Game of Thrones & House of the Dragon

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knives
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Re: Game of Thrones

#326 Post by knives » Mon Apr 22, 2019 11:04 am

Well not all of the Stark kids and Lannisters.

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Murdoch
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Re: Game of Thrones

#327 Post by Murdoch » Mon Apr 22, 2019 12:54 pm

MongooseCmr wrote:
Mon Apr 22, 2019 11:02 am
I initially stopped watching during the second season and only periodically watched the last three over my girlfriend’s shoulder. For all it’s reputation for killing characters I’m really stunned by how many people are still alive at this point. All the Stark kids, all the Lannisters, even all the sidekicks and love interests (I’m even more surprised to remember Littlefinger only died in the last season finale.) I’m expecting something like the end of Harry Potter, where so many minor deaths are piled on at once that most don’t get any real staying power.
Yeah, I stopped watching then got hit by all the hype and am now caught up. What I loved about the series - denials of catharsis through beloved characters being suddenly and unapologetically killed off - has been fairly absent for the past three or four seasons. The writers have been doing more building up of lesser characters to throw them to the wolves as fodder than engaging in any of Martin's infamous tactics. I'm expecting each of the cast's big names will either survive or get a grand hero's death but I hope I'm proven wrong.

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movielocke
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Re: Game of Thrones

#328 Post by movielocke » Mon Apr 22, 2019 1:36 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Sun Apr 21, 2019 10:10 pm
Well, we’ll see how much guts this show has in the next episode after giving just about every character in Winterfell but Dany and Jon scenes that could double as farewells. Also
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How is the crypt the safest place to be if you’re fighting an army that reanimates the dead?
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In the books at least, skeletons are a bit of a no-go as wights. but in the show, we have the earlier attack of the skeletons when Bran reaches the three eyed raven (harryhausen tribute!).

Also in the books, we have Bran's perspective when warging Summer than cracking a bone and exposing the marrow is what un-animates a wight. So if any crypt bodies had their bones (traditionally for example) broken, they'd be ineligible for reanimation.

I'm guessing that the oldest skeletons in the crypts are actually ashes, or are empty, because in ye olden days they knew better than to store bodies. but still, most of the actual burial sites are covered by big slabs of stone, which ought to be a deterrant.

Also the book often refers to bones, because the ancient traditions are of stripping bodies of flesh and only retaining bones for burial (this is what the silent sisters do), so the bones are implied as a bit of a disconnected jumble pile, transported in a much smaller symbolic container than a typical coffin, again, probably an ancient tradition people came up with since incinerating human bodies takes massive tons of fuel and can't be done at scale, but boiling bodies and sloughing off the flesh can be scaled far more efficiently.

But all that said, yeah, it seems like they really set up hard that there is going to be a battle of the crypts with ancient Starks.

Looks like Theon is being set up as the Gollum who kills the night king, The emphasis last episode on "what is dead may never die" suggests that the Iron Born's ritual of drowning and resuscitation confers immunity from wight-hood.

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movielocke
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Re: Game of Thrones

#329 Post by movielocke » Mon Apr 22, 2019 1:50 pm

Murdoch wrote:
Mon Apr 22, 2019 12:54 pm
MongooseCmr wrote:
Mon Apr 22, 2019 11:02 am
I initially stopped watching during the second season and only periodically watched the last three over my girlfriend’s shoulder. For all it’s reputation for killing characters I’m really stunned by how many people are still alive at this point. All the Stark kids, all the Lannisters, even all the sidekicks and love interests (I’m even more surprised to remember Littlefinger only died in the last season finale.) I’m expecting something like the end of Harry Potter, where so many minor deaths are piled on at once that most don’t get any real staying power.
Yeah, I stopped watching then got hit by all the hype and am now caught up. What I loved about the series - denials of catharsis through beloved characters being suddenly and unapologetically killed off - has been fairly absent for the past three or four seasons. The writers have been doing more building up of lesser characters to throw them to the wolves as fodder than engaging in any of Martin's infamous tactics. I'm expecting each of the cast's big names will either survive or get a grand hero's death but I hope I'm proven wrong.
I think a lot of this has to do with both a misunderstanding of how often Martin kills off major figures because of the endings of Book 1 and 3 (but very little to nothing in the other books, as the implied killing off of Bran and later Theon, were revealed to be fakes, and the deaths in Mereen, Kings Landing, and the battle of the bastards were not written for nor included in book 5), and also a result of the compression of the story in the adaptation, meaning it is a shortcut for the writers to be able to jettison numerous supporting characters but as a result, require established characters to take on the narrative functions of those lost roles, this gives those established characters additional plot armor and the accretion over many episodes means a perceived decline in mortality for established characters.

But also, a lot of the major deaths of seasons 5, 6 and 7 have been of characters that were not necessarily beloved by the audience, but were major figures without being the outright antagonists nor protagonists. What we see with so many Starks and Lannisters having survived is a reduction back to that core conflict, without the five intervening seasons of wide ranging tangential cast members. Since this has always felt like the core conflict, having them all together sort of shines a light on just how many survived to this point, 3 of 7 Lannisters and 4 of 8 Starks.

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denti alligator
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Re: Game of Thrones

#330 Post by denti alligator » Mon Apr 22, 2019 10:47 pm

At the end of the first season the army of the dead were on the march south. Did it really take them this long to finally get to Winterfell? Seriously?

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domino harvey
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Re: Game of Thrones

#331 Post by domino harvey » Mon Apr 22, 2019 10:48 pm

What? They couldn’t break through the wall til they had a dragon, which only just happened

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movielocke
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Re: Game of Thrones

#332 Post by movielocke » Mon Apr 22, 2019 11:07 pm

denti alligator wrote:At the end of the first season the army of the dead were on the march south. Did it really take them this long to finally get to Winterfell? Seriously?
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Per Bran in the latest episode, they were/are coming for him, he went north of the wall in season 3 which would have switched up their plans. They also spent time dealing with wildlings and nights watch incursions. And if they have as slippery a grasp of time as the wierwood trees they would simply be waiting for the (ice) dragon that will allow them south, as apparently the magical ice wall really was an effective deterrent to magical ice elves.

They’ve been in more of a guerrilla state before possessing the ice dragon, not necessarily proceeding directly south.

I find it fascinating that Bran was revealed in this last episode to be an inverted one ring, that before being able to implement his evil scheme the night king must first destroy a significant and potent symbol, but one that also represents his creator, the creation killing the creator sort of thing, fun twist on robot mythos.

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domino harvey
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Re: Game of Thrones

#333 Post by domino harvey » Tue Apr 23, 2019 8:29 am


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domino harvey
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Re: Game of Thrones

#334 Post by domino harvey » Sun Apr 28, 2019 10:34 pm

The show backed itself into a corner in which this episode needed to overdeliver beyond what it ever possibly could give us, but nevertheless, this was still a disappointment. I was shocked at how poorly staged much of the fighting/action was, and I love plot contrivance as much as the next person but holy shit how many close calls and convenient reappearances of the appropriate heroes for the person under attack can you unironically include and not get called on it? Utterly toothless. I liked the misdirection with spending so much time on
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Arya, seeming to indicate she was going to die, only to have her save the day (out of freaking nowhere, one last cheat for the episode to go out on...). At the end of the day we lost, what, some minor Wall characters, the Mormonts, Theon, the religious right, the Night King, and that's it? What. A. Crock.
That said, the score was beautiful, on par with the great stuff in the season finale a few seasons back.

If this episode gets hailed by the internet as a work of art instead of justly panned, I say we riot.

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Murdoch
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Re: Game of Thrones

#335 Post by Murdoch » Sun Apr 28, 2019 10:55 pm

My god, why did I watch this show for eight seasons? I just .. I just can't.

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domino harvey
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Re: Game of Thrones

#336 Post by domino harvey » Sun Apr 28, 2019 11:48 pm

Well, early fan reaction seems mixed trending downward, so at least we all saw (or didn’t see) the same thing. Perhaps they subverted expectations here to turn around and off everyone in Kings Landing instead, but I’m not sure how much faith I have in the show right now to pull the rug out on anyone, especially if it’s a well-liked rug

ford
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Re: Game of Thrones

#337 Post by ford » Mon Apr 29, 2019 12:19 am

I was quite stunned overall. Or maybe I just had low expectations.

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Shrew
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Re: Game of Thrones

#338 Post by Shrew » Mon Apr 29, 2019 12:50 am

I'm just glad that's over. The ice zombies have always been my least favorite part of this series and I'm happy it'll end in the human realm rather than with a generic High Fantasy Final Battle. It would have been nice if we had gotten this done in ~60 min, but hopefully the next episodes will have color and light (this was especially painful given the great low-light cinematography last episode).

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YnEoS
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Re: Game of Thrones

#339 Post by YnEoS » Mon Apr 29, 2019 1:09 am

I've mostly been expecting and rooting for the show to take a more optimistic turn towards the end. It never felt to me like it was trying to be a constantly upend the audience and rotate through a cast of main characters who get unexpectedly killed off, but was mostly just making the usual children lose their parents in war and grow up to get revenge story more impactful not starting with that loss, but creating the feeling that we expect to things to go normally. But I think most of the characters have been through far too much to give them a kind of quick unexpected death at this point. It does kind of feel like the story is missing some kind of big shift towards the later half, but I just don't think anythings been appropriately built in. They might kill off a few big parts (I was guessing Bran for this episode), but I expect most of the main characters will get to the end alive and happy. I do worry though that at this point things might be going a bit too linearly at this point, around season 5 they had some plot threads where from the first episode they set out where they were heading and then just followed through without any big shifts. And its starting to seem like the final season might simply just be "first the Night King attacks, then Cersei attacks, then its over. I do hope they've got some interesting twist or development that they're holding back before the end.

For the most part I liked this episode, I thought it had some good visuals, like the torches all going out (though seems like it was meant to be played in a theater and not on 99% of how the viewer's television screens have been built and configured). I wasn't quite sure where they were going to go with it, though ultimately they ended up killing off far fewer people than I expected (and I probably expected fewer than most were predicting).
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Arya finishing off the Night King sort of makes sense on paper, since she's the one that's been training the whole series into being some ultimate assassin. It did feel a bit sudden, though for me the problem was the entire kill the leader and the whole army dies setup. I would've liked a bit more mythology in the end, some kind of vision confrontation between Bran and the Night King or something for all that build up.

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bearcuborg
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Re: Game of Thrones

#340 Post by bearcuborg » Mon Apr 29, 2019 12:01 pm

I’m seeing near universal love for last night’s episode online, and from friends. What’s incredible is nearly everyone seems to rewatch on Monday. Though I’m probably late to that fact. That’s something I don’t remember happening with any other TV show.

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tenia
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Re: Game of Thrones

#341 Post by tenia » Mon Apr 29, 2019 12:07 pm

On this side of the Atlantic, most of the feedbacks I read in my "entourage" is that it was overlong and the death toll underwhelming, but the episode well directed.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Game of Thrones

#342 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Apr 29, 2019 1:19 pm

Fan service is a disease. And apparently a much stronger disease than the looming existential threat that completely defined this franchise, which some hack television writers blew away like dandelion spores because reckoning with it became too inconvenient for them.

Turns out Martin really should've just finished writing those books in time after all. These aren't good enough showrunners to do anything worthwhile without a robust template to trace over.

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Persona
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Re: Game of Thrones

#343 Post by Persona » Mon Apr 29, 2019 2:17 pm

Murdoch wrote:
Sun Apr 28, 2019 10:55 pm
My god, why did I watch this show for eight seasons? I just .. I just can't.
I stopped after the first season. I knew it wasn't really for me and never would be.


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tenia
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Re: Game of Thrones

#345 Post by tenia » Mon Apr 29, 2019 2:34 pm

mfunk9786 wrote:
Mon Apr 29, 2019 1:19 pm
Turns out Martin really should've just finished writing those books in time after all. These aren't good enough showrunners to do anything worthwhile without a robust template to trace over.
Some might have a different opinion on them, but I found Crows and Dragons quite tedious reading, and simply thought the show to follow the same trend. Hopefully, when/if the next book will be released, it'll be an improvement though.

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knives
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Re: Game of Thrones

#346 Post by knives » Mon Apr 29, 2019 2:50 pm

mfunk9786 wrote:
Mon Apr 29, 2019 1:19 pm
Fan service is a disease. And apparently a much stronger disease than the looming existential threat that completely defined this franchise, which some hack television writers blew away like dandelion spores because reckoning with it became too inconvenient for them.

Turns out Martin really should've just finished writing those books in time after all. These aren't good enough showrunners to do anything worthwhile without a robust template to trace over.
I haven't read the books, but agree. The first few seasons were effective and devastating. Definitely some of the best stuff on the medium ever. Certainly of this make everything violent age where there was more than a pleasing of fans to the violence. Since they ran out of books though it has become harder and harder to watch despite occasional bright spots (everything with Cersei/ father's day). Didn't bother with the past two seasons even. That said I doubt Martin ever finishes the series and even the next book seems like it will only come out in manuscript form (I looked into reading the books when the show first picked my up, but then said no).

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hearthesilence
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Re: Game of Thrones

#347 Post by hearthesilence » Mon Apr 29, 2019 4:13 pm

LOL! Well, it's easier to sleep on a pile of money.

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domino harvey
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Re: Game of Thrones

#348 Post by domino harvey » Mon Apr 29, 2019 6:43 pm

I know they would have published that story even if last night’s episode was incredible, but still one of those Onion articles that’s so close to the truth that it’s barely satire

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Game of Thrones

#349 Post by Mr Sausage » Mon Apr 29, 2019 8:39 pm

No, not a triumph. But I did like the episode well enough. There were some great visuals (the flaming swords going out in the distance), and a palpable sense of dread and futility. There was too much discontinuity editing, and, yeah, way too many last minute saves. Perhaps because I went in without feeling the worth of the battle rested on how many main characters died, I wasn't disappointed that so many survived.
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I think Arya saving the day was set up in numerous ways, wasn't it? Her meeting with Melisandre seemed to indicate the latter's prophecy earlier in the series was about Arya's final role, tho' I can't say I remember the specifics. Plus the show made such a point to highlight both her weapon and her finishing move.
Anyway, this is only a mid-season cap. The real face off is, appropriately enough, a human one. This has been a show in which magic took second place to petty human conflicts. The great villain of the series turns out not to be the Ice King, but Cersei Lannister.

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jindianajonz
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Re: Game of Thrones

#350 Post by jindianajonz » Mon Apr 29, 2019 10:36 pm

Reddit wrote:They clearly pulled the biggest swerve of all time. We were all wondering which main characters would die. But Ned and the Red Wedding already happened so what's the point of killing main characters? It's not going to shock anybody. So they set their sights higher and killed the entire story instead. The ultimate swerve.

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