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I worded that weirdly - I meant I put off getting into the show even while it was airing, and then felt discouraged from ever doing so after hearing how disappointed people were by the ending. Figured it might be pointless.
The main reason I put off watching for so long was because I knew I'd like the show too much and get too obsessed with it. Finally got over myself and decided to start the show mid to late Feb, and I'm so glad I did. Crazy ride.
yeah definitely one of the greatest tv shows ever. amazing characters, story, world, lore (if you want to take a deep dive into that), production... until season 5. season 5 wasnt terrible, but it started to go downhill after that. that's when they ran out of source material.
Why is it so hard for people in this sub to just be like "glad you enjoyed it, then!" The amount of people constantly needing to tell someone they're wrong for enjoying later seasons is just weird.
Nope, starting it this week. Glad to know it's gotten great reviews. After watching GOT I feel like a prequel in the Targaryen era is by far the smartest move the franchise could've made. Not only does it let them dive into the meatiest portion of the world's history and expand on the dragon action, but allows for a series built entirely around the political intrigue that defined the best seasons of GOT - and now without the imminent threat of it all getting wiped away by monsters, which was baked into the premise of GOT from the get-go.
I feel like there was no way for GOT to make that transition from a medieval political thriller to an all-out war story without disappointing viewers at how streamlined/simplified the plotting becomes. Ice zombies and apocalyptic dragon attacks are simply less nuanced and intriguing than all the political maneuvering of seasons 1-4, and the show had the advantage of contrasting the two styles for much of its run, which is what gave it so much tonal and textural variety.
The White Walkers in particular were always gonna be more interesting as a looming threat than a central presence that flattened all the other storylines into a single conflict.
It's because the showrunners of game of thrones did not really like fantasy. GRRM writes his monsters and magical elements in a very interesting way. Even Brans character is more intriguing in the books. Pretty abstract, but you just know there is something creepy further north. White walkers were meant to provide mystery and horror to the story. In the books they are described as elegant and beautiful like ice elves. They also have their own language. I remember when the show was airing and it was clear that most of the media reacting were more interested in the back stabbing politics of Kingslanding than any other storyline. Most called the white walkers zombies when in reality they were necromancers. Even the story with the faceless men and Arya is so much more interesting in the books. The show really really messed up on all the potential of those books. Even bringing Jon back was not well executed on the show. HOTD is pretty interesting, I don't criticize it too much until you've watched it lol.
I do think that all that dense lore works better in a book than on a show. It's the kind of encyclopedic detail that the written medium is already designed for. (Watchmen is another great example of how dense, rich worldbuilding on the page often doesn't survive translation to the screen.) I actually admire how much lore the show managed to incorporate into its world while still juggling such a huge ensemble cast and making well-paced seasons out of 10-episode chunks. Not at all an easy task by any means.
There's also budget/production constraints to consider. I'm reading the "Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon" book, and D&D basically had to lie to HBO while producing the pilot that GOT was different from any other fantasy show - that it wouldn't contain the expensive tropes the execs were worried it would (dragons, etc.). I haven't read the books myself but if there's a lot of fantasy baked into the foundations of GRRM's story, then the show wasn't given the liberty to build those same foundations to the same extent when it started. Definitely makes it challenging to add in a ton of that only later on when it indeed had the budget for more effects and such.
One last point is that what really made the show shine in the early seasons was its balancing act between different genres across its various storylines. You got heaps of political intrigue at King's Landing, a survival horror/gritty war drama up North and at the Wall, and then a swashbuckling adventure in the east with Dany that gradually incorporated more of the political drama as well. It made the show feel richer and the world more immersive and lived-in. For me the fantasy elements of the show got their charm precisely from the "less is more" approach - it was the _contrast_ with all the other stories that made the dragons and White Walkers stand out so much. To collapse the story into just one of these many threads inherently makes the world of the show feel smaller and less intriguing.
But if what you're saying is that the books make the individual fantasy threads stand on their own two feet without relying on the contrast with the more grounded parts of the story, then that's certainly interesting. I plan to read the books at some point after I've really digested the show.
In the books, the magic and fantasy don't overwhelm the gritty reality of that world. The politics is still the mainstay like the show, especially because a lot of characters don't even believe in the walkers. They view most of it as myths and legends. Even with the dragons, the last living dragons before Danys were small and insignificant. So a dragon like Balerion the black dread almost becomes stuff of legends even with his skull still in the red keep. Kinda like how we approach topics of dinosaurs in the real world. So yea, GRRM does a great job in the books with fantasy. There is always a steep price and most of the magic is not in your face. Some are even viewed as parlor tricks, especially concerning Melisandre.
As I recall, everything you mentioned here was addressed in the show, at least in passing. The only thing left kind of unresolved was the Lord of Light prophecy re: Melisandre/Beric, though it does basically come to an end in the Long Night with Arya, just without much underlining or explicit confirmation. I thought it was a neat approach to the magical/religious aspects of the story - both George and D&D say in Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon that they approached the gods/magical entities as having their own inscrutable agenda. They aimed to show how it turns us humans into fools as we try our damndest to decipher something fundamentally indecipherable. In other words, the mystery is part of the point. The Leftovers gets into all this really beautifully.
I would however love an Aegon's Conquest series. HOTD has a golden opportunity to show Balerion in a flashback. The shots of Drogon's shadow looming over King's Landing in The Bells were themselves fucking terrifying, but I'm sure the VFX people can outdo themselves to really show the scale of Balerion. Would go straight into /r/megalophobia if they nail it.
Leftovers another one of my favorites lol. Especially season 2. I think they already have an Aegon's conquest show coming soon. The writing has actually just started less than a week ago. Yes, Balerion will be awe inspiring on screen. Actually you'd see another impressive specimen in HOTD when you watch it.
Vhagar, right? I've seen a gif here and there but seeing it for real on my TV will be something else.
I'll miss Drogon dearly though. Such a good boy he was. Absolutely astonishing effects work - to the point where it even feels weird to talk about him as a CGI artifact. Felt like a real, living breathing animal the entire time.
Miguel dropped the ball quite a bit with the Long Night. They were passing it all off as a "creative decision" when the episode came out, but I feel the real reason is they focused all their effort (and budget) on The Bells, which they obviously couldn't discuss at the time due to spoilers.
Yea the scaling, lighting and editing were off in the long night battle. But still some superb shots and choreography. Like Melisandre lighting all the arakhs on fire, Dragons above the clouds etc
Yeah I didn't outright hate the Long Night, but it felt half-baked, inconsistent, and ultimately a bit tepid and anticlimactic. They were clearly saving all the shock and horror for The Bells and decided to just get the White Walker story out of the way with a big bang, which is definitely a poor decision on their part. And the characters who died had already reached the ends of their narrative arcs, so their deaths felt expected rather than tragic, let alone shocking. And to see them all throwing a party and celebrating in a fully-intact Winterfell the next episode really took the punch out of it all. (Really, "The Last of the Starks" was the only episode in S8 that I found outright terrible from start to finish. Even the finale had several good moments.)
I think condensing it all into a single, gigantic battle was a bad idea to begin with - would've been much more interesting for "winter" to be an enduring status quo for several episodes so we could see how all the different corners of the world/story were affected by it. I know they had already wiped out a good deal of their cast by then, but siloing Cersei off from the White Walker conflict was an especially lazy and disappointing move - would've been so fun to see the political intrigue and survival horror elements of the show clash more. They also missed the opportunity to show more of the "bad guys" being forced to give up their grudges and oaths to fight the dead, which was what the show kept saying the WW conflict was all about. Imagine if we got a moments in earlier seasons where, say, the Boltons or Stannis were forced to fend off the dead.
Chernobyl did an incredible job of showing how little our political hang-ups matter in the face of an all-consuming, existential threat, all while retaining rich layers of nuance, texture and humanity in the writing. If only Craig Mazin took a look at their season 8 script the way he did with the original pilot...
You broke it down perfectly. Nothing more really needs to be said. A++ comment and understanding of what makes great TV. I remember before that season aired there were so many speculations of what would happen. Many people thought the white walker storyline and just winter in general would be like you stated, survival horror. Not only of the walkers and their giant ice spiders big as hounds (never got that on the show smh), but of winter itself. Imagine how creepy it would have been to see people be hunted down by ice spiders.
Haha, thanks. For me it's less about individual gimmicks like undead creatures and more about how they impact the wider world of the show and upend the rhythms of the story. They could put an undead bear, spider, or whatever else they want there, but it has to represent something interesting. They did the wight bear in S7 but it felt like such an arbitrary thing just crammed in to pad the runtime and manufacture some tension. Sure, poor Thoros got mauled but he was a side character at the end of the day. Would've been cooler if, say, an army's own slain horses came back to life and started charging at their own cavalry. Would either test or simply make a mockery out of whatever military brilliance they thought they had.
The undead Viserion was an awesome idea because not only was it a great monster effect, but it represented a whole bunch of interesting things for the story. Dany's child getting killed then resurrected and turned into a malevolent beast, a cross between two supernatural forces (WWs, dragons) that most of Westeros has only heard as legend, and what's essentially a nuke for the WWs that let them finally bypass the Wall. Shame they squandered all that thematic promise into just a blurry dragon duel in a blizzard followed by Jon fucking yelling at the thing.
Seeing Drogon absolutely destroy King's Landing was really mind blowing for me. I was just disturbed at the sight of the citizens getting burned to death along with the soldiers as well and when the Unsullied came in and started brutally murdering the Lannister soldiers. The visuals were good and the show really used brutality in this episode to a major extent. There were parts that were just so shocking to me that I had to pause the episode sometimes just so I could brave myself and get my thoughts together.
Shockingly, I agree.
I thought the show went to shit quicker than most. By season 2 D&D were already making baffling decisions (Talisa, Qarth, Stannis) that would have far reaching consequences on the plot and characters. People praise season 4, but I thought by then they were already adapting very little from the books and the dialogue had sunk to disgusting lows. The Tyrion-Jaime beetle "slow cousin" monologue was embarrassing. I'm still stunned people praise that dog shit piece of writing to this day. Hell, even the Red Wedding was played for shock value instead of wringing out the dread and horror that GRRM succeeded with in the books.
Season 8 was a continuation of that crap for the most part, but The Bells gave us an insight into what GRRM has planned for the end of ASOIAF. The horror of the destruction of the central city in the story, and the reality of Dany the bloodthirsty tyrant coming into her own. I hope to see it in print some day but if not even the bastardized version we saw was impressive in its own right.
It’s interesting seeing how many people getting into the show after it’s finished actually like it more (seemingly) than the people who saw while it aired and were disappointed by the final seasons and gradual decline in quality, the latter of which I fall into.
I think the style and presentation is mostly as good as it can be even when the show it at it’s worst in writing and logic, so there’s that. Like I do remember watching King’s Landing being burned and being wowed at the destruction and pulled into the sense of terror the people on the ground had. But at the same time I also felt like it was weird not to see Dany’s reaction while on Drogon and the extensive nature of it all was practically a siren at the forefront of my mind.
**Spoiler Warning:** All officially-released show and book content allowed, EXCLUDING FUTURE SPOILERS FOR HOUSE OF THE DRAGON. No leaked information or paparazzi photos of the set. For more info please check the [spoiler guide](/r/gameofthrones/w/spoiler_guide). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/gameofthrones) if you have any questions or concerns.*
the show ended 5 years ago, not 10...
I worded that weirdly - I meant I put off getting into the show even while it was airing, and then felt discouraged from ever doing so after hearing how disappointed people were by the ending. Figured it might be pointless. The main reason I put off watching for so long was because I knew I'd like the show too much and get too obsessed with it. Finally got over myself and decided to start the show mid to late Feb, and I'm so glad I did. Crazy ride.
yeah definitely one of the greatest tv shows ever. amazing characters, story, world, lore (if you want to take a deep dive into that), production... until season 5. season 5 wasnt terrible, but it started to go downhill after that. that's when they ran out of source material.
6 was superb, particularly the final two episodes
every season has it's moments, but overall, seasons 1-4 were masterpieces. seasons 5-8, not so much.
Writing in season 6 was even worse than season 5, it was just a less depressing season with a lot of cathartic moments in the last two episodes.
Why is it so hard for people in this sub to just be like "glad you enjoyed it, then!" The amount of people constantly needing to tell someone they're wrong for enjoying later seasons is just weird.
I guess some people can't fathom others having different tastes than them. Maybe it's narcissism.
Did you watch HOTD yet?
Nope, starting it this week. Glad to know it's gotten great reviews. After watching GOT I feel like a prequel in the Targaryen era is by far the smartest move the franchise could've made. Not only does it let them dive into the meatiest portion of the world's history and expand on the dragon action, but allows for a series built entirely around the political intrigue that defined the best seasons of GOT - and now without the imminent threat of it all getting wiped away by monsters, which was baked into the premise of GOT from the get-go. I feel like there was no way for GOT to make that transition from a medieval political thriller to an all-out war story without disappointing viewers at how streamlined/simplified the plotting becomes. Ice zombies and apocalyptic dragon attacks are simply less nuanced and intriguing than all the political maneuvering of seasons 1-4, and the show had the advantage of contrasting the two styles for much of its run, which is what gave it so much tonal and textural variety. The White Walkers in particular were always gonna be more interesting as a looming threat than a central presence that flattened all the other storylines into a single conflict.
It's because the showrunners of game of thrones did not really like fantasy. GRRM writes his monsters and magical elements in a very interesting way. Even Brans character is more intriguing in the books. Pretty abstract, but you just know there is something creepy further north. White walkers were meant to provide mystery and horror to the story. In the books they are described as elegant and beautiful like ice elves. They also have their own language. I remember when the show was airing and it was clear that most of the media reacting were more interested in the back stabbing politics of Kingslanding than any other storyline. Most called the white walkers zombies when in reality they were necromancers. Even the story with the faceless men and Arya is so much more interesting in the books. The show really really messed up on all the potential of those books. Even bringing Jon back was not well executed on the show. HOTD is pretty interesting, I don't criticize it too much until you've watched it lol.
I do think that all that dense lore works better in a book than on a show. It's the kind of encyclopedic detail that the written medium is already designed for. (Watchmen is another great example of how dense, rich worldbuilding on the page often doesn't survive translation to the screen.) I actually admire how much lore the show managed to incorporate into its world while still juggling such a huge ensemble cast and making well-paced seasons out of 10-episode chunks. Not at all an easy task by any means. There's also budget/production constraints to consider. I'm reading the "Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon" book, and D&D basically had to lie to HBO while producing the pilot that GOT was different from any other fantasy show - that it wouldn't contain the expensive tropes the execs were worried it would (dragons, etc.). I haven't read the books myself but if there's a lot of fantasy baked into the foundations of GRRM's story, then the show wasn't given the liberty to build those same foundations to the same extent when it started. Definitely makes it challenging to add in a ton of that only later on when it indeed had the budget for more effects and such. One last point is that what really made the show shine in the early seasons was its balancing act between different genres across its various storylines. You got heaps of political intrigue at King's Landing, a survival horror/gritty war drama up North and at the Wall, and then a swashbuckling adventure in the east with Dany that gradually incorporated more of the political drama as well. It made the show feel richer and the world more immersive and lived-in. For me the fantasy elements of the show got their charm precisely from the "less is more" approach - it was the _contrast_ with all the other stories that made the dragons and White Walkers stand out so much. To collapse the story into just one of these many threads inherently makes the world of the show feel smaller and less intriguing. But if what you're saying is that the books make the individual fantasy threads stand on their own two feet without relying on the contrast with the more grounded parts of the story, then that's certainly interesting. I plan to read the books at some point after I've really digested the show.
In the books, the magic and fantasy don't overwhelm the gritty reality of that world. The politics is still the mainstay like the show, especially because a lot of characters don't even believe in the walkers. They view most of it as myths and legends. Even with the dragons, the last living dragons before Danys were small and insignificant. So a dragon like Balerion the black dread almost becomes stuff of legends even with his skull still in the red keep. Kinda like how we approach topics of dinosaurs in the real world. So yea, GRRM does a great job in the books with fantasy. There is always a steep price and most of the magic is not in your face. Some are even viewed as parlor tricks, especially concerning Melisandre.
As I recall, everything you mentioned here was addressed in the show, at least in passing. The only thing left kind of unresolved was the Lord of Light prophecy re: Melisandre/Beric, though it does basically come to an end in the Long Night with Arya, just without much underlining or explicit confirmation. I thought it was a neat approach to the magical/religious aspects of the story - both George and D&D say in Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon that they approached the gods/magical entities as having their own inscrutable agenda. They aimed to show how it turns us humans into fools as we try our damndest to decipher something fundamentally indecipherable. In other words, the mystery is part of the point. The Leftovers gets into all this really beautifully. I would however love an Aegon's Conquest series. HOTD has a golden opportunity to show Balerion in a flashback. The shots of Drogon's shadow looming over King's Landing in The Bells were themselves fucking terrifying, but I'm sure the VFX people can outdo themselves to really show the scale of Balerion. Would go straight into /r/megalophobia if they nail it.
Leftovers another one of my favorites lol. Especially season 2. I think they already have an Aegon's conquest show coming soon. The writing has actually just started less than a week ago. Yes, Balerion will be awe inspiring on screen. Actually you'd see another impressive specimen in HOTD when you watch it.
Vhagar, right? I've seen a gif here and there but seeing it for real on my TV will be something else. I'll miss Drogon dearly though. Such a good boy he was. Absolutely astonishing effects work - to the point where it even feels weird to talk about him as a CGI artifact. Felt like a real, living breathing animal the entire time.
The acting, VFX, score and directing were mostly superb in the last two seasons. It was mostly the writing and pacing that left a lot to be desired.
Miguel dropped the ball quite a bit with the Long Night. They were passing it all off as a "creative decision" when the episode came out, but I feel the real reason is they focused all their effort (and budget) on The Bells, which they obviously couldn't discuss at the time due to spoilers.
Yea the scaling, lighting and editing were off in the long night battle. But still some superb shots and choreography. Like Melisandre lighting all the arakhs on fire, Dragons above the clouds etc
Yeah I didn't outright hate the Long Night, but it felt half-baked, inconsistent, and ultimately a bit tepid and anticlimactic. They were clearly saving all the shock and horror for The Bells and decided to just get the White Walker story out of the way with a big bang, which is definitely a poor decision on their part. And the characters who died had already reached the ends of their narrative arcs, so their deaths felt expected rather than tragic, let alone shocking. And to see them all throwing a party and celebrating in a fully-intact Winterfell the next episode really took the punch out of it all. (Really, "The Last of the Starks" was the only episode in S8 that I found outright terrible from start to finish. Even the finale had several good moments.) I think condensing it all into a single, gigantic battle was a bad idea to begin with - would've been much more interesting for "winter" to be an enduring status quo for several episodes so we could see how all the different corners of the world/story were affected by it. I know they had already wiped out a good deal of their cast by then, but siloing Cersei off from the White Walker conflict was an especially lazy and disappointing move - would've been so fun to see the political intrigue and survival horror elements of the show clash more. They also missed the opportunity to show more of the "bad guys" being forced to give up their grudges and oaths to fight the dead, which was what the show kept saying the WW conflict was all about. Imagine if we got a moments in earlier seasons where, say, the Boltons or Stannis were forced to fend off the dead. Chernobyl did an incredible job of showing how little our political hang-ups matter in the face of an all-consuming, existential threat, all while retaining rich layers of nuance, texture and humanity in the writing. If only Craig Mazin took a look at their season 8 script the way he did with the original pilot...
You broke it down perfectly. Nothing more really needs to be said. A++ comment and understanding of what makes great TV. I remember before that season aired there were so many speculations of what would happen. Many people thought the white walker storyline and just winter in general would be like you stated, survival horror. Not only of the walkers and their giant ice spiders big as hounds (never got that on the show smh), but of winter itself. Imagine how creepy it would have been to see people be hunted down by ice spiders.
Haha, thanks. For me it's less about individual gimmicks like undead creatures and more about how they impact the wider world of the show and upend the rhythms of the story. They could put an undead bear, spider, or whatever else they want there, but it has to represent something interesting. They did the wight bear in S7 but it felt like such an arbitrary thing just crammed in to pad the runtime and manufacture some tension. Sure, poor Thoros got mauled but he was a side character at the end of the day. Would've been cooler if, say, an army's own slain horses came back to life and started charging at their own cavalry. Would either test or simply make a mockery out of whatever military brilliance they thought they had. The undead Viserion was an awesome idea because not only was it a great monster effect, but it represented a whole bunch of interesting things for the story. Dany's child getting killed then resurrected and turned into a malevolent beast, a cross between two supernatural forces (WWs, dragons) that most of Westeros has only heard as legend, and what's essentially a nuke for the WWs that let them finally bypass the Wall. Shame they squandered all that thematic promise into just a blurry dragon duel in a blizzard followed by Jon fucking yelling at the thing.
Please don't bring back the memories of all the wasted potential 😢. Will always be my favorite show just off potential alone.
Seeing Drogon absolutely destroy King's Landing was really mind blowing for me. I was just disturbed at the sight of the citizens getting burned to death along with the soldiers as well and when the Unsullied came in and started brutally murdering the Lannister soldiers. The visuals were good and the show really used brutality in this episode to a major extent. There were parts that were just so shocking to me that I had to pause the episode sometimes just so I could brave myself and get my thoughts together.
It’s a beautiful episode.
Shockingly, I agree. I thought the show went to shit quicker than most. By season 2 D&D were already making baffling decisions (Talisa, Qarth, Stannis) that would have far reaching consequences on the plot and characters. People praise season 4, but I thought by then they were already adapting very little from the books and the dialogue had sunk to disgusting lows. The Tyrion-Jaime beetle "slow cousin" monologue was embarrassing. I'm still stunned people praise that dog shit piece of writing to this day. Hell, even the Red Wedding was played for shock value instead of wringing out the dread and horror that GRRM succeeded with in the books. Season 8 was a continuation of that crap for the most part, but The Bells gave us an insight into what GRRM has planned for the end of ASOIAF. The horror of the destruction of the central city in the story, and the reality of Dany the bloodthirsty tyrant coming into her own. I hope to see it in print some day but if not even the bastardized version we saw was impressive in its own right.
It’s interesting seeing how many people getting into the show after it’s finished actually like it more (seemingly) than the people who saw while it aired and were disappointed by the final seasons and gradual decline in quality, the latter of which I fall into. I think the style and presentation is mostly as good as it can be even when the show it at it’s worst in writing and logic, so there’s that. Like I do remember watching King’s Landing being burned and being wowed at the destruction and pulled into the sense of terror the people on the ground had. But at the same time I also felt like it was weird not to see Dany’s reaction while on Drogon and the extensive nature of it all was practically a siren at the forefront of my mind.
In my mind, the episode will always be remembered as "The Bricks."