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The Official Game of Thrones [A Song of Ice and Fire] Thread (includes spoilers)

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The full soundtrack is out now btw guys.

Ramin Djawadi is a freaking genius. Incredible work for 8 straight years, down to the last note.

I said this on twitter, but Djawadi and John Williams have a direct line into my soul. Think of how many moments in this show would fall flat with shitty music. Hell, think of the Red Wedding without Reigns playing.

Fuck he's so good. I'm half convinced that he is the reason the show was so good. Even last night, when I knew it was BS, I still felt something when Tyrion found Jamie and Cersei and when Jon killed Dany. It's amazing.
 
Couldnt agree more on the score. Incredible. Anytime that Targaryen medley kicked in I got some feels.

Rains of Castamere was iconic as well.
 
I honestly think the books have a chance of making this ending much more satisfying than what the show ended up putting out.

The reason Bran wasn't even in Season 5 is because they ran out of source material for him and didn't really know where to go from there. I feel like Martin (especially given the perspectives he writes in) will leave much better breadcrumbs leading towards the puppetmaster Bran story.

It feels like the showrunners left some hints at it... Bran giving Arya the dagger, using Hodor/Jojen/Theon to survive, setting up the garden encounter with the Night King, telling the truth about Jon to sew discontent between him and Dany, etc. It just feels like it was done in a very sloppy way to the point where people thought of Bran as an afterthought sitting around instead of the mastermind who saw it all coming and guided it in secret.

If Martin does a better job of developing Bran beyond sitting around and makes his motivations better known, the ending will feel much more plausible than it did here.
 
I honestly think the books have a chance of making this ending much more satisfying than what the show ended up putting out.

The reason Bran wasn't even in Season 5 is because they ran out of source material for him and didn't really know where to go from there. I feel like Martin (especially given the perspectives he writes in) will leave much better breadcrumbs leading towards the puppetmaster Bran story.

It feels like the showrunners left some hints at it... Bran giving Arya the dagger, using Hodor/Jojen/Theon to survive, setting up the garden encounter with the Night King, telling the truth about Jon to sew discontent between him and Dany, etc. It just feels like it was done in a very sloppy way to the point where people thought of Bran as an afterthought sitting around instead of the mastermind who saw it all coming and guided it in secret.

If Martin does a better job of developing Bran beyond sitting around and makes his motivations better known, the ending will feel much more plausible than it did here.
I honestly think the ending of the show is perfectly satisfactory for the show. They rushed getting there and did some dumb things along the way, but I think the ending was excellent.

That said, I have no doubt that the book ending will be better, but then again, the book has been a better product since season one. IMO, there's almost no world in which a screen adaptation of ASOIAF is as good as the books.

I think 90% is theoretically achievable, and I think D&D got us to about 80%. That's outstanding. The bitter taste really comes from the fact that an additional season might have gotten us to that 90% :(
 
"This is what I hate the most. The show kicked off when a power vacuum was created when Bobby B died. Now weve ended up with a way larger power vacuum and volatile new players, yet it’s all gonna be wrapped up neatly by a council meeting?"

Bingo

https://www.reddit.com/r/freefolk/comments/bqko9g/if_the_leaks_are_true_dothraki_what_do/

Kind of confused -- the quote isn't in that thread -- at least, not on the first page of it. I do agree with the post saying that the Dothraki and Unsullied just hopping on ships and heading east makes no sense.

On the other hand, I think a Council to select a new King made perfect sense given everything that had transpired.
 
I honestly think the ending of the show is perfectly satisfactory for the show. They rushed getting there and did some dumb things along the way, but I think the ending was excellent.

That said, I have no doubt that the book ending will be better, but then again, the book has been a better product since season one. IMO, there's almost no world in which a screen adaptation of ASOIAF is as good as the books.

I think 90% is theoretically achievable, and I think D&D got us to about 80%. That's outstanding. The bitter taste really comes from the fact that an additional season might have gotten us to that 90% :(

What was disappointing to me is that I actually liked some of the changes D&D made to the source material. AFFC was a real slog, and they made it bearable. Love some the scenes they added with Arya and Tywin, for example. But once they ran out of that source material...the wheels came totally off.
 
I honestly think the ending of the show is perfectly satisfactory for the show. They rushed getting there and did some dumb things along the way, but I think the ending was excellent.

That said, I have no doubt that the book ending will be better, but then again, the book has been a better product since season one. IMO, there's almost no world in which a screen adaptation of ASOIAF is as good as the books.

I think 90% is theoretically achievable, and I think D&D got us to about 80%. That's outstanding. The bitter taste really comes from the fact that an additional season might have gotten us to that 90% :(

If they had the full source material I think they would've gotten to 90%+. There's a reason the conclusion is taking Martin so damn long to get perfect (despite being the guy creating it all). It's not an easy task to take a sprawling epic like this and streamline the plot to a conclusion, even if you know what the conclusion will be.

I'm OK with how it ended (if I ignore the pacing) but I can't help but think what could've been. Maybe if Martin had finished the books, D&D would've signed off on the longer season since they'd know how to end it. Oh well. Still doesn't ruin my love for the series.
 
The plot needed him to survive though!

I mean they couldn't even get this right.

Fine, he kills her. But the amount of plot armor they apparently heaped on him at the end is astounding.

There's something poetic in all of the Valyrians dying off right after the White Walkers are defeated. Like two sides of the same coin. And there's NO REASON Jon shouldn't be dead, other than....well, you can figure it out.

I've long wondered if Valyrians were sort of nature's response to White Walkers. And both are capable of apocalyptic like destruction (see the Doom). So that when one side was finally destroyed, the other would follow suit.

But the show has been half pretending Jon isn't Targaryen and isn't capable of carrying the "madness" gene so...whatever.
 
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I honestly think the ending of the show is perfectly satisfactory for the show. They rushed getting there and did some dumb things along the way, but I think the ending was excellent.

That said, I have no doubt that the book ending will be better, but then again, the book has been a better product since season one. IMO, there's almost no world in which a screen adaptation of ASOIAF is as good as the books.

I think 90% is theoretically achievable, and I think D&D got us to about 80%. That's outstanding. The bitter taste really comes from the fact that an additional season might have gotten us to that 90% :(

I guess we have very different opinions on how we should judge artistic content.

To me it's not just about what happens. It's about how it happens. The idea that the show ended up in a satisfactory place is irrelevant to me. The fact that the show tripped over itself getting to that place is incredibly relevant to me.

I can't imagine someone could watch the first 4-6 seasons worth of fantastic plot development and storytelling and be fine with the way this series wrapped up. It was a completely different show. It was a disaster imo, which is tragic.

I would never complain about what happens in a story. The story does not belong to me. But I absolutely will lambaste poor storytelling. That is the crime D&D committed.
 
Kind of confused -- the quote isn't in that thread -- at least, not on the first page of it. I do agree with the post saying that the Dothraki and Unsullied just hopping on ships and heading east makes no sense.

On the other hand, I think a Council to select a new King was made perfect sense given everything that had transpired.
After the battle of winterfell it looked like Danys army was completely decimated. Then they magically respawned as if a giant battle was never fought in the first place. Since all they did was slaughter fleeing soldiers and people in the massacre of kings landing... They could have just had a rag tag group of the small remaining men from the unsullied and the few dothraki the retreated on the charge plus Jon/Sansa's army. Then it would have actually been believable that they wouldn't be bale to hold Jon accountable after he kills Dany.
 
I don't really understand why Jon didn't kick some snow over the bloodstain and say, "Dany Flew off on Drogon". She told me to be King while she is gone."
 
What was disappointing to me is that I actually liked some of the changes D&D made to the source material. AFFC was a real slog, and they made it bearable. Love some the scenes they added with Arya and Tywin, for example. But once they ran out of that source material...the wheels came totally off.

Yes, Tywin and Arya was great stuff.

And I agree parts of AFFC were sluggish. I mean, I love Euron Greyjoy but if I never read another Aeron chapter I'll be fine. Same with Area Hotah.

But...they like essentially had no back-up plan. They just sorta gave the fAegon plot to various characters. Part of it over here to Cersei. A little bit of it over here to Jon.

I think it was @Stark who said that D&D could go fuck themselves for not doing two full 10 episode seasons and I'll say if they had wanted to go this route they probably needed an entire 9th season, too. The White Walkers needed to last an entire season. We needed to see the living lose, and lose. ANd then the destruction and consequences. And THEN an entire season spent on Daenerys descent into madness. Though, listening to the BTS, you can't actually figure out if they are making her insane, or just evil, or both, or whatever they need to say to make it work.

AND still, even with adding episodes, they needed to change the order of events. Cersei NEEDED TO DIE SOONER. Idc how good Lena Heady is, having her around made both the White Walkers and Daenerys WWE-style heel turn seem far less important.
 
I guess we have very different opinions on how we should judge artistic content.

To me it's not just about what happens. It's about how it happens. The idea that the show ended up in a satisfactory place is irrelevant to me. The fact that the show tripped over itself getting to that place is incredibly relevant to me.

I can't imagine someone could watch the first 4-6 seasons worth of fantastic plot development and storytelling and be fine with the way this series wrapped up. It was a completely different show. It was a disaster imo, which is tragic.

I would never complain about what happens in a story. The story does not belong to me. But I absolutely will lambaste poor storytelling. That is the crime D&D committed.
If you're gonna judge by the journey, then judge the entire journey IMO. Seasons 1-6 were near masterpieces. And there is a lot to love in Seasons 7 & 8. Unfortunately there were a lot of things not to love in that same time span.

So to me, it holds up to the test no matter how you look at it. If you're looking at it for how it ended, they did very well. If you're looking at it as a whole complete story, they did pretty well.

If you look at it as only seasons 7 & 8 defining your opinion of the series, then you are woefully disappointed. But what logic is there in that?
 

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