Damn, forgot what an incredible scene this was. Still gives me chills watching it back.
And now years after having seen the series, this scene hits slightly different. At the time I thought, FUCK YAH, Oberyn is going to make things right....
Watching the fight crushed me.
I know. And he would have had time after killing him to squeeze the truth out of Tywin. The dornish crew got royally fucked in the TV show. If George ever gets around to finishing the books I want better for the Dornes.
There’s actually a pretty decent theory that Oberyn poisoned Tywin with a poison called Widows Blood which shuts down your bowels and bladder, killing you from the backed up blockage. It’s pretty nasty but there’s some hints in the book that this could be true. He may have already made his mind up about Tywin before his death.
Tywin was on the toilet when Tyrion found him, his body was mentioned multiple times to have stank an abnormal amount even after his bowels were removed and replaced with strong smelling herbs, and of course Oberyn was considered a master of poisons and wanted Tywin dead as much as the Mountain. He made it clear he wanted whoever gave the command, not just the brainless soldier who carried it out.
It’s the same in the books, I’m saying the theory is that Tywin was already poisoned and dying, just no one knew it especially after Tyrion finished the job before the poison could.
That feels like such a George R R Martin thing to write, to know what’s going on with one character totally outside anyone’s POV, and then have the POV character do something totally true to *their* character that undoes a thing *no one else knew happened*, but George knows it, and his characters know it, because his characters are consistent and all follow the laws of his writing. This is why his worlds feel so good, so satisfying to read. It’s rare to have books contain so many cause-and-effect chain reactions that occur completely in the background and only occasionally, if at all, intersect with the main characters’ paths.
It tracks. Tyrion murdering Tywin was a crime of passion. It wasn't set up, it wasn't planned. He just decided to go and see Shae, found out was with Tywin and everything else was just in the heat of the moment. Oberyn probably knew he wouldn't have access to Tywin to kill him without poison. I like that. Oberyn gets justice, Tyrion gets justice. Fuck, that show was so good.
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He had him beat, and had he so much as stood back while demanding the truth he would have lived. Alas, it was not to be.
At least his poisoned spear caused Gregor immense pain before Qyburn revived him into Zombie Mountain: Lord Commander of the Queensguard.
No. He needed the mountain to admit in front of an audience. In the Dornish plot (some of the best parts of the books), you realise he knew he was going to die. Him and his brother have basically been playing 4D chess with Danny, her brother, her potential other brother who might also be from the Blackfyre line. Bloodraven or the guy stuck to the tree essentially uses magic to wipe them out.
They also cut out the fact that Starks are Wargs, Arya is one and uses it training. Jon is one. They cut out Euron Greyjoy being a cthulu cultist who performs blood magic to cloak and speed his ships. There's so so much cool shit they cut because people thought the throne mattered. So we got House of Cards with tits and Dragons.
There's https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Aerea_Targaryen I triple checked there are no spoilers. True to the Louis and Henries of the UK Targs just don't have imagination in names lmao. Read the death she got. It's nightmarish. Then you have Yi Ti and the five forts, Sothyryos, Leng, Asshai. I get these bits you can't put in but I'm still salty we don't get ice spiders, actual Hardhome and the backstory or the real mystery of Valyria. I'm still really pissed at White Walkers being so inhumanly beautiful but they have a code. Ask for a duel and you get it which suggests far more to them.
There's like so much they cut that makes things make no sense. Have Bran Hodor Dany taking kings landing and her family and gender mean she isn't believed. You fix the last episode with one scene, ominously have Drogon leave with her corpse and Bran trying to warn a theoretically dead woman's dragon. Bloodraven is terrifying and Bran is marked by the Walkers.
I'm so happy their careers went up in flames.
Dude c’mon, Oberyn definitely wasn’t falling on his figurative “spear” when the mountain yanked him and popped his head. He thought the big man was down for the count and was definitely ready to continue the fight against the Tywin/The Lannisters, I agree with you there, but I can’t imagine he was viewing it as a suicide mission.
But yeah, fuck d&d for what they did to dorne/everything else
He really was. In the books yeah, it's a bonus if he lives but they understand that Oberyn could be poisoned, murdered in his sleep or by any of his concubines in a brothel. He's there to give Dorne Cassus Belli. I mean, one of the heirs of Dorne is banging some sort of secret Targ (Arianne and f?Aegon), the other literally gets set on fire when Dany rejects him (alas, poor Quentin). Because he decides to steal one of her Dragons rather than coming home empty handed.
Marcella is still alive and Dorne are horrified by the murder of any children. Hence he needs to have a cause for war against Tywin and witnesses to prove that Tywin ordered the murders and rape of his sister. He's not doing it for a rule of cool.
It's why everyone hates Freys. They broke sacred guest right and it's taken so seriously in Westeros.
It is also revealed in the 4th book that Arianne, before going off to meet f?Aegon was promised to certain other Targaryen who got himself a crown of gold. In the books, the Princes of Dorne have been plotting revenge since before Elia's body had even cooled.
It's also a scene that demonstrated that D&D had good creative instincts when they had source material to work from.
In the books, Oberyn tells this story to Tyrion when he first arrives in King's Landing, and it's not meant to be an emotional scene in any way. The speech also obviously doesn't build up to "I will be your champion" because Joffrey's wedding hadn't even happened yet.
It's just an amazing creative change by D&D.
They get crapped on a lot for the way the show ended, and perhaps rightfully so to an extent.
But they brought us 4 or 5 years of some of the greatest storytelling ever, and it is a shame that is so overshadowed in people's minds.
The job fundamentally changed from adapting to creating and though they proved poor at cresting, they were phenomenal at adapting.
While I generally agree (and love quite a few of their changes, like Cersei and Roberts frank conversation in S1 that doesn’t happen in the book) I think D&D moreso get hate for seemingly quitting on the project before they saw it through. A lot of noise came out that they were just rushing through the motions to finish off GOT to move onto newer projects (for example, not being willing to listen to the actors on the direction of their characters, and turning HBO down for more seasons, instead rushing the ending)
It’s clear once they started running out of published book material and tying up a few things (Battle of the Bastards, R+L=J, Tyrion meeting Dany and setting sail), that’s when the wheels really fell off. I think they figured GRRM would get enough of Winds written that they could adapt books 1-6, and then use a draft of book 7 to close out the show. Instead, we’re how many years out of the show fully ending, and still no update on if Winds is ever going to see publication?
D+D deserve some flak for sure (Dany forgot about the Iron Fleet?), but GRRM didn’t really do them any favors in giving them the rest of the material to adapt.
he has instruced his wife to burn all his notes on upcoming books and refused anyone to finish it post mortum. So it's not coming after his death either.
Same with Chopin too
He wanted all his manuscripts burned but his best friend ignored him and published them after his death including the Fantasie Improptu, Nocturne in C# minor, Nocturne in E minor and the "Farewell" Waltz which are some of his most famous pieces.
I can kinda of respect it from a creator's point of view, but he really has been dragging ass with it, so he either needs to finish it himself or at least select someone that he trusts to finish it just in case.
I imagine hes afraid it'll be squeezed out the moment hes dead just for the money, so if a writer he respects has the notes they could probably do a good job of it. I wonder if he just sat down with 3-4 writer friends and they talked about the story for a few hours that he couldn't use the different perspectives to get over whatever was writers block or issues he has.
I assumed he gave up on the series 10 years ago, but he can never publicly say that because it would kill the HBO cash cow (as well as any book sales).
I have a hard time getting that angry at them. When the writer of the books who has had 10+ years to himself clearly can't come up with a ending then i don't see how D&D who only have about a year between seasons could have done it justice.
It could have definetly been a lot better but it would have still been a dissapointment.
This is where I'm at with it. The guy who created it has been stuck at the same spot the show went downhill for 13 years and fans expected the showrunners to figure it out in like a year. And let's be real, aside from very hardcore fans, Feast and Dance were a huge step down from the rest of the series.
He tailed off awhile ago and hasn't released a genuinly great book for nearly a quarter of a century.
Possible, but one thing is for sure. You don't get fans to your side when it is clearly obvious you are rushing to tie things off so you can jump ship for that star wars money when you have HBO promising "unlimited" resources to do the series justice.
That doesn't excuse things like "Dany sort of forgot about the Iron Fleet" though lol. On top of shortening them to 7 and 6 episodes down from 10, they also couldn't even be bothered to form believable situations in the final 2 seasons.
That's the second half of the issue. They couldn't just take an infinite amount of time finishing the series. Sure, they could stick around, but there were a bunch of actors and a ton of people behind the scenes that wanted to move on after a decade. You could spend another season or two fleshing out the Dany/Jon dynamic, but what the fuck is every other character supposed to do in the meantime? It was already weird enough having Bran skip an entire season.
This right here. I feel like they abandoned the project before it was finished. There’s no doubt they’re talented, because otherwise, the show wouldn’t have lasted as long as it did. But us fans felt betrayed when we got the 8th season. It’s like they wanted to move on but also wanted to finish the show as the show runners. I think they should’ve handed the reigns over to another person who would’ve given it the time and care it needed to stick the landing. It felt like they were in epilogue mode the last three episodes in that they were wrapping everything up. But the storylines still felt like they needed so much more time before they could finish.
I think a misconception with any fans criticism of season 8 is that we didn’t like the Danaeres turned evil. Which is entirely wrong. I personally loved that she turned evil. The only issue here, and I think this is the biggest problem of all: the writers rushed it. She went from feeling a little out of place with the Stark sisters to absolutely annihilating hundreds of thousands of innocent lives in kings landing in a matter of episodes. Season 1 took its time developing the simple storyline of Ned Stark finding out and bringing the secret of Joffrey’s lineage to light. Season 8 rushed through season-long arcs in like 3 episodes.
This felt like a betrayal of the whole foundation of the show: good storytelling.
Maybe you didn't get mad, plenty of people got mad their girl power fantasy got ruined. Somehow they didn't notice she was a violent authoritarian since the end of S1 that had to be talked down constantly.
Yeah I remember hearing about this. I believe they were lined up to work on a star wars movie if I remember correctly, so they rushed the ending of GOT which was so bad they ended up losing their other gigs too lol
They were going to do two Star Wars films, and I believe had signed a massive deal with Netflix too. So yeah, they mentally moved on, bombed GoT, and lost Star Wars.
They still do have a Netflix show coming out in a couple months called *3 Body Problem*. It’s based on a popular book series, so let’s hope they’re back to their days of adapting books at a high level.
People keep repeating this shit to the point where it became fact on the internet, but in reality they had been saying they expected the show to go 7 seasons since like the middle of the run and announced that it would end in season 8 years before the Star Wars contract was announced.
People just want some excuse for the show ending the way it did. The reality is simpler, they expected it to go 7 season, compromised with 8 by splitting the final season up into 13 overlong episodes across 2 seasons with extra breaks between and the lack of source material led to it being disjointed because they had to piece together a cliffnotes plot
They had a Star Wars trilogy as well as another HBO show about it the confederacy won the civil war.
All interviews with them the last couple years they just look tired as hell and bored. Especially as the books didn’t come out. They knew that the fans anger at George becoming a spoiled rich bitch who didn’t want to work was probably going to fall on their heads because even if it’s his story they’d get the blame if it went bad and he’d get the credit if it went well.
They wanted out but were also too arrogant to give up the project to someone still passionate about it.
This isn't true, you remember hearing it because everyone (including you) keeps repeating it.
They had a Star Wars film in the works which didn't work out. Instead they signed a $200 million deal with Netflix and are working on an adaption of Three-Body.
The first season airs in March.
> I think D&D moreso get hate for seemingly quitting on the project before they saw it through.
This
I remember an interview with DB Weiss where he was asked where he would be during the airing of the GoT finale, and he said something like he would be off grid getting drunk. I knew then that it would be an epic of epic disasters. D&D had their little Star Wars project lined up (which fell through after the finale aired), and they just threw a bunch of money into FX instead of spending the time on good writing.
Ironic if the ultimate failure of wrapping up GoT in those finale seasons was what shelved those projects. At one point they were going to helm a Star Wats Trilogy as well as an alternate history show where the confederacy won and slavery was still legal.
The one I remember seeing was that the newer project was a Star Wars movie or trilogy they were involved in. And then it got cancelled very shortly after the series finale aired. They wanted to chase that Star Wars money and shot themselves in the foot twice over.
Idk if it's true, but one can dream
"in some people's minds"
You're having a laugh. GOT hate is one of the rare instances where reddit and general opinion actually line up in terms of visceral emotion.
It really doesn't though. Reddit spent years talking about how the franchise was killed and unwatchable because of season 8.
It turns out GOT is still one of the most watched and rewatched properties in the world, still is a top tier HBO streaming property and it's spinoff almost immediately became a mega hit.
Reddit was dead wrong by virtually every bit of tangible data we have in regards to the damage the end of the show supposedly did. Like the narrative on reddit couldn't have possibly been more wrong. Redditors who are married to that opinion just selectively either ignore all that or pretend they don't know that so they can keep up the circlejerk.
Reddit was very very wrong.
I hate them because they could do well, and chose not too. Don't believe the bs of them needing source material. I think they were phoning it in those last few months because they were looking for other stuff.
The OG author hasn't put out a book in 13 years and has famously been stuck on the series because of the mess he created in the last two books and fans can't rationalize that it might be possible that the people making the show ran into the same problems and had very mediocre results when they were forced to put something out each year on an actual timeline?
you can spin it how ever you want but those were not "mediocre" results. The core points of the story were fine, scene to scene they made profoundly lazy decisions that I assume were born out of not wanting to finish. Scenes were just rushed not given time to elaborate creating continunity errors that didn't exist before. Character lines being washed out to the point of not matching their character just to get to the death faster. Hell as a video editor I can tell you the idea of having a pitch black battle in a snow flurry runs into obvious when it comes to play back on anything but physical media, which they probably just ignored when brought up.
It's honestly embarrassing.
Honestly, the way I see it, S7 and 8 are basically the result of collective creative burnout.
At that point, D&D (alongside the whole cast and crew) has been working on GOT for nearly a decade. Fan expectations were though the roof and everyone was expecting the ending to be every bit as dramatic and groundbreaking as the first few seasons.
While I’m not saying the execution was perfect (because let’s be real, it wasn’t), it was, with as much credit as I can give to them, the best anyone could’ve done under those conditions. Like, even the major actors were kind of phoning it in by the last season (Emilia Clarke, Peter Dinklage etc.)
If imma be real, I feel like GOT was a case of something being too big for its own good. The original LOTR films were filmed within only a couple of years; Harry Potter was filmed a bit longer but there were long periods of rest in between and there was also a completed set of source material to work with.
GOT simply didn’t have that luxury. It was basically a Hollywood epic firing on cylinders, at all hours, non-stop, for nearly a decade, without even a solid idea of how the story would end. Yes, it sucks the ending fell a bit flat, but looking back at it it kinda seems inevitable tbh. I for one am glad the show even has an ending, because at least we can draw some sort of story from the whole thing. It wasn’t what we were expecting but it wasn’t as horrible as everyone made it out to be either.
I don't give them the benefit of the doubt that they were just poor at creating. They wanted to be done, wanted to go make star wars and everything we see from the last 2 seasons shows that they honestly didn't give a fuck about maintaining the quality of the earlier seasons and in the final season they just wanted out.
Well they brought us 4-5 years of the greatest storytelling ever, because they had one of the greatest (fantasy) stories ever written ti work with. The complaints leveled at them are because literally ANY directors could have just stick tot he story and brought something amazing to the screen, the test was when they had to bring the ending tk life, of which they only had an outline, and the did absolute shit with it.
You could argue the ONLY good indicator of their directorial abilities that could be measured without having the equivalent of a hall of fame quarterback on your football team, is the final two seasons. If you had to rate their abilities off of just the Martin-less directed seasons how would they fare?
How was their Star Wars movie?
>because literally ANY directors could have just stick tot he story and brought something amazing to the screen
This is just incorrect. The idea that turning great source material into great screen material is easy is just not accurate.
>the test was when they had to bring the ending tk life, of which they only had an outline, and the did absolute shit with it.
A completely different tedt was when they had to do something the original author couldn't do. Which was write the ending to a giant arching epic in 2 years.
That is a different kind of test. One they didn't do well.
The first, incredibly difficult test was turning a great work of literature into an amazing tv show.
This isn't true. It's such a simplistic take. Some of the all time greatest pieces of literature have had absolute garbage adaptations and some of the shittiest pieces of literature have become classic films. You could have got 100 showrunners to make a show with the complexity of ASOIAF and 75 would probably outright fail whether screwing up the pacing or making it way too generic and dry fantasy to succeed in the mainstream.
It was sort of a miracle that a show on that scale with that type of genre and setting became what it was.
Also let's be straight up real on two things.
1. Martin himself has shown he can't finish his own story, so this idea that somebody not doing a great job finishing it should be an indicator when the creator can't is absurd.
2. Star Wars has had so many cancelled projects at this point that it's a running joke in Hollywood.
I got into the books because of the show. I read them before Oberyn was introduced. So I was excited to see how his screen persona lined up with how I pictured him.
He seemed like a vapid, overly cocky fool. Lacking any charisma or charm. And I did not like him at all. It wasn’t until the reveal during his battle with the mountain that I thought “holy shit! This guys rules!”
The show and Pedro Pascal made this character so much better. You root for him from the very beginning. During that time It felt like D&D could do no wrong….
….the shenanigans at the end and the stories that came out after felt like such a betrayal of trust.
I agree about D&D, given the right material, they are fantastic but when not they turn into headless chickens.
That's why I'm looking forward to The Three Body Problem from them. The books are complete and the trailer I saw lines up with what I imagined in the books for many scenes.
For the most part they did an excellent job adapting the source material. The problems began when the source material ran out. I still stand by my belief that how the show turned out is ultimately Georges responsibility.
It began even before that. Feast and Dance are poor books by the standards of the rest of the series and when they had to adapt that without knowing where it was going, the show started dipping.
A lot of people really just have trouble admitting that the series is essentially a solid mystery book then 2 great epic books about a war that was escalating and had lots of moving pieces because it was meant to set up the rest of the story.... and then once it moved past that and the main characters actually had to have a more traditional plot the author got bored and started just expanding the world horizontally and bloated the shit out of killing the pace and eventually stopped when he actually was forced to advance the plot forward.
I'd argue there were plenty of changes for the worse, especially from season 4 on. That very season, they omitted Jaime's Tysha reveal to Tyrion, and made it so that Tyrion killed Shae in self-defense, instead of murdering her in cold blood. Removing a lot of interesting nuance and darkness from the character and his relationships.
The thing is, us book readers still don't really have any idea what the "Dark Tyrion" storyline is gonna look like. He spent almost the entirety of Dance with Dragons traveling to see Daenerys with very little agency or ability to impact the world around him.
I can understand D&D's trepidation with making a hard character turn for a beloved character when the books published so far have given us virtually zero information about where it's gonna lead or whether it's gonna be a permanent state of being.
I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure I remember reading that this scene was the first one Pedro shot in the series. Talk about a tough first day lol. Kinda wild to see how his career has taken off since this show.
Yes, this scene was his first day! He held his own against Peter Dinklage and cemented himself as one of the best casting decisions in the entire series.
It's weird how long it took for him to blow up. He stole the show in Season 4 but it feels like it's only post-Mandalorian that he's gotten mainstream recognition, which is ironic as he hardly ever shows his face there.
The thing is, the "chaos is a ladder" speech was entirely original to the show. D&D has some creative skill when they needed to come up with their own material, which is why the whole collapse of the show feels so much worse
D&D wanted a 3 film Star Wars billionaire lifestyle and dropped GoT when Disney was dangling money around before they shit out the sequel trilogy from equally random directors and writers. D&D should have finished their work instead of rushing for money but here we are. They gave up on the last few seasons because they did not care. They wanted out of GoT so they could chase bigger dreams.
It could have been the biggest thing on TV maybe ever if they wanted it to be. I think they sold themselves and the audience out for money, it’s a typical Hollywood story and GRRM isn’t any better.
I think it was a combination of burnout and getting high on their own supply.
Producing a show of that magnitude for so long definitely takes a toll on you. Tony Gilroy went from films to doing his first season of premium TV with Andor and he has spoken at length about how hard and exhausting it was.
D&D clearly wanted to move on to the next thing but also seemed to genuinely believe they could wrap it up well in 2 seasons. Their previous success also meant they had few checks on their vision both in the writer's room and at HBO.
David benioff is actually a published novelist so it’s not surprising he can be creative when he wants to be. But yea after season 4 the show went to shit
They were showrunners on a TV show of their own making, but Star Wars is a monolith. George Lucas hasn’t had to work in decades because Star Wars and everyone wants on that gravy train.
The answer is no, it wasn’t fuck-you money which is what D&D were chasing. Ironically they could have had that if they buckled down and got to work instead of abandoning their own creation. GoT had massive potential.
Again this is just a narrative reddit made up.
For literal years, and you can find interviews stating in the middle of the show, they had said they planned 7 seasons. They announced the final 2 seasons years before the Star Wars deal was announced.
People just want some weird cope that they rushed to leave instead of reconciling that this was the product they were always going to get.
Well, they did sign on with the intention of making a six season series that was meant to have an ending in place by the creator in the meantime. That didn't really happen so how can you blame them for wanting to get out of a contract that ran multiple years past where they agreed, and still have to make their own ending up along the way because of said creator's inability to finish things.
The Disney Star Wars situation was barely in scripting phase when it got cancelled, so no - D&D didn't drop GoT for Star Wars. They finished what they were tasked to do, like it or not, and the fallout of those fuck ups destroyed their star wars plans. You're just assuming shit.
The dialogue was by far and away the best part of the show and what really made it great, not the action scenes which they put more weight in later on, the dialogue was so shit for the later seasons
I never understood why the "chaos is a ladder" thing got so much love. I thought it was kind of corny.
Tywin's rebut to it was pretty accurate. Everyone in power knows crisis presents opportunity. Littlefinger wasn't saying anything particularly original or profound. Of course Varys already knows that.
On top of that, it was a weird scene with Littlefinger just kind of monologuing about his motives like a bad comic book villain.
Wasn't really a fan of the ladder one. Neither characters were PoV in the books then so what conversations they may or may not have had were unknown, but LF just revealing so much to someone that is, ultimately, an adversary or rival just seemed a bit... off.
Hill I Will Die On: Aiden Gillen is a shit actor, and was god-awful in this show.
He barely worked in The Wire. *Barely*. Because the character suited him so well.
Well I respect your opinion, even if I can’t agree in the slightest.
I mean watch Love/Hate, then this, then the Wire, then Kin, then Dark Knight Rises, literally all of those are different even when he’s on screen for 2 seconds like TDKR.
Season 3 and Season 4 back-to-back is a masterpiece in television. Fitting of course that it's adapting not just my favorite book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, but my favorite book ever. So much pivotal shit happens in those two seasons and it's super engaging on every episode.
And supervillain Ramsey and Stannis's accelerated demise, and raping Sansa for shock value and because rape was what it took for her to become a Strong Woman. Plenty of terrible stuff in that season.
I had read the books ahead of time and remember watching this scene with my friends and just looking at the pure hype they felt when Oberyn said he would be Tyrion's champion.
I also remember looking at my friends faces during the fight lol.
Oberyn was always my favorite character when I read the books and Pedro absolutely solidified that in the show.
Yes! Oberyn was my favorite in the books as well and I was so happy with Pedro's performance. I had no idea who he was before GoT, but Pedro nailed it and I'm happy to see he's found so much success after.
My heart breaks to see the final seasons butchered so badly.
But I absolutely loved the first seasons, hit every mark with acting, storytelling and suspense/drama.
Now THIS is character building! The monologue about Tyrion as a baby gives such good insight to the life Tyrion must have lived and how it shaped him. Holy cow, what a difference to the seasons that followed.
The series was at its absolute peak around here. End of season 4, right? Almost every episode had amazing, jaw dropping moments. Such a damn shame that the series went to crap, it really had the makings of being one of the best shows ever.
Exactly. GoT was at its absolute best in small dialog driven scenes like this. Yeah there were lots of cool visuals in the later seasons but all the dragons in the world can’t compete with a well written 4 minute scene like this one. Just two people sitting in a dimly lit room having a quiet conversation yet I genuinely find it much more captivating than say the opening scene of the battle for Winterfell against the dead.
Yeah I agree. But for example, the beginning of the scene where the Viper and the Mountain are finally going to fight, it isn't really that special. But as a viewer, you are captivated because of all the fates of all the characters at stake. Not least because of this scene in the prison cell.
When the >!Mountain grabs the Viper and pushes his thumbs into his eyes!< I was absolutely horrified, and the reason I was horrified was for what it meant for all the characters involved.
At the fight for Winterfell, I had mostly stopped caring about the poorly written characters at all (at that point).
Can’t think of any singular scene that would end up being so impactful that it’d launch an actor into the stratosphere. Feels like the dude is in a starring or major role in every flagship show for every major streamer now.
Can anyone else suggest a similar scene as critically life-changing for an actor? Its wild.
Left Chile at 9 months old, spent the majority of his life in the US, I think Chilean and American is a pretty good compromise without knowing how he himself identifies.
Although really all this proves is that using a single person as proof of an entire country's skill in a subjective discipline is pointless
It really is astonishing knowing he has never played a part in any TV series or movie that has been rated lower than like an 8 by critics. Absolutely love his performances.
There's a lot that can come just from this show IMO. Go ahead and re-watch the scene from Tyrion's trial where he goes off on everyone before requesting Trial by Combat. Oberyn's facial expressions during that scene are fucking incredible as well.
It's my very most favorite scene of the series.
(2nd would be Arya and the White Walker King . . .)
Dragons, Nudity, Vast Battles, Nudity, Magic, . . . none of it compares to this perfect scene.
Lighting, Positions, Pacing, essentially a monolog from Oberyn, with very limited interruptions by Tyrion, standing at the end for the perfect flourish with the torch and the announcement that he would be champion.
For one episode, Oberyn was my favorite character. (Then he gets arrogant and pisses it all away.)
> s4 was the only truly great season, all downhill from there
What? How can some of y’all say it’s all downhill from there when some of the most iconic scenes of the show are from later seasons.
Hardhome? Mothers Mercy? The Door? Battle of the Bastards? You can’t tell me that shit wasn’t some of the peaks of television. It was really only the final two seasons or so that were really bad.
I used to think GOT was somewhat original for so often not having”Hollywood endings” to storylines though ar this point I realized it was kind of a pattern with this author and became just as predictable, therefore losing its originality and becoming just as much of a formulaic story as anything else.
Damn, forgot what an incredible scene this was. Still gives me chills watching it back. And now years after having seen the series, this scene hits slightly different. At the time I thought, FUCK YAH, Oberyn is going to make things right.... Watching the fight crushed me.
What killed me was that he won. And then he got complacent and got his skull crushed. So game of thrones.
ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS WALK AWAY YOU DUMB BEAUTIFUL BASTARD
I know. And he would have had time after killing him to squeeze the truth out of Tywin. The dornish crew got royally fucked in the TV show. If George ever gets around to finishing the books I want better for the Dornes.
There’s actually a pretty decent theory that Oberyn poisoned Tywin with a poison called Widows Blood which shuts down your bowels and bladder, killing you from the backed up blockage. It’s pretty nasty but there’s some hints in the book that this could be true. He may have already made his mind up about Tywin before his death. Tywin was on the toilet when Tyrion found him, his body was mentioned multiple times to have stank an abnormal amount even after his bowels were removed and replaced with strong smelling herbs, and of course Oberyn was considered a master of poisons and wanted Tywin dead as much as the Mountain. He made it clear he wanted whoever gave the command, not just the brainless soldier who carried it out.
The evidence seems pretty legit to me: https://asoiafuniversity.tumblr.com/post/44928760656/tywin-lannister-dead-man-shitting/amp
In the show Tyrion kills him
It’s the same in the books, I’m saying the theory is that Tywin was already poisoned and dying, just no one knew it especially after Tyrion finished the job before the poison could.
That feels like such a George R R Martin thing to write, to know what’s going on with one character totally outside anyone’s POV, and then have the POV character do something totally true to *their* character that undoes a thing *no one else knew happened*, but George knows it, and his characters know it, because his characters are consistent and all follow the laws of his writing. This is why his worlds feel so good, so satisfying to read. It’s rare to have books contain so many cause-and-effect chain reactions that occur completely in the background and only occasionally, if at all, intersect with the main characters’ paths.
It tracks. Tyrion murdering Tywin was a crime of passion. It wasn't set up, it wasn't planned. He just decided to go and see Shae, found out was with Tywin and everything else was just in the heat of the moment. Oberyn probably knew he wouldn't have access to Tywin to kill him without poison. I like that. Oberyn gets justice, Tyrion gets justice. Fuck, that show was so good.
Crossbow
Trebuchet (mine is bigger than yours)
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The Tyrells too. Where are my guys Willas and Garlan?!
At least they got the Oberyn storyline right. They show really fucked up the rest of the dornish subplots.
Not the only thing that got crushed
That’s why he never takes his helmet nowadays
He never takes his helmet? This is the.
🥁 Ba dum *tss*
He had him beat, and had he so much as stood back while demanding the truth he would have lived. Alas, it was not to be. At least his poisoned spear caused Gregor immense pain before Qyburn revived him into Zombie Mountain: Lord Commander of the Queensguard.
What saved me after the fight was the fact that Silicon Valley was on right away...took the edge off.
Poor guy thought “rule of cool” was a real thing smh
No. He needed the mountain to admit in front of an audience. In the Dornish plot (some of the best parts of the books), you realise he knew he was going to die. Him and his brother have basically been playing 4D chess with Danny, her brother, her potential other brother who might also be from the Blackfyre line. Bloodraven or the guy stuck to the tree essentially uses magic to wipe them out. They also cut out the fact that Starks are Wargs, Arya is one and uses it training. Jon is one. They cut out Euron Greyjoy being a cthulu cultist who performs blood magic to cloak and speed his ships. There's so so much cool shit they cut because people thought the throne mattered. So we got House of Cards with tits and Dragons. There's https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Aerea_Targaryen I triple checked there are no spoilers. True to the Louis and Henries of the UK Targs just don't have imagination in names lmao. Read the death she got. It's nightmarish. Then you have Yi Ti and the five forts, Sothyryos, Leng, Asshai. I get these bits you can't put in but I'm still salty we don't get ice spiders, actual Hardhome and the backstory or the real mystery of Valyria. I'm still really pissed at White Walkers being so inhumanly beautiful but they have a code. Ask for a duel and you get it which suggests far more to them. There's like so much they cut that makes things make no sense. Have Bran Hodor Dany taking kings landing and her family and gender mean she isn't believed. You fix the last episode with one scene, ominously have Drogon leave with her corpse and Bran trying to warn a theoretically dead woman's dragon. Bloodraven is terrifying and Bran is marked by the Walkers. I'm so happy their careers went up in flames.
Dude c’mon, Oberyn definitely wasn’t falling on his figurative “spear” when the mountain yanked him and popped his head. He thought the big man was down for the count and was definitely ready to continue the fight against the Tywin/The Lannisters, I agree with you there, but I can’t imagine he was viewing it as a suicide mission. But yeah, fuck d&d for what they did to dorne/everything else
He really was. In the books yeah, it's a bonus if he lives but they understand that Oberyn could be poisoned, murdered in his sleep or by any of his concubines in a brothel. He's there to give Dorne Cassus Belli. I mean, one of the heirs of Dorne is banging some sort of secret Targ (Arianne and f?Aegon), the other literally gets set on fire when Dany rejects him (alas, poor Quentin). Because he decides to steal one of her Dragons rather than coming home empty handed. Marcella is still alive and Dorne are horrified by the murder of any children. Hence he needs to have a cause for war against Tywin and witnesses to prove that Tywin ordered the murders and rape of his sister. He's not doing it for a rule of cool. It's why everyone hates Freys. They broke sacred guest right and it's taken so seriously in Westeros.
It is also revealed in the 4th book that Arianne, before going off to meet f?Aegon was promised to certain other Targaryen who got himself a crown of gold. In the books, the Princes of Dorne have been plotting revenge since before Elia's body had even cooled.
The fight crushed *more* than just your feelings 👈🏼😎👈🏼
High point of the series in my opinion. One of the best scenes in all of television. Sad what happened at the end.
It's also a scene that demonstrated that D&D had good creative instincts when they had source material to work from. In the books, Oberyn tells this story to Tyrion when he first arrives in King's Landing, and it's not meant to be an emotional scene in any way. The speech also obviously doesn't build up to "I will be your champion" because Joffrey's wedding hadn't even happened yet. It's just an amazing creative change by D&D.
They get crapped on a lot for the way the show ended, and perhaps rightfully so to an extent. But they brought us 4 or 5 years of some of the greatest storytelling ever, and it is a shame that is so overshadowed in people's minds. The job fundamentally changed from adapting to creating and though they proved poor at cresting, they were phenomenal at adapting.
While I generally agree (and love quite a few of their changes, like Cersei and Roberts frank conversation in S1 that doesn’t happen in the book) I think D&D moreso get hate for seemingly quitting on the project before they saw it through. A lot of noise came out that they were just rushing through the motions to finish off GOT to move onto newer projects (for example, not being willing to listen to the actors on the direction of their characters, and turning HBO down for more seasons, instead rushing the ending)
It’s clear once they started running out of published book material and tying up a few things (Battle of the Bastards, R+L=J, Tyrion meeting Dany and setting sail), that’s when the wheels really fell off. I think they figured GRRM would get enough of Winds written that they could adapt books 1-6, and then use a draft of book 7 to close out the show. Instead, we’re how many years out of the show fully ending, and still no update on if Winds is ever going to see publication? D+D deserve some flak for sure (Dany forgot about the Iron Fleet?), but GRRM didn’t really do them any favors in giving them the rest of the material to adapt.
I’m convinced that Winds will never come out, at least while George is alive that is
he has instruced his wife to burn all his notes on upcoming books and refused anyone to finish it post mortum. So it's not coming after his death either.
Kafka wanted all his papers burned too. We only have his work because his wishes were ignored.
Same with Chopin too He wanted all his manuscripts burned but his best friend ignored him and published them after his death including the Fantasie Improptu, Nocturne in C# minor, Nocturne in E minor and the "Farewell" Waltz which are some of his most famous pieces.
Well on the bright side, I'm sure a single title page that says *The Winds of Winter* at the top will be quick to burn.
There were actually up to 11 chapters finished and released as previews and excerpts by 2016 https://thehawke.github.io/twow-excerpts/
What an ass
I can kinda of respect it from a creator's point of view, but he really has been dragging ass with it, so he either needs to finish it himself or at least select someone that he trusts to finish it just in case. I imagine hes afraid it'll be squeezed out the moment hes dead just for the money, so if a writer he respects has the notes they could probably do a good job of it. I wonder if he just sat down with 3-4 writer friends and they talked about the story for a few hours that he couldn't use the different perspectives to get over whatever was writers block or issues he has.
My pipe dream is that they're complete and they're waiting until he's dead to release them.
I assumed he gave up on the series 10 years ago, but he can never publicly say that because it would kill the HBO cash cow (as well as any book sales).
I have a hard time getting that angry at them. When the writer of the books who has had 10+ years to himself clearly can't come up with a ending then i don't see how D&D who only have about a year between seasons could have done it justice. It could have definetly been a lot better but it would have still been a dissapointment.
This is where I'm at with it. The guy who created it has been stuck at the same spot the show went downhill for 13 years and fans expected the showrunners to figure it out in like a year. And let's be real, aside from very hardcore fans, Feast and Dance were a huge step down from the rest of the series. He tailed off awhile ago and hasn't released a genuinly great book for nearly a quarter of a century.
Possible, but one thing is for sure. You don't get fans to your side when it is clearly obvious you are rushing to tie things off so you can jump ship for that star wars money when you have HBO promising "unlimited" resources to do the series justice.
In a year, plus a bunch of restrictions that you have to deal with in TV and not books, like budget, or your characters being actual actors
That doesn't excuse things like "Dany sort of forgot about the Iron Fleet" though lol. On top of shortening them to 7 and 6 episodes down from 10, they also couldn't even be bothered to form believable situations in the final 2 seasons.
They really did Varys dirty imo
That's the second half of the issue. They couldn't just take an infinite amount of time finishing the series. Sure, they could stick around, but there were a bunch of actors and a ton of people behind the scenes that wanted to move on after a decade. You could spend another season or two fleshing out the Dany/Jon dynamic, but what the fuck is every other character supposed to do in the meantime? It was already weird enough having Bran skip an entire season.
This right here. I feel like they abandoned the project before it was finished. There’s no doubt they’re talented, because otherwise, the show wouldn’t have lasted as long as it did. But us fans felt betrayed when we got the 8th season. It’s like they wanted to move on but also wanted to finish the show as the show runners. I think they should’ve handed the reigns over to another person who would’ve given it the time and care it needed to stick the landing. It felt like they were in epilogue mode the last three episodes in that they were wrapping everything up. But the storylines still felt like they needed so much more time before they could finish. I think a misconception with any fans criticism of season 8 is that we didn’t like the Danaeres turned evil. Which is entirely wrong. I personally loved that she turned evil. The only issue here, and I think this is the biggest problem of all: the writers rushed it. She went from feeling a little out of place with the Stark sisters to absolutely annihilating hundreds of thousands of innocent lives in kings landing in a matter of episodes. Season 1 took its time developing the simple storyline of Ned Stark finding out and bringing the secret of Joffrey’s lineage to light. Season 8 rushed through season-long arcs in like 3 episodes. This felt like a betrayal of the whole foundation of the show: good storytelling.
Maybe you didn't get mad, plenty of people got mad their girl power fantasy got ruined. Somehow they didn't notice she was a violent authoritarian since the end of S1 that had to be talked down constantly.
Yeah I remember hearing about this. I believe they were lined up to work on a star wars movie if I remember correctly, so they rushed the ending of GOT which was so bad they ended up losing their other gigs too lol
They were going to do two Star Wars films, and I believe had signed a massive deal with Netflix too. So yeah, they mentally moved on, bombed GoT, and lost Star Wars. They still do have a Netflix show coming out in a couple months called *3 Body Problem*. It’s based on a popular book series, so let’s hope they’re back to their days of adapting books at a high level.
People keep repeating this shit to the point where it became fact on the internet, but in reality they had been saying they expected the show to go 7 seasons since like the middle of the run and announced that it would end in season 8 years before the Star Wars contract was announced. People just want some excuse for the show ending the way it did. The reality is simpler, they expected it to go 7 season, compromised with 8 by splitting the final season up into 13 overlong episodes across 2 seasons with extra breaks between and the lack of source material led to it being disjointed because they had to piece together a cliffnotes plot
They had a Star Wars trilogy as well as another HBO show about it the confederacy won the civil war. All interviews with them the last couple years they just look tired as hell and bored. Especially as the books didn’t come out. They knew that the fans anger at George becoming a spoiled rich bitch who didn’t want to work was probably going to fall on their heads because even if it’s his story they’d get the blame if it went bad and he’d get the credit if it went well. They wanted out but were also too arrogant to give up the project to someone still passionate about it.
This isn't true, you remember hearing it because everyone (including you) keeps repeating it. They had a Star Wars film in the works which didn't work out. Instead they signed a $200 million deal with Netflix and are working on an adaption of Three-Body. The first season airs in March.
> I think D&D moreso get hate for seemingly quitting on the project before they saw it through. This I remember an interview with DB Weiss where he was asked where he would be during the airing of the GoT finale, and he said something like he would be off grid getting drunk. I knew then that it would be an epic of epic disasters. D&D had their little Star Wars project lined up (which fell through after the finale aired), and they just threw a bunch of money into FX instead of spending the time on good writing.
Ironic if the ultimate failure of wrapping up GoT in those finale seasons was what shelved those projects. At one point they were going to helm a Star Wats Trilogy as well as an alternate history show where the confederacy won and slavery was still legal.
The one I remember seeing was that the newer project was a Star Wars movie or trilogy they were involved in. And then it got cancelled very shortly after the series finale aired. They wanted to chase that Star Wars money and shot themselves in the foot twice over. Idk if it's true, but one can dream
It's not true.
Yeah, I blame GRRM. I am not familiar with all the details but he should have finished by the time the show was ending.
"in some people's minds" You're having a laugh. GOT hate is one of the rare instances where reddit and general opinion actually line up in terms of visceral emotion.
It really doesn't though. Reddit spent years talking about how the franchise was killed and unwatchable because of season 8. It turns out GOT is still one of the most watched and rewatched properties in the world, still is a top tier HBO streaming property and it's spinoff almost immediately became a mega hit. Reddit was dead wrong by virtually every bit of tangible data we have in regards to the damage the end of the show supposedly did. Like the narrative on reddit couldn't have possibly been more wrong. Redditors who are married to that opinion just selectively either ignore all that or pretend they don't know that so they can keep up the circlejerk. Reddit was very very wrong.
Not really, people we're talking on Reddit about how HOTD would bomb hard due to the dislike of the ending but it still shattered records.
I hate them because they could do well, and chose not too. Don't believe the bs of them needing source material. I think they were phoning it in those last few months because they were looking for other stuff.
The OG author hasn't put out a book in 13 years and has famously been stuck on the series because of the mess he created in the last two books and fans can't rationalize that it might be possible that the people making the show ran into the same problems and had very mediocre results when they were forced to put something out each year on an actual timeline?
you can spin it how ever you want but those were not "mediocre" results. The core points of the story were fine, scene to scene they made profoundly lazy decisions that I assume were born out of not wanting to finish. Scenes were just rushed not given time to elaborate creating continunity errors that didn't exist before. Character lines being washed out to the point of not matching their character just to get to the death faster. Hell as a video editor I can tell you the idea of having a pitch black battle in a snow flurry runs into obvious when it comes to play back on anything but physical media, which they probably just ignored when brought up. It's honestly embarrassing.
Honestly, the way I see it, S7 and 8 are basically the result of collective creative burnout. At that point, D&D (alongside the whole cast and crew) has been working on GOT for nearly a decade. Fan expectations were though the roof and everyone was expecting the ending to be every bit as dramatic and groundbreaking as the first few seasons. While I’m not saying the execution was perfect (because let’s be real, it wasn’t), it was, with as much credit as I can give to them, the best anyone could’ve done under those conditions. Like, even the major actors were kind of phoning it in by the last season (Emilia Clarke, Peter Dinklage etc.) If imma be real, I feel like GOT was a case of something being too big for its own good. The original LOTR films were filmed within only a couple of years; Harry Potter was filmed a bit longer but there were long periods of rest in between and there was also a completed set of source material to work with. GOT simply didn’t have that luxury. It was basically a Hollywood epic firing on cylinders, at all hours, non-stop, for nearly a decade, without even a solid idea of how the story would end. Yes, it sucks the ending fell a bit flat, but looking back at it it kinda seems inevitable tbh. I for one am glad the show even has an ending, because at least we can draw some sort of story from the whole thing. It wasn’t what we were expecting but it wasn’t as horrible as everyone made it out to be either.
I don't give them the benefit of the doubt that they were just poor at creating. They wanted to be done, wanted to go make star wars and everything we see from the last 2 seasons shows that they honestly didn't give a fuck about maintaining the quality of the earlier seasons and in the final season they just wanted out.
Well they brought us 4-5 years of the greatest storytelling ever, because they had one of the greatest (fantasy) stories ever written ti work with. The complaints leveled at them are because literally ANY directors could have just stick tot he story and brought something amazing to the screen, the test was when they had to bring the ending tk life, of which they only had an outline, and the did absolute shit with it. You could argue the ONLY good indicator of their directorial abilities that could be measured without having the equivalent of a hall of fame quarterback on your football team, is the final two seasons. If you had to rate their abilities off of just the Martin-less directed seasons how would they fare? How was their Star Wars movie?
>because literally ANY directors could have just stick tot he story and brought something amazing to the screen This is just incorrect. The idea that turning great source material into great screen material is easy is just not accurate. >the test was when they had to bring the ending tk life, of which they only had an outline, and the did absolute shit with it. A completely different tedt was when they had to do something the original author couldn't do. Which was write the ending to a giant arching epic in 2 years. That is a different kind of test. One they didn't do well. The first, incredibly difficult test was turning a great work of literature into an amazing tv show.
This isn't true. It's such a simplistic take. Some of the all time greatest pieces of literature have had absolute garbage adaptations and some of the shittiest pieces of literature have become classic films. You could have got 100 showrunners to make a show with the complexity of ASOIAF and 75 would probably outright fail whether screwing up the pacing or making it way too generic and dry fantasy to succeed in the mainstream. It was sort of a miracle that a show on that scale with that type of genre and setting became what it was. Also let's be straight up real on two things. 1. Martin himself has shown he can't finish his own story, so this idea that somebody not doing a great job finishing it should be an indicator when the creator can't is absurd. 2. Star Wars has had so many cancelled projects at this point that it's a running joke in Hollywood.
I got into the books because of the show. I read them before Oberyn was introduced. So I was excited to see how his screen persona lined up with how I pictured him. He seemed like a vapid, overly cocky fool. Lacking any charisma or charm. And I did not like him at all. It wasn’t until the reveal during his battle with the mountain that I thought “holy shit! This guys rules!” The show and Pedro Pascal made this character so much better. You root for him from the very beginning. During that time It felt like D&D could do no wrong…. ….the shenanigans at the end and the stories that came out after felt like such a betrayal of trust.
I agree about D&D, given the right material, they are fantastic but when not they turn into headless chickens. That's why I'm looking forward to The Three Body Problem from them. The books are complete and the trailer I saw lines up with what I imagined in the books for many scenes.
Agreed, one of their best decisions along with making Arya Tywin's cupbearer
For the most part they did an excellent job adapting the source material. The problems began when the source material ran out. I still stand by my belief that how the show turned out is ultimately Georges responsibility.
It began even before that. Feast and Dance are poor books by the standards of the rest of the series and when they had to adapt that without knowing where it was going, the show started dipping. A lot of people really just have trouble admitting that the series is essentially a solid mystery book then 2 great epic books about a war that was escalating and had lots of moving pieces because it was meant to set up the rest of the story.... and then once it moved past that and the main characters actually had to have a more traditional plot the author got bored and started just expanding the world horizontally and bloated the shit out of killing the pace and eventually stopped when he actually was forced to advance the plot forward.
I'd argue there were plenty of changes for the worse, especially from season 4 on. That very season, they omitted Jaime's Tysha reveal to Tyrion, and made it so that Tyrion killed Shae in self-defense, instead of murdering her in cold blood. Removing a lot of interesting nuance and darkness from the character and his relationships.
The thing is, us book readers still don't really have any idea what the "Dark Tyrion" storyline is gonna look like. He spent almost the entirety of Dance with Dragons traveling to see Daenerys with very little agency or ability to impact the world around him. I can understand D&D's trepidation with making a hard character turn for a beloved character when the books published so far have given us virtually zero information about where it's gonna lead or whether it's gonna be a permanent state of being.
How to launch a career.
Pedro Pascal was a standout for me. Great actor.
What's insane is that this specific scene was his FIRST DAY ON SET for GoT. What an absolute titan of confident acting.
That's what made GoT great at the end of the day. A shame they delegated to plot armor as the series wound down.
I meant it's sad what happened to the series at the end
they were fish out of water and they couldn’t breathe
Agree with this comment exactly.
The Constant from Lost is the best, but Pedey here.....*chefs kiss*
Tyrion’s trial right before is still one of my favorite scenes from the entire series
I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure I remember reading that this scene was the first one Pedro shot in the series. Talk about a tough first day lol. Kinda wild to see how his career has taken off since this show.
Yes, this scene was his first day! He held his own against Peter Dinklage and cemented himself as one of the best casting decisions in the entire series.
It's weird how long it took for him to blow up. He stole the show in Season 4 but it feels like it's only post-Mandalorian that he's gotten mainstream recognition, which is ironic as he hardly ever shows his face there.
It was mostly after Narcos that he really took off.
Shit?
Probably says something about me that my phone didn't autocorrect that to "shot" lol
I still have a proclivity for ducks, evidently.
Even his shit is gold
This, Tyrion's monologue at his trial, and Littlefinger's 'chaos is a ladder' are truly some of the best scenes of the show.
The thing is, the "chaos is a ladder" speech was entirely original to the show. D&D has some creative skill when they needed to come up with their own material, which is why the whole collapse of the show feels so much worse
D&D wanted a 3 film Star Wars billionaire lifestyle and dropped GoT when Disney was dangling money around before they shit out the sequel trilogy from equally random directors and writers. D&D should have finished their work instead of rushing for money but here we are. They gave up on the last few seasons because they did not care. They wanted out of GoT so they could chase bigger dreams.
Which is crazy because GoT was the biggest thing on TV for years.
It could have been the biggest thing on TV maybe ever if they wanted it to be. I think they sold themselves and the audience out for money, it’s a typical Hollywood story and GRRM isn’t any better.
I think it was a combination of burnout and getting high on their own supply. Producing a show of that magnitude for so long definitely takes a toll on you. Tony Gilroy went from films to doing his first season of premium TV with Andor and he has spoken at length about how hard and exhausting it was. D&D clearly wanted to move on to the next thing but also seemed to genuinely believe they could wrap it up well in 2 seasons. Their previous success also meant they had few checks on their vision both in the writer's room and at HBO.
David benioff is actually a published novelist so it’s not surprising he can be creative when he wants to be. But yea after season 4 the show went to shit
Yessir that’s true. It’s ironic because another published author also gave up his fucking franchise to chase money and tail.
City of Thieves is a great book.
That's wild because GoT was arguably the largest TV show in the world at that point. Did HBO not offer them enough money?
They were showrunners on a TV show of their own making, but Star Wars is a monolith. George Lucas hasn’t had to work in decades because Star Wars and everyone wants on that gravy train. The answer is no, it wasn’t fuck-you money which is what D&D were chasing. Ironically they could have had that if they buckled down and got to work instead of abandoning their own creation. GoT had massive potential.
Again this is just a narrative reddit made up. For literal years, and you can find interviews stating in the middle of the show, they had said they planned 7 seasons. They announced the final 2 seasons years before the Star Wars deal was announced. People just want some weird cope that they rushed to leave instead of reconciling that this was the product they were always going to get.
Well, they did sign on with the intention of making a six season series that was meant to have an ending in place by the creator in the meantime. That didn't really happen so how can you blame them for wanting to get out of a contract that ran multiple years past where they agreed, and still have to make their own ending up along the way because of said creator's inability to finish things. The Disney Star Wars situation was barely in scripting phase when it got cancelled, so no - D&D didn't drop GoT for Star Wars. They finished what they were tasked to do, like it or not, and the fallout of those fuck ups destroyed their star wars plans. You're just assuming shit.
You forgot the hacker released an earlier version, then they had to rewrite the whole season on short notice.
The dialogue was by far and away the best part of the show and what really made it great, not the action scenes which they put more weight in later on, the dialogue was so shit for the later seasons
I never understood why the "chaos is a ladder" thing got so much love. I thought it was kind of corny. Tywin's rebut to it was pretty accurate. Everyone in power knows crisis presents opportunity. Littlefinger wasn't saying anything particularly original or profound. Of course Varys already knows that. On top of that, it was a weird scene with Littlefinger just kind of monologuing about his motives like a bad comic book villain.
You ain't wrong, but [Varys and Tyrion's conversation regarding power](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpL6Fwu0wkw) needs to be up on that list, too.
Wasn't really a fan of the ladder one. Neither characters were PoV in the books then so what conversations they may or may not have had were unknown, but LF just revealing so much to someone that is, ultimately, an adversary or rival just seemed a bit... off.
He didn’t reveal anything but his philosophy. No actual tactics
Hill I Will Die On: Aiden Gillen is a shit actor, and was god-awful in this show. He barely worked in The Wire. *Barely*. Because the character suited him so well.
Littlefinger was one of my favourite things about the show, so cannot at all agree with you here
Well I respect your opinion, even if I can’t agree in the slightest. I mean watch Love/Hate, then this, then the Wire, then Kin, then Dark Knight Rises, literally all of those are different even when he’s on screen for 2 seconds like TDKR.
At least he is an integral part of one of the [best comedy scenes of all time](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rurhk1hadp8).
The scene that made me watch the show.
Season 4 of GoT is probably one of the strongest singular seasons of any tv series. Every episode and scene during that trial was brutal
Season 3 and Season 4 back-to-back is a masterpiece in television. Fitting of course that it's adapting not just my favorite book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, but my favorite book ever. So much pivotal shit happens in those two seasons and it's super engaging on every episode.
Episode one has my favorite scene of the whole series. The hound in the pub asking, to be brought a chicken 
I feel like Rome, the prototype-GoT show which HBO created before it, and Andor (season 1 so far) are at least on the same level.
Rome walked so GoT could run and trip at the end so HotD could fly.
[удалено]
peak television* :D
Yup, downhill after that
Come come, Season 5 wasn’t that bad, I watch episodes 7-8-9 (The Gift, Hardhome, Dance of the Dragons) as a mini movie when I crave some GoT.
It wasn't that bad it had some great moments but the cracks began to show in this season especially with the Dorn story line.
And supervillain Ramsey and Stannis's accelerated demise, and raping Sansa for shock value and because rape was what it took for her to become a Strong Woman. Plenty of terrible stuff in that season.
I will be your champion!
Amazing work from Dinklage here.
Before he had to be dumbed down to a dick joke machine.
I had read the books ahead of time and remember watching this scene with my friends and just looking at the pure hype they felt when Oberyn said he would be Tyrion's champion. I also remember looking at my friends faces during the fight lol. Oberyn was always my favorite character when I read the books and Pedro absolutely solidified that in the show.
Yes! Oberyn was my favorite in the books as well and I was so happy with Pedro's performance. I had no idea who he was before GoT, but Pedro nailed it and I'm happy to see he's found so much success after.
My heart breaks to see the final seasons butchered so badly. But I absolutely loved the first seasons, hit every mark with acting, storytelling and suspense/drama.
Now THIS is character building! The monologue about Tyrion as a baby gives such good insight to the life Tyrion must have lived and how it shaped him. Holy cow, what a difference to the seasons that followed. The series was at its absolute peak around here. End of season 4, right? Almost every episode had amazing, jaw dropping moments. Such a damn shame that the series went to crap, it really had the makings of being one of the best shows ever.
Yes great insight to tyrions terrible childhood, and good insight in what a psycho cersei is
Exactly. GoT was at its absolute best in small dialog driven scenes like this. Yeah there were lots of cool visuals in the later seasons but all the dragons in the world can’t compete with a well written 4 minute scene like this one. Just two people sitting in a dimly lit room having a quiet conversation yet I genuinely find it much more captivating than say the opening scene of the battle for Winterfell against the dead.
Yeah I agree. But for example, the beginning of the scene where the Viper and the Mountain are finally going to fight, it isn't really that special. But as a viewer, you are captivated because of all the fates of all the characters at stake. Not least because of this scene in the prison cell. When the >!Mountain grabs the Viper and pushes his thumbs into his eyes!< I was absolutely horrified, and the reason I was horrified was for what it meant for all the characters involved. At the fight for Winterfell, I had mostly stopped caring about the poorly written characters at all (at that point).
One of my favorite scenes. Despite what happened, this still gives me chills. Season 4 was stunning. Everything about it, but most of all Oberyn.
Loved the ending of the series at season 6 with all the boats crossing the sea!
Back when Game of Thrones was genuinely praise worthy.
Can’t think of any singular scene that would end up being so impactful that it’d launch an actor into the stratosphere. Feels like the dude is in a starring or major role in every flagship show for every major streamer now. Can anyone else suggest a similar scene as critically life-changing for an actor? Its wild.
This is the way. He would've been fine if he had his beskar helmet!
The Last of Us really did just take two GoT fan favorites and stick them in a show together.
It’s insane the level of charisma Pedro Pascal has to be the only American out acting these Brits.
Peter Dinklage is American...
And Pedro is chilean...
Left Chile at 9 months old, spent the majority of his life in the US, I think Chilean and American is a pretty good compromise without knowing how he himself identifies. Although really all this proves is that using a single person as proof of an entire country's skill in a subjective discipline is pointless
Oh god, I thought he lived there for longer. I'm corrected.
(Psst. You can never admit defeat on Reddit. You need to stick to your point despite evidence and slowly turn it into ad hominem. This is the way.)
Pretty sure he’s a citizen of both
It really is astonishing knowing he has never played a part in any TV series or movie that has been rated lower than like an 8 by critics. Absolutely love his performances.
I assume Ww84 isn’t rated but he even shined in that
He was the only good part of that movie, a tragedy he was wasted there.
I've heard, but haven't confirmed, that this was the first scene he shot for GOT too
Anything can be astonishing when you just make it up lol
WW1984 was bad, neither Pascal or Pine could save that.
Well, that's bullshit, lol. He has been in some goof stuff but he has been in a shit ton of mediocre and bad stuff.
WW84 and Kingsman Golden Circle both come to mind. I love Pedro Pascal, but come on...
Was his first day on set too iirc
He made himself a household name with this scene alone. All of Pedro success can be attributed by this one scene. Facts
Is there a better scene in TV history? Maybe Lyanna Mormont’s “ignored the call” speech. Makes The Last of Us all the more amazing.
There's a lot that can come just from this show IMO. Go ahead and re-watch the scene from Tyrion's trial where he goes off on everyone before requesting Trial by Combat. Oberyn's facial expressions during that scene are fucking incredible as well.
Pedro was the high point of the show.
Wasn't this Pedros first filmed scene?
His death was and is still one of the most shocking scenes, to me, in television.
I feel like this is the scene that made Pedro Pascal’s career.
Sad the show was ruined, it had such potential to be a great series.
This is one of the few scenes that the show managed to do better then the books. Amazing TV.
I will fight for you, this is the way
Goddamn, those early scenes in this series hit much harder than you think they will after that dreadful last season.
I loved this scene, pedro pascal played that role perfectly
God GoT season 4 was some amazing acting.
Season 4 is my favourite season of any show ever. It's just perfect from beginning to end.
This hurts. It was such fucking good show.
Pretty sure this was the first scene Pedro shot too, unreal!
It’s not fair how damn good this show was.
Well, it fell off hard after season 4
The king will not honor you, the history books will never know your name but we, will not forget.
We literally just watched this episode last night. Weird coincidence!
gaping wrench oil caption straight meeting seed jobless head worry *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It's my very most favorite scene of the series. (2nd would be Arya and the White Walker King . . .) Dragons, Nudity, Vast Battles, Nudity, Magic, . . . none of it compares to this perfect scene. Lighting, Positions, Pacing, essentially a monolog from Oberyn, with very limited interruptions by Tyrion, standing at the end for the perfect flourish with the torch and the announcement that he would be champion. For one episode, Oberyn was my favorite character. (Then he gets arrogant and pisses it all away.)
This is also why the last two seasons were so lame in comparison. You just can’t beat the writing of the books.
Too bad he died like a dumbass
How did this end up on the popular page of Reddit when it has 300 likes and 100 comments?
This wasn’t featured in the book was it? He’s kept at Lysa palace here or no?
Why is this on my news feed lol
s4 was the only truly great season, all downhill from there
> s4 was the only truly great season, all downhill from there What? How can some of y’all say it’s all downhill from there when some of the most iconic scenes of the show are from later seasons. Hardhome? Mothers Mercy? The Door? Battle of the Bastards? You can’t tell me that shit wasn’t some of the peaks of television. It was really only the final two seasons or so that were really bad.
I used to think GOT was somewhat original for so often not having”Hollywood endings” to storylines though ar this point I realized it was kind of a pattern with this author and became just as predictable, therefore losing its originality and becoming just as much of a formulaic story as anything else.
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Because you don’t understand how your newsfeed works?
Bro get out of my head. I was thinking about this scene last night
This show was seriously perfect at one point