Game of Thrones (Spoilers)

[Zatman]

Spoiler

I agree with most, the NK was built up as this big bad but we never understood his motivations. Why did he want Bran I still dont get that part

The music I thought was really poor for the last 10 minutes or so, probably didnt help things

 

[Zatman]

Spoiler

Melisandre another one just popped up out of nowhere, no explanation then gone

All my criticisms it was a fun episode

[StefanAVFC]

5 minutes ago, Zatman said:

  Hide contents

I agree with most, the NK was built up as this big bad but we never understood his motivations. Why did he want Bran I still dont get that part

The music I thought was really poor for the last 10 minutes or so, probably didnt help things

 

Spoiler

The music was absolutely fantastic 

When piano is in GoT you know shit is about to go down

 

[Davkaus]

That was the **** business, I loved every second. 

The question is, where do we go next. The North is destroyed, Dany has no army left... Cersei surely wins by default unless she does some seriously mental shit. 

[villa4europe]

My money is on some seriously mental shit...

With it being this close to the end and them being so under developed I can't see anything clever on the cersei side of things like a golden fleet double cross

Her being killed by a brother, asha might as well join in now and kill euron, cleganebowl, dany and jon....sibling rivalries from here on in

Hopefully sansa looks at arya funny

[Chindie]

The more I think about this episode...

Spoiler

...the less I like it.

It's a junk food episode. Immediately enjoyable but no depth. The action is great, as a directorial job it's brilliant (barring filming it inside Satan's arsehole), but the writing is bad. You can justify why it's bad, but it's undermined by all the work before it. 

Our apocalyptic threat, set up as an impending doom creeping up on the show from the first scene, whose threat grew to the extent their climax of the last series was them breaking through to the other side of the Wall, is beaten at their first real hurdle. Not only beaten, the dramatic impact of them being beaten is completely nullified by the fact there is barely any sacrifice in our heroes victory. We lose 6 named characters, but none of them are really weighty ones. Edd? Who cares he's barely a named character. Lyanna Mormont? She's a fan favourite because of a single scene who serves no purpose to the show really. Jorah? He's been a major supporting character but his story is done, his death was nailed on. Beric? Cool character but his death had a lampshade hung on it last episode and again, his (paragraph long) story is over, completely and expectedly is disposed of. Melisandre? She tells us she's going to die. She turns up to die. She dies. Shrug. Theon? He also has been a major character but his story has literally stopped for the last couple of series really and the only thing left for him was the ultimate redemption - death as a good man.

None of these deaths have much force to them. They're disposable characters. Their deaths are set dressing. This is a show that made it's name on being prepared to throw expected narrative conventions away by killing off seemingly important characters, chopping off plot 'demands' and telling viewers that nothing is certain and no-one is safe - there isn't necessarily 'plot armour' for anyone.

Aha! you might think... They subverted the suggestion that impactful moments must have impactful deaths! After all, the show seems to have realised it's 'nobody is safe' trick quickly grows old as a stunt. There's problems with this though. Just because something is narratively expected or is a trope, doesn't mean it's bad. In many cases the tricks writers use, going back to the well of common character arcs, is because they create satisfying results. Take Theon's death. That's an age old trope, the redemption in death thing. The bad/flawed/unlikable guy has an arc where he tries to redeem himself and the ultimate sacrifice is made to restore or gain him his honour. It's a common, satisfying trope. It's one I'd not be surprised to see be used again in the remaining episodes.

Considering this, let's take the White Walker threat. The first scene of the show sets up their impending threat. The slogan of the franchise is arguably a reference to them. The 7 series to date has them as a recurring slowly growing mysterious threat, and some of the biggest moments, the most iconic episodes, have featured them. Are they the most interesting part of the show? No, the human intrigue and drama is it's trump card. But they've been the ticking clock of the show. The cliffhanger of the penultimate series is their final arrival.

The trope, to create, underline, grow, threat in a story line this is give the threat stakes, visceral impact. The easiest way to do that is have your heroes lose something - have them be beaten, have them lose something important, or have a significant character die. Game of Thrones has done that occasionally with the White Walkers but this was the tip of the spear. It was the real moment for this threat to meet the heart of the show, it was the pinnacle they had been building towards. And it's a bit of a damp squib dramatically. 6 disposable characters die. The threat is extinguished at the first battle it faces with no dramatic weight. Sure, they killed a lot of numbers of faceless infantry, but nobody cares about a bunch of empty chain mail dying.

But what makes this worse is the episode flirts with impact again and again. You lose count of the times some major character is glimpsed on the cusp of being overwhelmed (I think Brienne alone has 3 moments where she's struggling against overwhelming odds) but gets through it because, well, the Plot clearly wants them alive. Eventually I knew the scenes didn't really matter. Brienne, Jaime, Tormund... They weren't going to die.

It really does undermine the weight of it all.

Again, action, spectacle, it's wonderful. Brilliant. The writing? It's weak.

 

[Czechlad]

Spoiler

I thought it was a fine episode. I am not reading much into it. It had a lot of action, and ending was pretty great. 

Only complaints were:

• Plot armor for main characters was way too strong
• WTF was Bran doing that whole time. I thought he was planning something, but guess not?
• Why was the episode so dark the whole time?! I had to check to see my stream was in HD numerous times. 

 

[Chindie]

The darkness is a combination of saving money and easily bumping up the atmosphere.

Unfortunately this time they seem to have gone so dark it's a nearly universal complaint of the episode that nobody could see anything for v chunks of the episode without tinkering with settings.

[villa4europe]

To me there's just something obvious about the attack coming at night, it's logical and adds to it, same as the helms deep battle taking place at night in shit weather but Jackson put a blue tint on it all to make it dark but still everything in view, the battle with cersei however should happen in the day in the sunshine with the golden company but i don't see how they do that cos the north haven't got anyone to March south

Agree that they've done it on purpose to not cut costs but stop in being ridiculous, think the episode doesn't live up to expectation but that's more because of the high standards of the series and people loving the previous unpredictability, no win situation after episode 2, the me a was actually a bit of a GOT surprise last night but not in the form of death which I think people wanted, if we all read back last week's comments and various guessing blogs etc then the majority of predictions are wrong, so ironically the who didn't die was actually a bit unpredictable...

[LondonLax]

1 hour ago, Chindie said:

The more I think about this episode...

  Reveal hidden contents

...the less I like it.

It's a junk food episode. Immediately enjoyable but no depth. The action is great, as a directorial job it's brilliant (barring filming it inside Satan's arsehole), but the writing is bad. You can justify why it's bad, but it's undermined by all the work before it. 

Our apocalyptic threat, set up as an impending doom creeping up on the show from the first scene, whose threat grew to the extent their climax of the last series was them breaking through to the other side of the Wall, is beaten at their first real hurdle. Not only beaten, the dramatic impact of them being beaten is completely nullified by the fact there is barely any sacrifice in our heroes victory. We lose 6 named characters, but none of them are really weighty ones. Edd? Who cares he's barely a named character. Lyanna Mormont? She's a fan favourite because of a single scene who serves no purpose to the show really. Jorah? He's been a major supporting character but his story is done, his death was nailed on. Beric? Cool character but his death had a lampshade hung on it last episode and again, his (paragraph long) story is over, completely and expectedly is disposed of. Melisandre? She tells us she's going to die. She turns up to die. She dies. Shrug. Theon? He also has been a major character but his story has literally stopped for the last couple of series really and the only thing left for him was the ultimate redemption - death as a good man.

None of these deaths have much force to them. They're disposable characters. Their deaths are set dressing. This is a show that made it's name on being prepared to throw expected narrative conventions away by killing off seemingly important characters, chopping off plot 'demands' and telling viewers that nothing is certain and no-one is safe - there isn't necessarily 'plot armour' for anyone.

Aha! you might think... They subverted the suggestion that impactful moments must have impactful deaths! After all, the show seems to have realised it's 'nobody is safe' trick quickly grows old as a stunt. There's problems with this though. Just because something is narratively expected or is a trope, doesn't mean it's bad. In many cases the tricks writers use, going back to the well of common character arcs, is because they create satisfying results. Take Theon's death. That's an age old trope, the redemption in death thing. The bad/flawed/unlikable guy has an arc where he tries to redeem himself and the ultimate sacrifice is made to restore or gain him his honour. It's a common, satisfying trope. It's one I'd not be surprised to see be used again in the remaining episodes.

Considering this, let's take the White Walker threat. The first scene of the show sets up their impending threat. The slogan of the franchise is arguably a reference to them. The 7 series to date has them as a recurring slowly growing mysterious threat, and some of the biggest moments, the most iconic episodes, have featured them. Are they the most interesting part of the show? No, the human intrigue and drama is it's trump card. But they've been the ticking clock of the show. The cliffhanger of the penultimate series is their final arrival.

The trope, to create, underline, grow, threat in a story line this is give the threat stakes, visceral impact. The easiest way to do that is have your heroes lose something - have them be beaten, have them lose something important, or have a significant character die. Game of Thrones has done that occasionally with the White Walkers but this was the tip of the spear. It was the real moment for this threat to meet the heart of the show, it was the pinnacle they had been building towards. And it's a bit of a damp squib dramatically. 6 disposable characters die. The threat is extinguished at the first battle it faces with no dramatic weight. Sure, they killed a lot of numbers of faceless infantry, but nobody cares about a bunch of empty chain mail dying.

But what makes this worse is the episode flirts with impact again and again. You lose count of the times some major character is glimpsed on the cusp of being overwhelmed (I think Brienne alone has 3 moments where she's struggling against overwhelming odds) but gets through it because, well, the Plot clearly wants them alive. Eventually I knew the scenes didn't really matter. Brienne, Jaime, Tormund... They weren't going to die.

It really does undermine the weight of it all.

Again, action, spectacle, it's wonderful. Brilliant. The writing? It's weak.

 

Spoiler

The humans did lose something, they lost Winterfell which is the home for the story. 

The impossible problem for the writers to resolve is that the story was never about the undead. They were not much more than a plot device. However they were a plot device that had been in the background being discussed for so long that any resolution could be seen as unsatisfying. 

Many of the hero characters have personal human vs human story arcs to be resolved after 8 seasons and sacrificing too many of them to death by zombies would also be pretty boring and unsatisfying. 

Ending a story that has been running for a long time in a way that would satisfy its huge global fan base is next to impossible.

 

[Stevo985]

Amazing episode, but similar complaints to others

Spoiler

 

Too many big characters survived. Couple of deaths but nobody anyone cares about apart from maybe one. Seems like they made a decision a couple of seasons ago that that sort of stuff wouldn't happen anymore

And, even though Arya killing the NK was great, it felt a little underwhelming that we've been building to that for 8 seasons and she killed him that easily.

Will we ever know why he wanted Bran?

 

Minor though. It was still a great episode.

[Brumerican]

39 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

Will we ever know why he wanted Bran?

 

“He wants to erase this world, and I am its memory.”

 

[Brumerican]

I think Arya is a great example for young players. Willing to go to the continent at such a young age and learn from a foreign coach is commendable in today's game.

Edited April 29, 2019 by Brumerican

[Designer1]

Well that was **** epic.

Loved it all apart from the bloody  brightness levels during parts of the battle sequence. Such wonderful cinematography and choreography shouldn't be shrouded in a cloud of darkness.

Spoiler

The Red ladies last moments were particularly poignant and well shot. I'm gonna miss that sexy bitch. 

 

[LondonLax]

Spoiler

There was also an interesting plot line that has been mentioned where the key representatives of all the different gods in the GoT universe (red god, drowned god, the seven, the many faced god and the old god) had to work together to defeat the night king.

A neat way to tie the story together.

 

[Risso]

Overall slightly disappointed with that, to be honest.  The darkness and whatever the sand storm thing was just made it too difficult to watch.  Great effects and all, but for some reason I always find big battles like that slightly unsatisfying.

Spoiler

Where did Arya just pop up from?

Why did the Night King go to the James Bond baddy school of pissing about instead of just killing his enemy?

It really pisses me off when main characters become invincible despite being utterly surrounded by about 1,000 enemies

 

[Brumerican]

Ghost highlights.

[Brumerican]

13 minutes ago, Risso said:

Where did Arya just pop up from?

 

She's a trained stealth assassin so it's in keeping with the character.

[Brumerican]

I didn't notice on the first viewing but yeah Jon does in fact try to kill a dragon by screaming at his face.

[Jareth]

Yeesh that was insane. Have re-watched the ending like 5 times. 

But don't get this darkness criticism, just turn all other light sources off and it's all clear..