Right now they are coasting on their GoT popularity, but Emilia already bombed with Terminator and Star Wars, and the word of mouth on the new X-Men movie is pretty terrible. I haven’t seen Nikolaj on anything prominent yet.
He had a supporting role in the 2013 Tom Cruise SF movie Oblivion. The reviews were mixed .
While I didn’t hate the last season nearly as much as a lot of people did, there was barely enough story left to fill out the final six episodes. Another season would have been a huge mistake.
Whether or not Benioff and Weiss were anxious to be done with it, ending it when they did was the right choice creatively.
There was plenty of story left to tell. Varys’ betrayal would have been a season long arc in previous seasons, we got two scenes. Dany and Jon fell deeply in love in like two episodes. Dany’s heel turn should have taken multiple seasons of her getting progressively worse. Give one single reason for Bran to end up as king that makes sense. Make Euron a real character instead of a magical Deus Ex Navis.
LOL I saw that movie and have absolutely no memory of him being in it. I do remember him in Mama though, which came out in the same year.
They didn’t have to do another season - I think making seasons 7 and 8 eight episodes each would have helped - if they could have written good enough material to use it.
My take on ‘breakout’ stars is that a key skill for an actor is knowing how to choose a role. There are some great actors who are just terrible at picking movies to star in, and others who grow as actors because they manage to hook up with directors and scripts that keep them growing in stature.
So on a TV show like Game of Thrones, all the actors get enough exposure to get offers to do various projects. The ones who ‘break out’ are the ones who know how to find the best material for them, and who are talented enough to play more than one type of character.
Sophie Turner really impressed me, as she had to express a huge range of emotions and behaviors on the show, and was always totally believable.
I notice no one mentioned Kit Harrington, and perhaps for good reason. I really don’t know how good an actor he really is, because Jon Snow was a fairly one-note character. He neveer managed to pull off any chemistry with Emilia Clarke, and even the with the actress who plays Ygritte, even though they are now married. So I guess we’ll see if he’s any good once he tackles something else.
Americans tend to discount anything not made for US audiences. He was already a big star in his own country and he was well known in Europe.
Liam Cunningham is starring in a miniseries that is coming out next week.
He was in Pompeii, where he basically played Roman Jon Snow.
I liked him in that. I didn’t particularly care for MI-5, where he played a modern person.
I know the Red Wedding was some time ago but have you forgotten Richard Madden? He recently won the Golden Globe for The Bodyguard which I just read is the most watched British series since they started tracking.
Nikolaj was on a Fox series called New Amsterdam about a decade ago, in which he played an immortal guy in NYC. The show only lasted a season but he wasn’t completely unknown to an American audience.
I’ve seen multiple ads for The Bodyguard and didn’t realize at all that it was him.
Holy cow - we watched, and liked The Bodyguard, and I had no idea that was Robb Stark. But now that I know, it should have been obvious.
look at the Sopranos, HBO’s major hit before GOT. Very few of those actors did a lot post Sopranos. James Gandolfini did some good movies but he died in 2013. Edie Falco did Nurse Jackie. I’ve seen some of the others in episodes of L&O SVU , ironically 2 of them played judges on SVU.
What HBO wants, more than anything, is to be seen as, in the words of an old NBC slogan, Must See Television. They want the show that everyone is talking about at the water cooler on Monday morning and that people feel they need to subscribe to HBO so they can watch. They don’t just want your fifteen bucks for the month but want you to subscribe all year round. HBO in fact stopped broadcasting boxing matches because their research showed people don’t subscribe on the basis of being able to watch boxing matches.
This is a weird statement. Most of the criticism was that they rushed things, handwaved some things and were teleporting people all over the place.
I don’t advocate for more seasons, I think 8 seasons is a good number, but they really should have made 7 & 8 the full 10 episodes. Giving each big event time to breathe and people time to travel, grieve and plot. Maybe characters would have appeared to be acting a lot less stupidly if they’d have had more scenes illustrating motives and reasoning instead of lazy exposition.
Would people have hated “Beyond the Wall” quite as much if they’d have had an episode or two where our heroes needed to go north of the wall for some less idiotic purpose and retrieving the wight was done opportunistically? Maybe Jon and the boys are on a rescue mission more similar to Hardhome and they get trapped.
Would Bran’s arc have been less of a headscratcher if they’d have had a number of scenes of him basically giving recon info ahead of each battle? Maybe he witnesses the attack on Last Hearth and gets some useful tactical info, or at least he gives everyone an ETA on the Night King instead of Tormund.
Would the Cersei, Jamie and Brienne triangle have felt like less of a WWE-style heel turn if Jamie had maybe had a few extra scenes to become jaded and cynical? Maybe the visit from Bronn is timed a bit differently.
In my opinion the key flaw of the last couple seasons was that they leaned really heavily on fan service, lazy exposition and big set pieces. There simply wasn’t enough “show, don’t tell” and the characters acted in ways the facilitated a neat and tidy conclusion while often being mostly out of character.
Mmm. I’d disagree, sort of.
What HBO wants is a merchandising machine. GOT inspired a lot of merchandising. Figurines, books about the series, artwork, whatever. That’s where the real money is on something like that.
If HBO is going to drop that much money producing something they’ve got to get a multi-quadrant return on that investment.
I think everything that happened in the series was leading up to a conclusion. To keep the series going just to keep it going would have diminished it. Every “game” eventually ends with a winner and a loser, and it was time for that to happen.
Trouble with Jamie is that he’s one of the nordic clones: blonde hair, sometimes bearded, square faced, and when they appear on something I struggle to work out if its Jamie, Sawyer from Lost, Eric from True Blood or Aaron Eckheart 20 years ago.
And I’m sure there’s about three more I’ve forgotten.
I really liked New Amsterdam but I think only 3 of us watched it.