Game of Thrones

Discussion in 'Taylor's Tittle-Tattle - General Banter' started by tonycotonstache, Apr 15, 2019.

  1. hornetgags

    hornetgags McMuff's lovechild

    Thanks for your input.
     
  2. Relegation Certs

    Relegation Certs Squad Player

    Have you considered television critiquing as a career?
     
  3. Diamond

    Diamond First Team

    I loved it and hated at the same time.

    The scenes throughout were outstanding. Just wow. Everything was just awesome to look at from start to finish. I'm gobsmacked at how good that was. The dragon face appearing from the darkness just before the execution was perfect.

    So how, in a single episode, have the dragon killing weapons become useless?

    The Cercei death was lazy. I wanted a long drawn out death for her not being buried by a load of rubble. Awful.

    To me it just feels like they need to wrap up the series in 6 episodes rather than 12. Things are rushed and it's leaving a bad taste in my mouth. We're going to remember it for ending badly. I'm sad that next week's will be the end. Poor show.
     
  4. nornironhorn

    nornironhorn Administrator Staff Member

    I don't think it's a because of them becoming useless, I think it is more the case of Daenerys being prepared for them which she wasn't in the previous episode.

    Emphasis was put on how slow they were to manoeuvre and reload which is why so many failed to get a good shot on the dragon.
     
  5. Happy bunny

    Happy bunny Cheered up a bit

    No, I'm planning to ask you to train me as a football pundit
     
  6. Diamond

    Diamond First Team

    How much self control will it take Sansa to not laugh in Jon's face and say "I told you so?"
     
  7. Sting

    Sting Squad Player

    Don't judge the whole thing on one episode or frankly even this series. The previous series were all good to great - this has been very mixed between good and poor.
    For me once the scriptwriters had to invent the story themselves because they had got to the end of the books it started to fall away.
    GRR Martin wrote great books with character perspective and developing plots.
    TV scriptwriters just go for "show" and it suffers.
    I am no longer sorry that this is the last season.
     
    scummybear likes this.
  8. Happy bunny

    Happy bunny Cheered up a bit

    Yes, that's the impression I've gained from others
     
    Sting likes this.
  9. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    I don't see it as sudden. It's been a long time coming. I think Dany is a sociopath and always has been. She hasn't really done anything for altruistic reasons; it was all about what was good for her. Saving the slaves got her renown and hero worship, no to mention a devoted Unsullied army. She liked that. "I release you from slavery and now you are my subjects regardless of what you want! Rejoice!".

    From S1 she's had a nasty streak a mile wide, but because the music depicted it as heroic so many horrific things she's done are dismissed. She didn't blink an eye nor attempt to save her brother when he was brutally killed. She burned Mirri Maz Duur alive. She threatened to burn Qaath to the ground if they didn't help her. She crucified the masters as an act of reprisal, including those who had been against killing the children (per Hizdahr zo Loraq). She locked the dragons away not because they killed a child, but because she became afraid of them. She fed heads of families to the imprisoned dragons despite having no idea if they were guilty of anything or not. She burned all of the Khals of Vaes Dothrak alive despite having an opportunity to escape before them.

    Upon arriving in Westeros, she immediately started coldly demanding everyone bend the knee, no sign of any attempt to win them over; it was all threats. She overtly threatened to kill Tyrion if he failed her again. She unnecessarily burned the Tarlys, both Lord and heir. She unnecessarily burned Varys, no trial, no empathy, no sign that she was looking at a human being at all. She demanded Jon ignore his heritage and tell no one, because it's all about her. She instantly turned from charm and pleading with Jon to icy distance when she said "fear it is". The emotions were an act; she turned it on when needed and off the moment it became obvious she was getting nowhere.

    These aren't the acts of a well-balanced person. It would be one thing if she was conflicted, but she never was. Dany's MO has been "bow to me or die" for the entire show.

    What I think the show did a poor job of communicating was the time between Missandei's death and the battle for King's Landing. It would have been at least 2 weeks later, during which time she's been in solitude, no eating, and consumed by thoughts of vengeance. It was pretty obvious when they showed the shot of her black-rimmed eyes and disheveled hair at Dragonstone that she'd lost the plot. Coupled her Nazi-esque justification of her coming actions ("a mercy to future generations to not suffer under tyrants") with a genetically mentally unstable individual and you've got a recipe for disaster.

    If they had allowed for two additional episodes to show the passing of time between Missandei's death and the events of King's Landing, and a few scenes showing Dany visibly degrading, it would have been less jarring. It seemed sudden to us on-screen because they skipped over the content in between, which was a huge mistake.

    I don't think they became useless, they simply didn't have surprise on their side anymore.

    When Rhaegal got hit, he was fairly badly injured from the BOW, and was cruising lazily through the skies because apparently Dany is blind and can't see an enemy fleet while airborne. Rhaegal was easily visible, at a good distance and not maneuvering at speed. He was about the easiest target they could have had striking from an ambush.

    While I have issues with the Iron Fleet not being seen, if you accept that the story says they wasn't the shots on Rhaegal became fairly easy.

    The scorpions at King's Landing were another matter. Dany worked out to come from above (the scorpions can't shoot straight up) and with the sun behind her to stop them from spotting her. She dove in hard and fast, torched the ships, then turned and came from behind, correctly identifying that the scorpions can't turn fast and, most importantly, can't shoot backwards because of the sails/mast. From there, it was easy for her. Drogon is faster than Rhaegal, actually trying to dodge the shots because he knows they are coming, has surprise on his side and, most importantly, isn't badly injured. Cersei's comment later put it into perspective: "One lucky shot". That's the reality of their plan; taking a shot at a fairly stationary injured dragon from an ambush is one thing, but a combat mobile uninjured one that knows you have defenses and where they are is something else entirely. As Tyrion noted earlier in the show, dragons are intelligent. Drogon certainly learned from seeing what happened to Rhaegal.
     
  10. domthehornet

    domthehornet Moderator Staff Member

    I agree it has been building but I didn't see it to the extent where she went after civillians. I agree that the pacing may have not fully conveyed that she was brewing on what had happened which I believe would have helped it easier to understand. It felt like I had skipped an episode and missed a crucial part of the story.
     
  11. tonycotonstache

    tonycotonstache Squad Player

  12. Sting

    Sting Squad Player

    However mad she may have been or has become her strategy to torch King's Landing first and then to attack the Red Keep where Cersei was makes no sense ar all.
     
  13. Sting

    Sting Squad Player

    In Game of Thrones you are not dead until you are seen to be dead (and not always then) . I will not be at all surprised if Cersei has survived.
     
    The Voice of Reason likes this.
  14. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    Agree on that part, they needed at least (preferably two) episodes to make it clear there had been a tipping point. Instead, we get a throwaway comment from Varys made to a kid and coupled with the geographical distance between DS and KL we're expected to extrapolate.
     
  15. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    Mercy is her strength!

    She's snapped and lost the plot entirely. Burn them all!

    "The Mad King gave his enemies the justice he thought they deserved, and each time, it made him feel powerful and right, until the very end."

    I did like the attention to detail with the occasional ignition of one of Aerys' hidden wildfire caches. A daddy/daughter bonding moment for the ages.
     
  16. wfcmoog

    wfcmoog Tinpot

    I don't agree entirely.
    Viserys was a monster. He treated Dany like a piece of cattle to buy an army. When he was killed, he was threatening her.

    MMD also got no more than she deserved. Dany trusted her and she not only poisoned her husband, but killed and mutilated he unborn child, making her unable to have children in the process. Burning alive would seem fair.

    Dany was genuinely affected by Drogo's brain death.

    The crucifixion of the masters was a response to their butchery of children in the same way. Maybe a few of the masters killed were against the children being crucified, but in the committing of a war crime, they were complicit.

    She also put her plans for conquest on hold, to fight the good fight of the North against the undead.

    There were many occasions where she put her longer term plans on hold to liberate slaves. She clearly found the whole concept repellent. The risks she took and for little gain after she had secured her unsullied army, do not suggest it was purely about self aggrandizement. She also left the second sons in Essos rather than being them to westeros, where they could have helped her move for the throne more quickly.

    I think that the change has been badly written. Though they signposted it a bit, it's been 7 seasons of building her up and then 2 episodes of suggesting she might be be bit suspect and then straight out genocide because she was peed off. There's no consistency at all
     
    Sting and Arakel like this.
  17. RookeryDad

    RookeryDad Squad Player

    I realised about 3 years ago I wouldn’t ever watch it.

    Some of the appeal will be from the zeitgeist, water cooler effect.

    Not to judge it as bad but that it is of its moment.
     
  18. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    On Viserys: no, he wasn't remotely nice. He was also drunk at the time he died and the only family member she had, yet she showed zero emotion whatsoever about him getting brutally executed. She then proceeded to name a dragon after him, so she can't have been that upset with him in the grand scheme of things.

    On MMD: she was burned to death. That's crazy tier, no matter what someone has done to you. Granted, as a single standalone act you can argue it was a crime of passion given what went before, but this isn't a lone act.

    On the masters: the children being crucified does not justify doing the same thing in vengeance. Not only does it make you no better than them, but returning the favour indiscriminately without knowing whether or not the individuals involved were guilty is absolute tyranny, not justice. Merely being a master doesn't make them complicit any more than you or I are complicit for the war crimes committed by mssrs Blair and Bush.

    Finding slavery repellent doesn't make her a nice person. Hitler was a vegetarian and was very pro animal rights. He was still a monster.

    Freeing slaves (who ironically in many cases went on to have worse lives as a result, covered in detail by the books and the show alike) doesn't excuse locking someone in an unbreakable vault to starve to death, or feeding someone to a dragon purely because they're the head of a family.

    Fact is every time an object was put in Dany's way, her stance became comply or die. She did the right thing when it was easy. The moment it got hard and people didn't immediately fawn over her, she went off the deep end. Heck, her character was exposed the moment she found out she wasn't the true heir to the Iron Throne after all. Her entire justification has been that everyone else was a usurpers and not the rightful heir; neither is she, yet she immediately and desperately sought to hide that truth, to the point she was willing to kill Varys for letting others know what the truth was. What sort of ruler kills people for telling the truth?

    Varys absolutely nailed it with his comment about tyrants who are convinced of their own destinies.

    Either way, good discussion!
     
    wfcmoog likes this.
  19. The Voice of Reason

    The Voice of Reason First Team Captain

    I agree with you, and I have suggested this scenario in an earlier post.
     
    Sting likes this.
  20. tonycotonstache

    tonycotonstache Squad Player

    Nailed it.
     
  21. Diamond

    Diamond First Team

    Talking of Varys. at the very beginning of the episode, we see Varys talk to one of his little birds. She tells him the queen isn't eating. Varys says to try again at dinner, and also that "the greater the risk, the greater the reward." At the time it may have sounded like he was concerned about an increasingly delirious Daenerys, but did he manage to slip her something that sent her bonkers?
     
  22. domthehornet

    domthehornet Moderator Staff Member

    The current theory is that he has tried to poison her food in order for Jon to take the throne. In an ideal world this plan should have been shown on the show with the girl getting caught. It would at least have made Varys's death much more than it was.
     
    wfcmoog likes this.
  23. Hornpete

    Hornpete Squad Player

    SPOILER="Spoiler"]I cant beleive Cersei had grown 3 robot dragons who shat torpedoes onto the unsullied. That was brilliant tv. I also loved the bit where the ghost of Ned Stark returned to tell Jon Snow where to find the remote control for the robot dragons. I never saw that coming whatsoever. Brilliant.[/SPOILER]
     
    La_tempesta_cielo_68 likes this.
  24. wfcmoog

    wfcmoog Tinpot

    #wishyouweretheshowrunner
     
  25. Sting

    Sting Squad Player

    Boooooooo. Some people.
    You have not learned to use "spoiler" correctly and now you have given away all the truths that we were wanting to avoid. It is not worth any of us watching the three remaining episodes nor the next series which has been filmed secretly and they may as well close this thread immediately.
     
  26. wfcmoog

    wfcmoog Tinpot

    I think the bottom line for both is that the characters in GOT are not villains or heroes. We assign them those roles as viewers but GRRM has been explicit about how he never writes characters that way. They are all flawed, all capable of good and all capable of being monstrous.

    There has been some outcry on twitter by SJWs who feel let down by the turn of events of episode 5. They argue that strong, powerful female leads turning to **** is a betrayal. Frankly I think they should avoid watching any fictional TV, or indeed, factual, if they want their perfect vision of identity politics to be preserved intact.

    For Danaerys, she was always a flawed character, I just think it's a massive leap to go from justifying extra judicial executions by burning due to your right of absolute monarchy and then committing genocide of village children and women who are fleeing for their lives, for no reason whatsoever. If there had been some question of the battle being in the balance, of there being a judgement call of whether to risk losing the battle by sparing the children or going for the win no matter the cost, I think it might just have tipped it, but the sounding of the bells, the surrendering of weapons by the red guard, the infiltration of the city by the Unsullied, the Northmen and the (miraculously still alive) Dothraki Screamers, means that she chose to annihilate thousands of innocents out of nothing more than blood lust.

    Of course, for the plot, it creates a perfect rationale for how they are going to finish it off (presumably) in episode 6. A Dany who made a questionable military decision might not be so easily displaced as one who'd gone ******* berserk and torched the innocents, but still, it's incongruous with her previous behaviour and hard to swallow.

    The worst part is that GRRM still shows no sign of producing another book. It's been, what, 8 years since Dance with Dragons? How involved has he been with the writing on the show and is there any possibility that there may be some significant differences between the way the Show turned out vs, the books? I'm hoping Strong Belwas is proclaimed the undisputed king of the Iron Throne and that he marries Lady Stoneheart and has some half zombie children with her.
     
    Arakel likes this.
  27. Sting

    Sting Squad Player

    I wonder if GRRM will wait until the end of the TV GoT and then write his own continuation. He can hardly write a book from where he last left off.
     
  28. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    The actor who played Barristan the Bold has said GRRM has already finished BOTH books (Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring) but had a deal with D&D/HBO where he wouldn't release them until the show was done.

    Whether or not he's right remains to be seen, but he said it on camera at a convention panel so the fact he said it is indisputable.
     
  29. wfcmoog

    wfcmoog Tinpot

    GRRM has already flatly denied this
     
  30. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    Ah, missed that. Shame really, because that means he's just slow and subject to dying before finishing.
     
    wfcmoog likes this.
  31. wfcmoog

    wfcmoog Tinpot

    Elia and Linda will have to finish an unofficial ending to leave fans unsatisfied
     
  32. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    Did they all wake up and find it was just a dream ?
     
  33. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    I am so convinced he's going to do a Robert Jordan.
     
  34. wfcmoog

    wfcmoog Tinpot

    I don't know the reference.
     
  35. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    Jordan was the author of the Wheel of Time series and died before completing it (tried one of the books, didn't like them, YMMV). Someone else had to finish the last two books.

    Martin is 70 and, obviously, a bit overweight. Given that DwD was published in 2011, there's a good chance he'll drop dead before finishing at the current rate.
     

Share This Page