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[Ru1977]

Jon's parentage never seemed to really lead to anything either, right?

 

[joshsquash729]

Jon's parentage never seemed to really lead to anything either, right?

Sorrrrta? Too lazy to use the spoiler tags again, so if you haven't watched it and somehow don't know, look away.

He's the easiest explanation for the Prince Who Was Promised, and being a Targaryen, is literally a child of "ice and fire" , he's the one who warns of the White Walkers, who unites the people to come together to fight them, etc. And it would also technically lend credence to the claim that a Targaryen was rightful heir to the throne. By taking out Dany, Jon, being a Targaryen, still inherited the throne, even if it was destroyed right after, yada yada. All a bit hamfisted in how it played out on the show, and of course many others have their opinions, but that seems to be the general consensus.

 

[Damien]

Doubling back for just a minute because "the studio" in the above paragraph clicked something: Firefly is a 20th Century Fox Television show for FOX. Serenity is a Universal Studios film because Fox wouldn't make it.

Yeah, that's a good point. It wasn't even Fox relenting. It was Universal being like 'okay, we'll do it.'

I wonder if part of the dis-connective tissue some of you are remarking on is because they had to change things or not use specific things over rights issues. It sounds stupid, and it is, but Whedon's hands could very well have been tied. Or not. But a possible contributing factor.

I think I remember Whedon saying it was mostly a creative decision to get the majority of the plot simplified and put on screen so the movie could stand on its own. Either he or the studio (or both) didn't want the movie to ONLY appeal to people who only watched the show.

Given GRR can't seem to resolve the story either, I would love to get more on the behind the scenes once they got past the books - did they want to wrap it up around the main beats because they didn't want to deviate from the main plan (which I still think was mostly GRR in terms of what went down) or fill in details he was still working out, or was he unable to guide them as to the fates of so many characters? Or did they know they couldn't pull it together either and wanted out as they saw it might not come out well?

To be fair to GRRM, he knows the overall beats and exactly how it's going to end. He's just obviously struggling to write it all down. And he has like 400 more characters and 300 more plotlines to wrap up than they had in the show. The show was -drastically- simplified compared to the books. Honestly, I think what's tripping GRRM up the most is a combination of fatigue (he's been writing this series since the early '90s) and just how many things he has to deal with and finish up that never got close to being part of the show and, you can probably guess from that, don't have nearly the significance of the main show cast's plotlines.

But the reason why the show fell apart is well-documented. The showrunners wanted out. They got an offer to make a Star Wars movie and some other stuff, and even though HBO offered them more seasons so they could wrap it up properly (and, greedily, because it was one of the most popular shows on television and HBO likes money), they wanted to rush to the ending so they could move on to other things. By a lot of on-set accounts they completely stopped giving a shit once they thought they were famous and didn't NEED HBO anymore. They even did interviews where they said shit like 'Danny forgot about the Iron Fleet.' Meaning.. THEY forgot and had to sketch a resolution to that in randomly in a way that made no sense and made a bunch of characters look like complete morons.

All the characters were essentially lined up for a proper ending. It just needed more time to get there in a way that made sense and they weren't willing to do that. Hence you get Danny going from relatively calm and beloved, and WINNING, to going full-psycho genocide in about 20 seconds.

I realize I am at odds with the general GoT fan but I kind of felt the earlier seasons meandered too much, too many side stories and side political intrigue with characters that I felt were often more depth than was needed and ended up not being relevant.

That's what I like about the show. Maybe unpopular, but I don't need every TV show to speedrun a single main narrative beginning to end. Especially with a huge cast and complicated politics. I'm happy to live in that world for a while and see how and why things are as they are. Also, I genuinely do think almost every one of those plotlines matters and informs character actions later. Take any of it out, and it doesn't work as well or make as much sense. I'd even argue too much was stripped out of the story compared to the book for time constraint reasons and that fucked with timelines, character motivations, characterization, etc.

I also think people expected the White Walkers to be more of a threat than maybe even GRRM intends them to be. The politics is definitely more of the point than the Walkers. Those guys are climate change. They're the inevitable doom that comes if we can't cooperate. But they're definitely -supposed- to be background noise for a lot of the story. But they look cool and modern audiences love zombies and shit so.... audiences made them more of a focus than I think was ever intended.

For me the weirdest part of GoT Season 6 was that everyone suddenly can teleport after five seasons of it taking forever to get anywhere other than the one Inn that everyone stopped at when they left a castle.

Another casualty of the showrunners being like 'I don't care, just hit all the notes so we can go home.'

That, and how all the characters who spent 5 seasons traveling places and learning things and becoming better people just... stop doing that and revert to their worst impulses at the last minute so they can die miserably or in some fan-wank battle that didn't need to happen. The Hound and the Mountain? Fuck that. The Hound had figured out how not to be that guy. He didn't have to be that guy. Same with Jaime. What are we even doing? If you gotta kill them, kill them, but don't take from the characters their growth.

Even some of the actors have (coyly) alluded to like 'yeah, I don't know why that's what the character did but okay.' Emilia had 'I fucking hate this' written all over her face constantly. Kit was clearly checked out. You could just see this was just AN ending, not THE ending. It was whatever the showrunners felt was the fastest way to 'finish' each character up. And if that meant ignoring their story arc to do something that shuts the story down faster? Well, you can see the decisions they made.
Hound v. Mountain was fan service. Fans wanted to see it for the entire show. The best decision would have been to deny them that. Be like 'that's not who this character is now.' But we did not do that. Because it was easier and faster to just do one of the worst fight scenes ever filmed and move on.

Everything about the last two seasons of GOT was just lazy, disinterested bullshit. And it TANKED D&D's careers. I have no idea how they thought making the worst final two seasons of a TV show ever was NOT going to reflect badly on them with all their other contacts.

 

[TheSameIdiot]

Warning, I'm going full Game of Thrones spoilers in this post.

I think they had, but many people refused to see it the first time through as they perceived her as one of the heroes.


RE: The Americans, genuinely curious:

Spoiler: More spoilery questions

Did you feel Stan was the "hero" we were rooting for or did you not feel that anyone was?

Did you think that they had insinuated enough that the spies had been more or less compelled/manipulated/brainwashed into doing their jobs? I felt one aspect was we were supposed to question how much they were forced to do that they disliked under the guise of "for the greater good" - although from the start he was a bit less of a true believer than she was.

A good friend also really was rooting for justice for them and even though she appreciated the show she disliked that the bad guys were the protagonists and that we were supposed to sympathize with them at all, especially the first few seasons. And they do some terrible things to be sure, so I am not saying they were the heroes (I think Stan was by default) but I also did not think of them as villains per se but pawns. Paige ended up being such a great character as well. I still think the scene where she gets off the train was a great, perfect moment and honestly the show could have ended on that scene and I'd have been happy.

Spoiler: The Americans

To me, The Americans falls within the TV antihero canon. It's like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men. You can like the characters, but none of them are good people. I didn't root for Stan, Elizabeth, or Philip. The ends never justified the means.

I realize I am at odds with the general GoT fan but I kind of felt the earlier seasons meandered too much, too many side stories and side political intrigue with characters that I felt were often more depth than was needed and ended up not being relevant. So the pace in the later seasons I actually preferred.

That makes sense. If you didn't like the pace or political chessboard, I can see why you'd like the later seasons.

The early groundwork was there, but her switch from "tyrant in training" to "total wack-a-loon mad queen" is pretty abrupt.

Yeah... I have complicated feelings about Dany's arc. As a book reader, she was always too much of a wildcard for me to root for, but there's no doubt George/the show wanted to have its cake and eat it, too. They intentionally portrayed her as a heroic badass throughout the series before shifting to "she's craAaAzyyyy." People do lose their marbles, but to the extent that they want to be queen of the ashes? It's a difficult sell. The show, at least, didn't come close to pulling it off.

Same with Jaime. What are we even doing? If you gotta kill them, kill them, but don't take from the characters their growth.

His death was the worst part of the ending. Upended seven seasons of character growth for what, exactly?

And now we have the books, which may never be finished, at least while George is alive.

He ain't finishing them.

Jon's parentage never seemed to really lead to anything either, right?

This is where I think George got too cute. At some point, you need to revert to the hero's journey. He faked us out with Ned and Robb. From there, he should've shifted to Jon and gone prototypical fantasy. When your story refuses to follow traditional structure, it's not so much subversive as it is wrong. Humans innately understand storytelling. Stray too far from the path and you're in trouble.

They even did interviews where they said shit like 'Danny forgot about the Iron Fleet.' Meaning.. THEY forgot and had to sketch a resolution to that in randomly in a way that made no sense and made a bunch of characters look like complete morons.

This is the exact interview where they lost all credibility with me.

 

[Ru1977]

He ain't finishing them.

Well, and I can't totally blame him. Not just because book lovers hate the ending and may hope he can deliver something more satisfying but probably can't, but also... I think having someone else finish you story, especially if they (clumsily) followed more or less the same plan you had, probably takes a lot of the flavor out of it. I know when I'm even just telling some dumb, POS, verbal story, and someone else comes in and tells the ending before I can, I definitely, at least internally, have a real "ah, fuck it" attitude after.

This is where I think George got too cute. At some point, you need to revert to the hero's journey. He faked us out with Ned and Robb. From there, he should've shifted to Jon and gone prototypical fantasy. When your story refuses to follow traditional structure, it's not so much subversive as it is wrong. Humans innately understand storytelling. Stray too far from the path and you're in trouble.

I can agree with that, yeah. Even moving on from the hero's journey, you set things up and the reader is gonna need payoff. It's Chekhov's bastard.

 

[fac]

But the reason why the show fell apart is well-documented. The showrunners wanted out. They got an offer to make a Star Wars movie and some other stuff, and even though HBO offered them more seasons so they could wrap it up properly (and, greedily, because it was one of the most popular shows on television and HBO likes money), they wanted to rush to the ending so they could move on to other things.

Was there any discussion about handing the reigns to other show runners? I am not sure who owned what in terms of rights to do the adaptation, but I would think that HBO could have forced the issue and said "you want out, fine, we will continue without you" - I also wonder if any of the actors contracts were up and re-upping for more was going to get cost prohibitive.

I just feel like something is missing in all of it - maybe not, maybe they just made a bad choice and had checked out, maybe they were just so frustrated that they were going from adapting a book series to completing the story and really didn't want to deal with it. Or felt they couldn't.

 

[fac]

This is where I think George got too cute. At some point, you need to revert to the hero's journey. He faked us out with Ned and Robb. From there, he should've shifted to Jon and gone prototypical fantasy. When your story refuses to follow traditional structure, it's not so much subversive as it is wrong. Humans innately understand storytelling. Stray too far from the path and you're in trouble.

And add this to what @Damien speculates about the Walkers maybe being interpreted as more of a threat than GRRM intended, then you have an instance where you are creating an existential/generational threat and having it be more or less a diversion is a little odd. As @Ru1977 notes, a reader/viewer would reasonably expect the two main stories to merge somehow where one more directly impacted the other (at the extremes, the houses come together and a clear leader is forged to defeat the Walkers or the Walkers decimate everything because the houses can't work together and they lose everything - that was where I assumed in broad strokes it was heading). But it felt like conclusion A and then conclusion B to me.

I also wonder if the characters reverting to their base instincts despite what they have experienced is a GRRM concept (like Jaime and Cersei back together, or Daenerys going worship me or face my wrath) - that seemed to be a theme of his I felt, that characters only grow so much - which is why I was expecting the White Walkers to win to be honest.

 

[Chooch555]

The other thing that baffled me with the final season was everyone hiding in the crypt and the Walker King dude doesn't resurrect the corpse of Ned Stark to chase them around.

 

[Ru1977]

Or Daenerys even switching sides because they're all shit and becoming queen of the wights means she has total dominion. Series ends with her taking the iron people boats toward where she started.

 

[Ru1977]

the Walkers maybe being interpreted as more of a threat than GRRM intende

I mean... they kicked off the entire series with this, and it felt like each season moved that threat forward a little more. And they did have a big, dark and smeary battle but.... eh. Again, I didn't care so much about the political aspects, so having it all coincide would have made the ending better for me at least.

 

[JakeEkiss]

Hound v. Mountain was fan service. Fans wanted to see it for the entire show. The best decision would have been to deny them that. Be like 'that's not who this character is now.' But we did not do that. Because it was easier and faster to just do one of the worst fight scenes ever filmed and move on.

100%. Given the rest of the series, the only right answer there is to not have that fight, and have that be the Hound's final victory. Choosing to say "fuck this noise".

Everything about the last two seasons of GOT was just lazy, disinterested bullshit.

I'm hyper averse to calling creative decisions lazy because it's ball-bustlingly hard to make even bad things. But in this case, I have to agree. They had one foot out the door because they started getting high on their own supply and it shows top to bottom in those last seasons. Just shoddy.

They intentionally portrayed her as a heroic badass throughout the series before shifting to "she's craAaAzyyyy."

Once she's taken the pyramid or whatever they give a good amount of time to her deeply compromised uses of force to make people behave the way she wants them to. And those, for a time, escalate in a reasonable fashion. That said, the decline gets really really sharp in that last season and it is not well motivated at that point.

 

[adrienveidt]

I hope the new Stargate series Amazon announced is a reboot. I *adore* the SG1->SGU canon as the best live action space adventure franchise of them *all* and would very much like the unanswered plot SGU left hanging answered; but a reboot is better than trying to revive that canon after 10-odd years being defunct.

 

[JakeEkiss]

I hope the new Stargate series Amazon announced is a reboot. I *adore* the SG1->SGU canon as the best live action space adventure franchise of them *all* and would very much like the unanswered plot SGU left hanging answered; but a reboot is better than trying to revive that canon after 10-odd years being defunct.

They stated in the announcement video today that it is not a reboot, just a new chapter in some fashion. They heavily imply they are getting some returning cast as well.

 

[Damien]

Yeah... I have complicated feelings about Dany's arc. As a book reader, she was always too much of a wildcard for me to root for, but there's no doubt George/the show wanted to have its cake and eat it, too. They intentionally portrayed her as a heroic badass throughout the series before shifting to "she's craAaAzyyyy." People do lose their marbles, but to the extent that they want to be queen of the ashes? It's a difficult sell. The show, at least, didn't come close to pulling it off.

The show goes to AMAZING lengths to always remind you that Targaryens are a problem. The whole "the gods flip a coin" thing. I think for fans that really pay attention, and/or really like the lore, Danny going crazy was inevitable. It's foreshadowed constantly. The problem is that foreshadowing it doesn't mean you can just randomly do it in ONE episode and it makes sense. The other problem is that I don't think the majority of TV viewers pay close enough attention to stuff like that and really needed it spelled out for them longer and slower.

I will argue that anyone thinking Danny is/was the hero, even by Season 5, probably wasn't paying attention. But I'll also argue that "you should have expected it if you're deep in the lore and pay attention to every side comment in dialogue" is a piss-poor way to build to that moment. Like I said earlier, this entire final season needed like 3 more seasons just to get to where they ended up, and it shows.

His death was the worst part of the ending. Upended seven seasons of character growth for what, exactly?

The treatment of Jaime was absolutely criminal. Even IF you wanted to play the 'some people cannot save themselves' addiction card, once again, we got NO build up to him making that choice. We got lots of build up to him NOT making that choice. I'm sure D&D thought the sudden switch was dramatic and 'subversive,' but it was just stupid.

He ain't finishing them.

I'd love it if he did, but I've accepted that it's a long shot at this point. Despite my usual pessimism, I don't really feel good about being 'sure' he won't, though. He's a wealthy writer, which are the weirdest people on earth. If inspiration strikes, or he decides he needs one more big pay day and no one is optioning more TV shows, he might just say 'fuck it' and buckle down to get it done. The rumour is that people who know him are saying both books are fairly close to done but George won't stop fucking around with them. So... you never know.

This is where I think George got too cute. At some point, you need to revert to the hero's journey. He faked us out with Ned and Robb. From there, he should've shifted to Jon and gone prototypical fantasy. When your story refuses to follow traditional structure, it's not so much subversive as it is wrong. Humans innately understand storytelling. Stray too far from the path and you're in trouble.

I don't know if I agree with this. As a history nut, like George is, I see this more as him writing a history as much as a story. 'Here are the events, you may not find any heroes here' is a very -historian- way to tell a story. Everybody is some form of bad, the good guys usually don't win, and there's no real end because history doesn't end. And I think there IS value in a subversion of the very idea of telling a traditional story.
In this particular case, it's impossible to tell if George can pull it off because we need two more books to find out. The real problem is that the SHOW didn't pull it off. But it's impossible to really blame that on George. D&D are in no way the creative talent that he is.

This is the exact interview where they lost all credibility with me.

It's just SO obvious in that interview that not only did they not give a shit anymore, but that they didn't give a shit if you KNEW they didn't give a shit. It was two rich frat boys that have never even been grounded explaining to their parents that they don't really know what happened to the vodka in the cupboard.

Well, and I can't totally blame him. Not just because book lovers hate the ending and may hope he can deliver something more satisfying but probably can't, but also... I think having someone else finish you story, especially if they (clumsily) followed more or less the same plan you had, probably takes a lot of the flavor out of it. I know when I'm even just telling some dumb, POS, verbal story, and someone else comes in and tells the ending before I can, I definitely, at least internally, have a real "ah, fuck it" attitude after.

People have postulated that the reception to the show has a lot to do with it. But allow me to submit to you that A Dance with Dragons released in 2011. The same year that the first season of Game of Thrones aired. GOT Season 5 aired four years later, in 2015. 4 YEARS. The show was number 1 on every list and everyone was in love with George. The show hadn't eclipsed the books yet and the seasons were still very good even by the accounts of most book fans.

And he still never released the next book. In four goddamn years while the show based on his existing books was doing gangbusters.
Now consider that A Dance with Dragons came out 6 years after the previous book, which had come out 5 years after the book before it, which had come out 2 years after the book before that. Each book took progressively longer.
Not only has it taken him progressively longer to release these since well before the show existed, but it's been clear at least since before Dance that he may be losing interest in his own series. Now you can add to that how incredibly wealthy the HBO deal has made him. He doesn't have to write another word for the rest of his life and he'll remain wealthier than any ten of us combined will ever be able to even ASPIRE to be. If he's done with ASOIAF, I don't think it's because of the show or expectations. I think it's because he just doesn't care enough to finish it.

And he's allowed to feel that way, for sure.

Was there any discussion about handing the reigns to other show runners? I am not sure who owned what in terms of rights to do the adaptation, but I would think that HBO could have forced the issue and said "you want out, fine, we will continue without you" - I also wonder if any of the actors contracts were up and re-upping for more was going to get cost prohibitive.

My understanding from all the interviews and suchlike is mostly that HBO didn't DEMAND more, they just said 'hey, we can give you X amount more seasons to keep this going' and D&D were like 'we don't need it, we've got a really great conclusion all lined up already.' They weren't going to argue with HBO, but rather just assure them this was the best creative decision. I think they also convinced HBO that the ending was setting HBO up to be able to run more shows out of it - like the cancelled Jon Snow spin-off. So HBO was like 'oh cool, yeah, do it up.' And then everything fell apart.

I also wonder if the characters reverting to their base instincts despite what they have experienced is a GRRM concept (like Jaime and Cersei back together, or Daenerys going worship me or face my wrath) - that seemed to be a theme of his I felt, that characters only grow so much

Definitely could be. But D&D aren't good enough creatives, and didn't want to spend the time, to make those reversions make any narrative sense.

And add this to what @Damien speculates about the Walkers maybe being interpreted as more of a threat than GRRM intended, then you have an instance where you are creating an existential/generational threat and having it be more or less a diversion is a little odd. As @Ru1977 notes, a reader/viewer would reasonably expect the two main stories to merge somehow where one more directly impacted the other (at the extremes, the houses come together and a clear leader is forged to defeat the Walkers or the Walkers decimate everything because the houses can't work together and they lose everything - that was where I assumed in broad strokes it was heading). But it felt like conclusion A and then conclusion B to me.

It makes sense from a meta perspective. You set up this existential threat -- essentially Chekhov's Gun -- at the beginning of the series to give more weight to everything going. It all matters more. You care more who sits on the Iron Throne becaus that's the person that has to deal with this looming threat. Will they work out their shit in time? Do they have enough super magic swords? Can the dragons help -- will the dragons even be alive to help? Everything he -actually wants to write about- is way more important because those White Walkers exist in the margins of the page.
But they don't actually matter in and of themselves. They're there to aid in the tension of the politics, and when that begins to really resolve, we can resolve the Walker threat at the same time and it becomes very narratively fulfilling that all the stuff you cared about MATTERED, because the people that 'won' also stopped the threat.
In theory, it's genius. It's just, once again, not something D&D could pull off because they actually suck at their jobs and by the end didn't even give enough of a fuck to try to make it work. But once you see how those threads run through everything, it makes a ton of sense and you can almost see where George was (and may still be) going with it.

100%. Given the rest of the series, the only right answer there is to not have that fight, and have that be the Hound's final victory. Choosing to say "fuck this noise".

Yyyyup. And dear me, I was actually EXPECTING Sandor to just leave. Express disgust for what his 'proud' brother has become and just .. go. But nope. Gotta have 'Cleganbowl' to make the people happy who don't even seem to understand any of what's going on in the show, I guess.

I'm hyper averse to calling creative decisions lazy because it's ball-bustlingly hard to make even bad things. But in this case, I have to agree. They had one foot out the door because they started getting high on their own supply and it shows top to bottom in those last seasons. Just shoddy.

I try to give as much credit as I can to creative people doing creative things. But these guys were neither.

I hope the new Stargate series Amazon announced is a reboot. I *adore* the SG1->SGU canon as the best live action space adventure franchise of them *all* and would very much like the unanswered plot SGU left hanging answered; but a reboot is better than trying to revive that canon after 10-odd years being defunct.

I'm keeping a close eye on this.
I'm a MASSIVE SG-1 and Atlantis fan.
I'll admit that I skipped out on episode 1 of Universe when they just were like 'what if Dawson's Creek but Stargate and kind of survival horror?' I found it insulting as a viewer and absolutely infuriating that we lost Atlantis to this shit. So I'd be more than happy if they struck Universe from the canon and replaced it with something else where some of the older former cast can do walk-ons but not be expected to really participate.

BUT, I'd also be interested in what someone could do with a full reboot as well. Don't think that's happening though, as Jake said.

 

[TheSameIdiot]

The show goes to AMAZING lengths to always remind you that Targaryens are a problem. The whole "the gods flip a coin" thing. I think for fans that really pay attention, and/or really like the lore, Danny going crazy was inevitable. It's foreshadowed constantly. The problem is that foreshadowing it doesn't mean you can just randomly do it in ONE episode and it makes sense. The other problem is that I don't think the majority of TV viewers pay close enough attention to stuff like that and really needed it spelled out for them longer and slower.

I will argue that anyone thinking Danny is/was the hero, even by Season 5, probably wasn't paying attention. But I'll also argue that "you should have expected it if you're deep in the lore and pay attention to every side comment in dialogue" is a piss-poor way to build to that moment. Like I said earlier, this entire final season needed like 3 more seasons just to get to where they ended up, and it shows.

There's a big difference between being a George Bush-esque war criminal and being a loony tune. As Jake said, her over-the-top use of force was long established. Convincing me that she went off the deep end would've taken several more seasons.

The rumour is that people who know him are saying both books are fairly close to done but George won't stop fucking around with them. So... you never know.

That's the only way he'll finish them. If he's still working on 6 and hasn't started on 7, no chance.

In this particular case, it's impossible to tell if George can pull it off because we need two more books to find out. The real problem is that the SHOW didn't pull it off. But it's impossible to really blame that on George. D&D are in no way the creative talent that he is.

I remain skeptical. I'll admit that Bran had a bigger role in the books (to the point that I wasn't totally surprised that he wound up "winning"), but making the boy who lives in the tree the president rather than the bastard with legitimate claims to the throne—a classic fantasy trope—is a tough sell.