ELI5 why Game of Thrones' last season was so controversial

[Zinneke]

When the dwarf dude found the inbreds I legit teared up

[Anti Democrat Democrat Club]

At the time, the showrunners blatantly wanted to get the show over with and rushed it to move onto other things. Benioff and Weiss put noticeably less effort from 2019 and even cut the number of episodes so they didn't have to do much.

All of this was over a Star Wars deal that eventually fell through. They have a show on Netflix that's doing well but even then it doesn't overshadow. This wasn't some avant-garde ending that fell flat like the Sopranos. The last season failed because Benioff and Weiss were too lazy to finish it properly.

[Frozen Sky Ever Why]

The show had devolved into garbage long before s8. The difference is that s5-s7 were 99% fan service while s8 resolved certain storylines in ways that went against the desires of the majority of the audience.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

[Hindsight was 2020]

At the time, the showrunners blatantly wanted to get the show over with and rushed it to move onto other things. Benioff and Weiss put noticeably less effort from 2019 and even cut the number of episodes so they didn't have to do much.

All of this was over a Star Wars deal that eventually fell through. They have a show on Netflix that's doing well but even then it doesn't overshadow. This wasn't some avant-garde ending that fell flat like the Sopranos. The last season failed because Benioff and Weiss were too lazy to finish it properly.

The Sopranos finale is fantastic

[GeneralMacArthur]

The way the plot develops is bizarre and totally lacks the subtlety and nuance of the earlier seasons.  It feels more like a children's cartoon.  I would have loved to see the remaining group of characters fighting over who should be the new king of Westeros, and in the earlier seasons that would've filled several episodes with court intrigue and personalities clashing and conniving and forming alliances.  Instead Tyrion gives a five minute masturbatory speech and everyone just says ok sgtm

It's also very rushed because of the aforementioned Benioff/Weiss Star Wars dream.  HBO wanted this story to have 20 more episodes to wrap up, but they decided to do it in six.  This left lots of totally unresolved storylines, and those that were resolved were rushed and disappointing.  For instance we spent ten years building up this massive threat of the army of the dead, this was the plot of the whole show, and then their attack lasts all of two scenes and one battle episode.

What plotlines were developed just felt dumb.  There are YouTube videos longer than the season itself explaining all the stupid decisions and plot holes and characters totally changing their personality for the sake of the plot.  "Danaerys kind of forgot about the Iron Fleet" is a notorious Benioff quote from the commentary tracks attempting to explain one of the most important plot points of the series, and one that's utterly bizarre and gets worse the more you think about it.  Why would Danaerys, who's intelligent and calculating and surrounded by other smart, capable, strategically-minded people, "just forget" her primary adversary and the only guy who's delivered her a defeat thus far in the war?  And even ignoring that quote and looking at the plot of the episode, she doesn't do any reconnaissance whatsoever and just leaves her entire army vulnerable as she travels deep into enemy territory.  Nobody saw a problem with this?

The whole thing is very frustrating.  We spent ten years getting really invested in the plot of this show and then they basically just let a sixth grader write in the dumbest possible endings to all the plotlines, filmed them as quickly as possible, and moved on to Star Wars, which they didn't even get to make because GOT8 was such a disaster.

I personally am in favor of it being redone, and this needs to happen while the actors are still young enough to be believable in the roles.

[emailking]

I liked it.

[7,052,770]

Another example - Bran becomes king for no real reason (though I believe that one came straight from GRRM?), and then Sansa is like "nope, the North is going to be independent" and everyone is just fine with that. Maybe Bran would allow it because Sansa is his sister, but the Iron Islands and Dorne are going to submit to this random Stark with no real claim on the throne, and not ask for independence for themselves if King Bran is just giving it out? Did the writers even think of this?

Really seasons 7 and 8 need to be redone. 7 went off the rails when Jon leads those guys North of the Wall to capture an undead (this plot was dumb because Cersei already knows the undead exist anyway), and it ends with Gendry running all the way back to the Wall (this would have taken many hours at best), send a raven 1,000 miles to Dragonstone, and then have Dany fly her dragons all the way up there to rescue them. How fast can ravens and dragons fly? Even if it's 100 MPH, we're talking about this whole thing taking more than a day of Jon and the rest needing a quick rescue before it happens. But the writers didn't seem to even care about that kind of thing.

[emailking]

The series did seem to be very inconsistent throughout about how long it takes to cross the continent. Could be years or days depending on the storyline.

The other criticisms don't bother me. :shrug:

[Ferguson97]

Destroying the character arcs of Jaime and Daenerys is probably the worst offense.

[Electric Circus]

The ending left some of Martin's most important arcs unresolved. We didn't get so much as a hint about Bran's tax policy.

[Landslide Lyndon]

The series did seem to be very inconsistent throughout about how long it takes to cross the continent. Could be years or days depending on the storyline.

The other criticisms don't bother me. :shrug:

That's a common problem. I remember 20 years ago when I was watching the X Files and many people complained about the lightning speed with which Mulder and Scully were cross-crossing America (not to mention the jurisdictional issues).

And more recently I observed the same problem with the Black List.

[Hindsight was 2020]

Destroying the character arcs of Jaime and Daenerys is probably the worst offense.

What happened to Sansa might be arguably worse because you can’t hide behind Martin on that one. Dany going mad or Jaime going back to Cersei is stuff that could be theoretically happening in the books but they put Sansa into the Jenye Poole raped by Ramsay and rescued by Theon plot in S5