GoT is dead, and I can point to the exact moment which killed it. It died here, at the Battle of the Bastards:
And here’s the thing. I loved the Battle of the Bastards (despite the abysmal military tactics). The problem isn’t with that episode itself. The problem is what they did to the showrunners.
The GoT producers now believe GoT is all about SFX.
They think the people watch the show for the “realistic” battle sequences.
But it isn’t. It never has been. Let’s rewind the clock waaaayyyy back. All the way to Season 1. Let’s look at the very first battle scene ever depicted in the show:
Yes, it’s supposed to be upside-down. Because Tyrion gets hit in the face before the battle even begins, and then wakes up on the field after it’s all over.
No arrows. No cavalry charges. No fifteen thousand extras or CGI dragons. Literally no on-screen deaths.
But we loved it. And keep in mind, this is S1E9. Nine episodes into the first season, and the only battle sequence we have lasts for the duration of Tyrion giving a rousing speech and then getting whacked in the face.
The first real battle we see doesn’t happen for another season (S2E9):
All this to make a simple, inescapable point.
Nobody watches GoT for the action sequences. Nobody.
Sure, epic scenes get lots of praise. But that’s icing on the cake. If you make the cake out of nothing but icing, it’s disgusting.
What we all know, and what the showrunners once knew and have forgotten, is that Tyrion > Whispering Woods. Davos > Blackwater.
Think of all the cool things you remember about GoT. Remember all the things your friends wouldn’t stop talking about. The Red Wedding. Tyrion slapping Joffrey across the face. When they killed Ned Stark. Tyrion and Shae. Oberyn Martell. You know nothing, Jon Snow. Secretly a Targaryen. Dany walking out of the fire. How many of those are battle sequences?
We aren’t watching the show because we just can’t wait to see lines of faceless soldiers running at each other. We’re watching because we want to see who finally kills Cersei. Whether Jamie finally manages to get over her. Whether Arya finally gets revenge for Ned Stark. How Jon and Dany work out their differences. Or don’t.
And the thing is, the seeds were all there.
We did get to see Sandor finally work out his familial issues. (Yeah, I know that’s a shot from last season. Sue me)
And Jamie finally give in to his demons.
Arya come to terms with the price of violence.
And Dany finally decide which side of the Targaryen coin came up heads.
The issue wasn’t that these scenes weren’t there. It’s that the focus was lacking. The showrunners were too focused on “omg cgi flames”
To give any of those arcs justice.
And why? Because “burning civilians alive = bad” needs to be overstated for audiences to understand it? Maybe you should have Tyrion say “tens of thousands of innocent people will die” another half-dozen times?
This last episode looked like a first-year film student’s final project.
He finally gets to work with a CGI engine and thinks its so cool that he spends the entire semester playing with the sliders that he forgets to actually write a script or do character shots.
Varys’ betrayal ought to have been a heartfelt affair. He’s been in Dany’s corner literally since Season 1. 5 minutes of screentime could have done it, but he didn’t get them.
Tyrion is one of the best characters (and hands down one of the best actors) in the show. Benched the whole episode.
Jamie? He completely falls off the horse but that’s OK because his character gets an arc by… killing Euron?
And Arya had a great moment with Sandor. A pity they just rushed through it so she could have 15 minutes of running from falling debris.
Dany… I don’t think I’ve seen a character this under-served since Anakin Skywalker in Revenge of the Sith, and even he more or less got that whole movie to himself. All she gets is five seconds of looking tortured before doing a swan dive off the cliffs of insanity
Sorry, wrong movie.So yeah. You can tell what a filmmaker thinks is important because they point a camera at it.
So when “random burned corpses” got more screentime than any named character, it’s easy to see what’s happened.
The series has lost focus.
3/10. Barely watchable.
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