Arya and Brienne aren't exactly friends. Last time they met, Arya just ran away from Brienne. I don't know if Arya even has friends at this point.Samtemdo8 said:
Game of Thrones Season 7 discussion thread. (SPOILERS ABOUND)
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This episode actually merits a pros and cons list.
PROS
1. Some gorgeous tableaus. This is something GoT has always had going for it, a certain degree of scenery porn, and it was on display here. Most particularly during Arya's return to Winterfell and the battle between the Dothraki and Lannister Bonus Army.
2. The battle itself was quite spectacular, and explains why last episode's battle looked so...thrifty. It's clear the CGI budget was heavily invested in this one. Let's hope there was enough left for one more, but I'm guessing if they blew their wad on one episode it was this one. Some of the ground-level chaos after Drogon's strafing runs was actually very well done. The show can't write but the cinematography is on point. Joins Hardhome and the Battle of the Bastards as show-original skirmishes that made for excellent television set pieces.
3. Arya sparring with Brienne was neat, and I particularly enjoyed when she got the boot in the chest and ended up on her ass. Realistically she would have been demolished. It degenerated into fan wankery from there but for a moment it was classic thrones, where Arya's water-dancing ran up against a far stronger, more brutal opponent.
4. Another Stark reunion. I never really get tired of those.
5. Emilia Clarke actually flashed a dimension beyond "chilly imperiousness" on the beach where she channelled a little bit of Targaryen crazy. It worked!
6. Bran being remote and weird is an interesting character development for a character that has seldom been interesting. I feel like he's not being very helpful though.
7. The Unsullied did not miraculously appear over a hilltop at some crucial moment to turn the tide of the battle.
8. We did not see or hear from the show character loosely based on Euron Greyjoy.
CONS
1. Cersei's Maleficent cosplay continues, and the banker feels woefully miscast. Their scenes were painful, and that whole plot arc is atrocious.
2. The Lannister Bonus Army has apparently never heard of scouting. The army shouldn't exist in the first place so I guess that much has been remedied. And to be fair, Dany's troops had no earthly way of travelling that distance that fast. The Lannisters forgot that time and distance no longer mean anything on this show! Mahahahaha! I'm half surprised Euron didn't sail his fleet up onto the lake and start attacking.
3. Bronn almost had a perfect moment where his gold dropped out, he remembered he was a mercenary cut-throat, and ran for his life. Instead, he nobly stares down a massive dragon. I was halfway to applauding them for reading a character properly and then SHOW WRITING happened. Oh well.
4. I'm beginning to suspect they have absolutely no idea what to do with Littlefinger. Tyrion is similarly struggling. The most intelligent characters feel the most cast adrift in SHOW WRITING land. Characters with simpler beats, like Jon, are carrying along alright.
5. Jon's stubbornness to concede to Dany's demands reek of plot contrivance. "Nothing is more important than uniting against the White Walkers! Nothing!". "I'm in, just bend the knee." "Oh well, absolutely not."
6. Jaime is clearly not dead yet show you are fooling no one with this bullshit.
PROS
1. Some gorgeous tableaus. This is something GoT has always had going for it, a certain degree of scenery porn, and it was on display here. Most particularly during Arya's return to Winterfell and the battle between the Dothraki and Lannister Bonus Army.
2. The battle itself was quite spectacular, and explains why last episode's battle looked so...thrifty. It's clear the CGI budget was heavily invested in this one. Let's hope there was enough left for one more, but I'm guessing if they blew their wad on one episode it was this one. Some of the ground-level chaos after Drogon's strafing runs was actually very well done. The show can't write but the cinematography is on point. Joins Hardhome and the Battle of the Bastards as show-original skirmishes that made for excellent television set pieces.
3. Arya sparring with Brienne was neat, and I particularly enjoyed when she got the boot in the chest and ended up on her ass. Realistically she would have been demolished. It degenerated into fan wankery from there but for a moment it was classic thrones, where Arya's water-dancing ran up against a far stronger, more brutal opponent.
4. Another Stark reunion. I never really get tired of those.
5. Emilia Clarke actually flashed a dimension beyond "chilly imperiousness" on the beach where she channelled a little bit of Targaryen crazy. It worked!
6. Bran being remote and weird is an interesting character development for a character that has seldom been interesting. I feel like he's not being very helpful though.
7. The Unsullied did not miraculously appear over a hilltop at some crucial moment to turn the tide of the battle.
8. We did not see or hear from the show character loosely based on Euron Greyjoy.
CONS
1. Cersei's Maleficent cosplay continues, and the banker feels woefully miscast. Their scenes were painful, and that whole plot arc is atrocious.
2. The Lannister Bonus Army has apparently never heard of scouting. The army shouldn't exist in the first place so I guess that much has been remedied. And to be fair, Dany's troops had no earthly way of travelling that distance that fast. The Lannisters forgot that time and distance no longer mean anything on this show! Mahahahaha! I'm half surprised Euron didn't sail his fleet up onto the lake and start attacking.
3. Bronn almost had a perfect moment where his gold dropped out, he remembered he was a mercenary cut-throat, and ran for his life. Instead, he nobly stares down a massive dragon. I was halfway to applauding them for reading a character properly and then SHOW WRITING happened. Oh well.
4. I'm beginning to suspect they have absolutely no idea what to do with Littlefinger. Tyrion is similarly struggling. The most intelligent characters feel the most cast adrift in SHOW WRITING land. Characters with simpler beats, like Jon, are carrying along alright.
5. Jon's stubbornness to concede to Dany's demands reek of plot contrivance. "Nothing is more important than uniting against the White Walkers! Nothing!". "I'm in, just bend the knee." "Oh well, absolutely not."
6. Jaime is clearly not dead yet show you are fooling no one with this bullshit.
I agree with most of your cons, but I feel like Jon holding out on this one is a good approach. The Northern lords would probably revolt at the concept of serving a Targaryian, doubly so when they've shed so much blood over the ideal of being an independent nation. Kind of ironic. In the books, Dany learns not to expect everything to be handed to her because that's what her brother did and look where that got him. In the show, she's acting exactly the way her brother would, (IE, going I'm a Targaryian, therefore I am entitled to loyalty from people I have never met in my life when I have done nothing to earn it) just with some patience.BloatedGuppy said:
As Jon rightly points out upon his arrival, who rules isn't really the issue anymore, as they'll be ruling over a graveyard if they don't unite to face the common enemy.erttheking said:
It's a ridiculous sticking point. Were it not for the threat from beyond the wall, absolutely. In light of that, dickering over who gets to call whom a King or Queen is lunacy.
There's certainly a point to that, but the Northerners are a pretty proud people and they're not above acting on impulse. The Night's Watch knew better than anyone how dangerous the walkers were, and yet they murdered Jon Snow and caused a power struggle in the Night's Watch. In fighting when the White Walkers are coming would be an incredibly stupid thing. The problem is, people ARE incredibly stupid and Jon knows this better than anyone else judging by all the people who tried to kill him and followed Ramsay Bolton of all people. He's had to work hard to get the Northerners under one banner and it won't do anyone any favors if they start killing each other again before the Walkers get to the wall.BloatedGuppy said:
Hell, even if Jon did bend the knee, he'd probably just end up with a head on a spike and with one of the Stark kids proclaimed the new King/Queen in the North, because there's no way any of the Northern lords would accept that.
I don't get this. GoT isn't afraid to kill major characters in grusome ways, but characters have survived near death experiences before - Davos and Tyrion at the Blackwater, Arya survives being stabbed in the stomach, Sandor Clegane survives his fall, Jon and Gregor are literally brought back from (near) death, etc. Jaime surviving Drogon wouldn't be out of the blue, all things considered.tippy2k2 said:
So, to sum up, Dany's on the verge of uniting all of Westeros against her, including her own advisors, which I'm guessing will lead to some nasty things happening to her, which will lead to a shortage of dragonglass, which will lead to an inability to hold off the undead.Samtemdo8 said:
"Game over man, game over!"
Without revealing to much of the spoilers I have read from the script leak, all I can say is no that is not the case. Lets just say really dumb things are gonna happen.Hawki said:
Also in that preview episode Jon Snow himself said "Bran saw the Night King and his armies marching towards Eastwatch"
How does he know about Bran let alone knowing that Bran saw the Night King, when he's miles away from him?
And I just realized there is only 3 episodes left!? Oh my goodness things are gonna get rushed up the ass these final 3 episodes.
How does he know about Bran let alone knowing that Bran saw the Night King, when he's miles away from him?
And I just realized there is only 3 episodes left!? Oh my goodness things are gonna get rushed up the ass these final 3 episodes.
Of course it isn't, which is why they should've just shown him blow the water off his nostrils and be done with it. Instead they tease us with this really surprise deep pond. I bet Jaime even gets a dream sequence before waking up on the beach.Hawki said:
So I just watched the latest episode:
Overall, pretty good. An improvement over the previous one in both writing and general keeping-me-excitedness. Fifteen minutes of Drogon fucking shit up is a cure for all ills, apparently. Pacing is still all fucked up. They really, really need to nail down their sense of narrative time and resist the urge to just have characters teleport to whichever places it is most dramatic for them to appear.
On the plus side:
- There's more of the ancillary establishing dialogue that ought to have been happening in earlier episodes, where Character A says to Character B "go and do that thing that's important for us to do but which we will not show us doing on-screen." Those snippets here and there are more important than they appear at first because they are what patches over otherwise-obvious plot holes.
- Daenaerys finally deciding to fuck some shit up and succeeding unreservedly by doing what is strategically the incredibly-obvious option (attacking an overstretched supply line with a force entirely made of light cavalry ideal for the job, then using the dragon to blow a hole in the shield wall to neutralise the Lannister's only advantage.)
- Jaime refusing to abandon his soldiers and then playing St. George was a nice capstone to his overall character arc and his attempts to be less of a shifty ****. If he'd died then and there, I wouldn't have been disappointed, because that's one hell of a way to go out.
- The dragon scene very powerfully highlights how much of a game-changer even one dragon is to medieval warfare. It's essentially a fighter-bomber in a world with no aircraft, immune to anything short of siege weaponry. Even when it gets wounded and forced to land, it's still a giant fucking dinosaur that breathes fire. Also, the special effects were great.
- The show both highlights, explains, and directly tackles the plot development of Bran becoming increasingly detached from people. Meera Reed giving him a tongue-lashing was much-needed and served to balance out his incredibly cold treatment of Sansa last episode.
- The reappearance ofChekov's Littlefinger's dagger! He's been keeping that thing on his belt for six years, so seeing it pulled out was a nice little brick joke. Don't know what the significance of giving it to Arya is going to be. Don't really know what the showrunners are doing with Arya in the firstplace.
Which leads to the cons...
- The show continues to have no grasp of time and space, keeping track of its characters according to Dramatic Reveal Standard Time; they only appear when it is most dramatic according to what the showrunners think, not according to any sense of pacing, time, logic or basic common fucking sense. (Why did Theon arrive at Dragonstone after the news of Euron's ambush at Casterly Rock? That means Euron ambushed them in Dorne, sailed back to King's Landing, then sailed a thousand ships all the way to Casterly Rock on the other side of the continent in the time it took Theon to get back to Dragonstone.)
- The banker continues to make no sense.
- Arya's sparring match with Brienne aggravated me. It felt like fanservice. Arya in general has just been you-go-girl fanservice this whole season.
- What the fuck is up with Bronn?
- There's more of the ancillary establishing dialogue that ought to have been happening in earlier episodes, where Character A says to Character B "go and do that thing that's important for us to do but which we will not show us doing on-screen." Those snippets here and there are more important than they appear at first because they are what patches over otherwise-obvious plot holes.
- Daenaerys finally deciding to fuck some shit up and succeeding unreservedly by doing what is strategically the incredibly-obvious option (attacking an overstretched supply line with a force entirely made of light cavalry ideal for the job, then using the dragon to blow a hole in the shield wall to neutralise the Lannister's only advantage.)
- Jaime refusing to abandon his soldiers and then playing St. George was a nice capstone to his overall character arc and his attempts to be less of a shifty ****. If he'd died then and there, I wouldn't have been disappointed, because that's one hell of a way to go out.
- The dragon scene very powerfully highlights how much of a game-changer even one dragon is to medieval warfare. It's essentially a fighter-bomber in a world with no aircraft, immune to anything short of siege weaponry. Even when it gets wounded and forced to land, it's still a giant fucking dinosaur that breathes fire. Also, the special effects were great.
- The show both highlights, explains, and directly tackles the plot development of Bran becoming increasingly detached from people. Meera Reed giving him a tongue-lashing was much-needed and served to balance out his incredibly cold treatment of Sansa last episode.
- The reappearance of
Which leads to the cons...
- The show continues to have no grasp of time and space, keeping track of its characters according to Dramatic Reveal Standard Time; they only appear when it is most dramatic according to what the showrunners think, not according to any sense of pacing, time, logic or basic common fucking sense. (Why did Theon arrive at Dragonstone after the news of Euron's ambush at Casterly Rock? That means Euron ambushed them in Dorne, sailed back to King's Landing, then sailed a thousand ships all the way to Casterly Rock on the other side of the continent in the time it took Theon to get back to Dragonstone.)
- The banker continues to make no sense.
- Arya's sparring match with Brienne aggravated me. It felt like fanservice. Arya in general has just been you-go-girl fanservice this whole season.
- What the fuck is up with Bronn?
Overall, pretty good. An improvement over the previous one in both writing and general keeping-me-excitedness. Fifteen minutes of Drogon fucking shit up is a cure for all ills, apparently. Pacing is still all fucked up. They really, really need to nail down their sense of narrative time and resist the urge to just have characters teleport to whichever places it is most dramatic for them to appear.
Come to think of it, I have to ask...with dragons being weapons of war in the world for over 300 years, did no-one think until now to deploy a ballista? I ask because the implication I got is that it was a new weapon created by Cersei's maester (forget his name).
Seems like all that's left is fan-service and closing the story lines. There seems to be no more character development, just "Hey remember all the previous character development". All the characters are in their natural final positions but with two seasons to actually finish the story*.
*Except maybe Sam and MAAAAYBE Theon.
*Except maybe Sam and MAAAAYBE Theon.
I'm pulling this tired old trite but in the books, it was common knowledge that a ballista could hurt a dragon...if you could get it in the eye. At one point, during the siege of Meereen, the slavers outside are setting up balistas and Tyrion snorts that it's a fat lot of good it would do them unless they could make that million to one shot.Hawki said:
I think this season is just irking me so I'm being extra harsh on it because you're right, Thrones has pulled this kind of ish before. I swear every damn episode has some kind of BS in it where previous seasons usually only had like...one or two BS's (BSs? BS? What is plural BS?) that just bugs the shit out of me.Hawki said:
All well, I will stick with it because of course I will (the episodes have still been very good but this little stuff is starting to grate on me). I'll just complain
Not only that, the Wildlings regard him as a king solely because they respect him. If he bent the knee to someone the wildings didn't know, they wouldn't necessarily follow along with him, and he would run the risk of splintering the north if he capitulated to Dany.erttheking said:
That's one of the things this season that does make some sense, although I agree it's strange Jon didn't at least offer to bend the knee after the white walkers were taken. He claims he doesn't want to be king, but he does seem awful fond of the title
In the books, it's very old knowledge. One of the original Aegon's dragons got killed by a ballista while trying to invade Dorne, but it was a lucky shot to the eye.Hawki said:
I suspect Qyburn is not saying "here, look at this ballista I invented," and more "here, look at this ballista I ordered a ton of people to start making because I heard they can kill dragons." But that scene is problematic anyway; for one thing, a three-hundred-year-old skull is a lot easier to crack than that of a living dragon covered in scales and muscle. Qyburn's little demonstration did nothing but make Cersei overconfident in her ability to down a dragon; as we see in the latest episode, not only can Drogon dodge the ballista bolts, but even if you hit him with one he's more "wounded" than "dead," and a wounded dragon on the ground is still a plane-sized tank that breathes fire.
You'd need dozens of those scorpions, fully manned, to properly ward off a dragon attack. For a place like King's Landing, that's certainly doable. But for an army in the field...well, it's improbable that Bronn was even able to deploy the ballista by himself, much less fire it. It required an entirely-unnecessary collapsing wagon setup that served no purpose except to look cool.
Overall, it was just another case of the showrunners deciding they had to unrealistically buff up Cersei's capabilities to maintain dramatic tension.
I think it's because he has a very personal and intimate knowledge of what happens when a commander makes pragmatic decisions that nevertheless enrage his subjects.balladbird said:
Hmmm, episode 4. Lots of faffing about with plenty of 'look how awesome this character is now' and 'hey, remember this plot device/character?' fan-service. And then, 15 minutes of dragon mayhem.
We already got a little preview at the end of the last season in Mereen, but it felt a little weedy. 3 dragons taking their sweet time burning a single ship? Doesn't seem all that much of a gamechanger. But this? Ok, the Lannister force was only a (sizeable) caravan escort rather than a proper army. The ballista got in one minor hit before getting annihilated, the rest of them had no recourse whatsoever. It showed how pants-wetting terrifying a dragon attack can be.
We already got a little preview at the end of the last season in Mereen, but it felt a little weedy. 3 dragons taking their sweet time burning a single ship? Doesn't seem all that much of a gamechanger. But this? Ok, the Lannister force was only a (sizeable) caravan escort rather than a proper army. The ballista got in one minor hit before getting annihilated, the rest of them had no recourse whatsoever. It showed how pants-wetting terrifying a dragon attack can be.