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

[RobertoCarlos]

Brans breaking the wheel on wheels and drogon is flying off to find D&D

[Marfrilau]

Your belief that he's a villain is so immensely stupid it's funny.

Why was it the time right for Jon to know his true parentage when Bran said so? What was gained from him knowing and what did that knowledge lead to?

[Logwyn]

I bet Sansa would marry gendry, he is naive

I bet Sansa is barren after what Ramsey Bolton did to her. Unless Arya has a bastard child that is the legitimized as a Stark end of the Stark line. And really even if Sansa does have a child it will have to be with a commoner, not a landed lord. Or the same thing happens.

Basically this is the end of the Stark line and in the end, the Lannisters won. Tyrion still around to see the Lannister line goes on.

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Your belief that he's a villain is so immensely stupid it's funny.

The Night King was the true hero of the story!!!!

[Celista]

They're no longer siblings, though. Bran isn't Bran any longer.

She refers to him as such so clearly she still considers him to be one.

[wunksta]

I really don't understand the whole Lord of Light and Azor Ahai plot point now.

[Th3Scourge]

If Bran doesn't tell Jon he's Aegon Targaryen:

Teams up and Marries Dany
Defeats the Night King
Prevents Dany going mad from her rejection
Doesn't see Jon as a threat to her claim
Most likely takes KL without any bloodshed because Dany hasn't gone mad.

Jon's arc should've been the main story, as it was for a significant portion of the series. This ending just feels so meh

[Monster Hunter]

I really don't understand the whole Lord of Light and Azor Ahai plot point now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4J16GzUJ28

should help explain it, Azor Ahai is like the great flood myth in the real world its been so adapted mutated and strung out theres no telling which religion or culture has it right all we got was the red priests version. but theres evidence it all ready happened thousands of years ago far in the east.

[Ragedaug]

The more I think of it, the more it hits me that they biggest failure of Season 6 was causing fans (or maybe just me) to stop caring about characters we cared so much about for several seasons - or for decades for some who started reading the books back in the 90's.

One of the keystones of the success for this story is how passionate fans are about the characters, which is very tangible whenever characters we care about and are vested in die, driving up the stakes for the rest of the characters. This season ended, and I felt very similar to how I felt leaving the theater for Last Jedi. I just didn't care what happened to anyone.

None of the prophecies mattered. Much of the foreshadowing didn't matter. Another analog to SW EP 8. This got me thinking about an old Kevin Smith Q&A that I rewatched recently. He was asked about the Superman script he wrote in the 90's. He mentioned how terrible producer WB has running the Superman project was and threw a note about how in Hollywood you just fail upwards.

Kevin Smith talks about the producer having no idea of any of the Superman back material (real name, planet he's from etc), is dead set on making sure Superman doesn't wear "gay" tights, and doesn't fly, making sure we include a Chewbacca type character in the Superman movie because that would be cool, and most importantly, Superman needs to fight a giant spider at the end because they are "nature's most fierce killers".

But anyway, I think folks like Ryan Johnson and D&D are doing the best they can, they just aren't that good at what they do. And there's common sense stuff that an entire random audience would laugh at how ridiculous it is, that they put into their movie/show without a clue that it doesn't make any sense. And when you do that enough times, people just stop caring. But yeah...failing upwards. D&D are now moving on to their Star Wars trilogy. Hopefully they don't get bored of it midway through the final movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH9bXNe2kOA

[Swnem]

The last season was surely rushed, but at the end of the day, the story would not have changed. So, i am glad i didn't have to wait 2 more years of fluff to get there.

I do think bread crumbs were set if there is ever to be an idea of a sequel though, wich i wasn't expecting.

The king that was promised, certainly wasn't delivered.

[Ragedaug]

It's large geographically but population is small... the Reach has the highest population by far, I believe (which makes Bronn one of the biggest threats to the throne).

The north, however, IS geographically remote and easy to defend. So from that perspective it's probably the best candidate to go it alone (next best would be Dorne, then Iron Islands).

The North has the last vestiges of the blood of the First Men. The North doesn't worship the Seven. So not counting the Iron Islands, because they were originally part of the North and they worship their own god, the 6 middle & southern kingdoms claim Andal heritage and worship different gods than the North. So that's another reason the North would split off.

Anyone talking about the crack in the floor of the map room in the Red Keep that splits the North from the rest of Westeros? (foreshadowing?) You can see it when Jamie and Cersie first meet in Ep 5.

[Velshin]

It's large geographically but population is small... the Reach has the highest population by far, I believe (which makes Bronn one of the biggest threats to the throne).

The north, however, IS geographically remote and easy to defend. So from that perspective it's probably the best candidate to go it alone (next best would be Dorne, then Iron Islands).

Yes, but I have an interesting question for you...how do you know the population is small really where did you get that info from?

[Shadowferal]

'Game of Thrones' fiasco: Shareholders would have a good case to sue in court

HBO’s parent, AT&T, shamefully threw away a valuable asset for no reason, says Brett Arends.

No, the final season of “Game of Thrones” wasn’t a disappointment.

It was an insult.

This fiasco was, of course, an insult to the tens of millions of fans who had invested so much time and energy in this series over eight extraordinary years.

But in a more tangible sense, it was also an insult to the many more who own stock in HBO’s parent company, AT&T (T) If you have money in a regular U.S. index fund, that includes you.

AT&T’s management has just needlessly thrown away a prize asset for no good reason whatsoever. Imagine the Empire State Realty Trust (ESRT) knocking down the Empire State Building “before people get tired of it.” Or Tiffany (TIF) canceling its line of engagement rings to “move on.”

This was like setting fire to a pile of money. Your money.

Laziness? Incompetence? Stupidity? You make the call. This must be the dumbest move since Coca-Cola’s (KO) New Coke.

The final season was a disaster. Talk about blowing an opportunity. Never have so many exciting characters met such boring deaths. Never have so many brilliant possibilities been thrown away. Never has so much time, money and talent been wasted mailing something in.

It took them two years to make this?

How fitting that someone accidentally left a Starbucks coffee cup in one scene and a couple of water bottles in another. Did anyone actually watch this thing before broadcasting?

A few diehard fans are defending how the series ended. But almost no one is praising it.

The only question that remains now is whether some enterprising limo-chasing lawyer is going to file a class-action suit against the company on behalf of the stockholders.

Don’t rule it out.

Stephenson specifically cited the value of “Game Of Thrones” when he announced his company’s massive $85 billion takeover of HBO’s parent company, Time Warner, in 2016.

The takeover deal would be a “game-changer” for AT&T because of Time Warner’s “marquee businesses, including HBO,” and “blockbuster shows like ‘Game of Thrones,’ ” he wrote to all of AT&T’s employees at the time.

Instead, after completing the takeover last year, he ran the “blockbuster series” for just six more episodes — each more ludicrous than the last.

This was potentially one of the most valuable franchises in entertainment history. The series should have been kept running, or at worst sold to another company. You think no one would have bought this? The merchandising rights alone are worth a fortune.

Meanwhile, HBO was getting about $15 a month per direct online subscriber. How many of those will now cancel?

Record viewership for the final season may sound like a “win” for HBO and AT&T, and that’s probably how they’ll spin it. But it wasn’t a win. People tuned in this season to see the conclusion of a brilliant and complex melodrama that had been running since 2011. If you’d watched the previous seasons, you really had to watch the ending.

So the viewership figures this time around aren’t a testimony to the final season. They’re a testimony to the previous seven. And, more importantly, they’re a sign of what might have been.

[Velshin]

Using the size of the army as a proxy, and I can't remember any specific details but I believe there were mentions as to how sparsely populated the north was, it's clear that their population was lower than the Westerlands, and WAAAY lower than the Reach.

Yes but this is just assumptions tbh nothing official at all.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

-snip-

Underdeveloped story aside, the problem is that the show is unsustainable. Publicly traded corporations are about growth. Shareholders invest in a company because they expect it to make more money this year than the last. Meanwhile, GoT has been running for eight years and people have already made up their minds about the show: either they're watching it or they're not going to. GoT is HBO's flagship title and the show that anchors their subscription service, and it's quite evident that subscription growth has flatlined over the past few years. The show has captured as large of an audience as it's going to get. meanwhile, GoT production budgets continue to grow with each season as cast and crew rates continue up, with the mains being paid as much as $500,000 per episode. Simply put, the profit margins for the show are going to decrease and that hurt's HBO's bottom line when it comes to market growth. From the perspective of HBO, it may be better to cut the knot and reinvest that money into developing a multitude of new properties which don't come with the ridiculous costs of production that a eight season long show has.

[ohwell]

Ok, then please explain to me why even after the Starbucks coffee cup incident, they still didn't learn a damn thing, and there's water bottles now on the set. This whole season seemed rushed.

Definitely agree. It's like they gave up.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Definitely agree. It's like they gave up.

Oh please, a couple of forgotten drinks that in a view for a couple seconds of footage from an hours long shoot isn't going isn't going to bring the quality of the show down. Film crews can spend upwards of eighteen hours a day shooting and resetting only to get maybe five minutes of usable footage.

[Celista]

Definitely agree. It's like they gave up.

Sounds like burnout. Happens when you overwork people for almost a decade.

[ohwell]

Oh please, a couple of forgotten drinks that in a view for a couple seconds of footage from an hours long shoot isn't going isn't going to bring the quality of the show down. Film crews can spend upwards of eighteen hours a day shooting and resetting only to get maybe five minutes of usable footage.

It's not the drinks.....it's the QA of them. You do realize they've been edited out now. They didn't even review their finished product.

[Kellorion]

Hodor died for this shit?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

It's not the drinks.....it's the QA of them. You do realize they've been edited out now. They didn't even review their finished product.

George Lucas and Peter Jackson watched rushes of their films hundreds of times over and mistakes still made it through. This isn't unique to GoT at all. I'm quite frankly amazed that the most renowned errors in the show thus far have been a couple of forgotten drinks.