Yeah the whole "omg there's tension between Sansa and Arya now!" stuff felt so rushed and ham fisted at times.
Having no source did present a challenge plus the compressed time frame to write and make a show under the pressure of deadlines and expectations. That said, I’m glad they didn’t just didn’t give fans what they wanted. It would have been too predictable and that not what that show was all about all along to me. After the show was completed I saw an interesting fan outline for how the series could of ended, but it’s better they ended it and didn’t try and drag it out for another two seasons.
And even after they revealed they were playing Littlefinger, it's like... so all they had to do to get rid of his ass was rattle off everything he's ever done? "It's just that easy!" But... it shouldn't have been. It felt like all the subtle intrigue in the book-based seasons was thrown out for quick and easy solutions to what were previously huge problems, making everyone retroactively look stupid.
The final episodes were made in two or three years and "adapted" from a treatment in the notepad of a writer who has all the time they need, even over a decade, to weave a complex plot for each book in their series. A treatment that'll be expanded and possibly changed exponentially during the writing process. Those last two seasons were never gonna live up to the hype.
It's true that if anything this just shows how bad the writers got without having Martin's work to work from, but it also reminds me of how I felt about Lost. Not to invoke another divisive show or anything, but it felt like in both cases, the makers negotiated an exit strategy and were determined to commit to it, even as it slowly became clear they couldn't do everything they wanted to do in that negotiated time. So rather than make a new deal to give themselves more time to do things properly, they decided to just half ass it so they could commit to their plan.
The writers were not even that bad imo. I think the creative choice of focusing on climactic battles instead of trying to emulate the dense narrative or early seasons might've been the smartest one possible. It's one thing to write a new story in the same world, but the only writer who can finish ASOIAF properly for better or worse is GRRM. Giving fans a satisfying conclusion is made more challenging by the fact that he's a slow writer and unlike JRRT, the lore, character development and backstory are still being figured out (as explained in his "gardener vs architect" analogy in interviews) instead of setting the stage at the beginning. So he's not to blame - you can't rush a story as ambitious as that - and also this is why I don't shift much blame on the show writers - they had an impossible task ahead of them. As far as I know they made the most out of what they had to work with.
Goddamn tho the highs of this show were exhilarating. Hardhome, Battle of the Bastards, the Purple Wedding, basically anything involving Liam Cunningham
Some really good points. I was personally underwhelmed by the whole White Walkers ending, but there wasn’t really a lot of dynamics there to work with. I was fine with the rest. Could have been better and could have been worse. The show was a tragic tale of the fall of those who want power and the destruction they cause trying to get it. By the end it was mostly characters who didn’t seek power who survived (even if they took power in the end). The show set the table of any character could die at anytime (except maybe Jon Snow who’s story didn’t feel over when it happened).
I think the main thing that still upsets me is we were always building to a final showdown with the white walkers. That was the threat that loomed over everything, they repeatedly showed us the grab for the throne was ultimately pointless. Then in the final season there really isn’t any build up to the white walker battle , expect for easily the best ep of that season where characters are just interacting with one another before the fight. That battle was so dark, and hard to see at times. Not in a good way imo. Then it felt so rushed. Really it should have been 2-3 episodes long just the battle. The white walkers are supposed to be the main bad we’ve been building to. Then to have Cersei be the final bad. Along with the Dany switch. Which made sense, but again we needed more time to see her make that switch.
The worst part is is that I guarantee the backlash to how the show ended backed GRRM even further into a corner as to how he intended to wrap the series up. He'll either have to finish it the way he intended it to end but somehow pull it off in a way that doesn't suck like the show, or change everything to a different ending because he feels the need to distance himself from the show. Neither will happen tho and he'll die a multimillionaire
The first several seasons had a lot of of problematic issues that have been discussed to death, but they also had a lot of strengths that clearly resonated with all sorts of fans. The mainstream / crossover appeal of a fantasy show like that felt absolutely unprecedented to me. The last season particularly just felt like the show-runners had a handful of major plot points that they felt they had to hit and they wanted to just do so as quickly as possible. So you lose a lot of what was so good about the show to begin with, while at the same time, all of the problematic issues that existed all along are still there and seem even worse because they've kinda been pushed to the fore in the mad rush to hit plot points. The closest feeling I can think of is the 3rd Peter Jackson Hobbit movie where he all of a sudden decides he wants to just end the story as quickly as humanly possible after inexplicably taking 37 hours to get through like 50 pages of story from the book. I have no idea if this is the case or not, but it just felt like they wanted to be done with the show as quickly as possible. It doesn't really make sense, because I'm sure HBO would have loved to keep milking that cash cow for a few more seasons. It makes me wish they had handed over showrunning responsibilities to other writer(s) who actually wanted to try to wrap the story up in a satisfactory way.
It was hard to wrap up the White Wakers just like it’s hard to wrap up Zombies. There’s just not a lot of depth there unless they push into their origin or how to defeat them and they touched in both. I agree. Wrapping up all those storylines must have been a challenge.
Imagine creating a popular, coherent, well-regarded show and burning yourself out making it until the last season, only to yell "Scorched earth, fucker!" in the home stretch. Just ride off into the sunset, middle fingers up.
They barely touched on the origin. I feel like there really could’ve been something nuanced about the nature of time and death renewing life or something and they just kinda let them be zombies. Would’ve also been cool to have an actual thematic purpose to the faceless men. That just sorta fizzled out after acting as a plot distraction for two whole seasons
My personal opinion is that the show-runners spun their wheels a little bit creatively for a while when they ran out of books to adapt, kinda hoping that GRRM would get the book out there so they could keep going forward, and he obviously never did. But when you slow things down and really spend a lot of time setting up storylines and weaving all sorts of plot webs, arguably for seasons at a time, it just makes it all the more jarring and frustrating when you get to the end and decide to just cut out and wrap things up quick and dirty. It's not that the quick pacing and breakneck storytelling of the final season is inherently bad, but it is very unsatisfying coming after the type of setup that it did.
I feel it was mentioned that the writers had signed on to do another big project and basically were rushing to get through the show. But then the project they were moving towards got scrapped? Am I imagining this or what
I'm not sure. I do think they had an alternative historical fiction show they were setting up, and I think there were rumours swirling around of a Star Wars movie or trilogy of movies from them. Also, I think Netflix was dangling like a billion dollars in front of them to go make a bunch of stuff for them. Which is all well and good, but I think if that's the case, you should pass your current project to someone who wants to do it properly, in my humble opinion.
I think those are two storylines they kind of fell short on. There could have been more to those stories, but when you take into account that main characters stories on moved once every two weeks because there were so many stories they kind of just let those two slid. Maybe given more time or maybe they hoped whatever spin-offs they had played would cover it. But yeah, those two stories let me wondering bit. I didn’t mind a lot of the main character arcs though because you still needed some shock value, things to not work out, and show the cost of power seeking. I will say, the fact that the principle cast stuck with the show even as they became famous is something that deserves a nod of appreciation.
Again, didn't mind the main character arcs....Bran becoming king makes sense if you're reading between the lines of George's books. Dany becoming the Mad Queen--referenced in the show AND the books a lot. Sansa Queen in the North, great! Arya badass assassin and becoming Elissa Farman, great. Sam as Grand Maester, Tyrion as Hand, Brienne on the Kingsguard, etc etc etc. Jon's ending is a bit disappointing I suppose. What annoyed me is how fast we got there the last two seasons. The Dany switch seemed to happen almost instantaneously. I think the proper way to tell the story would ahve been 9 full seasons, not 6 full and then two shortened ones. Maybe if you tell the Dorne storyline correctly, you can get 10 full seasons out of it.
wasnt it some fucked up slavery show that got cancelled because it was so obviously problematic? Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_(TV_series)?wprov=sfti1
I actually don't remember there being a ton of backlash when it was announced that this was happening. People were more like "uh...okay? The Game of Thrones guys are doing it, so I guess we'll give it a shot." Then as the later seasons of Thrones started releasing people were like "This is a pretty fucked up idea for a show and it's going to be handled extremely poorly because it's the Thrones guys." I believe the project they were rushing for was their Star Wars movie that got cancelled almost immediately after the final season aired.