• A Song of Ice and Fire /Game of Thrones Discussion V2: Winter Is Here
    999 replies, posted
the amount of arm chair generals coming out to critique this episode is funny.
It doesn't take a tactical genius to realize that lining your infantry up outside your walls, behind your siege engines, and in front of your barricade is a dumb idea. The blind charge is just icing, it turned out the only way you could expect it to. They didn't even put archers on the wall until the dead started breaking through the trench.
This show really loves the image of a pike & shield wall, but for all their appearances they never* actually function like one. Every time the Unsullied fight, they make nice and neat rectangles on the field and trot in place so perfectly, and then stand several feet apart so that the frontline immediately dissolves into an omni-directional close-quarters fracas where (who knew!) spears become nigh useless. *Except when Ramsay's soldiers surround Jon's at the end of the BotB, because apparently Ramsay is the only commander that ever read past the first page of a tactics textbook.
If I'm correct the composer for the show also does music for Westworld. Explains why some beats in this episode gave me Westworld vibes.
As far as I know, in the books the Night King is one of the many legendary figures from The Age of Heroes and he's first mentioned as one of the many subjects of Old Nan's tales to Bran Stark. Later still, it's mentioned in a passing by Samwell to Jon as an example of a being whose existence is questioned by the archmeisters of the Citadel. The Night King didn't have a backstory to speak of until the release of the official Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire roleplaying game or something, where he was described as a former commander of the Night's Watch who found a female Other of exceptional beauty beyond the Wall, joined with her (in every way you may think of at this moment) and he became an Other of exceptional power himself, a Night King alongside a Night Queen. If a lore featurette for the show is anything to go by, the showrunners originally planned the show's Night King to have the same backstory as the one from the roleplaying game. However, in season seven is revealed that lore featurette was completely discarded in favor of making the Night King the very first White Walker the Children of the Forest made in order to defend themselves from the humans, and, at some point, he managed to surpass their control and lead his breathen towards the goal of annhilating every form of life in Westeros. Let's just say that the way the showrunners adapted the Others as a whole doesn't exactly strike my fancy, but, until (if) the final books are (will be) published, we can't say for certain if all of this is Martin's own vision as well or not
He's done a consistently fantastic job too. The soundtrack for the last 5-10 minutes of this episode was amazing.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/110547/53b35f50-c52d-45bf-9d5a-982d4263afe5/1556567139123.jpg
I believe the Night's King in the book was killed by an alliance between the Starks and some Wildlings after declaring himself king of the Night's Watch, but it's been a while so don't quote me on that.
Change your TV settings.
The HBO Go/Now version was also fucked from what I've read on reddit, people sharing screens and it was like an entirely different show.
I was watching it on cable television and it was also really dark. Other TV shows seem fine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1frgt0D_f4 regardless of how i feel about the arch wrap-up, this fucking music is so god damn great.
imho Miguel Sapochnik did a fantastic job with that whole ending sequence given the dumb stipulation that the NK be defeated this episode. you don't get a big "hoorah we did it!" or even any dialogue, just all the heroes slowly dying of their wounds in almost complete silence. it seems to me he was probably trying to keep it as bleak and raw as he could while still meeting the criteria of "the good guys have to win at the end," "you can only kill X amount of characters," etc.
Yea the show-runners are beyond lucky to have gotten Miguel Sapochnik on board. That guy's single-handedly elevated this show so fuckin much by making some of the most phenomenal episodes of the entire series. God tier director.
The music in this show is top notch. That song gives me similar feels to the Light of the Seven. https://youtu.be/pS-gbqbVd8c
I'm beyond disappointed at how they ended a threat that was coming for hundreds (thousands?) of years in-universe and has been hyped up by the show for 7 seasons. I expected something like Infinity War's ending. That's how you don't let down your viewers after hyping up a threat for 10 years. Wasn't the whole point of the show (and books) that the nobles of the seven kingdoms squabbling between each other was just a distraction and the real threat was the Long Night, death, the threat beyond the wall, an ancient evil that has been building up their forces for eons. Now it looks like the threat was on par with the Boltons and didn't deserve a 1000 year, 7 season arc. More like a 1 year, 2 season arc.
I have a feeling someone at Ubisoft is going to watch this episode and fucking beg for them to get in touch with Maisie in order to get her at the protag of the next AC game
Still got one left in him too
Goddamn I loved every moment of this soundtrack. Never though he could top light of the Seven. Damn.
Holy fucking shit this forum needs a new spoiler policy. Can't follow the conversation without scrolling up and down a billion times. What kind of idiots who would click this thread before watching are we protecting? Fuck 'em in my opinion. This thread is unreadable.
This guy is immortal and so is his army. He can literally surround Winterfell and wait because there's no urgency. Thousands of years of planning and biding his time is out the window because he didn't take the time to surround Winterfell and just chill. To be fair, he waited until he had basically won to show up, and brought his entire gang with him. How could he predict Arya somehow teleporting into the air behind him?
After some thinking, if the episode played out the exact same way, but the dagger only severed the connection between NK and the Wights/Risen but otherwise stayed alive and was forced to retreat, that would have been much better. A threat stopped for now, but still a threat.
Gotta say, I really enjoyed the character arcs for Theon and Melisandre. Obviously Theon's was in a league of its own, but Mel's still was entertaining as well IMO. Great characters. https://imgur.com/qCMljXL A++
Still no packs of pale spiders big as hounds, 5/10
I feel that GoT has lost a lot of charcter during last few years, now being littered with clichés and tropes, and worst of all it has became predictable. And by predictable i mean that we're not getting suprised out of blue with major events like the Red Wedding, and the assasination of Joffrey. Instead we now got some 'epic battles against unbeatable force with miracle happening at the elevent minute during final stand off between two characters... Instead of the Long Winter being only one big army slowly approaching Winterfell and having final standoff there, i would have written that, after the Wall was breached wights and whitewalkers have started to spread in the north, rendering countryside dangerous and almost impossible to travel, isolating communities. And during timeline of months or even years communities start dropping out/felling into complete silence, until only few strongholds are left, while whitewalkers and their followers slowly keep moving towards more densely populated south, triggering panic and refugee crisis, which in turn winds up into full scale war.
For me, Jon's fight was getting everybody together. Having everyone actually rally against the dead was his war, not some 1v1 combat with the ice-king.
I watched the ep again and Mel's ending was great, I think her casting off the necklace and walking out into the cold was symbolic of her rejection of being the LoL's pawn, acknowledging what Davos said, that her god is evil.
My episode didn't look like this either. But then again I have an extremely bright light-cannon of a TV. I think this episode is gonna look great in 4K UHD.
It helps that Alfie Allen is legit one of the best actors on the show.
personally fine with the ending but i'm kinda biased because i just love these three https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/57956/392bca26-fc67-4078-8d87-d0e2121eb7c4/gn-gift_guide_variable_c.jpg what a delightful trio of awful people
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