Mr Fahrenheit
Valar Morghulis
- Oct 9, 2009
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Rewatching Game of Thrones
- Thread starter Fred22406Capsfan
- Start date
I've been rewatching GOT and just finished season 3. Season 1 was a lot better than I remembered it being. In fact, I think it's my favorite so far. Such a good buildup from winterfell to King's Landing. So many great dialogues between Ned, Varys, Jamie, Cersei, Little Finger etc.
Season 2 still really good but a lot less interesting to me. The politics with the 5 kings stuff going on was good but they have all these armies and we get to actually see like 1 battle that's instantly over. I understand it's tough to show battles that large, but I would've liked a little more.
Season 3 picks way back up. Tywin just owns every scene. It was season 2 but his intro with Jamie has got to be one of the best dialogues on the show. He's so clearly better than pretty much everyone else at the game and they do a great job of showing you that right away. Then of course you have the red wedding. The show telling you they are going to name Rob's son Ned right before they they murder all of the Starks in the castle is just gut wrenching even knowing it's coming.
I forgot how good this show is because of the bad taste the final few seasons left. But man early and mid GOT is probably my favorite show of all time. All of the fantastic dialogue with such an interesting plot. Then you have them going back and forth between every climate and it really feels like a big world with so much going on. The lack of this in HOTD season 1 was noticeable to me but I think season 2 will be much better.
Season 2 still really good but a lot less interesting to me. The politics with the 5 kings stuff going on was good but they have all these armies and we get to actually see like 1 battle that's instantly over. I understand it's tough to show battles that large, but I would've liked a little more.
Season 3 picks way back up. Tywin just owns every scene. It was season 2 but his intro with Jamie has got to be one of the best dialogues on the show. He's so clearly better than pretty much everyone else at the game and they do a great job of showing you that right away. Then of course you have the red wedding. The show telling you they are going to name Rob's son Ned right before they they murder all of the Starks in the castle is just gut wrenching even knowing it's coming.
I forgot how good this show is because of the bad taste the final few seasons left. But man early and mid GOT is probably my favorite show of all time. All of the fantastic dialogue with such an interesting plot. Then you have them going back and forth between every climate and it really feels like a big world with so much going on. The lack of this in HOTD season 1 was noticeable to me but I think season 2 will be much better.
I had this discussion with a buddy of mine just the other week.
The series ending honestly makes it so hard to actually go back and watch, because the entire time you're watching the good seasons, you just know in the back of your mind where everything ultimately leads to.
Which is such a shame because seasons 1-6 are simply peak television, and even season 7 for me at least was solid. Season 8 just wipes everything great away.
And, as a few people have already said... It didn't have to be that way. Even the ultimate storylines that played out, could have worked. If they had just given the show the proper story time to let it play out the way they intended. Rushing season 7 and 8 into just a combined 13 episodes was f***ing tragedy. If they had given us 2 full season with 10 episodes in each, that would have given them ample time to make the decisions and battles that occurred, make so much more sense.
But anyway, HOTD is great! So far right up there with early GOT for me. And its given me some hope that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms can be good as well and will be interesting to see how it more closely ties with the early events of GOT. I hope one day we get a series about the Nights Watch, and the Night King as well. That's probably the stories I'm the most interested in from this world at this point.
The series ending honestly makes it so hard to actually go back and watch, because the entire time you're watching the good seasons, you just know in the back of your mind where everything ultimately leads to.
Which is such a shame because seasons 1-6 are simply peak television, and even season 7 for me at least was solid. Season 8 just wipes everything great away.
And, as a few people have already said... It didn't have to be that way. Even the ultimate storylines that played out, could have worked. If they had just given the show the proper story time to let it play out the way they intended. Rushing season 7 and 8 into just a combined 13 episodes was f***ing tragedy. If they had given us 2 full season with 10 episodes in each, that would have given them ample time to make the decisions and battles that occurred, make so much more sense.
But anyway, HOTD is great! So far right up there with early GOT for me. And its given me some hope that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms can be good as well and will be interesting to see how it more closely ties with the early events of GOT. I hope one day we get a series about the Nights Watch, and the Night King as well. That's probably the stories I'm the most interested in from this world at this point.
Emperoreddy
Show Me What You Got!
The Crypto Guy
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- Jun 26, 2017
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It’s truthfully not as bad as people make it seem. And watching it straight through, without weeks/years in between definitely helps.
I'm halfway through season 4 now and I can kinda see Dany getting away from where she initially started. She's freeing people but getting more and more violent while doing so
Yeah idk what the hell they were thinking doing that. The show probably could've done 10 seasons and not ran out of plot. If you can only do 8 then fine, but don't do shortened seasons
The Waffler
Smartest Man-Child on HF
I quite liked the Battle of Winterfell, my only issue was that when it premiered, directly following it was an episode of Barry where he fights a feral karate kid and that definitely overshadowed the BoW almost instantly. And I don’t even watch Barry.
BrindamoursNose
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- Oct 14, 2008
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The showrunners wanted to stop doing the show, basically. That's why I have such vitriol for Dan & Dave. They wanted to stop it so they could start working on a Star Wars project (which they were kicked off of) and an HBO show they were going to do called The Confederacy, which was canceled.
I hate those guys for ruining maybe the greatest show of all time.
I do remember hearing about that now. Such a shame they rushed what could've been arguably the greatest show of all time.
Yep...
And again, its not like they even needed that much more time. They absolutely could have still made everything work in 8 seasons. They just needed to give us the 7 episodes they took away.
- Jun 23, 2020
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They could have made it work in the time they had if they had dumped filmed plotlines that went nowhere (Braavos, Dorne) and cut down on the Ramsey torture porn.
They simply had no idea what they were doing, though. All that stuff was pointless shock value that added nothing.
JimmyApples
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- Sep 24, 2021
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There is a massive difference between writing television shows, and major fantasy novels.
Signing on to create the show, everything was peachy. GRRM was finishing up the 5th of 7 books, writing an episode or two every season, and openly collaborating with the creatives of the show. Imagine, while slightly over halfway done the show, being told you have to finish off the show, with no help from the source material? From my understanding, they knew the end of ASOIAF, as well as some minor plot details. And now they have to figure out how to get from Point P to Point Z, of someone else's work, for the biggest show maybe in history?
I'm definitely frustrated with the way Game of Thrones went. It was my favourite show. But what a shitty situation to be put in as a television writer.
Neutrinos
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- Sep 23, 2016
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Don't you live for that opportunity if you're a television writer?
Leading up to the final season, I watched quite a few "leaked Season 8 plot" videos on YouTube that turned out to be far more interesting than what we ended up with...
Someone had to write these...
- Aug 24, 2011
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Agreed. Season 8 is a lot more palatable when you’re binging it. Like the show “Lost”, when you’re not waiting a week or weeks/months between episodes and seasons things flow better.
Some things are just too dumb to fully look past (WW’s chaining up the dead dragon, Gendry sprinting through the mountains to go get help from Dany real quick, “The Long Night”, etc…but S7 and S8 had so much spectacle and grandeur to them it doesn’t ruin a rewatch for me whatsoever. Especially since many characters in the first half of the series don’t make it to the 2nd half.
I’ll always love rewatching GoT, Lost, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men. Timeless classics.
BrindamoursNose
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I'm not giving them any slack for their poor effort. George told them the outline of where his story was going and the proceeded to botch it.
The biggest issues I had with the ending of GOT wasn't the big bullet points (even though some I really didn't like), but it was how it was executed. They had total control over how fast the story moved at the end. They kept reducing the number of episodes when they needed to stretch them. Season 8 should've been 2 full seasons. Basic writing principles for characters were completely thrown out the window. I'll never forgive them for what they did to Jaime Lannister in Season 8.
So anyway, I interpreted your response as a defense of D&D and I'm not having that, hah.
I've been in the GOT community for a while (I actually make vids about it) and I do not care for that Ser Hunts dude and his stupid arrows pointing at nothing in the thumbnails, hah. Total side comment.
But overall: You're dead on that writers should *dream* of having this world to work with. George laid the story out for hem to adapt, even unfinished. Like wildly basic things such as Jon fighting the Night King was an obvious journey in the story...that they completely avoided.
RandV
It's a wolf v2.0
Even still, they might have put themselves into that situation. I don't know how the writing industry works in film here, but I recall reading an article shortly after that pointed that the normal operating practice is you have a teams of writers. Dan & David on the other never hired other writers but kept the reigns fully to themselves. They also had no prior experience as writers in the film industry, I could be wrong but I think they were friends where one was a film graduate and the other an ivy leaguer from a wealthy family, that had the connections to get in the room with GRRM to pitch an HBO show.
I don't mean to rag on the guys more personally here as there's a lot I'm not familiar with, but taking an extremely negative outlook on the situation one has to wonder how hard being the 'TV writer' is working between GRRM's writing and HBO's production & casting, if they weren't just two under qualified guys who due to connections failed upwards.
While it was the final season that fully took the wind out of the sails I thought the warning signs were there right from the start when they had to start veering off from season 4/book 3. While you expect to suspend disbelief watching TV, a big thing that made GoT so great through 4 seasons was it had none of that. There was a sense of 'realism' where characters naturally met the consequences of their actions. While adapting season 5 onwards was always going to be a challenge, you look at something like the Dorne plot line which was resolved by Jamie just offering Bron a very big castle for the two of them to go alone into Dorne, and personally to me it was suddenly like I was watching Archer on the CW or something. And while you want to condense plotlines let's not even get into how utterly stupid the Sansa/Ramsay marriage was.
I wonder if the reaction to Season 8 completely took the wind out of GRRM's sails for finishing Winds of Winter and Dream of Spring.
Perhaps the ending was what he had intended for the books and rather than rewriting it, he'd rather work on other projects and hope no one notices or remembers.
But we remember George. The North Remembers.
Perhaps the ending was what he had intended for the books and rather than rewriting it, he'd rather work on other projects and hope no one notices or remembers.
But we remember George. The North Remembers.
Mr Fahrenheit
Valar Morghulis
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"Why is there a dumb arrow pointing at nothing" was literally all I thought about while looking at the thumbnail
BrindamoursNose
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It's the biggest hack content creator move I've seen to date. It ranks up there with loser video makers that title their videos with stupid generic shock-value headlines like "You Won't Believe What I've Got Inside!" or "How You Are Inches Away From Death RIGHT NOW"
Tells you nothing, and you watch it and still tells you nothing. Just stupid clickbait nonsense...Just like those stupid arrows.
I hate that Ser Hunts has 2x the amount of subscribers I do while knowing he does this hack behavior.
Just finished season 4. Wow what a ride. You have the fallout from the red wedding happening then Joffrey dying at his own wedding shortly after. Having already watched it once, I could really see where the pendant off the necklace was taken and how everything occurred. Such a well done poisoning.
This season also had the best Lannister family dynamics. Tywin hates Tyrion but respects his knowledge. Cersei just outright hates him. Jamie loves his brother but also feels a sense of duty to Tywin and his love Cersei.
Oberyn was such a great character. A bisexual badass looking for nothing but revenge. I was sad to see him die by a trick he probably should've expected though. Even worse, we all know the Mountain comes back.
I really enjoyed the stuff with Bran going to the tree in the north. Not being able to see his brother when they were so close to being united was hard to watch.
Arya going through a similar journey just missing her family at the red wedding and then arriving a few days too late to meet with her aunt. Her and the Hound's travels were both tragic and humorous at times. The chicken scene especially.
Somehow I missed this or maybe just didn't remember about the part where Lysa reveals she and little finger were behind jon Arryn's death and writing the letter to lure Catlin to go to Kings Landing. Very f***ed of her and she got what she deserved in the end. You can really see Sansa starting to understand the game at this point, coming into her own a bit.
The battle at the wall was just incredible. Maybe my favorite battle of the whole show. The did well to hold for the first night. Then Stannis saved them the second day. The part with Ygritte dying was so sad. John just taking Ls at every turn. Oh and the part with the 5 men in black saying their vows as the giant gets closer and closer had to be one of the best scenes of the entire show for me. I really enjoy how the show shows you that even the brave are terrified of dying. As much as you want to see the action, it feels so realistic to the point where it can be hard to watch.
Then of course you have Tyrion's trial. That whore betrayed him when all he ever wanted was her safety. Tyrion saying they all deserved to die at the end of the trial was so satisfying. He has a great way of joking but also being right. Him getting revenge on Tywin was so satisfying. He had everyone else under his control but not his two sons.
Overall, probably my favorite season of GOT so far. I think I'd rank them 4, 1, 3, 2 so far. Looking forward to starting season 5 tonight.
Its one of the most overrated TV shows ever, even though its still pretty entertaining, particularly during the early seasons. Still GoT doesn't hold the jockstrap to really great shows such as Twin Peaks, The Wire, Sopranos, The Shield, Rome, Veronica Mars, Curb etc. The World building isn't that creative either if you know a thing or two about history. Then you have the botched end as well which just sours the overall impression of the show.
RandV
It's a wolf v2.0
This is an opinion I always see and it bugs me to no end. First, while the show writers had GRRM's ending cliff notes the problem was in the execution, not necessarily the ending itself. Though that's not something a lot of people will realize.
I think more importantly though is the fact that GRRM had long since checked out already. Books 1-3 were released within a span of 4 years during the late 90's. Then it took 5 years to get book 4 out, with the obvious issue of half the characters (and the more popular ones at that) being missing. But there was a note from GRRM at the end which went something like: 'don't worry, the book just got too big and had to be split in half and the second part with Jon/Dany/Tyrion stories is mostly written and will be out shortly'. And then with all eyes on him now that the HBO show was out and a massive hit, it took him 6 years to get the 5th book out.
At this point he said somewhere in an interview that he's going to stop putting out timelines for his releases because when he inevitably misses it he files like a child explaining to his teacher why his homework wasn't done. And with much more publicity now from the HBO show, books 4 and 5 were received with a lot of criticism. And he had even longer to finish book 6 before the show wrapped up.
Basically in my opinion why he hasn't finished doesn't and doesn't need to have any relation to the show. It's more likely a combination of getting too old/fatigued and letting the plot/story get to unwieldy and running away from him.
Finished season 5 recently. It was a clear step down from season 4 for me. It's still great television but the storylines just aren't as interesting. Felt like more of a setup season similar to season 2.
Arya is doing the faceless man stuff which wasn't nearly as good as her with the Hound. John is busy with politics at the wall. Dany is also stuck in one city trying to figure out how to make peace between the slaves and masters.
King's Landing has the storylines with the crown militant. Tommen is the lamest king who ever lived. He couldve stopped this pretty much immediately but was too afraid too. You can tell he really needs Tywin around and he flounders so hard without him.
The show in general became very religion heavy in this season with all of the above. Stannis is also waging war being guided by the red woman.
I remember hating Stannis before, but I kindve respected him this time around until he had Shireen burned alive. What an awful scene to watch. He deserved to lose after that. Still, it was nice to have an "all duty" type of character around. Without him saving the wall, the wildlings would never have joined John Snow. So in a way his actions were pretty important to humanity surviving.
Maybe my least favorite season of the show so far though. The dialogue and storylines are still good and above most other shows for me. But they clearly dipped in season 5 imo.
Arya is doing the faceless man stuff which wasn't nearly as good as her with the Hound. John is busy with politics at the wall. Dany is also stuck in one city trying to figure out how to make peace between the slaves and masters.
King's Landing has the storylines with the crown militant. Tommen is the lamest king who ever lived. He couldve stopped this pretty much immediately but was too afraid too. You can tell he really needs Tywin around and he flounders so hard without him.
The show in general became very religion heavy in this season with all of the above. Stannis is also waging war being guided by the red woman.
I remember hating Stannis before, but I kindve respected him this time around until he had Shireen burned alive. What an awful scene to watch. He deserved to lose after that. Still, it was nice to have an "all duty" type of character around. Without him saving the wall, the wildlings would never have joined John Snow. So in a way his actions were pretty important to humanity surviving.
Maybe my least favorite season of the show so far though. The dialogue and storylines are still good and above most other shows for me. But they clearly dipped in season 5 imo.
Also not to hate on HOTD, because I love that show too, but it's just not nearly as good as GOT.
GOT feels like an entire world with actions on one side of it eventually having consequences everywhere. They have characters you care about and scenes of happiness. Those scenes are often followed up with gruesome deaths. But that's the difference. I really couldnt care less for most of the character deaths in HOTD because they never showed us those characters being happy or having any kind of wholesome moments/personality. It's like they forgot the buildup.
HOTD is like a hyper focused version with no fun or happiness, strictly thriller/drama. It's a damn good one. But watching these shows side by side, it's very obvious which one is better.
GOT feels like an entire world with actions on one side of it eventually having consequences everywhere. They have characters you care about and scenes of happiness. Those scenes are often followed up with gruesome deaths. But that's the difference. I really couldnt care less for most of the character deaths in HOTD because they never showed us those characters being happy or having any kind of wholesome moments/personality. It's like they forgot the buildup.
HOTD is like a hyper focused version with no fun or happiness, strictly thriller/drama. It's a damn good one. But watching these shows side by side, it's very obvious which one is better.
Neutrinos
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- Sep 23, 2016
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I would say GoT is "better" than HOTD in the same way a buffet is better than ordering off the menu...
That's not to say the buffet food is of greater quality, there's just more of things you'll like to enjoy
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