Watch it all!
That way you may truly understand the depth of our fury.
I had a roommate (one of five at the time) way back in university who threw a brick at our TV because his beloved Eagles lost. Probably good that we never saw the last episode of The Sopranos, or the final seasons of Game of Thrones….
Wasn’t a large part of the issue that the show runners wanted to move onto a Disney contract, rather than taking an additional season (or 2) to wrap things up properly? Or better, anyway.
To say it was simply lack of source material, is not quite there. Lacking source material could still have made good choices. And also not totally weird choices way out of context of everything before. That was the plummet it had. And had that when it still had source material (Season 5 and 6 were often parts of the last two novels).
They wasted one of the best twists of the book. Didn’t even use it. LSH.
I can’t remember the bad bits of Season 5, but there was plenty of those. Season 6 brought the awful Arya bits, which spacefilled then went really stupid towards the end. Dorne was laughable in these.
Then it got really silly in Season 7. By then I was hate watching it. I suffered Season 8, so it wasn’t unexpectedly bad and the only thing which surprised me is that I couldn’t see a damn thing in some episodes. The quality and 180 turns just were “yeah, not surprised they did that”… It was just the landing but the trajectory was clear from Season 5 to me. The writers/producers just didn’t care for the characters, the world, the overall arcs and if there was any shortcut to take, they’d take them and they were often ludicrous (Genry’s running about 2 days walk in 20 minutes. Instant dragon transport 300 miles).
TLDR; The ending wasn’t the problem. Season 8 wasn’t the problem. Half the seasons of it were the problem.
I’ll echo and amplify much of what Smid said. Martin (and the show, initially) did an outstanding job of world-building, and as part of that, character-building. You got invested and came to “know” these characters.
And then, in later seasons, the world didn’t make sense. Armies suddenly seemed to be able to teleport to places and appear “just because.” Plot armor became so thick it didn’t matter what stupid idea a character or leader had; they were going to win, or survive, or navigate whatever issue they faced.
Worst of all, the characters – the people we’d come to love or hate for excellent reasons – became someone other than themselves, acting in completely ridiculous ways. Some became much smarter than they should have been; others (one especially) became significantly stupider than before.
The show’s final few seasons were sad. A handful of high points with a lot of decline mixed in. It was like watching a really interesting, funny, intelligent member of your family succumb to dementia over a three-year period.
Those things were pretty much exactly my problem with the later seasons. Travel time is a major factor in the early seasons, and then all of the sudden it isn’t. So the North folks could have just taken a ship to the capital and been there in a three days, instead of spending half a season walking?
One of the great parts of the early seasons is that characters, even ones we’re cheering for, get punished for stupidity, or even if it isn’t “stupidity”, it’s clear that their actions have consequences, and nobody is ever safe. The lack of plot armor is such a distinguishing feature of the first few seasons.
It really felt to me like everybody was done with the show in the last few seasons, but there were two seasons left to film, and five seasons of stories left to tell. Everything is just so rushed, instead of being allowed to develop and unfold like in the first few seasons.
I still liked the show up to the end, it just fell from the top of the amazing list, down to just better than average genre stuff. If the first season had been as muddled up as the last, I’d’ve probably gotten bored with it and tuned out.
Yeah, pretty much the same for me. And I really enjoyed the books.
One the one hand, the ridiculous time jumps were really annoying. Yet if the rest of the story held up, I would have been completely fine ignoring that aspect. Characters acting at odds with who they were, manufactured drama, unbelievable plot armor - those were the real problems with the last seasons.
I think the travel time problem stands out because it’s easy to quantify and objectively say it was wrong. Characters’ actions and ridiculous plot points are more subjective.
The last two I can tolerate - the whole thing is “manufactured drama” and plot armor is sometimes necessary unless you are going for a TPK (That one’s for I Love Me Vol. I). It’s the “Let’s make Character A, who has been shown to be very intelligent and a good tactical AND strategic planner a total idiot. Let’s take Character B, who is like a brother to Character A, and take him on a massive redemption arc. What happens next happens, but he needs to screw over a loyal, brave and actually really bitchin’ character first, destroying any redemption he might have earned. Then let’s tack on an ending from somewhere way down Waveland Avenue that satisfies absolutely nobody.”
But what was their hurry? I read that although the show cost some eye-watering amount to make (half a billion dollars?), it probably made four times as much. Why not make it go on, if it means that many more subscriptions?
The creators were tapped to launch the next “post-Skywalker” Star Wars trilogy.
Didn’t that fall through in part because of how they handled the final season or so of GOT?
That and the fact that they wanted one of their post-GOT projects to be a “The South won the Civil War” type production, with sympathetic slave-owners and all that shit.
In fairness, The Man in High Castle was a fairly successful show on Amazon that did something similar, except with Nazis instead of Confederates.
I would bet money that ‘High Castle’ was mentioned in their pitch meetings.
My favorite is their stated reason for leaving Star Wars: toxic fandom. Ha! How much wailing and gnashing of teeth was there from fanboys after the final season of Game of Thrones? A trifle compared to the wailing and gnashing of teeth Star Wars fanboys were getting ready to unleash.
I actually kind of wanted to see that. Not the Star Wars, the fanboy backlash when it sucked.
Yeah, I always thought they got a bit of a bum rap for the “Confederacy” thing. The South winning the Civil War is one of the most common premises for alternate history stories; probably second only to Hitler winning World War II. There are literally hundreds of novels and stories based around the idea of a victorious Confederacy, without there being any assumption that the writers consider that outcome to be a positive.
This new series coming out in August, a prequel explaining the centuries before the main series. Is this based on books? Are they spending so much money?
For more on that: House of the Dragon, an HBO prequel series to Game of Thrones
And definitely agreed, MrAtoz.
Yes, it’s based on a completed set of short stories and history that Martin wrote. And there will be lots of dragons.
I bought the first book as a remainder in Waterstone’s and the next three in a buy-two-get-one-free offer. I stopped there and have no interest in buying any more. I didn’t watch the TV series either.
My main complaint was that he kept killing off his best characters. I formed the opinion that he just got bored with them and then with the whole series.
Excited would be too strong a word but I am still curious about what happens. The first three books and the corresponding TV episodes are some of the best storytelling I have ever experienced and I am still interested in what happens next. While I agree with everyone that the last two seasons were weak, I don’t think they were irredeemably bad. There were still some strong scenes and I rather liked the final episode.I could easily see Martin fleshing out the later story into some half-decent novels.