TV: Game of Thrones prequel pilot ordered

[Shareefruck]

What do you mean, GRRM gets tons of shit. But a big reason it bombed so spectacularly in the end is because D&D were equal to the task, that once you take away closely following the source material they simply weren't good writers. There were still a number of good points that came out in the latter half of the series but with the first half of the show being such a high standard it really makes the bad moments stand out.

And like I said above, they had books 4 and 5 to work with, but as they were too big and could no longer be transcribed to TV and had to be "adapted" we saw Dan & David's worth, and it's hard to think it would have been any different even if they had book 6 to work with. Where GRRM is writing plots at a chess master level Dan & David are barely playing checkers.

While I'm sure they did other things to make them additionally responsible, this particular reason for placing blame has never really made sense to me (although it's an accurate explanation for the show being bad)-- It seems pretty unreasonable to expect them to be good enough writers to carry the torch from the source material and keep the quality consistent just off of their own writing ability alone. The reason why the show is based on source material in the first place and why they were adapting it rather than writing their own is because it's no easy task to write something on that level and they obviously couldn't. I mean, that's why when successful adaptations spin-off, everyone rightfully expects them to be pretty lame.

That said, I don't understand why this whole "who technically deserves the blame" sidebar even matters.

 

[Blender]

What do you mean, GRRM gets tons of shit. But a big reason it bombed so spectacularly in the end is because D&D were equal to the task, that once you take away closely following the source material they simply weren't good writers. There were still a number of good points that came out in the latter half of the series but with the first half of the show being such a high standard it really makes the bad moments stand out.

And like I said above, they had books 4 and 5 to work with, but as they were too big and could no longer be transcribed to TV and had to be "adapted" we saw Dan & David's worth, and it's hard to think it would have been any different even if they had book 6 to work with. Where GRRM is writing plots at a chess master level Dan & David are barely playing checkers.

GRRM gets tons of shit for not finishing the book series, he often gets let off the hook for the show.

Saying the last 2 books are "chess master" level is certainly kind as well.

 

[CupHolders]

Probably also doesn't help that the show ending seems to have taken the wind out of GRRM's sail on finishing A Song of Ice and Fire. I've never been one to criticize him on his writing pace but people thought there was long waits between A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons, but at this point The Winds of Winter has taken as long as those two combined. Each year that ticks away just increases the odds that the series never gets finished, and unless something's changed unlike Robert Jordan he's indicated if it comes to that he doesn't want someone else to finish it for him.

Not sure what could have been done about it but the whole thing seems like such a massive unforced error letting hacks like Dan & David set the final tone (with how it's looking) for such a great series. A new prequel show can still be good and if so will probably be popular, but it's never going to have anywhere near the same impact GoT did. For one thing it's not the only game in town anymore, you have The Witcher, a new Lord of the Rings series, The Wheel of Time should be out this year, I think the King Killer Chronicles is getting soemthing, then plus a lot of 'geekdom' has gone back to Star Wars after the Mandalorian. Personally my #1 wishlist would be with an increasing confidence in animation a good animated series for Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive series, which I assume would be too big/expensive to put on TV.

Recently, I wondered if Apple could do a live-action adaption of Sanderson’s Cosmere universe. They have the funds. If done correctly, it would be a big draw to their service.

I personally wouldn’t mind either live action or animation for Sanderson’s works.

 

[MadDevil]

GRRM gets tons of shit for not finishing the book series, he often gets let off the hook for the show.

Saying the last 2 books are "chess master" level is certainly kind as well.

While I do enjoy the last 2 books more now than I did initially, they're still a step down in quality from the first 3, which is why I'm not necessarily on the "GRRM would have done it better" bandwagon. I think it would probably be more fleshed out than the rather rapid pace the last two seasons had, but if he can't figure out how the hell to land the thing I'm not going to kill somebody else for not being able to land it either. Although I do think they probably should have asked for some writing help if they were struggling, which it sounds like they weren't willing to do. Unless that was just a rumor that was shot down. I have the memory of a goldfish sometimes.

 

[Pierce Hawthorne]

The way GoT ended was honestly so terrible it legitimately took me a long time to get over it. After 6 seasons of flat out brilliance, and even IMO the 7th season though fighting some pacing issues, was still fantastic in my books.


But the final season was such a monumental, utter failure that it flat out ruined the entire series for me. It was so bad, that normally my absolute favorite TV series of all time, I've watched all of them at least 2-3 times because often times those 2nd and 3rd watches reveal details you miss the first time though. Shows like Lost, Breaking Bad, HIMYM, The Office, Doctor Who, even recently Dexter.. All great shows that I have rewatched at least once... But I couldn't bring myself to watch GoT a 2nd time and still have not yet almost 2 years since it ended. I basically look at it now as why waste so much time watching the first 7 season just to get hit with the biggest let down in the final season that leaves you angry by the end of it.



....But, all of that said, I will definitely be watching this series the moment it releases and I have very high hopes for it. Will it be better then Seasons 1-7 of GoT? No, probably not, that's a ridiculous standard to try and match. But it will certainly be significantly better then Season 8 of GoT, and the fact it exists in the same GoT universe using characters and stories we heard about in GoT, that stuff will be very cool to see play out in the series.

So ya, I'm probably one of those people that has essentially moved on from GoT and really dont even talk about it anymore... But the moment House of the Dragon releases, I'll be tuned in every week for the next episode.

 

[Rhaegar Targaryen]

The way GoT ended was honestly so terrible it legitimately took me a long time to get over it. After 6 seasons of flat out brilliance, and even IMO the 7th season though fighting some pacing issues, was still fantastic in my books.


But the final season was such a monumental, utter failure that it flat out ruined the entire series for me. It was so bad, that normally my absolute favorite TV series of all time, I've watched all of them at least 2-3 times because often times those 2nd and 3rd watches reveal details you miss the first time though. Shows like Lost, Breaking Bad, HIMYM, The Office, Doctor Who, even recently Dexter.. All great shows that I have rewatched at least once... But I couldn't bring myself to watch GoT a 2nd time and still have not yet almost 2 years since it ended. I basically look at it now as why waste so much time watching the first 7 season just to get hit with the biggest let down in the final season that leaves you angry by the end of it.



....But, all of that said, I will definitely be watching this series the moment it releases and I have very high hopes for it. Will it be better then Seasons 1-7 of GoT? No, probably not, that's a ridiculous standard to try and match. But it will certainly be significantly better then Season 8 of GoT, and the fact it exists in the same GoT universe using characters and stories we heard about in GoT, that stuff will be very cool to see play out in the series.

So ya, I'm probably one of those people that has essentially moved on from GoT and really dont even talk about it anymore... But the moment House of the Dragon releases, I'll be tuned in every week for the next episode.

Season 7 was just as bad as Season 8

 

[RandV]

GRRM gets tons of shit for not finishing the book series, he often gets let off the hook for the show.

Saying the last 2 books are "chess master" level is certainly kind as well.

I wasn't talking about the writing, as obviously who wrote himself into a corner that the story is so wide-spanning that he can't finished. Rather I was talking about the plot, or the intricacy of the games and schemes and plots all the different characters and factions have going on. Like consider everything what's going on in the North in A Dance with Dragons. We couldn't comment on this while the show was on because 'no book talk in the GoT thread', but i don't think that really applies anymore. I could probably ramble on and on about what GRRM is doing, while Dan & David's adaption is the equivalent of Ramsay Bolton waiving a wiener around.

The one critical divergence I'll comment on is Sansa Stark's role. On GoT Littlefinger tosses Sansa away openly to marry Ramsay. Not only is this incredibly dumb, but it effectively puts team Littlefinger and team Bolton back in rebellion against the crown, as you know in Kings Landing they still think Sansa and Tyrion murdered Joffrey. That's like a massive oversight here which simply never amounts to anything because I don't think the info is ever given to Cersei to react too? Kind of a 'she forgot about the iron fleet' moment there.

Now in A Song of Ice and Fire on the other hand, the person Ramsay marries is known as 'fake Arya', aka Jeyne Poole the Winterfell stewards daughter and Sansa's close friend. A very minor character, but after Ned Starks failed coupe in book 1 and the Winterfell contingent in KL is being slaughtered Jeyne is with Sansa the whole time safely tucked away in their room. When the doors busted down and Sansa captured Jeyne is whisked away to be forgotten about... until it's convenient for the crown to produce an 'Arya', a proper northern girl born and raised in Winterfell, to cement a new alliance and bring the North back into the fold. So now the entire point of Theon Greyjoy role in all this is being pretty much the only person left alive from Winterfell (Nightswatch aside) who could recognize a Stark girl to be there at the wedding to confirm her.

Maybe a little convoluted but it believably falls right in line with all the other behind the scenes plotting Roose and Tywin did. In the books meanwhile Littlefinger and Sansa are playing an entirely different game that isn't just unbelievably stupid as sending Sansa to Ramsay but rather will tie the Vale/North/Riverlands into a unified block, with the Vale being the only force that after all the fighting is still at 100% strength.

 

[RandV]

Recently, I wondered if Apple could do a live-action adaption of Sanderson’s Cosmere universe. They have the funds. If done correctly, it would be a big draw to their service.

I personally wouldn’t mind either live action or animation for Sanderson’s works.

Yeah to prop it up some more if there's a high fantasy setting that can capture peoples imaginations in the way a Star Wars/Harry Potter/Avatar does it's Sanderson's Roshar/Stormlight Archive from his Cosmere universe. The other stories are good to, like Mistborn would make a good movie trilogy, but Stormlight is the big one.

If anyone not familiar wants to spend 20 minutes having a look at it the history youtube channel Invicta did a spoiler-free lore primer on it. Just found this the other day and thought it was really good:



Thought that was really cool to see, and it doesn't even touch on the order of The Knights Radiant.

 

[Eisen]

I've noted before that the show apparently "ran out of time" and had to close all of its outstanding plot threads in a relatively short amount of time. My solution in hindsight is to kill the pointless plots that went nowhere, cut down significantly on the superfluous moments that advance neither character or plot (think of how many "Look how evil Ramsey is" scenes there were when we already knew that), and use that time to actually drive the plot and actually develop the characters. Instead we got scene after scene of Ramsey torturing people, or Arya creepily wandering around in a giant face dungeon.

Showing how evil Ramsay is drove the plot for a couple of characters, though, and developed some characters.

 

[Eisen]

What do you mean, GRRM gets tons of shit. But a big reason it bombed so spectacularly in the end is because D&D were equal to the task, that once you take away closely following the source material they simply weren't good writers. There were still a number of good points that came out in the latter half of the series but with the first half of the show being such a high standard it really makes the bad moments stand out.

And like I said above, they had books 4 and 5 to work with, but as they were too big and could no longer be transcribed to TV and had to be "adapted" we saw Dan & David's worth, and it's hard to think it would have been any different even if they had book 6 to work with. Where GRRM is writing plots at a chess master level Dan & David are barely playing checkers.

Sure D and D are not good writers, they were never supposed to. It's all on Martin for not moving his gargantuan butt. Nobody writes that slow.

 

[Mr Fahrenheit]

There are a lot of good scenes that were not from the books

 

[LeafalCrusader]

Looking back, I think I hated seasons 5-7 more than season 8 for all these stupid plot lines that they did nothing with.

 

[Pizza!Pizza!]

Looking back, I think I hated seasons 5-7 more than season 8 for all these stupid plot lines that they did nothing with.

I dunno, my Spidey senses went off after season 5 and I thought they were going to jump the shark in season 6 and totally ruin the show. S6 wasn't great, but it exceeded my expectations so I stuck around for S7, which was a mistake. Still, S8 was soooooo f***ing bad and nonsensical that I still think it trumps the cumulative suck of seasons 5-7. Had they used their extended time and budget to properly write and shoot a coherent ending I think a lot of the unresolved storylines could have at least gotten some closure. As it stands S8 was so off the rails by episode 3 that the show just became a joke, people were only watching it to see just how bad it could actually get. Like rubber necking at a bad car wreck on the highway.

I am not even interested in any of the spinoffs. I'll only watch them if they have positive reviews, from fans - not paid 'critics', after they complete their runs.

 

[Shareefruck]

While I think seasons 5-8 are terrible and seasons 1-4 are overrated/merely solid rather than some masterpiece (even at its best and most well written, its appeal was still mostly built around roller-coaster-y entertainment, shock value, and thrills, really), I don't agree with the people who think that the last few seasons can negate whatever the quality of the first few seasons were. If something can be so easily undone, then it was never any good in the first place, IMO. Things should be worth appreciating for their own merits regardless of any jumping the shark moment. 25 years of trashy Simpsons seasons doesn't negate the 5 or so years of great ones. So what if you only get a well-told, four-season long snippet of a story, and the rest you have to disregard and stop watching at to preserve that feeling? I personally would have preferred for it to just stop at season 4 and just remain incomplete rather than what we got (I would consider that a better overall product), but even if it didn't do that, that's still not nothing, and nothing keeps being good forever anyways (something remaining good for 8 seasons is a pretty unlikely/unreasonable expectation-- most things don't maintain what they have going for that long).

I especially don't understand the people who get so personal, entitled, and indignant about the creators when it comes to stuff like this (I'm hearing insults like douche and ***-hole thrown around simply because they lack writing ability and couldn't do a good job without source material-- like, what the hell?), as if they as a viewer were legitimately owed something better. Well, they're not. The fanbase isn't owed anything and the investment in hours someone made isn't owed anything. They did something well for a while and then due to whatever circumstance happened to be unable to keep it up, and for whatever reason, you chose to watch all of it-- that's all that should be thought of it, IMO. It's merely something that's unfortunate, not some punishable injustice.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

While I'm sure they did other things to make them additionally responsible, this particular reason for placing blame has never really made sense to me (although it's an accurate explanation for the show being bad)-- It seems pretty unreasonable to expect them to be good enough writers to carry the torch from the source material and keep the quality consistent just off of their own writing ability alone. The reason why the show is based on source material in the first place and why they were adapting it rather than writing their own is because it's no easy task to write something on that level and they obviously couldn't. I mean, that's why when successful adaptations spin-off, everyone rightfully expects them to be pretty lame.

That said, I don't understand why this whole "who technically deserves the blame" sidebar even matters.

I'd like to expand on that a little - to start, I have no idea whether the writers in charge at the end of the series are any good or not. I've never watched GoT and have not really been compelled to do so for whatever reason. But I will say this: if they were expected to keep going and add on the source material, they were doomed to fail in the first place. Sure, you can add your own spin to existing source material, but the source material will still have a voice of its own. In that case Martin's. Especially in a medium (books) where the process is far less collaborative than on a TV series. Expecting someone to come in after the fact and (quickly) build on someone's else fantasy world and imagination seems like a brutal idea creatively.

 

[JabbaJabba]

There are a lot of good scenes that were not from the books

This is still one of the things I can't understand. Like if D&D were able to write good stuff before, why weren't they able to do it later? They even had more time in the later seasons when there were less episodes plus they took a year off to finish the show. And then season 8 starts with Tyrion making a "clever" joke about Varys not having balls... Like, how did they spend all that time if that was the best they could come up with? And I don't want to just nitpick about stupid jokes, but the whole season feels like a first draft of the script.

 

[RandV]

This is still one of the things I can't understand. Like if D&D were able to write good stuff before, why weren't they able to do it later? They even had more time in the later seasons when there were less episodes plus they took a year off to finish the show. And then season 8 starts with Tyrion making a "clever" joke about Varys not having balls... Like, how did they spend all that time if that was the best they could come up with? And I don't want to just nitpick about stupid jokes, but the whole season feels like a first draft of the script.

I don't find it hard to understand at all. While they're adapting a book series as the show writers they still have to write the scripts, and scripts are pretty much all dialogue. So they do have some base competency here.Then what they're getting credit for are the extra scenes they needed to pad season 1, but these are just 2-3 characters talking to each other and they're working with talented veteran actors who can really sell the scenes. So give them credit where its due but you also have to recognize the impact the actors have in these scenes.

Now where they get exposed or where it goes off the rails is when they have to write plot and story. And some bad dialogue, but you're looking at jokes here where the good scenes in season 1 were drama built (mostly) off the existing story.

 

[Mr Fahrenheit]

This is still one of the things I can't understand. Like if D&D were able to write good stuff before, why weren't they able to do it later? They even had more time in the later seasons when there were less episodes plus they took a year off to finish the show. And then season 8 starts with Tyrion making a "clever" joke about Varys not having balls... Like, how did they spend all that time if that was the best they could come up with? And I don't want to just nitpick about stupid jokes, but the whole season feels like a first draft of the script.

Well, the thing that comes to mind is that they were spending less time on it. They said, at the time of around season 4, that they were working year round on the show and perhaps that changed during the last couple seasons, I have zero idea.

 

[discostu]

Well, the thing that comes to mind is that they were spending less time on it. They said, at the time of around season 4, that they were working year round on the show and perhaps that changed during the last couple seasons, I have zero idea.

The scale of the production definitely hurt the quality.

It's harder to write witty dialogue scenes when you're trying to film epic dragon battles.

Early seasons got creative and had key battles occur off screen (like Tyrion getting knocked out at the beginning of a season 1 battle and only waking up when it was over).

I know many people tuned in to see those sequences, but I would have been happy to sacrifice a few of those each season to allow more time to fine tune the scripts.

 

[RandV]

I'd like to expand on that a little - to start, I have no idea whether the writers in charge at the end of the series are any good or not. I've never watched GoT and have not really been compelled to do so for whatever reason. But I will say this: if they were expected to keep going and add on the source material, they were doomed to fail in the first place. Sure, you can add your own spin to existing source material, but the source material will still have a voice of its own. In that case Martin's. Especially in a medium (books) where the process is far less collaborative than on a TV series. Expecting someone to come in after the fact and (quickly) build on someone's else fantasy world and imagination seems like a brutal idea creatively.

It's a little more complex than that. There are basically three phases to GRRM's books:

Books 1-3. These were tightly paced and perfect for TV adaption. Released in the mid-late 90's over a span of 4 years, they make up the first 4 seasons of GoT.

Books 4-5. The plot goes off the rails. GRRM is an exceptionally good at writing characters and interconnected intrigue, but he flies by the seat of his pants and writes intuitively without planning exactly on where he's going. It's basically just one book but it got too big so he had to pull half the characters (and the popular ones at that) out of #4 and drop them into #5 and it took him 10 years to wrap it all up. The show runners had these books but they had to be heavily adapted, and make up seasons 5 and 6.

Books 6-7? Two more books planned, though no one's confident GRRM can finish the series in two books, and book 6 has been now 10+ years in the making. For season 7 and 8 the show runners had the main plot points GRRM wanted to hit but otherwise had to make it up on the go.

Now to heap criticism on the show writers David Benioff and Dan Weiss. However it came about this was basically their first project, by their own admission they used it as a learning experience and never hired any one else (which would be the norm) but kept the writing/ideas limited to themselves. Martin's series became famous for breaking all the fantasy tropes and being more 'mature and realistic', but for season 5 & 6 when Dan & David had to heavily adapt story lines they basically wrote standard TV trope stuff. For the final seasons 7 and 8 which would be all new stuff, they just wanted to be done with the show to get onto other projects so rushed it to a conclusion taking all sorts of short cuts along the way.

Taking it beyond a bunch of butt hurt GoT fans to real world implications, leading up to the final seasons they were a hot ticket item lining up deals to write like Star Wars and their own original HBO show. But after GoT ended those types of offers have all shrivelled up and they've more or less faded into obscurity.

 

[Siamese Dream]

The scale of the production definitely hurt the quality.

It's harder to write witty dialogue scenes when you're trying to film epic dragon battles.

Early seasons got creative and had key battles occur off screen (like Tyrion getting knocked out at the beginning of a season 1 battle and only waking up when it was over).

I know many people tuned in to see those sequences, but I would have been happy to sacrifice a few of those each season to allow more time to fine tune the scripts.

In some instances they deliberately straight up traded one for one good writing for showing off good production. The Long Night episode was the best example of this.

Nothing from the defence of Winterfell made sense tactically. There's absolutely no reason for the Dothraki to be charging headlong into the army of the dead other than it looks cool.

 

[Cas]

Nothing from the defence of Winterfell made sense tactically. There's absolutely no reason for the Dothraki to be charging headlong into the army of the dead other than it looks cool.

To be fair, that's pretty much par for the course in TV and film.

I enjoyed 1917, but literally nothing in the film made sense from a military standpoint.

 

[Mr Fahrenheit]

The scale of the production definitely hurt the quality.

It's harder to write witty dialogue scenes when you're trying to film epic dragon battles.

Early seasons got creative and had key battles occur off screen (like Tyrion getting knocked out at the beginning of a season 1 battle and only waking up when it was over).

I know many people tuned in to see those sequences, but I would have been happy to sacrifice a few of those each season to allow more time to fine tune the scripts.

You are suggesting that they spent so much time writing battle scenes that they didnt have time to write something better than "I have balls and you don't" ?

 

[ArGarBarGar]

While I think seasons 5-8 are terrible and seasons 1-4 are overrated/merely solid rather than some masterpiece (even at its best and most well written, its appeal was still mostly built around roller-coaster-y entertainment, shock value, and thrills, really), I don't agree with the people who think that the last few seasons can negate whatever the quality of the first few seasons were. If something can be so easily undone, then it was never any good in the first place, IMO. Things should be worth appreciating for their own merits regardless of any jumping the shark moment. 25 years of trashy Simpsons seasons doesn't negate the 5 or so years of great ones. So what if you only get a well-told, four-season long snippet of a story, and the rest you have to disregard and stop watching at to preserve that feeling? I personally would have preferred for it to just stop at season 4 and just remain incomplete rather than what we got (I would consider that a better overall product), but even if it didn't do that, that's still not nothing, and nothing keeps being good forever anyways (something remaining good for 8 seasons is a pretty unlikely/unreasonable expectation-- most things don't maintain what they have going for that long).

I especially don't understand the people who get so personal, entitled, and indignant about the creators when it comes to stuff like this (I'm hearing insults like douche and ***-hole thrown around simply because they lack writing ability and couldn't do a good job without source material-- like, what the hell?), as if they as a viewer were legitimately owed something better. Well, they're not. The fanbase isn't owed anything and the investment in hours someone made isn't owed anything. They did something well for a while and then due to whatever circumstance happened to be unable to keep it up, and for whatever reason, you chose to watch all of it-- that's all that should be thought of it, IMO. It's merely something that's unfortunate, not some punishable injustice.

I would say the biggest difference between comparing the Simpsons to GoT in this context is the former deals with self-contained episodes that do not generally relate to one another, while the latter has a long overarching story that is moved forward with smaller ones. And considering the effort of characterization with each of the characters and the anticipation of the eventual fates of all these characters in a very "complex" political game where life is precarious, the ending really does put a sour note on the rest. Does it ruin them? No. But it definitely is difficult to watch the show which sets up very long plot/character development paths while knowing that a lot of those paths lead to incredibly contrived conclusions.

I don't bitch and moan about what I dislike about the way the series ended like people on Reddit do, but it definitely is a series I have had little motivation to circle back to because of seasons 7 and 8.

 

[Shareefruck]

I would say the biggest difference between comparing the Simpsons to GoT in this context is the former deals with self-contained episodes that do not generally relate to one another, while the latter has a long overarching story that is moved forward with smaller ones. And considering the effort of characterization with each of the characters and the anticipation of the eventual fates of all these characters in a very "complex" political game where life is precarious, the ending really does put a sour note on the rest. Does it ruin them? No. But it definitely is difficult to watch the show which sets up very long plot/character development paths while knowing that a lot of those paths lead to incredibly contrived conclusions.

I don't bitch and moan about what I dislike about the way the series ended like people on Reddit do, but it definitely is a series I have had little motivation to circle back to because of seasons 7 and 8.

I think the same way regardless of whether something's episodic or built up, personally, but if you need a non-episodic example, I would say that Season 5 of The Wire does not remotely sour the first four seasons for me. If the individual lead-up seasons and setup is really well done, I feel that it should be every bit as worth admiring and being entertained by in isolation even without the promise of an eventual payoff, personally.