It's a silly, silly argument that suggests that educated people are not capable of gross incompetence, or that people are never promoted beyond their abilities, or that the ability to manage and orchestrate a large television production means you are incapable of creative ineptitude, or that because you've made a big money generator on telly that you are artistically credible, or that you can't question Harold Shipman's care giving qualities until you've trained as a doctor and have decades of experience, or if you have never helmed a big TV show you can't question creative decisions, and that my daddy DanD are better than Shakespeare and Homer and the Brontë lot and Rembrandt and Nina Simone because they never did big TV.
Well guess what I've compared late GOT against other art, and I can confidently conclude that my 10 year old niece is a more creative, credible artist than these hacks.
It's not a silly argument at all, and it doesn't suggest that educated people can't make mistakes. I feel like you're moving the goalposts slightly, like Sylar did, in order to rant a little more about D&D and complain about the way the show ended. I'm not talking about who could do better or worse or whatever with the final season, I'm talking about randomers on the Internet passing themselves off as budding showrunners when they have less than zero experience of working on a TV show and have even less of an idea about the logistics of putting a large project together and finishing it.
All over the web I see the following: "If I was HBO I'd do this", "If I was D&D I'd have done this", "If I was in charge of programming at HBO I'd do this". The simple fact is that, no, you wouldn't, because you can't do that, and never will do that, or understand the reality of running a TV show, or finishing a project the size of Game of Thrones, or putting together literally any other TV show that's on literally any network. We have no idea what goes on behind closed doors in executive meetings, what creators and actors are contracted to never reveal, what happens on set, etc. It's all hot air and conjecture.
Now, if someone with years of experience of showrunning, script writing, etc. came out and said "D&D did a terrible job with the ending of Game of Thrones, they should have done this, this, and this", then I'd be more inclined to listen to what they have to say, because they've actually done it as a job and would have something of value to offer. But when it's randomers on the Internet, whose only experience of TV is consuming it as a fan, forgive me if I tune the feck out when they start telling the world how their version of the story is the best one.
It's not a silly argument at all, and it doesn't suggest that educated people can't make mistakes. I feel like you're moving the goalposts slightly, like Sylar did, in order to rant a little more about D&D and complain about the way the show ended. I'm not talking about who could do better or worse or whatever with the final season, I'm talking about randomers on the Internet passing themselves off as budding showrunners when they have less than zero experience of working on a TV show and have even less of an idea about the logistics of putting a large project together and finishing it.
All over the web I see the following: "If I was HBO I'd do this", "If I was D&D I'd have done this", "If I was in charge of programming at HBO I'd do this". The simple fact is that, no, you wouldn't, because you can't do that, and never will do that, or understand the reality of running a TV show, or finishing a project the size of Game of Thrones, or putting together literally any other TV show that's on literally any network. We have no idea what goes on behind closed doors in executive meetings, what creators and actors are contracted to never reveal, what happens on set, etc. It's all hot air and conjecture.
Now, if someone with years of experience of showrunning, script writing, etc. came out and said "D&D did a terrible job with the ending of Game of Thrones, they should have done this, this, and this", then I'd be more inclined to listen to what they have to say, because they've actually done it as a job and would have something of value to offer. But when it's randomers on the Internet, whose only experience of TV is consuming it as a fan, forgive me if I tune the feck out when they start telling the world how their version of the story is the best one.
I understand where you’re coming from when you denounce people who offer up their hypothetical versions as superior to what we were given. Preston Jacobs (a YouTuber who discusses ASOIAF) gave us his version of how he’d do season 8, and despite his vast knowledge of the lore and characters, and the ability he’d shown prior when dissecting narratives and thematic elements, his version was utter wank. I agree with a lot of what you’ve said, specifically concerning the idea that they were phoning it in to get their Star Wars trilogy etc, I think a lot of that is conjecture that is probably pretty far from the truth. Ending the show was a gargantuan task as there was a plethora of plot lines to be resolved and GRRM himself is obviously having trouble in this respect in his own medium. From what I gather though HBO and GRRM wanted more episodes but we can ignore this as we don’t know the semantics of the situation.
However, you don’t need to be a show runner to simply point out the problems with the last season. There was a lot of bad writing. I’m always hesitant to label what is essentially art as objectively bad, but the writing in the last season (and building up to it) was poor. D&D have some real stinkers on their CV, but they had done an excellent job adapting the books, and I think people underestimate what an undertaking that was, mainly due to the incredible amount of characters and plot lines and they did a really impressive job. So it’s not like I think they turned into imbeciles overnight. They’d diverged sharply from the books after season 4 (and I can understand why, whereas they needed to begin whittling down the story GRRM expanded it post ASOS). This resulted in them taking both the story and characters in a different direction, the misstep was trying to end a lot of the major characters stories the same way that they will in the books. But it didn’t work, the characters were now very different, in different places, and with different themes. They tried shoehorning characters into roles that just didn’t fit (Cersei taking young Griff’s role for example, speculation but it’s likely). It wasn’t the characters driving the story anymore, and as a result none of it felt authentic. Once they diverged from the books they should have concocted an ending for the show, not from the books. They didn’t though and it resulted in a disjointed mess that had little emotional impact.
You wrote up why you liked the last season and it was coherent and I could understand where you were coming from. I wish I could say the same about the last season
I understand where you’re coming from when you denounce people who offer up their hypothetical versions as superior to what we were given. Preston Jacobs (a YouTuber who discusses ASOIAF) gave us his version of how he’d do season 8, and despite his vast knowledge of the lore and characters, and the ability he’d shown prior when dissecting narratives and thematic elements, his version was utter wank. I agree with a lot of what you’ve said, specifically concerning the idea that they were phoning it in to get their Star Wars trilogy etc, I think a lot of that is conjecture that is probably pretty far from the truth. Ending the show was a gargantuan task as there was a plethora of plot lines to be resolved and GRRM himself is obviously having trouble in this respect in his own medium. From what I gather though HBO and GRRM wanted more episodes but we can ignore this as we don’t know the semantics of the situation.
However, you don’t need to be a show runner to simply point out the problems with the last season. There was a lot of bad writing. I’m always hesitant to label what is essentially art as objectively bad, but the writing in the last season (and building up to it) was poor. D&D have some real stinkers on their CV, but they had done an excellent job adapting the books, and I think people underestimate what an undertaking that was, mainly due to the incredible amount of characters and plot lines and they did a really impressive job. So it’s not like I think they turned into imbeciles overnight. They’d diverged sharply from the books after season 4 (and I can understand why, whereas they needed to begin whittling down the story GRRM expanded it post ASOS). This resulted in them taking both the story and characters in a different direction, the misstep was trying to end a lot of the major characters stories the same way that they will in the books. But it didn’t work, the characters were now very different, in different places, and with different themes. They tried shoehorning characters into roles that just didn’t fit (Cersei taking young Griff’s role for example, speculation but it’s likely). It wasn’t the characters driving the story anymore, and as a result none of it felt authentic. Once they diverged from the books they should have concocted an ending for the show, not from the books. They didn’t though and it resulted in a disjointed mess that had little emotional impact.
You wrote up why you liked the last season and it was coherent and I could understand where you were coming from. I wish I could say the same about the last season
I don't want you thinking that I thought the last two seasons were perfect, or even as good as the first six seasons, or that D&D are gods. I don't think the shortened seasons could ever provide the same level of emotional satisfaction as the 10-episodes ones, and speaking honestly for a second, I was worried towards the back end of season 7 that D&D had kinda forgot about the sort of story Game of Thrones had been for 5/6 seasons up to that point. In my view they brought it back around, but I've got absolutely no problem at all with people thinking the ending was rubbish or even writing their own fanfic endings as a fun little exercise. Hell, if the end of the show pissed some people off so much that they decide to become screenwriters themselves, and in ten years time are making genre defining TV to show D&D how it's done, then that's great. The universe will only benefit from that.
My problem is when criticism of the writing extends beyond that, and people start acting like they know the first thing about running a TV show, or realising a vision, or bringing something to life. It reminds me a lot of when those idiots tried to raise $200m to completely re-do The Last Jedi and Rian Johnson donated to their campaign because he wanted to see how bad it could be, or when those 1 million other idiots signed a petition to change D&D's ending for GoT. It firstly shows a total disregard for the efforts of everyone involved, and as much as some people disliked the choices in the final season I'm not sure you can argue that 100% wasn't put into it by 99% of the people there. But mostly, it shows a complete ignorance of what it takes to put something like season 8 together. They (and when I say "they" I mean D&D, the cast and crew, everybody) essentially made two TV episodes and four films in 18 months.
That is unbelievable dedication.
If you go back to 2012, or if you read D&D's comments about where the vision for their ending was first thought up, you'll see that they had to lie to HBO for years in order to get here. They downplayed how much fantasy would be in the show, they lied about the very nature of the show and what it focused on, they lied about the ending they had in mind. Back in the early days when they were given $10m a season (as opposed to $10m an episode), they even considered taking the show away from HBO and TV altogether and putting it in cinemas just so they could complete the story. In other words, they fought hard to get the network to trust them with the show and it resulted in it becoming a global phenomenon.
For someone to then come on to the Internet and say D&D "rushed out" of GoT to go and do Star Wars is deliberate misinformation and again shows ignorance of how TV shows are put together. The scripts for season 8 weren't quickly glued together in a 6-month period after season 7 ended, they were being written as far back as season 2 and in full development by the time season 5 was airing. The announcement that the final two seasons would only contain 13 episodes came within weeks of season 6 finishing, a full eighteen months before Disney announced that D&D would have anything to do with a Star Wars project. We'll never know for sure why D&D decided to shorten the last two seasons (or view it as a 13-episode split final season) and the people trying to guess about why only ever reveal that they'd never get a job in television.
I have my own problems with the way D&D managed the story in seasons 6, 7 & 8, but I'm not gonna sit here and say I could have done any better because a) I thought their ending was imperfect but still hugely entertaining, and b) I wouldn't even know the first thing about how to bring the story to an end. As you've said, GRRM doesn't either, and it was his bloody story to begin with! My overall point is that creating any piece of art is fecking hard work. I've only ever made music but honestly, once I've written and recorded and released an album I'm just glad it's out of my life. Imagine trying to create something the size of Game of Thrones with the entire world watching your every move, waiting for you to screw it up. I think I'd give in from the pressure and go off grid.
That's not to say we're not allowed to criticise D&D because they're poor little souls who tried their best and we're all just big meanies. They're millionaires and they have no idea who I am. But fecking hell, we talk about Game of Thrones, or The Last Jedi, or the ending of Lost, or the ending of Battlestar Galactica, or The Sopranos or whatever, like we have the first idea about how to start a project like that, let alone finish it. All the reaction to season 8 has done is prove to me that an astounding number of people on the Internet think they know the first thing about how to create a TV show. Instead all they've done is apply hindsight to a product that already exists, say they'd do things differently in a way that makes sense to them personally, and now consider themselves budding screenwriters.
I keep reading that ive moved the goalposts, but why are their discussions about what 'randomers on the internet' say. As I said, who on this thread said they could direct better than the two? My issue isnt the direction, its the writing and rush job.
If D&D had their way, season 7 would have been the last and 10 episodes, instead of 15 over 2 seasons. Imagine how that would have been with even less time to get from A to B...
Im still not understanding how talking about them doing a bad job, translates to a lack of how TV shows are made. Then asking for it to be explained, not getting one. If anything, D&D and HBO have confirmed, the length was dictated by D&D. So again, whats the misunderstanding?
The scripts for season 8 weren't quickly glued together in a 6-month period after season 7 ended, they were being written as far back as season 2 and in full development by the time season 5 was airing. The announcement that the final two seasons would only contain 13 episodes came within weeks of season 6 finishing, a full eighteen months before Disney announced that D&D would have anything to do with a Star Wars project. We'll never know for sure why D&D decided to shorten the last two seasons (or view it as a 13-episode split final season) and the people trying to guess about why only ever reveal that they'd never get a job in television.
Game of Thrones director Neil Marshall has revealed that he would have taken a "different approach" to the series' finale, which he agrees was "really rushed".
"I kind of agree with a lot of the criticism that it was really rushed. Everyone ended up where they were meant to end up but they got there in a little bit of a rush in the end."
As for why it was shortened, they always insisted on doing 73 hours, which would be fine, but I dont think you go from season 6 to end at season 8 if youve mapped it out as far back as you noted. They went from one pace to a completely different pace.
The Star Wars thing is a meme and nobody takes that seriously. But I think its fair to say they wanted to do other stuff (including Star Wars).
And again, a lot of people arent talking about running a TV show. But rather telling a story.
All other things are speculation, as to why things get cancelled, why things happen the way they do. This is a thread for discussion after all.
Game of Thrones director Neil Marshall has revealed that he would have taken a "different approach" to the series' finale, which he agrees was "really rushed".
"I kind of agree with a lot of the criticism that it was really rushed. Everyone ended up where they were meant to end up but they got there in a little bit of a rush in the end."
As for why it was shortened, they always insisted on doing 73 hours, which would be fine, but I dont think you go from season 6 to end at season 8 if youve mapped it out as far back as you noted. They went from one pace to a completely different pace.
The Star Wars thing is a meme and nobody takes that seriously. But I think its fair to say they wanted to do other stuff (including Star Wars).
And again, a lot of people arent talking about running a TV show. But rather telling a story.
All other things are speculation, as to why things get cancelled, why things happen the way they do. This is a thread for discussion after all.
For what it's worth, I agree with Neil Marshall about the last two seasons needing a little more time and I think he's being entirely reasonable with what he says. I don't have a problem with people criticising the last two seasons at all - as much as I like them both, season 8 especially, I think there's plenty to criticise about them. But even then, he says "Everyone ended up where they were meant to", which is basically my takeaway too. It's easy to forgive a story that moves a little quicker than it should when the major beats and conclusions track both logically and emotionally, which is what they did for me. If that wasn't the case for you then that's a shame but totally fine. There's a difference, though, between not liking the decisions of the creators and genuinely thinking you would know how to better write the ending from scratch if you were in their position, or that you'd force them to do this many episodes or that many extra scenes if you were an HBO executive. That's not how TV production works and it never will be.
For what it's worth, I agree with Neil Marshall about the last two seasons needing a little more time and I think he's being entirely reasonable with what he says. I don't have a problem with people criticising the last two seasons at all - as much as I like them both, season 8 especially, I think there's plenty to criticise about them. But even then, he says "Everyone ended up where they were meant to", which is basically my takeaway too. It's easy to forgive a story that moves a little quicker than it should when the major beats and conclusions track both logically and emotionally, which is what they did for me. If that wasn't the case for you then that's a shame but totally fine. There's a difference, though, between not liking the decisions of the creators and genuinely thinking you would know how to better write the ending from scratch if you were in their position, or that you'd force them to do this many episodes or that many extra scenes if you were an HBO executive. That's not how TV production works and it never will be.
Then why not just skip season 6 and 7 and go from 5 to 8 completely. I mean everybody ends up where they are meant to that way too.
Again you talk about major beats tracking logically but this is when discussing s7 and 8.
Nobody could force them to do extra scenes, but the resources were there to do so to flesh out the story and not rush it. You can defend as much as you want, but that doesnt take away from how rushed it was to get to the end point given its own internal pacing for 80% of the show.
Then why not just skip season 6 and 7 and go from 5 to 8 completely. I mean everybody ends up where they are meant to that way too.
Again you talk about major beats tracking logically but this is when discussing s7 and 8.
Nobody could force them to do extra scenes, but the resources were there to do so to flesh out the story and not rush it. You can defend as much as you want, but that doesnt take away from how rushed it was to get to the end point given its own internal pacing for 80% of the show.
This is what Gambit and I mean. You say "the resources were there" like you were privy to this information and present in the meetings that took place between D&D and HBO. All you're doing is guessing and passing it off as fact. HBO might have wanted 10 seasons but they might have only wanted 10 seasons on the condition that D&D were only given access to the budget that ended up being used for what we saw in seasons 7 & 8. That might be the case, it might not, we'll never know for sure. My opinion on why the show ended up reaching its conclusion with less detail than I would have otherwise wanted is different to that and is far less sympathetic to D&D, but I'm not going to start acting like I could have done better or that D&D should have said this or that in negotiations with HBO. When you have experience of showrunning we'll talk about this again. Until then...
This is what Gambit and I mean. You say "the resources were there" like you were privy to this information and present in the meetings that took place between D&D and HBO. All you're doing is guessing and passing it off as fact. HBO might have wanted 10 seasons but they might have only wanted 10 seasons on the condition that D&D were only given access to the budget that ended up being used for what we saw in seasons 7 & 8. That might be the case, it might not, we'll never know for sure. My opinion on why the show ended up reaching its conclusion with less detail than I would have otherwise wanted is different to that and is far less sympathetic to D&D, but I'm not going to start acting like I could have done better or that D&D should have said this or that in negotiations with HBO. When you have experience of showrunning we'll talk about this again. Until then...
Guessing and passing it off as fact
Or from d&ds mouth:
D&D made it clear that they were the ones insisting on stopping at eight seasons and limiting the last two to a total of 13 episodes. “[HBO] said, ‘We’ll give you the resources to make this what it needs to be,’” Weiss said. Benioff added, “HBO would have been happy for the show to keep going, to have more episodes in the final season.” But the showrunners refused.
I mean there's defending something. Then their is just whatever you are doing ...
Guessing and passing it off as fact
Or from d&ds mouth:
D&D made it clear that they were the ones insisting on stopping at eight seasons and limiting the last two to a total of 13 episodes. “[HBO] said, ‘We’ll give you the resources to make this what it needs to be,’” Weiss said. Benioff added, “HBO would have been happy for the show to keep going, to have more episodes in the final season.” But the showrunners refused.
I mean there's defending something. Then their is just whatever you are doing ...
Are you just ignoring things I say now? I just said my own personal opinions on why they shortened the final two seasons were less forgiving of D&D than the possibility that HBO didn't just give them a blank cheque. But because I don't know for certain, and never will, I'm not going to sit here and say that I'd do better in their shoes or HBO's.
I probably should since I mentioned resources
You said I made that up and passed it as fact.
I provided their own words and you just skipped it
Again, I never once said I would do a better TV show. But I can say it should have been a better finale cos the finale we got was a massive disappointment and will go down as one of the worst endings to one of the greatest TV productions.
Whether I can do better or not doesn't mean these two self proclaimed luckjobs can escape criticism which you seem to take personally
I probably should since I mentioned resources
You said I made that up and passed it as fact.
I provided their own words and you just skipped it
Again, I never once said I would do a better TV show. But I can say it should have been a better finale cos the finale we got was a massive disappointment and will go down as one of the worst endings to one of the greatest TV productions.
Whether I can do better or not doesn't mean these two self proclaimed luckjobs can escape criticism which you seem to take personally
I don't mean for it to come across like I take it personally because I certainly don't feel it personally. How other people feel about season 8 doesn't really affect how I view it - if anything I welcome most of the criticism I've encountered because it's only enhanced my own opinions and further supported the conclusions I came to in the end. I've not really provided enough context for my points up to now, though, so for that I apologise. I suppose the reaction to season 8 and the reaction to The Last Jedi have really stunned me and opened my eyes to how I approached art and entertainment in the past. If I'm totally being honest, my understanding of season 8 and my experiences of the reaction towards it have completely reframed how I consume and react to art and entertainment now, quite profoundly actually.
As I said, my opinion on why D&D made the decision to shorten the final two seasons doesn't really reflect that well on them, neither as storytellers or showrunners. But who the hell am I, and who the hell is anyone else, to make a YouTube video outlining "the ending we deserved"? Who are we to start petitions demanding a complete recreation of the final season? We're nobodies, and we don't understand the first thing about how to even begin operating what became, as you say, "one of the greatest TV productions", let alone finish it. I'll extend that GRRM as well. I've never read the books and don't plan to, but he has no obligation to continue writing The Winds of Winter either. I want him to because I would love two endings to this story, but if they never come out then that's just that.
I suppose my two points are that, a) artists and creators owe us absolutely feck all, and b) we'll never know what it's like to create anything so massive, so anything we have to say on the matters of putting a huge production together is less than irrelevant. It's easy for me to come to that conclusion when, in the case of The Last Jedi and GoT season 8, I like what the artists and creators are offering me, but it's something I try to apply to things I don't like. If I hear a shitty piece of music I know I have the knowledge and skill to do better because I can play a few instruments, write songs, and have a decent enough grasp of theory. But when it comes to running a major film/TV project, I haven't the foggiest and will never, ever presume that I would have done better.
As I keep saying, if you think D&D fecked up the ending of GoT then that's fine. Above everything else, art is subjective and we can only ever have our own personal readings of it. I know I'm in the minority of people who really enjoyed the final season. But it's very easy for us to look at a piece of work that already exists and pick its faults apart when we haven't been asked to create our own piece of work from scratch. It's probably cheesy of me to quote Ratatouille in this instance but I think that part of that ending monologue about creation, consumption and criticism is spot on for matters such as this and gets right to the heart of what I've been trying to say across the past two pages.
"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgement. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so."
My problem is when criticism of the writing extends beyond that, and people start acting like they know the first thing about running a TV show, or realising a vision, or bringing something to life.
Running a tv show is one thing. A luxury, a privileged position that is not always arrived at through artistic merit. I'm sure it's necessarily a tough job with long hours and big pressures. And a lot of those pressures are entirely unrelated to artistic decision making.
Realising a vision or bringing something to life is usually totally unrelated. Creativity and visions are open to even the most humble of artistic venture. You seem to want to conflate administrative tv production work with artistic endeavour, so as to dismiss criticism pertaining to the former with questions over the critic's experience of the latter.
You seem to want to answer: I don't understand this characters motivation, I would have prefered it if the writing explained why this character from the Helix Nebula six seasons deep has suddenly started talking in Jamaican Patois. with:well how many boardrooms have you sat in on? because your creative opinion is valueless until you have stuffed as many 50 pence pieces in the light meter as the show producers.
Poor show.
It reminds me a lot of when those idiots tried to raise $200m to completely re-do The Last Jedi and Rian Johnson donated to their campaign because he wanted to see how bad it could be, or when those 1 million other idiots signed a petition to change D&D's ending for GoT.
So you're angry at angry people on the webs, that sounds like a fulltime job. But fanmob dumbfeckery reminds you of the people who think they know about realising a vision or bringing something to life? There will be some crossover for sure but it seems you are being obstructionist by continuing to group criticism of artistic, creative decisions of the finished show with the irrational mob behaviours on web forums. Poor show.
It firstly shows a total disregard for the efforts of everyone involved, and as much as some people disliked the choices in the final season I'm not sure you can argue that 100% wasn't put into it by 99% of the people there.
Well save these defenses for the people who are protesting over the lack of hours the cast put in. Don't just jam it all in with artistic criticism. Poor show.
If you go back to 2012, or if you read D&D's comments about where the vision for their ending was first thought up, you'll see that they had to lie to HBO for years in order to get here. They downplayed how much fantasy would be in the show, they lied about the very nature of the show and what it focused on, they lied about the ending they had in mind. Back in the early days when they were given $10m a season (as opposed to $10m an episode), they even considered taking the show away from HBO and TV altogether and putting it in cinemas just so they could complete the story. In other words, they fought hard to get the network to trust them with the show and it resulted in it becoming a global phenomenon.
They worked hard, they are liars, they handle big money and they built a McDonalds. Stop trying to silence artistic discussion with bureaucratic sob stories. Poor show.
For someone to then come on to the Internet and say D&D "rushed out" of GoT to go and do Star Wars is deliberate misinformation and again shows ignorance of how TV shows are put together. The scripts for season 8 weren't quickly glued together in a 6-month period after season 7 ended, they were being written as far back as season 2 and in full development by the time season 5 was airing. The announcement that the final two seasons would only contain 13 episodes came within weeks of season 6 finishing, a full eighteen months before Disney announced that D&D would have anything to do with a Star Wars project. We'll never know for sure why D&D decided to shorten the last two seasons (or view it as a 13-episode split final season) and the people trying to guess about why only ever reveal that they'd never get a job in television.
I have my own problems with the way D&D managed the story in seasons 6, 7 & 8, but I'm not gonna sit here and say I could have done any better because a) I thought their ending was imperfect but still hugely entertaining, and b) I wouldn't even know the first thing about how to bring the story to an end. As you've said, GRRM doesn't either, and it was his bloody story to begin with!
How do you know GRRM doesn't know either? And how can you question his understanding of the eschatological conclusions of his own work when you have spent so much time telling others not to question DanDy because they haven't the experience. Have you ever written a huge, multimillion pound fantasy saga? Poor show.
My overall point is that creating any piece of art is fecking hard work. I've only ever made music but honestly, once I've written and recorded and released an album I'm just glad it's out of my life. Imagine trying to create something the size of Game of Thrones with the entire world watching your every move, waiting for you to screw it up. I think I'd give in from the pressure and go off grid.
That's not to say we're not allowed to criticise D&D because they're poor little souls who tried their best and we're all just big meanies. They're millionaires and they have no idea who I am. But fecking hell, we talk about Game of Thrones, or The Last Jedi, or the ending of Lost, or the ending of Battlestar Galactica, or The Sopranos or whatever, like we have the first idea about how to start a project like that, let alone finish it. All the reaction to season 8 has done is prove to me that an astounding number of people on the Internet think they know the first thing about how to create a TV show. Instead all they've done is apply hindsight to a product that already exists, say they'd do things differently in a way that makes sense to them personally, and now consider themselves budding screenwriters.
Your apparant complete dismissal of the amateur, fan bases and any outsider creative opinion is depressing. You come across as elitist, a coprorate production house shill and a philistine.
And Game of Thrones is a poor show.
Note:
Also this is all meant in a lighthearted way. I don't take this stuff seriously and I'm partly just exercising my brain, trying to kill some time at work. However I do genuinely believe that creative freedom should extend all the way down to forum idiots voicing there own visions of someone elses show. And maybe if that is upsetting you so much then you could just close down a few of those forum browser tabs and get out in the fresh air for a while.
Running a tv show is one thing. A luxury, a privileged position that is not always arrived at through artistic merit. I'm sure it's necessarily a tough job with long hours and big pressures. And a lot of those pressures are entirely unrelated to artistic decision making.
Realising a vision or bringing something to life is usually totally unrelated. Creativity and visions are open to even the most humble of artistic venture. You seem to want to conflate administrative tv production work with artistic endeavour, so as to dismiss criticism pertaining to the former with questions over the critic's experience of the latter.
You seem to want to answer: I don't understand this characters motivation, I would have prefered it if the writing explained why this character from the Helix Nebula six seasons deep has suddenly started talking in Jamaican Patois. with:well how many boardrooms have you sat in on? because your creative opinion is valueless until you have stuffed as many 50 pence pieces in the light meter as the show producers.
Poor show.
So you're angry at angry people on the webs, that sounds like a fulltime job. But fanmob dumbfeckery reminds you of the people who think they know about realising a vision or bringing something to life? There will be some crossover for sure but it seems you are being obstructionist by continuing to group criticism of artistic, creative decisions of the finished show with the irrational mob behaviours on web forums. Poor show.
Fine everyone worked hard. But again you are trying to obfuscate. You are deflecting artistic criticism with tales of perspiration. Poor show.
This has so little to do with the terrible writing in GOT, or any of the criticism of the terrible writing in GOT. Poor show
Well save these defenses for the people who are protesting over the lack of hours the cast put in. Don't just jam it all in with artistic criticism. Poor show.
They worked hard, they are liars, they handle big money and they built a McDonalds. Stop trying to silence artistic discussion with bureaucratic sob stories. Poor show.
Please stop talking about administrative decisions and network television experience, it's exhausting. Poor show.
How do you know GRRM doesn't know either? And how can you question his understanding of the eschatological conclusions of his own work when you have spent so much time telling others not to question DanDy because they haven't the experience. Have you ever written a huge, multimillion pound fantasy saga? Poor show.
Your apparant complete dismissal of the amateur, fan bases and any outsider creative opinion is depressing. You come across as elitist, a coprorate production house shill and a philistine.
And Game of Thrones is a poor show.
Note:
Also this is all meant in a lighthearted way. I don't take this stuff seriously and I'm partly just exercising my brain, trying to kill some time at work. However I do genuinely believe that creative freedom should extend all the way down to forum idiots voicing there own visions of someone elses show. And maybe if that is upsetting you so much then you could just close down a few of those forum browser tabs and get out in the fresh air for a while.
Sorry mate, I'm having so many conversations about basically the same thing in two or three different threads so I forget what I've said to you and what I've said to others.
I think our wires are getting crossed slightly. I don't think D&D are above criticism from fans and randomers on the Internet at all, and especially not because they wrote the ending and we didn't. This isn't about arguing the quality of the final season really. I can't remember if I was discussing this with you or Sylar, but I don't think their job with the ending was given the space to breathe that it required. I have my own theories as to why they imposed shorter final seasons on themselves, and the problems that caused for the show, but that's all they are: theories. I'll never know the truth as to why and neither will any of us. All we're doing by trying to sleuth our way into the minds of D&D and HBO's executives is coming up with assumptions that might be really wide of the mark. The same goes for GRRM really. We all have our theories about why The Winds of Winter hasn't been published yet but all our theories ever really amount to is hot air and conjecture. On that, I don't think GRRM has to finish the A Song of Ice and Fire series either. It's his baby and he can do what he wants with it.
Don't get me wrong, it's a fun exercise to re-write the ending and play these guessing games. It's something I love doing privately, and I've loved reading fanfic versions of the ending. But quite often on the Internet it's loaded together with negativity and it contributes to the spread of what could be complete misinformation. The narrative has taken hold that D&D rushed the ending so they could jump to Star Wars, but the decision to shorten seasons 7 & 8 was announced as far back as mid-2016 and probably decided upon as early as 2015. Disney announced that D&D would be overseeing a Star Wars project in February 2018, a month after the scripts for season 8 were finalised and received by the cast and crew. We'll never know why they decided to shorten the seasons, we'll never know who made the final call, we'll never know for sure when it was made, and for that reason I think trying to play guessing games about the administrative decisions of major TV networks is pretty reductionist and wastes a lot of the energy we could be spending having fun with discussing the show.
Once you build up super-enemies, you can only kill them with super heros or inconsistency (with the very few exceptions). That just didn't fit the setting of GoT.
Good for them for pulling the plug.
It wouldn't be a GoT thread without robin's pseudo intellectual dissertations and how he understands everything better than the test of us.
How someone who hasn't read the books can claim things like we misunderstood why the NK we killed in such a anticlimactic way. Nothing to do with the fact D&D wanted "subvert expectations".
Correct me if I’m wrong, but did you, @robinamicrowave , not watch the show when you had medical issues? It seems to me that all else being equal, what you are doing is just post-hoc rationalization about why something that you hold dear that ended up very sucky doesn’t actually suck that much.
You’ve never read the books and professed yourself to never want to, you’ve seen D&D’s own admission that they let the actors write their own characters, you’ve seen them admitting that they didn’t bother with the themes of the source material at all ( ‘themes are for 6th grade book report’, ‘we made it about power’), so why bother defending their writing prowess when they themselves don’t even care?
I don’t frequent freefolk, but I can assure you on long standing forums like ASOIAF or Westeros.org, Dany going Mad Queen was a very common theory, so among the ASOIAF readership the outrage was never about how things ended up, but the way they dumbed down everything and butchered source material needlessly (Dorne). Ultimately, the main criticism from both the book fans and the fandom at large has always been how it ended up there, not the way it did. You don’t roast a whole city of innocents on a whim just because you don’t get to bang your nephew, and reeling off a few instances of her burning people from seasons past in entirely different contexts doesn’t cut the mustard.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but did you, @robinamicrowave , not watch the show when you had medical issues? It seems to me that all else being equal, what you are doing is just post-hoc rationalization about why something that you hold dear that ended up very sucky doesn’t actually suck that much.
You’ve never read the books and professed yourself to never want to, you’ve seen D&D’s own admission that they let the actors write their own characters, you’ve seen them admitting that they didn’t bother with the themes of the source material at all ( ‘themes are for 6th grade book report’, ‘we made it about power’), so why bother defending their writing prowess when they themselves don’t even care?
I don’t frequent freefolk, but I can assure you on long standing forums like ASOIAF or Westeros.org, Dany going Mad Queen was a very common theory, so among the ASOIAF readership the outrage was never about how things ended up, but the way they dumbed down everything and butchered source material needlessly (Dorne). Ultimately, the main criticism from both the book fans and the fandom at large has always been how it ended up there, not the way it did. You don’t roast a whole city of innocents on a whim just because you don’t get to bang your nephew, and reeling off a few instances of her burning people from seasons past in entirely different contexts doesn’t cut the mustard.
I do hold the show very dear, you're right, and I'm definitely more favourable towards it than most by default because of everything it did for me around the end of my teen years/start of my twenties. But like, so did the music of Kanye West, and I've got no problem saying his music new is boring now or that I find his public persona to be incredibly dull. Bringing it back to GoT, I've got no problem with thinking that the way the show treated its female characters was mostly awful in the early days, or that 'No One' mostly sucked, or that the Winterfell plot in season 7 sucked, or that 'The Last of the Starks' crammed too much content into too small a space, because all the little quibbles don't really affect my overall enjoyment. The same way big Star Wars fans can forgive Jar Jar, or the ewoks, or the prequels as a whole, or the way Lord of the Rings fans can forgive Tom Bombadil not being in the films. Loving something means taking its faults as part of the greater whole that you get so much out of, and I'm basically the same when it comes to GoT. I can forgive its problems because what it gives me outside of those problems is really emotionally rewarding, and it's really emotionally rewarding because I think it's quality entertainment from start to finish.
With regards to Dany's ending, I have a completely different reading of her character than most people, and I don't really have many problems with how the show executed the last leg of her story. As I implied before, I'd have liked the writers to spread the content of 'The Last of the Starks' (and the beginning of 'The Bells') over two or three episodes as opposed to just the one, just to increase the sense of hopelessness and inevitability in Jaime and Dany's stories, but looking back with hindsight I think Dany's end especially was pretty inevitable and definitely tragic. I completely agree with you when you say that cherry picking her "mad" moments from previous seasons as proof that she was always going to burn shit up doesn't cut the mustard, because I think it completely misses the point of her story. To me, Dany was as equally capable of tyranny as she was of liberalism and she showed this numerous times throughout the series. It's why her nature is constantly compared to a coin toss - she's a complex character with an unpredictable moral compass. She is the "human heart in conflict with itself", as a certain man once said. In the end, the closer she got to the power she believed to be her birthright, the more it conflicted with her ideal vision for the world, which meant the universe went from tossing her coin every now and again to tossing it a hundred times in a minute. I firmly believe that she was just as likely to climb down from Drogon on that day, but the coin landed on the dark side. Because she died not long after, it unfortunately defined her legacy before she could reckon with what she'd done.
I could talk for hours about this show, as evidenced by this thread, and I could talk for days about Dany. She's one of my favourite TV characters of all time and her eventual end has a lot to do with that. We can only ever take personal readings away from the art and entertainment we consume, but I don't want you thinking that I only have a positive reading of the finale because of how much the show meant to me emotionally. If anything I had grounds to be even more devastated if I didn't like the ending, but even if I had hated it I would still remember how much I enjoyed the first 6 seasons and be happy I had them at all. We're lucky to come across any entertainment we enjoy, be that in TV or film or music, and disliking the ending of GoT wouldn't have changed my feelings about the first six seasons. Hell, I know people who don't even consider seasons 7 & 8 to be canon. I don't think they're being ridiculous or childish, I think they're just comforting themselves and trying to find their own way to maintain a positive relationship with a show they loved but came to dislike. There's no problem with that. If GRRM does get around to finishing the book series then I won't go in fighting the show's corner, saying that was the best ending, I'll just be glad that we have have not one but two endings to one of the greatest stories I've ever been told. I can't really say much more than that.
