S_W_LeGenD
Game of Thrones TV show - in its present form - is no longer the same show that set it apart from others in immersion and storytelling experiences during the days of Seasons (1 - 5).
Current crop of producers have reduced this show from brilliance in TV adaptation to a completely (fan-servicing) exercise .
I see fans praising each episode of Season 7 blindly - without realizing how much this show have declined in quality since Season 5. Die-hard fans are only interested in watching Dany and Jon having an affair, Dany dethroning Cersei and the entire humanity banding together to defeat the Knight's King; a happy ending for the protagonists and long live Jon Snow archetypes. Unfortunately, fans are the reason why producers have lost touch with gripping aspects of the lore behind Game of Thrones TV show - a Song of Ice and Fire from its original author Martin.
Example of my critic of Season 7 of Game of Thrones:-
Originally posted by S_W_LeGenD
Seasons 1 - 5 were quality storytelling - scores of decent subplots enriched the holistic storytelling experience. Season 6 went downhill in storytelling aspect but it carried itself with memorable works like Battle of the Bastards and Dany and outwitting the forces of resistance in Meereen.
However, SEASON 7 has not only written all over it but it also seems that producers have run out of budget. Slashing the number of episodes was a bad idea (HBO should not have pulled the plug from a show of this caliber, if it is responsible - bad decision).
1. Euron has a huge fleet? How?
Euron a threat but not to the extent that he literally wiped out much of the Dany's fleet in a span of 2 episodes. He should have lost some ships in the first battle and be reluctant to act for a while. However, he demolished Yara's fleet without breaking a sweat, had time to boast about his success in the King's Landing and then suddenly came to Casterly Rock and wiped out the fleet of Unsullied as well. This is looking artificial now - comically bad in short.
2. Casterly Rock should have been adequately defended - Unsullied victory should have been hard fought (and earned) so that Grey Worm would have a sense of accomplishment of his own as a commander and further character-building experience. This battle should also have spanned at least 30 minutes in duration. However, what we get to see is that Casterly Rock was not adequately defended and Tyrion had informed Grey Worm how to sneak inside. Then Euron came out of nowhere and burned his entire fleet. WTF is this? Taking over Casterly Rock felt like a lost cause and Unsullied victory looked cheap.
3. Arya single-handedly slaughtering the entire House Frey - WTF is this? Assassination of the elder Frey and his sons should have been enough to put this house into disarray and an easy picking at a later stage. Arya has certainly learned a lot in her journey but she is not a Marvel Character - producers have went overboard with her skills now.
4. Defeat of Olenna Tyrell felt rushed and lacked much depth. This should have been a hard fought battle but a notable victory for the Lannisters. And this battle should also have spanned 30 minutes in total. However, much of it was skimmed.
5. Jon Snow can only think about the Night's King. Dany completely failed to intimidate him (even with a demonstration of Dragons; anybody who have seen them for the first time would be shitting his pants) and acted TOUGH as if he is in the position to extract benefits from her and does not risks loosing his head. Jon didn't had to bend the knee so soon but he wasn't in the position to act TOUGH either. The whole Jon and Dany arc seems to be a huge fan-servicing experience to me and this is too predictable.
Don't get me wrong. I am not asserting that unpredictable plot is the key to good storytelling - it is not. However, story progression should have element of depth in it, developments should be fulfilling experiences and even predictable story elements can have a degree of unpredictability in them.
Season 7 is complete horseshit the more I come to analyze it critically.
I haven't even touched the Little Finger angle.
Here is a brilliant piece of critic from one of the writers for Forbes:-
5 Ways 'Game Of Thrones' Has Changed For The Worse
As Game Of Thrones returns for its seventh season, I've decided to start over from the beginning. Alongside the three first episodes of Season 7, I've re-watched the first three episodes of Season 1.
One of the things I've noticed right away is just how many references to the first season are packed into the current one. For instance:
- Jaime and Cersei quarrel over Bran and Jaime says: "The boy won't talk. And if he does, I'll kill him, Ned Stark, the king, the whole bloody lot of them until you and I are the only people left in this world." There's echoes of that when Cersei tells Jaime earlier this season that they're the only ones left. Jaime's words ended up being a bit too prophetic.
- Jon goes south, as Ned grudgingly did back in Season 1, as his father did before Robert's rebellion. It never seems to end well. But Jon isn't a Stark, so...maybe he'll be the exception.
- Sam sees an illustration of the knife the assassin used in Season 1 in his botched attempt on Bran's life.
- All the little direwolf pups, including Nymeria who we finally see return in Season
- Magister Illyrio telling Viserys that the people of Westeros drink "secret toasts" in his name, something that Dany throws in Varys's face this season.
There are more references like this, of course, all to a season that aired over half a decade ago. You'd be forgiven for missing some (or most) of them, and it's kind of neat to go back and re-watch these early episodes to see how full circle the show has come.
On the other hand, watching the first season also helps underscore some of the problems the current season is facing---problems that I've written about before, but which I want to go into more detail about here, using Season 1 as a reference. Let's start with...
1. Things actually happened to characters as they traveled from one place to the next.
IMAGE: https://blogs-images.forbes.com/erikkain/files/2017/07/tyrion-jon.jpg
One of the best critiques of Game Of Thrones as it stands now is that there's no sense of time and distance. Characters, entire armies, and even entire fleets of ships seem to teleport across Westeros without any regard for time or geography.
But in Season 1, this isn't an issue. Even though characters move great distances even in just one episode, it's always anchored to a sense of time and distance either through events that happen along the way, or snippets of exposition.
For instance, in Season 1 we learn that King Robert and his retinue are traveling to Winterfell. Shortly after we learn this, they arrive. Why doesn't this feel like teleportation/fast travel? Because characters mention that Robert rode for 30 days to get there. We know that time has passed, and the chronology holds. We even see it in the growth of the direwolf pups. At one point Catelyn mentions how fast they grow, but the fact that they've grown at all suggests a passage of time.
Another thing that the show (based on the books at this point) does is convey passage of time through scenes along the way from one place to the next. When Ned Stark and his daughters travel south, we get at least two scenes along the way.
In the first of these, Ned and Robert discuss wenches, and Ned awkwardly refuses to discuss Jon's mother with the king. We see their friendship in this moment, which then spills over into the second, more harrowing scene.
Here Joffrey shows his true colors, tormenting the butcher's boy Arya is playing with. When he starts attacking Arya after she intervenes, Nymeria saves her, and the resulting horrors firmly establish Robert as a weak, pathetic man and Cersei as a horrible, vindictive woman. But beyond how these character moments establish the cast, these stops along the way to King's Landing give us a sense of time and distance.
I would also add that oftentimes these moments along the way are some of the best in the show. When Catelyn encounters Tyrion and arrests him on the road, she sets many terrible things into motion. If Season 1 had engaged in such blatant fast travel, Catelyn would never have even run into Tyrion; Joffrey would never have had the Hound kill the butcher's boy; and Jon and Tyrion wouldn't have sat around talking about books.
Continued...
Current crop of producers have reduced this show from brilliance in TV adaptation to a completely (fan-servicing) exercise .
I see fans praising each episode of Season 7 blindly - without realizing how much this show have declined in quality since Season 5. Die-hard fans are only interested in watching Dany and Jon having an affair, Dany dethroning Cersei and the entire humanity banding together to defeat the Knight's King; a happy ending for the protagonists and long live Jon Snow archetypes. Unfortunately, fans are the reason why producers have lost touch with gripping aspects of the lore behind Game of Thrones TV show - a Song of Ice and Fire from its original author Martin.
Example of my critic of Season 7 of Game of Thrones:-
Originally posted by S_W_LeGenD
Seasons 1 - 5 were quality storytelling - scores of decent subplots enriched the holistic storytelling experience. Season 6 went downhill in storytelling aspect but it carried itself with memorable works like Battle of the Bastards and Dany and outwitting the forces of resistance in Meereen.
However, SEASON 7 has not only written all over it but it also seems that producers have run out of budget. Slashing the number of episodes was a bad idea (HBO should not have pulled the plug from a show of this caliber, if it is responsible - bad decision).
1. Euron has a huge fleet? How?
Euron a threat but not to the extent that he literally wiped out much of the Dany's fleet in a span of 2 episodes. He should have lost some ships in the first battle and be reluctant to act for a while. However, he demolished Yara's fleet without breaking a sweat, had time to boast about his success in the King's Landing and then suddenly came to Casterly Rock and wiped out the fleet of Unsullied as well. This is looking artificial now - comically bad in short.
2. Casterly Rock should have been adequately defended - Unsullied victory should have been hard fought (and earned) so that Grey Worm would have a sense of accomplishment of his own as a commander and further character-building experience. This battle should also have spanned at least 30 minutes in duration. However, what we get to see is that Casterly Rock was not adequately defended and Tyrion had informed Grey Worm how to sneak inside. Then Euron came out of nowhere and burned his entire fleet. WTF is this? Taking over Casterly Rock felt like a lost cause and Unsullied victory looked cheap.
3. Arya single-handedly slaughtering the entire House Frey - WTF is this? Assassination of the elder Frey and his sons should have been enough to put this house into disarray and an easy picking at a later stage. Arya has certainly learned a lot in her journey but she is not a Marvel Character - producers have went overboard with her skills now.
4. Defeat of Olenna Tyrell felt rushed and lacked much depth. This should have been a hard fought battle but a notable victory for the Lannisters. And this battle should also have spanned 30 minutes in total. However, much of it was skimmed.
5. Jon Snow can only think about the Night's King. Dany completely failed to intimidate him (even with a demonstration of Dragons; anybody who have seen them for the first time would be shitting his pants) and acted TOUGH as if he is in the position to extract benefits from her and does not risks loosing his head. Jon didn't had to bend the knee so soon but he wasn't in the position to act TOUGH either. The whole Jon and Dany arc seems to be a huge fan-servicing experience to me and this is too predictable.
Don't get me wrong. I am not asserting that unpredictable plot is the key to good storytelling - it is not. However, story progression should have element of depth in it, developments should be fulfilling experiences and even predictable story elements can have a degree of unpredictability in them.
Season 7 is complete horseshit the more I come to analyze it critically.
I haven't even touched the Little Finger angle.
Here is a brilliant piece of critic from one of the writers for Forbes:-
5 Ways 'Game Of Thrones' Has Changed For The Worse
As Game Of Thrones returns for its seventh season, I've decided to start over from the beginning. Alongside the three first episodes of Season 7, I've re-watched the first three episodes of Season 1.
One of the things I've noticed right away is just how many references to the first season are packed into the current one. For instance:
- Jaime and Cersei quarrel over Bran and Jaime says: "The boy won't talk. And if he does, I'll kill him, Ned Stark, the king, the whole bloody lot of them until you and I are the only people left in this world." There's echoes of that when Cersei tells Jaime earlier this season that they're the only ones left. Jaime's words ended up being a bit too prophetic.
- Jon goes south, as Ned grudgingly did back in Season 1, as his father did before Robert's rebellion. It never seems to end well. But Jon isn't a Stark, so...maybe he'll be the exception.
- Sam sees an illustration of the knife the assassin used in Season 1 in his botched attempt on Bran's life.
- All the little direwolf pups, including Nymeria who we finally see return in Season
- Magister Illyrio telling Viserys that the people of Westeros drink "secret toasts" in his name, something that Dany throws in Varys's face this season.
There are more references like this, of course, all to a season that aired over half a decade ago. You'd be forgiven for missing some (or most) of them, and it's kind of neat to go back and re-watch these early episodes to see how full circle the show has come.
On the other hand, watching the first season also helps underscore some of the problems the current season is facing---problems that I've written about before, but which I want to go into more detail about here, using Season 1 as a reference. Let's start with...
1. Things actually happened to characters as they traveled from one place to the next.
IMAGE: https://blogs-images.forbes.com/erikkain/files/2017/07/tyrion-jon.jpg
One of the best critiques of Game Of Thrones as it stands now is that there's no sense of time and distance. Characters, entire armies, and even entire fleets of ships seem to teleport across Westeros without any regard for time or geography.
But in Season 1, this isn't an issue. Even though characters move great distances even in just one episode, it's always anchored to a sense of time and distance either through events that happen along the way, or snippets of exposition.
For instance, in Season 1 we learn that King Robert and his retinue are traveling to Winterfell. Shortly after we learn this, they arrive. Why doesn't this feel like teleportation/fast travel? Because characters mention that Robert rode for 30 days to get there. We know that time has passed, and the chronology holds. We even see it in the growth of the direwolf pups. At one point Catelyn mentions how fast they grow, but the fact that they've grown at all suggests a passage of time.
Another thing that the show (based on the books at this point) does is convey passage of time through scenes along the way from one place to the next. When Ned Stark and his daughters travel south, we get at least two scenes along the way.
In the first of these, Ned and Robert discuss wenches, and Ned awkwardly refuses to discuss Jon's mother with the king. We see their friendship in this moment, which then spills over into the second, more harrowing scene.
Here Joffrey shows his true colors, tormenting the butcher's boy Arya is playing with. When he starts attacking Arya after she intervenes, Nymeria saves her, and the resulting horrors firmly establish Robert as a weak, pathetic man and Cersei as a horrible, vindictive woman. But beyond how these character moments establish the cast, these stops along the way to King's Landing give us a sense of time and distance.
I would also add that oftentimes these moments along the way are some of the best in the show. When Catelyn encounters Tyrion and arrests him on the road, she sets many terrible things into motion. If Season 1 had engaged in such blatant fast travel, Catelyn would never have even run into Tyrion; Joffrey would never have had the Hound kill the butcher's boy; and Jon and Tyrion wouldn't have sat around talking about books.
Continued...