House of the Dragon (Game of Thrones) Thread

[Forky]

1 hour ago, Mick said:

 

Aww, that's a shame. They could in theory keep going all the way up to Jon Arryn dying  . 

Oh I'm sure they're not done milking the living hell out of this series. Which I'm not opposed to since I've been enjoying it.

[gunnar hendershow]

Spoiler

It was such a weird season finale because of the points raised that it all was stuff that should've happened midseason. The big point of suspense during the episode for me was whether Daemon would actually bend the knee. And the payoff was pretty good, I thought that scene was definitely going another direction.

Always a fan of seeing Olivia Cooke bear the face of a person who absolutely fucked up to perfection. But at this point there's nothing more for the Alicent character. At least she seemed to connect the dots that by being not-Aemond everyone would welcome Rhaenyra with open arms. So that's one son she actually doesn't love anymore. I know she'll be back but her character existed to be the accidental puppeteer behind a massive, deadly war. Now the war is truly here. She just will wallow in her misery.

It's tough as a season finale because we expect spectacle, but they know this isn't a make-or-break season and everyone will just come back when the next season starts up even if they were disappointed by this episode.

 

[Ruki]

But I want more now 😩

 

At least we get Dunk & Egg next year as a hold over.

[GoGo Yubari]

I will say that while I don't think the episode felt like a season finale as such, "let's set the pieces for next season" is basically in line with how a lot of HBO flagship shows, Game of Thrones included, often work. The problem is that it's usually doing so after something truly explosive/status quo altering and here it's after Westeros' Next Top Dragonrider. And that was a great scene and does alter the status quo of the show but it's no Red Wedding, or Night's Watch vs. Wildlings war, so there's no audience feeling of needing to recover from something massive.

[gunnar hendershow]

The general adherence to source material and "canon" that is sinking a lot of Star Wars and Marvel TV like a lead balloon reared its head here a bit I think. Certain events feel pre-ordained to happen at a certain time and you have to have a lot of treading water for characters until their next major event. 

Spoiler

Why was Daemon having dreams for the whole season? Because his entire arc this season was more or less about 2 scenes - getting the riverlands under his banner and then realizing he didn't want/need to be king. They had to pad everything because chronologically he couldn't move ahead of everyone else.

Much the same for Corlyss and his bastards who had basically the same conversation for half the season. Treading water until they finally go out into the actual water.

But then you have actual narrative movements inside the Red Keep and on Dragonstone, the latter of which also had multiple treading water episodes anyway. It's just ridiculous how afraid they seem to be to draft up some entertaining TV-only subplots for these characters. I know the reaction to GOT is that "if it's not pure canon source material it's shit" but those guys were not well-versed in thematic writing, something the HotD writers very much do seem to get. Feels like they've just left some good, self-contained content out of the show deliberately.

 

[Schlitzbrille]

On 05/08/2024 at 20:20, gunnar hendershow said:

  Hide contents

It was such a weird season finale because of the points raised that it all was stuff that should've happened midseason. The big point of suspense during the episode for me was whether Daemon would actually bend the knee. And the payoff was pretty good, I thought that scene was definitely going another direction.

Always a fan of seeing Olivia Cooke bear the face of a person who absolutely fucked up to perfection. But at this point there's nothing more for the Alicent character. At least she seemed to connect the dots that by being not-Aemond everyone would welcome Rhaenyra with open arms. So that's one son she actually doesn't love anymore. I know she'll be back but her character existed to be the accidental puppeteer behind a massive, deadly war. Now the war is truly here. She just will wallow in her misery.

It's tough as a season finale because we expect spectacle, but they know this isn't a make-or-break season and everyone will just come back when the next season starts up even if they were disappointed by this episode.

 

Hearing that there were supposed to be two additional episodes (apparently written and all) this season, could be why it felt weird?

[Mick]

What if there is no Winds of Winter, and really it's just George RR Martin with the greatest retirement scheme in recorded history? 

 

Like this place I used to work, part of the schtick was to register people for a contest to win a million dollars. The other part was trying to sell magazine subscriptions (dating this a bit  ). But one of the probing questions was "What would you do if you won all that money?" And suggest magazines based around that. 

 

"Would you travel, party, retire, invest it...?"

GRRM: ....Yes. 

[Hellraiser]

In his most recent blog post, GRRM has announced that one of the next few posts he is going to write will be about everything that in his opinion went wrong with House Of The Dragon. I'm sure that this will be an interesting read.

[gunnar hendershow]

He's a nearly 76 year old man who can't even finish his own story after 30 years, probably in part because he can't stomach fan backlash or disappointment. Doing that just makes him feel a bit superior - "dear fans, I would not have done the thing you didn't like".

[Bobfoc]

He's credited as an Executive Producer on the show. You'd think he'd be able to have a good amount of creative control if he wanted to.

[Mick]

11 minutes ago, Bobfoc said:

He's credited as an Executive Producer on the show. You'd think he'd be able to have a good amount of creative control if he wanted to.

 

I don't think he wants to put up with the shit you have to to do it, though. I think he's happy just smiling and cashing the checks. 

[Hellraiser]

So GRRM published the post criticizing House Of The Dragon and swiftly deleted it. There were major spoilers about the book and some changes that the showrunners are going to make to the story in seasons 3 and 4.

Here is an archived version on archive.org. Don't read if you haven't read the book and/or want to avoid possible spoilers for future seasons of the show.

Spoiler

https://web.archive.org/web/20240904154210/https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2024/09/04/beware-the-butterflies/

 

[Bobfoc]

This seems like a strange thing to do. It's just going to annoy HBO. I understand the points he's making, but you'd normally talk about this sort of thing when the show has finished.

[Hellraiser]

25 minutes ago, Bobfoc said:

This seems like a strange thing to do. It's just going to annoy HBO. I understand the points he's making, but you'd normally talk about this sort of thing when the show has finished.

Apparently showrunner Ryan Condal made promises to GRRM regarding a certain character during the planning stages of the show. But between that and now, a change was made to the story which GRRM perceives as Condal going back in his word. He also says that this change will have a butterfly effect on the story in future seasons. And he alluded to more controversial changes they made to the story.

Edited September 4 by Hellraiser

[Tigerstyle]

Eh the thing is everything removed bar the motivation for one thing is convoluted story beats for a TV show that its predecessor already had pacing issues towards the end, and this one likely the same.

You can’t make a true to the story book to TV adaptation without it being really, really long.

[Schlitzbrille]

Key is to find the line between "600% faithful" and "adaptation that may as well be a fanfic with a silly budget and studio backing"

[Bobfoc]

1 hour ago, Hellraiser said:

Apparently showrunner Ryan Condal made promises to GRRM regarding a certain character during the planning stages of the show. But between that and now, a change was made to the story which GRRM perceives as Condal going back in his word. He also says that this change will have a butterfly effect on the story in future seasons. And he alluded to more controversial changes they made to the story.

Again, I can understand why he'd be annoyed about that, but publicly complaining about it doesn't seem very professional. There were some bad adaptations made by Benioff and Weiss to Martin's written work, but he didn't feel the need to talk about them until years later.

I don't want to be a corporate apologist, but HBO will see this as undermining one of their biggest projects. They're paying Martin a lot of money, only for him to essentially tell viewers that he doesn't approve of the upcoming content.

[gunnar hendershow]

I'm just going to say he writes books, and while he does have some TV experience ripping apart a TV show made by experienced TV people is rather silly. They are different mediums and different things work in each. He should've learned in GOT when they were leaving out/switching up things from the books that you can cram so much more narrative into a series of novels than you can with a more visual medium.

I'm not defending the show or being a corporate stan, just that this is such a lame ass thing to do.