Yeah, I can see how those points are mainly nitpickings. My main complaints are:
- As much as I understand that it's difficult to have the heroes survive (in order to fight another day and eventually win) an unstoppable force of nature, the sudden defeat of the White Walkers means that nobody in Westeros south of the Twins will even realize how much Jon was right in warning about the dead, ie - the seemingly main theme of the show.
- Arya jumps out of nowhere for her surprise attack to the Night King. Pippin in Lord of the Rings made a surprise attack at the Nazgul, nobody complained about that because he was right there on the ground.
- Rhaegal, a moving flying target, gets seen and sniped with 100% precision by a ship that was hidden and therefore couldn't have been able to see it. I can't see you, you can't see me.
I accept the story decisions, but they have to make sense. Pippin stabbing the leg of the Nazgul because he was on the ground having fallen with Eowyn from the horse they were both riding makes sense. Pippin being shown 20 minutes earlier in Minas Tirith and then flying out of the air to attack the Nazgul doesn't make sense, no matter how much you rationalize it by saying "He had the time to get out of Minas Tirith, you knew he cared for Eowyn".
But there are many small things that amount to the story being a bit off, we can see it analyzing how many wrong things there are with a single scene, the war council on what to do after having destroyed the White Walkers. Here we go from Wikiquote:
Grey Worm: [on the Unsullied] Half are gone.
Jon Snow: The Northmen as well.
Varys: And the Golden Company has arrived in King's Landing, courtesy of the Greyjoy Fleet. The balance has become... distressingly even.
Missandei: When the people find out what we have done for them, how we saved them-
Daenerys Targaryen: Cersei will make sure they don't believe it. We will hit her hard. We will rip her out, root and stem.
Tyrion Lannister: The objective here is to remove Cersei, without destroying King's Landing.
Varys: Thankfully, she's losing allies by the day. Yara Greyjoy has retaken the Iron Islands in her Queen's name. The new Prince of Dorne pledges his support.
Daenerys Targaryen: No matter how many Lords turn against her, as long as she sits on the Iron Throne, she can call herself Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. We need the capital.
Tyrion Lannister: I watched the people of King's Landing rebel against their King when they were hungry, and that was before winter began. Give them the opportunity, and they will cast Cersei aside.
Jon Snow: We'll surround the city. If the Iron Fleet tries to ferry in more food, the dragons will destroy them. If the Lannisters and the Golden Company attack, we'll defeat them in the field.
Tyrion Lannister: Once the people see that Cersei is our only enemy, her reign is over.
Daenerys Targaryen: All right.
Sansa Stark: The men we have left are exhausted. Many of them are wounded. They'll fight better if they have time to rest and recuperate.
Daenerys Targaryen: How long do you suggest?
Sansa Stark: I can't say for certain, not without talking to the officers.
Daenerys Targaryen: I came north to fight alongside you, at great cost to my armies and myself. Now that the time has come to reciprocate, you want to postpone.
Sansa Stark: It's not just our people, it's yours! You want to throw them into a war they're not ready to fight?
Daenerys Targaryen: The longer I leave my enemies alone, the stronger they become.
Jon Snow: [firmly] The Northern forces will honor their promises, and their allegiance to the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. What you command, we will obey.
Tyrion Lannister: So. If all are in agreement... Jon and Ser Davos will ride down the Kingsroad with the Northern troops and the bulk of the remaining Dothraki and Unsullied. A smaller group of us will ride to White Harbor, and sail from there to Dragonstone, with our Queen and her dragons accompanying us from above. Ser Jaime has chosen to remain here, as a quest of the Lady of Winterfell.
Daenerys Targaryen: [locking eyes with Sansa] We have won the Great War. Now, we will win the last war. In all Seven Kingdoms, men will live without fear and cruelty... under their rightful Queen.
In one single scene, with few minutes of dialogue, we have:
1) A direct contradiction when Varys says that Cersei is LOSING allies, but Dany says her enemies grow STRONGER; does she even listen?
2) A very reasonable issue raised by Sansa, with everyone being tired, that is dismissed by saying something in direct contradiction with something affirmed before;
3) The role of the dragons being estabilished as anti-ships "aircrafts" only for the dragons not seeing ships from above later;
4) Who are those allies and enemies to begin with? Cersei didn't "lose" the Iron Islands (a bunch of sea rapists that nobody even remembers they exist until they raid too much inland) or Dorne (people secreting hating the Lannister for the murder of Elia Martell and their children), it was only logical they wouldn't care for her.
Elaborating more on this: someone earlier said that they wanted to focus more on the main storylines, and also on the actual actors being paid to be the protagonists. This of course makes total and complete sense, you can't pay a fuckton of money to Lena Headey and Peter Dinklage to sit in their trailers while you show Mr. RandomBum from RandomHouse doing something that has no relation to the main story just because it's in a 1500 pages book, but on the other hand, their made the world too much small, without achieving a proper compromise between pruning the cast, and world building.
This is no longer the game of thrones, it's Jon and Dany versus Cersei. Everyone else has disappeared. The story began with Rob having to cross a random bridge, and he had to give himself AND ARYA away in marriage to do it. That's how complex the world was. It's like if the Hobbits to leave the Shire would have to pay a big toll at a bridge, and being murdered for it when they didn't respect the pacts. Now we don't know:
- Who's in charge in place of basically anyone else who isn't the Lannisters or the Starks
- How the people of King's Landing reacted to the explosion of the Vatican with the Pope and the royal family inside.
Dany says that people won't now fear and cruelty anymore - are people in Westeros subjected to fear and cruelty? do we see Cersei being an active tyrant? is there a dictatorship in King's Landing with people being rounded up for being out late at night, are there unjust taxes? we don't know. We don't even know what the other lords of Westeros (because they are never mentioned) think and if "sending a message to them" in burning King's Landing could be a logical choice or not.
Anyone remember when Cersei was visited by Mycroft Holmes from the Iron Bank? she said that the explosion of the sept was "an accident". Maybe that was the cover story, a tragic accident with wildfire, the pyromancers screwed up, the young and gentle heart of the king couldn't handle such destruction, the queen mother is devasted as anyone and with a heavy heart and without heirs assumes the crown for the good of the realm blah blah blah. We must assume it at best, we don't see it and so we can never see if people have an actual reason to love Dany or to long for her.
This is what creates all the discussions about the actions of the protagonists: when it's literally just Starks + Dany vs Cersei in King's Landing, we no longer have a view on how the rest of Westworld reacts, or even lives under Cersei, to contextualize better the choices of Dany.
Topic: Game of Thrones (TV, fantasy) Thread (Read 637928 times)
