Honestly, what do you think about Season 8? Mod warning post #1/#410

micko1234

An absolute master class from start to finish, I have started Frontier on Netflix, great show too.

Raisins

Foxtrol wrote: »

Feel this season will stand up better for people who binge watch it straight after the others. No matter what they did with the last few seasons it was always going to seem rushed compared to the GRRM material, but by limiting the time lag between episodes and seasons it will allow character arcs and storylines to flow better and not seem as rushed as we found it watching along.

Not at all in my experience this is exactly what I did I binged all the GOT this year to catch up just before the last episode aired. Season 8 is actually worse if you binge watch after the other seasons the drop off in quality is absolutely laughable.

Apart from all the crazy stuff that doesn’t make sense and the guillotine of character development the dialogue in the last few episodes is embarrassing it’s so cringey at times.

People who say this is just a lot of fan boys too invested in the show or that it will age better in time are way off the mark. It will be a show famous for a few things including just how awful the ending is.

Mousewar

Having let the dust settle, I think the single biggest problem with the series, the thing that most left audiences unsatisfied, was the complete and utter neutering of Jon as a character.

Every series like this needs a hero (or an antihero). GoT was wonderfully refreshing in that when you thought someone was that hero (Ned, Robb) they pulled the rug from under you. But there still had to be a hero and that was Jon, or at least it was meant to be. The show told us this through two key plotlines.

The first was Jon's lineage - a major plot reveal, done to stirring music at season end. Jon was the true king - heir to the Iron throne. The second was that he was literally raised from the dead. People who are unimportant don't get raised from the dead. It's a Messiah theme. Jon was meant to be the Messiah, raised to save the world from the darkness. He had a mission, a purpose.

But neither of these two plotlines had any payoff. Jon's lineage meant nothing. It did nothing. If he had just been Ned Stark's bastard, he'd still have won back Winterfell, he'd still have met and fallen in love with Dany. The only difference was that his familial relationship with Dany put the brakes on his relationship with her and may have contributed to her mental break. Is that it? Is that really satisfactory payoff for the setup of the importance of his lineage? He wasn't even mentioned when they discussed appointing a new king. I think him going north is, in theory, a fitting ending for his character but not like this, banished there like some petty criminal. It should have been him turning down the throne having won it already.

As for his resurrection, exactly what was he brought back for? The Lord of Light is, we are told, uninterested in thrones, so the resurrection can only really relate to the fight against the Night King. But Jon didn't kill the NK, they gave that to Arya. Some people tell me that Jon was needed to unite the north against the undead as if that is meant to be a satisfactory payoff. It's not. Plenty of people could have done that. Why not resurrect Ned or Robb? Why not Sansa - they made it clear she was capable. There had to be somethig uniquely special about Jon to justify a resurrection storyline, something he achieves that no one else could and something clear and specific. Something like killing the NK.

Ultimately, what did Jon achieve over 8 seasons? He didn't even win the Battle of the Bastards, Littlefinger and the knights of the Vale won it for him. The only thing of substance he really did was murder his aunt/girlfriend, stabbing her in the chest. Is that it?

That is why it feels so deeply deflating when, after 8 seasons, your main hero character just peters out like a total irrelevance.

PressRun

Mousewar wrote: »

Having let the dust settle, I think the single biggest problem with the series, the thing that most left audiences unsatisfied, was the complete and utter neutering of Jon as a character.

Every series like this needs a hero (or an antihero). GoT was wonderfully refreshing in that when you thought someone was that hero (Ned, Robb) they pulled the rug from under you. But there still had to be a hero and that was Jon, or at least it was meant to be. The show told us this through two key plotlines.

The first was Jon's lineage - a major plot reveal, done to stirring music at season end. Jon was the true king - heir to the Iron throne. The second was that he was literally raised from the dead. People who are unimportant don't get raised from the dead. It's a Messiah theme. Jon was meant to be the Messiah, raised to save the world from the darkness. He had a mission, a purpose.

But neither of these two plotlines had any payoff. Jon's lineage meant nothing. It did nothing. If he had just been Ned Stark's bastard, he'd still have won back Winterfell, he'd still have met and fallen in love with Dany. The only difference was that his familial relationship with Dany put the brakes on his relationship with her and may have contributed to her mental break. Is that it? Is that really satisfactory payoff for the setup of the importance of his lineage? He wasn't even mentioned when they discussed appointing a new king. I think him going north is, in theory, a fitting ending for his character but not like this, banished there like some petty criminal. It should have been him turning down the throne having won it already.

As for his resurrection, exactly what was he brought back for? The Lord of Light is, we are told, uninterested in thrones, so the resurrection can only really relate to the fight against the Night King. But Jon didn't kill the NK, they gave that to Arya. Some people tell me that Jon was needed to unite the north against the undead as if that is meant to be a satisfactory payoff. It's not. Plenty of people could have done that. Why not resurrect Ned or Robb? Why not Sansa - they made it clear she was capable. There had to be somethig uniquely special about Jon to justify a resurrection storyline, something he achieves that no one else could and something clear and specific. Something like killing the NK.

Ultimately, what did Jon achieve over 8 seasons? He didn't even win the Battle of the Bastards, Littlefinger and the knights of the Vale won it for him. The only thing of substance he really did was murder his aunt/girlfriend, stabbing her in the chest. Is that it?

That is why it feels so deeply deflating when, after 8 seasons, your main hero character just peters out like a total irrelevance.

You've said it all perfectly, but I just wanted to say I agree. The more I think back on it, the more the disservice done to the Jon Snow character grates.

EagererBeaver

It was absolutely ****ing awful.

facehugger99

I honestly think it would have been much, much better if he hadn't be resurrected.

I remember how shocking his death was when i read the last book and it really felt cheap to resurrect him (I'm aware that resurrection as a concept was already established in the show/books - it still doesn't sit right). One of the things that made the ASOIAF series so compelling and tense was the sense that any of the characters could die at any time. It was so unlike the usual deus ex machina tropes that are common in fiction.

Considering what they ended up doing with the character, it really made no sense to go back on all that made the series so different and resurrect him after a couple of episodes.

OneOfThem Stumbled

facehugger99 wrote: »

I honestly think it would have been much, much better if he hadn't be resurrected.

I remember how shocking his death was when i read the last book and it really felt cheap to resurrect him (I'm aware that resurrection as a concept was already established in the show/books - it still doesn't sit right). One of the things that made the ASOIAF series so compelling and tense was the sense that any of the characters could die at any time. It was so unlike the usual deus ex machina tropes that are common in fiction.

Considering what they ended up doing with the character, it really made no sense to go back on all that made the series so different and resurrect him after a couple of episodes.

The only significant things that Jon got up to after being resurrected was the Battle of the Bastards, his conflict with Sansa over ruling the North, kidnapping the zombie, and killing Daenerys, and personally I think the last two things, maybe even three things would have been better cut altogether.

The Battle of the Bastards might even have been more interesting as being Sansa against Ramsay... it would have been two generals facing off against one another, instead on one general (Ramsay) and one berserker (Jon) with the actually decisive action being played by Sansa (who obtained the knights of the Vale). Sansa is even the one who kills Ramsay in the end anyway!

If someone was watching this series from scratch I'd tell them to stop after Season 7 episode 4, and skip straight to Season 8 episode 1, and then finish altogether at Season 8 episode 3. The move of Daenerys from the Reach to the North might seem a bit disjointed for anybody doing it this way, but it's not like the series hadn't been using teleporters already. The end of the white walkers would still be a bit anti-climatic, but it's the best ending that can be derived without an entire rewrite.

Brian?

Mousewar wrote: »

Having let the dust settle, I think the single biggest problem with the series, the thing that most left audiences unsatisfied, was the complete and utter neutering of Jon as a character.

Every series like this needs a hero (or an antihero). GoT was wonderfully refreshing in that when you thought someone was that hero (Ned, Robb) they pulled the rug from under you. But there still had to be a hero and that was Jon, or at least it was meant to be. The show told us this through two key plotlines.

The first was Jon's lineage - a major plot reveal, done to stirring music at season end. Jon was the true king - heir to the Iron throne. The second was that he was literally raised from the dead. People who are unimportant don't get raised from the dead. It's a Messiah theme. Jon was meant to be the Messiah, raised to save the world from the darkness. He had a mission, a purpose.

But neither of these two plotlines had any payoff. Jon's lineage meant nothing. It did nothing. If he had just been Ned Stark's bastard, he'd still have won back Winterfell, he'd still have met and fallen in love with Dany. The only difference was that his familial relationship with Dany put the brakes on his relationship with her and may have contributed to her mental break. Is that it? Is that really satisfactory payoff for the setup of the importance of his lineage? He wasn't even mentioned when they discussed appointing a new king. I think him going north is, in theory, a fitting ending for his character but not like this, banished there like some petty criminal. It should have been him turning down the throne having won it already.

As for his resurrection, exactly what was he brought back for? The Lord of Light is, we are told, uninterested in thrones, so the resurrection can only really relate to the fight against the Night King. But Jon didn't kill the NK, they gave that to Arya. Some people tell me that Jon was needed to unite the north against the undead as if that is meant to be a satisfactory payoff. It's not. Plenty of people could have done that. Why not resurrect Ned or Robb? Why not Sansa - they made it clear she was capable. There had to be somethig uniquely special about Jon to justify a resurrection storyline, something he achieves that no one else could and something clear and specific. Something like killing the NK.

Ultimately, what did Jon achieve over 8 seasons? He didn't even win the Battle of the Bastards, Littlefinger and the knights of the Vale won it for him. The only thing of substance he really did was murder his aunt/girlfriend, stabbing her in the chest. Is that it?

That is why it feels so deeply deflating when, after 8 seasons, your main hero character just peters out like a total irrelevance.

Completely agree.

The great mystery about Jon was his lineage. Discovering this lineage needed a pay off. Even winning the Iron throne wouldn't have been a pay off for me.

The story is "A Song of Ice and Fire", Jon is the living embodiment of that. Stark and Targaryan lineage. Ice and Fire magic. The real pay off I was hoping for was that the Night King was a Stark who came looking for men to keep up their side of the bargain that had been forgotten. Jon would have been the makeweight in that bargain.

Instead it turns out the Night King was just a big baddie, a lesser Sauron, who could be stabbed to death and his whole army destroyed. It was a complete let down.

Daith

One thing I find interesting (well poor) is that Cersei and the Night King basically end up the same

Both take down a dragon
Both kill people close to Dany
Both inflict heavy losses for Dany's allies

In comparison, Jon doesn't get hurt that much by them.

Instead of showing that humans can be worse than supernatural beings, they both perform the same function and leaves the whole thing feeling like a repeat in the same season.

.......

The aspect that annoyed me the most was the build up with mytserious patterns, culture, rituals of the Night King and his generals, and then....nothing.

Not so much as a boss fight.

They built it up SO much. Repeated body part patterns of the dead. What was that about? Right from season 1 through to season 8. Mance rayder commented that they were "ever the artists". Was that all it was? Pretty designs?

Then, some kind of secret place where the generals all stood round in a circle and watched a baby boy be baptised into being one of them. So if they were turning babies into white walkers, presumably they had a place where the babies lived, grew up, got raised?

Its reasonable to assume that Craster was just one of many making this sacrifice to appease the WWs. But no, we only ever saw a few generals and NK himself.

So after all of this mysterious build up, where we saw the difference between wights being created and white walkers being created, and we saw Jon Snow fight a WW directly, and we made the discovery that dragon glass created them and dragon glass could kill them........

It all came to nothing. There was an episode that was so dark it was virtually impossible to see the action where the army of the dead was thrown at the living and meanwhile the generals and the NK did nothing much, and we never discovered anything about all of these mysterious things we had been shown all along.

Neutered Jon? They castrated the NK.

OneOfThem Stumbled

Okay so discussions about GOT are going off faster than a corpse in the July sun, but here are two videos that have just been released, that are worth watching in relation to Season 8.

Enjoy (if you have not yet seen them). The second video is a short supercut, the first is a long discussion.

Kiith

As much as the season wasn't great, it had some fantastic music.

Peatys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GdWD0yxvqw

eagle eye

We have clearly a new type of tv audience. Us older guys just accept the outcomes and rate accordingly. The younger audience wants it done exactly as they think it should be done and if that doesn't happen they scream and rant about it.
It was a great show imo, the last season, outside of the war against the white walkers episode, wasn't as good or as detailed as previous seasons but it was still very good.
In the argument for best tv show of all time.

facehugger99

eagle eye wrote: »

We have clearly a new type of tv audience. Us older guys just accept the outcomes and rate accordingly. The younger audience wants it done exactly as they think it should be done and if that doesn't happen they scream and rant about it.
It was a great show imo, the last season, outside of the war against the white walkers episode, wasn't as good or as detailed as previous seasons but it was still very good.
In the argument for best tv show of all time.

Maybe you should just speak for yourself.

The rest of us older guys didn't vote for you to be the voice of our generation.

eagle eye

facehugger99 wrote:

Maybe you should just speak for yourself.
The rest of us older guys didn't vote for you to be the voice of our generation.

Well I'm speaking for myself and all the people of similar age that I know well. Yeah there is one guy moaning about it but the rest are like I just said above.

Kirby

eagle eye wrote: »

In the argument for best tv show of all time.

Anybody making that argument will lose it.

Game of Thrones will never be considered one of the greatest tv shows of all time because of the ending. The vast majority agree that the ending was poor. Exactly how poor will vary from person to person but there is no denying the overriding feeling of disappointment.

You miss the point completely if you think people were unhappy because "It didn't end exactly how we wanted it to". People were unhappy because the writing was objectively terrible.

Varys betraying Dany for the realm and paying for it.
Dany burning kings landing to the ground.
Tyrion forsaking her because of it.
Jon killing her.
Tyrion ending up as hand again.
Jon going north of the wall.

None of these ideas are terrible ones. But the execution of them was horrendous.

And then we have to deal with choices that don't make any sense when examined for longer that five minutes.
The NK and army of the dead being defeated in a single episode after so much buildup.
Arya killing the NK.
Jons parentage being ultimately pointless.
Euron 360 noscoping a dragon out of the sky.
Jon being left alive for longer than 5 seconds after killing Dany.
Bran being crowned King.
The North being granted independence without the other 7 kingdoms losing their collective sh*t and starting another war.
Jamie and Cersei's death.
The list goes on.

Season 8 had the hallmarks of a writing team who had checked out and were desperate to close the book and move on to other things. i.e Star Wars.

beauf

Most of the people I know don't mind the ending. But then they shovel feed tv and don't really that discerning. Anyone I know who pays attention to the details was disappointed.

Even when reading the books it always felt like the fantasy side wasn't really integrated with the non fantasy side. Felt like it was added to add color but his heart was never really in it.

Some won't care. But if you do it really felt unresolved and poorly written in the final season.

TerrorFirmer

To be honest, anyone at this stage who's still banging on about how 'people are throwing a tantrum because they didn't get the ending they deserve' is just being willfully ignorant.

People, critics included, have gone to enormous lengths, on virtually every platform going (including here in immense detail), to discuss how the fundamental problem with S8 E03-E06 is the rushed and terrible execution of what are perfectly sound ideas on paper.

Nothing whatsoever to do with audience ages or the ending in principle. Everything to do with atrocious writing and attempting to cram about 4 episodes worth of content into each of the last 3 episodes of the season.

In years to come, it'll be remembered as a unique cultural phenomenon alright, but just like the last great example of same in modern times, Lost, it'll be remembered for a disappointing, anti-climatic and weak ending.

Greyfox

Kirby wrote: »

Game of Thrones will never be considered one of the greatest tv shows of all time because of the ending..

Season 8 had the hallmarks of a writing team who had checked out and were desperate to close the book and move on to other things. i.e Star Wars.

It's still one of the greatest tv shows ever made as most of season 1-6 and parts of s7 were of a far higher standard than most other tv shows. The massive drop in quality is the last 3 of 73 episodes (I know pacing issue started in S7ep1) its only from here that it becomes clear that D&D didn't bother to put any real thought into the ending. What happened was a tragedy as D&D had checked out but everyone else was still doing there best.

eagle eye

Kirby wrote:

Anybody making that argument will lose it.

Bran becoming king meant everybody lives happily ever at the end of the tale.
Danys destroying Westeros was in line with something the mad king would do.
Jon Snow was the only person who could get close enough to kill her.
He had to go after he killed her, that made sense.
I agree with you that some great storylines that were built up for years were dismissed in the last series but this thing went on a lot longer than anybody expected.
When you look at the endings of other great tv shows you'll see that a lot of them didn't end very well.
This show stands out despite the last series as one of the greatest ever.

Kirby

eagle eye wrote: »

Danys destroying Westeros was in line with something the mad king would do.
Jon Snow was the only person who could get close enough to kill her.

I feel I need to repost some of what I just said as you aren't quite grasping it mate.

Kirby wrote: »

Dany burning kings landing to the ground.
Jon killing her.

None of these ideas are terrible ones. But the execution of them was horrendous.

The idea is sound. The execution was not. So just repeating "Oh yeah well some of this made sense" is missing the point. GRRM gave them a vague outline for the ending, minus Arya killing the NK as that was their own invention. They had an outline....they royally ****ed up in the telling of it.

There are several truly excellent breakdowns on youtube explaining how if you still doubt it.

paleoperson

Kirby wrote: »

The idea is sound. The execution was not. So just repeating "Oh yeah well some of this made sense" is missing the point. GRRM gave them a vague outline for the ending, minus Arya killing the NK as that was their own invention. They had an outline....they royally ****ed up in the telling of it.

I disagree. The ideas were dog**** while the execution of it was great, visually at least. Given ideas that were that dumb I'm not sure how it could have been executed better.

Kirby wrote: »

There are several truly excellent breakdowns on youtube explaining how if you still doubt it.

I could not care in the slightest what some youtubers are saying about it. If you cannot explain it here then I'm not interested in the case you're trying to make. For what it's worth from what I've seen online most people agree with me, that the ideas were rubbish and the main downfall of the series.

imo Jon killing Dany was the dumbest ending imaginable and most people agree.

PressRun

Don't know how anyone can genuinely claim that people are only annoyed by the ending because it didn't turn out how they wanted when plenty of things happened throughout the series that people didn't want to see happen and audiences actually delighted in it for the most part. Who wanted Ned to die? Or Robb Stark? Or Oberyn Martell? Nobody. All of those characters were fan favourites who audiences rooted for at some point. Nobody wanted to see them die, but it still made narrative sense that they went when they did and audiences enjoyed these choices because the groundwork had been laid with character and plot development to make sure that it worked.
Trying to frame it like "typical millenials crying again" is complete bs when you look back on how certain plot twists and such were handled and received by audiences in the past.

Kirby

paleoperson wrote: »

I could not care in the slightest what some youtubers are saying about it. If you cannot explain it here then I'm not interested in the case you're trying to make.

I can explain it. I simply have no desire to retread the same detailed argument that I've had ad nauseum both online and in real life. There comes a time when a person gets fed up having the same discussion for the 12th time.

It's easier to just copy paste something you've already said or direct a person to a video which outlines the point.

These youtubers are generally not genius critics. The popular videos aren't full of their own insight, its filled with the best and most precise takes from multiple sources and condensed into one video. If you are truly interested in what other people are thinking, then watch them.

Stop moaning ffs

YouTube videos insightful or not are no more valid than anyone else’s opinion.
It simply can’t be trusted either as anyone on it with a channel is hoping to make money off it and the only way to do that in today’s climate is to go negative and go hard negative in most cases. So it’s hardly a balanced or fair barometer of anything.

OneOfThem Stumbled

Stop moaning ffs wrote: »

YouTube videos insightful or not are no more valid than anyone else’s opinion.
It simply can’t be trusted either as anyone on it with a channel is hoping to make money off it and the only way to do that in today’s climate is to go negative and go hard negative in most cases. So it’s hardly a balanced or fair barometer of anything.

I think that's a slightly unfair assessment of Alt Shift X. It's clear what his personal opinion is, but he genuinely attempts a deep analysis of what is shown.

paleoperson

OneOfThem Stumbled wrote: »

I think that's a slightly unfair assessment of Alt Shift X. It's clear what his personal opinion is, but he genuinely attempts a deep analysis of what is shown.

I think his points about youtubers in general were very fair, including that they are financially conflicted so can't be trusted. That's one of the advantages of posting here, right?

He didn't mention any youtuber by name, I don't know why you're introducing this youtuber to this discussion which is supposed to be about Game of Thrones.

Just referring to a youtuber and saying "watch him, that's what I think" kind of defeats the purpose of posting here, which is a place to exchange ideas between users. If you're tired of having a discussion you can always not post.

.......

I prefer to make up my own mind than take on board the subjective opinions of "youtubers" myself.

These guys make videos for the popular audience, its the lowest form of discernment, most of the content is just them assembling the loudest complaints and putting their own spin on it.

Unfortunately the "interwebs" has allowed those who shout loudest and longest to seem to have the more "correct" opinion which is nonsense.

B_ecke_r

Greatest of all time?

not a chance.

Sopranos is the GOAT and it's nowhere near that.