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Beginning of Game of Thrones: psychological and political realism plus magic.
Ending of Game of Thrones: fanservicey wrap up that a fairy tale would be ashamed of.
(Or fan *dis*service, given the ratings.)
Disclaimer: I haven't been watching the show normally, I read re-caps and see scenes on Youtube. Which means I miss details and much of the fine acting. OTOH it also means that fine acting can't distract me from a shitty plot.
Spoilers for the last two episodes:
Daenerys, a woman often ruthless or cruel to those who wronged herself or others, but also marked by unusual compassion for the common people... goes and burns thousands of civilians in a surrendered city. Why? The showrunners just say "she went mad". Various watchers think it was foreshadowed or natural, but they disagree on why she did it, undermining how natural it really was. And reportedly, Emilia Clarke was shocked and traumatized when she saw the scripts; if the woman whose full time job has been to try to get into Dany's head didn't see this coming, neither did you.
It's not like Miss "The Throne is Mine" couldn't be a villain. We already saw her burn the stolen food meant to keep King's Landing from starvation. She could easily burn the Red Keep despite Cersei's human shields, or turn on her unreliable allies and burn Winterfell. Those would have some psychological realism.
Arya "made out of rubber this episode" Stark, teen avatar of Death, rides off on a mysterious pale horse. Apparently that was just a random horse, not symbolic of anything coming.
----
Jaime and Cersei die in the basement of a collapsing castle but Tyrion finds them easily. Also the throne room is just fine.
Drogon flies off with a corpse and conveniently disappears, rather than hanging around as a big hungry animal eating whatever he wants.
Jon, having apparently confessed to regicide, is held prisoner for weeks rather than summarily executed for treason and regicide by Grey Worm.
A council picks a new king -- okay, Great Councils of lords doing exactly that are a repeated part of post-Conquest Westeros. I'm not sure the show ever mentioned them, and they should be a lot, well, greater, but it's a thing.
But electing a creepy crippled teenager most of them have never met, and who has absolutely no blood claim to the throne? All because Tyrion gave a nice speech? If you squint you can imagine that lords might *like* a weak and sterile claimaint, to keep any one else from taking the place, but it doesn't sound like that was made clear in the episode (and such placeholderism hardly stops anyone else from making a military attempt anyway). (And a natural alternative, especially given the destruction of the capital, is that the Seven Kingdoms fall apart. They were only unified by Aegon's dragons and then inertia.)
Bran tells Tyrion this is why he came south. So he saw all this coming? Revealing Jon's heritage was a maneuver to drive Dany mad enough to kill thousands of people? Is Bran the real baddie?
Oh, and Gendry, a commoner-raised bastard, is accepted as Lord of the Stormlands based on an off-hand legitimization by the short-lived genocidal 'queen'. Oookay.
Sam as Grand Maester, despite being an undergrad dropout rather than an archmaester, more attached to Jon than Bran -- okay, he's a trustworthy maester-like object, sure.
Bronn, a sellsword whose talent is stabbing people with swords, is master of coin? WTF? Also apparently made lord of Highgarden, which he recently looted for food for King's Landing. I guess Bran wants to start the next rebellion early.
The Greyjoys, who have rebelled twice in the last generation, don't go "Me too!" when Sansa takes the North independent. Or as a reddit comment said:
"Yara just bends the knee to someone she's never met and knows nothing about except that he's the son of the person who put down her father's rebellion and raised her brother as a hostage."
Arya, having finally found her family again, decides to leave them again, to go exploring the great empty ocean no one has returned from. Because exploring empty spaces has been *such* a big point of her character until now. Also, in this time of tragedy and privation, she's diverting resources to fund a naval expedition.
--
Thought on narrative framing of Dany's past record:
"First she came for the slavers, and I didn't say anything because I wasn't a slaver.
Then she came for more slavers, and I didn't say anything because I wasn't a slaver.
Then she came for misogynist homicidal warlords, and I didn't say anything because I wasn't a misognyist homicidal warlord..."
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/game-of-thrones/s08 has been fascinating to watch. Audience rating fo the whole season was 45% a week ago. It had fallen to 39% right before the last episode, dipped down to 38%, and now 37%. No audience rating of individual episodes, but you can see the critics have had collapsing opinions. I suspect the last episode rebound is partly trying to find something good or just plain relief it's over.
Ending of Game of Thrones: fanservicey wrap up that a fairy tale would be ashamed of.
(Or fan *dis*service, given the ratings.)
Disclaimer: I haven't been watching the show normally, I read re-caps and see scenes on Youtube. Which means I miss details and much of the fine acting. OTOH it also means that fine acting can't distract me from a shitty plot.
Spoilers for the last two episodes:
Daenerys, a woman often ruthless or cruel to those who wronged herself or others, but also marked by unusual compassion for the common people... goes and burns thousands of civilians in a surrendered city. Why? The showrunners just say "she went mad". Various watchers think it was foreshadowed or natural, but they disagree on why she did it, undermining how natural it really was. And reportedly, Emilia Clarke was shocked and traumatized when she saw the scripts; if the woman whose full time job has been to try to get into Dany's head didn't see this coming, neither did you.
It's not like Miss "The Throne is Mine" couldn't be a villain. We already saw her burn the stolen food meant to keep King's Landing from starvation. She could easily burn the Red Keep despite Cersei's human shields, or turn on her unreliable allies and burn Winterfell. Those would have some psychological realism.
Arya "made out of rubber this episode" Stark, teen avatar of Death, rides off on a mysterious pale horse. Apparently that was just a random horse, not symbolic of anything coming.
----
Jaime and Cersei die in the basement of a collapsing castle but Tyrion finds them easily. Also the throne room is just fine.
Drogon flies off with a corpse and conveniently disappears, rather than hanging around as a big hungry animal eating whatever he wants.
Jon, having apparently confessed to regicide, is held prisoner for weeks rather than summarily executed for treason and regicide by Grey Worm.
A council picks a new king -- okay, Great Councils of lords doing exactly that are a repeated part of post-Conquest Westeros. I'm not sure the show ever mentioned them, and they should be a lot, well, greater, but it's a thing.
But electing a creepy crippled teenager most of them have never met, and who has absolutely no blood claim to the throne? All because Tyrion gave a nice speech? If you squint you can imagine that lords might *like* a weak and sterile claimaint, to keep any one else from taking the place, but it doesn't sound like that was made clear in the episode (and such placeholderism hardly stops anyone else from making a military attempt anyway). (And a natural alternative, especially given the destruction of the capital, is that the Seven Kingdoms fall apart. They were only unified by Aegon's dragons and then inertia.)
Bran tells Tyrion this is why he came south. So he saw all this coming? Revealing Jon's heritage was a maneuver to drive Dany mad enough to kill thousands of people? Is Bran the real baddie?
Oh, and Gendry, a commoner-raised bastard, is accepted as Lord of the Stormlands based on an off-hand legitimization by the short-lived genocidal 'queen'. Oookay.
Sam as Grand Maester, despite being an undergrad dropout rather than an archmaester, more attached to Jon than Bran -- okay, he's a trustworthy maester-like object, sure.
Bronn, a sellsword whose talent is stabbing people with swords, is master of coin? WTF? Also apparently made lord of Highgarden, which he recently looted for food for King's Landing. I guess Bran wants to start the next rebellion early.
The Greyjoys, who have rebelled twice in the last generation, don't go "Me too!" when Sansa takes the North independent. Or as a reddit comment said:
"Yara just bends the knee to someone she's never met and knows nothing about except that he's the son of the person who put down her father's rebellion and raised her brother as a hostage."
Arya, having finally found her family again, decides to leave them again, to go exploring the great empty ocean no one has returned from. Because exploring empty spaces has been *such* a big point of her character until now. Also, in this time of tragedy and privation, she's diverting resources to fund a naval expedition.
--
Thought on narrative framing of Dany's past record:
"First she came for the slavers, and I didn't say anything because I wasn't a slaver.
Then she came for more slavers, and I didn't say anything because I wasn't a slaver.
Then she came for misogynist homicidal warlords, and I didn't say anything because I wasn't a misognyist homicidal warlord..."
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/game-of-thrones/s08 has been fascinating to watch. Audience rating fo the whole season was 45% a week ago. It had fallen to 39% right before the last episode, dipped down to 38%, and now 37%. No audience rating of individual episodes, but you can see the critics have had collapsing opinions. I suspect the last episode rebound is partly trying to find something good or just plain relief it's over.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-20 21:07 (UTC)From:Yeah, I mostly like it, but it didn't feel as authentic as, say, the first four seasons. I'd say the fanservicey wrap up has been going on for a good couple of seasons now though.