If a hypothetical person is complaining about plot armor now but was cool with Jon Snow being brought back from the dead maybe "plot armor" isn't the real issue.
I get that people are annoyed with hearing the term "Plot Armor" now, but honestly, the types of situations that are really driving people crazy this season are fairly easily avoided. "The Long Night" was full of little vignettes where they actively tried to fake the audience out and heavily imply a character was dead only to have them miraculously be fine, similar to how Peter Jackson loves to do throughout the LOTR movies. It is a dumb thing to do really is not necessary as there is plenty of drama already happening all around. Most of the complaints I am reading are pointing this type of thing out rather than the overall idea that 'yeah, our main characters are going to survive through a lot of shit that should kill them because show'. I do sort of think it is a silly thing to harp on either way, but to me this type of nitpicking is really indicative that the show is just flat out no longer working for a lot of people where it once did very much.
I mean, having a twist (even a poor one because everyone knew he was coming back) isn't really the same as plot armor. I'd describe plot armor more of like...being on the front lines on a battle of crazy undead that you are barley hanging on right off the bat...but then an hour later you are still alive even though everyone else is dying and you were on the front line, but still barely hanging on. Then the dead arise a 2nd time and you are still barely hanging on. You should be dead, but can't because you got that plot armor on....
"Plot Armor" is just the plot. If every character in every work of fiction died every time it would be realistic for them to do so, regardless of their importance to the story being told, there would be no stories. Luke Skywalker has plot armor when he survives the drop at the end of Empire. It should've killed him! But he's essential to the plot, so he survives. Knocking something for "plot armor" is such a lame CinemaSins-y form of nitpicking.
I feel like the plot armor has been earned by the characters. It doesn’t subvert my expectations or anything.
Bran, a small child, survives being shoved out of a window hundreds of feet in the air in the very first episode of this show. But yeah, plot armor is a huge problem now for sure for sure lmao
I feel like you’re completely ignoring the actual problems people are having and you’re just making fun of the phrase “plot armor”
If the problem is “characters are now surviving situations in which it is entirely unbelievable that they would do so, solely because of plot reasons”, then how am I ignoring the problems people are having?
I’m also critical of Jon Snow being revived. Not sure why it even happened tbh. Were we supposed to stop questioning why at a certain point?
I think the answer is he still has a purpose to fulfill with the “gods.” With one episode left that purpose may still happen ... or it could very well just be the Red Woman had her magic but no actually validity behind it. She was wrong in her visions before.
It’s been mentioned a bunch of times in this thread and specifically today that it isn’t a problem for characters to survive because they are necessary to the plot, it’s an issue when they skip over the showing of their survival (like comparing staying with Jon getting his air in BOTB to Sam or Brienne getting COVERED in wights and then being totally fine right after) so that you’re taken out of the experience. It’s also a problem when there’s no reason for the character to survive that particular moment except for the fact that they clearly want them dead at a different specific moment, without offering anything meaningful to their story to warrant it. Rhaegal could have died in the battle at Winterfell (in fact most people thought he did), and that would have done the same thing for hurting Dany’s spirit and power within the story. He also could have lived and been lost during the battle at KL to give some believability to Dany snapping since it would have been a purely visceral reaction to his death. But that doesn’t leave room for a shocking twist during episode 4, so they bent over backwards to make it happen at exactly that moment. It’s still not coming down to whether the character lived or died, but how it happened within the story and whether or not they followed the logic of the world to get there or just reverse engineered it as a means to an end.
That’s actually the last place you see Jon in the books as well so it was a natural moment to use as a season cliffhanger
Jon dying was one of the first big spoilers I remember reading as it aired. I don’t think I knew that they brought him back into way after that fact, but I assumed he would be. I don’t think I heard anything else huge through social media until Hodor died.
I don't really consider that plot armor though. The issue there isn't "they survived" it's "we didn't see how."
Yeah it’s getting into semantics about the phrase for sure, but I think it comes into play because if that same scene happened to a red shirt there would be no question that they died after the cut and were never seen again. If that kind of thing happens to someone we know and then they teleport somewhere else without any reason, that’s where the idea would come in. I’m not even the biggest fan of the phrase itself, partly because it’s been so overused, but I do think it’s important to clarify that it doesn’t just mean “they lived and in real life they wouldn’t”.
i wish i was creative enough to make something that @Anthony_ likes because i'd have a guaranteed cash flow the rest of my life
I also don’t think Jon’s death has even the slightest thing to do with plot armor. He died. He was brought back by magic. If anything you could say it’s a foregone conclusion or “spoiled by the medium” or something, because everyone knew he was too popular to stay dead. But in the story that isn’t an example at all.