2017 TV/Movie/Book Thread with Spoilers

[ampd]

I find it hilarious that in a show about dragons, magic and undead, people draw the line at realistic travel times.

This is such a red herring. People are objecting to story where an established narrative and understanding is being upended by the way the plot is being moved towards its resolution.

Spoiler:

If it was established that people could travel through Westeros this quickly, then fine. If it was established that ravens could fly thousands of miles southward to Dragonstone in the manner of a few hours, fine. If it was established the map is actually smaller than it has been depicted, fine. But none of that has been established. In fact, what is being critiqued is that all of that intricate detail is being unraveled by silly plot contrivances.

If you don't have a problem with it, fine. But don't belittle people who do.

Spoiler:

Yep, that's pretty much the problem.

It feels like the writing is hampered by the fact that they don't have enough time (in real life episode terms) to resolve all the various threads, but they have these predetermined plot points they need to get to that they're struggling to arrive at in organic ways.

There were definitely better and less ridiculous ways to get the dragons there and kill one of them without the whole deus ex Daenerys thing that's been happening this season, and yes the fault lies with the writers of the show, but it also lies with GRRM for taking so damn long to finish the series himself.

I don't think the writing has been flat out bad (even if it's been in slow decline ever since they left the source material), but it's reached the point where it's undeniably on a lower tier than earlier episodes and the books, where Martin was totally unafraid to kill strong and beloved characters like Ned, Rob, Tywin, etc. where it made sense and you didn't feel the heavy hand of the author intervening at every step. In a sense the reversal of that sense of danger is the worst thing that could have happened to the show and the most disappointing thing about the post books GOT show. You never really felt Dany or Jon Snow was under any real threat in that last episode, even when they were being overwhelmed by white walkers and Jon was essentially left to die. It takes so much of the potential tension out of these scenes when we sort of know Jamie isn't going to get killed by the Dragon, Dany isn't going to get shot out of the sky by the ice spear, and Jon isn't going to get zombified.

The moment you don't believe Cersei can win in the end or Daenerys could just die is the moment this show has gotten away from what made it great and started defaulting to generic fantasy tropes.

I still trust they aren't going to do anything truly awful to this series, but this season has been a mixed bag and I can't really fault anyone for being a tad disappointed with some of it.

[KidA24]

Spoiler:

GoT

I do agree that the wight plan was really stupid. No horses? Or exit plan at all? I agree with others that Dany simply being at Eastwatch would have made a lot of sense and made it the botched timeline part a lot easier to swallow.

Or you know, some ravens. How everyone communicates over distance there.

Take ravens with them? I thought maester's were the only ones who could control ravens?

My understanding is that anyone can control ravens, Maester's just take care of them. They fly back to their cities of origin, much like homing pigeons.

Sam was definitely not a maester and he was in control of the ravens when they went beyond the wall on the ranging w/ Mormont.

[ampd]

Spoiler:

GoT

I do agree that the wight plan was really stupid. No horses? Or exit plan at all? I agree with others that Dany simply being at Eastwatch would have made a lot of sense and made it the botched timeline part a lot easier to swallow.

Or you know, some ravens. How everyone communicates over distance there.

Take ravens with them? I thought maester's were the only ones who could control ravens?

My understanding is that anyone can control ravens, Maester's just take care of them. They fly back to their cities of origin, much like homing pigeons.

Sam was definitely not a maester and he was in control of the ravens when they went beyond the wall on the ranging w/ Mormont.

Spoiler:

According to this article the total time between raven in the air and Dany's rescue should have been around 4 days, not counting the amount of time it should have taken for Gendry to run all the way to the wall (so probably another day at least). There is no way the show gave the impression they were on that rock for anything like 4 days, although they easily could have, and it would have been an easy out by to just make it obvious the white walkers wanted to watch them freeze to death.

If you assume dragons can fly much faster than ravens, you could maybe cut the whole thing to 2-3 days. The show cut so much for time that they couldn't even do that amount of time justice, or give us much of the sense of fear those characters should have had on that rock staring at an army of the undead watching them freeze to death, etc. It's becoming increasingly clear they simply don't have enough episodes to even do their own ending justice.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2017/08/22/the-math-behind-that-game-of-thrones-supersonic-911-rescue-raven/#618287957365

[El Duderino]

Spoiler:

Yep, that's pretty much the problem.

It feels like the writing is hampered by the fact that they don't have enough time (in real life episode terms) to resolve all the various threads, but they have these predetermined plot points they need to get to that they're struggling to arrive at in organic ways.

There were definitely better and less ridiculous ways to get the dragons there and kill one of them without the whole deus ex Daenerys thing that's been happening this season, and yes the fault lies with the writers of the show, but it also lies with GRRM for taking so damn long to finish the series himself.

I don't think the writing has been flat out bad (even if it's been in slow decline ever since they left the source material), but it's reached the point where it's undeniably on a lower tier than earlier episodes and the books, where Martin was totally unafraid to kill strong and beloved characters like Ned, Rob, Tywin, etc. where it made sense and you didn't feel the heavy hand of the author intervening at every step. In a sense the reversal of that sense of danger is the worst thing that could have happened to the show and the most disappointing thing about the post books GOT show. You never really felt Dany or Jon Snow was under any real threat in that last episode, even when they were being overwhelmed by white walkers and Jon was essentially left to die. It takes so much of the potential tension out of these scenes when we sort of know Jamie isn't going to get killed by the Dragon, Dany isn't going to get shot out of the sky by the ice spear, and Jon isn't going to get zombified.

Spoiler:

Ned getting killed in season one is what fully sold me on the show. GOT isn't typically the type of show i like, but i was shocked when Ned was actually beheaded because he was arguably the largest character at the time.

I knew nothing about the books back then and was so conditioned to the normal TV show model where the biggest character always manages to survive that i just assumed Ned Stark would end up getting out of that situation somehow. When he was beheaded i literally said "whoa" out loud and thought this is something different. As you mentioned prior to recently, other big characters also caught me off guard by being killed off and i loved that aspect of the show.

Now, i knew Jaime would survive the rush towards the dragon and knew Jon, along with most of the other seven would survive their silly trek going to catch a walker. Granted, i would miss Jaime's character especially, but i agree with you that some of the tension of will X character be killed off here has gone away for me and instead i just assume they'll survive.

[Iheartfootball]

Yeah, I haven't followed any of it so I was just spitballing.

[WRau1]

I find it hilarious that in a show about dragons, magic and undead, people draw the line at realistic travel times.

Do you watch the show and if so have you ever described it this way to someone who doesn't?

Would you be happy if at the end of the show, it was revealed that all of the characters were actually one character? I would think so since there are also dragons.

I can appreciate the show for what it is and I'm not going to lose my **** over an already established fast travel. It's not hard for me, and most people apparently, to assume that in a world where seemingly anything is possible, we don't need to see people hanging out, playing cards on a boat for three episodes in order to move the plot along a little quicker.

[tydett]

Guys, we all know that Cersei is going to have Dany in an impossible situation when the Starship Enterprise is going to come out of nowhere and have Darth Vader teleport down to earth with his TARDIS before using Mjolnir to smash Cersei's face in because this show has dragons and undead people.

[jakecronus8]

GOT

Spoiler:

Re watched. Yes they made mistakes. Gendry's sprint back, Ravens and dragons with supersonic speed. Just pretend they had horses and Dany waiting at the castle. Problem solved.

[tydett]

Book spoilers

Spoiler:

It's also **** incredible to me that the writers have said they didn't want to include Lady Stoneheart because bringing back Catelynn Stark to be a bland, vengeful figure who just goes around killing people would be a waste... and they've literally turned Arya into a bland, vengeful figure that just goes around killing people this season. Remember that the earlier seasons spent almost two whole episodes on the journey from Winterfell on the King's Road, and we now handwave a run from **** nowhere in the North to Eastwatch in 30 seconds. The spectacles and the battles are still a fun sight, and we have an attachment to the characters because of who they once were, but does any character pretty much retain their original characterization aside from **** Jon Snow,
evil-as-hell Cersei, and **** Littlefinger? Other than this, complicated characters have become one-note versions of themselves, often in reverse to the characters that were developing earlier on in the show's run.

[jakecronus8]

Taken from the Media Lounge board re: Arya/Sansa

Spoiler:

to the Aria/Sansa debaters check this out:

Foreshadowing: We have quotes from as far back as S6 suggesting that Arya will protect Sansa.
“No one can protect me." – Sansa, S6E9
“You need better guards.” – Arya to Sansa, S7E4


Protecting each other: After LF suggests Sansa use Brienne to intervene in the Arya-Sansa catfight, Sansa sends Brienne away and says that she has trusted guards here already. Sansa is not afraid of Arya, nor Littlefinger, and she doesn’t want the honorable Brienne involved in their lying and schemes.


Arya is trained in stealth: Arya was trained by assassins. She is far too stealthy to let LF know that he is being followed, unless she did this deliberately. In S7E4, Arya walks onto Brienne and Pod sparring just as Brienne says, “Don’t go where your enemy leads you.” In S7E6, the directors deliberately show us Sansa opening and closing a very squeaky door as she goes into Arya’s bedchamber. Yet Arya is able to sneak up on Sansa without a single noise.


Staged fights: When Arya confronts Sansa about the Northern lords talking badly about Jon in S7E5, the door is wide open. Similarly, when Arya confronts Sansa about the letter from S1, Arya projects her voice just as she is reading the letter. It’s almost as if they want someone to hear their fights.


The Game of Faces: In what seems to be the most psychotic Arya scene, Arya basically threatens to cut off Sansa’s face and pretend to be her. The entire scene is Arya playing the Game of Faces, presenting lies as truths. She even says that they are playing!

She plays this game when she tells Sansa that she remembers Sansa standing on Ned’s execution stage – Sansa fought and screamed, and Arya knows this. Arya played the game when she told Sansa she would never serve the Lannisters – Arya served as Tywin’s cupbearer.

Arya tells Sansa she wonders what it would be like to wear her face and her pretty dresses, to be Lady of Winterfell – we are beaten over the head since S1 that Arya HAS NEVER WANTED ANY OF THESE THINGS.

Arya is playing the game of faces, and when she realizes Sansa hasn’t caught on to her lies, she hands her Littlefinger’s dagger, symbolically saying, “I trust you and want you to protect yourself from LF’s lies.”


The third eye: Do we really think there hasn't been a single off-script scene where Bran tells them, "Hey, uh, LF kinda started the war of the Five Kings by lying about this dagger, betrayed our father, and is essentially the reason our whole family is dead." We hear crows when LF comes out of the crypts with Jon, when Arya enters LF's bedchambers, and again when LF and Sansa are talking in S7E6. These noises are very deliberate.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gameofthrones/comments/6var9w/main_spoilers_the_game_of_faces_why_arya_doesnt/?sort=top

Mind_blown.gif

[humanrefutation]

Taken from the Media Lounge board re: Arya/Sansa

Spoiler:

to the Aria/Sansa debaters check this out:

Foreshadowing: We have quotes from as far back as S6 suggesting that Arya will protect Sansa.
“No one can protect me." – Sansa, S6E9
“You need better guards.” – Arya to Sansa, S7E4


Protecting each other: After LF suggests Sansa use Brienne to intervene in the Arya-Sansa catfight, Sansa sends Brienne away and says that she has trusted guards here already. Sansa is not afraid of Arya, nor Littlefinger, and she doesn’t want the honorable Brienne involved in their lying and schemes.


Arya is trained in stealth: Arya was trained by assassins. She is far too stealthy to let LF know that he is being followed, unless she did this deliberately. In S7E4, Arya walks onto Brienne and Pod sparring just as Brienne says, “Don’t go where your enemy leads you.” In S7E6, the directors deliberately show us Sansa opening and closing a very squeaky door as she goes into Arya’s bedchamber. Yet Arya is able to sneak up on Sansa without a single noise.


Staged fights: When Arya confronts Sansa about the Northern lords talking badly about Jon in S7E5, the door is wide open. Similarly, when Arya confronts Sansa about the letter from S1, Arya projects her voice just as she is reading the letter. It’s almost as if they want someone to hear their fights.


The Game of Faces: In what seems to be the most psychotic Arya scene, Arya basically threatens to cut off Sansa’s face and pretend to be her. The entire scene is Arya playing the Game of Faces, presenting lies as truths. She even says that they are playing!

She plays this game when she tells Sansa that she remembers Sansa standing on Ned’s execution stage – Sansa fought and screamed, and Arya knows this. Arya played the game when she told Sansa she would never serve the Lannisters – Arya served as Tywin’s cupbearer.

Arya tells Sansa she wonders what it would be like to wear her face and her pretty dresses, to be Lady of Winterfell – we are beaten over the head since S1 that Arya HAS NEVER WANTED ANY OF THESE THINGS.

Arya is playing the game of faces, and when she realizes Sansa hasn’t caught on to her lies, she hands her Littlefinger’s dagger, symbolically saying, “I trust you and want you to protect yourself from LF’s lies.”


The third eye: Do we really think there hasn't been a single off-script scene where Bran tells them, "Hey, uh, LF kinda started the war of the Five Kings by lying about this dagger, betrayed our father, and is essentially the reason our whole family is dead." We hear crows when LF comes out of the crypts with Jon, when Arya enters LF's bedchambers, and again when LF and Sansa are talking in S7E6. These noises are very deliberate.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gameofthrones/comments/6var9w/main_spoilers_the_game_of_faces_why_arya_doesnt/?sort=top

Mind_blown.gif

This is definitely plausible, and really is the only way these scenes would make sense. Let's see what happens on the finale.

[Turk Nowitzki]

I'm in wait and see mode on Arya. I refuse to believe they are dumb enough to ruin an awesome character the way they are. We'll see if they can find a way to justify her weird behavior in the finale.

[ReasonablySober]

GoT EPISODE 7 SPOILERS

Spoiler:

I'm just going off the leaks, but all the Arya talk and speculation here makes me wonder if fans are gonna be satisfied when she kills Littlefinger. Leaks say it happens, and it's because Sansa wants it to. So either one or both have been playing him, or they have some kind of revelation.

[humanrefutation]

GoT EPISODE 7 SPOILERS

WAT. Are we already getting Episode 7 spoilers? Was there another leak?

[ReasonablySober]

GoT EPISODE 7 SPOILERS

WAT. Are we already getting Episode 7 spoilers? Was there another leak?

No no no just the leaks from last November, 95% of which have been correct. I'm comfortable saying I know everything that happens on Sunday.

[Turk Nowitzki]

GoT EPISODE 7 SPOILERS

Spoiler:

I'm just going off the leaks, but all the Arya talk and speculation here makes me wonder if fans are gonna be satisfied when she kills Littlefinger. Leaks say it happens, and it's because Sansa wants it to. So either one or both have been playing him, or they have some kind of revelation.

Spoiler:

I'm not going to go reread them so close to the finale but if I recall correctly the finale spoilers were a little vague. Obviously, some key events were in there but I don't recall a ton of details as to how/why certain things play out. I'm excited to have a little bit of unknown in there since I was dumb/weak enough to spoil myself.

[jimmybones]

GoT EPISODE 7 SPOILERS

WAT. Are we already getting Episode 7 spoilers? Was there another leak?

No no no just the leaks from last November, 95% of which have been correct. I'm comfortable saying I know everything that happens on Sunday.

Pretty sure I know what you're referring to. I read those spoilers thinking they were about episode 6, or at least in order, but they were about the whole season. Turned out they were in a random order and I read a couple things that haven't happened yet and I'd be willing to bet they do happen.

[emunney]

I find it hilarious that in a show about dragons, magic and undead, people draw the line at realistic travel times.

Do you watch the show and if so have you ever described it this way to someone who doesn't?

Would you be happy if at the end of the show, it was revealed that all of the characters were actually one character? I would think so since there are also dragons.

I can appreciate the show for what it is and I'm not going to lose my **** over an already established fast travel. It's not hard for me, and most people apparently, to assume that in a world where seemingly anything is possible, we don't need to see people hanging out, playing cards on a boat for three episodes in order to move the plot along a little quicker.

Not showing them traveling is not the issue.

[tydett]

Taken from the Media Lounge board re: Arya/Sansa

Spoiler:

to the Aria/Sansa debaters check this out:



https://www.reddit.com/r/gameofthrones/comments/6var9w/main_spoilers_the_game_of_faces_why_arya_doesnt/?sort=top

Mind_blown.gif

This is definitely plausible, and really is the only way these scenes would make sense. Let's see what happens on the finale.

Sounds a lot like the "Arya is strutting about Bravos giving out money just to try to lure the Waif into a trap" theory right before she got **** up and only survived because of plot armor that was floating around about a year ago.

[jakecronus8]

Taken from the Media Lounge board re: Arya/Sansa

Spoiler:

Mind_blown.gif

This is definitely plausible, and really is the only way these scenes would make sense. Let's see what happens on the finale.

Sounds a lot like the "Arya is strutting about Bravos giving out money just to try to lure the Waif into a trap" theory right before she got **** up and only survived because of plot armor that was floating around about a year ago.

That or she's learned from her mistakes and has LF right where she wants him. I think he's done for on Sunday, and really Arya is the perfect choice to take him out.