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Game of Thrones (S8)

Nik the Trik said:
I get the sense that the episode will be somewhat divisive. Personally I think there was a lot of good(especially related to Arya), a lot of not so good(the incoherence of a lot of the action) and some silly(the hundred or so "Oh no, an important character is about to die....psych!" moments) 

Personally, I thought it was a little underwhelming in emotional stakes even as they knocked it out of the park technically. For a show that tended to really establish both sides of a conflict a battle between people we like and mindless, motivationless zombies didn't really do it for me.
I feel like I got a bit of zombie fatigue to be honest. I don't like Zombie movies in general so I thought part of the way in I'd rather be watching Army or Darkness lol. Lots of good like you said but just a lot of questionable things. Like is this the billionth fight where John essentially thought a really dumb strategy and got bailed out?
 
CarltonTheBear said:
The episode for me was a joy to watch and experience, but yeah thinking about it the next day it did leave me wanting more. I figured after 3 episodes we'd 1) have solved the mysteries of the Night King and 2) have seen the main characters face some serious consequences leading up to the "last war".

In terms of #1, there really weren't any. I guess they still have time to maybe expand on that if Bran does something weird but I don't see them going that route. In terms of #2, they're more or less in the same boat as they were when the season started. Their armies, particularly the Dothraki, have considerably thinned out but I still feel like there should have been a much greater cost for dealing with the army of the dead as opposed to dealing with Cersei. I mean Dany still has 2 dragons so army or not worst case scenario she can still use them against Cersei's army even though she (or her advisers) wanted to avoid that. Maybe having the dragons bite it in this one would have been a good idea so they're seen as more of an underdog in what comes next.

All in all it just feels like a bit of a waste of 3 of the final 6 episodes. One small change that I would have made would have been to focus more on Jon's admission that he's Aegon Targaryen. We could have seen a real conversation between Dany and Jon about that and what it means going forward. That could have built some real tension between the two, and then maybe in the battle at Winterfell there could have been a scene where Jon was about to die and we see Dany hesitate to save him because she knows he's a threat to the throne. Maybe she does end up saving him, or maybe she doesn't and Jon survives anyway but knows Dany didn't want to help. Damn, this is gold, brb gotta write up my alternate universe fan-fic.
So you're basically pulling a Bran at the end. "Brb, going afk. Back for gold!"
 
CarltonTheBear said:
Deebo said:
The origin of the Night King was revealed, in season 5 I believe. He was created by the children of the forest to help destroy the foreign invaders. (The first men, whose descendants ended up being the Northmen, Wildlings, Ironborn, etc.)

It always seemed to me that the Night King was motivated by the purpose he was created for and that's why there was no negotiating or reasoning with him, he was interested in nothing but destroying the first men and later the Andals.

The CotF created them and ended up losing control of them.

Yeah I meant moreso something beyond "big bad villain wants to destroy everything just because". I get that this is a problem of some fandoms in general trying to speculate on things but there were some pretty cool/wild theories about the Night King that would have really added a lot of depth to the character. They decided to make him a cardboard cutout of every other villain instead.

edit: Putting it another way, I was expecting Thanos and we got Ultron
The issue I have with the series in general, even though I still mostly enjoy it and have invested to heavily not to see it out, is once they ran out of source material the fan theories were better than a lot of the actual plot. Like Arya in Braavos was crap compared to some of the stuff I read out there, and the trusting Cersei gambit was just so hilariously bad.
 
Game of Thrones cedes a lot of battle logic to budget/logistical constraints.

They did the Dothraki + Ghost dirty purely for visual effect and to save on night time horse wrangling/CGI. Melisandre lighting up the arakhs is a nice way to see their numbers from afar (how rousing), and then also demarcate where the dead were congregating (oh snap!). Their abrupt loss was cheap motivation to spur Dany into early and ineffective action. They could have accomplished a similar visual effect with the trebuchets and rolling stones of flame while being significantly more effective tactically, but then they'd have to corral and coordinate all their riders throughout the ensuing melee. I would also not be surprised if a lot of the Dothraki stunt extras were recycled as wights.

https://twitter.com/yardsperpass/status/1123022522713300992

but also:
https://twitter.com/aireadee/status/1122690564091273216
 
https://twitter.com/notdred/status/1122842150377590790

Similar to the article Nik shared and more angry hilarious.
 
herman said:
https://twitter.com/notdred/status/1122842150377590790

Similar to the article Nik shared and more angry hilarious.

https://twitter.com/notdred/status/1122842198700175360

cc Mike Babcock
 
This probably sounds like more of a dig than it is intended as but most of the Game of Thrones big setpieces really just makes me appreciate just how well made the Lord of the Rings movies were.
 
Jon Snow knew nothing (as usual) of Arya's capabilities and really only experienced her godswood sneaking skills. He probably would've tried to stop her if he knew what she intended to do.
 
Nik the Trik said:
This probably sounds like more of a dig than it is intended as but most of the Game of Thrones big setpieces really just makes me appreciate just how well made the Lord of the Rings movies were.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn2-PUq1Z84

Nerdwriter1 touches on that exact thing
 
The roast continues:
https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/4/30/18522955/game-of-thrones-season-8-battle-winterfell-military

That being said, I still very much enjoyed the episode.
 
For all the dunking on the gameplan of the living, I'm still a little more confused by the actions of Team Dead. Leaving aside the fact that they seemed to switch between swarming brainless locust mode and Michael Myers in Halloween mode(Arya in the Library, the Giant deciding to pick up and get a good look at the Mormont girl) whenever convenient, the plan of overwhelming them with sheer numbers was going pretty well. So why did the Night King not figure that his guys could deal with Bran as well? Was he arrogant? Did he not know he was vulnerable?

I know Sam said something along the lines of wanting to erase men and Bran being a good place to start but if he knows where Bran is, then what difference does it make when he gets to him so long as his unstoppable rampaging army eats everyone in Winterfell first? Especially if he knows that killing him switches off the rest of his goons like it was Independence Day.

These are the sorts of questions that make me wish we'd learned more about what the deal was with the Night King or, if the explanation is that he was just a single-minded Terminator devoted to killing folk, that there was a better character in his place.
 
I thought it was a pretty classic villain trope. The Night King doing his own silent monologue, staring at Bran with his smug "I got you now" look on his face, only to be defeated seconds later. 
 
Crave TV has a free 1 month trial. Signed up and immediately cancelled. Valid until June 4th I can now see Game of thrones live for the last 3 episodes.

Glad I never signed up for Crave before this.
 
Zee said:
Crave TV has a free 1 month trial. Signed up and immediately cancelled. Valid until June 4th I can now see Game of thrones live for the last 3 episodes.

Glad I never signed up for Crave before this.
I kinda like Crave though. Few other HBO shows I watch and back catalogue for a lot of older stuff. But yeah if you're gonna do it for the trial now's the perfect time.
 
I get a kick out of watching crowd reaction videos on YouTube from the last episode.  Must have been something watching that with a crowd of people all yelling and screaming
 
Caught up last night, a touch disappointed.

I'm unclear as to why all the investment/screen time was made in the Bran character arc all these seasons if all he really amounted to was bait. I was waiting for something cool to happen, and natch.
 
Frycer14 said:
Caught up last night, a touch disappointed.

I'm unclear as to why all the investment/screen time was made in the Bran character arc all these seasons if all he really amounted to was bait. I was waiting for something cool to happen, and natch.
I think you'll still see something. The conversation between Tyrion and Bran will likely come up again (some have speculated Bran told him about Jon's true parentage) and where Bran went while warging during the battle has to play a role yet too.

The show can't just move from one battle against the White Walkers to the next against Cersei with no consequence between. It would be too jarring and everything in the show has always been connected in some way so far.

At least I hope. I don't have 100% faith in the writers after season 7, but I am giving them the benefit of the doubt.
 

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