OT: TV and Movies

[WRau1]

Yup, when GoT had GRRM to guide them, it was probably a top 5 show of all time. Without him, was worse than Heroes s2. I have no confidence in anything in that world unless it's 100% overseen by GRRM.

All true but kind of surprised it played out that way. I read all the books before starting the show and I thought aspects of the book were going to be really hard to do right on TV and staying too close would be detrimental to the show. Specifically the more in your mind fantasy stuff like the kids taking over the dire wolves minds and pretty much the whole Bran arc. The show skipped most of the dire wolf stuff. Bran was a mixed bag, he never really worked in the show and the writers seemed to phase him out mid way but then brought that story back and made him the ultimate winner, I think they did this to try to stay close to the book because he's an important character there but in my opinion since GRRM didn't finish the books they didn't need to do that and should have just did their own thing emphasizing the characters that worked best on TV.

Kind of felt like the show runners just wanted to be done and half assed the final couple seasons. More than any one thing the whole production and writing seemed lazy and rushed.

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The show can forever **** all the way off when they decided to not put in Strong Belwas and Victarion Greyjoy.

[ReasonablySober]

HotD with a solid first episode.

[PintSizedBox10]

First episode was great. I'm hyped! It feels awesome to be back in Westeros

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[HurricaneKid]

I hated it. But that's just me.

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[Siefer]

My understanding is GRRM is more involved in House of the Dragon than he was in the last 4 GoT seasons, and we're dealing with a new show runner (Sapochnik) and new writers. Granted the source material for the Dance of the Dragons is a lot less detailed than the Ice and Fire books, but the first episode felt good. The dialogue was solid, the look and feel was on point, and I'm on board for the intrigue. My biggest critiques (one episode grain of salt) are that they sipped into the GoT soundtrack well too much, and the gold cloaks scene was unintentionally silly.

[MickeyDavis]

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[emunney]

When it comes to his philosophy on finishing stories, you can't accuse Martin of inconsistency.

[FrieAaron]

It's hard to disagree with him. The final few seasons felt extremely rushed, but that may just be a result of them having a loose roadmap and having no idea how to get there. But it is strange that they didn't want to extend the series but were anxious to start at least two spinoffs. I guess they just didn't want to pay the cast anymore.

[DingleJerry]

It's hard to disagree with him. The final few seasons felt extremely rushed, but that may just be a result of them having a loose roadmap and having no idea how to get there. But it is strange that they didn't want to extend the series but were anxious to start at least two spinoffs. I guess they just didn't want to pay the cast anymore.

Especially when compared to the pace of the earlier seasons and attention to detail in them. Most obvious example would be that if we/they knew they were going to have to rush the ending we probably didn't need 10 mins a week for a full season on torturing Theon (although my guess at the time was it was a cheap way to fill time).

So yea I agree with him, to do it right would've needed that and for him to be involved to get the story right. I don't remember exacts now but the budget numbers on how much the episodes were costing were quite ridiculous, so I get why they had to cut it down. But that also surprised me they jumped into an expensive spinoff right away, which I assume will have lots of expensive CGI due to the dragons.

I'll probably give it a few weeks before I watch, see what others say and allow it to build up so can binge a few in a row. Or if general consensus publicly and among friends is that it sucks then I won't bother with it.

[jimmybones]

Regardless of how GoT ended, it was still a very enjoyable experience watching it and HoTD first episode was awesome. A few weird things, imo, but Kings Landing, The Red Keep and the dragons were awesome and there were intriguing characters and scheming shenanigans that made the original great. I’m in.

[Siefer]

It's hard to disagree with him. The final few seasons felt extremely rushed, but that may just be a result of them having a loose roadmap and having no idea how to get there. But it is strange that they didn't want to extend the series but were anxious to start at least two spinoffs. I guess they just didn't want to pay the cast anymore.

By all accounts HBO was happy to give GoT as much runway as Benioff and Weiss wanted, but they were the ones insistent on calling it quits. This is my theory of what went down based on observing the trainwreck in real-time, and piecing together clues from context and things like interviews, but my read on how GoT fell apart is that D&D signed up for adaptation job, and did it well for as long as the material was relatively linear. I don't think the collapse is entirely on them - GRRM hasn't put out a book in 11 years now, and it wasn't supposed to be that way - but I think D&D panicked and quit on the show.

Things started to fall apart with the horizontal expansion of the narrative between Feast and Dance. I think they couldn't figure out how to adapt all of the material without slowing the plot progression to a crawl - Feast and Dance, really being one gigantic book over mostly the same time period, and introducing even more characters and narrative threads. So they took ~30 episodes of material, and whittled it down to 10 (season 5), significantly narrowing the scope of the world, accelerating the pace significantly, and exposing how they very specifically could not write characters like Tyrion, Littlefinger, and Varys without a cheat sheet. They panicked in the face of an adaptation hurdle, and blew up their safety net.

At the time a lot of people wanted to believe it was a blip, but I think they just straight up bailed on the problem, hoping they'd be able to blow past the snarl (that itself has contributed to GRRM's issues finishing the series), get to the climax, and at least deliver on the spectacle. Instead the magic was lost, the marriage of naturalistic character drama and meticulous world-building abandoned. So, D&D ran out of source material, and then largely winged it with cliffnotes for S6. I think internally D&D knew they were **** after that. They didn't know how to land the plane, the writers room had completely lost characters like Tyrion, and it was clear GRRM wasn't going to deliver new material in a functional time frame. So they bailed out. They took another ~20 episodes of storytelling space and stripped it down to an 13 episode action movie, hitting plot points GRRM had given them in the hope it would amount to a conclusion.

[emunney]

It's hard to disagree with him. The final few seasons felt extremely rushed, but that may just be a result of them having a loose roadmap and having no idea how to get there. But it is strange that they didn't want to extend the series but were anxious to start at least two spinoffs. I guess they just didn't want to pay the cast anymore.

By all accounts HBO was happy to give GoT as much runway as the Benioff and Weiss wanted, but they were the ones insistent on calling it quits. This is my theory of what went down based on observing the trainwreck in real-time, and piecing together clues from context and things like interviews, but my read on how GoT fell apart is that that D&D signed up for adaptation job, and did it well for as long as the material was relatively linear. I don't think the collapse is entirely on them - GRRM hasn't put out a book in 11 years now, and it wasn't supposed to be that way - but I think D&D panicked and quit on the show.

Things started to fall apart with the horizontal expansion of the narrative between Feast and Dance. I think they couldn't figure out how to adapt all of the material without slowing the plot progression to a crawl - Feast and Dance, really being one gigantic book over mostly the same time period, and introducing even more characters and narrative threads. So they took ~30 episodes of material, and whittled it down to 10, significantly narrowing the scope of the world, accelerating the pace significantly, and exposing how they very specifically could not write characters like Tyrion, Littlefinger, and Varys without a cheat sheet. They panicked in the face of an adaptation hurdle, and blew up their safety net.

At the time a lot of people wanted to believe it was a blip, but I think they just straight up bailed on the problem, hoping they'd be able to blow past the snarl (that itself has contributed to GRRM's issues finishing the series), get to the climax, and at least deliver on the spectacle. Instead the magic was lost, the marriage of naturalistic character drama and meticulous world-building abandoned. So, D&D ran out of source material, and then largely winged it with cliffnotes for S6. I think internally D&D knew they were **** after that. They didn't know how to land the plane, the writers room had completely lost characters like Tyrion, and it was clear GRRM wasn't going to deliver new material in a functional time frame. So they bailed out. They took another ~20 episodes of storytelling space and stripped it down to an 13 episode action movie, hitting plot points GRRM had given them in the hope it would amount to a conclusion.

I don't think they necessarily panicked and quit, I just think they are essentially unequipped to independently tell the kind of story Martin had been telling, where the main character is the state of the world more than it's about any individual. When they took over, they took the roadmap Martin gave them and pushed the characters along it as best they knew how. They took a sociological/anthropological story and made it about individuals. Martin's orientation toward his characters (expendable in service of the story of Westeros and revealing *its* character) should have made it clear enough what had to be done, but they could not fill in the gaps in the roadmap with anything other than action. They just hit the beats, spilled the blood, and got out of Dodge. They can't tell a story that unfolds naturally if somebody doesn't tell them exactly what the whole story is.

[Siefer]

I don't think they necessarily panicked and quit, I just think they are essentially unequipped to independently tell the kind of story Martin had been telling, where the main character is the state of the world more than it's about any individual. When they took over, they took the roadmap Martin gave them and pushed the characters along it as best they knew how. They took a sociological/anthropological story and made it about individuals. Martin's orientation toward his characters (expendable in service of the story of Westeros and revealing *its* character) should have made it clear enough what had to be done, but they could not fill in the gaps in the roadmap with anything other than action. They just hit the beats, spilled the blood, and got out of Dodge. They can't tell a story that unfolds naturally if somebody doesn't tell them exactly what the whole story is.

My disposition is admittedly pretty harsh here, but getting out of Dodge feels a lot like quitting. Most multipart stories don't stick the landing, in fact, I think middling to subpar endings are kind of the norm - conclusions are really hard! But there are two shows that I can think of in the modern era that left viewers so burned they lost most cultural relevance overnight - Game of Thrones, and How I Met Your Mother.

[Ron Swanson]

Very much enjoyed the first episode of House of Dragon. What made GoT so good and ground-breaking was the political intrigue. What ultimately ruined it was, ironically.....the Dragons. I'm very interested in seeing where they go with the new series and hoping it focuses more on the former rather than the latter. I will say, for how good their casting typically is, Matt Smith seems like a really odd and out-of-place choice for a supposed "charismatic warrior prince" archetype.

[tydett]

Most multipart stories don't stick the landing, in fact, I think middling to subpar endings are kind of the norm - conclusions are really hard!

To be fair, Benioff also wrote X-Men Origins: Wolverine, so he can't really stick the landing in single part stories either.

They were two guys who Martin asked "What do you think is Jon Snow's parentage?", they answered correctly with a well-established theory from the fandom, and George was like "you guys got this". They were pretty good technicians for executing the beginning of the show, and the Varys/Littlefinger conversation shows that they could be capable of making micro-changes to the narrative that benefited the show overall, but when it comes to actually implementing a vision and following through on it, they chose the path of least resistance - cut out the fantastical parts of the show to ground it more in reality, but remove all stakes by keeping peoples' favorite characters alive. They chose to market to the masses who moved on promptly when it ended and the next shiny thing appeared.

[ReasonablySober]

I think the hatred for GoT's final season(s) is pretty overstated.

[crkone]

I think the hatred for GoT's final season(s) is pretty overstated.

I for one loved the heel turn to Hitler Daenerys.

[Ron Swanson]

I think the hatred for GoT's final season(s) is pretty overstated.

Is it? I think there's a pretty sizable and vocal segment of the fandom that really hated it. I'm not one of them (the Battle of Winterfell might the single most impressive hour of TV spectacle I've ever seen), but when even the actors are saying in interviews that they found their character resolutions unsatisfying, I think the criticism is somewhat deserved.

[ReasonablySober]

I think the hatred for GoT's final season(s) is pretty overstated.

Is it? I think there's a pretty sizable and vocal segment of the fandom that really hated it. I'm not one of them (the Battle of Winterfell might the single most impressive hour of TV spectacle I've ever seen), but when even the actors are saying in interviews that they found their character resolutions unsatisfying, I think the criticism is somewhat deserved.

I think, like anything else, it's not hard to find the very loud vocal minority. I think the criticisms are largely justified, but I also think that most people who don't have internet brain rot probably thought the show was still enjoyable.

[emunney]

I thought season 6 was still pretty good but the last two seasons were far less coherent. Generally speaking even when it was good it wasn't as good as its place in the culture indicates, although the gap wasn't as big as when Walking Dead was peak popularity, as an example. But to DB's point, even at its worst, it was still a spectacle.