Why Game of Thrones Burning of King's Landing Fails

[Music] at least you can't get any worse how many times have I told you not to say that now something worse is gonna happen I've seen it on happy days watch in three two one holy crap and here I thought that after the unceremonious dunking of the night King Game of Thrones would just slip into a boring snooze fest how innocent and naive I was to think I could just lay back turn my brain off and let the ending of Game of Thrones wash over me yes I was fooled again but apparently so was everyone else even the actors didn't like it so at least we can comfort each other in our disappointment so why was episode 5 so bad and is it possible to be fixed now my last video on Game of Thrones I talked about how D&D don't care about characters dramatic themes or planning things out they couldn't even budget any money for John to have a touching emotional goodbye with ghost who cares about feelings based on things built from eight years of a show throw that into the trash we have to put all of our money into the burning the city to the ground scene all D&D care about is spectacle big concept controversial ideas like war is bad the exquisite bravery of a butterfly flying against the wind did you notice that once De Niro starts at burning down the city you never see her face again it's like her character in her emotional state don't matter it's all sacrificed for the scene all to force an unearned emotional feeling down your throat it doesn't matter if the characters you've watched for eight years suddenly act like different people D and D don't care about any of this they're gonna force whatever situation they want upon you and you're just gonna have to take it like why did Tyrion even tell Varys a sneaky sneaky schemer man who has already voiced concerns about Daenerys Jones parentage in the first place why would Varys then turn around and tell Tyrion about his plan to betray Daenerys do you think season 1 Varys would have done that no but the characters motivations and logic don't matter because D&D needed them to tell each other so that Dany could find out and kill Varys so that John would be too turned off to sleep with her hey John let me see your lawn cloth uh I just watched a fat man with no genitals burned alive I'm not really in the mood here it is then well I guess Danny not getting the D from her man makes her crazy remember when people thought this show was woke progressive why does Daenerys randomly decide to kill hundreds of thousands of random innocent people but trying everything her character stood for D andis answer for this is baffling and I don't think she decided ahead of time that she was going to do what she did and then she sees the red keep which is to her the home that her family built when they first came over to this country three hundred years ago looking at that symbol of everything that was taken from her when she makes the decision that doesn't make any sense what that means she wouldn't want to destroy it stop trying to use your brain simple viewer just enjoy the spectacle of shock and horror as a city is destroyed rev up those fryers why does Jamie get into a random encounter with Joran on a beach why does your own even want to kill Jamie Jamie doesn't even know why is this show try to randomly throw in this anti revenge message up until this point revenge has worked out pretty well for Arya she's killed dozens maybe even hundreds of people in the name of revenge she literally chopped people up and fed them in a pie to the poor caretaker from Harry Potter in this show cheered this on but now suddenly vengeance ad why is that D&E tell us why the reason we decided to follow aria out of King's Landing and to see the fall of King's Landing through Verizon sign that we talked about with an earlier episode you just care a lot more when you're with a character that you care about so if we saw a lot of extras running around on fire and buildings falling apart it might have been visually interesting but you won't have had much of an emotional impact of course who cares about logic or character or even emotionally satisfying conclusions they've shown they don't care about any of that no aria is simply a pond she's a person on a haunted house ride being ferried from horrible scene to horrible scene the brutal faceless assassin who used to be the most capable person in the world is now running through the streets like everyone else and is emotional again for some reason you can't trick me again show everything was so ridiculous that by the end of it I have expected Aria to catch some falling ash and say something like winter has come and when that random horse showed up I swear I thought slowly would pull off a mask to reveal it was really jock in her car on all fours the whole time and he'd say a girl must come with me if you want to live then they gallop off into the sunset how did it all go so wrong and can we fix it like my last video I will offer two scenarios one in which as little as possible as change to make the story work and another were more fundamental aspects of the story are reworked now I want to make it clear I have absolutely no problem with stories having dark or tragic endings heck I'm the guy that won the movie AI to end with Haley Joel Osment trapped forever beneath the ocean his quest a tragic failure so I'm not some hearts and Rosie's kind of guy a story about Daenerys a young and naive girl with the best of intentions slowly becoming disillusioned and corrupted as she learns to rule until eventually she falls to the dark side that could be a really interesting story Breaking Bad is a show about a normal guy becoming more and more damaged and evil and people loved it anyways let's get into it number one Varys and betrayal like in my last video we need things to be tangible especially if we're supposed to buy that Daenerys is going to go crazy we need varus's betrayal to actually accomplish something and no Daenerys didn't know that Varys was trying to poison her food and that's why she wasn't eating I know it's confusing because it seems like Danny knows Varys betrayed her but if you watch the scene again she actually doesn't know until Tyrion tells her that's why Tyrion tells Varys right before he dies that he was the one that ratted him out maybe we see he convinces some of the iron Islanders to ditch Dany maybe he plants the seed of doubt in the northern army we need scenes of the north men grumbling to each other like ah I like that Jon Snow lad who's the colonel the north eye but this foreign Queen from across the sea with her flying monsters mutilated men in barbarian horde I don't know about her the talk spreads in northern army starts to get antsy while they're marching south maybe a minor uprising starts and Jon has to quell it you could even have more drama with Dany weiying the rebels executed in Jon doesn't and if you want to take the drama further you could have Dany say she's gonna burn them but Jon convinces her that they're from the north and they deserve a better death from their Lord so he beheads them kind of like something Ned Stark would do this could anger a lot of the remaining north army leading to lots of people running away in the middle of the night Danny wants to chase down the deserters and execute them and Jon refuses he could say he'll leave her if she does both as a northern Lord and as her love suddenly we have a real weight and real tension pressing on Danny the audience can see that her fears about the north are actually grounded in reality and not just she would also feel a greater sense of betrayal and uncertainty about Jon that wouldn't be based around them banging the way it is right now Daenerys feels like that clingy girlfriend who won't stop texting you if you don't respond in the first five minutes the point is there needs to be something HBO wanted D&D to make this season 10 episodes long but D&D refused and decided to only make it that's why everything feels so lush so claustrophobic Game of Thrones used to be a show about characters navigating a dangerous world of mystery in conflict now it's a world that exists only to service a few characters it feels empty and lifeless a friend of mine joked that before the last episode King's Landing only existed in Circe's throne room before Danny destroys the city we saw nothing of King's Landing the season the streets the people where all the scenes with the common people upset with Circe's rule that Tyrion keeps mentioning people should be running out of food now that Highgarden doesn't support Cersei show us some food riots show us Cersei trying to quell the mobs by playing up the threat of foreign invaders it's not like that's not politically topical and some I assume are good people show us the families of peasants fearing for their lives leaving their homes and running to the capital before the battle build up this world that the characters are living in when the show writers decide to cut their seasons episode count almost in half they have no one to blame but themselves when they don't set up things properly this season of Game of Thrones feels like the Star Wars prequels where we had a clear distinction between the character scenes and the action scenes and most of the character scenes only purpose was to rush us to the action scenes Game of Thrones is doing this only with having character episodes all be rushed to simply get to the action set piece episodes but this makes no sense because Game of Thrones is a character drama it's always been a show about the people it was never a show about action spectacle set pieces or high concepts the first two seasons only contained one explosive action episode the rest of the wars and skirmishes were barely even shown and yet everyone considers the first two seasons the best it's like they forgot what made it popular in the first place number two Jamie cut out the whole Jamie going back to Cersei for no reason subplot not only does it completely betray all his character development but it's utterly pointless Jamie ends up doing nothing of importance anyway all he does is walk around on a beach fight you're on for absolutely no reason and comfort sir see as they die why would you do that why would you do any of that no reason I can think of why D&D had Jamie go back is just because they want to have this scene where Tyrion frees Jamie because it mirrors that time when Jamie free Tyrion you know again it's like poetry so if they rhyme yeah it was a nice scene but it wasn't really worth throwing away years of character development number three Euron's fleet Euron's fleet is destroyed with such ease it's practically a joke the once incredibly threatening scorpions are now rendered pointless and moot but fixing this scene is actually pretty easy just have it happen at night have Danny swoop in the night before her army attacks using the cover of darkness to hide she could burn some ships slip away into the dark clouds above and then strike again the darkness and the confusion would make it far more believable that Danny could burn all these ships down without her dragon getting skewered you can have a nice scene with all the sailors looking around terrified at the ships ablaze listening for the beating wings to alert them at the next attack I mean this is the show that loves the film stuff in the pitch-black the one time they could have used darkness for a plot reason they decided not to and if they want to get a little bit more maybe a little outlandish they could have had Danny not only attack at night but from underwater everyone's expecting the dragon to attack from air as being able to fly is obviously a huge advantage none of these sailors are going to expect a dragon to swim under them and start burning their ships from the water surface you could have this intense scene where the dragon keeps popping in and out of the water burning ships then disappearing into the darkness below and they could even have it so that physically the scorpions can't even point down why would they they were constructed to attack things from the air so you're on in the rest of the cruise start desperately sawing the base of the scorpions off so they could manually aim the thing down I don't know seems like a pretty exciting sequence to me and it wouldn't just be Danny Birds all the ships doesn't die because block number four aria in the hound as I talked about in the beginning the whole revenge be bad yo message is absolutely absurd for Game of Thrones it's like The Mortal Kombat people trying to act like there's some kind of positive influence on society because they don't have the women wearing sexy outfits anymore yes I'm so glad the girls decided to cover up their lady bits while they brutally and graphically murder each other I think you may have your priorities a little mixed up but more importantly you need Aria there because cleganebowl was last video I said Aria killing the night king was all plot and no character the hounds fight with the mountain was all character and no plot you need both otherwise it's boring and pointless the Hound is engaged in an utterly pointless fight with the mountain as the castle Falls around them we already know they're both gonna die so who cares we need the Hound to actually fight the mountain for some reason instead how about we have a scene where John or Tyrion tells Arya hey how about you go use your super assassin skills to kill Cersei as soon as possible Daenerys is looking kinda crazy and we want this whole war thing to end as quickly as possible before she snaps now we have an actual ticking time element to add tension Arya is trying to kill Cersei before Daenerys does some crazy stuff you could create some kind of scene where the Hound is fighting the mountain not just for his own revenge but to keep him away from Cersei because she needs to be killed ASAP and the mountain can actually care about protecting Cersei so we can have this nice back-and-forth going on between these four characters all trying to kill each other sounds more interesting to me than just having two guys with sticks hitting each other again again for no cept that day med number 5 Daenerys the biggest mistake of them all now when I first wrote the script for this video I went to great detail why it would be completely out of character for Daenerys to commit genocide however it became so long it would require its own video just for that so let me give you the abridged version up until this episode one of the core traits for Daenerys his character was her motivation to help the common people the wise masters of yunkai have sent a gift for the Silver Queen there is far more than this awaiting you on the deck of your ship you should have as many ships as you require and what do you ask in return all we ask is that you make use of these ships sail them back to Westeros where you belong and leave us to conduct our affairs in peace I have a gift for you as well your life my life and the lives of your wise masters but I also want something in return you will release every slave in yunkai every man woman and child should be given as much food clothing and property as they can carry as payment for their years of servitude reject this gift and I shall show you no mercy Lannister Targaryen Baratheon stark Tyrell they're all just spokes on a wheel it's ones on tops and that ones on top and on and on it spins crushing those on the ground I'm not going to stop the wheel I'm going to break the wheel I know what says he has told you that I've come to destroy your cities burn down your homes murder you and orphan your children that's Cersei Lannister not me I'm not here to murder and all I want to destroy is the wheel that has rolled over rich and poor to the benefit of no one but this Cersei Lannister's of the world that's the only reason she didn't come to Westeros in season for food that is could've stand for Westeros long ago but she didn't he said she stayed where she was and saved many people from horrible fates some of whom are on this island with us right she protects people from monsters just as you do that's why she came here so we're supposed to believe she just throws that all the way to psychotically kill all these innocent people because varus has a failed betrayal attempt and Circe spilled her sundae yes she's killed people in the past but it was always for a very specific reason she never just went around killing people randomly I can believe Daenerys becoming more ruthless but I can't believe her becoming the Joker you're mad your plan do I really look like a guy with a plan oh wait no she also cares now that people don't love her enough they said a Dark Lord you would have a queen [Music] okay a character trait that's never been established for Daenerys before this moment sorry D&D I want a refund cuz I'm not buying it and it's not even like killing the people was revenge against Cersei Cersei doesn't care about the people she hates them remember the whole walk of shame experience and Danny knows Cersei doesn't care about the people tyrion straight-up tells Danny several times that Cersei is using the people as meat shields all that's left is just the Mad King nonsense great we've thrown magical prophecy out the window and replaced it with biological determinism fantastic now we can still have Danny go too far and end up in a morally bad area without requiring her to systematically destroy the whole city again this feels like the Star Wars prequels where the second Anakin gets tricked into being evil he immediately goes and murders a bunch of younglings on the horrible massacre scale Danny went from a 2 to a Hitler let's turn that dial down to like Caesar killing some Germanic tribes have Danny be blinded by a blood lust to kill Cersei you could have the bells ring they surrender and then Danny fly straight to the red keep she demands Cersei comes out and faces justice Cersei doesn't go out because either she's a coward or maybe she's too busy trying not to get killed by Aria so Danny starts burning the red keep down all the common people below are screaming maybe if you get hit with collateral damage and all the people in the castle are dying you can even have a nice little symbolic scene where Aria is just about to kill Cersei but Danny's dragon melting the castle accidentally stops Aria and allows Cersei to escape Cersei runs out trying to hide in the crowds of people as cover but Danny Caesar and Cersei panics and runs Danny would no regard for anyone else just starts blasting through everyone to get to Cersei this way you could still have Daenerys killing lots of innocent people have John and Tyrion look on in horror and regret it makes so much more sense for Danny's character rather than destroying the entire city Daenerys his problem is with Cersei not King as landing they never established the city itself having some greater symbolic representation to Danny it's not like she grew up poor and abused there and just wants to see it burn Danny has no strong negative feelings towards the city her anger is directed only at Cersei and we've never seen Danny as the one to just lash out blindly against the world when she's angry the whole burn it all down mentality is for people who've lost all hope and hate the world Daenerys is still a queen with an army that literally worships her even the Mad King didn't try to blow up the city until he knew he had already lost that he and his children would all die anyways then the sequence could end when Daenerys accidentally kills some of her own people maybe she kills her injures grey worm her most loyal of soldiers yeah we've seen stuff like that before but I'm trying to work with the variables D&D gave us which leads us to number six Cersei Circe's death was horribly unsatisfying Joe though I guess we should have expected that considering how the night king went out sirs he's a crazy evil person if she had a dragon you'd actually expect her to burn a whole city down without a care remember when Cersei had an undead zombie do things to a nun remember when Cersei chained a mother and daughter up so that they could watch each other die slowly remember when Cersei blew up the equivalent of the Vatican while sipping wine and twirling her mustache evilly yeah I don't understand why D&D are trying to make her sympathetic it's completely ridiculous so here's what you do after Daenerys accidentally kills her wounds grey worm she has her little shock wake-up moment which allows Cersei to escape seeing that she's unable to leave the city by land Cersei goes back through one of the secret passages that leads under the castle trying to get to where the remnants of the iron fleet is to possibly escape she's tired bleeding stumbling at the point of exhaustion as her castle is falling down around her you could have some nice symbolism as a frightened Cersei stumbles through the empty halls of a crumbling castle Cersei has alienated and killed everyone around her just for the Stonewall and yet when she's at her lowest point these stone walls won't help her the castle much like herself is all alone damaged and empty inside then we can have Cersei limp her way to the basement and they're on the brink of exhaustion and despair she sees a figure in the distance and is suddenly filled with hope he came back for me she thinks Jaime my love my golden Knight came back to save me but then the momentary fantasy fades away and we see it's not Jaime its you're on you're on tells her that the city is lost that she lost Cersei grabs him cries for help but he pushes her away he says something like he wanted a queen not a dead woman Cersei falls to the dust and dirt as her castle crumbles around her watching Euron walk away it's then that she realizes in her thirst for power she gave up the one thing that mattered her children Jaime these people brought her the only joy she ever experienced while the game of Thrones brought her only misery and now she would die helpless and alone and as this horrible realization of her entire life being a mistake crashes down upon her so too does the castle itself now all this isn't perfect but at least it's more coherent than what we got if the writers wanted to have Danny go full genocide it would take a lot more than a single episode it would take a lot more than a single season if this is where they wanted to end up they should have been building to this from the beginning and they had the perfect opportunity to once Daenerys rules the city of murine conflict emerges between the populace the former slaves and the former masters the freed slaves want all the previous masters killed and their wealth redistributed now Danny's seen that very plan in action I don't remember if they talked about it in the show but in the book after Danny gets the unsullied from a stupor freeze all the slaves and kills all the masters the city falls into chaos ruin so she knows that plan doesn't work and instead wants the two sides that put their past behind them and work towards a better future and of course we know that's not gonna happen violence riots civil war spreads throughout the city a mass group of rebels calling themselves the sons of the harpy appear and start killing off the unsullied using guerrilla tactics then even the freed slaves turn on Daenerys for not simply murdering the former masters Daenerys is shocked and betrayed every time she tries to make things better with peace and harmony everything only gets worse now maybe you're thinking huh that all sounds familiar well it should because what I just described is basically what happens in season five that's why I said this setup is all there the problem is in the conclusion if D&D wanted Daenerys to get to the city destroying point arene should have ended completely different it should have ended in utter failure either the city tears itself apart until there's nothing left ordinary up trying to fix it in Lee's and disgust this would leave Daenerys changed her entire worldview shattered no longer does she have the blind faith she once had in the common people now she begins to see the merits of stronger stricter leadership she comes to Westeros as already as somewhat broken and lost person there she starts taking over the place does some questionable things starts falling down a darker path however when she falls in love with John his love rekindles part of her we thought was lost then in the last season have it be betrayal that causes her Dragon and Miss Andi to die not incompetence while Danny kind of forgot about the iron fleet and Euron's forces then when John threatens to leave her it would make sense for Daenerys to fall back once more into darkness she would see John's threat to leave her as the final betrayal as the proof that no one can be trusted she would then choose to rule by but of course we didn't get any of that Daenerys is able to successfully bring a happy ending to marine just by killing all the bad guys this perfectly mirrors Cersei situation in King's Landing at the same time she has her own people's uprising the sparrows and how does she deal with it just kill everyone both Daenerys and Cersei solved their problems easily and simply by murderer all complexity is thrown out the window there's no negative repercussions for any of this that's why I call D Indies war is bad message complete BS when it's convenient for D and D the characters just kill all their enemies murder and war became an easy tool just to move the plot along but now suddenly oh no guys war is bad no screw you your attempt at moralizing this late in the game is cheap and Hollow when the message until now has been the exact opposite if you think dean d planned any of this out you're sorely mistaken they're flying by the seat of their pants here people have been watching this show for years invested in the characters and for many it was all for nothing but it wasn't the fans who were betrayed the most it wasn't george RR martin it was the cast and the crew watching the behind the scenes for this episode is awe-inspiring the amount of work they put into this episode was crazy how many hours did it take for people to build all these houses craft all these details do all the special effects it wasn't just CG they had guys being set on fire and jumping off rooftops working so hard on making this amazing spectacle thinking that they'd proudly be able to tell their friends and family I was a part of this I helped build this but now no one cares or worse they hate it all this amazing work was to create something everyone will hate all because D and D couldn't be bothered to figure out how to make it work I didn't expect to make another Game of Thrones video on a specific episode but here we are doing at least one more on the decline of the show overall possibly tracing the characters arcs from the beginning so make sure to subscribe if you like this video or the last one after that I plan on finishing what I was working on before all the Game of Thrones stuff an unbiased yet funny and easy to understand explanation of the Muller report something which will loom over us all throughout the coming election and possibly even beyond for the future of my channel I plan to bounce back and forth between videos about movies shows and games and videos explaining complicated political or social things in entertaining ways like my Israel video or my Boy Scout video anyways I just want to thank everyone who watched liked and shared my last video and helped it explode in popularity all my subscribers who have stuck with me for so long and of course an extra big thanks to my patrons who help me keep making these until the next one friends [Music]

Channel: PSA Sitch

Views: 611,719

Keywords: Game of thrones, got, a game of thrones, a song of ice and fire, asoiaf theories, game of thrones season 8, got s8, psa sitch, game of thrones season 8 episode 5, got s8 e5 reaction, got s8 e5, dany, daenerys, daenerys destroys king's landing, got season 8 episode 5, dany burns king's landing, daenerys burns king's landing, game of thrones the bells, game of thrones the bells reaction, got season 8 episode 6, d and d game of thrones, Game of Thrones 8x05

Id: wuiNRpeqg3A

Length: 29min 59sec (1799 seconds)

Published: Sat May 18 2019