because they’ve effectively left Kings Landing out of this season, and it lessened the impact of the slaughter since we don’t know what’s been going on there all this time (or really since explosion of the Great Sept). Still, I was pretty exhausted from the whole episode last night, and it’s not often TV can do that to me.
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Re: Game of Thrones - series/season 7

Postby ` » 14 May 2019, 09:34

Show really seems to have lost a lot of its oomph since they ran out of George R. R. Martin material with which to move forward.

Ep 5 (of 6) felt horribly rushed with the writers making characters they'd spent eight years building up behave in ways that just weren't credible (e.g. Daenerys' convenient transformation into a mass murderer)

The number of WTF plot holes that have opened up these last few episodes is also dragging the show down. (the dragons were useless in the night battle and easy prey for Euron's massive arrows in the previous two episodes, yet sliced through the Iron Fleet and Kings Landing like butter without breaking a sweat)

While Daenerys and her dragon(s) seem to be the worst victims of this increasing sloppiness, they are far from being the only ones.

Hopefully, the last episode will be a triumph - after seven terrific series, GOT deserves to end on a high rather than on a whimper like Lost.

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Re: Game of Thrones - series/season 7

Postby ` » 14 May 2019, 09:43

Geezee wrote:It’s a shame because they’ve effectively left Kings Landing out of this season, and it lessened the impact of the slaughter since we don’t know what’s been going on there all this time (or really since explosion of the Great Sept). Still, I was pretty exhausted from the whole episode last night, and it’s not often TV can do that to me.



Simple. Cersei has been busy on a massive infrastructure enhancement programme that mean it now takes just half an episode for vast armies to cover distances it used to take two characters entire series to traverse.


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