The ending of GoT will never stop being a sore spot for me. Some of the worst writing and abandonment (sabotage?) of character development I’ve ever witnessed.
The thing that still blows my mind is that they evidently could not comprehend that pulling this sort of bullshit would have sharply negative effects on their future in all of showbusiness. Like, they had a Star Wars movie signed. That’s still a bit of a thing nowadays, and when they got it, it was an even bigger deal. And they spiked it because they couldn’t be fucked to put in the effort to give one of the most popular TV series EVER a reasonably meaningful, satisfying, and well-written conclusion.
Even if we get nothing else from those last seasons, at the very least it’ll serve as a warning to show runners in future. You can be responsible for one of the biggest and best shows ever but if you don’t stick the landing people will never forgive you.
I wonder how they feel about it now, what a waste of an opportunity.
The worst part is all the investment I had into it. Not just emotional investment but also time spend getting to know the lore and coming up with theories
I feel so sorry for the actors and other people who worked on the show, besides D and D of course. Imagine being part of the biggest TV thing ever and having incredible success, only for it all to fall apart towards the end, completely removing the thing from public consciousness.
Man, remember when they had the cast do that media blitz for the final season, and Peter Dinklage was just giving off Hide The Pain Harold vibes for the whole interview? That must have been rough :(
Yeah, that must have been brutal. Some of the actors let a couple of negative sentences slip during those interviews, but I’m sure they weren’t allowed to.
I don’t know if a single clip shows this better than the reaction of Varys’ actor to his characters death. Just imagine having to sit at a table WITH THE SHITHEADS THAT ARE RESPONSIBLE for butchering an amazing character you should be remembered for, and not being able to say anything. Fuck.
You’ve got it all wrong! It was actually an incredibly genius move, as the writers knew that after 7 seasons of twists, turns and surprises, the audience wouldn’t really be phased by any characters death anymore. We’d become so accustomed to sudden character deaths that watching GoT became the literal incarnation of “expect the unexpected” and you can’t shock people who are just waiting for it to happen. So what did the showrunners do? They did the only thing nobody expected, assassinated the only target they knew would still get a reaction out of people after all this time - they killed off the show itself.
Danerys going crazy should have been set up YEARS in advance. She spends the first 7 seasons doing everything she can to avoid needless suffering and talking about how she’s going to “break the wheel.”
Then, over the course of only 3-4 episodes in Season 8, D & D flip her switch from “good” to “evil” like the Krusty the Clown doll and she slaughters an entire city. This is not “character growth.” This contradicts everything we’ve been shown about her character.
If they were extremely accomplished at one thing, it was throwing away almost a decade worth of character and story development for basically every surviving character in the show, which is honestly impressive
Honestly a huge amount of people overlooked the red flags with Danerys, because reasons. The final flip to full on crazy was poorly done, but there was a history of violent and cruel outbursts.
I think the difference is those are portrayed in a way where you’re still supposed to be rooting for her. Every one of those people, as brutally as they were killed, were monumental assholes. And instead of letting the viewer grapple with the fact that they’re on the side of a sadistic monster torturing someone to death, to explore the dangers of prioritizing vengeance over justice, the story just moves on. There’s a lot they could have done to bring the consequences of Dany’s shortsighted rage into perspective, really give the viewer several moments of “yeah, I see why she did it in the heat of the moment, but damn, that’s fucked up”. Then, her subsequent heel turn would feel like the logical conclusion of her arc.
Then just give her time to be the main antagonist for a bit. What’s the point of spending a series long arc setting up a powerful villain if she’s not actually given any screentime as the villain?
True but each of those times her violent outburst felt grounded. Character A does a very bad thing to Danerys, and she reacts. It made sense to her character. Kings landing didn’t, because the people of Kings Landing cheered her arrival. Cersci was not popular and about to fall anyway, Danerys could have had what she wanted, Westeros and the love of the people.
To make her turn work Cersci needed to fall before Danerys got to Westeros and someone likable is on the Iron throne. Now the people want to hold onto their new monarch who saved them from Cersci or have Cersci turn likable. She had a rough start but through experience becomes a good leader only to have Denarys dethrone her. Something other than RING THE BELLS.
It only feels grounded because you get her pov and the other side is obviously bad (according to her), so they totally deserved it. She showed up to several cities, murdered the fuck out of them, took what she wanted and left. Yes the turn to full on evil was handled poorly, but all the signs were there before hand. Tyrion’s speech after the fact said as much.
The probable crazy switch for Dany in the books is fAegon. She’s all busy in Mereen, meanwhile fAegon is out there taking Westeros from Cersei and fixing stuff.
When she finally gets her shit together and goes to Westeros along with the Iron Fleet and Mr. Cthullu, the liberator card doesn’t work because no one needs to be liberated so she goes nuts. All the pride, violence and idolatry in her arc makes sense.
In the show she was just replacing Cersei. No one likes Cersei, she’d still be a liberator. We’d need Jon unseating Cersei while trying to unite Westeros before Dany arrived for it to make sense. All we got as a trigger was a scene where she was sad because the members of the patriarchal society she just arrived in with three giant fire lizards don’t want to drink with her.
Clone Wars did a great job portraying Anakin's gradual slide. There was nuance and plenty of exposure of the good parts of his character. His friendship with Obi-Wan was in evidence. His relationship with Padme was believable.
The fact that post-pubescent prequel-Anakin was ever trusted by anyone is at best evidence of how the dark side clouds perception.
In the prequels, from EPII he continuously felt like someone who should clearly be a Sith being shoehorned into being a Jedi. His friendship with Obi-Wan existed in name only, and his "romance" with Padme was in fact not a better romance than Twilight. (And that's saying something.)
OG fans waited decades to see Vader's backstory, and what we got was about the least rewarding most hamfisted and uninteresting portrayal of that backstory that could have been achieved. Decades of fan appetite regarding that backstory, possibly the only time such a thing has been maintained in the history of cinema, or likely will be again, and Lucas gave us Jar-Jar, cringe dialog, limp acting, and endless CGI.
D&D royally fucked up with GoT, but using the prequels to shine a light on that reads like something from The Onion.
The whole point of it is that whatever you described...
It's only a matter of degree though, at best. The three movies OP refers to were absolute shit in their own way. OP could have done a like to like comparison with Clone Wars and GoT and had a meme that made much more sense.
Meanwhile, I think there's a credible argument that the prequels (you do know what I'm describing, right?) are not in the slightest better than the last season of GoT (if we ignore their contribution to the meme-o-sphere), making OP fairly weak, and in an almost Onion-like way.
David Benioff and DB Weiss are the two dumbos that ruined game of thrones. I don’t like that they’re abbreviated to be confused with the ttrpg Dungeons and Dragons, but it’s what the internet decided.
they think shocking effect just for the sake of shocking is great, and always works for GoT.
NOPE.
Dany the compassionate and kind, snapped just in 1 episode to become his father, burrrn them all.
Jaime whole character arc become waste that he came back to Cersei after post nut clarity with Briene.
Jon Snow, the Ice and Fire, the prince who was promised, Azor Ahai, simping for muhh qweeen, yells at zombie dragon, while Arya stab the big bad Night King like it was just random villain.
Varys, Littlefinger, and Tyrion, those who always playing 4D chess, become so dumb that it hard to watch.
and the most shocking of all: “and who has a better story than Bran the Broken?” like what the fuck man, I thought Bran story become much sinister and dark that he is the Bran of All Time (Bran the Builder, Bran that become Night King, and other Bran, etc). Like, also why bother create a story about the connection between him (as three eyed raven) and the Night King, psychic bond between them when he wargs, etc. and no, it’s just “Westeros now are adopting Democracy, and Bran is the leader choosen by the council” thing.
I love how Game Of Thrones ended like 3 years ago and the internet is still processing our collective trauma from how objectively terrible season 8 was.
Star Wars is a simplistic naive story where every single character is either good or evil. There’s no character complexity whatsoever. The main reason the original trilogy was so successful is because they were very well made movies made in a time when well made movies hadn’t even been done yet. Star Wars raised the bar of how good a movie should look and feel. But the story is trash.
The main reason the original trilogy was so successful is because they were very well made movies made in a time when well made movies hadn’t even been done yet.
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