Game of Thrones - Spoilers

Started by Dinny Breen, June 21, 2016, 10:49:26 AM

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nrico2006

Quote from: stew on August 25, 2017, 11:00:17 AM
Quote from: nrico2006 on August 22, 2017, 08:46:13 AM
Quote from: stew on August 21, 2017, 04:13:57 PM
I want to see Tyrion  on the throne at the end, he is the smartest player in the game and comes from royal stock, he is also fair minded and decent, just like his current employer.

I like Tyrion but there are a few smarter than him.

Easily the best Character in the show. he will end up on the throne at the end and kill his sister in the process, great show that is in danger of becoming a shadow of what it once was, the last couple of episodes have been the weakest I have ever seen out of this franchise.

I think Jaime will kill her.
'To the extreme I rock a mic like a vandal, light up a stage and wax a chump like a candle.'

stew

Quote from: nrico2006 on August 25, 2017, 11:35:04 AM
Quote from: stew on August 25, 2017, 11:00:17 AM
Quote from: nrico2006 on August 22, 2017, 08:46:13 AM
Quote from: stew on August 21, 2017, 04:13:57 PM
I want to see Tyrion  on the throne at the end, he is the smartest player in the game and comes from royal stock, he is also fair minded and decent, just like his current employer.

I like Tyrion but there are a few smarter than him.

Easily the best Character in the show. he will end up on the throne at the end and kill his sister in the process, great show that is in danger of becoming a shadow of what it once was, the last couple of episodes have been the weakest I have ever seen out of this franchise.

I think Jaime will kill her.

Good call, either would make sense, as long as somebody does and right soon too.
Armagh, the one true love of a mans life.

omagh_gael

No chance Tyrion will sit the Throne. I think it is pretty clear that there will be no throne at the end of the show. Dany has said it herself, she is going to break the wheel. The show will end with a Westerosi version of democracy and she/John will lead it in a presidential type of role. Tyrion gave the strongest hint yet in the last (may have been two episodes ago) when he was explaining the voting system of the nights watch and kings moot from the Iron Isles.

In terms of the valunquar (sic) prophecy. I think the final episode will follow these sort of lines:

- John etc will bring the wight to Cersei, Jamie et al

- Cersei will appear to accept that she will join their 'cause'

- Cersei will divulge a back stabbing (kill John, Dany etc) plan to Jamie and he will end up killing her as the final straw. He will fully understand that the threat of the dead is real and Cersei's plan will be her Mad King "kill them all" moment.

- Brienne has been sent to Kingslanding to treat with Cersei and she will be the key link to Jamie rekindling his humanity as we saw in the earlier series.

JPGJOHNNYG

Quote from: omagh_gael on August 25, 2017, 12:24:27 PM
No chance Tyrion will sit the Throne. I think it is pretty clear that there will be no throne at the end of the show. Dany has said it herself, she is going to break the wheel. The show will end with a Westerosi version of democracy and she/John will lead it in a presidential type of role. Tyrion gave the strongest hint yet in the last (may have been two episodes ago) when he was explaining the voting system of the nights watch and kings moot from the Iron Isles.

In terms of the valunquar (sic) prophecy. I think the final episode will follow these sort of lines:

- John etc will bring the wight to Cersei, Jamie et al

- Cersei will appear to accept that she will join their 'cause'

- Cersei will divulge a back stabbing (kill John, Dany etc) plan to Jamie and he will end up killing her as the final straw. He will fully understand that the threat of the dead is real and Cersei's plan will be her Mad King "kill them all" moment.

- Brienne has been sent to Kingslanding to treat with Cersei and she will be the key link to Jamie rekindling his humanity as we saw in the earlier series.

Cersei will be killed off but not in the next episode Im afraid it s littlefinger whose scheming will finally catch up with him, to be honest dont actually understand what he is up to. In the past it made sense he was almost having a battle of wits with varys but now what exactly is he going to gain from his meddling other than having his head chopped off??

omagh_gael

Is Littlefinger's motivation now his little head? I think he's manoeuvring to have Sansa as the head of the Stark house and he as her husband.

I really hope there is more to the Sansa and Arya story arc. If they are playing it straight i.e. they are growing apart/out to get eachother then I'd be very disappointed, surely they are playing a double bluff on LF and he gets his comeuppance in the next episode?

Syferus

#185
Quote from: nrico2006 on August 25, 2017, 07:59:18 AM
Quote from: trileacman on August 24, 2017, 10:23:31 PM
Got was never a great show but these last two season have been tripe. Some notable exceptions aside like battle of the b**tards and blowing up the sept were grand but the rest is poorly scripted filler. There's times it's little better than hollyoaks in chain mail.

GOT is arguably the best show there has been.  I have watched most of the better ones and it is definitely up there.

It's been very good for most of the run but it's not a patch on a show like Breaking Bad. If you want to see how you go about ending a big show, look no further than BB. It was hitting home runs in its final two seasons.

CiKe

I'm hardly an expert on TV series, but I'd find it hard to believe is the best (actors, script, dialogue etc). I'd also find it incredibly hard to believe there have been many more entertaining series.

JPGJOHNNYG

Quote from: omagh_gael on August 25, 2017, 01:51:56 PM
Is Littlefinger's motivation now his little head? I think he's manoeuvring to have Sansa as the head of the Stark house and he as her husband.

I really hope there is more to the Sansa and Arya story arc. If they are playing it straight i.e. they are growing apart/out to get eachother then I'd be very disappointed, surely they are playing a double bluff on LF and he gets his comeuppance in the next episode?

Your probably right but for such a clever man he is backing a donkey there. Surely he would have been better trying to seduce Cersei or Dany if he wanted the power

nrico2006

Quote from: Syferus on August 25, 2017, 01:56:40 PM
Quote from: nrico2006 on August 25, 2017, 07:59:18 AM
Quote from: trileacman on August 24, 2017, 10:23:31 PM
Got was never a great show but these last two season have been tripe. Some notable exceptions aside like battle of the b**tards and blowing up the sept were grand but the rest is poorly scripted filler. There's times it's little better than hollyoaks in chain mail.

GOT is arguably the best show there has been.  I have watched most of the better ones and it is definitely up there.

It's been very good for most of the run but it's not a patch on a show like Breaking Bad. If you want to see how you go about ending a big show, look no further than BB. It was hitting home runs in its final two seasons.

Really?  Season 7 has been excellent.  I imagine season 8 will be even better.  Breaking Bad was brilliant too, but hard to pick one over the other. 
'To the extreme I rock a mic like a vandal, light up a stage and wax a chump like a candle.'

omagh_gael

GoT has made some major balls ups over the years with the plot etc but, imo, it is still a better show that BB overall.

gallsman

Season 7 has been by and large terrible in my book (geddit?). Great to get some payoffs that we've be long expecting but they've been handled pretty poorly with some awful scripting. Great visuals though.

6 was quite poor too but picked up massively towards the end.

5 was messy because of how they ruined the Dorne angle but had Hardhome in it, which was an absolute masterpiece.

First 4 sessions are terrific. I don't know if it's as simple as it went downhill once they started going off piste but the timing aligns more or less.

Syferus

#191
Quote from: nrico2006 on August 25, 2017, 02:40:15 PM
Quote from: Syferus on August 25, 2017, 01:56:40 PM
Quote from: nrico2006 on August 25, 2017, 07:59:18 AM
Quote from: trileacman on August 24, 2017, 10:23:31 PM
Got was never a great show but these last two season have been tripe. Some notable exceptions aside like battle of the b**tards and blowing up the sept were grand but the rest is poorly scripted filler. There's times it's little better than hollyoaks in chain mail.

GOT is arguably the best show there has been.  I have watched most of the better ones and it is definitely up there.

It's been very good for most of the run but it's not a patch on a show like Breaking Bad. If you want to see how you go about ending a big show, look no further than BB. It was hitting home runs in its final two seasons.

Really?  Season 7 has been excellent.  I imagine season 8 will be even better.  Breaking Bad was brilliant too, but hard to pick one over the other.

I was able to turn a blind eye to the last minute saves and plot conveniences until the last episode. Before that we had Jaime's last second rescue from certain dragon-toasted death and then not sinking to the bottom of the lake despite wearing a full suit of armour, Bran just straight chillin' at Winterfell and not telling Jon he's actually Dany's nephew because they want the romance to develop before they tell them it's incestuous, Arya acting like a jackass and Littlefinger becoming even more of a pantomime villain, the very network TV resolution to the Lannisters' money troubles, and the explaining away that the money wasn't there when Dany attacked with the dragons, so many little unbelievable and lazy pieces of writing.

That last episode just went way too far with that stuff and turned me against it. The finale has a lot of work to do now to get me genuinely excited for the final season.

The problem shows that get to this stage have is fans really invest in the characters and the world - if this was just some random show a season or two into its run your standards would be far lower and you wouldn't think too heavily about the errors. GoT through its own successes has set a higher target and when it doesn't hit that it's glaring. I expect better, and I doubt I'm alone. The Atlantic had a great article post-Beyond the Wall that encapsulates my feelings on where the show is right now:

Quote
Jon Snow is about to die. Again. This time, his imminent death is coming at the bony hands of the army of the dead: Jon, attacked by wights, has plunged into an icy lake. Torn at by zombies and closed in on by frigid waters, he seems to be done for. And, yet—here is a spoiler that, if you have been watching Game of Thrones, will be not much of a spoiler at all—Jon survives. Maybe because he's a really strong swimmer who is not at all weighed down by the layers of animal pelts he had donned specifically for their heft. Maybe because of the Targaryen fire that warms his blood. Maybe because his soul is buoyed by his growing romance with his aun—


But we are not meant to question such things. Nor are we meant to question it when, during the epic battle between the Night King and the Guardians of the Known World, Tormund gets saved, at the last second, by the Hound. Or when Benjen gallops into the battle at the very last minute, sacrificing himself to the zombie-horde so that Jon might ride again, even though both of them totally could have fit on that raft horse. Or when Daenerys herself arrives on the scene at precisely the right moment: to save the remaining Guardians, Jon, finally, included.

In some ways, those moments are simply continuations of approaches Game of Thrones has long taken in its storytelling: plot twists, destabilized time, a steadfast faith in magic—the kinds of powers that merge the world of the show and the world beyond it. The kinds that come from authors, and showrunners, and the surly demands of narrative. More and more, though, as the show approaches its final season, it has been losing its reassurance of narrative control. Its seams are showing. Its stories are cracking like so much zombie-ice. We are not meant to question—this is a fictional and fantastical world, after all—and yet it's becoming more and more difficult not to. So while the show's current season is establishing mysteries about sororicide, and incest, and zombie-dragons, it's also establishing a broader one: Does this story still know what it's doing? Will viewers' longstanding faith in it, in the end, be rewarded?


Game of Thrones is in many ways a show about faith: in gods, in others, in oneself. But it also demands, as any such show will, another kind of faith—in storytelling. In authorship. In the universe that is being constructed as a setting for the other things—a universe full of its own authors. Who knows, in this world, things others do not? Who decides how the stories will play out, and how the games will be played? The Lord of Light, and the Three-Eyed Raven, and Bran, and Hodor, and time travel, and resurrections, and dragons, and magic: Their presence has made Game of Thrones not just a work of fantasy, but also, in its way, a work of logic. This is a universe with its own rules to be obeyed—and, for the audience, its own disbeliefs to be suspended. Wildfire works as a weapon because, in the show's world, it literally works as a weapon. Bran becomes the Three-Eyed Raven because we watch him in the transformation. Arya has become "no one," we understand, because we have watched her become so many someones.

That so little of this has seemed the tautology it is has been a credit to the show's execution: Game of Thrones, with the help of its hefty budget, has been exceptionally good at the art of universe-construction. It has been fantasy that has, against all odds, made sense. What is dead may never die has long been an element of the show; the remarkable thing is that, for the most part, the death-fleeing has seemed a natural extension of the order of things rather than a violation of it.


Will Game of Thrones take the good faith it has built up over nearly seven seasons and squander it?


And yet here are some things that happened on Sunday's show: Viewers learned that Arya carries around a set of rubbery death-masks in a tasteful leather satchel. And that ravens can travel, seemingly, at the speeds of turbo-jets. And that Gendry, on the ground, can somehow do the same. And that the army of the dead is as resourceful as it is populous, apparently, able as it was, after the battle was fought, to procure the massive chains with which to remove a dead dragon from icy waters. Maybe there's a Home Depot conveniently located next to the Arby's off the I(ce)-95?

In some ways, sure, all that is simply an extension of the disbelief-suspension that has always been a requirement of the show—the deus-ex-machina twists that have been presented not as easy solutions to narrative problems, but rather as evidence of the show's cosmic surefootedness. Again and again, fate, which is to say the show's authors, collectively, intercedes. The battle is lost—until Stannis makes a surprise appearance. Arya's cover will be blown by Ser Amory—until Jaqen H'ghar kills him the second before he can tell her secrets. Daenerys and her small band of loyal advisors are doomed on Meereen, enclosed on by enemies—until Drogon shows up to save them, just in the nick of time. Jaime, in the line of dragon fire, is at the last minute pushed into a river by Bronn—and, then, rather than sinking to the bottom, as one might expect given the Kingslayer's clothing (armor) and prosthetic (a hand made of gold), he survives by means unknown. Showrunners are their own kinds of gods; they tell their own kinds of truths.

But, now, winter has come. The series is coming to a close. The time for resolution is here. And the show has established, at this point, many more questions than answers. Is Arya still Arya, or someone—something—else? Will Bran, notably absent in Sunday's episode, provide an as-yet-unseen salvation? Will the White Walker dragon breathe fire, or something else? Will the battle that will inevitably ensue be the final song of fire and ice? Is Jon Snow, infallible and invincible, the Drowned God? Will he and Daenerys—"Dany"—join the long line of coupled-off Targaryens?

They're enticing questions. But "Beyond the Wall," on Sunday, did not bode well for their answers. This is a season, after all, that has at times seemed almost overly aware of Thrones's success as a cultural phenomenon. The Ed Sheeran cameo. The many, many meme-friendly moments. The plots that seem designed to get from one spectacular set piece to the next. As my colleague Spencer Kornhaber put it, "The fuzziness with time just adds to the impression that this is a story driven by coincidence and expedience rather than logic." And it suggests a certain sloppiness in a show that has otherwise been so precise in its world-building—a sloppiness that asks other questions: Will Game of Thrones keep jumping sharks? Will it nuke fridges? Will it take the good faith it has built up over nearly seven seasons and squander it? Could it, in the end, go the way of Lost, its myths busted, its key questions unresolved?

Or: Is the show simply building, with all its moments of easy absurdity, to some final, pivotal plot twist?

Sunday's grand battle followed in one of the traditions Game of Thrones has established over its seven seasons: It provided an epic event not to close out the season, but as a capper to the season's penultimate episode. Next week's finale will ostensibly yield, if past formulas are any indication, an episode that will pick up the pieces and start to make sense of the new world. It might provide another epic battle, cannily staged and stunningly shot. It might provide another extension of the question fans have been asking since those squawking dragons first crawled over Daenerys's sooty shoulders at the end of the show's first season: What if the Night King gets one? What then? We'll soon find out. And we can safely assume that Jon Snow, saved by fate and fortune and the workings of a show that needs him, will be there to find out along with us.

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/08/deus-ex-westeros/537480/

Mike Tyson

f**king hell. Can't wait for the next season!

gallsman

Thought that was poor enough. They obviously used up all their CGI budget on the battles with the dragons as the CGI in the scene at the wall looked ridiculous.

leenie

#194
Didn't expect the person who was killed off  to happen.. thought they would have made it to the end ..
I thought it was a great episode
I'm trying to decide on a really meaningful message..