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The Reason Fans Hate the Last Season of Game of Thrones
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- kkarakk 7y agoIf you're familiar with manga(comics) and anime(manga comics adaptations to animation video) then this is a good and hilarious analogy that works perfectly for the latest season of game of thrones done by the meta anime Gintama - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4S9NuI6NKo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4S9NuI6NKo Looking forward to Game of Thrones: Brotherhood whenever it comes out
- stefanfisk 7y agoI love it! But, I think that the main issue is the INCREDIBLY lazy writing for S8 in particular, and S7 to a large extent as well.
- ianai 7y agoI think they’re just arrogant and full of themselves. They don’t have the chops to end what Martin started. They’ve got to use cheap plot twists to be compelling.
- dragonwriter 7y agoMartin provided outlines through the end of the series early on; this was widely reported at the time. And what twists? Other than “who kills the Night King”, most of the “twists” people have complained about are deeply flawed characters acting on accord with, rather than transcending, flaws that have been consistently shown since S1. It's a twist only in that it defies narrative traditions of the medium, but then that's also in accord with the character the show has shown since S1 (notably with the execution of Ned Stark.)
- ianai 7y agoUntil he publishes the last book I don’t believe he wrote the queen going mad into the story.
- davvolun 7y agoReally?! I'm not saying we should have all expected it or something, but there were decently strong hints in retrospect she wasn't what we all wanted her to be, whereas Jon was what we wanted but lacked the ambition or whatever -- which almost perfectly mirrors Ned and everyone else in the story. The only thing I can't believe is that the prophecies were pointing toward Arya as Azor Ahai, or the (apparently now) more likely theory that the "darkness" mentioned in the prophecy didn't have anything to do with the army of the undead (http://time.com/5589654/game-of-thrones-jon-snow-azor-ahai-prophecy/ http://time.com/5589654/game-of-thrones-jon-snow-azor-ahai-p...)
- stefanfisk 7y agoeven if we know that he provided outlines, we don't know to what extent if any the producers chose to follow them.
- ianai 7y agoGood point. Maybe they rushed to the end. That can lose an audience.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y agoThe biggest reason is that fans can’t stand seeing someone that they thought was the epitome of good and someone they identified with, become evil before their eyes. Every other reason is secondary to that.
- m_mueller 7y agoMost negative opinions I heard and read were not about the fact that Dany turned evil - this has been telegraphed for a long time and most have expected it. It's that the transition was almost completely unmotivated. It makes no sense whatsoever. People want to understand the characters, that's the central point of this article.
- dragonwriter 7y agoThe underlying character needs and triggers were established over many seasons, and the multiple triggers were laid on heavily throughout S8 (and some pretty heavily in S7.) The idea that the actions were unmotivated is bizarre; I get that some fans were hoping (and that narrative convention supports those hopes) that Dany would transcend her clearly established flaws, but the idea that there was anything not clearly established, in either general orientation or specific triggers, is hard to believe.
- jamesrcole 7y agoHere's a different take, which I thought was quite interesting and compelling https://twitter.com/DSilvermint/status/1125856091261136896 https://twitter.com/DSilvermint/status/1125856091261136896
- agapon 7y ago"The same" text as an article rather than a series of twits: https://www.wired.com/story/game-of-thrones-plotters-vs-pantsers/ https://www.wired.com/story/game-of-thrones-plotters-vs-pant... (So, it's actually an expanded version).
- TimothyBJacobs 7y agoThe takes don't seem to be substantially different. For instance, this tweet > A show that had been about the weight of the past became about the spectacle of the present. Characters with incredible depth and agency - all the more rope with which to hang themselves - became pieces on a giant war map.
- joecot 7y agoI agree that D&D are plotters now. The real problem is that they were panters for every season up to these last 2. They'd look at book characters and think "not that important" and leave them out, or wildly change events from the books to put out something that seemed more dramatic. But like a kid who partied too hard senior year and found out his final project is due in a week, they seem to have woken up one day and realized they'd moved way, way too far from the source material, and then just jerked the wheel to steer it back in a straight line towards the intended book ending. Characters who've developed differently in the show than in the books? Whiplashed back to the book versions. The Night King taken down in a single episode, with no real understanding of what he was trying to do, or what any of it really meant. Dany destroying all of King's Landing, but instead of a culmination of increasingly morally grey choices as she takes the throne from a loved leader, she's murdering civilians who don't even like Cersei because a bunch of dudes kept saying she was crazy (or something). Frankly I'd have preferred they just made up some hollywood ending that vaguely fit the direction they'd brought the show, instead of giving us all whiplash.
- jayd16 7y agoIt seems pretty obvious to me the issue is they just didn't put in the narrative work to make Dany's transition satisfying.
- nilkn 7y agoAs a counter point to this, S8 was despised before E5 aired.
- jayd16 7y agoI think there was a clear turn. There were valid pacing complaints but not core plot issues like now.
- nilkn 7y agoMaybe. This isn't exactly scientific, but E4 was actually the lowest rated episode of the season so far here: https://www.reddit.com/r/gameofthrones/comments/bpc20p/spoilers_postepisode_survey_results_s8e5_the/enr87fr/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gameofthrones/comments/bpc20p/spoil... Those numbers do actually suggest a clear turn, but it seems to have happened going from E3 -> E4 rather than from E4 -> E5.
- jayd16 7y agoHmm makes sense. Her change was telegraphed in E4.
- nilkn 7y agoYou can read the corresponding thread and see that not many folks there were really talking about that at the time. I think this analysis is too retroactive. E4 had many issues, particularly centering on Jaime, Brienne, Euron and the Iron Fleet, and the nonsensical nature of the Cersei negotiation. It also declined to fix issues presented by E3 (e.g., other than the funeral, it was as if the NK and WW conflict never happened, it didn't expand on Bran, etc.).
- colordrops 7y agoEveryone is analyzing how the process of writing may have changed but I think we need to go deeper. The show is created by mere mortals with families and children who burn out like everyone else. They've also got contracts that pay them by the season rather than the episode, and a contract for a Star Wars trilogy in the waiting. They are just sick of the show and are doing the bare minimum to fulfill their contractual obligations.
- kkarakk 7y agoExplanation fails when you take Marvel studios into account. Overall consistent product with some outstanding and satisfying movies. Disney/HBO seem like hacks in comparison. Now that Disney is assuming control of Marvel however i expect the quality to drop because of things like James Gunn incident etc. Companies that are too concerned with image and aligning with the cultural zeitgeist are consistently putting out mediocre products
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- fa 7y agoOther examples of sociological storytelling y'all might recommend—other than Game of Thrones and The Wire—and not necessarily from TV but in any medium?
- hyperpallium 7y agoAlthough this is in Scientific American, it's an informal article about an informal pop-culture topic. However, I'd still prefer it to make its claim, and make its case. Here, that means first defining "sociological/institutional storytelling" and "personal storytelling", then arguing that GoT is the former and not the latter, by reference to the source material (i.e. examples). I can only infer these definitions: "sociological" means reacting to circumstance; "personal" means agency. If we take the first season, the climax shows the two main actors acting with agency - against sociological forces: Ned chooses honour, against all circumstance, advice, sense and customs of the world. Joffrey chooses execution, again against all circumstance (protocol, advice, expectation of others - even self-interest). The article mentions another aspect, of characters being killed off, and that this shows the story is sociological rather than personal. But not all characters have been killed off, notatable, the Stark children have only been top-and-tailed (Robb and Rickon), leaving Jon, Sansa, Arya and Bran. They were present at the very beginning; they are present at the end. The story is about them. The standard argument is that character deaths make us fear for the main characters, instead of assuming plot armour. Minor and major characters routinely die. Even within the family, Ned, Cat, Robb and Rickon die. Further, Bran and Jon also appear to die, though live on. But most of the children, the core, remain. The claim of sociological storytelling would have more support if all major characters died, and were replaced with other characters, who behaved in similar ways under similar forces. Then the story would be about those forces. Therefore the story is personal, not sociological. Of course, the world is deep and interconnected, and makes sense. In this sense, the novels are "sociological". But the story itself is not. It is not a story about circumstance and institution forces, but a story about personal agency.