Game of Thrones (spoilers)

Started by diggler, June 06, 2011, 02:39:04 PM

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Fernando


Robyn


Fernando


Jeremy Blackman

Yeah, I'm going to skip this trailer as well.

Robyn



The final battle is one of the biggest battle sequences ever made and took 59 nights to shoot...

Jeremy Blackman

Approximate runtimes for the final episodes!

Ep 1 – 54 min

Ep 2 – 58 min

Ep 3 – 1 hour 22 min

Ep 4 – 1 hour 18 min

Ep 5 – 1 hour 20 min

Ep 6 – 1 hour 20 min


Total: 7.2 hours / 432 min

That's kind of like getting 7 one-hour episodes. Or 10 episodes that are 43 min long each.


https://www.slashfilm.com/game-of-thrones-season-8-episode-lengths/

Jeremy Blackman

I'm rewatching seasons 6 and 7 to get ready.

I've said many times that Season 6 is the best season, but I'm not so sure anymore. There are some outright bad scenes early on (scenes, not episodes). All the scenes with Tyrion, Missandei, and Grey Worm are pretty rough, but the one with them having the walk-and-talk argument is one of the worst scenes in the show's history. The direction and staging is shockingly poor. The actors whiffed that scene so hard that I can't believe they didn't do more takes. They look uncomfortable in their costumes, which appear to be straight out of the factory, like they're on an EW cover. The writing is really bad too. What happened?

Anyway, next ep is The Door, so I'm optimistic. I'm already pretty sure we can credit good ol' Jack Bender for turning this season around.

Drenk

I disliked season 5 and 6.

I mentioned that the tension in the books between traditional fantasy and a more "realistic" work is what I believe ultimately destroyed the series. How can G.R.R Martin continue? It kept growing and growing and now he can't resolve this intricate mess. He forgot the Wall and what's behind it along the way, but he can't go back to it now and throw away everything that he was building up in the last two books, can he?

Anyway, after following the books Game of Thrones decided to end the series by being the traditional story that Martin avoided. It makes sense. It's the easiest path and, after all, all the elements are there. Seasons 5 and 6 were still struggling between the two.

Weirdly, in its shamelessness, season 7 is way better than the previous seasons: it's also spectacular. I enjoyed it. I've lost the characters and I don't even know what they're supposed to want except fighting the Walkers but I enjoy it.

Missandei and Grey Worm: you can imagine the fourteen year olds writing variation of these scenes.
Ascension.

Jeremy Blackman

I haven't watched a lot of behind-the-scenes content (and don't really intend to), but I think I remember hearing that multiple directors work on any given episode. With multiple locations, they sort of have to do that to an extent, right? This is probably why we get bad scenes here and there but never really a whole episode that disappoints. For example, 604 has all the problems I talked about, but the badness is mostly quarantined in Meereen. That same episode has great scenes: Sansa reuniting with Jon, the high sparrow telling his story to Margaery, Jon reading Ramsay's letter ("come and see"), and then finally, Daenerys burning the khals, which is one of her best scenes ever.

And the episode that follows, The Door... oh boy. Jack Bender is really one of the best.

Season 6 has some of the highest highs, and for that I really, really love it. I'll gladly take a failed scene here and there in exchange. I believe that's the most sensible way to view any television program. The best shows take big swings and require your patience — from Lost to BSG to Twin Peaks. I think that's fair.

Robyn

What's your theories on Season 8, JB?

Or maybe you want to rewatch season 6/7 before writing about that...

Jeremy Blackman

I think I can make a few predictions...

I can't help but predict that Daenerys must successfully "break the wheel" and conquer Westeros. GoT obviously loves to upend expectations, but I feel like this is one that GRRM is comfortable fulfilling. From a writer's perspective, if you've worked at being unconventional and surprising in all different parts of the work, you've earned at least one very satisfying conventional bit. It seems pretty obvious now that Jon and Daenerys were always seeded as the real heroes. Just think of all the work they've done and all the sacrifices they've made. The red-herring heroes like Ned and Rob had no such investment from GRRM. If I were to predict who will be more heroic and victorious, between Jon and Daenerys, I would bet on Daenerys — because her ultimate success is so thematically central to the whole saga. She and Jon might both die achieving that. But it won't make them any less successful.

As much as I'd (emotionally) like to see Daenerys take the throne and rule Westeros as a benevolent dictator, I think something new is in the cards. I am very curious what "breaking the wheel" will specifically mean when Daenerys has won. Does she have radical structural change in mind, or is that an overblown expectation? I'm not sure. As I rewatch, I'll listen for the kind of wording she uses. In 606, she tells Jorah, "When I take the Seven Kingdoms, I need you by my side." Notice she doesn't say "when I rule." Presumably once the seven kingdoms are "taken," something innovative can be done. I can absolutely see Tyrion setting up a system with some element of democracy, like a central government with representatives or parliament. If Daenerys dies, Tyrion can do that without her, perhaps with all eyes on Daenerys's child as a future leader.

In predicting how the final events play out, we can think about each character's special powers:


Jon - selflessness, personal sacrifice, dragon-riding (trust me)
Daenerys - fire immunity, dragon-riding, commanding/inspiring
Bran - being omniscient and warging and stuff
Arya - disguising herself and assassinating folks
Sam - maester knowledge
Sansa - political strategy
Jaime - military strategy
Tyrion - political & military strategy, dragon-riding (I'd bet on it)


Daenerys, Bran, and Arya have actual supernatural powers, so I feel like they're the ones to watch in the final battles. There's definitely going to be a scene where Dany is trapped by the dead and one of her dragons burns the whole area and she survives, right? Bran has to warg into a dragon at some point, right? And Arya... oh boy. She could slay a number of dudes. I'm picturing that one Godfather montage, but it's her in every scene.

Robyn

That made me more excited then the trailer!

I started to rewatch season 6 and 7 as well. It would be interesting to see the final battle in episode 5 with the final episode being a epilogue of sort.

1. They win against the white walkers.
2. Rebuilding of the world begins.
3. Daenerys at the throne "breaks the wheel", but dies in childbirth. Things are getting better.
4. However, we see the child grow up to be a complete monster.
5. The child, old now, sitting at the throne while being the worst possible ruler you can imagine.
6. We are kind of back at where we started. Nothing has changed, The Game Of Thrones begins again.
7. The End.

Hehe...

WorldForgot


Robyn

Quote from: WorldForgot on March 16, 2019, 01:29:59 PM
^ And cue the spin offs

Exactly.

Maybe Tyrion/someone could be appointed the new leader after the death of Daenerys. Then the child grows up and wants to rebel, because he believes he should be on the throne instead.

Something like that, idk...

Jeremy Blackman

Along those lines, I can see Cersei and Daenerys's new children growing up and having a kind of epic rivalry, and forces clash again. I really don't want that to happen, though.

We know the ending is going to be "bittersweet," but how pessimistic is GRRM about the future of this world? How much does he believe the cycle will continue? Does all the suffering in this story earn an optimistic ending?