Game of Thrones Season 8

[Deepster]

So is Arya the Prince That Was Promised?

I'm not a scholar on the Prince That Was Promised, but from what I recall I think the case can be made.

 

[Excalibur]

So is Arya the Prince That Was Promised?

I was talking with somebody about that today. The whole PTWP thing seems to have gone out the window.

 

[Jbirdp5]

Part of the problem is the stream we are getting. HBO is streaming at 1080p I think and the video is compressed a couple of times before it shows up at your box.

Got to wait until the original source material comes out. Until then, mess with your TV settings.

A friend of mine waits two minutes and starts it on hbo go, says the 4K is so much better on there

 

[Scalito]

I miss my Samsung plasma. Such deep blacks with it.

You’re spot on with the rest of your commentary. Arya must’ve used her faceless skills to get to him. There was that whoosh that one of the white walkers noticed as it ruffled his hair on the way by, not sure how she got such elevation though.

I was hoping Arya would remove Bran's face, stand up and out of Bran's wheelchair, and end things.

 

[Slasher]

A friend of mine waits two minutes and starts it on hbo go, says the 4K is so much better on there

It's not actually 4k though. HBO only pushes a max of 1080p unfortunately.

 

[crazyUCfan23]

Dumb charges are a theme in GOT:
1. John @ Battle of the Bastards
2. Dothraki last night
3. Theon charging Night King

jamie charging dragon

 

[Cheddie]

I will never stop marveling how everyone turns into Sun Tzu when reviewing a television show because Jon Snow didn't deploy his troops the way Napolean would have.

Besides, the worst military mind in the history of television is the night king. He has 10,000 years to figure out how to kill a crippled kid, his army grows exponentially after every battle and he has the ability to conjure a winter storm that would kill every possible source of food for his enemy.

But after 10,000 years, he couldn't wait ten more minutes for his army to wipe out every single soul on the other side and he got killed by a middle-school girl.

That was a pretty entertaining 90-minutes of television.

The one thing that I read that I really agree with is that the show was just too dark. Literally, too dark. I turned the lights off, tilted the screen, etc. I get that it was filmed at night, but we still have to be able to see it.

My wife complained about the clarity, but I thought it was a nice touch. Gave a truer sense of how chaotic and confusing the battle was for the living, and it amped up the anxiety of the situation.

 

[Cheddie]

My problem with the Dothraki wasn't the military strategy -- it was the result. Think about it. For an hour after their charge failed, we saw individual brave men and women on foot hold off the dead far in excess of their numbers. We saw Arya kill a White Walker. We saw baby Mormont kill a giant.

And yet we're supposed to believe that in a matter of seconds a few thousand mounted Dothraki were massacred by wights? Please. yes, at the end the Dothraki might have lost to overwhelming numbers, but given what we had actually seen in this and other battles the Dothraki would have cut through their lines slicing the dead left and right like the human cavalry killing infantry orgs in the Lord of the Rings movie.

It was beyond unrealistic. Even for a movie about dragons, the dead and dead dragons fighting.

Was also disappointed that there were no real plot developments and no one of any importance died.

Did you see how quickly the wights swarmed over the dragon? It was likely much worse for the Dothraki, as none of the Night's King zombies were yet "killed" by multiple blow torch passes of Dany's dragons.

 

[Cheddie]

Tactically also the Night King pulled a Santa Anna and should have just bypassed Winterfell on his way to conquer the world. Everyone in Winterfell would have frozen or starved and he could have just walked through the countryside - game over.

Then his minions just stand around in a circle singing kumbaya while he strolls up to Bran. It's always the delaying that gets ya.

I agree on the darkness, way too dark.

Supposedly killing Bran was one of his key objectives. It would wipe out the memory of the living and push humans towards darkness.

 

[Cheddie]

They could've very easily fixed it by having her drop down from the treetops. While all the chaos was going on she could've easily slipped in and climbed it. I'm interested to see if they care about explaining how she got that close to the Night's King unimpeded.

One explanation - her ability to take on other faces/appearances, like when she served Frey his last meal. Could she have taken the appearance of one of the White Walkers standing behind the Night's King?

 

[huskypantz]

I think the gist of the night king is that he’s a simple personality. He’s an evil being with a singular purpose- build an army to take over the world. He considers himself invincible. There’s no strategy because he thinks he doesn’t need them. His methods are to attack, kill, raise dead, rinse and repeat. It worked except for the fact that his overconfidence was eventually his undoing.

 

[Fishy]

My wife complained about the clarity, but I thought it was a nice touch. Gave a truer sense of how chaotic and confusing the battle was for the living, and it amped up the anxiety of the situation.

Generally, I’d agree, but it was almost a radio broadcast for a while there.

 

[jleves]

Completely disappointed in this episode. Way too dark. I get that it's night and you want to express the fog of war, but at least let me see who is fighting who. Having 30+ minutes of soldiers charging into soldiers with no idea who is who was ridiculous.

Totally not GOATs to have nobody really important die in such an epic battle which was ridiculous. I wonder if most of the main character have clauses in their contracts not to die before the final or penultimate episode.

While I'm not surprised at all that killing the Knight King would end the battle, they could have done that way better.

I'm not even going to bother with Arya being able to kill one after another on the ramparts while she had her weapon and others had trouble with one or two at a time.

I just can't believe they got done shooting this episode and thought - 'yeah, we nailed it.'

How do you build up to all this and end it in such a ridiculous episode.

Skip one of the build up episodes and make the battle a couple episodes and add some interest.

I think HBO has a need to end this wrapped up and happy as possible to make the show like every other show. Happy endings.

Should have been so much better.

I'll get off the porch now.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Completely disappointed in this episode. Way too dark. I get that it's night and you want to express the fog of war, but at least let me see who is fighting who. Having 30+ minutes of soldiers charging into soldiers with no idea who is who was ridiculous.

Totally not GOATs to have nobody really important die in such an epic battle which was ridiculous. I wonder if most of the main character have clauses in their contracts not to die before the final or penultimate episode.

While I'm not surprised at all that killing the Knight King would end the battle, they could have done that way better.

I'm not even going to bother with Arya being able to kill one after another on the ramparts while she had her weapon and others had trouble with one or two at a time.

I just can't believe they got done shooting this episode and thought - 'yeah, we nailed it.'

How do you build up to all this and end it in such a ridiculous episode.

Skip one of the build up episodes and make the battle a couple episodes and add some interest.

I think HBO has a need to end this wrapped up and happy as possible to make the show like every other show. Happy endings.

Should have been so much better.

I'll get off the porch now.

They couldn't do a two episode battle scene. It is a very long battle scene as is.

 

[Fishy]

They couldn't do a two episode battle scene. It is a very long battle scene as is.

Yep.

It was damned near an Avengers movie for well over an hour.

 

[Horatio]

I guess they were supposed to fight the “Night” King on a sunny day at noon.

 

[Mots010]

You may have a bit more luck today with the darkness, especially if you streamed it.
Was Last Night's ‘Game of Thrones’ Too Dark, or Does Your Screen Suck?

 

[Deadrody]

Wanted to reflect for a bit before responding.

Don't the writers feel any need to explain what a terrible general Jon Snow is? He sends the entire Dothraki army to its death in the first 5 minutes of the battle, when the plan all along was to light a trench on fire and then hide in Winterfell. If that was the plan, why were they bringing civilians into Winterfell rather than sending them South as fast as they could? Why wasn't everyone inside the trench line? Why wasn't the whole field set on fire somehow? Given that the ultimate plan actually worked, why was there a need to sacrifice so many others unnecessarily.

I would have liked if there was more ebb and flow to the battle, instead of a one way beatdown that was saved by Arya at the last second. I would have liked some one-on-one battles between White Walkers and major characters. About 30 minutes into the episode, the overwhelming beatdown left only two potential outcomes to the battle: 1) The survivors of the battle escape to the South and join up with Cersei to fight the dead, or 2) some crazy deus ex machina moment happens at the end of the episode to defeat the Night King and the dead. The first choice would have been more interesting.

My biggest problem with the episode is that the Night King is defeated and we never hear from him about what he really wanted or why he did this. A huge part of the plot of the series, starting from the opening moments of the first episode, is resolved with "they are just evil". I was hoping for something more interesting.

Right. Because HBO writers know what makes or doesn't make a good general

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Right. Because HBO writers know what makes or doesn't make a good general

Do you have any idea how much research goes into writing a good script? If not, don't post on the topic.

 

[ColchVEGAS]

I think the gist of the night king is that he’s a simple personality. He’s an evil being with a singular purpose- build an army to take over the world. He considers himself invincible. There’s no strategy because he thinks he doesn’t need them. His methods are to attack, kill, raise dead, rinse and repeat. It worked except for the fact that his overconfidence was eventually his undoing.

Surprised nobody else mentioned this. Everybody seems to be attacking the Night King for his poor plan after years of building an army, but he has always been extremely cocky in battles and was never a master thinker.

Also, Dany may have lost a good chunk of her army, but she still has Daario and the Second Sons in Meereen and for sure he would love to reunite with Dany and battle Cersei or Jon Snow to put Dany on the Iron Throne.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Throughout both the show and the books, the better generals do not typically win out. Robb Stark, Tywin, Stannis, Robert, and later on, Randall Tarly, were all top military leaders, and all ultimately lost. In the books, Tywin said something to the effect of more wars are won with the quill than with the sword.

I don't know if they will ever address how terrible the plan was for the Battle of Winterfell given that their are only 3 episodes left and they won the battle.

 

[Scalito]

Do you have any idea how much research goes into writing a good script? If not, don't post on the topic.

Lol

 

[Deepster]

Surprised nobody else mentioned this. Everybody seems to be attacking the Night King for his poor plan after years of building an army, but he has always been extremely cocky in battles and was never a master thinker.

Also, Dany may have lost a good chunk of her army, but she still has Daario and the Second Sons in Meereen and for sure he would love to reunite with Dany and battle Cersei or Jon Snow to put Dany on the Iron Throne.

Any shot Yara (or someone else) is off rounding up forces from Dorne? They hate the Lannisters.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

I think the gist of the night king is that he’s a simple personality. He’s an evil being with a singular purpose- build an army to take over the world. He considers himself invincible. There’s no strategy because he thinks he doesn’t need them. His methods are to attack, kill, raise dead, rinse and repeat. It worked except for the fact that his overconfidence was eventually his undoing.

That would be a completely logical explanation if the Night King or Sam or someone explained it. We have no idea.

Giving the main characters motivation is Writing 101, yet the Night King has none. If you were a sophomore at UConn in a creative writing course and wrote a 10 page short story where the antagonist has no motivation, you would get a "C" if you were lucky and it was otherwise well written.

 

[crazyUCfan23]

Was just reading something that suggests Bran is actually the Lord of Light. Basically, it says that the followers of the Lord of Light believe that he is always at war with his great enemy (aka the Night King) and Bran shares similar abilities with the Night King. when he was warging during the battle, he could've been helping to manipulate events to ensure that everything would fall into place so Arya could kill the Night King. On this same token, Jon and Beric are technically wights, but they were reanimated by fire, not ice. They both played an integral in helping arya defeat the Night King, hence why Melisandre was always saying they've been brought back for a purpose, which was evidently to help Arya kill the night king. If all this is true, if Bran dies, does that mean Jon dies as well?

 

[Drumguy]

I'm not even going to bother with Arya being able to kill one after another on the ramparts while she had her weapon and others had trouble with one or two at a time.

The books better portrayed Arya's training as a faceless assassin - was probably one of the more creative parts of GRRMs books - her evolution in becoming one. She is a BadAss character. I liked the portrayal on the ramparts as she mowed down the zombies!

imho her ability to face shift and get through the white walkers was a creative use of her storyline.

My problem with the battle was Jon was lost and all over the place and then at the penultimate moment, hiding behind debris and whimpering at the blue flame dragon.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Arya and the Waif's fight in the streets of Bravos foreshadowed what Arya was capable of in combat. The Waif and Arya were jumping from building to building and dropping 2 stories on leaps. The writers had already used the "leap out of the background" when the Waif jumped off a building to get Arya in that fight 2 seasons ago.

 

[ZooCougar]

You may have a bit more luck today with the darkness, especially if you streamed it.
Was Last Night's ‘Game of Thrones’ Too Dark, or Does Your Screen Suck?

HBO needs to get in touch with the Silicon Valley firm “Pied Piper” for some middle out compression.

 

[intlzncster]

imho her ability to face shift and get through the white walkers was a creative use of her storyline.

There was no face shifting going on with Arya at the end. She merely snuck up on the proceedings. They foreshadowed that all episode long.

 

[Mike75]

I'm interested to see how they get Dany's army down to Kings Landing. The forces loyal to her are pretty much gone, save for a few unsullied. The remaining Northerners have no loyalty to her and can't be too excited to march 1000 miles south in the wake of this battle. Plus, Cersei is no direct threat to them, so why not stay in the North? Maybe she marries Jon to get them behind her? Just seems like a pretty difficult sell at this point.

On the PQ, I watched it again on HBO Go last night on my calibrated 4k LED TV and had no issues with the darkness. Much better than the PQ on my 10 year old plasma.