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Probably the worst written TV show I've ever watched. Complete garbage that took a giant shit on Tolkien's works. Bravo, Mr Bezos. Bravo.

How did Halbrand get in front of Galadriel and the dude she was chasing?

I thought about that one - we see Galadriel use a Haste spell (3rd level, mofos!) on her hoss, and she's just a lowly elf. Given that Halbrand ([spoiler]aka possibly, Sauron[/spoiler]) is a [spoiler]Maia[/spoiler], one assumes he can probably cast Wish (9th!) and just, y'know, win any race.

For someone so entirely consumed by continuity, I'm surprised you don't know that "the dude she was chasing" is Adar. Do try to keep up. However are you going to learn Prestidigitation if you don't pay attention to the details?

LOL Yes, like "the dude" even matters. I called him that because A) I couldn't recall his name due to me not being invested in anything going on in this show, and b) he's not from any of Tolkien's lore, so who gives a fiddlers fuck about "trying to keep up" when the show isn't.

This is not Tolkien. Do try to keep up.

Thought it was awful to be honest. As soon as you engage your brain, it falls to bits. For example: the army on its way to Middle Earth from Numenor. How long did it take for them to be clearly in open water on the sea to disembark on wherever it was they landed? How did they even know where they were going? How did they even know what they were supposed to be facing? Where did they store all those horses for every single solider that came along? Why was it day time when they set off, and night time at their destination? If it was a distance thing, then how come they literally showed up just in time for a battle that probably only lasted a few hours when the location of the map indicates a distance of a few hundred miles or more? Did they have sat nav on the horses and did the horses have wings and engines attached? Or they just teleported because they read the script? Was the Elvin tower at the fort held together with chewing gum and duct tape for a single rope breaking to fell it? Why did the orcs just all march in single file straight into what would be potential ambush? Why did they abandon an obvious stronghold built for a siege and thought it was a better idea to hold up in a town in open plane that could be attacked from every direction, no fortification apart from a keep that could be burned or raised to the ground? How did Halbrand get in front of Galadriel and the dude she was chasing? How did the townsfolk not know they were fighting other townsfolk and realize it was a ruse?

It did look nice and dramatic in some shots, though. Suppose that's what counted.

it looks nice. they should get a good calendar out of it.

LOL

About what it's good for at the moment. If people are enjoying it, fair play. But no one's convincing me that it's anything other than a lovely-looking, boring and extremely expensive disaster.

Wow he spends a long time to say he knows nothing, knows no more than anyone else as no real insight and likes to kinda suggest he does and he's due something.

This Mr H character? Total plank, he is. He's picked up a rather nasty gathering recently too based on his recent spew he's put out about Hollywood "wokeness" and alt-right inspired clickbait, bandwagon bollocks. Reading his comments, it seems every other one you come across expresses concerns about "them" emasculating Dredd in some way or another. Do they even understand who it is that's making this project?

Honestly, it can't win.

People who hate the previous two will say it sucks because of SJW, social marxism.

And people who loved the previous two will hate it because it intentionally did away with a lot that made TLJ great to placate to the former group.

Yeah, there's a lot of that doing the rounds off of knobheads with channels on youtube. the thing is, I disliked the previous two. Maybe not TFA so much because it was what it was, a soft reboot and hugely derivative fan service. It was mediocre the more I thought about it after the dust settled, but TLJ was a flat out mess and I've no plans on ever watching it again. I don't put any of this down to bollocks excuses like politics. I leave that for the mentalists out there to come out with that shit. The problem with thinking like that is that you'll see what you want to see regardless of reason or logic. It's toxic as fuck, and boring.

After watching this last night, it's just clear that the entire thing was just a really badly written trilogy from start to finish with no real plan, which is at the heart of the problem and absolute madness as far as Disney are concerned. It's like getting a chef to cook you a meal, only for him/her to leave half way during the preparation and serving the appetiser and another with a completely different style to come in and serve you something else out of the blue half way through eating it.

Except Hughie is also sexist and homophobic (etc) throughout, just a bit less so, and in a manner where he sometimes realises it. That he sometimes calls Butcher on his shit makes no odds to me when he's often in the same ballpark, and it's part of what makes me feel the production is at fault. (The series also has a lot of male gaze attitudes to women that are frankly very problematic. Preacher had similar issues.)

For me, the nadir for Hughie is late on when he [spoiler]boots A-Train's head off in a rage, and then claims he's not a monster[/spoiler]. Right. Just a bit [spoiler]less of one[/spoiler]. Anyway, despite its problems, I enjoyed the TV show. I can't say the same or 80%+ of the comic run.

I can't recall from memory any instances where Hughie was outwardly sexist in the comic. Just naive at his core, so much so its a crucial element to the plot overall. He is constantly defending the opposite sex, and those of a different sexual orientation throughout. Well, that's what I remember from him anyway. There was the conversation he had with MM about Butcher's prejudices, and how he disliked him for that. MM set him straight by telling Hughie that Butcher doesn't hate anyone, be they black, gay, or whatever. A lot of what he says is for a reason, and that reason is to cause reaction or to manipulate to get what he wants. This is highlighted no more so than the event you mention. It was all set up and planned by Butcher into getting him to do what he wanted, and needed, him to do, and not Hughie himself. In the end, Butcher used that against him because he passed the test.

It's true that the comic does have some very heavy homophobic, and racist content to it, but I'd say that it isn't done out of spite, or to be mean spirited or edgy in any way. In fact, I think it's in there to give a bit of contrast between the characters, mainly between that of Hughy and Butcher. It's mostly Butcher for a lot of his none PC colloquialisms or disparaging language. It's there too for shock value, non PC and vulgar dark humour, and also to convey a message, which is usually delivered via Hughy pulling Butcher up on his apparent prejudices towards homosexuals. I think its a necessary part of displaying Hughy's character, especially when it comes to the end. It's definitely the sort of thing best left out of a TV show, though, as it's just not necessary at all (for the screen). In fact, there are a few things in the comic that I'm not sure if they'll approach, if at all.

On the plus side, thank fuck that's over because it was like being gradually waterboarded episode by episode. We got a Scooby Doo mixed with a Return of the King and some Marvel sequel expanding hinting style ending. Who couldn't be happy with that?

Can't wait for all those spin offs now. The Adventures of Arya et al.

Foreshadowing is one thing. Events and actions of the past indicate otherwise and back up the fact that it was out of character. People seem to point towards a mundane line of dialogue, it being "I will take what is mine, through fire and blood!" as some kind of vindication of what she did. Fire and blood, yes, certainly; slaughter of innocent women and babies...er...what?! This especially goes against the grain of her character, seeing that she locked up her 'children' in a dank dungeon under Meereen after Drogon roasted a child. Before that she turned vengeful of the masters having walked past a child nailed to a post, and made it her chief cause to free them and the slaves of Astapor and Meereen of their masters. There has been zero evidence in her character whatsoever to suddenly want to slaughter the innocent, so that's why her actions at KL feel wrong, and out of character, because they are jarring and seemingly spring from nowhere. This is not to say her turning evil and vengeful couldn't be a trait within her, as there have been subtle clues of it, but seeing that the writers have dumbed down the other characters that have kept her in check all this time, it's gave them the green light for them to make her go full blown Anakin dark side. At the drop of a hat, no less.

[However, it is also widely speculated that following the disaster at KL (which will most likely largely be due to Dany inadvertently igniting the wildfire caches buried under the city) she will be wracked with guilt and abandon her hopes of claiming the throne, eventually finding redemption by heading north to fight the army of the dead alongside Jon Snow and (probably) Stannis, a battle in which she will one way or another end up giving her life and the lives of the dragons.]

For me it's the best of the season, yeah still rushed but the Mad Queen has been teased for so long.

Now she's lost her claim to the throne, two dragons and all her close advisers who in previous episodes have held back her more murderous instincts. This carnage was the logical conclusion.

The setup for Dany's heel turn was woefully inadequate as far as I'm concerned. The way the show set it up I could totally see her burning down a path to the Red Keep with no regard for bystanders, but there is a monumental difference between that and actively deciding to genocide an entire city of innocent men, women and children just because. I will never, ever buy it as a logical storytelling choice.

I don't doubt that 'Dany burns down King's Landing' is a plot point that came from Martin. Dany going full-on conqueror is her pretty much signposted by her last chapter in the last published book. However, it is also widely speculated that following the disaster at KL (which will most likely largely be due to Dany inadvertently igniting the wildfire caches buried under the city) she will be wracked with guilt and abandon her hopes of claiming the throne, eventually finding redemption by heading north to fight the army of the dead alongside Jon Snow and (probably) Stannis, a battle in which she will one way or another end up giving her life and the lives of the dragons.

To me, that's an immensely more satisfying and logical conclusion to her arc, and the saga as a whole, and really fits the 'bittersweet' theme that Martin describes. You get the pathos, the moral ambiguity, and you still get a dragon raining firey death over King's Landing, but you get it without throwing Dany's entire arc under the bus. The way it played out in the show is a miserable nightmare with no hope of resolution or redemption. Yeah - Arya's gonna kill her next episode. Honestly, who gives a shit? How depressing. Are we supposed to glean some kind of satisfaction from that? If you'd have told me five years ago that this is how the story would end, I'd have laughed out loud. It's like they let a teenage edgelord write it; 'And then this happens, and then this happens, and then this guy kills this and this guy and then this guys blows this thing up, and then...'.

I also cannot fathom the degree to which Jon Snow has been sidelined this final season. He is arguably the central protagonist of the entire saga - the literal embodiment of the 'Ice and Fire' in the title of the series, and he's been given almost nothing to do.

All I can is that I hope this travesty reignites Martin's interest in wrapping up the book series, because he surely can't be happy with this being the official ending of the saga.

That would have made so much more sense. Unfortunately we've got two hack frauds in charge of the writing on this. Basically, this is equivalent of the scene in Trainspotting when Spud shit the bed, and then carried it into the dining area where it then subsequently got jettisoned all over the place.

The Arya Stark Show and Stuff - A song of Contrived Subversion

That should be the new name after series 8. What an absolute trainwreck. How they've managed to fuck this up so bad is beyond comprehension.

The Belter accent sounds like Bob in this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TutMf0xPczI

2:08

There's a brilliant set piece (which we're not up to yet in the series) where an unexpected sudden change in acceleration decimates anyone not strapped in.  I'm being coy to avoid spoilers.

There's two examples of this on the show I can recall in series 3. One was when someone was strapped in, and the other was an entire episode dedicated to the effects of such an event set on a larger scale, but with less speed and rapid deceleration involved. What I particularly loved about the attention to detail about that, is that it depicts how dangerous any kind of injury in zero gravity conditions would have, even if it would be relatively minor with 1G.

It's also got one of a few (possibly only?) true depictions of what a spontaneous fire outbreak would do and look like in zero gravity, even if it's the wrong colour.

Yeah, I never really saw the thing about Stannis in the show. I kept hearing how he was supposed to be this awesome character. All I ever got the impression of that he was a weak, pussywhipped gobshite that had plans and executed them like an utter moron, getting people killed. How anyone followed him on the show is beyond me.

As for this prequel, hopefully it just does its own thing, because most things that are remotely successful and have spin-offs that try to capture what made the original brilliant ends up failing.