Okay, so the Mrs. has read a whole lot of hype in recent weeks, what with the new Game of Thrones season starting, and decided we had to take a look. (That’s what led to the other thread, the problems of getting HBO productions at any reasonable cost - even on streaming it’s in the pricier tier.)
Now… the Mrs. is a hardcore lifetime Tolkien fan, reads the set through every winter and watches the full-extension movies through every summer. She finds most other fantasy and high fantasy tedious. Me, I find pretty much all fantasy tedious, across the board. I’ve watched the LOTR movies twice - once theatrical, once extended. Tend to doze off. Harry Potter movies are the few that can put me to sleep every time - I skipped the last three theatrically. I don’t do elfy-welfy on any level and I actively dislike “Renfair Fantastique.”
But I married her for better reasons and we didn’t have anything else on the watch list, so…
Two eps into season one. Heavy softcore and sadism on an utterly generic, downright shopworn Renfair fantasy platform, complete with British accents. A whiff of Sopranos/House of Cards (aka Machiavelli).
Am I missing something? Or does the inclusion of four-letter words, lots of tits and simulated sex, and sadistic brutality revitalize this tired genrification enough to support its adoring audience?
Seems like you are so distracted by your dislike for “renfair fantasy” that you’ve completely forgot to pay attention to characters, dialogue and story.
Honestly, it took about four episodes for it to click with me. I only persevered because so many of my friends said it was excellent. My initial reaction after the first episode was something along the lines of “what was that crap that I just watched?”
If you aren’t drawn in by it, I can’t really say anything to convince you. What you see is pretty much what you get. Things I enjoy about it, as someone who is not a huge fantasy fan outside of Tolkien and a few very selected other works:
It’s light on the magic. Instead of everyone spraying lightning bolts and fireballs around the place like it’s nothing, magic is rare, and supernatural elements are rare enough that not everyone even believes in them. Which leads to an actual level of excitement when you see dragons come on screen, or spells that actually do something.
He’s starting to stray from it in the later books, but the idea that no character is safe lends a sense of danger and suspense to the proceedings that’s absent in, say, Harry Potter. Even when Rowling ominously said that “major characters will DIE!” you knew it wasn’t going to be one of the REAL major ones, not in any permanent sense.
Even more, in this case, it’s: I am surprised to find that I don’t like a thing I already didn’t like!
People enjoy it because it’s intricately plotted. It’s written better than most of this stuff and very well acted by most of the principals. The art direction is good. If one is predisposed to like the “RenFaire” thing, it’s a pretty solid example of that. And there are a lot of very attractive people of both sexes doing things in various stages of undress.
Meh. I feel the same way, having given up on the books around #4. But lots of people find it fascinating, so more power to them. The more money HBO makes, the more opulent productions they will undertake.
But if we keep having spoiler wars over this, I’d be on board with banning any and all discussion of the show, the books, everything.
I can’t find the article I recently read on why we love Game of Thrones, but I found a different one which is kinda high-toned but explains it quite well.
Like most good TV, you won’t fully appreciate it based on one or two episodes, especially if those one or two are in the fourth season.
I watched through Season Two and really wanted to love it, as I do Tolkein, Renn Faire crap and beautifully photographed, intricately plotted, many-episode time wasters. I couldn’t get past the gratuitous brutality and the rapey peek-a-boo prurience. /Great Aunt Ko
I think the main appeal is that GOT feels like the history of a real place in a way that most shows, even ones based on actual history don’t. Its sprawling, with characters in widely separated places that almost never interact. Its brutal in a way that history is but fantasy usually isn’t. There’s no real narrative arc: main characters disappear, important plot lines peter out through chance and happenstance, smart people do all the right things and end up losing while fuck-ups come out on top just by luck.
In feels like you’re watching real history, where anything can happen, rather then getting told a story where you know everything you’re being show is in service to some central narrative that’s going to unfold in a planned out way.
Obviously that’s not going to be everyone’s thing. But its at least different then most other TV shows.
I love it when the first response to a thread is the perfect response.
Seriously, there are interesting characters, terrific dialogue, a set of intricate interrelated stories, character development, comedy, drama, a real sense of pseuo-history in a fleshed-out coherent world, subversion of certain common tropes of the genre, and of course sex and violence. (Almost none of which, IMHO, is actually gratuitous.)
I’m not sure if gratuitous is quite the right word ( since those scenes had a definite purpose ), but I thought the use of ‘exposition whores’ was a little much. And I like naked boobs in my TV shows, including GOT. But even I said “really?” the second time that happened.
I’ll give you the prurience which is sometimes a little on the nose (Eww), but the brutality of the show has never striked (stroked ? Ewww) me as gratuitous.
Quite the opposite, I think the portrayal of medieval violence in GoT makes the same sort of subversive statement wrt the fantasy/historical fiction genres as the opening of* Saving Private Ryan *did for the WW2 genre in its time : “So, you like tales of battling knights with their shining armours and gleaming swords. This is what it *really *looks like. It’s shit and guts and mud and flailing and gurgling. So glorious, am I right ?”. Knights were brutal thugs and little more. GoT effectively drives that point home.
It’s just one of those things, I guess. My husband and I have spent decades reading a lot of fantasy and spent a good chunk of our twenties and thirties working Renfaires or being involved in SCA, and neither of us care for it. We gave it a few episodes, and while I can see why others like it, it does not grab us, not unlike about 60%-75% of the various fantasy TV and movies out there. It is certainly well-made and I wish I did like it better if only to watch some of my favorite actors work, but oh well.
I read GRRM in the days before Fire & Ice, and he was one of those authors I liked better for some of his ideas than his actual writing, so I imagine that is why GOT is unlikely to ever grab me.
I never get the appeal of such graphic violence. I’m sure the characters are maybe well drawn, the dialog perhaps well crafted, and the plot intriguing. But, for me, the graphic violence is a deal breaker, I just cannot see past it to the rest, I’m afraid.
I recognize I am neither the target audience nor in the majority position. Just another one of the few scratching my head and wondering what the appeal is, I’m afraid. So OP you’re not entirely alone.
I picked this one to respond to but read all that followed.
I have a too-long list of movies and TV shows that I found unattracting or even repellent from an outside view, but liked/loved/think highly of having made the attempt to watch them. GOT was on that first list; I had no dislike for it but couldn’t see a single element that appealed to me.
Having watched two episodes with as open a mind as I can manage, I can’t find a single thing about the show that I like. It’s dead-center on that sort of “renfair history” I find tedious and repetitive. If there’s one single new character, situation, story or line of dialogue, I either missed it or haven’t reached it yet. (Just maybe David Dinklage’s character is a fresh mix, but I’ve loved everything he’s ever done, and unlike most wee folk, he’s handsome enough to pull off the crazy role.)
I mean, really, other than the really foul language, I think you could assemble this show from library clips of every sword-and-jerkin movie ever made. I am honestly bewildered by the claims that it’s got wonderful story values… there is shelf upon shelf of this pablum at any Barnes & Noble. (I count writers of some of it among my friends.)
The language, gratuitous softcore and even more gratuitous cruelty and sadism don’t make it fresh, new, 21st century or innovative. Just more tedious and repelling on more levels.
And no, I am not in any way saying anyone else should share my opinion; there are clearly quite a few folks who adore it, and I wish them well. I just wondered if we were all watching quite the same show, and if we are, I’m full and will excuse myself from this banquet.