[TV/Books] Game of Thrones ***SPOILER Discussion***

[Champagne Supernova]

Should of probably watched this in the dark with the lights off, could barely see anything without red priest and dragon fire haha.

[Einsz]

16 years later still nothing can beat LOTR fight scenes. Poor job from GoT, I did read somewhere that filming winterfell battle took 130 days, that just shows GoT crew lacks talent.

[Independent voter]

If the Night King could've been killed that easily, why didn't someone kill him long ago?

That way they wouldn't have had to build the Wall.

[Puupi]

16 years later still nothing can beat LOTR fight scenes. Poor job from GoT, I did read somewhere that filming winterfell battle took 130 days, that just shows GoT crew lacks talent.

Both are quite poop in my opinion. I don't like CGI battles.

[Shibito]

Stop bringing in your sylvanas bitching into this thread its enough with the lore forums.

[Kolvarg]

it played into the theme of the episode better having her come out of nowhere, all hope seemed lost but they overcame death.

the whole episode was building up to a "the night is darkest before the dawn" type deal they made it feel as hopeless as possible for the big moment where the NK falls and hope is restored!

in the "glory days" of the show it was literally famous for doing quick, unexpected things.

The "all hope is lost" trope, where the "good guys" are losing but at the last moment something happens or a hero does something heroic and they manage to win, is one of the most used tropes/clichés in action movies and such.

The only reason I wouldn't expect it, is because I expected this series to be better than that. Game of Thrones is not famous for doing "all seems to be going wrong but then a miracle happens". If anything it's quite the opposite, it was famous for having quick, dark and unexpected twists when all was seemingly going well.

I mean, look at Ned Stark in Season 1. What would the impact have been if after that time in captivity, he was saved or released at the last moment just when he was about to be executed? That's not what happened. It got worse and worse for him, and when all hope was lost, with his daughter begging for mercy, he still got executed with no sugar coating. When Robb Stark was doing well in the war and on a strong path to winning, he was betrayed and murdered in cold blood because of politics. That was Game of Thrones, not this.

Don't get me wrong, I liked the episode, it was undoubtedly entertaining, and I loved the sense of dread and terror that they conveyed with the army of the dead. The ending just felt "meh". You could argue that there was no real satisfying way of tying all the loose knots in GoT, and perhaps you're right - I'm certainly not claiming I'd write something better. Doesn't mean I have to like it though.


I mean, at the point where the NK is exposed enough to be jumped on by Arya, why not just hit him with a dragonglass arrow at a safe distance? And considering there was literally no new information conveyed about him or his purpose, why did he even exposed himself in the first place? Surely he knew that if he died his whole army would fall, so why not just lay back and wait till the wights killed everyone? If all he wanted was everyone dead, a few more minutes and they would be dead, including Bran.

[Kolvarg]

The dothraki do thier little charge with jorah, the lights going out is a good foreshadowing shot.

Indeed. I was expecting more of that overview PoV of the lights slowly extinguishing into darkness, though. And after that I was hoping to see rows of dead dothraki now leading the undead's charge, coming out of the darkness, but alas not everything can be perfect Definitely one of the nicest shots/moments of the episode.

[Puupi]

Anyone who has played Shaman in WoW knew the very first second what would happen to the Dothraki.

Flametongue weapon has always been absolutely shit.

[tromage2]

Bit disappointed by this episode.

- No John Snow vs Night King.
- No dialog or reasoning behind the Night King he just wanted Brann for reasons….
- Action was good in some parts others you could not see what was happening or it was to dark.
- To many characters are still on their feet after this episode wanted more death.
- John Snow direwolf Ghost was only on the screen for 10 seconds doing nothing pretty pointless.
- For me Arya taking the Night King kill is like John Snow getting the Cersei kill, their story does not connect but they get the final blow not rly doing it for me. (anticlimactic)

[Molis]

Its amazing how you can ruin a good episode with the last 5 minutes.

You are just too edgy for us. You can stop watching now.

[Asphyx22]

Yeah screaming while jumping from god knows where is so stealthy... She could have posed as one of the corpses around Bran and wait for the night king to reach out for him to kill him and then stab him from below... that would have been stealthy. Jumping at someone while screaming is not stealthy.

While it was probably done for dramatic effect, Arya yelling doesn't happen till she is in the air 2 feet from the Night King's face. She was dead silent until that point. It was definitely too late for any of the White Walkers to act on that.

[Kolvarg]

i guess it annoys the nerds because it makes no tactical sense. It is literally for the writers to get thier tv shots. Which is fair enough. I imagine in the books that won't happen, the books can afford to be 'more boring'. The troops will likely set up right (no dumb charges into the darkness, catapults behind infantry, unsullied behind trenches etc) I'd imagine that in the book they do everything right tactically and it makes the futility of the long night more apparent by only barely winning.

True. If anything it's doing a great job at making me wanting more and more to read the books (if they ever come out)!

[Lollis]

The most idiotic decision was charging with your calvary head on into the hordes of undead... It was literally just giving more soldiers to the Night King for free. Why not have them just pincer the wights from the sides/from behind???


The defence on the walls... WHERE THE HELL WAS BURNING OIL DROPPING FROM THE TOP OF THE WALLS ON THE ARMY UNDER THEM ???
That alove would kill hundreds, if not thousands of the wights.


All in all, having a competent tactician do the preparations and strategy, there wouldn't be as much deaths as there was


(Seriously, whe the fuck puts trebuchets in the front lines, and barely even uses them?)

IKR. Charging INTO the darkness no less. The sheer incompetence that the commanders would have needed in planning the battle is so laughable.

The trebuchets didn't really enter my thoughts so much as the Dothraki throwing their lives away and the complete idiocy of there being no oil on the walls, they create a barrier to set on fire which could practically have been jumped over or put out and have absolutely nothing for the walls?

Hell, we can even ignore the oil and make these idiots stand side by side on the crenellations jabbing dragonglass swords out over the side and they would have been more effective, they actually let the dead climb over the fortifications when it literally takes a slash and they fall down destroyed.

Just a little snip from a forbes review

Melisandre asks as they stare at the fallen Beric Dondarrion, who has died so many times before, all for this moment it turns out. All part of this plan.

"Not today," Arya says.

And she rushes off. I didn't know why at the time.

Are you fucking kidding me? Anyone who didn't get what was going to happen when Melisandre mentioned BLUE EYES is a complete fucking idiot.

[Molis]

People that think this show is about the Night King need to go back and read GRRM. He has always been an outside threat meant to be a minor plot point.

Maybe this is the fault of the HBO writers, however he was never meant to be the final boss.

You need to get over it or get on with your life.

[Pratt]

I watched live on HBO and the video quality was the worst I have ever seen on my x900. I couldn't see much at all and the entire screen was shifting blocks of pixels. Completely ruined it for me.

[Thrif]

This is why people criticizing the writing of the show now is really ringing hollow with me, especially after tonight. I guess people forgot that in the "glory days" of the show it was literally famous for doing quick, unexpected things. I think this qualifies as a classic TV GoT move, up there with the best of them.

That couldn't be further from the truth. It didn't become famous for doing quick, unexpected things, it became famous for not using shitty storytelling devices like deus ex machina and plot armors. Which this episode is littered with.

Also it did a lot of other things right, but this is focusing on what you mistakenly call "quick unexpected things"

[Elkfingers]

Why am I not surprised that so many people on MMOC are dumping on the episode with completely fucking contrived opinions.

If you're disappointed because you thought the fight with the night king should have been like, 20 minutes long, that's your own fault really. There was very little known about him, certainly not enough to suggest that he's supposed to be a Capcom boss, and really what makes him a threat is the whole raising the dead thing. That's his whole deal. On top of that, prophecy has been a major theme throughout the series, and clearly Brann's giving Arya the dagger is a signal that in some very real sense the outcome was predetermined. Far from 'not making sense', it would make no sense at all for that not to have happened. If those pieces didn't fall into place as soon as you saw that scene, you should really have a think about how well you actually understand narrative structure versus how much you just wanted to see a big, pointless cinematic duel for no reason.

Not only was it the only sensible way to resolve the confilict with respect to really, really obvious foreshadowing, it also makes sense in relation to the remainder of the narrative. The NK's and his army are not interesting characters - zombies, from a broad characterisation standpoint are not interesting because they don't have personalities like people do. Their purpose isn't to be the main focus of the story (and never has been), but is instead to act as a device with which to raise the stakes. A huge portion of the army has been wiped out defending Winterfell which in turn makes Cersei and her army a bigger threat, and because both sides consist of fully fleshed out characters, the stakes are naturally higher and more engaging anyway. The Night King sets up the conflict to take place over the latter half of the series, and spending any longer than is strictly necessary on the specifics of how he dies is pointless because it does nothing to bolster the rest of the narrative.

Don't get me wrong, GRRM is not an amazing author, and GoT has gone in really questionable directions a few times, but I really feel that people are missing the point in a big way when it comes to this particular episode.

[Puupi]

People that think this show is about the Night King need to go back and read GRRM. He has always been an outside threat meant to be a minor plot point.

Maybe this is the fault of the HBO writers, however he was never meant to be the final boss.

You need to get over it or get on with your life.

It's not a minor plot point.

The whole series starts with a scene about Night King. IIRC the first book does, too.

EDIT: yeah, just checked - the prologue for the first book is the same as the first scene of the TV series.

[-aiko-]

People that think this show is about the Night King need to go back and read GRRM. He has always been an outside threat meant to be a minor plot point.

No....

He doesn't exist in the books, at least not in the same way as the show, but the whole point of the story is that the petty squabbling between houses means nothing in the face of the true threat.

What the hell do you think "Winter is coming" means?

[Amaterasu65]

For someone no doubt dead he's surprisingly not dead in the preview for the next episode (the dead BBQ scene). Someone already posted a picture 2 pages ago.

!remindme 1 week