Game of Thrones Season 5

[CrazyFoxMachine]

All I'm asking for is a few people to root for. Is that too much to ask?

[Hawkmumbler]

Is that a reaction or an example?

[Theblazeuk]

Team Pod! And omg 

[Batman's Superior Cousin]

Interview with Lena Heady's body double, & how 'that' scene was filmed:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/game-of-thrones/11684225/Game-of-Thrones-Lena-Headeys-nude-body-double-revealed.html

[GordonR]

Time to give this particular topic a rest now, I think...

[Goaty]

Time to give this particular topic a rest now, I think...
[/quote

Please!!

[Theblazeuk]

Disagree largely with this article as never had much time for Dorne, but here is an article to chew over:

http://io9.com/how-to-fix-what-s-wrong-with-game-of-thrones-1712355749




(I was impressed how long it went before any mention at all)

[Satanist]

For some reason this thread reminds me of Picard in Extras...

Patrick Stewart: Yeah. For instance, I'm walking along, and I see this beautiful girl, and I think I'd like to see her naked, and so all her clothes fall off.

Andy Millman: All her - clothes fall off?

Patrick Stewart: Yes, and she's scrabbling around to get them back on again, but even before she can get her knickers on, I've seen everything. Yeah. I've seen it all.

[Famous Mortimer]

I'm rooting for Ramsay Bolton from now on, that dude knows how to get things done. Pod had one job and messed it up.

I don't think there's tons wrong with the show that didn't come from the original text. GRRM left Dany off on her own way too damn long, and (by his own account) stretched something originally intended for three books way thinner than it needed to be. This quote from that io9 article sums it up perfectly:

A Storm of Swords is a drunken orgy of carnage, and the two books that follow are, in many ways, the hangover.

A hangover that lasts for two books. There's not a lot you can do with that, as a TV show. I've been thinking about this, and - picking a book at random off my shelf - looking at "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Dumas. It's one of the most extraordinarily entertaining stories ever written, and packs a huge amount of story and detail and characters and fun into 1200 pages. If he'd written it in the 21st century, he'd have been told by his publisher to make it a trilogy, put in a bunch of stuff no-one cared about, give the entire history of France during the text, and if it was popular, stretch it to five or six.

How the show can "solve its problems" is to have more light to go along with the dark and to start moving things into place for a conclusion of some sort. That's it. But next season we're going to get even more Meereen and now a bunch of Iron Islands stuff...

[I, Cosh]

I've been thinking about this, and - picking a book at random off my shelf - looking at "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Dumas. It's one of the most extraordinarily entertaining stories ever written, and packs a huge amount of story and detail and characters and fun into 1200 pages. If he'd written it in the 21st century, he'd have been told by his publisher to make it a trilogy, put in a bunch of stuff no-one cared about, give the entire history of France during the text, and if it was popular, stretch it to five or six.

I'll be honest, I agree with the basic concept of today's sprawling sagas frequently being inferior to an older, smaller volume. However, I'm not completely convinced about your idea of holding up a book longer than than Lord of the Rings (including the appendices) as a model of brevity!

[Famous Mortimer]

I don't think it's a model of brevity by any reasonable standard (although the last half of the book, when his plan comes together, is one of the most amazing sections of literature ever written - get the Richard Pevear translation, if you're going to read it at all) but it's a short story compared to what ASOIAF will be by the time it's done.

I don't know. I feel like endless swathes of text has been given over to analysing Martin's books and this show when I'm not 100% sure they deserve it. Take "Breaking Bad", for example, a show which I've seen compared to GOT more than once since the season finale. It had light to go with the dark, a story which seemed simple (mild mannered teacher gradually turns into Scarface) but was anything but, two of the greatest central performances we'll ever see on TV, a wonderful finale...I'm sorry, I'm on these horrifically strong painkillers and my mind is wandering a little.

GOT has Dinklage, who's extraordinary; Coster-Waldau, who could be great but is ill-served by his character's dull storyline; Headey, who's fine; and lots and lots of sort-of-okay TV actors. Perhaps they could be fantastic, but with five minutes an episode we're never going to find out (Cunningham and Glen, for two). It's had scenes which are amazing for the action they portray, but it's never had a dialogue scene as perfect as "I am the one who knocks".

If it doesn't want to play with those "prestige drama" big boys, then it needs to get off its ass and do something a bit more genre-y. Take the "Chekhov's Gun" principle and apply it to Dany's dragons. It's taken three (four?) entire seasons before they bothered doing anything with any of them. Imagine Walter White waiting til season four of "Breaking Bad" before deciding to start cooking meth?

Sorry...again, struggling to concentrate. Much as I found the last two books to be a pretty unbearable slog, I've felt with a lot of season 5 of GOT. Going back to that article, the show would be better served by letting at least one of the main plot threads have a season off. Or having an asteroid destroy Meereen and everything in it, with a bit breaking off to blow up Dany and whoever's with her, allowing Tyrion and Varys time to escape of course.

[IAMTHESYSTEM]

GOT is pretty dark fare but that's the point for it is about power. You win the game of thrones- or you die.

The sort of people who are attracted to power may be the last people we wish to acquire it, sociopaths, psychopaths and narcissists but they make effective leaders because they are unconcerned with moral outcomes. Only what serves their best interest is relevant to them and therefore they can cut through the quagmire of competing issues to what they believe will give them the result they desire.

Television must in some way reflect society and we all know that very immoral indeed amoral events have taken place recently. The banking crisis caused by the insidious greed of the Bankers, various wars that Western powers have engaged in have resulted in something close to true anarchy in Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan. Our leaders whom most of us are increasingly estranged from promise this that and the other yet seem to be only interested in their own supporters or like minded followers and the general belief is that all politicians are in some way corrupt; in hoc to private enterprise or if Liberal/socialist the Trades Unions and the EU. We all complain about this sense of dislocation but what to do about this feeling of drift no one seems to know.

So thats why I think GOT is such must see TV. It reflects an awful truth we suspect that in an amoral universe- the amoral tend to prosper! This is only partially true since despite the awful privations endured by say the Stark family all is not lost. Bran ,Sansa and Arya still live indeed Arya went through a brutal 'training' period with the Hound as Mentor turning her into a remorseless killer. Anyway if you want power you must be prepared to fight dirty as Bronn the sell sword quipped as he sends a knight to his doom-'Yes-he fought fair!' In GOT as in real life fairness and power just don't go together very well.

[Richard]

That io9 article is bonkers. It boils down to "let's improve the Game of Thronee TV series by making it more boring."

[Famous Mortimer]

So thats why I think GOT is such must see TV. It reflects an awful truth we suspect that in an amoral universe- the amoral tend to prosper!

Telling us what we know about the world doesn't make it "must see" for me. I'd suggest having a read (and watching) the Grantland.com coverage of GoT, it's been excellent and they talk a lot about how bashing us over the head with "the worst possible thing that can happen, will" is okay for a while, but begins to grate after five seasons.

I'll offer another for-instance. I recently watched "Still The Enemy Within", the documentary about the miners' strike. It was, undoubtedly, a terrible time for communities up and down the UK - police brutality, no money, the press against them, no support from the Labour Party - and the documentary could well have been a catalogue of the misery of that year. But it talked about the friendships that were formed, the way that traditional homophobia was broken down, the comedy in trying to get round the police lines, and so on.

GoT needs more of that. We know things are awful and are unlikely to get a lot better, but even in dark times, there's some light. Dorne could have been a bit of swashbuckling fun, for example, but it ended up being the death of a girl we'd barely seen just to make Jaime's life even worse, and yet more war coming from it.

I think someone attached to the show realises this - hence Tyrion's line a few episodes ago about not wanting to see so much death as part of his leisure time.

[Link Prime]

Which GoT character are YOU?

http://variety.com/2015/tv/features/quiz-which-game-of-thrones-character-are-you-1201470853/

(I got Ned Stark  )