Game of Thrones spoiler thread. What did you think?
This is for the last episode. Season 8 episode 3. The big battle.
And if you don’t watch GoT, I don’t give a crap. Go eat a raw potato.
This question isn’t for you.
I’m not posting my answer yet as the West Coast hasn’t seen it yet.
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It’s 11:06 pm here and heading home after watching a theater screening of AKIRA. Watching the latest episode once I get home. Will post answer later. :)
Hoping none of the characters I really prefer not to get killed survived in this episode.
All I’ll say is…Arya ftw!
Also, no elephants were harmed in this episode.
I saw some of episode one, but nothing after that.
What happened to the Storm King and the dragon that he “revived”?
I think I’m gonna need therapy.
I’m watching for a second time now. It was that good.
Just saw it. WTF???! Lol
Dragons need some aerial combat lessons man!
In the end, that suspenseful scene with Arya evading the wights did serve a purpose other than being scary. It showed that it can be done, a sneaky ninja could get behind the Night King.
I think I shed a tear for the Dothraki. They went US Marine on the enemy and all died heroes imo.
Lyanna Mormont kicked ASS!
[GAME OF THRONES SPOILERS, SORT OF, IN CASE SOMEONE IS READING THIS ON MY ACCOUNT PAGE]
I thought it was sort of ok in some senses, but also very very stupid and/or nonsensical in terms of basic tactics, pacing, scale, rate-time-distance, and logic.
They should have at least showed the Dothraki going berserk if they wanted to waste them, not make it look like the battle plan was stupid as dirt.
They should set up their siege engines INSIDE THE WALLS… no one except TV & movie idiots are that stupid as to set them up in front of the foot troops.
They should not have had the bulk of their army outside the walled city, guaranteeing they would lose most of them.
The fight choreography was too often inconsistent and unbelievable. Sometimes the undead are slow and killable – other times they’re unstoppable/fast/acrobatic. One moment they’re a few dispersed here and there – the next moment there’s an explosive mob of them making heavy wooden doors explode? Then someone is hopelessly surrounded, but then they’re not, etc.
The scene with undead swarming the dragon seemed wrong and dumb to me. It looked like the CGI changed the scale of the undead figures to extra-small so there could be more of them swarming, and what do they have super-glue hands? And of course it was dumb to happen at all because it’s just another “character conveniently forgets to do anything about attackers because of mandatory stupid dramatic pause” event.
And the results… statistically hilarious.
At least they didn’t do that other drama stunt we were worried they were foreshadowing in the previous episode.
I was happy that Chris Evans got to live out his life in the past.
Um. Raw potato is kinda nasty. But you knew that before you tricked me into eating one, didn’t you. >_<.
I absolutely hated it. It was visually stunning cinematographically, and there were artistic choices like using silence and sound to great effect, but the battle strategy made no fucking sense whatsoever.
The whole thing felt contrived to create moments with 2–3 characters we care about in little vignettes. A little of this can be forgiven, but it reminded me of how super-hero movies are written where there’s this list of superheros and their powers and we have to make sure we tick off each one: “Ok there’s the frost guy that needs to freeze someone… Check. And the flame guy needs to use his flame powers… Check. and on and on. It feels so contrived and phony. Instead of the story dictating the actions of the characters, it’s the plot that has to bend to accommodate the characters.
Yeah. The strategy made no sense. What they should done was circle the army of the undead with dragon fire. Then just keep spirally in.
And I understand that feeling like they’re just going through a checklist of characters. But given that it’s a battle, people are gonna fight the way they know how.
Frost guy’s got to frost, man.
@raum “But given that it’s a battle, people are gonna fight the way they know how.”
Compare last night’s battle with the Battle of Hardhome. That fight didn’t feel contrived at all. It was an organic reaction to the threat. You had some of the short vignettes within the bigger story, but they didn’t feel heavy-handed or that the army of the dead behaved in unrealistic ways to set up the scenarios.
@gorillapaws Hardhome annoyed me a lot, actually, again with the pacing and rate/time/distance abuses, and super-powered undead leaping off cliffs as a tactic, moving too fast, etc. The latest battle to me was like the same sorts of problems, but ramped up 100 times.
Wow. Picky mtf’s. It wasn’t perfect but it was better than any other battle I’ve seen on film.
People love to complain.
Most of the living must die, the battlefield swarming with the dead before the Night King becomes confident enough to expose himself before they can even prove Jon’s assumption that all they need to do to win is kill him.
If he didn’t expose himself and avoided encounter with Jon and Dany, he will keep raising the dead securing victory.
They could have done much better military strategies but the only way the Night King would expose himself is when most of them are dead.
The writers could have done a more entertaining dragon air combat scene with Dany’s dragons chasing and firing at Viserion, some really cool dragon battle visuals….above the snow storm where we could clearly watch the fight….but they depicted the Night King as devoid of carelessness, too wily to take such risks so he chose to engage inside his self-generated storm.
Jon and Dany were just overwhelmed by the cold and merely got lucky booting the Night King off his dragon.
The strategy made perfect sense, and @mazingerz88 nailed it. The battle was completely unwinnable and if they just hunkered behind the wall, they would have been overwhelmed and everybody died before the Night King came out. What they needed to do was to expose Bran and sacrifice practically everybody before the Night King exposed himself. The quibble I had was that Bran should have been better protected and they should have had archer snipers hidden.
Anyway, from a cinematic and artistic point of view, I thought it was the best single episode of television I have ever seen. The artistic quibble was that it was dark, but that was intentional.
HBO made a documentary on the making of the episode
https://io9.gizmodo.com/dig-deep-into-game-of-thrones-long-night-with-this-40-m-1834386356
Never bothered with the show despite numerous recommendations from mates, will probably give it a go one day, but not in a hurry.
@mazingerz88 Um, really? Even if that were the “thinking”, it seems to me they could have just had the Dothraki and any other “extra” troops who were just going to get wiped out under their “plan”, retreat south and not participate in the battle, instead of sacrificing them.
^^ I was actually thinking why not all of them abandon the North and head south forcing Cersei’s army to fight?
They could have saved any of the army faction that was there ( Dothraki, Unsullied ) but why would they when their sole purpose is to protect the lives of their leaders and/or owners who stayed to fight?
@Zaku Exactly. If the intent was to appear vulnerable to lure out the Night King, there were many alternatives that didn’t involve sacrificing thousands of people. Also why were they surprised when all of their fallen allies were resurrected to attack them—surely someone would have considered this ahead of time…
Yeah, I do admit the sacrificing the Dothraki thing had me scratching my head. The proper use for the Dothraki cavalry would have been to have them on the flanks in reserve charging in from the side after the infantry engaged the enemy in battle.
What about putting the trebuchets INSIDE the walls and firing more than one volley? What about soaking the fields in oil/tar ahead of the battle?
@gorillapaws I don’t think they would have fit. The castle seems relatively small inside
@mazingerz88 Really?
“why not all of them abandon the North and head south forcing Cersei’s army to fight?”
– For one thing, because the Northerners care about their non-military population, and the population probably can’t just all flee, especially in winter, without mostly dying? But, many of them perhaps could/should have tried to retreat or flee if they could.
“They could have saved any of the army faction that was there ( Dothraki, Unsullied ) but why would they when their sole purpose is to protect the lives of their leaders and/or owners who stayed to fight?”
– If the only plan the leaders/owners can think of involves them being worse-than-useless because they’ll get wiped out, turned into well-equipped wights, and demoralize the rest of the defenders watching them get wiped out, then they would do far better to be out of the battle. And if there is any possibility of the leaders/owners surviving (which, in Danerys’ case, riding a dragon and all, there would be), then they would presumably be better to have alive later.
^^I think they decided it’s all or nothing for all of them. Sam didn’t even send Gilly and her child away.
Hmmm, why do some people feel it’s necessary to tell others they don’t watch the show the question is about? As if we care.
Exactly. They didn’t read my question details.
As I think about it more, and talk to more people, the battle tactics were totally fucking stupid. So I’ll give you all that. However it was still a brilliantly produced episode
Hmmm, you clearly do care because you just brought it up.
@Caravanfan I read your details but ignored them because the clumsy, crass way you worded it deserved nothing less.
Back to the topic at hand. The naval battle in the last episode kind of broke me.
1) You know there is a fleet there. Being surprised by them is the height of naval stupidity
2) You have TWO dragons. Fly up and do air recon. Fly higher than those big ass arrows can fly.
3) Let’s say they are surprised and the first dragon falls. Fine. You have another dragon. Fly UP, flank them, and use your breath weapon. We have already seen how they can use breath weapons to destroy a fleet.
4) Brienne gets laid and then she turns into a blubbering schoolgirl? “Don’t gooooo!!!!” She’s a fucking badass high level paladin warrior knight. Act like it.
Oh one more thing. On the other side, you pull a surprise out of your butt under amazing odds. You have a ruthless naval commander and you just destroyed the flagship of the fleet. The survivors are all swimming in tidal currents for their lives. You pick one of them up as a hostage, but you LET THE REST GO? Why not either pick them off in the water, or as they are struggling to shore, put your army and get them as they climb out of the surf. But NOOOOO, you retreat behind the city walls when you clearly have a tactical advantage and you wait for them to regroup.
@Caravanfan Thank you. They out-did the stupidity of sacrificing the Dothraki by having that truly insultingly stupid “we ambushed flying dragons in clear weather with our navy and our super-accurate ship-mounted rapid-fire ballistas” scene.
No, that’s not how any of that would happen. So. Stupid.
If you’re going to force an outcome, and are writing the story, how about making any effort at all to think about how your precious forced result might actually plausibly ever possibly occur? (e.g., conceal your position where you correctly guess they’ll come and will be a stationary target that’s in range.)
And then, of course, another ridiculously insulting “parley” scene where, having just seen how insanely long-range and accurate and fast-firing they think their fantasy ballistas are, they have a parley well with in range of them and the archers. “Hey, let’s go talk to the most ruthless hostile despot we know, and do it right in front of an entire army of missile weapons, in range of them, with zero cover. Sure, why not?” It’s insulting they didn’t wipe them all out in that scene.
So much money, time and effort spent making things look nice. So little awareness of obvious tactical realities? Or do they know, and are intentionally making things stupid as sin?
@Caravanfan For someone who stated they don’t give a crap, you’re fairly obsessed man :D
Also, for the record, you just proved that GOT fans are, well…like you.
Hey ucme you misread the question. I don’t give a crap if you haven’t seen the show. And I still don’t.
@zaku especially after she bribed Bronn to go kill Tyrion and when she has 500 arrows pointing at him she doesn’t fire?
Why not? Sloppy lazy stupid writing this week.
The one thing I really liked, however, was Arya riding off with the Hound. She’s a high level chaotic neutral assassin monk. She has no place at court and she has unfinished business.
If you took the time to actually read my initial response, I clearly said that although i’d not seen the show, I almost certainly will at some point.
Perfectly reasonable & yet, you repeatedly call yourself out as crass & hostile…nice work.
@ucme Oh FFS, you don’t give up. I said in my question details that I don’t give a crap if you haven’t seen the show. This question isn’t for you. Go away
@Zaku It’s like they were stupid as the ravenous bugblatter beast of trall, who assumes if you can’t see it it can’t see you. They were flying over the ships. If the ships can see them well enough to aim and fire a slow moving scorpion arrow, then no way Dany couldn’t have seen them. Are we supposed to believe that OOPS! where did these arrows all of a sudden come from?
@Caravanfan I agree. The writing has gotten very sloppy. I find this always happens when scriptwriters write backwards (i.e. they start with the ending and try to work out the sequence of events required to get to that scenario) instead of thinking about each character and their motivations and figuring out how they would approach each challenge/obstacle/confrontation.
@Caravanfan @gorillapaws Yeah, not only would it be ridiculously easy to think of ways to force the outcomes they want in ways that make some degree of sense and that would even be interesting, but by having preposterous nonsense just suddenly happen, it undermines the entire situation, so that there is pretty much no more situation to be interested in, because anything can happen, because things without any reason are regularly happening in random and even utterly unbelievable ways.
You aren’t watching a show about a situation, if the events don’t behave anything like that situation.
Okay, one more thing and then I’ll give this week a rest. Where the hell is Kings Landing anyway? Isn’t KL supposed to be on a harbor? But this stupid confrontation scene happened in the middle of the desert—it’s like they were back across the Narrow Sea again in Essos.
@Zaku @gorillapaws They have had a lot of time and unlimited money to have a plan. Now, at the beginning, they didn’t know if the show would survive and I even saw one early interview where Benioff was saying that if they got to the Red Wedding they would be happy. I do get that they went past where GRRM wrote soo given that, you would think that they would have a writing team that would make basic continuity checks and “This is fucking stupid” checks. The production is A plus. Couldn’t be better. The writing C minus.
Ozzy Man had a slightly nicer interpretation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvyUkkfulLc
Another show that lost me with the writing was Battlestar Galactica. Moore basically made it up as he went along.
@Caravanfan Yeah I think it’s yet another case of a dysfunctional organization where no one gives the writer/directors any critical feedback, and/or they writer/directors suffer from the the Dunning–Kruger effect and/or other egocentric issues.
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