Where do you think Game of Thrones went wrong?

[NobodyReally]

Season 2 when Arya Stark sat down to have a chill convo with Tywin Lannister I knew the show was gonna eventually jump the shark. No one believed me but I stopped watching after that. There's no way either character would have interacted like that.

 

[the cool]

Although most people blame season 7 and 8 for GOT not being the GOAT, I've always felt that the show went down hill around season 5 or so. Focusing on the high septum/sparrows, Dorne, and the bullshyt going on with Daenerys really set back the show. To me they killed off Joffrey and Tywin too soon. They should have waited another season. I know it's based on the books but I still think they should have done that differently. The show really struggled with having a main villain after Tywin was killed. Ramsey filled a great role for the Stark Arc, but there was no more true threat with the Lannisters that gave the show its main drive.

when the books ran out

5 they didn't have a book to follow. thats why 1-4 was so goat

 

[Tasha And]

when the books ran out

5 they didn't have a book to follow. thats why 1-4 was so goat

They did have books to follow for 5. They decided to cut most of the characters and actual plots from books 4 and 5, which is what season 5 turned out to be.

Season 1 - A Game of Thrones (book 1)
Season 2 - A Clash of Kings (book 2)
Season 3 - A Storm of Swords (book 3)
Season 4 - A Storm of Swords (book 3)
Season 5 - A Feast for Crows (book 4)/A Dance with Dragons (book 5)

 

[O.Red]

They did have books to follow for 5. They decided to cut most of the characters and actual plots from books 4 and 5, which is what season 5 turned out to be.

Season 1 - A Game of Thrones (book 1)
Season 2 - A Clash of Kings (book 2)
Season 3 - A Storm of Swords (book 3)
Season 4 - A Storm of Swords (book 3)
Season 5 - A Feast for Crows (book 4)/A Dance with Dragons (book 5)

Again down to bias

I think they cut most of the Dorne shyt out because they saw it as boring/not too important. I think it reflects the common consensus about Feast For Crows.

I can understand this reasoning even with them butchering Dorne as bad as they did. The real pity is I felt the same way about Feast For Crows as many others until my first reread. That book is actually

 

[The Devil's Advocate]

Although I completely understand why people are mad at Mad Queen Dany I think there's a bit of unfairness on it

The writers definitely blew it BUT

I think there's a macro reason why Dany's change appears to be "out of the blue"

Dany throws nikkas off guard because they're so used to female characters talking and behaving the way she did, which was GRRMs point in writing Dany in the first place. She's meant to be a subversion of the type of characters girls and women love to read about

With nikkas guards down they failed to discern that Dany BEEN an a$$hole since at least season 3 she became increasingly indulgent and selfish. And she had some cases that justified her anger. But you don't get a nikka back like THAT

A good trick to notice in fiction is when a character starts going "I I I,me me me. I am this. I'M gonna do that" Characters that talk like that become VILLAINS my nikka. Juxtapose that with Jon, the reluctant hero. Another common trope

D&D's selfishness and eventual laziness ruined the Dany arc, but her becoming what she was wasn't as "out of the blue" as nikkas think

This is spot on. Danny's heel turn at the end was something from a mile away, since her character arc is one of the variations of a tragic protagonist that you see more often than not. Doubly so when you consider that the character could be seen as an analog of Alexander the Great.

The problem (along with others) is, like you said, down to how the writers executed it. They spent a lot of the series with that storyline on a low boil, and then just cranked it up in the last couple of episodes. Additionally, the show has an absolute awful relationship with time. It doesn't convey how much time passes in between events, so it has the result of cheapening some of the events.

For example, it seems like Jon's storyline is supposed to ultimately be like an undercover cop who spends too much time in deep cover, become disillusioned with their duties, and ultimately sympathizes with the people he was supposed to be snitching on. But since the majority of his on screen time posing as a wilding occurs in one season, the show almost argues he got the first semester college freshman experience of leaving home for the first time, listening to a professor with a couple decent lectures, made a friend, clapped some cheeks, and came out a changed man.

Nah I call bullshyt. Maybe because I haven't read far in the books, but I think you both have a lot of bias here. That shyt was not telegraphed at all

Dany would do some wild shyt, but it was ALWAYS based in a sensible way. Even when she went out her way to get revenge, it was for a valid reason. The witch lady, the khals who wouldn't let her leave, her brother, the rich guy she burned in the temple...........

It was measured. And usually she could be easily talked out of it. And felt regret and remorse when doing something wrong. She was forgiving those who wronged her and her family. She didn't want the fighting pits. She didn't want slaves. She could have rode in with dragons day one, she wanted to win the people


All the sudden THE fukkING PEOPLE ring the bells and give up. And that's when she decides, you know what, lets kill EVERYONE. Reign fire on her own people, her new friends, her lover who was down there, babies, slaves, women, children, sick, dying, don't matter. Just mass murder all of them cause why again??

I get seeing your people die is traumatic, but get all the way the fukk out of here. Nobody on the entire show was nutty enough to make me say "Yea they'd kill everyone in King's Landing after they won"... Let alone The Breaker of Chains


They went wrong with not hinting at that a lot more.

 

[Liu Kang]

Plenty of good reasons and I think one that was not stated was the insistance of writing medieval characters with today's style. In the first seasons, there was a real feeling of past times and behaviors of a distant era and that disappeared with time leading to caricatural characters.

A good illustration of that caricature is how men got dumbed down progressively and reduced to warring idiots letting women fill the void of playing the game of thrones :
- Night King advancing the battlefield with 0 cover only to be clapped by Arya out of nowhere
- Littlefinger outmaneuvered by Sansa and Arya and Sansa ending ruling the North
- Varys and Tyrion making the most ludicrous mistakes by conspiring against Dany
- Jon being a dumbass who cant take any kind of decision
- the Greyjoy men being idiots while Yara is the only level headed one and end up ruling Iron Islands ?
- Euron being a fool and easily played by Cersei
- Jamie losing any type of intelligence and going back to Cersei

Like in the first seasons, you had finesse between men and subtle chess plays to beat their foes. Smarts in battle, diplomatic alliances and traps so they could tilt the balance towards them and all but that dried up quickly.

Strong women leads were more than welcome in the show as it led to great characters like Cersei or Olenna but it seems it was done at the expense of the men characters. If you compare the first season to the last one, it's night and day how dumb men became overall

 

[Spiritual Stratocaster]

Season 2 when Arya Stark sat down to have a chill convo with Tywin Lannister I knew the show was gonna eventually jump the shark. No one believed me but I stopped watching after that. There's no way either character would have interacted like that.

That happened in the books if I recall..

TYWIN suspected her because of her accent and how she pronounces "meh lord" I stead of "my lord" or something like that.

 

[NobodyReally]

That happened in the books if I recall..

TYWIN suspected her because of her accent and how she pronounces "meh lord" I stead of "my lord" or something like that.

Arya Stark and Tywin Lannister NEVER interacted in the books. It just didn't make sense at all. In the original scene that the show tried to recreate, it was Arya and Roose Bolton, which makes much more sense. Ugh, just thinking about all of the unnecessary changes annoys the shyt out of me.

 

[Legal]

Nah I call bullshyt. Maybe because I haven't read far in the books, but I think you both have a lot of bias here. That shyt was not telegraphed at all

Dany would do some wild shyt, but it was ALWAYS based in a sensible way. Even when she went out her way to get revenge, it was for a valid reason. The witch lady, the khals who wouldn't let her leave, her brother, the rich guy she burned in the temple...........

It was measured. And usually she could be easily talked out of it. And felt regret and remorse when doing something wrong. She was forgiving those who wronged her and her family. She didn't want the fighting pits. She didn't want slaves. She could have rode in with dragons day one, she wanted to win the people


All the sudden THE fukkING PEOPLE ring the bells and give up. And that's when she decides, you know what, lets kill EVERYONE. Reign fire on her own people, her new friends, her lover who was down there, babies, slaves, women, children, sick, dying, don't matter. Just mass murder all of them cause why again??

I get seeing your people die is traumatic, but get all the way the fukk out of here. Nobody on the entire show was nutty enough to make me say "Yea they'd kill everyone in King's Landing after they won"... Let alone The Breaker of Chains


They went wrong with not hinting at that a lot more.

Haven't read the books at all. Tried reading the first book, and it started really dry for me, so I put it down something like 10 years ago, and have yet to pick it back up. I just watched the show along with everyone else, so I don't really have a bias or preference to go off of.

However, I've watched enough TV and movies to know a setup when I see one. The problem with Dany for a lot of people is that they often take a character being a protagonist as automatically being right, despite their flaws. The biggest red flag presented throughout the entire series was that everything about her pursuit of the Iron Throne was centered around her believing herself to be entitled to it by birthright. She lives out her life believing that she is a queen in exile who will return as a beloved savior, and has a massive messiah complex. She's told multiple times by everyone around her that her approach ultimately won't work, but most of her solutions are "But I got dragons, tho." It was painfully obvious that she was never going to be the kind and just ruler she thought she was going to be. Her snapping at the end is SUPPOSED to be a culmination of her having nearly every single dream of hers snatched away by someone else (Jon is the actual heir to the throne, and clearly the better option as ruler, she loses her spot as fire slinging savior because Arya is the one to kill the Night King, not her or her remaining dragon, and on top of that the people of Westeros aren't fukking with her like that), but they fukked it up by serving her most of those Ls in the previous four episodes because they blew through the last two seasons.

 

[Spiritual Stratocaster]

Arya Stark and Tywin Lannister NEVER interacted in the books. It just didn't make sense at all. In the original scene that the show tried to recreate, it was Arya and Roose Bolton, which makes much more sense. Ugh, just thinking about all of the unnecessary changes annoys the shyt out of me.

Oh damn you're right​

 

[SunZoo]

As someone who didn't read the books and has no reference for when they didn't follow the source material...the show got wack to me RIGHT as I was getting to the part that I wanted to see so badly, Ayra in Braavos with the faceless men.

Here I am locked the fukk in...and they just kept making little mistakes and rushing shyt that soured on me real quick. Soon as that happened shyt just kinda took a nosedive and I was watching more just to come to a conclusion. It just kept getting worse though, I thought maybe here's a dip and they'll ride it out more level from there. But D&D clearly wanted the fukk out.

 

[O.Red]

Nah I call bullshyt. Maybe because I haven't read far in the books, but I think you both have a lot of bias here. That shyt was not telegraphed at all

Dany would do some wild shyt, but it was ALWAYS based in a sensible way. Even when she went out her way to get revenge, it was for a valid reason. The witch lady, the khals who wouldn't let her leave, her brother, the rich guy she burned in the temple...........

It was measured. And usually she could be easily talked out of it. And felt regret and remorse when doing something wrong. She was forgiving those who wronged her and her family. She didn't want the fighting pits. She didn't want slaves. She could have rode in with dragons day one, she wanted to win the people


All the sudden THE fukkING PEOPLE ring the bells and give up. And that's when she decides, you know what, lets kill EVERYONE. Reign fire on her own people, her new friends, her lover who was down there, babies, slaves, women, children, sick, dying, don't matter. Just mass murder all of them cause why again??

I get seeing your people die is traumatic, but get all the way the fukk out of here. Nobody on the entire show was nutty enough to make me say "Yea they'd kill everyone in King's Landing after they won"... Let alone The Breaker of Chains


They went wrong with not hinting at that a lot more.

You said all that shyt just to end up agreeing with our posts with your last sentence

We're saying the same thing essentially

The Dany foreshadowing was there, but juxtaposed with her going from level 1 to level 10 yes it was a mess

But again we can't act like Dany wasn't an a$$hole with progressively more Karen-ish tendencies the bigger them dragons got. But once again we're so used to seeing that from female characters it doesn't register

And YES she was justified in most of the shyt she did. But so was Anakin Skywalker

Being a villain ain't about being right, it's about how a character reacts to being wronged

 

[O.Red]

when the books ran out

5 they didn't have a book to follow. thats why 1-4 was so goat

That's not true

Season 5 was Feast For Crows/Dance with Dragons. The events of two these books run concurrently

The first season with a majority of non book material was season 6, which funny enough, is arguably the best season

 

[SuavePrince]

I typed a long ass post about it in the main thread but in short

The first domino was the writers clear biases, mainly in regards to Tyrion

Tyrion is who he is largely because of what happened to his first wife Tysha. This situation draws a straight line to him killing Tywin. In the show they tried to have it both ways and make it about Shae but in the books Tyrion knew Shae never loved him and was only playing a role for money. Tysha and Tyrion were truly in love with each other

Also changing it from the book to where Tyrion kills Shae in self defense murders the character. They did this so that Tyrion didn't look like such a bad person for killing Shae, while in the books Tyrion literally murders Shae in a bloody rage.

After this Tyrion goes down a path of cynicism and self loathing that is not portrayed in the show. Throwing whole chunks of characterization away like that is how by season 8 he's just a paperweight repeating old lines for fan service

There are more biases(their love for Cersei and their hate for Stannis the most obvious) but the beginning of the end of this shows integrity started with Tyrion

Agreed they butchered my favorite character its so sad man smh

 

[SuavePrince]

Plenty of good reasons and I think one that was not stated was the insistance of writing medieval characters with today's style. In the first seasons, there was a real feeling of past times and behaviors of a distant era and that disappeared with time leading to caricatural characters.

A good illustration of that caricature is how men got dumbed down progressively and reduced to warring idiots letting women fill the void of playing the game of thrones :
- Night King advancing the battlefield with 0 cover only to be clapped by Arya out of nowhere
- Littlefinger outmaneuvered by Sansa and Arya and Sansa ending ruling the North
- Varys and Tyrion making the most ludicrous mistakes by conspiring against Dany
- Jon being a dumbass who cant take any kind of decision
- the Greyjoy men being idiots while Yara is the only level headed one and end up ruling Iron Islands ?
- Euron being a fool and easily played by Cersei
- Jamie losing any type of intelligence and going back to Cersei

Like in the first seasons, you had finesse between men and subtle chess plays to beat their foes. Smarts in battle, diplomatic alliances and traps so they could tilt the balance towards them and all but that dried up quickly.

Strong women leads were more than welcome in the show as it led to great characters like Cersei or Olenna but it seems it was done at the expense of the men characters. If you compare the first season to the last one, it's night and day how dumb men became overall

Basically turned into a feminist pleasing drama nice way of looking at it