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Too Cool for Episode Titles
So things are pretty rough and ungood here on a personal level, but for once I have FEELINGS about something, and it's not Endgame.
I first read "A Game of Thrones" in 1997, and I've spent a nontrivial amount of time since then wondering how the story would play out. What were the Others, why were they coming, how could they be stopped? How would all the layers of prophecy in the story play out? Why was the Starks' ability to warg such an important recurring element? Where was Bran's story going, given that he was such a key character on such a mysterious journey?
I've found the show a frustrating adaptation, noticeably weaker after the book material ran out and often infuriating in its choices. I stopped watching live in seasons 4 and 5 but got suckered back in by Hardhome. Because at least the series would give me an ending, right? And maybe sitting through all the rape and torture porn would be sort of worth it to get answers, even if the show abandoned a lot of the layers and themes that made the story meaningful.
And so it's an extra kick in the nads that the answer was pretty much, "lol, you thought any of this mattered?" Bran is utterly pointless and inscrutable. All the prophecy and history gets tossed in the trash. After all the buld-up of eight seasons, the heroes beat the bad guys in their first confrontation. They killed off a few expendable supporting characters and a whole lot of nameless ones, and that was it. The grand apocalypse was just a minor problem, easily resolved in the first half of the season. Ultimately, the HBO version of this story could just not have had any magic or ice zombies in it at all, and Bran could have died in the pilot without affecting much of anything. "Death is the enemy. The first enemy and the last," the show told us, but then death gets dispatched in one episode with a well-placed knife. And not because the characters had brilliant plans: they didn't. Their battle strategy sucked, Bran did absolutely nothing, they seemingly forgot that the Walkers could raise the dead (and that, in earlier episodes, they could put out fires). Most of the cast should really be dead, not because I love character death, but because they were put in situations where their survival was deeply improbable. And I love Arya, and I know that she's sneaky, but having her sneak from the castle to the godswood through an entire zombie army, including the ones standing several feet away, given that they're all out in the open, just feels like a cheat.
To me, the point of A Song of Ice and Fire was always that the various characters' obsession with power and politics and revenge distracted them from this mounting existential threat represented by the Others. War is not noble: it rips apart the country and the people, leaves families starving, lets disease thrive, and warps the children that grow up in its midst. "Who ends up on the throne?" feels like the wrong question to ask when the point should really be what's best for the country and for humanity. But all that's out the window, I guess, and all we're going to get is more stabbing and the showrunners giving their faves some memeable moments. Joke's on me for ever expecting anything more from people who haven't shown they were capable of it in years.
I first read "A Game of Thrones" in 1997, and I've spent a nontrivial amount of time since then wondering how the story would play out. What were the Others, why were they coming, how could they be stopped? How would all the layers of prophecy in the story play out? Why was the Starks' ability to warg such an important recurring element? Where was Bran's story going, given that he was such a key character on such a mysterious journey?
I've found the show a frustrating adaptation, noticeably weaker after the book material ran out and often infuriating in its choices. I stopped watching live in seasons 4 and 5 but got suckered back in by Hardhome. Because at least the series would give me an ending, right? And maybe sitting through all the rape and torture porn would be sort of worth it to get answers, even if the show abandoned a lot of the layers and themes that made the story meaningful.
And so it's an extra kick in the nads that the answer was pretty much, "lol, you thought any of this mattered?" Bran is utterly pointless and inscrutable. All the prophecy and history gets tossed in the trash. After all the buld-up of eight seasons, the heroes beat the bad guys in their first confrontation. They killed off a few expendable supporting characters and a whole lot of nameless ones, and that was it. The grand apocalypse was just a minor problem, easily resolved in the first half of the season. Ultimately, the HBO version of this story could just not have had any magic or ice zombies in it at all, and Bran could have died in the pilot without affecting much of anything. "Death is the enemy. The first enemy and the last," the show told us, but then death gets dispatched in one episode with a well-placed knife. And not because the characters had brilliant plans: they didn't. Their battle strategy sucked, Bran did absolutely nothing, they seemingly forgot that the Walkers could raise the dead (and that, in earlier episodes, they could put out fires). Most of the cast should really be dead, not because I love character death, but because they were put in situations where their survival was deeply improbable. And I love Arya, and I know that she's sneaky, but having her sneak from the castle to the godswood through an entire zombie army, including the ones standing several feet away, given that they're all out in the open, just feels like a cheat.
To me, the point of A Song of Ice and Fire was always that the various characters' obsession with power and politics and revenge distracted them from this mounting existential threat represented by the Others. War is not noble: it rips apart the country and the people, leaves families starving, lets disease thrive, and warps the children that grow up in its midst. "Who ends up on the throne?" feels like the wrong question to ask when the point should really be what's best for the country and for humanity. But all that's out the window, I guess, and all we're going to get is more stabbing and the showrunners giving their faves some memeable moments. Joke's on me for ever expecting anything more from people who haven't shown they were capable of it in years.