Game of Thrones Season 8 Is A Trainwreck

[Music] this video is brought to you by curiosity stream so I hesitated in making this video because I know there's probably a lot of them like it around many of them already up as I make this but at the end of the day I just had too many thoughts on this season that I couldn't help myself the fact is Game of Thrones has been one of my favorite shows of the decade and seeing it go out like this was a bummer even if at this point a letdown did kind of feel inevitable so let's start with a pair that everyone seems to be yelling at these days showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss the standard line on these two seems to be that without Georgia or Martin source material the writing on the show suffered and while I completely agree with that I think the question that doesn't get asked enough is why these two were so good at adapting Martin which I think looking at the first four seasons they definitely were but ultimately bad at adding to his story and the more I thought about it the more I think it can be boiled down to one word efficiency George RR Martin's novels are sprawling growing more and more massive with each installment the world he's created isn't just massive in scope and size it's always adding new characters new viewpoints through which we see Westeros which i think is a big reason why it's taking him so long to write but when you're making television there's just always going to be a limit to that and for years D&D were great at streamlining his novels into a TV structure now it was never perfect and I'm sure you'll find plenty of complaints about those early seasons from fans I think they proved they were really great as adapting those books without losing a lot of the nuance of the text they wanted to respect those novels while also making satisfying television but when they ran out of books it was that same instinct the value storytelling efficiency over everything else that would eventually turn the show from the rich textured world of the first half of the series into the hollow dumbed down overly convenient version of the show we ended up with there were so many times in season 8 that any sense of internal consistency in the world and sometimes even in the characters was completely sacrificed at the altar of efficiently delivering the big WOW moments that the show thought it had to give us and those problems really piled up I can never be not've Winterfell I could never be Lord of anything it was a difficult long trek for Robb Stark to march his army south in early game of Thrones in season 8 the journey between Winterfell and Kings Landing felt like a stroll through a meadow the complicated political machinations and alliances between houses felt like they all kind of fell away to the point that in the big council scene in the finale it really seemed like Sam and Davos were there because we recognized them not because it made much sense now these are all small things but like I said they add up really quickly season 8 felt like it would use any shortcut and any convenience to deliver fanservice and then in the show as quickly as humanly possible which gave the show a laziness that just didn't feel like Game of Thrones to me now if that sounds like a nitpick I understand but I really think one of the cornerstones of the series was treating Westeros like a living breathing world where its characters actions rippled out and affected the world around them and where the consequences of those actions really mattered those cause and effect consequences seemed like they totally disappeared in season 8 a good example of that is the Dothraki whose journey this season if you can even call it that was so lazily written it made me wonder if the showrunners even remembered they were in the scripts at all until like the very last minute in the Battle of Winterfell they appear to be unceremoniously killed off screen by the White Walkers all in service of a cool visual moment that didn't make much sense as a battle plan it's mentioned in episode 4 that some of them at least were still alive that already seemed pretty unlikely to me but I was kind of like ok I guess some of them survived despite episode 3 making it look like a total slaughter but then in the bells they seem to be back in more than full force running through the golden company like butter despite those guys being built up as incredible warriors and a map of army I guess they actually had no battle strategy at all and they just go down in like ten minutes but the final and most ridiculous thing that showed us with the Dothraki this season is forgetting about them after Danny gives her big saruman speech that they cheer on they just disappear grey worm apparently convinces them to leave along with the unsullied I guess which seems about as under a Keyes you can get at least a mean but it's just obvious the show doesn't care because getting into those details wouldn't be the fastest and most efficient way to get through the remainder of this story at a breakneck pace and in the end that's what the rioters seemed to care about the Dothraki were far from my biggest problem with the finale but I think they're the perfect example of the show totally dropping the ball on the kind of details that it used to care about but now let's talk about bran this character ending up on the Iron Throne or I guess the room where the Iron Throne used to be because of dragons apparently understand the concept of symbolic significance seems almost designed to not satisfy any viewer all season we've been waiting to see what the three-eyed Raven does one of the best sequences this show pulled off in its last few seasons was that incredible Hodor moment it was a rare moment that used the magic aspect of the show to really great effect creating the scene that was tragic moving and incredibly interesting plot wise but if you thought season 8 was gonna have anything half that interesting up its sleeve in terms of brand story you had another thing coming bran accomplishes a lot of nothing in season eight he makes a lot of people uncomfortable he checks in with his favorite birds and that's mostly it soin tyrion claims in the council scene that bran had the most interesting story of them all like of course it rained completely false bran story has had its moments but we're still talking about a character who was left off the show for an entire season because there just wasn't that much to do with him D&D have never cared all that much about the magical aspects of the world that they were adapting and I think that came through loud and clear I mean not forget that season seven ended with the night Kings evil dragon that showed up in one episode died and then was never mentioned again this just isn't an aspect of Westeros that the show seemed to have a lot of interest in so of course brand ending up on the throne isn't gonna elicit much more than a shrug it also just feels kind of weird honestly Tyrion and the rest of the council have made someone that they have no possible way of really understanding King and just kind of hoping for the best I guess I mean honestly I think there's probably a great horror story to be written about a kingdom ruled by an emotionless magical entity who is able to see the future the past and see through the eyes of animals whenever he wants to without like anyone knowing that's kind of extremely creepy and everyone is just hoping his intentions are noble based on not much honestly and if you think I'm reading too far into this I get it but I also think that's exactly what George R Martin would do in his writing I mean this is the guy who talking about his problems with the ending of Return of the King once said Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy that if a king was a good man the land would prosper we look at real history and it's not that simple Tolkien can say Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years and he was wise and good but talking doesn't ask the question what was aragorn's tax policy did he maintain a standing army what did he do in times of flood and famine and what about all those orcs by the end of the war Sauron is gone but all of those orcs aren't gone there in the mountains did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them even the little baby ones and their little orc cradles these are the kind of details that Martin deeply cares about and they're also the exact type of question Game of Thrones the TV show no longer had any interest in so far in this video I'm mostly focused on the dumbing down of the world of Game of Thrones but the characters were far from immune to now a lot of people have already talked about Danny's sudden lurch towards evil so I don't want to spend the rest of the video on it but I will say that I thought it was a good idea just executed very poor like almost everything about season 8 it felt so rushed yeah she had done morally questionable things in the past but so a Tyrian and so many others that we were cheering for in my mind that doesn't set up that she's willing to murder more people than Joffrey and Tywin combined at the drop of a hat especially when she didn't even need to to win the throne and there's the fact that they completely strip away anything that was once admirable about her any sense of mercy she had is long gone and even her wardrobe is about as subtle as a cartoon villain I think they could have believably gone to this place with Danny but not in six episodes it's a much more grounded example but look at the arc of mayor and former Littlefinger Tommy Carcetti in the last few seasons of HBO's the wire here we have a flawed but genuinely idealistic politician who seemed to really care about changing the problems he saw in Baltimore but during his time on the show he makes one concession after another always valuing his own political success and convenience over what he said he believed in and finally by the end he's transformed into exactly the kind of mayor he was so disgusted by in early season four they could have done that on an epic fantasy scale with Danny I think the seeds of that story were right there but they decided to rush through it and they kind of half-assed it as a result so when she dies I don't feel anything this isn't the death of a once noble hero with a tragic downfall it was a noble hero who turned into a standard fantasy villain on a dime then there's Tyrion his story actually is tragic because he apparently hit his head really hard in the box on his way out of King's Landing and never fully recovered I mean seriously once they ran out of book material the show had no idea what to do with Peter Dinklage and watching the character fumble his way from botched plan to dumb idea over and over again these last few seasons has been really disappointing don't get me wrong it's totally fine for Tyrion to make mistakes but the great mind that the early season so often showed us seemed pretty much gone name any great Tyrion line and I almost guarantee it's taken straight from the books they were just never very good at writing this character without them and him being hand at the end is fine I guess except for the fact that he's already demonstrated he's pretty bad at the job so I'm not sure why we should think he's gonna be any better now and his brother Jamie completely regressed in the last half of this season which I actually think is an interesting place to go with the character except and I hate to keep saying this they gave that development almost no time so it feels incredibly sudden and completely unearned and as for Cersei well she mostly stood around and stared out windows this season so I don't have that much to say there Aria story of this season was a little better but I'll skip the obvious joke about how she forgot how to change faces apparently and just cut - my main problem with it the climax of her story is when the Hound convinces her not to lead a life centered around revenge saying it will just make her a miserable broken person like he was and that was a good scene I thought the hound and Arya is mutual respect for each other is one of my favorite things this show ever did but I just kind of didn't buy it I mean we're talking about a character who's already murdered people and baked them into pies she fed human flesh to other human beings like don't get me wrong the phrase were terrible people but still I mean what's stabbing one evil ruler after you've done that I just don't think there's any coming back from that as for Jon and Sansa okay Sansa ends the season ruling the north which I think works well enough is the ending for her story and Jon gets sent up to the wall to hang out with his free folk pals and hopefully to never have to draw up a horrendous battle plan that fails miserably that one of his teenage sisters has to bail him out of once again and that's fine honestly I always thought Kit Harington was the obvious weak link in the cast like he has a really limited range so I've just never been the biggest fan of the shows Jon on a positive note lighting issues aside this was a pretty great looking season of TV it was mostly very well acted and I had a fantastic score every episode there was still a lot to enjoy here but the writing this year was just brutal it felt like the work of writers just trying to end their incredibly successful show as soon as possible with almost no regard for characterization or the internal logic of the world they brought to the screen and it felt like the work of guys who seemed like they'd rather be doing anything else and that sucks I think it's a real stain on the legacy of one of the 2010s best shows martin has said that his ideal version of the show would last a minimum of ten seasons and after watching how rushed this was I can see his point Westeros was a huge detailed place filled with great lore and interesting characters and they all deserved better but if you're satisfied with the show or not it's probably safe to say that you're gonna miss it I know I am which is a big reason it's been so great to watch through every episode of the real war of Thrones a documentary series that already has two seasons out on curiosity stream it very directly digs into the real European history that inspired Martin when writing books it's a great show and it's crazy to see just how much inspiration Game of Thrones took from the real world so watch it now on curiosity stream founded by the same guy as the Discovery Channel this is one of the very best streaming apps it's available worldwide on a ton of platforms and after your month-long free trial is still only $2.99 a month which is a great deal because you're gonna be able to watch over 2,400 documentaries on everything from science to history to really cool tech stuff and a lot more so go to curiosity stream comm slash Captain midnite or check out that link in the description or pend comment below you'd better hurry up and join at once because there's a big adventure ahead the thing to do now is to get started because we're going to have not only barrels of fun but loads of free gifts and

Channel: captainmidnight

Views: 959,827

Rating: 4.8313069 out of 5

Keywords: Game of Thrones, HBO, captain midnight, season 8, tyrion, daenerys, jon snow, ralphthemoviemaker, sansa, arya, review, trailer, scene, d&d, George RR Martin, Bad, GoT, song of ice and fire, peter dinklage, bran, bran king, iron throne, bran the broken, ghost

Id: Q_VGSGeiHdI

Length: 15min 15sec (915 seconds)

Published: Thu May 23 2019