How do you feel about the way Game of Thrones stuck (failed to stick) the landing?
Okay, finally have time for this. Stream of consciousness, here we go! So a few things...
- It was awful, specifically the sort of awful that left me feeling disinclined to ever watch an episode of the show again. Certainly, not once you get past the first three seasons. Sometimes a bad ending can retroactively ruin even the good things that came before.
- From a strictly storytelling standpoint divorced from making a good adaptation, this video does an excellent job explaining many of the problems that would be there even if one were to pretend the books never existed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGr0NRx3TKU- WTF even was the meeting to decide the new king? Why did the unsullied agree to Tyrion having any say in who became the next ruler, much less deciding it? Why would The North object to being ruled by Bran[don] Stark? Why would any objection to him not also apply to Sansa? Why is Bran able to be king of everything south of The Neck when the only reason Sansa is Lady of Winterfell is that Bran was supposedly incapable of even ruling Winterfell upon his return, much less the rest of The North? Isn't Bran still ahead of Sansa in the northern line of succession and if so, then shouldn't he be king of The North while someone from south of The Neck gets that area? Why would any of these people even consider anything remotely resembling democracy? Why are the unsullied okay with Tyrion having a key position? Why would anyone select their ruler by "Who has the best story?" In what universe has anyone ever watched GoT or read ASOIAF and thought "Bran, has the best story of any of these characters?"
- Why is Bronn suddenly blackmailing Jaime and Tyrion into giving him Highgarden? That made no sense. Worse, what about all the other Reach Lords? So they're suddenly down with some random up-jumped sellsword becoming their boss because...err...reasons? Bronn would be dead in like a day? And then he's Master of Coin? What, did he just threaten Tyrion and Jaime with a crossbow again? Did that somehow endear him to them? Really? And as Dereich once noted, this would seem to make Bronn essentially the new Littlefinger and that just feels...wrong.
- I enjoyed the show version of Lyanna Mormont a great deal and her death was the only one I cared about this entire season. Easily the saddest on GoT since Shireen died. I know he's nothing like BookEuron (who has far more in common with ShowRamsay than ShowRamsay does with his latent homosexual, pathetic, deeply insecure, slovenly, Stupid Evil family screwup counterpart from the books), but weirdly, I found Eurotrash Gaston...I mean...ShowEuron to be one of the most consistently entertaining parts of season eight. If they were trying to make a hammy Tim Curry-type villain then boy did they hit it out of the park, but if ShowEuron was supposed to be genuinely menacing or anything like that then he was a colossal failure.
- D&D were completely sick of the series by season seven and clearly wanted to rush it through so they could get paid for doing the next Star Wars film trilogy (ironically, that deal ultimately fell through) and boy did it show. The shortened seasons left inadequate time to develop the already weak storylines and so dumb stuff just came out of nowhere because that's what the writers' needed the characters to do at that moment whether it made sense or not.
Like, I do think BookDany is gonna go crazy in the books, but there's a way to set the stage for that and slowly build to it and if you're gonna go that route then it still has to make more sense then "Hahaha! See audience, you thought the person who opposed slavery was good. But all it took to make ShowDany evil was disregarding all of her prior characterization, so perhaps it is you who should reexamine your black and white moral views about...err...slavery."
- While poor characterization has always been a problem for GoT (not surprising when you remember that one of the show-runners argued in an interview that "themes are for eighth-grade book reports"), it spiraled completely out of control by the seventh season and didn't really improve in season eight. For example (aside from the characters mentioned in the video link I gave, which discusses Cersei, Jaime, Jon, Tyrion, Varys, Sansa, Dany, etc)...
(A) - Arya's characterization was a ****show. So, the show laser-focuses her storyline on a not terribly important subplot (Faceless Men stuff) and while in the books that's more about information gathering, using disguises, and learning about poisons...in the show we get "learn to be a faceless ninja assassin most greatest killer ever." Never mind that no one even really trains BookArya to fight nor is she ever particularly good at it (IIRC it kinda only even comes up at all in the first book, but *more on that later). So ShowArya leaves Bravos b/c she refuses to abandon her identity as a Stark/her moral compass, okay, that at least makes sense. Then suddenly she's an insane Sweeney Todd expy who feeds people their kids even though that's both very OOC and not even remotely related to anything she does in the books.
It's just weird...and leads to a very dumb mass murder scene in the seventh season premiere. ShowArya returns home and is happy to see her sister until ShowArya turns into a psychotic murderbot who inexplicably starts talking like a killer from a bad 90s slasher flick about doing stuff like wearing her sister's skin and pretending to be her. Then suddenly they randomly are besties again and this is never commented on in season eight. Then, ShowArya is randomly Azor Ahai (which while pretty cool at first, gets progressively dumber every time I remember it...**more on that later) and then finally we get her clear book arc (albeit condensed to one scene in 0805 where she realizes living for revenge is bad and self-destructive). So okay, she's made peace with everything and now gets to stay with her remaining family as seemed to be the plan from all indicat...no, actually there's nothing for her in The North, so off to become an explorer (which, fine, I can see it and there's a right way to do it, but there was little sign until the last episode that Arya wanted to do that, much less badly enough to leave the family she's managed to reunite with against all odds).
(B) Folks like Cersei and Jaime, etc who are clearly long dead by the time we reach the equivalent point in the books...were still alive in the last season and the writers had no idea what to do with them (same issue with LF in season seven). This is how you get random things like Jaime suddenly deciding "Cersei is hateful...and so am I" when the theme of his whole series-long arc was basically "no, he is not hateful like his sister." It's also why nothing involving Littlefinger has made a modicum of sense since season five.
(C) Then you have massive WTF stuff like "hey, guys, Westeros should be a democracy or something like that," Tyrion wanting to save Cersei's life for some reason, Sansa's spiel to the Hound (whose mere presence in the story is beyond asinine given how good an arc he has in the books) about how being physically, psychologically, and sexually abused (including rape!) was really empowering because it made her the #StrongWomen she is now. Oh and not to mansplain or anything, but D&D clearly think that being a "strong woman" means being a sociopathic megalomanic. Of course, the misogyny of many of the writers for this show is a whole megapost unto itself that others have already written at length about (ex: did you know Dave Hill - one of the four main writers for GoT - said that one of the main reasons ShowSansa hated ShowDany was that she was jealous of how pretty ShowDany was? Hill really said this, look it up!).
*(D) There was soooooooooooooooo much idiotic FanService playing to the lowest common denominator of GoT fandumb. We're suddenly told Sansa is now good at politics things even though we never saw anything showing her developing said skills nor does she ever actually do anything suggesting a keen political intellect...but who cares b/c fans want #QueenSansa and laying a foundation for that would take valuable time that could be spent getting paid to write Star Wars movies! Arya is suddenly a killing-obsessed faceless ninja warrior assassin b/c fandumb demands #FacelessWoman. ShowTyrion can't have character growth and become a cynical, malicious jerk lashing out indiscriminately at the world after killing his dad b/c fans liked when Peter Dinklage played a charming, likable dude who said funny things. Brienne can't just be a strong, independent woman who happens to develop a special friendship with a male character, she has to have sex with Jaime and then become a wailing, heartbroken basket case after he goes to KL because FanDumb demands to see it's Jaime/Brienne fanfics on screen. Gendrya has to happen b/c it's a common fandumb ship. And friggin #CleganeBowl became a thing. That literally started as a running joke. It was a dumb story idea and predictably was idiotic on the screen. I could go on all day, but there was far too much catering to the lowest common denomenator of the worst excesses of GoT fandumb.
- It annoys me that the Dothraki were brought back (apparently D&D kinda forgot about the unsullied being completely wiped out only three episodes prior) just so all of Dany's supporters when she gives her Dawn of a New Era speech at the start of the final episode would clearly be scary-looking foreigners.
- One coffee cup? Okay, it happens. But surely it's not too much to ask not to make the same mistake two episodes later?
- Far too much emphasis on surprise for surprise sake. I forget which it was, but either Benioff or Weiss once said they decided in like season 7 [?] that Arya was the best pick to kill the Night's King as long as no one predicted it would be her. The implication being that it wasn't important who made the most sense, so long as the audience didn't see it coming. The RW and Ned's death weren't effective twists b/c they were unexpected, it was because they subverted actual expectations in a way that 1) made sense in hindsight due to proper prior buildup and a careful foundation including in terms of what we knew about the characters involved; 2) they did so in a way that flowed organically from the story; 3) they didn't hinge on someone inexplicably carrying the idiot ball (even with the RW, you at least understand what Robb's motivation was for breaking his promise: he fell in love, boom, simple and easy to understand); 4) they felt realistic rather than contrived/tacked on.
If Arya kills the NK just b/c no one expected her to be the one to do it then...err...who cares? What, would it have been Theon who killed the NK and Arya who died if a theory about Arya doing it got attention from the fandom? No one expected M. Night Shyamalan to make a movie about
trees that kill people by brainwashing them into committing suicide, but that doesn't mean
The Happening had a good twist. Plus, everyone knew a main character was gonna kill the NK. I mean, if it was gonna be ShowArya then it was well executed (so to speak) in the episode where it actually happened, but I have a real problem with how the show got there, if that makes sense.
- I'm sure I'm forgetting things, but I'd highly recommend watching the video I linked to if you're interested in what went wrong with GoT on a core storytelling and characterization level.
