Malaphax Posted April 30, 2019 Report Share Posted April 30, 2019 Spoiler It was a good episode, but some aspects were a bit meh. I still think battle of the bastards and hardhome were better battle episodes. I also think it's going to be nearly impossible for any battle with Cersei to hold the same weight after they just killed an entire army of undead and a crazy powerful lich. I think the idea of leading with a cavalry charge was absolutely stupid. They're defending a position and they clearly can't fit the entire dothraki horde inside the castle but I do feel like they should have hit with a 1-2 punch of dragons light up the frontlines, followed by cavalry charge through the semi-cleared area, leading the undead back to the castle defensive positions. Or at least let the unsullied hold a center line and have the cavalry try and carve through the flanks. I especially loved that they couldn't light the trench but Jon is fucking sitting on the castle wall doing his best impersonation of batman staring up at the sky for the bat signal. I know I saw some reddit comments saying Melisandre was the MVP because all the scenes before she showed up and lit the trench were dark as hell. I blame this partially on the lighting for these scenes and partially on web compression which made some of these dark scenes look worse. Plot armor was so damn thick it was comical. You literally see 2-3 main characters fighting seeming endless hordes of undead with no random fighters surrounding them. Next weeks preview showed some random soldiers clearly survived but in those scenes they probably should have shown a clumps of soldiers holding off undead rather than just 2-3 main characters standing on a staircase hacking away. Bonus points for dragons taking major damage including what looked like 50+ undead swarming one of them and it just flies up and shakes them off, no big. Sidenote, I feel like I only saw one shot of Gendry that entire episode, I honestly think Ghost had more screentime than he did. I understood they needed some slower paced scenes including a few shots of the crypts but the Arya stealth section just seemed out of place. Especially because that was the only scene where the undead acted like slow zombies, the entire rest of the episode they behaved more like fast zombies (28 days later style). I really shouldn't be so critical and judgemental of a drama series having issues with major battle sequences. Game of Thrones was never meant to be about these massive battles, in fact many major battles in the books and earlier seasons even happen offscreen. I just hope the dramatic elements find a strong conclusion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Malaphax Posted May 3, 2019 Report Share Posted May 3, 2019 Spoiler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kuhla Posted May 21, 2019 Author Report Share Posted May 21, 2019 Just finished the series last night. Spoiler A lot of people are unhappy with the Season 8 and how it ended. I agree that the season and the finale were kind of weak but that's about as far as I would go. I don't think it was bad. I feel like some people are unhappy just because it was ending and the finality of that after living with this show for years. I actually blame the author GRRM for a lot of the problems since the creators of the show were suddenly left without reference material and a spiderweb of storylines to somehow resolve and piss off as few people as possible in a limited amount of time. What we got was the compromise solution which doesn't leave many people happy. Probably one of my biggest issues with the finale was actually when they tried to inject a few jokes. It felt wildly inappropriate compared to the tone of the rest of the episode (very somber and serious). I hope they don't try to push a bunch of prequels/sequels/spin-offs. I wonder what GRRM will do with the books now (I have not read any of them) since he now has the shows timeline to compare to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Malaphax Posted May 21, 2019 Report Share Posted May 21, 2019 Spoiler It was painfully obvious the point in the show where they outpaced the books. Aside from the Dorne storyline, the show runners did a fantastic job adapting the book material to a 10 episode show format, they cut plenty of chaff and random side characters while keeping the tone and key elements intact. It's one of the best examples of a book adaptation I can think of. One of the other issues with the show was the shift from drama focused to battle focused - this is partially due to the increased viewership and the culmination of major story arcs resolving in huge battles. If you remember back to the earlier seasons where major battles (all of Rob Stark's battles) were handled off screen because the importance was the dramatic elements, not on Jon doing that lazy fucking half dodge/swing he did about 50 times this season. There were multiple problems with this season, the battle with the dead feels like a much higher stakes encounter than anything with Cersei, and one of the major points of the entire show is getting people to see past the pointless squabbling for power to join forces against the army of the dead. The battle of King's landing was a mess, but more importantly several key prophecies got tossed out the window - cersei is supposed to die at the hands of her brother, jon is rather clearly azor ahai, daenerys' prophecy of never holding the throne isn't even really accurate since she does hold it (briefly). My truly major issue with the ending is how incongruous it is. Bran spent 4+ seasons telling everyone (including Meera) about how he's no longer Bran and that he has a specific role to be the 3-eyed raven. Nope he's "bran the broken" now because Tyrion read somewhere that most heroes have an alliterative name... and everyone is seemingly ok with that? How about danny's bloodriders? They're bound to follow either whomever kills their leader, or they'd split up and start trying to form their own khalisar... nah they're just hanging out in westeros now, no big deal. Grey worm is super mad at Jon for killing danny, but he's also heading away from westeros to Naath, so why can't Jon just do whatever he wants, no one is going to enforce his exile and he's far more popular than Sansa in the north. Speaking of Sansa, I actually understand her fight for independence - but I don't see how the other 6 kingdoms would be ok with the north being the only independent kingdom, especially the dornish who were the only kingdom never truly conquered by the targaryens. Also the idea of a kingsmoot isn't new (iron islands) but I have a hard time believing that would result in anything less than catastrophe, the game of thrones would be even more fierce if everyone can compete for the throne once a generation. I understand the show runners aren't writers and having to find a proper ending for one of the largest and most successful tv series is a hard task, but the entire season felt incredibly sloppy. The battle sequences made no sense, multiple character stories made no sense, and the ending felt out of place compared to the tone of the entire show. Unfortunately HBO is going to invariably try and milk this and either do spinoffs or other projects based on this series due to the immense popularity. My only hope is that they see the tremendous ratings drop (viewership hit new records though) and play this carefully. I suspect they'll instead release some milquetoast garbage branded as game of thrones which will invariably get decent viewership and take that as a sign that they should keep pumping money into this IP. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jedi2155 Posted May 22, 2019 Report Share Posted May 22, 2019 Quote I hope they don't try to push a bunch of prequels/sequels/spin-offs. This is simply not going to happen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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