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The truth be told, I was "over it" until you brought it back up again.
The Game of Thrones series ending sucked. The entire last season sucked. Your character changed drastically in the last three seasons for no apparent reason.
It did not end as well as it started.
But I wanna address something you talked about.
It happened with another HBO series too, and it sucked.
"Subverting expectations."
This is Hollywierd for, "plot twist that doesn't make sense but the fans figured out where things should logically go and we didn't have a good twist so we did this to show ourselves that we're smarter than the fans."
If Danerys' slide into villainy had been gradual, as you allude, and not all of a sudden, as was shown on screen, people wouldn't be near as critical about it.
Especially since her devastating King's Landing happened after the place had surrendered except for the palace.
"Cersei is holding out? Better kill everyone then!" is what we got. It was jarring and it made no sense because the incompetent writers didn't give us anything to show that Danerys had become so insane.
As for moving on?
I have. I noted that we got a season of nothing happening because the showrunners were hoping that George Martin would get off his pompous ass and finish the series before they got too far ahead of him, then two seasons of rush to an ending that was just scraps of flesh hanging from a plot outline skeleton.
It was bad story telling and just because a single dancing monkey is satisfied with their performance doesn't change that.
The fans are correct to criticize works they don't like.
HBO executives: That criticism is your customer base giving you market feedback. Pay attention. Repeat business comes from satisfied customers.
We're not going to bring up the scariest people in the series? The Night walkers and the Ice King with his own Ice Dragon. Killed in a 30-45 second sequence by a teen age girl. Just lazy writing as Deadpool would say.
ReplyDeleteI stopped reading the books after a while... Every character I started to like/care about just got killed off. If that's the series "trick" then I have no interest in completing the series. The show started off well but dragged a bit then went off a cliff with the "oh, crap we have to wrap it all up in one shortened season"... Some of the things were sort of there like the dragon queen going crazy, but going from 0 to "murder all of the civilians" level after building her character up as the "breaker of chains"? Just too much too quick. Yes, people do snap sometimes, but that's just rushed writing in this case... Meh, was fun for a bit but...
ReplyDeleteI beg to differ with both you and JC. I thought the ending was a nice twist. Everyone wanted the hot blonde and the brooding hunk to team up and rule the kingdom together, and I liked that they didn't. As for the "teenage girl" killing the Night Walkers, anyone who had the magic knife could have done it, so any character could have been the killer. (Arya Stark was my favorite character in the whole series. I liked the concept of a baby-faced stone cold killer.) (Yes, I know I'm a bad person.)
ReplyDeleteI wanted Samwell to be the one who killed the Night King.
DeleteThings that pissed me off:
Arya getting away from the Faceless Men's lifetime commitment scott free.
Three seasons of character development tossed on the fire for Jaimie in, what, two episodes?
Danerys and Jon hooking up at all. That was a ship I didn't want or like.
Tyrion losing his damn brain and becoming a vulgar comedian.
The way the Night King got taken out after SEASONS of building him up strikes as "and they went home and lived happily ever after". It was not implemented well, and the rushed writing and conclusion are why.
tv shows are sometimes like video games...most games today come out buggy and run like shit...they expect you to shell out shit ton of money to be a beta tester...tv shows are the reverse...they start out good, draw you in, then when they decide they want to end it they rush and the ending sucks shit...whatever...why i just watch old shows on metv now...when tv was simple and good...panzer guy
ReplyDeleteBrett Devereaux's history blog has some excellent articles fscking the ahistorical and often completely illogical logistics and "cultures" in Game of Thrones. He also does great work the Spartans, Tolkien and actual history. acoup.blog
ReplyDeleteAhistorical and fantasy world... Wrong word, I think. Dragons and magic are ahistorical, but are quite real in their fantasy settings.
DeleteCan't even go with unrealistic, because dragons and magic are unreal.
Illogical works.
Unbelievable works, I think.
I watched a long video on how unrealistic the castle designs were for the show and they cited architectural trends from the real world... Westeros doesn't have to have those trends. Their path to their designs don't have to include our path.
If the castle designs were absolute, then why doesn't Japan use the same styles as Germany?
Devereaux is a historian and his critiques focus on things like the Dothraki having no visible means of support, the ridiculous logistics of the loot train, or the perfunctorynature of religionin Westeros. On the opposite side he shows where Tolkien generally gets it right with regard to logistics, economics and social organizations
DeleteRegarding that castle video on YouTube, I agree, different regions build differently, both houses and castles. One can still reasonably critique castles in a fantasy setting from first principles. Does the fortification have a clear mission, is its design fulfilling that mission, are the defenses effective? This does lead to further questions of how do you build a castle to defend against dragon attacks? Do wizards count as artillery? It may well lead to castles looking more like 19th century artillery forts, or simply building wards into the walls to repel magic attacks.