Posted: Wed May 15, 2019 8:09 amDes-Bal wrote:Tarsonis wrote:
Nah it tracks with what I've been seeing on social media. Once people sit back and thing about it, they tend to come around. Most people are fine with the trajectory, is just the season is rushed.I mean it seems pretty obvious what happened, GRRM told them how things should end and they had no fucking idea how to get there and no idea how to make the necessary emotional connections for everything to come together. GRRM has said that he wanted things to end with something like the scouring of the Shire where after the big climactic battle they have to deal with something pretty low and petty. They also got obsessed with generating hype, writing episodes and stories that get people pumped for the next episode even if they make the actual quality suffer more. We get more excited for a big final battle between Cersei and Dany but that's never what they were delivering. Imagine telling a group of kids you're taking them to Disney World and driving most of the way there but at the last minute you cut across four lanes of traffic, do a u turn, and stop in front of an ice cream shop. We weren't going to bitch about ice cream until you said Disney World.
What we should have done was drop all the shit that happened to level the playing field. Every beat in the last two seasons has been setting Cersei up as a competent and dangerous enemy who could bring matching force to bear. The moment s8e5 starts the characters immediately know it's totally hopeless and the tension is just about whether or not Cersei will surrender before the city gets wrecked too hard. If this was what they were going for then setting Cersei up as the final boss after the final boss really only helps with hype. People get excited because they think "oh Dany still has a dragon but her army is tried and Euron can teleport anywhere" that shit gets people talking but it's not the story they were telling.
Cersei is sadistic, paranoid, and rash but she never showed any sign of competent leadership before she sat on the throne. Every leader has things they struggle with and every leader is shown very quickly that just doing what they want doesn't work. Robert fucks up the kingdoms because despite being a solid military leader he's a glutton with no financial sense, Joffrey's petty cruelty sparks a war and almost gets him ripped apart and killed, Stannis being Stannis makes everyone hate and abandon him, Tywin's military prowess and diplomatic skill are totally irrelevant when one of the children he's abused shoots on the toilet. Despite her many flaws Cersei's leadership seems pretty much fine after we leave book territory. Cersei's best moment was getting wasted in the Red Keep and breaking down into a mass of hateful neuroses. That's the character, a ball of issues so twisted she fucks one of her brothers and tries to have the other one murdered not the evil queen who threatens to rule all the realm.
Some of the best stuff in Game of Thrones was when Tyrion was setting up the defense against Stannis even though nobody appreciated it. What we should have had is that same basic framework but with Cersei who lacks Tyrion's intelligence, patience, and willingness to stomach disdain. Kings landing goes to shit, her rule is in peril, and her evil wizard advisor doesn't have much of a plan besides "scorpions everywhere." Everybody knows Cersei is incapable of putting up a fight and she is spared exclusively because Daenarys wants to unite all seven kingdoms bloodlessly and then then take her throne because people want her, not because she crushed them.
Dany is off rallying the other kingdoms to her cause. Instead of just making and then forgetting her break the wheel speech Dany decides to bring the kingdoms to her side through diplomacy, using her image the same way she did in Mereen to rally the slaves. Here though she is pressed on all sides by two of the most consistent themes in the story, people don't care who sits on the throne, and the Seven Kingdoms are not ruled by honor but by fear and blood. We watch as Dany becomes increasingly frustrated and relies more and more on brutal tactics becoming more and more emotionally unstable as she suffers loss and indignity all in the name of trying to save these people. Spend more time with her after she loses Viseryon, her child was killed and sent against as a rotting vanguard of the apocalypse and she never really has a significant reaction to it. If you have that emotional through line then when Missendai is executed and Rhaegal is killed and Varys betrays and once again tries to poison her it's not just Dany flipping the dead eyed psycho switch; it's her shattering after the the cracks that have been developed over time open up. Then there's no mistaking why she goes on tilt and the fact that she's killing the innocent as well makes sense. She came to be their salvation but they made her a conqueror.
What they did was the logical play for ratings considering if they did it your way (but stuck to GGRM's version with the NK defeated firs, assuming Martin wanted that)... there would be an even BIGGER backlash after Episode 3 because Cersei isn't a credible threat anymore.
Instead, they opted for building Cersei up as a credible threat before and after Episode 3... and then SUBVERTING that as a nod to Martin's love of subverting fantasy tropes. It's the safer play for sure.
A show where Cersei was shown to be incompetent and where you have 4 episodes of showing her forces as unable to match Danny would have resulted in more internet backlash and worse ratings. D and D also KNEW where their strengths lie... its not in writing dialogue so they decided to play to their strengths instead (which is setting up these villains the traditional way and then subverting).
Instead, they opted for building Cersei up as a credible threat before and after Episode 3... and then SUBVERTING that as a nod to Martin's love of subverting fantasy tropes. It's the safer play for sure.
A show where Cersei was shown to be incompetent and where you have 4 episodes of showing her forces as unable to match Danny would have resulted in more internet backlash and worse ratings. D and D also KNEW where their strengths lie... its not in writing dialogue so they decided to play to their strengths instead (which is setting up these villains the traditional way and then subverting).
