• FangedWyvern42@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    The Force Awakens is pretty meh itself, but we were not prepared for what was coming. It feels as foreboding as rewatching Game of Thrones S5 or S6 and knowing that the deteriorating writing will only get worse.

    • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      I’m very glad I never got into the game of thrones TV show.

      I read the books, but I couldn’t even handle the first season of the TV show.

      Kind of feels the same way as never having joined titter and watching it circling the drain now.

      • ccunning@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I opted out of GoT after trying to watch S1 too. I could tell it just wasn’t my cup of tea.

        Then around season 5 the hype got so intense that I caved. Ended up binging seasons 1-5. And I have to say…even despite seasons 7 and 8 (and somewhat season 6) it was worth the watch. When it was good, it was really good.

        I do think that bingeing seasons 1-5 really highlighted how bad the writing had gotten even in season 6. I tried to warn my friends that the outlook was not good but I wasn’t able to convince them. Some of them wouldn’t even admit it until season 8. Some as late as the last handful of episodes. But they all eventually came around.

        • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          That’s good to hear. I have given it a second watch some years back, but couldn’t get through The first season again, but it was such a phenomenon I imagine I’ll try again at some point

        • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          Game of thrones actually came out in 1996.

          The first five books were already written and published by the time the TV show started.

          The fifth one was published just a few months after that first season of the TV show.

          • Rekorse@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            5 months ago

            They were being cheeky, cause the author is well into a decade+ writing the 2nd to last novel in the series.

            I think most people have accepted at least the final book will never happen, that dudes not living the healthiest life right now anyways.

              • Nouveau_Burnswick@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                No dramas, I was being cheeky. I’ve also read the books. I was pleasantly surprised with how well the show portrayed the books (merging of some characters, but expected). Until a point…

                • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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                  5 months ago

                  Got it, thanks.

                  I actually had a conversation with someone who had seen the promos for game of thrones season 1 or heard about it somewhere, and we had this huge conversation because I had just finished reading the books and they didn’t even know there was a book series.

                  After trying the first season a couple times and not getting into it, I didn’t really follow it so I’m not sure if most viewers even know that it’s based on a book series.

                  I have seen a lot of articles about Martin not publishing any new books though?

                  I am going to give the show a third try eventually, but I just liked it the second time as much as the first for how poorly I thought the books were being adapted.

                  It’s good to hear that you enjoyed it, maybe I was just too close to the books still. The last time I watched game of thrones was maybe 5 years ago.

                  Hopefully my brain has decayed enough to give it another shot.

                  But then everybody hates the last two seasons with a passion, right? And that’s like 30% of the show?

                  Mmm.

                  • Nouveau_Burnswick@lemmy.world
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                    5 months ago

                    Basically once the show outpaced the books it went to shit.

                    If you didn’t like the first season, maybe just jump in at season two for your next watch?

                • elephantium@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  I thought the show did very well until they ran out of material to adapt and started having to improvise. The showrunners had a great talent for putting things on the screen, but they couldn’t write their way out of a paper bag.

                  (disclaimer, I only watched the first few seasons, plus a couple of episodes in S8 when a friend was organizing watch parties)

        • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          Okay. That’s a huge part of the show though.

          I am glad so many people are still defending it, there must be something to it

      • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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        5 months ago

        It was meh. It’s just that on the internet everything is either the best thing ever or the worst thing ever, there can’t be anything in between. It’s hard to monetize a “meh” reaction, so the influencers (and those easily influenced) say it’s it’s terrible. But it was meh.

        • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          I dunno, I’ve talked to some sane, mostly disconnected people IRL who didn’t like it either.

          But on the other hand, I’ve seen the other side of that coin, where a fandom decides to trash something good, so I suppose I can see that.

          • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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            5 months ago

            Don’t get me wrong it wasn’t great or anything. It was based on the notes of George RR Martin, and you really feel it. Wasn’t all that fleshed out. The long night ended up being a slightly longer than average night.

            I think a lot of the hatred comes from people who had their predictions about what would happen and still thought there was something to the “prince of light” (or whatever) prophecy even after the Stanis plotline. But nope, the powerful people in Game of Thrones were basically all just assholes and there wasn’t anything all that special about anyone. The show famous for doing the unexpected ended by doing unexpected things and people hated it.

            • FangedWyvern42@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              I think the issue was mostly how lazy and simplistic everything was. Sure, it was unpredictable, but just doing unpredictable things without any buildup is not a good way to tell a story. Bran becoming King for example is an unexpected twist, but the setup is nonexistent and the reasoning is dumb. The Long Night only lasting about an hour was a massive anticlimax for one of the main conflicts (it’s almost certainly not going to be that short in the books). Most of the characters’ endings were predictable, but some were way too sudden to be believable; Dany’s random fall to madness is particularly bad. They also failed to use interesting plotlines in a meaningful way; Jon being the true heir to the throne is so utterly pointless that it literally could be cut from the show and nothing would change, for example. It doesn’t cause conflict at all beyond an incredibly poorly executed plotline with Varys that goes nowhere. Characters also became incredibly stupid and some lost any traits that made them interesting (Jon in particular is painfully generic by the end). It essentially went from a brilliant, complex show to trite people only watched for the action and/or to see what happened to the characters. The worst part to me is that people endlessly went on about it “not having a happy ending”, but everyone other than Dany, Jon and Grey Worm got a happy ending. The final few seasons also have utterly awful writing, especially dialogue. There’s a video on YouTube where someone edited the final episode to have no dialogue at all, and it’s about 20-40 minutes of footage with nothing happening.

              • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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                5 months ago

                Daenerys had to always be talked out of solving problems with Dragonfire. If she didn’t die, it wouldn’t be an ending because we’d be left with a question about whether or not she might someday go Mad Queen.

                The point of the show is that it’s fairly arbitrary who sits on the throne. Robert Baratheon because he won a rebellion, Joffrey because he was supposedly the son of the King (but really wasn’t) his brother because Joffrey was poisoned, then their mother because… well she was an important person that was in the capital. Big army diplomacy, claims based on blood relations to dead people who were previously the monarch, fast army diplomacy… that’s basically a monarchy in a nutshell. It’s really the advisors that run everything so why does it matter who sits on a fancy throne?

                So it’s fitting that it ends with someone on the throne being arbitrary, it’s ultimately what a monarchy is, just some arbitrary person that people agree is the person that site on the throne. And it was the point of the story. It’s all just a silly game the powerful play while the peasants die for because of it.

                None of the decisions were bad, it was just rushed and clumsy. Just people didn’t pay a lot of attention to the fact that Daenerys was using dragonfire to solve her problems more and more. Didn’t pay attention to the fact that who’s on the throne doesn’t much matter, the most important thing is that people agree on whoever it is. Didn’t pay attention to the fact that the prophecy was just some bullshit that made Stanis do horrible things (like burning people alive) and didn’t notice Daenerys was going down the same path I guess they thought she was the real chosen one. People just didn’t pay attention to what the point of the story was, and were disappointed that there was never a real Prince of Light, just a bunch of assholes getting a lot of people killed for their petty game of thrones.