Game of Thrones 7.06
Aug. 21st, 2017 12:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beer_good_foamyOK, that was a mess.
Not a complete mess, for sure. It was a pretty good episode, I loved the banter among everyone at the beginning, and I'll never not like dragons doing airstrikes on zombies, but there was a bit too much here that felt sloppy. Not just in terms of this episode, but also in that it seems as if some of the things in this oddly paced mini-season that I've hoped were goofs or necessary shortcuts seem to be intentional.
Let's start at the beginning. Last week's plot to make Cersei an ally in the war against the White Walkers by showing her a real undead wight was naive to begin with, but desperate measures and all that and I kinda like that Jon Snow's... limited ability for strategic thinking is becoming a plot point again. But the way it was handled in this episode was just sloppy, for several reasons. There's the way the team consists of seven heroes... and a bunch of nameless redshirts who serve no purpose but to die. Hell, they don't even appear on screen except when they die. It doesn't help that the fight scenes just feel messy in general, half the time I can't tell where anyone is.
And then, of course, the whole timing issue. So basically, in the... six? Eight? Let's be generous and say ten hours it takes our heroes to Not Die, the following happens:
- Gendry runs alllll the way back to Eastwatch unharmed, without getting lost or falling through a crack.
- A raven is sent allllll the way down to Dragonstone. (Remember back in the early seasons when ravens got shot down or captured? Apparently they're now not only instantaneous, but encrypted as well.)
- Dany has someone sew her a nifty winter coat. Granted, it is a very nice coat.
- Dany flies her dragons allllllllll the way back up beyond the wall and finds our heroes.
OK, this is a magical world and we've never actually been told the top speed of dragons and it's not necessarily the weirdest thing to happen in the series. But when they've spent six seasons having it be a central plot point that this is a big world and it takes half a season to walk from one end to the other, suddenly throwing that overboard for the sake of drama does the exact opposite; it lessens the drama, it goes against the grain of the world they've built. If our heroes can do anything (and survive anything), it's not Game of Thrones as we know it.
Speaking of surviving; yeah, I've thought since before the season started that one of the dragons had to buy it, and boy oh boy am I looking forward to an ice dragon. But so the death count of this suicide mission is: Thoros of Myr, Benjen (who got, what, 7 seconds of screentime from start to finish? And where was he during that long standoff?) and one of the two dragons who've had no character development at all. (And a bunch of anonymous redshirts that even the camera guy didn't care about.) Jon and presumably The Hound have plot armour, but this plot should have cost us a fan favourite. That's the price you should have to pay to buy this drama.
And then there's the whole bit with Arya and Sansa. Which... the less said the better. One piece of paper is all it takes? There's a difference between writing Littlefinger as ridiculously clever, and writing everyone else as just dumb. Between Sansa and Jon's public bickering earlier in the season, Bran's newfound sociopathy, and now this, Littlefinger really doesn't even need to be at Winterfell - the Starks are happy to capsize this boat on their own.
It's all starting to feel... lopsided.
Since going off-book, they've had one and a half season to set things up and a year off to figure out how to do it, and a few too many times this season and especially in this episode, it's starting to feel like the writers just showed up on set and went "So what do we need to squeeze into this episode? ...Seriously? Boy, I wish we'd known about that half a season ago." Rather than getting caught up in the intricacies of the various characters' motivations, they're moving from set piece to set piece - putting that huge budget to use - and reducing the characters down to whatever they need to be to move the plot to the next battle. They're playing to the fans. We want Thormund/Brienne, so they're not going to kill off Thormund. We want conflict between the heroes, so they're going to insert it whether it makes sense or not. We want dragons, so they're going to give us dragons at the expense of the politics that brought their mum to Westeros. Some people want Dany/Joncest, and apparently we're going to get it no matter what. Again, screenwriters always have a hard time writing men and women interacting without romantic overtones. I'm not necessarily against it, but with last week's revelation that Jon really is the rightful king, I'm not sure their story needs a romance on top of everything else.
There's a paradox here: After six and a half seasons of build-up, they need to wrap all those arcs up in a neat little bow - but that was never how Game of Thrones worked before, so they need to rejigger the whole dynamic of the show without losing what made it special, without turning it into the extended edition of Peter Jackson's The Return of the King. I'm excited, but a bit wary after this episode, to see how they balance that in the season finale.
Not a complete mess, for sure. It was a pretty good episode, I loved the banter among everyone at the beginning, and I'll never not like dragons doing airstrikes on zombies, but there was a bit too much here that felt sloppy. Not just in terms of this episode, but also in that it seems as if some of the things in this oddly paced mini-season that I've hoped were goofs or necessary shortcuts seem to be intentional.
Let's start at the beginning. Last week's plot to make Cersei an ally in the war against the White Walkers by showing her a real undead wight was naive to begin with, but desperate measures and all that and I kinda like that Jon Snow's... limited ability for strategic thinking is becoming a plot point again. But the way it was handled in this episode was just sloppy, for several reasons. There's the way the team consists of seven heroes... and a bunch of nameless redshirts who serve no purpose but to die. Hell, they don't even appear on screen except when they die. It doesn't help that the fight scenes just feel messy in general, half the time I can't tell where anyone is.
And then, of course, the whole timing issue. So basically, in the... six? Eight? Let's be generous and say ten hours it takes our heroes to Not Die, the following happens:
- Gendry runs alllll the way back to Eastwatch unharmed, without getting lost or falling through a crack.
- A raven is sent allllll the way down to Dragonstone. (Remember back in the early seasons when ravens got shot down or captured? Apparently they're now not only instantaneous, but encrypted as well.)
- Dany has someone sew her a nifty winter coat. Granted, it is a very nice coat.
- Dany flies her dragons allllllllll the way back up beyond the wall and finds our heroes.
OK, this is a magical world and we've never actually been told the top speed of dragons and it's not necessarily the weirdest thing to happen in the series. But when they've spent six seasons having it be a central plot point that this is a big world and it takes half a season to walk from one end to the other, suddenly throwing that overboard for the sake of drama does the exact opposite; it lessens the drama, it goes against the grain of the world they've built. If our heroes can do anything (and survive anything), it's not Game of Thrones as we know it.
Speaking of surviving; yeah, I've thought since before the season started that one of the dragons had to buy it, and boy oh boy am I looking forward to an ice dragon. But so the death count of this suicide mission is: Thoros of Myr, Benjen (who got, what, 7 seconds of screentime from start to finish? And where was he during that long standoff?) and one of the two dragons who've had no character development at all. (And a bunch of anonymous redshirts that even the camera guy didn't care about.) Jon and presumably The Hound have plot armour, but this plot should have cost us a fan favourite. That's the price you should have to pay to buy this drama.
And then there's the whole bit with Arya and Sansa. Which... the less said the better. One piece of paper is all it takes? There's a difference between writing Littlefinger as ridiculously clever, and writing everyone else as just dumb. Between Sansa and Jon's public bickering earlier in the season, Bran's newfound sociopathy, and now this, Littlefinger really doesn't even need to be at Winterfell - the Starks are happy to capsize this boat on their own.
It's all starting to feel... lopsided.
Since going off-book, they've had one and a half season to set things up and a year off to figure out how to do it, and a few too many times this season and especially in this episode, it's starting to feel like the writers just showed up on set and went "So what do we need to squeeze into this episode? ...Seriously? Boy, I wish we'd known about that half a season ago." Rather than getting caught up in the intricacies of the various characters' motivations, they're moving from set piece to set piece - putting that huge budget to use - and reducing the characters down to whatever they need to be to move the plot to the next battle. They're playing to the fans. We want Thormund/Brienne, so they're not going to kill off Thormund. We want conflict between the heroes, so they're going to insert it whether it makes sense or not. We want dragons, so they're going to give us dragons at the expense of the politics that brought their mum to Westeros. Some people want Dany/Joncest, and apparently we're going to get it no matter what. Again, screenwriters always have a hard time writing men and women interacting without romantic overtones. I'm not necessarily against it, but with last week's revelation that Jon really is the rightful king, I'm not sure their story needs a romance on top of everything else.
There's a paradox here: After six and a half seasons of build-up, they need to wrap all those arcs up in a neat little bow - but that was never how Game of Thrones worked before, so they need to rejigger the whole dynamic of the show without losing what made it special, without turning it into the extended edition of Peter Jackson's The Return of the King. I'm excited, but a bit wary after this episode, to see how they balance that in the season finale.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-22 02:22 am (UTC)I was also unsure about Gendry's run, and the possibility he'd get lost, but the wall is a hard landmark to miss. And while a single raven could get shot down, I don't think anyone's watching Eastwatch for outgoing messages, and Dragonstone has protections for incoming messages, ie dragons. I doubt anyone's got the balls to hang around outside Dragonstone with intent to intercept.
I think you underestimate the Stark sisters. They're feeling one another out. Arya's like that, she acts on her convictions rather than talking it out; she likes showing more than telling. She showed Sansa her strengths, then showed her trust by handing the dagger and turning her back.
> screenwriters always have a hard time writing men and women interacting without romantic overtones.
Men and women have a hard time interacting without romantic overtones. That's life d00d. It would be unnatural for Jon and Dany to lack romantic tension.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-26 07:40 am (UTC)Sorry about the late reply, I wanted to rewatch the episode.
They really did seem to shrink the world, and it's unlikely the crew would be able to fight well after being exposed to the elements for so long, but then Dragons are conceivably really fast.
I guess. It still feels off, though, like something you'd see in a Peter Jackson hobbit movie. The early seasons of GoT always set up these standard fantasy plots only to then go "Of course, this is reality" and subvert them. A reality with dragons, yes, but still one where the eagles don't show up magically at the last second to save the pure of heart. The more the series moves off-book, the more it feels like they're losing that. But of course, it may all be setup for something in the last episode...
I think you underestimate the Stark sisters.
I hope I do.
And granted, my aunt doesn't look like Emilia Clarke. :) The romantic tension between them still feels forced to me, though. And I really hope it's not too unrealistic to think high-ranking politicians of opposite sexes can interact without making bedroom eyes at each other. News coverage of G20 conferences would be very disturbing otherwise.