Game of Thrones TV (Spoilers ahead-watch the eps b4 u enter)

Chat about non-baseball topics. No political discussions!
User avatar
G. Keenan
Sucking on the Rally Nipple
Posts: 23459
Joined: April 16 06, 6:03 pm
Location: Chicago

Re: Game of Thrones TV (Spoilers ahead-watch the eps b4 u en

Post by G. Keenan »

ghostrunner wrote:I'm not going to say they sold it, but for every altruistic thing Dany did, she did some pretty awful stuff to people, not all of whom were evil. Every time she's had to put someone to death it's been death after some kind of torture. Burning alive is pretty nasty - that's as much as a few minutes of agony before death. Crucifying the masters - they mostly have it coming, but it's inarguably torturing someone to death. She burned an innocent man in Mereen for Jorah's death to make him an example to others. Buried Xaro and Doreah alive, which is probably the worst. That's anywhere from 1 day to a week of either suffocation or starvation, and who knows what people will do to each other in that situation. A leader trying to inspire goodness in people should maybe think about the effects of those decisions a bit more. In most of those situations she was counseled to be merciful and chose the crueler option. You can say it's to send a message, but that doesn't apply in all those cases. I think she clearly was portrayed as getting off on her power to do and threaten those kinds of actions. She rules by fear and love both.

She's many times threatened to burn cities to the ground - Qarth directly, and the Slavers Bay cities when speaking to Tyrion. That means basically what she did to Kings Landing. And she had to be repeatedly advised not to raze the city before she did it. I don't think you can argue the tyrannical aspects haven't been there.

Recently, she's lost Jorah, Missandei, her ships and half of her troops. I think that's all meant to have pushed her, along with Jon spurning her.

I think it also showed in how she treated Sansa's objections - that seemed to me like more than just disagreement.

I don't think they sold it in the moment, but I see why they might have thought they did on paper. The main problem is we never clearly saw how each of these things affected her and how they pushed her to what she did. They didn't give her time to develop that twist in her character. I do think Emilia Clarke delivered on everything she was asked to do this season, she just wasn't given enough.
I get what you're saying, but my hang up is that all of that stuff was just normal behavior in the GoT universe, so it was not perceived as red flag stuff for the future. I did not think the story was trying to make a saint of Dany, someone so pure as to be above killing people, just someone with the intention to rule Westeros in a just way. And with the Lannisters in charge, that was a pretty low bar.

I heard a radio guy describe GoT at its best by saying the key events were both "surprising and inevitable." Surprising in that you didn't see them coming, and inevitable because it felt like it couldn't have been any other way. Think Ned's execution, the Red Wedding, Geoffrey's death, Tywins death, Hodor, etc.

The Dany turn was just felt so contrived by contrast.

I would have liked to see Dany not go berserk and take Cersei prisoner. The final episode could have then gone a lot of different directions. Cersei's trial and execution? Maybe Dany spares her and sends her into exhile with Jamie. Maybe Jamie frees Cersei, who kills Dany, only to be killed by Jamie or Tyrion, leaving the throne open for Jon or even Bran if that's what they wanted.

Point is, if you are going to kill off one of the show's primary heroines, at least make the audience care.

AWvsCBsteeeerike3
"I could totally eat a pig butt, if smoked correctly!"
Posts: 27273
Joined: August 5 08, 11:24 am
Location: Thinking of the Children

Re: Game of Thrones TV (Spoilers ahead-watch the eps b4 u en

Post by AWvsCBsteeeerike3 »

Has anyone figured out if bran legit planned this whole thing? The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced he did.

He obviously lied to tyrion. Said he didn't want to be lord of winterfell because he doesn't want anymore. Then traveled a month to kings landing just to accept the throne.

User avatar
Famous Mortimer
Perennial All-Star
Posts: 3636
Joined: November 14 14, 5:23 am
Location: Cherokee

Re: Game of Thrones TV (Spoilers ahead-watch the eps b4 u en

Post by Famous Mortimer »

AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote:Has anyone figured out if bran legit planned this whole thing? The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced he did.

He obviously lied to tyrion. Said he didn't want to be lord of winterfell because he doesn't want anymore. Then traveled a month to kings landing just to accept the throne.
Might have wanted to mention to someone "Daenerys is going to kill millions of innocent people, maybe have a word with her about that".

AWvsCBsteeeerike3
"I could totally eat a pig butt, if smoked correctly!"
Posts: 27273
Joined: August 5 08, 11:24 am
Location: Thinking of the Children

Re: Game of Thrones TV (Spoilers ahead-watch the eps b4 u en

Post by AWvsCBsteeeerike3 »

Famous Mortimer wrote:
AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote:Has anyone figured out if bran legit planned this whole thing? The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced he did.

He obviously lied to tyrion. Said he didn't want to be lord of winterfell because he doesn't want anymore. Then traveled a month to kings landing just to accept the throne.
Might have wanted to mention to someone "Daenerys is going to kill millions of innocent people, maybe have a word with her about that".
But then she could have been stopped and still be queen and he would not be king. Could have told her about the iron fleet, preventing the capture of messandei and death of rhaegal. Could have turned Jamie in for pushing him out of a window. Preventing Tyrion from setting him free. Etc.

User avatar
Famous Mortimer
Perennial All-Star
Posts: 3636
Joined: November 14 14, 5:23 am
Location: Cherokee

Re: Game of Thrones TV (Spoilers ahead-watch the eps b4 u en

Post by Famous Mortimer »

Because there's not even the vaguest hint of this at any moment in the show (or in the books), I respectfully disagree with your "Bran planned everything from the beginning in order to be King" hypothesis.

AWvsCBsteeeerike3
"I could totally eat a pig butt, if smoked correctly!"
Posts: 27273
Joined: August 5 08, 11:24 am
Location: Thinking of the Children

Re: Game of Thrones TV (Spoilers ahead-watch the eps b4 u en

Post by AWvsCBsteeeerike3 »

That’s fine. But to be fair, there wasn’t the vaguest hint he would be king until the hand of the queen that burnt half a million innocent people to death gave a 30 second soliloquy about how bran has the best .... story so he should be king?

For starters, his story was so dull they didn’t have him in season 5. A season where they focused on the hyper interesting septic of the 7 or whatever and the deserts of dorn. So. There’s a fair amount of inconsistency there. Also, at this point, I just assume anything Tyrion says/does is wrong. What was the last correct decision he made? Advised them to send an expedition north of he wall to capture a eight that lost them a dragon. Advised dany not to attack the Lannister forces after they took highgarden and she obliterated them. Got fooled by Cersei like 50 times. Etc etc. etc. he’s a fool.

User avatar
stlouie_lipp
Hallelujah Brother
Posts: 13409
Joined: April 17 06, 7:36 pm

Re: Game of Thrones TV (Spoilers ahead-watch the eps b4 u en

Post by stlouie_lipp »

Image

User avatar
Famous Mortimer
Perennial All-Star
Posts: 3636
Joined: November 14 14, 5:23 am
Location: Cherokee

Re: Game of Thrones TV (Spoilers ahead-watch the eps b4 u en

Post by Famous Mortimer »

AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote:That’s fine. But to be fair, there wasn’t the vaguest hint he would be king until the hand of the queen that burnt half a million innocent people to death gave a 30 second soliloquy about how bran has the best .... story so he should be king?

For starters, his story was so dull they didn’t have him in season 5. A season where they focused on the hyper interesting septic of the 7 or whatever and the deserts of dorn. So. There’s a fair amount of inconsistency there. Also, at this point, I just assume anything Tyrion says/does is wrong. What was the last correct decision he made? Advised them to send an expedition north of he wall to capture a eight that lost them a dragon. Advised dany not to attack the Lannister forces after they took highgarden and she obliterated them. Got fooled by Cersei like 50 times. Etc etc. etc. he’s a fool.
You suggest he planned everything out, but then you've just said "there wasn't the vaguest hint he would be king". You...appear to be contradicting yourself? I think it's much more likely that the showrunners just left a massive plot hole and hoped no-one noticed - like, we see him change the past very slightly in the Tower of Joy sequence. It would have been cool if he'd thought, during all those seasons and episodes where he was sat around doing nothing, to try and work on that a bit, or at the very least give his relatives some survival tips.If you don't want to deal with it, just have a line somewhere which says "the power comes and goes and I have no control over it", or something like that.

You make a very good point about Tyrion, though. The chief aide of the world's biggest mass murderer, in chains, and after several seasons where he see every plan he's formulated make things worse, decides the entire political future of the continent and everyone is fine with it. Dorne, an independent nation just as long as "the North", decides not to bother going independent at the same time, despite Bran having no army and no political system to hold a continent together, and them being relatively untouched by the war. Yara never mentions "hey, Dany promised us our independence if we helped you guys take out Cersei and the White Walkers". So many things they just left hanging.

Of all the many many issues the rush to the end had, I had no problem with Dany. It was pretty obvious from...season 6?...that she was going to be the final Big Bad of the series, and although it would have been nice to give her more time to get there, she was fine.

AWvsCBsteeeerike3
"I could totally eat a pig butt, if smoked correctly!"
Posts: 27273
Joined: August 5 08, 11:24 am
Location: Thinking of the Children

Re: Game of Thrones TV (Spoilers ahead-watch the eps b4 u en

Post by AWvsCBsteeeerike3 »

Well I don’t really think there not being a hint of him being king contradicts that he planned it all out. Obviously the show runners aren’t above leaving out crucial information for the sake of ending a show by a certain time.

And I’ve yet to hear, including from the show, what exactly was meant by bran when he said that’s the reason he traveled all that way. Presumably he knew he would become king and wanted to do so. Did I miss some other angle?

AWvsCBsteeeerike3
"I could totally eat a pig butt, if smoked correctly!"
Posts: 27273
Joined: August 5 08, 11:24 am
Location: Thinking of the Children

Re: Game of Thrones TV (Spoilers ahead-watch the eps b4 u en

Post by AWvsCBsteeeerike3 »

The backlash is getting out of control and I for one am curious how it will end.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/a-gam ... 0-6466519/
HBO has officially passed on one of the Game of Thrones prequel shows it was exploring. One of the show's writers and producers, Bryan Cogman, had been working on the concept with George R.R. Martin, but he's now revealed that HBO is going in a different direction.
https://www.nydailynews.com/entertainme ... story.html
There is a disturbance in The Force.

“Game of Thrones” fans disappointed with the eighth and final season of HBO’s popular fantasy show are petitioning Disney to keep the next installment of the “Star Wars” saga out of the hands of writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, whom they blame for botching the final six episodes of “GoT.”

While the previous seven seasons were based on source material by author George R.R. Martin, Benioff and Weiss were responsible for penning a final season that picked up where Martin’s books end.

A Change.org petition started by “GoT” watchers after last week’s finale was closing in quickly on its goal to get 15,000 signatures Sunday.
The petition to remake season 8 is currently at 1.6M. HBO has dodged the topic and remained silent while the cast/crew have lambasted the petition. But that is all after the fact handwringing. It'll be interesting how Disney deals with the backlash against DD if it reaches the fever pitch that GOT criticism has. The next star wars movie isn't going to be released until 2022 so they have plenty of time to go another direction if they choose to....I know nothing about the film world, but I could certainly see Disney going with someone different not necessarily because of the public perception of DD but because what they produced was so bad.

Post Reply