Honestly, what do you think about Season 8? Mod warning post #1/#410

no.8

Sonny noggs wrote:

Some of the worst TV ever made.

One of the worst comments ever made

Barna77

I wouldn't go as far as asking to remake it. But it wasn't that good.
It was too rushed, just needed some more episodes.

Arghus

I thought by the standards of other shows Season Eight was amazing: high caliber entertainment.

But by the standards established by earlier seasons of Game of Thrones Season Eight was a let-down. Two full final seasons for seasons seven and eight would have helped.

I don't really have a problem with where all the eventual pieces ended up - bar Bran becoming King, that was just stupid - but everything was rushed and crucial developments in the story and changes in the characters felt quite often weightless, convenient and inconsistent. It's a real shame. The huge twists and turns in the story needed time to breathe and flow naturally so that they felt authentic and they so often didn't.

I think the writers have no reason to be loyal to the viewers in the sense that they are somehow obliged to give people want they want, I don't mind the show taking turns I wasn't anticipating or even in favour of, but, if you are going to take risks make sure what arises out of them feels real and true - and I don't think a majority of Season Eight lived up to that.

Though some of the backlash is a bit OTT. Fair enough, people are dissapointed by Season Eight, so am I, but I've heard some ridiculously hyperbolic crap about the show since Sunday. GoT was pound for pound a fcking unbelievable show and maybe they didn't quite stick the landing but I'm not going to relentlessly shit on the show for that.

There was some absolute wind-bag on with Matt Cooper "reviewing" the show on the radio earlier and she gave the episode, the season and the show as a whole absolutely no credit, without, of course, really making any coherent sense - just lame-brainedly - talking about how "let-down" she felt. She had a particular problem with the Dragon CGI in the final episode, which made me wonder did she actually have functioning eyes - uggghh, absolute ear-cancer! I hate that. Season Eight had many faults, but it also was in its own right far better than just about anything else on TV and on a technical level it was spectacular. It's fun to rant and all but people should also be fair and perhaps, most importantly, inarticulate hot-take merchants shouldn't be asked for their opinion on radio on just about anything.

Sonny noggs

no.8 wrote: »

One of the worst comments ever made

In 10 years time no one will remember it, unlike The West Wing, The Sopranos etc.

Roger Hassenforder

Sonny noggs wrote: »

In 10 years time no one will remember it, unlike The West Wing, The Sopranos etc.

Not sure if serious...

kunst nugget

Roger Hassenforder wrote: »

Not sure if serious...

Ah, it's in keeping with a lot of the hyperbole that's been on this thread...

Greyfox

Arghus wrote: »

I don't really have a problem with where all the eventual pieces ended up - bar Bran becoming King, that was just stupid - but everything was rushed and crucial developments in the story and changes in the characters felt quite often weightless, convenient and inconsistent. It's a real shame. The huge twists and turns in the story needed time to breathe and flow naturally so that they felt authentic and they so often didn't.

It feels like what the writers done is worked out the endpoint for each character and then decided to work on how to get them to this point which was D&D writing backwards, sticking to a rough outline and not thinking enough about the characters feelings and motivations. what's particularly frustrating is everyone else besides the writers did an absolutely superb job which is why a badly written season was still worth watching.

daddy pig

I think it seems pretty clear that George RR Martin gave bullet points to the writers and they worked it out from there. They did a woeful job with it. There are countless others you could expand on but the one which really stuck out to me was Jon Snows endgame.

Jon Snow finishes the show by again taking the black and going out past the wall. That very much strikes me as something George RR Martin would have told them. It's a fitting finale for him.

However in the tv show this makes zero sense - the night king was the big baddie and was created by the children of the forest and white walkers could only be made by the night king.
They are all literally dead so there is zero threat anymore - nobody needs the wall and nobody needs the nights watch anymore. Even the wildling are zero threat anymore. Why does the Nights Watch even exist now?

In the books this would make perfect sense and going out past the wall as the final scene mirrors the first book and is a good finish. There is no big baddie in the book so once the original threat is beaten it makes sense that the Nights Watch and the Wall needs to be rebuilt. The Others are still a mystery and will regroup and come back in the future. Jon could have abdicated or refused the be heir to the throne as he viewed this more important. It can be tied up comfortably and actually make sense in the book.

walshb

Sawduck wrote: »

The last two seasons were a huge drop in quality,by the time the final episode csme around i was just watching out of curiosity and didn't really care anymore

Agreed. I think after 4 seasons or so it became nothing but a complete repetitive borefest...

beauf

Its kind of an open prison for the Kingdom, isn't it.
That said there were so many open threads on that part of the story both in the books and TV that were unresolved.
GOT both in Book and more so in the TV has always been flawed in the mechanics of the world don't fit together.

But you can overlook that as the characters are so absorbing. They were more important than the mechanics. Until they were discarded at least.

PhiloCypher

I think this YouTube account probably has the best grasp of what George and the writer are/we're aiming for.

This first video makes a good argument for why Bran was always the endgame and not just D&D copying their best bud Rian Johnson subversiony ways.

https://youtu.be/Kmnop6l7KmI

The second video from the same account makes a similar case for Dany's fall from grace.

https://youtu.be/D8ZqKVmkze8

The fates of those two characters now sit a little better with me even if I think the show did a poor job of setting them up so they felt natural and not so out of left field. Now if he can just make a video about all the other characters fates maybe I can have closure

Foxtrol

Greyfox wrote: »

It feels like what the writers done is worked out the endpoint for each character and then decided to work on how to get them to this point which was D&D writing backwards, sticking to a rough outline and not thinking enough about the characters feelings and motivations. what's particularly frustrating is everyone else besides the writers did an absolutely superb job which is why a badly written season was still worth watching.

I still disagree that they didn’t think enough about characters feelings and motivations, it was more that we didn’t see it through a slow pace and build up like earlier seasons. There is a difference between not getting enough exposition for a choice, not liking the character’s choice, or the choice not making any sense. I find most viewer complaints, especially the ones that come across as the most outraged, tend to claim the latter but their true issue falls into one of the other two.

I feel the working from the end point is exactly what happened. That isn’t a problem in itself, the bigger issue was that they weren’t moving the plot towards the ending of the show early enough. They initially went along with the slow pace of the books and basically kept that going up until the end of season 6, aside from stripping out certain elements of ‘fat’ from the later books. This kind of show and production was never likely to go more than 8 seasons. It is an interesting question to ask, if the show had to be capped at 8 seasons (and the same episode count), would people prefer the earlier seasons to be sped up and certain elements cut out or have the show as it was, with a final 2 seasons that were at a much faster pace?

the.red.baron

Writing was grand, within the confines of it being the last season.


They feckin dragged out the other seasons so much they had to squeeze in the whole story to the last season


A mistake of course


But the biggest mistake was casting two spectacularly bad actors in the main leads


I'd say that played on why they rushed it. The leads couldn't carry the story. Imagine a whole season of Emilia Clarke trying to act out her arc into insanity


Kit Harrington has about 1/2 an emotional range


They decided to just peg it along before it had jumped the shark


That said, the rest of the acting was great, very well cast, it made the other two look even worse


The Battles were brilliant really, so well done, lots of extras rather than just cgiing the whole thing, the balance was just right

Bigbagofcans

the.red.baron wrote: »

The leads couldn't carry the story. Imagine a whole season of Emilia Clarke trying to act out her arc into insanity

I actually thought Emilia's acting was great this season, it's really come along since the beginning. I felt she was able to convey her (short) descent into pure madness very well. Such a shame the writing was bad.

I'm disappointed with the lack of screen time Cersei got this season. Lena Headey plays her so well.

pq0n1ct4ve8zf5

I felt that Clarke and Harrington improved over the run but yeah I'd say they were the weakest links in the whole cast. Can't really excuse it with age or inexperience when they were able to cast the likes of Maisie Williams and Jack Gleeson. There were things they were each great at (not least nudity!) but subtle moments, convincing line reads weren't really either's forte. Though I got particularly down on Clarke's acting in seasons 2 & 3 and then felt terrible when I read her saying how much she struggled with the job while recovering from two brain surgeries :eek:

Honest opinion on the season overall, nowhere near where I thought it'd be before 2013, not as low as I thought it'd be at the start of the season. Best season of GOT? No. Worst season? Definitely not. Pretty good TV? Yeah.

the.red.baron

Bigbagofcans wrote: »

I actually thought Emilia's acting was great this season, it's really come along since the beginning. I felt she was able to convey her (short) descent into pure madness very well. Such a shame the writing was bad.

I'm disappointed with the lack of screen time Cersei got this season. Lena Headey plays her so well.

she is brilliant, she has had plenty of screen time at this stage though and they could only do so much with all the plot lines they had filled the rest of the seasons with, she just got lost


Still think Clarke and Harrington should be up for a razzie, her film career outside has just confirmed how bad she is


Seems like a nice person as does Harrington and it's nice he met his wife on set, better chemistry there


The finale should have been the snow man really, they did so well building it up over the seasons, making a real sense of dread about him


The killing of the dragon and john sailing off as they crowed onto the shore were truly great TV moments, not much has matched it

Useful.Idiot

Aside from the usual fantastic action set pieces, some enjoyable dialogue in the first couple of episodes and a palpably tense build-up to episode 3 (which ended up disappointing slightly) it was easily the worst season of the show. The dip in quality of writing started to be felt a couple of seasons ago but this season completely took the biscuit. It almost felt like a parody of previous stronger seasons; like comparing a nowadays Simpsons episode to Golden Era Simpsons. Every climactic moment or death had absolutely no emotional weight or impact, romantic relationships were completely unconvincing and what little there was of character development was usually completely illogical. This season epitomised the shows gradual metamorphosis from compelling dialogue and intricate character arcs to clumsy, wooden character interactions, "plot armour" and cheesy one-liners.

It's still one of the greatest TV shows of all time, but it'll be known as one, of that there are many, that ended with a whimper.

the.red.baron

Useful.Idiot wrote: »

Aside from the usual fantastic action set pieces, some enjoyable dialogue in the first couple of episodes and a palpably tense build-up to episode 3 (which ended up disappointing slightly) it was easily the worst season of the show. The dip in quality of writing started to be felt a couple of seasons ago but this season completely took the biscuit. It almost felt like a parody of previous stronger seasons; like comparing a nowadays Simpsons episode to Golden Era Simpsons. Every climactic moment or death had absolutely no emotional weight or impact, romantic relationships were completely unconvincing and what little there was of character development was usually completely illogical. This season epitomised the shows gradual metamorphosis from compelling dialogue and intricate character arcs to clumsy, wooden character interactions, "plot armour" and cheesy one-liners.

It's still one of the greatest TV shows of all time, but it'll be known as one, of that there are many, that ended with a whimper.

Bit harsh


they had to depart from the books because a TV audience isn't going to wait


And they felt they had to finish it


The books are unfinished, right, and god they dragged their feet, literally in two senses



Up to the last episode, i felt it was fine, it's not the greatest TV of all time though



I doubt i'd ever be bothered re-watching it

Roger Hassenforder

I think people were so invested in it, they almost feel betrayed by the denouement. The standard of early seasons was so high, when they needed to wind it up, certain things were sacrificed for expediency, resulting in a deterioration of what made it great.

The "bitter-sweet" happy ever after, while heavy on the cheese, was an excercise in extraction from a mess of where the books are.

What else could they do? No matter what they did, fans will be disappointed, esp the hard core superfans that were reading it before it became mainatream, who had imagined the lore of the books being realised, all their expectations fulfilled. But left instead with a menthol fag after choresex, wondering what happened to the hoped for animalistic rogering and Rothman.

But this talk of the series being rubbish is nonsense, one should consider slapping some sense into ones self.

Like a curates egg, theres good and bad. Filler and epic. Overall, its one of the top series ever. It has set the bar higher than where it was.

Brian?

Greyfox wrote: »

Yes I would, season 1-3 and 6 are excellent and season 4 of GOT is still better than any season of the wire or Sopranos. GOT at its worst is still better than watching the walking dead

You're having a laugh. Every season of The Wire or The Sopranos was better than any season of GoT. You can't even compare them in terms of acting, plot or cinematography.

I liked series 1-6, but they're a bit of escapist fun. The Wire and The Sopranos are the 2 best TV series ever made. I prefer to watch the Sopranos, but I can't honestly say it's better than The Wire.

In musical terms, The Wire is the Rolling Stones and The Sopranos are The Beatles. GoT are T-Rex, fun to begin with but fading badly.

Wedwood

Final series was fine. Only bit that annoyed is after 7 years of building up 'Winter is Coming', the Night King was dispatched without ever saying a single word.

MOH

Roger Hassenforder wrote: »

Ah would ya sthop.

It wasnt exactly another Lost.

Yes, it was.

Brian?

MOH wrote: »

Yes, it was.

The ending of Lost was better........

TerrorFirmer

I would say it's pretty fair to put S1-4 of GoT up there with Sopranos and The Wire, two other shows I loved, not to mention the likes of later seasons of Breaking Bad. I would dare say, depending on your taste, all are so similar in terms of quality that it's much of a muchness dependent on your taste. I'd take GoT S1-4 over all of them personally, but it doesn't take away from the fact they're all absolutely stellar TV.

They all have different strengths and weaknesses. I doubt many would claim the acting in GoT is better than that in Sopranos for example, but it's impossible to deny the sheer brilliance in how GoT managed to make a fantasy drama with such vast scope so grounded, razor sharp and irresistibly compelling in its first few seasons when it was completely leaning on GRRM's narrative and dialogue.

There was nothing quite like Sopranos before Sopranos, the same is true for Game of Thrones, and both have undeniably had an enormous and far reaching impact on the landscape and perception of TV. Whilst no doubt brilliant, I don't think the same could be said of The Wire, Breaking Bad, or other tremendously good shows like True Detective S1, earlier seasons of Boardwalk Empire, etc.

threein99

Brian? wrote: »

You're having a laugh. Every season of The Wire or The Sopranos was better than any season of GoT. You can't even compare them in terms of acting, plot or cinematography.

I liked series 1-6, but they're a bit of escapist fun. The Wire and The Sopranos are the 2 best TV series ever made. I prefer to watch the Sopranos, but I can't honestly say it's better than The Wire.

In musical terms, The Wire is the Rolling Stones and The Sopranos are The Beatles. GoT are T-Rex, fun to begin with but fading badly.

It's all subjective.

peddlelies

Spoiled the entire show for me. The writing was terrible and everything felt rushed.

Roger Hassenforder

MOH wrote: »

Yes, it was.

No it wasnt...
*waits for return shot


Nothing was worse than that.

Rezident

RiCriostoir wrote: »

I've seen a lot of complaints about it on Facebook, Twitter and Reddit. But personally I don't see anything wrong with Season 8, and feel as if the directors are doing a good job on it. It does feel a small bit rushed but the CGI is amazing.

What do yous think?

I would have preferred 10 - 12 episodes rather than a paltry 6 but it's obviously brilliant, people saying the acting or writing is bad but they can't act or write as well themselves! It's just 2019 Outrage Culture, people getting recreationally offended by everything nowadays - including their own favourite show! And ruining it for themselves - LOL! Just so they can Tweet about it and join the Hype-machine. Someone wrote they were simultaneously checking Twitter while watching it, no wonder they didn't get it - they weren't even paying attention. And people who said that not enough people died! - those people need help.

The casting, the acting, the cgi, everything is just dripping with quality, and it even manages to be funny too. It will stand the test of time.

I think lots of people ruined it for themselves, they were so obsessed with it, online and reading about every rumour and possibility of what might happen and hypothesising every possibility and they foolishly ended up spoiling a lot of the reveals for themselves - I avoided all that nonsense and really enjoyed it - mostly. And they were still surprised by the NK ending! And threw their rattles out of the pram! It's like they don't even want to be happy.

There were a few moments that annoyed me, like Jon running out in front of a dragon and doing nothing for pure optics (kill the dragon with your sword FFS! and the whole Dothraki and Unsullied armies respawning for the final level!), but it was mostly very good. And as for people crying about the 'realism' or the military accuracy of the placement of the fúcking catapults! Let's not over-analyse it - it's a fúcking TV show about dragons!

The Long Night was one of the best episodes of anything I have ever seen although, admittedly, there is so much in the first half that you can't take it all in on your first viewing and it did feel a bit much, but the second viewing brought it all together. I love that they reward repeat viewing, as in earlier seasons too instead of only pandering to the bloodthirsty, Twitter Trolls who never even watched previous seasons, only watched the episode once and weren't even paying attention. The final ten minutes of it, the music, everything, the finish was just legendary. Truly extraordinary. I'll be watching it again this weekend, can't wait, nothing else is this epic.

And yes the CGI is the best that's been done so far, better than any film. And I'm so glad they didn't chicken out of Dany's true destiny.

And for people saying Dany went Mad!? She didn't go mad - she went Targaryen!

Rezident

Oh - and one more thing - for the LOVE of all that is good and holy, stop using the word 'arc' - it's a TV show about dragons FFS! You sound like Una Mullally.

*puts on snobby, elitist, self-absorbed voice of entitlement*: "I am shocked and offended and OUTRAGED that *insert character*'s ARC did not do what I wanted it to do, it feels as though something has been taken from me, George RR Martin has STOLEN something from me, personally, denying me my right to continue, if you will, my own personal arc . . . and therefore the writing is terrible".

Stop taking yourselves so seriously. TV show. Dragons. Back to earth people.

TerrorFirmer

Ah, the classic "it has dragons" defence that is for some reason supposed to make the season largely immune to valid criticism. I must remember that for future movies.

Star Wars - "Lads, it has laser swords, cop yourselves on"

Terminator - "Lads, it has robot skeletons from the future, anyone who criticizes it is basically a sad, pathetic individual"

Can we apply it retroactively to existing movies widely recognised as being mediocre?

The Hobbit Trilogy - "Lads, it has wizards and orcs, stop being eo entitled and elitest"

Is there a cut-off point?

Battlefield Earth - "Lads, it's about aliens fighting humans, stop nit-picking and just enjoy it for what it is"

It's just 2019 Outrage Culture, people getting recreationally offended by everything nowadays - including their own favourite show! And ruining it for themselves - LOL! Just so they can Tweet about it and join the Hype-machine.

Very true, it must surely be the fact that it's 2019 to blame for all the criticism. Every other highly-rated season aired between 2011 and 2018 where they were thankfully safe from the masses of fans who for some reason apparently want to have serious issues with season 8 to be part of some global conspiracy specifically against the final season of Game of Thrones.

But look, that's 2019 for you I suppose. What can I say, I just went into S8 with my fingers crossed thinking "please, please lord, I've never asked you for much but I'm begging you, just let the final season of my favorite show ever, by a significant margain, be riddled with pacing, scripting, dialogue and consistency issues largely absent from previous seasons so I can rant about it on the internet".

I never thought that watching the final seasons of Boardwalk Empire, Dexter, Breaking Bad, Sopranos, Battlestar Galactica, True Blood, The Wire, Spartacus, and loads of other shows I've loved over the years, so as you say the only logical explanation is that it's 2019, there's no chance it could be anything to do with the show itself.