taking this as confirmation that jon snow does not have literal sex with a literal dragon while making the “I hope nobody realizes it was me, jon snow who laid that very stinky fart” face by the end of this episode
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isn’t “dragonglass” like poison to these things why didn’t they make a billion arrowheads instead lighting arrow shafts on fire so they could make obsidian falchions also: pikes; also: pikes
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yeah I can’t watch more than ten minutes of this before getting distracted by something else and pausing
I’m glad they gave Arya a weird combiweapon to do wushu with because the way she picks up a knife makes my brain itch
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the show had been straddling the line between “a basically OK way to participate in popular discourse” and “an insulting use of my time” for a little while now and this last season is just diving
HBO is prestige laundering dragon ball z setpieces at this point
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Game of Thrones spoilers ahead
I think the whole point (based on the brief scene where they talk about strategy) of engaging the white’s in front of the castle; was to hold them longer, from spilling into the castle. Therefore, buying Bran more time to lure the Night King into revealing himself. Indeed, once the white’s reached the castle walls, it didn’t take them long to get in, one way or another.
I’ve seen a lot of negativity towards this episode. But I don’t really agree with a lot of it.
Ignoring actual viable battle strategy aside: I think the episode as a whole, was good. and looked very good. It certainly could have been better. And thinking about the fact that they spend as much money on this show as the average movie: seems like they should have gotten some production talent to make certain it was better. But It was still good.
I actually liked how dark it was, for one thing. Amidst my suspension of disbelief—the low visibility seemed “realistic” to me. The darkness along with the snow storm, helped with the forboding and consuming nature of the foe at hand. And this is about the only time I actually liked quicker cuts and framing where its tough to directly see characters. Because they were being swarmed by an army of undead. And that all helped express the overwhelming nature of that thing. It was a blizzard of winter, a blizzard of bodies.
There were a whole lot of dragon FX shots. I didn’t feel like they skimped on that, at all. The people working on those shots, man this is like the dream job. When you’re 14 and thinking about computer animation: dragons blasting everything, is exactly the job you wanna be payed for. The people who animated the ice dragaon breaching the wall, must have been muttering to themselves “I love this”, during that entire project.
For me, the 2 true negatives of the episode were why did we have an Arya sneaking scene in the middle of a giant battle? They should have used that time to setup the Night King stuff more. Like maybe show him killing some people. or maybe show Arya sneaking back to the wild wood.
And the way they directed the death of the Night King, was by the books - surprise cut, cookie cutter, mainstream way to do it. and therefore, anti-climactic and boring (in its direction). I like who they decided to actually kill him (nice deepcut callback/foreshadow with Melisandre and Arya) and what she killed him with (the knife meant to kill Bran in Season 1).
They should have had a little sword fight between Arya and Night King. Not long. Heck, they should have made it look almost exactly like when Jon killed his first one. That would have been a cool call back. And there’s never been any indication that whitewalkers are any good at fighting in single combat.
I have a couple of other nitpicks, but those are my 2 core issues.
Haven’t seen it yet, but how is THE WHOLE EPISODE IS A BIG CGI FIGHT marketable or even on-brand? Pretty far cry from S1 where Tyrion gets knocked out for the entirety of a battle.
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would be 100% for this if the dragon ball z setpieces were executed well
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Well the budget was a lot smaller, then. The first few seasons, there is a sense that they saved their budget for one or two “big” episodes. Before then, they had to come up with interesting ways to get around showing battles. And effects shots for creatures and dragons were as little as possible.
But also, the entire series has been building to right now. The big battle with the things beyond the wall. From the very first moments of the first episode. That’s like 1/3 the fun of this show, is finally getting to the point at which those things (Dragons, stuff beyond the wall) get screen time.
We the viewer, know something is out there. And then they go on to have many moments where characters in the show deny that such things exist. blow them off as fairytales or at least push them aside as possible, but from long ago. But we know its all true, because of that first episode.
That’s the less generous way to interpret it, yes. They lucked into making something better because the budget forced them to.
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Among other things what bothered me most was, in your face fan/plot shielding +4 of Jaime, Brienne, Sam, Greyworm getting smothered in wight bodies and not a single one lost. Sure they’re higher level or whatever but if that doesn’t kill so much, I’m wondering how a King’s Landing Climax would. Things there are more personal though I guess, less brainless swarm.
Ugh god the S7 episode where they go north to find a white walker basically has Star Trek redshirts to kill because they’re so fucking scared of touching any main characters at this point.
they only killed the incels! It’s amazing!!
I mean, the battle of Black Water is Episode 9 of Season 2. and the next 2 seasons or so, clearly hold off big effects and big budget stuff, until the last couple of episodes. It seemed to be a pretty clear pattern. Yeah, they probably did end up with something better, from time to time, due to budget constraints. That happens a lot. And certainly, if you look at negative opinions on the past couple seasons which have all the budget, that rings true.
More spoilers
One of my additonal nitpicks. And I don’t usually like “killing” a character, as a way to get stuff done for writing. But, personally, I think they should have killed Jaime Lannister. If that character is to die, this was the right time. Not only for his own character archs, but also for how it could affect other characters. Cersei and Tyrion, especially. Both of which I think could use something to bite on, plot wise.
One of the worst plot angles of the entire series.
Yeah what’shisface Pip from the Wall. Theon had his ground to a pulp redemption arc, I guess deserves that slight even if he used to “get it”.
Jorah…I wouldn’t say my heart goes out. If he hadn’t the stigma of slave-trading, I’d have thought he was one of the most done dirty.
nah jaime has to kill cersei
man the dragon animation has always been complete trash and to be fair the stuff in the last episode was the best it’s been but bow howdy the 40 close up shots of jon snow and daenerys green screen dragon riding were just impossibly corny, i honestly don’t know how they could have thought any of it was a good idea
i think this episode was easily better than anything for the last two seasons, but i also think this show has been completely insufferable since uh season four at the very latest. just a long ramping up of mugging for twitter to the point where now the women like literally sit at tables and say “we’re both powerful female characters” to each other, it’s fucking ridiculous
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I agree with the rest of your post but idk about this
like, at best they tried to subvert expectations a number of times in this episode to produce that good old low fantasy “we’re working with what we’ve got and nothing is perfect in the end” approach but they failed to actually establish the baseline expectation that was to be subverted in every single case (except for the two bits that were directly lifted from dragon ball z, which is not exactly a bolt of insight on their part) so the result was this goofy muddle
the direction seemed shockingly bad when you think about how genre movies have been pretty consistently good at delivering the big character buildup moment since, like, the star wars prequel trilogy wrapped up
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honestly i might only feel that way because there was so much less dialogue than usual, normally every character says something that makes me gag every single episode and in this one like half of them barely got to talk
but yes the show has always had just pitiful action, even if it was better than their par i don’t think it was anywhere near good
idk like hardhome was actually pretty damn exciting for VFX work and almost all the storyboarding here seemed like a bad parody of itself
it was worse than I could’ve imagined, they made the entire world watch TV movie helms deep
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