Topic: The Game of Thrones guys aren't getting their own Star Wars Trilogy anymore.

[pokepal148]

link


Well, that's interesting.

[broodwars]

And there was much rejoicing.

[ejamer]

And there was much rejoicing.

Is that the general reaction? I mean, Game of Thrones was pretty highly regarded for a long time... but once they got past the written content my understanding is that it went downhill fast until reaching a rushed and unsatisfying end. (Although I read the books, I only watched a couple of early seasons for the TV series. What I did see was nicely done.)

[broodwars]

And there was much rejoicing.

Is that the general reaction? I mean, Game of Thrones was pretty highly regarded for a long time... but once they got past the written content my understanding is that it went downhill fast until reaching a rushed and unsatisfying end. (Although I read the books, I only watched a couple of early seasons for the TV series. What I did see was nicely done.)

The show started going off the rails once they reached the limits of where Martin'd gotten in the story. Season 7 wasn't great, but its stupidity was generally tolerated because we all thought the show was leading up to something amazing. Then the final season happened, which was a complete dumpster fire. Just so you get an idea why, consider that the entire show had been leading up to Winter and the resulting horrors, and Winter lasts...a couple of days, maybe? The grand army of the dead built up over 3 seasons gets wiped out in a single battle because one character decided they wanted Solo XP from the big boss.

The entire mantra of GoT's final seasons was "we have to wrap this **** up, so just go with whatever comes to mind." They're as bad as the early seasons were good.

What makes this all hilariously ironic is that the entire reason they rushed those final seasons was so the writers could move on to work on Star Wars. 

[nickmitch]

There was a Q&A with the showrunners where they admit they had no idea what they were doing and basically fell assbackwards into the opportunity and failed their way up.  Basically, the source material and budget are probably what saved them.  They had no writing credentials to speak of,  which explains why the series ended as broodwars described.  Once the work required someone to know what they were doing, it fell apart, basically.

As successful and popular as GoT was, it was in spite of and not because of the showrunners.

[Stratos]

Yeah, and even before the recent Q&A the "behind the episode" bits they did after each episode had them making very awful and contentious statements. It was so bad they never released the "behind the episode" clip for the final episode.

[Adrock]

An ending for a show that built its popularity on the back of continually upping the ante in terms of shock value was always going to be polarizing. There was just no way to please everyone or even most people. The problem was that Benioff and Weiss seemed to just get bored after catching up with the books. HBO wanted more episodes and more seasons. Benioff and Weiss said they only had 13 episodes worth of story left. They needed at least 20 episodes (probably more or at least some extended episodes) if they plotted the last two seasons out correctly. When you think about how many plot threads abruptly came to an end (e.g. Cersei/Jamie, the Sand Snakes etc.) and how many were rushed (e.g. the Mad Queen, the White Walkers etc.), there was probably enough story for 30 episodes. If they wanted to do The Mad Queen, Daenerys’ sanity should have been a slow descent for at least half of that. As is, it was basically...

Daenerys: Well, I’m just extra cruel now. Ignore every conviction I had in the past seven seasons. Time to murder some innocent people, I guess. LOL.
Tyrion: Even the children?
Daenerys: Especially the children. Later, nerds.

And seriously? “Who has a better story than Bran?” Objectively, almost every living main character does. More importantly, Jon should have “won” the game of thrones because he didn’t want to. It cost him Daenerys and you know, most of the Stark family, and he was clearly the best person for the job. That would have brought the show full circle because someone raised by Ned Stark who has a similar sense of honor but not to a fault should be king. Daenerys ultimately saw it as a prize while Jon understood that ruling isn’t about a chair or a title; it should be about making people’s lives better. Every point the show made about how shitty royals are/can be made it fitting for Jon to be king because he wasn’t like that. Furthermore, it appropriately wouldn’t have been a happy ending. Jon would lose everything including the North (Winterfell) and True North (beyond the Wall) for the betterment of an entire continent. That sounds like the bittersweet ending that George R. R. Martin told us about. I don’t know how these fucking clownshoes got that far into the story with everything laid out on a silver platter for them and couldn’t figure any of that out.

****, I hated that ending.

On topic, probably for the best. Without anyone holding their hand, I’m not sure how well this would have turned out.

[broodwars]

Just about every person got character assassinated in that final season.

- John, the reluctant hero who does what's right even in the face of death: "She's mah queen!"

- Tyrion, the smartest character in the show who hates the common people that always looked down on him: Is suddenly an idiot and a bleeding heart for the common people.

- Daenerys, a caring ruler who spent YEARS not chasing the iron throne because she wanted to free slaves: "Kill them all!"

- Varys, the smartest person in the show not named Tyrion: is also suddenly an idiot.

I could go on, but Lindsay Ellis covered all this better than any of us ever could in her 2 part video on the final season.

[broodwars]

More info on the infamous Q&A:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2019/10/28/game-of-thrones-showrunners-david-benioff-and-db-weiss-confirmed-the-worst-suspicions-of-the-fanbase/#5ce500eff37c