HBO's Game of Thrones (1 Viewer)

[joshEH]

Winter Stannis is Coming: Next season's advertising should totally feature Tyrion seated on the Iron Throne. I know, I know, he's not a contender for the throne, but neither was Sean Bean, and he was all over last year's stuff. Mainly, what I'm saying is I want to cruise down Hollywood Boulevard and see a huge-ass billboard with The Dinklage chilling on that awesome chair.

 

[Jim_C]

I'm re-reading the books right now. Can't wait to see how season 2 unfolds on the screen.

 

[joshEH]

Awesome. Just pure awesome. And I too can't get enough of midgets sitting in chairs too big for them. Hell, this could turn into a plot-point on Life's Too Short. Though I'd almost prefer him chilling in a bed with a headboard kinda shaped like the swords of the Iron Throne, and he's surrounded by naked women. Kinda like the Hung posters, but with The Dink instead.

 

[Johnny Angell]

Maybe you need to have read the books to really enjoy this show but I thought it was a total bore. In all fairness to the show, I thought it was very well produced & acted and I've got almost no interest in medieval sword fighting fantasy stories but I can't believe the reviews that this show has gotten based on what I saw.

My wife and I must be among the 10 people in the country who have not seen this series, until recently. With our new AppleTV 4K we have HBOGO and a subscription to HBO via DTV. I think you can subscribe to HBOGO if you don’t have an HBO subscription. So, it looks likethere’s more content on GO than you can shake a stick at.

About 3 weeks ago we started watching it. Fantastically done in every respect. Production values are top notch. I our humble opinion, you don’t have to know the books (we don’t). Nothing about this is boring. I wish they’d dial the violence back a little. I know it’s HBO, but I’m surprised (and delighted) about the amount of nudity and the “explicit” simulations.

We are just into the second season.

 

[RobertR]

My wife and I must be among the 10 people in the country who have not seen this series, until recently. With our new AppleTV 4K we have HBOGO and a subscription to HBO via DTV. I think you can subscribe to HBOGO if you don’t have an HBO subscription. So, it looks likethere’s more content on GO than you can shake a stick at.

About 3 weeks ago we started watching it. Fantastically done in every respect. Production values are top notch. I our humble opinion, you don’t have to know the books (we don’t). Nothing about this is boring. I wish they’d dial the violence back a little. I know it’s HBO, but I’m surprised (and delighted) about the amount of nudity and the “explicit” simulations.

We are just into the second season.

Two words: Red Wedding.

 

[Johnny Angell]

Two words: Red Wedding.

Did you mean birth as opposed to wedding. There’s been a red birth, I think. It involved a lot of black.

 

[RobertR]

Did you mean birth as opposed to wedding. There’s been a red birth, I think. It involved a lot of black.

You'll find out.......

 

[BobO'Link]

Did you mean birth as opposed to wedding. There’s been a red birth, I think. It involved a lot of black.

It's coming... and he most definitely meant wedding. And it's red because... well... you'll see... Things just get better until the show runners run out of books from which to draw material and, although they still use Martin's outlines for the unfinished/unwritten books, have to lean on their own dialog writing and plotting abilities which just don't hold up against Martin's. At that point it's still very good, just not as good as before.

 

[John Lee_275604]

It's coming... and he most definitely meant wedding. And it's red because... well... you'll see... Things just get better until the show runners run out of books from which to draw material and, although they still use Martin's outlines for the unfinished/unwritten books, have to lean on their own dialog writing and plotting abilities which just don't hold up against Martin's. At that point it's still very good, just not as good as before.

I wouldn't assess it quite so pessimistically. There may be some narrative detail and structure missing without GRRM's explicit guidance, but the culminations of the past two seasons have resulted in some of the most stirring and cinematic set pieces, not only in the history of the show, but in the history of TV.

Spoiler

Battle of the Bastards and Money Train is up there with Kubrick, Speilberg and Kurasawa

 

[BobO'Link]

I wouldn't assess it quite so pessimistically. There may be some narrative detail and structure missing without GRRM's explicit guidance, but the culminations of the past two seasons have resulted in some of the most stirring and cinematic set pieces, not only in the history of the show, but in the history of TV.

Spoiler

Battle of the Bastards and Money Train is up there with Kubrick, Speilberg and Kurasawa

While I'll give you Speilberg (IMHO, GOT is better than any SF/Fantasy product from Speilberg) I absolutely cannot put them, or any episode of GOT, in the same league as Kubrick and Kurasawa.

Seasons 6 and 7 saw less "intelligent" dialog that, at times, borders on trite/cliche' coupled with gaps in location flow, or rather improper time frames for events to be able to occur, and logic of character reaction/action. It's quite obvious that there's a difference in those things once season 6 arrives. It's still good... just not as good as it was when they were relying on Martin's existing dialog and plotting.

Here's a quote from this article that pretty much sums it up:

David Benioff and Dan 'DB' Weiss have gone from expert adapters to pretty decent fan-fiction writers – and just because they're not as good at the latter, that doesn't undo the incredible work they did with the former.

Add to that the *time* they took to fully adapt the books in S1-S5 which presented a fully fleshed out world and characters. Then we get S6 and S7 which feel rushed while also feeling somewhat stagnant at times. This in spite of S6 still being drawn mostly from the books. You saw a bit of the decline in S5 as they added a bit of "new" material but it's more noticeable in S6. Events that likely would have taken an entire episode in the first 5 seasons are done in half and episode or less. In spite of it sporting some of the longest episodes of the series, S7 felt very rushed and truncated with some of the worst dialog and plotting to date. It, too, should have been 10 episodes.

I stand by my comments and conclusion on their abilities. I saw and felt it in the very first episode of season 6 as, to me, it felt "less" than what'd come before. It's not gotten better since then but at least it's not truly gotten worse (although the battle beyond the wall came very close).

So... that may come off somewhat negative. It is... and it's not. GOT is still at the top of the Fantasy TV pile and one of my all-time favorite shows.

 

[Tommy R]

I like GoT, but I'm not crazy about it. I like a number of the characters and I really like a few of the story arcs, but I think it otherwise meanders about from occurrence to occurrence without much reason. I'm interested just enough to finish it whenever it comes back, but I'm not really anticipating it in the meantime.

 

[John Lee_275604]

Looks like we were talking about two very different things. I was commending narrative culmination as well as the beauty and coherence of big set scenes. Bob was more criticizing the slower and less narratively taut sections.

 

[BobO'Link]

No, I'm criticizing *all* their work once they ran out of books from which to draw material. The "big set scenes" (I'm assuming you mean the large battle sequences) in seasons 6 & 7 frequently go on far too long and seem to be done that way to distract you from the rather poor dialog and personal interactive scenes or simply to fill time as they don't have any dialog written to fill in gaps in the narrative. Many of those scenes, while attractive to look at, remind me of the 2-page slug fest spreads in comics. There to show off how "good" the artist is but do nothing substantial to further the story.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

It definitely became a different show once they moved past the books. I'm a big fan of both versions of the show, though the "after" seasons feel more "TV" than the "before" seasons.

 

[Josh Dial]

Damn, this thread is, in many ways, quite sad. Poor 2011 Josh so utterly happy with the adaptation of one of his favourite book series.

Flash forward to my post in the season 3 thread, where I expressed my extreme dissatisfaction for the Red Wedding adaptation (which I now consider to be the point at which the series took a downturn), and again in the season 5 thread in respect of the season premiere.

Here's another quote from me in the season 5 thread:

Guess I'm alone this season, as it's really not good in my opinion. It's pretty clear to me that Weiss and Benioff are only good at taking Martin's literal words and scenes, and not good at inventing their own.

Regarding my season 3 quote about the Red Wedding, it turns out I was totally wrong: it did affect my enjoyment of the series. Since season 3, my opinion of the show has diminished greatly. While season 7 was a great improvement on seasons 5 and 6, the show just isn't as good as it once was. I recognize I'm in the minority here, but everything is worse. The showrunners have abandoned all world building (by abandoning the Bran plot almost completely). Character development is relegated to telling, not showing. Everything gives way to action sequences (which I still maintain don't hold a candle to Black Sails' sequences). Almost every single "missing" plot line and character is important and actual "work" to advance the greater story. Almost every single "new idea" from Benioff and Weiss is bad and poorly written (if not poorly executed).

I basically stopped posting in the season 5 and 6 threads because I didn't want to be the member who constantly craps on a show others enjoy (see, for example, what happens in the Star Trek Discovery thread). I outlined most of my negative opinions in the season 7 thread, however.