Poll: Winter Is Coming - HBO's A Game of Thrones [READ WARNING]

Who will rule Westeros?


  • Total voters
    471
  • Poll closed .
Soldato
Joined
17 Apr 2009
Posts
7,580
The series is literally called game of thrones, the whole premise was started off as political theatre around gaining the throne... they guy who 'won' the game, said about 5 sentences in the entire series, hadn't done anything interested in 3-4 years and wasn't even a big player before then. In terms of his 'playing the game' you could say a couple of his sentences were important but they basically picked a character who had his character traits and personality removed several seasons earlier and might be the dullest character in the whole thing.. but he won, woooo.


The only thing I think people are too hung up on and the ONLY thing the show almost did right, but in a hamfisted and stupid way, was the succession thing. People need to not care who deserved to be on the throne, deserved and heirs are pointless. Game of Thrones was about conquering. Succession doesn't mean much of anything unless everything is at perfect peace and the king dies of natural causes then goes to the next in line. However no country, land or planet in the world has to till their species is extinct follow a line of succession. If they decide inheriting the throne is bad and decide to stop simply letting first born men sit on the throne then that's fine. If someone comes along and kills Bran, they've won the throne, they've defeated armies and get to be the leader, they don't go, but were you related to someone 400 years ago who sat on the throne, its about power and armies are how you express your power.

The show even, and this is the part they got a little bit right, said that succession is bad, we need to pick a capable and right ruler rather than let a bunch of inbred twits have the throne due to who their daddy was. The bad thing they did was picked a ruler who had no experience, has essentially no personality, had changed completely, that no one knew if he was sane, crazy or could potentially be a good leader or not. "he had the best story"... because he went north of the wall and survived a fall, lol. If you're doing away with succession and picking a righteous leader which is a good thing, then turn around and say this kid has a good story but we have zero evidence he could be a good leader, lets pick him, it's absurd.

Also as they blew up succession (which is fine) and decided to vote for leaders (great) but created a situation in which they can pick terrible leaders with no way to get them off the throne... it's as bad as before. Bad leader stacks the houses and who gets the vote and votes in their son. They literally had Sam suggest a democracy, laughed at him but could have said we'll pick a new king every 10 years through vote and that would have at least somewhat really fixed the problem with people believing they had a right to the throne and starting wars over it. Instead they created a new equally bad system.

"He had a good story"

[looks at the other candidates]
Sansa
Gendry
Robyn
Unknown Dornish dude
Edmure Tully

Out of them, I do think Sansa should have got it. As much as I'm not fan, she would have been a proper winner of the "game". Bran is... no worse than the others on that list I guess..
 
Sgarrista
Commissario
Joined
9 Aug 2013
Posts
10,421
Location
Bromsgrove
It felt like the next scene and then she was dead, totally lame for 7 years of build up.


This is probably the part that stings the most. We expect death in this show, but when major characters died, they got good send offs.

Ned
Commander Mormont
Lysa
Renly
Stannis
Viserys
Joffrey
Tywin
Ramsay
The high sparrow + 10 others
Ser Barristan
Drogo
Catelyn
Oberyn
Shireen
Robb
Hodor

+ Many others, they got real gut wrenching or heart tugging or simply epic send offs.

Meanwhile in this season.

Mormont - Got a decent send off
Varys - 30 second scene not worthy of the character development he had
Night King - 10 second scene with trampoline arya
Dany - Maybe 10 second before it became all about Drogon?
Jamie and Cerci - While a bit naff was quite heartfelt how they went out together.
 
Caporegime
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
33,188
Practically impossible for it not to be anticlimactic after 7 years tbf

It is if writing is bad and one of the key goals of the writers seems to be... make sure you give the fans nothing they want.

Picking the most boring, uncharismatic, unproven person in the entire show to be king was, absurd, and they did it just to subvert expectations again, not because he made the most sense.
 

Kyo

Kyo

Soldato
Joined
11 Oct 2003
Posts
7,911
What on earth were they thinking. Lazy writing which could have been so much more. The prophecy, plot points all flushed down the drain. It's a tragedy.
 

SPG

SPG

Soldato
Joined
28 Jul 2010
Posts
10,231
It just felt rushed, no explanation of the old gods, the god of light, the prophecy the pretty dire knight king so many more things needed explaining.

But it what it is, maybe a Aria spin off and its done now :(
 
Soldato
Joined
1 Jun 2014
Posts
5,066
The six seasons total of this show were magnificent (although it waned a little towards the end). Just a shame HBO couldn't come up with the budget to make seasons 7 and 8.

Hopefully one of The Witcher, The Mandalorian, Watchmen, Westworld 3 will be worth watching.
 
Associate
Joined
26 Sep 2018
Posts
349
So bad. I don't think the Bran thing is necessarily a terrible end, but if that's how things are meant to go, it feels like they've left out a couple of books worth of build up and replaced it with two short conversations about the power of storytelling.
Plot holes all over the place - why would the unsullied execute soldiers for fighting on the wrong side then just imprison the person who killed their Queen?
Thought it was a shame they took the whole Drogo/Drogon thing that's been subtley played throughout & bludgeoned us over the head with it. And nobody needs their symbolism as overt as literally melting the iron throne. Good grief.
Sansa's "sit down" was great & Peter Dinklage did an incredible job with what he was given, but urrrrrrrrgh.
 
Caporegime
Joined
20 Oct 2002
Posts
74,025
Location
Wish i was in a Ramen Shop Counter
yeah i was thinking that - lots of really slow scenes which could have been used to better effect.

It was a lot of wasted time that felt like padding, time better used to support the decisions of the characters instead. It’s 80mins episode, there are movies of that length out there so there’s time to resolve character arcs had they used the time wisely.

Not just this episode but previous ones, a lot of scenes are pointless, Jamie bang and run with Briene was what?! Pointless. Arya getting horny, really? What did that really do in the scheme of things? 20 mins of them drinking at the start of ep 4, no need. I swear there is about an hour of wasted screen time for padding. Time better spent for story, in getting them to where they got to in the end. I don’t hate the decisions but how they got there.
 
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