In response to Byron ^ Spoiler That's exactly the question the art director should be posing to the concept team - recycle an existing idea, or come up with something new and inventive. It bothers me because it's exactly the line of work I'm training for, and recycling an existing idea is such a cop-out (and an obvious alternative to having more time and a bigger budget, if you ask me). If it had been me I'd have kept The Night King on his horse, and I'd have given the dragon a demeanour in-keeping with the rest of the Army. As it stands we have a host of reanimated corpses hobbling along on exposed limbs, and then in swoops a reanimated dragon corpse performing fine-tuned aerobatics and breathing bright blue fire. I'm not going to enter into the ridiculous dialogue of "that wouldn't happen in real life", however I think it's fair to point out stylistic inconsistencies from an artistic perspective. IMO it'd have looked better if the dragon was like a flying wrecking ball, taking advantage of its enormous mass and inherited invulnerability (by virtue of being dead) and smashing the wall to pieces by flying into it. Also, if you're going to have the dragon breathe fire, make it black, or even dark green, or purple. Why the hell does magical fire always have to be bright blue?! This isn't fantasy for kids who need to be spoonfed the token good-vs-evil semiotics! On your other points - agreed on all. Especially the Theon scene, both with Jon beforehand and afterwards when he really puts his head to the task. Awesome episode...most of it!
I was really disappointed by this series, there's no game of thrones left to it at all, no mystery, no treachery, no history, it's just a hugely predictably action flick now...feels like a rush to the finish.
That's because you've had 5 years of build-up. Think about movies -- when does the final act ever end with whispers and intrigue? We're in the final act equivalent of the show. Buckle up.
I have to say, as someone who hasn't watched since season 5 but caught the majority of last nights finale, it did seem like it'd gone down the pan slightly. I think the problem is that the white walkers/undead have been around since season 1, but it's been such a slow creep up in threat that the effect just isn't there now - they would have been better off keeping the in-fighting between the houses going, purposely left the undead alone (barring the odd rumour from the wall or vision from Bran), then been like "BAM! THE WALL IS DOWN BITCHES!". It seems like a lot of cool content from the books was cut and all that time was spent north of the wall to build up to a stupid ice dragon...
What books? The last two haven't been released yet. I place the blame for the pacing issues, both in this season and before, squarely on GRRM. Let's not forget that some story lines in the first 6 seasons sometimes really dragged, presumably in the hope that George would catch up. First the show writers had to tread water, now they have bunch of bullet points to hit, and possibly restricted creative licence they can take to fill the gaps, because that would place expectations the on books that are yet to come. I'm sure that if they had a complete series of books to work from we would have had a much less disjointed show. They've proven their prowess in crafting a show, and any real criticism has stemmed from pacing issues regarding arcs that haven't yet been completed in the books.
I mean the series as a whole - as I say above, I stopped watching at the end of season 5, by that point the show had overtook the books but it felt like it had done so because it skipped so much. Just having a quick look at the episode synopses of season 6 and 7, it looks like they've had to flunk the pacing just to fill those gaps. As you rightly say though, GRRM has only himself to blame, the books are hideously overdue from the original plan, so the shows producers have been hamstrung. I also think the whole thing is a victim of it's own story - the more characters that got killed off for shocks and glory, the less invested and interested we can be.
I'm not so sure about that - the very fact that nobody seemed safe made me fear for the characters, that I liked, much more (I haven't read the books). I think the last couple of seasons have built steadily toward the coming conclusion*. * that conclusion being (if you read the internet theories) Arya is Dany's mother, the Night King is Jon's twin brother and Tyrion is an alien from the planet Ork.
Very funny but also seemingly true. I saw something on FB the other day which led to some searching, and the fruit of my labour is this cinematic short, "Wrath of the Lich King" by Blizzard in 2010. There's paying homage to something, and there's outright stealing it - the WoW community certainly isn't happy. There's a short video kicking around that shows both scenes below played in succession, and it's essentially a direct copy. Ah well... I suppose if a big TV network can get away with it, why not? Must have saved them a packet in, y'know, actually creating their own material LOL.
Time to resurrect this thread, eh? Any thoughts on S8E1? Spoiler The moment when Sam dropped the big ol' truth bomb on Jon's head was was A-W-E-S-O-M-E in every which way.
Spoiler Or the slightly freaky child pinned to a wall? First episode I can recall where someone didn't die, technically the child was the un dead so they don't count
Spoiler Nope someone did die. The "freaky child was Ned Umber, seen earlier in the episode telling Sansa that he needed more horses to get his people from Last Hearth to Winterfell. Looks like he got back home just in time to meet the White Walkers. Let's not forget the crew slaughtered by Theon in Yara's rescue.
Spoiler Why you not talking in spoiler mode! Spoiler: [QUOTE="David, post: 4642439, member: 43625 Spoiler Nope someone did die. The "freaky child was Ned Umber, seen earlier in the episode telling Sansa that he needed more horses to get his people from Last Hearth to Winterfell. Looks like he got back home just in time to meet the White Walkers. Let's not forget the crew slaughtered by Theon in Yara's rescue. [/QUOTE]"] Oh yeah, oops! Nested spoilers Cheesecake
Spoiler: Wonder what's inside? That child proper spooked me as I had my headphones cranked up. The blue eye bit was also hilarious. Can't wait to see more of those 2. Also
^ On that particular subject, any predictions what's gonna happen? Spoiler I had a fleeting thought that Daenerys might get really upset when she finds out about Jon's birthright and just feed him to Drogon. Plot twist: because Dany's secretly a bigger bitch than Cersei. It's Game of Thrones... could totally happen.
Spoiler: spoiler with increased angle of attack = MOAR DOWNFORCE Are they not technically related? I know incest seems to be a running trend but come on, one is more than enough.