At what point, did you realize show was going downhill?
For me it was when they left out Strong Belwas and killed Barristan Selmy.
shareThe shitty Dorne scenes.
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MovieChat Forums > Game of Thrones (2011) Discussion > At what point, did you realize show was ...
For me it was around the time when the show was dragging a bit with the “Sons of the Harpy” plot line. But I still went with it.
Honestly, I wasn’t truly displeased with the show until Season 7, with its rushing through all the major plot points. Scenarios that people had been waiting to see. Wondering what it would be like when these characters met up etc...just flew by. Then sadly season 8 continued that downhill trend.
Up until then it felt like D&D at least tried to draw everything out, to a pace where they could stretch the season arc for its fullest effect. But once they knew how they wanted to wrap it all up, & announced the shorter seasons. They put aside the way the show used to be written/paced, & it became
Game of Thrones cliff notes.
It was like a sprint to the finish line. As far as writing & character arcs went...
Yeah, I knew something was wrong when Lady Stoneheart wasn't brought in at the end of Season 4. It was up until that point where Double Dumb had stayed pretty true to the books, but that was the first time I realized something was off.
Just imagine if Season 4 had ended with Beric Dondarrion and Thoros of Myr standing along side the river, resurrecting Catelyn Stark, and her eyes open. Perfect.
Fast forward to Season 6, and when it was announced that Season 7 would only have 7 episodes, and Season 8 would only have 6 episodes, then I really knew something was wrong. No successful show in history cuts their season lengths like that, especially after 6 successful seasons. Double Dumb had been awarded the contract to do the next Star Wars Trilogy, so they wanted to get out of Thrones fast.
And with Season 8 as the prime example, they got out fast.
Totally agree. Lets hope that D&D hear these complaints, & learn from them...
You do not rush something, the very thing that made them successful in the first place, just to get it over with - so you can go to a higher paying gig. Because of how sloppy they became near the end, as of now, I have no trust in them as story tellers.
They need to focus & see things through until the end. Take Breaking Bad for example. The main writers for that hit show didn’t start side projects etc...until the show was properly finished.
Its absolutley criminal to me how HBO allowed them to just cut the show down to 6 episodes instead of just getting better writers to finish it off. Why wasnt that an option? Why couldn't they just get fresh blood to take over? This isnt the type of show you sink into the ground like this on a whim because you're bored.
shareMy only guess, as far as HBO goes is. They probably thought based on previous seasons that these guys knew what they were doing. So if they said to them, it’ll only take this amount of episodes to finish this...HBO probably trusted them.
shareHBO should've insisted S8 go 10 episodes, and had GRRM personally write them. Those episodes would've fleshed out the Night King/Brand saga and given Dany time to slowly start turning more and more paranoid and psychotic. Oh, and maybe also given us one last bada-bing between Jaime and Cersei. ;)
shareAs far as I know D&D pitched the show to HBO in the first place so it is their show and they can do what they like with it.
HBO don’t like to creatively interfere with showrunners, D&D most likely had free reign to do as they please with the show, although according to George RR Martin D&D wanted 7 seasons but HBO did manage to convince them to do 8 seasons so bizarrely it could have been even more rushed than what we got.
HBO would have loved to have carried it on for 10 seasons, maybe even more but in the end it’s D&D’s show to kill unfortunately which is a real shame.
Older seasons had some issues, but it all went to shit with season 7.
That's where Westeros suddenly became real small with characters teleporting left and right. Tyrion started acting real dumb and "Beyond the Wall" has to be the single worst episode in the entire show.
Amen, “Beyond The Wall” annoyed the shit out of me...
shareI rewatched 'Beyond the Wall' today, and aside from the cinematography, the beautiful landscape, the music, the visual effects, the acting, and some of the dialogue exchanges between characters, it really does contain a whole lot of stupid. It probably is the most illogically far fetched episode of the entire show.
For starters the mission is indeed very stupid. How exactly were they supposed to extract one wight and bring it back to the Wall without any mode of transport, when they likely would have been swarmed by an army of undead? As it happens they got extremely lucky by happening upon a small group of undead and a white walker, which was separate from the rest for some unknown reason. And then even more fortunately, Jon kills the white walker, and they're left with one undead, which is exactly what they wanted. I mean what are the odds that out of that whole bunch, the wights were all turned by that one white walker, except one?
Then it's just a series of lucky escapes and bad writing. They get lucky with the lake breaking up around them, with the timing of the dragon arriving, with Jon getting saved at the last minute by Benjen. They make it stupid how quickly the message gets to Dany, with the Night King's inexplicable reason for throwing his spear at the dragon flying in the sky, and not at Drogon on the ground nearer to him with all the humans on it, with Benjen's ex machina appearance. And what's up with all the red shirts on the mission? I bet if you were to tally up the number of members on the mission at the beginning it would increase as it goes along to include some red shirts getting killed off.
The writers at this point require such a suspension of disbelief from the viewer compared to earlier seasons. I mean I quite like the concept of these different characters going off on a mission into the wilderness together and seeing them all interact the way they do. It reminds me of the first LOTR movie, but it could have been written a lot better.
Exactly. The premise is silly in & of its self, but what makes it even worse is the fact they go on foot to find the lone wight.
It would of been much more believable if they simply asked Dany if she would fly them on her dragons to grab one and flee. Then everything else with the dragons could still happen. But going on foot?? Stupid.
Yeah or even just go in on horses to give themselves half a chance of fleeing the scene with a wight. I mean how exactly were they expecting to carry a wight back with them on foot while likely having an army of dead on their tails? How were they envisaging taking one wight out of a whole army anyway?
It should have at least been written that they were aware there was a smaller group of dead separated from the full army that made their reason for the mission more believable. Otherwise, they must have assumed they were facing a huge army of dead men, and there is not one plausible explanation for why they'd have thought they could have possibly got out of it alive and complete their mission, without Dany's help.
Season 6 when a lot of story arcs started to die out and the emerging main story was becoming a bit simplistic. Also most of Westeros's movers and shakers were quite suddenly female*.
*Nothing wrong with good female characters and the show had plenty of those but it just highly unlikely in a medieval society.
> Nothing wrong with good female characters and the show
> had plenty of those but it just highly unlikely in a medieval society.
So you’re saying in a fantasy story, you can accept Dragons and undead people and resurrected people and precogs… but not a bunch of strong females? While being based on our Middle Ages, it IS a fantasy story, so in my opinion, there’s nothing wrong with shaking things up a little, you don’t have to build a faithful representation of our medieval society with a bit of magic on top.
It’s just like, for example, all those airships in "Watchmen" in an alternate 1985 world. Of course you could say that’s unlikely in a world in which technology seemed to have advanced very much like it did in our world (if not a little bit more) – but hey, it’s a story, the authors are free not to follow the course of our history.
The world of GoT is not a women-friendly. Unlike some other fantasy\sci-fi fictional universes and very much like our own past (or present in many cultures).
One of the advantages of such setting is creating\developing female characters capable of overcoming or circumnavigating social obstructions and cultural\religious obstacles. We have several such a characters on the show.
It's just not very probably when they become a majority of the world's powers. At least the part of the world which we are shown.
> The world of GoT is not a women-friendly.
No argument here.
> It's just not very probably when they become a majority of the world's powers.
> At least the part of the world which we are shown.
Yes, but in EVERY story we get to see the events that are improbable and differ from the events in the rest (the part we don’t get shown). That’s what makes it a story. That’s why we see them instead of all the other events in the world where things run just the way the usually do.
I think I get what you mean: In all stories, the authors create a certain setting and they’ll better stick to that setting, otherwise it’ll become unbelievable. If they for example create a vast continent but on various occasions travelling around on that continent seems to take no time at all, people will frown and think: "What’s going on here? How can that be?"
I just think that the improbable accumulation of powerful women it not one of these things, but well within the limits of unusual events that we get told *because* they are unusual.
But that or course is a matter of opinion.
There was a gentle decline starting around S6, when Mereen was bogged down in endless fighting, Jon and Sansa wandered around failing to raise a Bolton-fighting army, and Arya got stabbed in the gut twice and fell in a filthy canal full of raw sewage and she was fine after a helpful lady put some bandaids on the wounds. However, the season redeemed itself with some absolutely awesome scenes - Arya seeing the play about Good King Joffrey, the rivalry between Cersei and Margarey, the Battle of the Bastards, the Sept of Baylor, Danerys taking the SotH's fleet, etc. In seasons 6 and 7 there was a gentle decline, as the weak scenes slowly became more numerous than the awesome scenes.
But IMHO the quality of the show fell off a fucking cliff and hit bottom and stayed lying there in a heap as of S8Ep3! The first two episodes were weak, but the last four were just... dreadful. Nothing worked. Everything was rushed and no attention was paid to plausibility or authenticity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI7zy1PTMp0
For sure. From the death of the Night King in Ep3, & onwards was just ridiculous.
“Winter is coming...for 1 night only”
All the shit about Winter is pointless now...
The burning of a child, and when Ramsay Bolton was sent out to dispatch the remaining Baratheon army with a few trusted men. Also the death of Stannis was terribly lame.
shareThe ultra-played-out "A giant army shows up at the absolute last minute and saves the day" ending to the BotB.
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