Game Of Thrones: Season 8

[TraffordBlue]

Despite my criticisms though, the opening 20 mins or so was unbelievable TV. I don't think they could have built the suspense any better. Top marks for that.

 

[neil999]

So many great screenwriters, novelists and mediaeval battle experts in this thread lol

 

[MarkK1988]

dunno if its been covered but i fear for Danery's tactics based on that sorry show yesterday.

Why send the dothraki when they had the catapults basically rendered useless.

 

[MarkK1988]

Great score all the way through - fabulous use of music.

Certain moments, certain scenes, certain individual performances really good.

But my goodness, the plot. Awful.

1 - The assembled commanders leading the defence of Winterfell, supposedly some of the finest military minds available, came up with THOSE tactics?? That alone is ridiculous. The same mistake that the writers made in the Battle of the Bastards - having people do the most mindlessly stupid things in order to bring about "peril" when it goes wrong.

Spoiler: Spoiler

Charging the entire contingent of Dothraki cavalry into complete darkness, with no idea of the size or disposition of the enemy, is beyond mindlessly implausible. They were fighting a DEFENSIVE action, against a larger enemy force, with the stated aim of trying to get the attacking forces to overextend in order to expose the Night King: sacrificing all cavalry in the first two minutes simply doesn't logically follow. And don't get me started on Jon and Dany each deciding to land their dragons in the middle of the battlefield - deliberately doing the ONLY thing that reduces their battlefield effectiveness AND renders them incredibly vulnerable.

2 - The plot armour for certain characters is nothing short of laughable.

Spoiler: Spoiler

All the Dothraki die. Every. Single. One. But Jorah, who led the charge? Yeah, he makes it back. Because we need a Hollywood ending for him.
Sam Tarly. Seriously. Runs around in the hand to hand repeatedly being pinned down or simply cowering before a wight and offering no resistance, but gets saved over and over.
Jon Snow. For goodness' sake, how many times is he going to make moronic battlefield decisions and survive? Dismounts dragon in the middle of a million corpses to face off against a guy he has ALREADY seen literally raise the dead. Later decides to try to fight a dragon with nowt but a sword.
Jamie, Brienne, Pod, Tormund: all leading infantry detachments at the start that get utterly minced, all leading heroically from the front. Yet all miraculously make it back inside, only to be individually surrounded as the walls are breached and the rest of the defenders are slaughtered... and then the ice dragon blows hundreds of square feet of castle to pieces. And they all survive.
Greyworm makes grimly suicidal decisions against overwhelming odds, disciplined to the very end, in order to execute orders which will definitely get him killed but will save others. Survives.
Every named character taking refuge in the crypt: subjected to a surprise attack from all sides, largely unarmed. All survive... by hiding behind things.

3 - Yet more dragon related idiocy.

Spoiler: Spoiler

The dragons are at their most effective strafing ground troops. Jon and Dany both agree in ep.2 that they need to be close enough to act when the Night King appears, but not so close to Bran that the Night King spots the trap... so they should be strafing ground troops. The retreat phase of the plan DEPENDS on them strafing the trench to set it alight. So of course, after NOT strafing ahead of the Dothraki and only briefly supporting the Unsullied and and the rest of the infantry, Jon and Dany decide to go looking for the Night King instead... moving AWAY from Bran, away from the trench, away from the defending ground troops who cannot possibly hold the castle without them.

4 - Certain characters clearly now posing problems for the writers, who simply don't know what to do with them.

5 - Complete waste of an entire story arc that has been building for several seasons.

The technical staff and the actors are being badly let down by the writing team IMHO.

read back it had been covered!

 

[Yarrgh]

I believe Arya will kill Cersi but considering what she's surrounded by, I think there are only a couple of people who could get that close to her. Reckon Tyrion or Jamie will have to be sacrificed.

Tyrion and Arya are about the same size and the Tyrion-Sansa sex scene probably requires that extra frission to end the season with a controversial bang.

 

[Nymzee]

How do you know, mate?

Not that I don't believe you. It's just that the writers genuinely seem to forget to include key details.

Let's all be honest, the show in the last few seasons has been saved by the good will of the first five. It's far too Hollywood for it's own good because at it's premise it's a dark show and the characters aren't meant to be superheroes.

Episode 4 promo mate.

 

[Nymzee]

you seem to have forgotten this guy....

at one point he literally gave up fighting and said what is the point

He’s scared of fire isn’t he.

 

[NorthernBlue]

Or arguably they've made a decent fist of speeding up the pacing of an often laborious and increasingly self indulgent series of books full of lazy POV inner monologue plot exposition that constantly adds uninteresting plot strands in the mistaken belief that it is somehow clever and not just convoluted.

The TV series is by no means perfect and has gone heavily over to fan service but let's not pretend the books are flawless. And if we were waiting for the author to tell us the tale then they could have shot a certain death scene towards the end in real time.

Trash now mate. Up their with Line of Duty, Luther, Peaky Bkinders, Walking Dead and trash like that.

 

[Nymzee]

Personal thoughts:

- Bit disappointed that’s the end of the lore regarding Night King/WW and I actually was hoping for some dialogue between him and the Three Eyed Raven
- You can tell they’re definitely rushing to finish it all off in this season which is equally as disappointing
- Bran serves no real purpose to the rest of the series now
- I see Ep 4 as an aftermath/set up, Ep 5 as a battle and then Ep 6 drowning queen/king/aftermath crap.
- Hopefully the prequel show/series they’re doing makes up for it
- Hope Euron survives

 

[Dylan]

dunno if its been covered but i fear for Danery's tactics based on that sorry show yesterday.

Why send the dothraki when they had the catapults basically rendered useless.

Spoiler

 

[Yarrgh]

Thought the opening 20 minutes was amazing. The way they built up the suspense was probably the best i've seen in anything I have watched. But can't help but feel disappointed in some of the scenes and how they kept the main characters alive.

It's lost a lot of what made it great earlier on with unpredictable deaths.

Up until the Dothraki charge being extinguished, it was absolutely blinding. In reflection, as a siege of a castle and full on assault of the castle, I really thought it went well. After that I understand some of the complaints about people seemingly turning up out of nowhere to save a particular person or other, and that some of the actions were not rational or keeping with the characters, but I was swept away while watching it. No major deaths was a surprise.

I liked the moment when Jon confronted the Night King, and seeing the potential for victory being snatched away. I liked Theon's story in this episode, I thought Arya up to and including the point where she met Melisandre was good, and can't complain about what she ultimately ended up doing as how else could you get rid of the NK? The Bran storyline seems to go nowhere here. Also the NK- how does the rest of Westeros view this news - it's probably just a whole heap of Northerner superstition - I had hoped that this battle had ended up at King's Landing. I also had hoped that Jon Snow would have been blasted with fire from a dragon and came out unscathed to show that he was a Targaryen - though I'm hoping for something like that at the battle against the forces of Cersi.

 

[Dylan]

Personal thoughts:

- Bit disappointed that’s the end of the lore regarding Night King/WW and I actually was hoping for some dialogue between him and the Three Eyed Raven

Nah, that would have been a bit crap really.

I see Ep 4 as an aftermath/set up, Ep 5 as a battle and then Ep 6 drowning queen/king/aftermath crap.

Yep, I reckon so.

Hope Euron survives

No. He deserves to die in a particularly painful way.

 

[Nymzee]

Nah, that would have been a bit crap really.


Yep, I reckon so.

No. He deserves to die in a particularly painful way.

Euron for King of the Seven Kingdoms

Also annoyed the Dragonborn makes no appearance - that’d have been cool.

 

[Nymzee]

In terms of a battle plan it was like a total noob playing Medieval Total War for the first time on hardmode.

 

[Daveysgingerlovechild]

At what point do the Avengers turn up?