It’s Time to Stop Blaming George R.R. Martin for Game of Thrones’ Demise

Professor Emeritus

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The Wolf Among You said:
No, sir.
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I broke it down way back in the day. Writing in the show was crap and they just used cheap thrills, decent source material, and complexity to hide the deficits.


Rhakim said:
Fantasy doesn't bother me. Something can be fantasy or sci fi and very well-written. And of course the other shows in the discussion aren't meant to be perfectly "real" either.

And I didn't say that GoT wasn't complicated. Soap operas can be really really complicated too. But complexity does not mean that it's well-written or has depth. That doesn't mean it's not entertaining. But I can't put it on the same level as The Wire or Breaking Bad.



Let's take "Battle of the b*stards" alone, which is supposed to be "The Greatest Game of Thrones Episode Ever!" by some of the fanboys, and break down the places where the writing and/or plot/character depth just sucked.


* Daenerys and Tyrion talking casually while violence reigns down from the sky and a wall even crumbles down near them is corny as hell. No way they wouldn't have secured themselves somewhere well away from where any of the incoming could land. But the writers set them up like the situation is desperate, even though it's not really desperate, and the way they're acting isn't in line with the situation at all - it's just a writing play to set up the next scene. And Tyrion needs to explain WAY too much here...he's really talking to the audience, not Daenerys.

* Daenerys's "You must be mistaken, we're here to discuss your surrender" was just a corny, cheap movie line that you could see coming a mile away.

* The burning of the ships was more than a bit silly. Not because it was dragons, but because the strategy was ridiculous. It was like they filmed it thinking, "they're dragons, people will believe anything", rather than having them attack or defend in the slightest strategic or realistic manner ever. If you had helicopters, would you have trained them on a single ship and kept firing on it even though its occupants were already dead or fleeing, when all the other ships were right there? Would you stay hovering in one spot when they have artillary firing like crazy? Would you unnecessarily burn the ship to the core even after Grey had just said, "Our queen likes ships"? The dragons would have been moving from ship to ship quickly, focusing on getting the people (one sweep of fire would do the trick) and disabling the weapons, not burning a single ship to the ground.

* The whole "we have to kill one of you" followed by "kill him, he's low-born" thing was as corny as hell again, seemed really contrived, poorly acted (even though the acting is usually much better), and once again, you could see what was coming a mile away.

* Tyrion's "go back and tell your people what you saw here" was another corny, cheap movie cliche that's been done a million times.

* The Sons of the Harpy's random pillaging scene gave the impression that the director had gotten tired of thinking through battle scenes and took a quick way out. Try to think in your head for a second about why those random freemen are randomly milling about outside the gate in nice little well-separated groups in the open so they can be raped and ravaged. The background that led to that scene doesn't make any sense if you think about it.

* Then the whole, "Here comes the overwhelming calvary - haha you're getting destroyed" when the Dothraki ride in was another film cliche.

* Finally, it all ends with a way-too-overtly-feminist moment.


On to the western battle....

* Ramsey being a brilliant battle commander makes no sense. He is carefully and strategically able to manipulate Jon Snow the whole time, which is totally out of line with his unhinged, emotionally unstable character. Why does every move he makes in battle perfect? This is the issue with the character development in this show. Ramsey has been able to make moves like this perfectly over and over, always executes his evil plans perfectly, even though he didn't appear at any point to be the kind of person who should have been able to plot so perfectly.

* Why does Rickon run in a straight line like an idiot, doing exactly what Ramsey wants him to do? Why is Ramsey clearly a master archer? Remember the similar but far better running scene in Apocalypto? That's how a real man would act, dodging and weaving and looking for cover, not just running like an idiot when he knows that any talented archer will taken him out the first moment he wants to.

* Why are all those men loyally fighting to the death for Ramsey again? When he murders Rickon Stark, the heir of Winterfell, right in front of their faces, why do they keep fighting? Completely unexplained.

* Davos having the archers get ready to fire, and then having them stand down because "it's no good - we'll just kill our own men" was a real sign that they're pandering to a stupid audience. There's no way he ever would have had his archers ready their arrows in the first place, and the explanation for standing down definitely wasn't necessary. Ramsey firing into the battle, and Davos not doing it, should have been enough to establish that Ramsey is a cruel man (which of course we know already). Davos's actions don't make sense except to create a cheap movie moment for an audience that needs things explained to them really slowly.

* Jon Snow losing his mind over and over, making error after error, doing a dozen things that should have gotten killed but having some lucky salvation every time, getting missed by hundreds of arrows...it just got old after a while.

* How the heck did a bunch of guys with big shields surround the other army, including calvary and a giant who can kinda see over people's heads? That made no sense whatsoever. Just a ridiculously silly thing (at least the director admitted it was a budget-saving device that was done to "look cool" on the cheap, since filming with active horizons is really expensive.

* The Stark forces are saved by a deus ex machina (here comes the new guys riding in for the rescue! - same stupid device that LOTR and the Hobbit used way too often), which is all the more silly because that device happens twice in the same episode. And for the Bolton forces to be destroyed by something outside of Ramsey/Snow's characters/relationship was really a disservice to the characters. Not to mention....why weren't these guys here earlier? Why wasn't the possibility even mentioned by Sansa? Couldn't Jon Snow have died unnecessarily ten times before this happened? Again, just audience manipulation - Jon Snow nearly dies and is barely saved just to play with the audience, not because it makes any sense when you think about it.

* Sansa getting her revenge and Ramsey being eaten by his own hounds....yet another cliche moment.


Overall, so much crap happens the way you know it has to happen for the audience, but makes no sense according to how it should happen for the characters. That's what I'm calling lack of plot/character depth. It's an audience-driven show, not a plot-driven show. They're in it for the ratings (hell, even George R.R. Martin has talked about how much he has the audience in mind when he writes), not for the world that they've created.


Like Boesky says especially, the show looks beautiful, and they're lining up those "moments" constantly, and that stuff combined with enough intricacies to go into forever will keep the fanboys hooked...just like a soap opera.
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The Wolf Among You

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Rhakim said:
I broke it down way back in the day. Writing in the show was crap and they just used cheap thrills, decent source material, and complexity to hide the deficits.
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You made some good points, but your original comment was that the writing was always crap. But most of your points are referring to the writing in later seasons that most people agree were badly written.
When you said “always” I thought you were saying the show was badly written from the beginning.
 
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DLo said:
Stop. Those last 2 seasons were awful. The first few seasons of the show classic but the fall off was the worst I have ever seen. :snoop:
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:sadcam: "I didn't get the ending I wanted"

"Every fan theory I had turned out to be false and instead of recognizing I obsessed over it a bit too much I'll just say the show sucked. Nooo Bran was suppose to be the Night King!"

Production, acting, writing, music scope and scale GoT was the standard 1 through 8.
 
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lol at @King Crimson getting so in his feelings that someone criticized the writing on "Game of Thrones" that he's tossing out negs. :mjlol:




FromStLouis said:
:sadcam: "I didn't get the ending I wanted"

"Every fan theory I had turned out to be false and instead of recognizing I obsessed over it a bit too much I'll just say the show sucked. Nooo Bran was suppose to be the Night King!"

Production, acting, writing, music scope and scale GoT was the standard 1 through 8.
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Breh, any objective observer could see shytty writing completely independent of "fan theory" desire. I had no vested interest either way but the episodes I watched the writing was terrible.

Already posted a season 6 tear-down, here's one from season 7.


Rhakim said:
Game of Thrones is fantasy/soap opera, where the plot drives the characters so they have to do stupid things they wouldn't otherwise do to keep the plot moving.


That's been even more true at the end of Season 7 than it ever has been.

Like, why did the characters make the stupid idea of trying to get a white walker? Cersei ain't joining with them in a million years whether she sees one of them things or not, and Jon Snow/Tyrion know that. It's just a stupid idea that the writers forced the characters into to create an exciting suspense scene followed by a dragon fight followed by a zombie dragon.

As always, there was constant deux ex machina shyt (Benjen Stark coming out of nowhere to rescue Jon Snow, the dragons showing up at the right time - flying in like two minutes after the raven got sent - like they always do, Bran suddenly coming up with the knowledge right when it will doom Littlefinger, etc.).

Constant, “Oh look, the hero is almost drowning but he won’t drown!” shyt.

Constant really bad plans that still work out with people surviving due to some miracle.

When will Bran decide to use his sight? Only in the rare moments when the plot demands it. When will the dragons get used? However will best lead to some great buildup followed by a spectacular fight. When will dragons get killed? In the exact situation that will make something cool happen. When will things that should be difficult instead happen really easily (Jaime and Bronn getting away from the train attack, Jaime and Tyrion meeting in King’s landing without even a disguise, the dead magically not being able to get across or even throw shyt at a little island to kill them), it’s because the plot needs it to happen easily.


It's like a Ke$ha song - it's entertaining for a lot of people, you get why it appeals so much to its target audience, but it is NOT a great piece of work for anything other than pleasing easy audiences.
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FromStLouis said:
:sadcam: "I didn't get the ending I wanted"

"Every fan theory I had turned out to be false and instead of recognizing I obsessed over it a bit too much I'll just say the show sucked. Nooo Bran was suppose to be the Night King!"

Production, acting, writing, music scope and scale GoT was the standard 1 through 8.
Click to expand...
George RR Martin don't even agree with this shyt :mjlol:
 
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