Did Bruce Willis try to sabotage Game Of Thrones? plus other untold stories from a new oral history
Aux Features For Our Consideration
Game Of Thrones’ fifth season was one of molting. Throughout those 10 episodes, HBO’s fantasy epic shed itself of the last layers of George R.R. Martin’s existing narrative, emerging as a new creature independent of the story the author was struggling to finish. Nobody stared down the thousands of pages that showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss planned to adapt into a television series and thought they’d outpace the author, but that’s exactly what happened. They finished Martin’s story before he could, and, for now, the ending they created is the ending we have. For some, that’s fine; for others, it’s torture.
One might expect James Hibberd’s Fire Cannot Kill A Dragon, a comprehensive oral history of HBO’s Game Of Thrones, to devote a gallon of ink to the show’s controversial ending, heavy as it hangs above the show’s legacy. But this isn’t that kind of book. It’s a great read, informative and insightful, but no one’s all that interested in unpacking the show’s controversies in any meaningful way. The creators cite “reactive” critics when discussing the furor surrounding the handling of Sansa’s rape by Ramsey, and there’s no mention at all of Jaime’s rape of Cersei in season four, another scene that many—including us—felt was indicative of a larger issue with the show’s repeated use of sexual assault as a plot device (with one exception, discussed in more detail below).
Fire Cannot Kill A Dragon is best in its early pages, when Martin, Benioff, Weiss, and the crew discuss the show’s creation and early seasons with the kind of reflection that can only arise after a decade. Hibberd’s impressive reach also helps; he speaks to just about every major player in the show’s orbit, from actors like Peter Dinklage, Emilia Clarke, and Kit Harington to directors like Neil Marshall and Miguel Sapochnik, the people responsible for some of the show’s most ambitious episodes. All that’s missing is original pilot director Tom McCarthy, the late Diana Rigg, and Stannis himself, Stephen Dillane, who doesn’t have the rosiest view of his time on set.
A number of the book’s big takeaways—Martin’s least-favorite scene, the failed original pilot, Clarke’s on-set struggles post-brain surgery—have already been teased ahead of the book’s release. But we culled a few other tidbits from the over 400-page oral history that we thought worthy of knighthood.
1. Dame Diana Rigg was a force of nature
As befitting someone of her noble stature, Dame Diana Rigg, a series standout as ornery Lady Olenna Tyrell, was not to be coddled and/or fucked with. Producer and writer Dave Hill, for example, has a hilarious story about Olenna’s first visit to the brothel owned by Aiden Gillen’s Littlefinger. “We were preparing for a scene where Olenna meets Littlefinger at the brothel,” Hill says. “And Dame Diana Rigg looked around and went, ‘Shouldn’t there be more sex toys? Shouldn’t there be sheepskin condoms scattered about?’ I’m all, ‘You’re absolutely correct, Dame Diana!’ We appreciated her knowledge of ancient sexual devices.”
Director Mark Mylod, meanwhile, says he was “terrified” of Rigg, who he says dismissed him with a curt, “Thank you! Go away!” after rejecting his direction. “I became a 5-year-old boy,” he continues. “I could feel myself blushing and creeping back to my monitor, stripped of any kind of dignity or authority. So I enjoyed killing her later on.”
Jessica Henwick, the actor behind Sand Snake Nymeria, has another story of Rigg “storming” off set after doing two takes she found sufficient. “Now, she can’t walk fast. She has to be helped,” says Henwick. “So basically we just sat there and watched as Diana Rigg effectively did her own version of storming off the set, but it was at 0.1 miles per hour. She cracked me up. I loved her.”
If this makes her sound like a monster, rest assured that she was, in the words of actor Natalie Dormer, “aware of the parody of herself… Sometimes I think she was mischievous to see what she could get away with.” After all, she sounds like a joy compared to Ian McShane, who apparently made such a ruckus about a burger he didn’t like that HBO hired new caterers. We love the guy, but what an asshole.
2. Benioff and Weiss played some dickish pranks
Every production’s got prank stories, but few are as cruel as the ones Benioff and Weiss played on the cast. In what Benioff calls a “minor prank,” he and Weiss told Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner (Arya and Sansa, respectively) that they weren’t allowed to come to the pilot episode’s wrap party but that there was a “special underage wrap party at McDonald’s” they could attend instead. Yes, that is objectively very funny, but it still made them cry.
Another prank involves It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia creator Rob McElhenney, a friend of Benioff’s (who had a cameo in the final season). After hiring Matt Shakman, a director McElhenney had recommended, they “thought it would be funny if we told Rob that it was not working out with Matt and that he was a total disaster.” This apparently stretched over several emails, concluding with the creators saying they were going to have to “step in and take over the episode because it’s turned into such a mess.”
“I forgot about that!” Shakman says. “That was the darkest practical joke. Rob was legitimately tortured about it. He was so concerned for me and was like, ‘What can I do? Who can I talk to?’ It went on for way too long.” Again, very funny. And very mean.
3. George R.R. Martin still sounds pissed about Daenerys and Drogo’s wedding night
As many people know, Game Of Thrones’ original, unaired pilot was something of a mess. When HBO gave Benioff and Weiss another crack at it, they ended up recasting their original Daenerys, Tamzin Merchant, with Emilia Clarke. That, however, wasn’t the only major change to Daenerys’ story in the new version of the pilot.
In Martin’s telling, Daenerys and Khal Drogo, the Dothraki warrior she’s forced to marry, have consensual sex on their wedding night. And that’s also how the original pilot with Merchant was shot. In the reshot pilot, the scene is changed significantly, with Jason Momoa’s Drogo raping Clarke’s Daenerys. Martin, who mostly has praise for Benioff and Weiss throughout Fire Cannot Kill A Dragon, still sounds pissed about this.
“Why did the wedding scene change from the consensual seduction scene that excited even a horse to the brutal rape of Emilia Clarke?” he asks. “We never discussed it. It made it worse, not better.”
Benioff and Weiss acknowledge that the scene works in the books, but that it wasn’t “gelling” for them or the actors. “[W]e just didn’t have that amount of time and access to the character’s mind,” says Weiss. “It turns too quickly. It was something the actors themselves felt wasn’t gelling. They weren’t able to find an emotional handhold.” To this day, it remains one of the show’s most controversial scenes.
4. Hodor shared his favorite times he said “Hodor”
This is cute. As Hodor, Kristian Nairn only spoke a single word throughout the entirety of his arc: “Hodor.” The fun of a role like that, of course, is in infusing each and every “Hodor” with some kind of identifiable emotion or meaning, and Nairn took this so much to heart that he can pick out two specific utterances of “Hodor” that are his favorites.
“There was a ‘Hodor’ I really like where Meera [Reed] and I are talking about sausages. This guy loves his sausages, clearly, and bacon. His face lit up, and he started talking about food,” he says. “I also enjoyed the ‘Hodor’ in season three with Osha. She’s complaining about having to build the camp, and he did this ‘Why are you telling me?’-type ‘Hodor.’ That was a fun one.”
5. Wait, Bruce Willis tried to sabotage Game Of Thrones?
Maybe.
According to Hibberd, the fourth season battle between Pedro Pascal’s Oberyn Martell and Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson’s The Mountain was shot in a Croatian amphitheater that overlooked a stable of yachts. A deal was made that each of the yachts would back off a quarter mile so they wouldn’t be in the shoot during filming. “Everybody agreed to do it—except one person,” says director Alex Graves. That person, according to “multiple people working on Thrones,” was Bruce Willis.
“[The yacht] circled trying to say, ‘Fuck you, I’m in your shot,’ a couple times and we were all laughing because we were aimed away from the water at that time anyway.” Crew members called the attempted sabotage an act of “yacht rage.”
Executive producer Bernadette Caulfield downplays the incident, saying they “never actually saw Bruce.” Harington, however, made a comment in a 2019 interview with Variety that could point to some lingering animosity for the actor. Speaking of the career he hopes to build for himself, he praised actors like Ben Whishaw and Benedict Cumberbatch for mixing personal work in with franchise fare. He then added, “I don’t want to be Bruce Willis and be an action hero.”
Revisit the A.V. Club’s Month Of Thrones, wherein we distilled the fantasy epic to 30 essential moments.
238 Comments
Ya know, I’d be curious to know the people that have rewatched the last season of Game of Thrones. It’s interesting. It’s like you wanna put a hand on their shoulder, just kinda tell em, “Dude, you have the Frisky Dingo box set. What’s, uh, happening here?”Like, imagine tv now. Just everything, right now. Arrested Development, season 1 and 2 .Firefly, season 2 thru 6. The Simpsons, season everything. Just imagine choosing to watch game of thrones over this:It’s a wild choice. A choice nonetheless, but a wrong one. Like, dude, it’s your opinion, but it’s wrong. So very wrong.
There is no season 2 of Firefly. Which is fine by me.
Season 2 thru 6 of Firefly, it happened. We all agreed it happened and it was glorious.
psst people only think Firefly is good because cancellation made the one, just-fine season seem rife with potential, even though with a second season it’d probably still continue to be just-fine.
I still contend that if Firefly has been a success, we would have all started hating it by season 3
Depends. Are Tudyk and Torres still on the show by S3? Because I’d watch those two read a shopping list.
Nah, Whedon killed them off in Season 2
Frisky Dingo reference, +1 BOOSH!
Frisky Dingo, super boosh. I want any and everyone to watch this show.
This is gonna sound like sacrilege (especially as a huge Sealab and Archer fan), but Frisky Dingo never did much for me. A few first season episodes, a couple second season eps, and that’s it. It seems like Reed & Co. just didn’t have a plan at all and made it all up as they went along.
It’s not for everyone.
I don’t think they did have a real plan but I don’t really care, it was goddamn hilarious.
It’s cool, man. People like what they like. There’s people that do not like Arrested Development. They’re considered monsters and hardly qualify as human-beings, but they do exist.I figure only people named Cody hate Frisky Dingo.
The Codys have no right to complain. They could do a lot worse than the Aryan Brotherhood.
Yeah, rewatching GOT seems pretty pointless now, knowing how it ends. I mean, there are tons of subplots, both those that span multiple seasons and those that end within few episodes, that lead nowhere and are ultimately pointless. Characters are introduced, characters die, and almost none of it has any effect on the general plot. All the shocking moments, even Red Wedding, are there mostly for shock value. This is why no one should ever try to adapt an unfinished book series like ASOIAF. What Benioff and Weiss should’ve done is to decide what kind of series they wanted to make – fantasy about the threat of ice zombies on medievalish kingdom where political squabbles only add to the trouble, or a kind of Tudors in fantasy kingdom, with some vague supernatural threat that never takes the front stage. They tried to do both and failed miserably. Another mistake was not throwing out even more book material, because as of now, the books are a mess of plots that will probably never be resolved.
While I mostly agree with you, ‘What kind of beer’ is a legit question.
and Stannis himself, Stephen Dillane, who doesn’t have the rosiest view of his time on set.Well you would too if you played a character who remained steadfast for a year during The Siege of Storm’s End to the point where they nearly ate the dead yet somehow was perfectly willing to burn his own daughter alive because it was cold for a few days…Benioff and Weiss acknowledge that the scene works in the books, but that it wasn’t “gelling” for them or the actors. “[W]e just didn’t have that amount of time and access to the character’s mind,” says Weiss. “It turns too quickly. It was something the actors themselves felt wasn’t gelling. They weren’t able to find an emotional handhold.”Keep in mind, these are the same assholes who think themes are for eighth grade book reports...
Eh, Daenerys doesn’t really have much of an option to consent to her wedding or not, and their early relationship does involve a significant amount of rape.
Fuck you SJWs! Clutching your pearls at sexual assault while eating up genital mutilation, torture, gore and infanticide. You ruined this show and got the ending you deserved for it. LOL!
As an aside, you got the fake Emilio Lizardo replying to you. Might want to hit the dismiss button on his comment before he gets ungreyed.
Done.
Keep in mind, these are the same assholes who think themes are for eighth grade book reports...Holy shit. It’s *checks calendar* October of 2020… are you people ever going to get over this?
It’s symptomatic of how they’d handle the later series. With B&W already having a set endpoint in mind for the show and to barrel full steam ahead towards it regardless of whether or not it made sense for the characters.
This may shock you, but I do not care.
Your continued presence in this thread suggests otherwise.
What I care about: People waxing vitriolic about B&W’s work on GoT over a year and a half after it ended.What I don’t care about: The substance of their criticism.Hope that clears things up.
Given how art works…no. The Three-Body Problem will totally work without themes too.
I’m surprised anyone is still talking about this show at all in 2020.
The worst part is, that quote is literally after critics complained that about Season 2. About how there were too many scenes in episodes that were just there to check in on characters and that the episode didn’t have a theme. The quote is specifically that they felt that each storyline in an episode didn’t need to be based around a theme.But here we are.
Also, it is kind of not wrong. One of the things that really turned me off English classes in middle/high school was the teachers’ insistence that everything in every book had a “meaning” despite many authors themselves trying to disabuse readers of this misconception.
Pssst… George has that planned for Stannis too. Or he did, before he saw the reaction. But that was said at the time, that the showrunners were like, “Wut? OK”
Shireen is at Castle Black with her mother and Stannis is besieging Winterfell in the books. Now, I don’t doubt Shireen will be sacrificed, it just won’t be Stannis who does it. After all, he refused to sacrifice Asha Greyjoy (You’d know her as Yara in the show since they already had a character called Asha and they probably didn’t want to confuse people.) at the behest of his men for similar reasons. In all likelihood, it’ll be Shireen’s mother who does it since she’s a devout follower of Mellisandre.
As it’s depicted in the show, Shireen’s burning lines up almost exactly with a Greek tragedy, Iphigenia at Aulis. I have a hard time seeing Benioff and Weiss taking inspiration from that kind of source, so I’m inclined to think it’s Martin’s idea. And for what it’s worth, it is the father/general who kills the daughter in the play. Of course, Martin might have referenced it as an inspiration and then Benioff and Weiss adapted it more literally.
Except in the books, Stannis is a solid 600 miles away from Shireen, so not sure how’s he’s going to manage winning a battle at Winterfell in the dead of a rough winter, and then returning to the wall to set his daughter on fire. And at that point, why would he set Shireen on fire. If the battle is won, what’s the point?I’m willing to bet the burning comes from Selyse, who has been gradually losing it, and uses her daughter’s sacrifice as a way to help Stannis
You’re assuming Stannis wins. Now, he could win and come back to Castle Black and Selyse be like, “That victory? That was the Red God. We burned Shireen” and Stannis goes batshit.OR…. Stannis loses and staggers back and gets talked into it.
Possible, but I’m a full-on believer of the Night Lamp theory. And ADWD already established that the, normally, 21-day journey from the Wall to Winterfell took at least double the time with the snow. So limping back to the Wall for another 40+ days. Personally, I feel it just lets the wind out of the sails by that point. And for me, it just feels to fit far more into Selyse’s character arc. But hey, we’ll find out sometime in 2026, right?
“But hey, we’ll find out sometime in 2026, right?”Look at Mr. Optimistic over here!
Erik, my brother, you and I just did the most work on Book 7 that has ever been done.
Stannis finding out about Shireen from Selyse would be a hell of a character moment and I’m sad that’s not what we got. It would be a failure of leadership, which given how much he believes he ought to be king, that it’s his right, would force him to face what has been done in his (and the Red God’s) name. If he makes the decision himself, it doesn’t have as much impact because he had direct agency. It’s easier to see that Stannis surrendering to Brienne’s justice, although I do wonder if they’ll cross paths again in the books as I felt this was their way of giving Brienne a dilemma about keeping one’s oaths sans Lady Stoneheart.
I get what you two are saying, but I also think there will be something tragic about Stannis being an unbeliever until he gets so desperate that he will try anything.
There was also something horrid about Selyse becoming a mother to Shireen too late. I admit, it may be different in the books, but I remain impressed at Dillane somehow managing to age 20 years in two minutes.
I get the whole “he gave me a peach” scene in the book, but I always figured the Stannis/Brienne thing was Stannis submitting to punishment for Shireen, even though Brienne was there for Renly. I wish they would have left the cut scene in, where they talk about the afterlife for a couple of minutes before she executes him.
Oh, and by the way… FUCK LADY STONEHEART! That is one change the showrunners should get a medal for making.
And as awful as Shireen’s death at her mother’s hands would be, it would also be so much more believable. For all of Martin’s faults as a writer, he creates very interesting characters and I guess that’s my biggest beef with D&D at the end of the day: they did not understand nor care to be faithful to the characters, and that’s a big part of why the final seasons—particularly the last—fall flat.
Stephen Dillane seems like part of the proud tradition of British actors to not give too many fucks about what he does to pay his mortgage
We should not be surprised that either the producers and/or the book author don’t seem to know that it’s “jell”, not “gell”, unless you’re putting it on your hair, in which case it’s “gel”.
100% correct. And while we’re at it, a gif is not pronounced “jif”.
This reads like they were being interviewed when they said this? How do you manage to draw the conclusion that Benioff Weiss and George RR Martin all misspell it as gell??
They really undermined Stannis’ character. He went to the wall because he was starting to realize the difference between what he thought he was owed in terms of the crown, and what it actually meant to have a duty to the people. It’s one of the reason Jon helps him with advice on how to recruit the hill clans to his cause. Which is not to say Stannis wasn’t still very complicated and kind of a dick, but he was changing, but he has moved away from “the throne at all costs way of thinking.”
I loved that series.I would watch all of the existing episodes again before the next season arrived. Engaged.Then it had such a wet-fart-in-the-elevator ending that I almost never think about it.
So they added a rape where there was not one because they thought it was exciting, had a rape between Jaime and Cersei that “became consensual”–and then tried to write a series where the south won…why on earth could anybody find these showrunners problematic?
Oh please, the South (or the Nazis, for that matter) winning has long been a staple of alternate history. Harry Turtledove has like 3,108 badly-written books about it.And right around the same time these guys were taking it in the pants for Confederate, Amazon was running out Man in the High Castle, which had a casual throwaway line with two Nazis having a glass of wine and celebrating how “they enslaved the African continent.”Crickets.Just admit that if these guys had come anywhere close to sticking the landing, all the wokeness about Confederate would have vanished.
They think making teenage girls cry is funny.They’re real dickheads, apparently.
almost as bad as when the creepy Duffer Brothers made so much out of that girl’s first kiss on Stranger Things…for some reason having two rich white bros as your all-powerful showrunners is uncomfortable for teenage girls, imagine that!
I think part of it is when there’s 2 guys in charge, they can play off each other, and feed into each others’ bad impulses. I have a pair of cousins who I got along with fine individually, but who were just impossible together, because then they were really just being each others’ audiences, and not caring at all about the “extras” in the room.
I went to an all-boys school, imagine that times 1000, or just drink septic runoff, equally toxic
That’s why all of the Dems act like teenage girls.
I like how the writer of the article makes it clear that both pranks are funny.
Huh. Guess I disagree.
Yeah that’s a wildly different definition of ‘funny’ than the one I go by.
LAUGH!IT’S FUNNY!
OKAY!
Ha. Hahaha. HA! HAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!Please let me go, sir/madam.
You’ll laugh if ya know what’s good for ya, Sunny Jim…. ::limps off, muttering::
There was a MST3K bit I can’t find saved anywhere where Joel kept showing off some of his gadgets, and would periodically interrupt by yelling, a la Rip Taylor, “LAUGH! It’s Funny!” Of course, the funniest thing about the whole deal was Joel (and eventually Tom & Crow) yelling, “LAUGH! It’s Funny!” at the camera….
Oh, MST3K, you national treasure.
Yeah, I kind of figured that out watching the show (and their plans for the thankfully-cancelled CONFEDERACY, which just gave me the crawls), so it’s no surprise to read that they were dickheads in normal life, too.
That mcdonald jokes wants me to punch them. To think they did that and they were adults. Real dickheads.
“So they added a rape where there was not one because they thought it was exciting, had a rape between Jaime and Cersei that “became consensual””
They also removed the rape of a 13-year old, but please, keep on sucking on that GRRM cock.
Fuck you SJWs! Clutching your pearls at sexual assault while eating up genital mutilation, torture, gore and infanticide. You ruined this show and got the ending you deserved for it. LOL!
I had some vague issues with them before, but after reading this I think they’re both complete assholes. Each of those stories about “pranks” they pulled ended with someone uncomfortably reassuring their interviewer that “it was funny” so that they wouldn’t come off as too critical of someone who holds more power in the industry than them, but none of those stories sound funny to me. No “joke” that causes genuine distress or upset to the person it’s targeted at is remotely funny. They made teenage girls cry, and caused a guy to think his friend’s job was in danger. That’s not funny, that’s abuse of power.
it just sounds like a lesser degree of 4chan’s “I’m using the swastika ironically and it’s hilarious”-basically in line with what I think about these two.
I’ve come to the conclusion over the year that people who really enjoy pranking people are at least asshole and at most probably have some mental issues. Wanting to cause mental distress to people for your joy is a pretty sick mindset
I remember the first time I saw pushback against “practical jokes” was on THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW — Rob hated pranks (which Buddy loved to do), so the pranks usually came back around and bit Buddy on the ass.Given Carl Reiner originally wrote Rob as to be himself, and Buddy as a clear analogue to Mel Brooks (who also really enjoys pulling practical jokes!), it makes me wonder if they didn’t have to come to some sort of accommodation early on to stay friends for as long as they have….
Mel Brooks may be the exception for my theory. The man is a treasure. Plus I have a feeling his jokes were more the foolish variety and not the “make teenage girls cry” variety
I really hope so, too — but I’m remembering Brooks used to “mug” another writer friend of theirs and take his wallet on a regular basis, including when they were in a rowboat in the middle of the Central Park Reservoir. Maybe the guy liked it, in the same way so many folk ended up seeing Groucho Marx insulting them as a badge of honor…?
If your vague issues were confirmed by this article you’re a dim bulb
To be fair, “pranks” & “practical jokes” are NEVER funny for the victims. I don’t think I’ve ever seen or even heard of one that didn’t, at minimum, create a mess, a hassle, stress, or some kind of pain to the recipient. At best, there *might* be the relief of finding out it was “only” a prank, but even then, I’d be pissed off it I were on the receiving end.
Even to an outside observer, I’m not sure “funny” is the right word. Mostly we’re cringing or pitying, or maybe laughing only because whatever awful thing is happening isn’t happening to US. With all the options for actual humor we humans have, I don’t get why anybody thinks torturing somebody else is a good way to go about it.
Which rape scene did they add “because they thought it was exciting”? They’re pretty clear that they framed the first Drogo/Dany encounter as nonconsensual because neither they nor the actors could believably get the characters there, which seems like the opposite of being cavalier about consent issues.It’s actually something I find interesting, because as badly as I think Benioff and Weiss fucked up the series, it doesn’t seem like they were the primary drivers behind the show’s exploitative sexuality. I say that because the show actually got less exploitative as it got more popular, the source material ran out, and the showrunners were left more and more to their own devices.
Part of that, I’m guessing, was because Emilia Clarke got famous enough that she was probably able to renegotiate her nudity clause. But I think another part was that Benioff and Weiss started to deemphasize the scandal-and-intrigue storylines that were the show’s original hook in favor of what I’ve always called character porn: “We know you love these characters, so here’s more of them doing the stuff you’ve loved watching them do in the past!” It didn’t make for great drama, but on the positive side, it meant the sexual scenes got less sadistic.
I have not read the books, so I don’t know if there were times in the books where Drogo raped Dani, but it goes: changed from consensual sex to rape and then falls in love with rapist; brother rapes sister and it “turns into” consensual sex; the Ramsay Bolton-Sansa rape which would have shut down a less-popular show. The last of these is apparently in the books, so the showrunners just friggin’ went to town on it.
Here’s what’s in the books:
The Mountain almost literally splits a 13-year-old girl in half by raping her.Drogo never rapes Dany, at least according to consent laws in the GOT universe. However, as has been discussed, Dany is 13. The Jaime-Cersei scene is not rape in the books. It is arguably coercion — basically, he begs her until she consents, but she does consent. (The ickyness is the fact that Jaime had just gotten back and hadn’t even washed up and that, you know, Joffrey’s corpse was right there) In the show, this is where the showrunners really fucked up, because I think the actors thought they were filming that and the editing was NOT that. Ramsay-Sansa was not in the books. Ramsay doesn’t marry Sansa in the books. But he does FAR worse to another character. And the showrunners toned it down. Martin is a sick fuck.
thank you for the icky summary!the showrunners SAID in the show between Jaime and Cersei it was rape that becomes consensual
Maybe that’s what they were trying for, but it didn’t come across. In the book, she literally helps him undo his clothes.Maybe it was just the weird thrusting NCW had going on, but it didn’t come across as consensual in any way
I understand that it was different from the book. I think for the show HBO was just trying to get a bingo on the things it needs at least one character to do in every show. Actually, these days more and more in order to make a big splash a show will have a main character do something they can’t possibly come back from (often in the pilot) and then just ignore it (a good example of this is something Atticus’ father does in Lovecraft Country that the show does not show any signs of reckoning with (successfully, at least).
I had to walk away from Dance for a little while after that Ramsay sequence. The sexual violence in the books makes the show look like a kids cartoon.
I’m not sure Ramsey and Sansa ever meet in the book. It’s been a long time since I read the books.
The Ramsay-Sansa scene isn’t precisely in the books; Sansa never meets him (and is never raped), while a minor character is the woman in that scene. Which definitely changed how the scene played, though whether it’s more or less problematic is debatable. The writing is fairly restrained, though, if I recall.
well these bros wanted some x-treme rape
No idea, because I understand that you are talking about a piece of art, and not reality, and the things creators do to their artwork does not translate to what they do in reality.
So you think I’m arguing that they go around raping people? Oh man, you’re brilliant.
Do you have any idea what you’re arguing?
oh stupid person, just looking upthread. Sad.
Let’s not forget the “rape as background color” scene at Craster’s Keep!
Regardless of what you think about Benioff and Weiss, I do not understand all the consternation of a series where the south won. It is not even an original story concept. “A world where the guys who lost actually won” is a very old story trope. It depends on what you do with the material. If this is so horrible, where is all the screaming about The Man in High Castle, which was generally loved on this site, and is the Axis powers winning WWII?
I think a very decent amount of the response was because they aren’t to be trusted with that material, as two rich white guys who can’t fucking write and have already shown how extremely insensitive they are to women onscreen, and how they barely can even whisper about race in GoT and leave their strongest minority characters to betray everyone and then meet humiliating meaningless deaths, a lot of it was about them. Given the current climate, and the direction HBO went in with Lovecraft Country (giving a book about the Green Book by a white author to a black showrunner and improving it immensely) how can you be surprised? Also there WERE concerns that Man in the High Castle was too nice to John Smith and could be watched by Nazis without much consternation, but the show was good and there is a wrinkle to the source material I won’t give away.
I think Lovecraft Country is a notable step down from the book (a book that I wasn’t even a huge fan of).
there’s nothing wrong with being incorrect sometimes, it can be freeing
Considering the book version of events is a 13 girl who has just been sold into a marriage “consenting” to have sex with a 30 year old man who doesn’t speak her language, not sure if I trust Martin’s call on this one.
Again, he’s a pervert old fuck who has gotten a pass because the showrunners took all the heat.
Yeah, GRRM’s ideas of where exactly the line is when it comes to rape is not the best.
and orphansthat entire World should have sunk into the ocean and drowned them all absolutely no redeeming morality in any of those characters
Fuck you SJWs! Clutching your pearls at sexual assault while eating up genital mutilation, torture, gore and infanticide. You ruined this show and got the ending you deserved for it. LOL!
I don’t trust Martin’s sensibility about sexual violence at all (and yet the show managed to not improve on it!), but there’s a nuance here that gets lost because we don’t have a great vocabulary for it. Daenerys suffers rape because she’s been put in a situation where she’s not in control of her sexual consent unless Drogo chooses to allow it; she’s also a child and we take it as axiomatic that children are not able to consent to sex with adults. Both of those things are true and the reader should be disturbed by the situation Dany is in.But the first aspect (Dany is in an arranged marriage and doesn’t have the right to refuse sex with her husband) is broadly true among the elite class in ASOIAF (they’re almost all arranged marriages) and probably generally true of marriage in ASOIAF; it was certainly generally true of marriage, in many places for a long time in the real world (including the USA until the 1970s, I think). Dany is in a worse situation than, say, Catelyn was on her marriage with Ned, but fundamentally, Catelyn had as little say in whether she had sex with Ned as Dany does with Drogo. This is bad! It’s a bad society! But we can look at the history of our own society and deduce that for the people living in it not every such situation is experienced as a trauma; that you don’t have the legal right to choose doesn’t mean that you don’t experience your own choice.Dany is also a child, and Martin (rather typically) has taken real instances of child marriage (and more to the point, consummation of the child marriage) from European history and turned it into a norm, which is both misrepresentative of history and deeply creepy. But I knew girls in high school who were sleeping with adult boyfriends. I’m sure they have a different perspective on those relationships now. But at the time they didn’t think “well, I’m 15, I can’t realistically consent to sex with a 23-year old because of the difference in power and maturity, so he’s raping me,” even though legally (and morally) that’s the right way to look at it.
But we can look at the history of our own society and deduce that for
the people living in it not every such situation is experienced as a
trauma; that you don’t have the legal right to choose doesn’t mean that
you don’t experience your own choice.Martin, as the author, can certainly create a fictional character that is not traumatized by Drogo, that doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t think that’s a generally suspect fictional reality to create.
GRRM is well-read on this subject, and you can’t even comprehend a relatively short post telling you how it used to be back in those days.
GRRM is well-read on this subject, and you can’t even comprehend a
relatively short post telling you how it used to be back in those days.First, Essos is a fictional world.Second, any actual historian will tell you that it’s impossible to know how most 13 year olds forced into sexual relationships with older men would feel about the arrangement because contemporaneous scribes weren’t particularly interested in the interior lives of 13 year old royal brides.
Historians couldn’t tell us, yet, you’ve decided that they were in a bad situation and were raped?
I’ve “decided” that Game of Thrones is a fantasy book.
Based on real events and research.
Who could forget when the House of Normandy married into the Hunnic Empire in order to retake England.
You know arranged marriages are still a norm in many Asian and African countries, right?
You know that just because a marriage is arranged doesn’t mean the bride hasn’t agreed to it…
Also, when death in childbirth was common and general life expectancy was way lower… trying to put modern sensibilities on historical cultural norms is a complete mug’s game.
Yeah, but it probably would’ve been handled differently.Catelyn: I’m sorry, Ned. I was engaged to your brother. This is too weird. I can’t tonight.Ned: OK, that’s fair. I’m gonna give you a couple of days, a week even. But after that, I can’t have my bannermen talking about how the Southern girl won’t put out. Makes me look bad. So, in a week, if you aren’t ready, Imma send you home to Hoster and say, “This one’s defective. I’m claiming the warranty. Fix her or send a replacement.” And Cat would have been in a shitload of trouble with her dad. I don’t think Ned would have raped Catelyn. But by the social standards, morays and culture of the series, he wouldn’t have and couldn’t have put up with it.
Arranged marriages of minor girls to middle aged men was not common in the US in the 20th century. Actually arranged marriages of any kind were rare.
I remember coming across a Twitter thread from an actual Medieval historian who debunked this idea that child marriages amongst European nobility were commonly consummated while the bride was still a girl (which includes early-mid teens). It did happen, but only in “emergencies” (which, still very gross) to maintain royal-level family lines because they knew pregnancy and childbirth carry risks for all women, even more so for girls and they weren’t dumb: just because a body can menstruate doesn’t mean it can easily carry a child to term. If I remember correctly, she said this misconception (along with many of our misconceptions of Medieval European life) came about during the Victorian times. I wish I could find it. It’s fascinating and disturbing that this myth has taken such hold.
Yes. The average person’s perspective on the medieval period is shaped by the perspective of intervening centuries which were very pleased to look back on the era with a great deal of self-congratulatory condescension. (Plus just genuine ignorance from a lack of data.) I think this basically holds true today; everyone once in a while you see some sort of medieval cleverness trending, but generally, “people a thousand years ago were dumb backward violent clumsy bigots, not like us” makes for better clickbait than “people a thousand years ago were pretty smart but lived in a very different world and made choices about how to do that which are sometimes relatable and sometimes hard for us to understand from inside our own context; also they were often dumb violent clumsy bigots, sometimes in different ways than we are”. Certainly we attribute a lot of superstitions to the middle ages that are really from more recent times. (Like witch hunts: mostly not medieval! It was in the Age of Reason that people got worried that wicked women were having sex with the devil to gain unholy power; in the middle ages people were worried that a demon might rape you in your sleep.)Martin’s general strategy with his world building is “what if the 15th/16th century, but turned up to eleven and magic is real.” So for example, even setting aside the magical aspects of Winterfell and Storm’s End, there’s at least five castles in the books (those two plus the Eyrie, the Rock, and Harrenhall) which would be the most impossibly impressive castle in real 15th century Europe. But the problem is that while Martin knows a lot more about European society 500+ years ago than Benioff and Weiss do (and is much more able to imagine a fictional society and then play by it’s rules, which the show couldn’t do consistently because), he’s not actually an expert (I mean, neither am I) and his mental picture is both outdated and informed by the most attention-grabbing stuff … which he’s then taking as a baseline to turn everything up to eleven. It would be like … if you were writing in a setting based on early 21st century America, but your knowledge of early 21st century America was heavily informed by Keeping up with the Kardashians, transcripts of Trump’s twitter feed, and an oral history of the time the Indiana Pacers had an on-the-court and in-the-stands brawl with fans of the Detroit Pistons … and then you said “but it’s a fantasy novel so I’m going to take it up a notch.”
if you were writing in a setting based on early 21st century America, but your knowledge of early 21st century America was heavily informed by Keeping up with the Kardashians, transcripts of Trump’s twitter feed, and an oral history of the time the Indiana Pacers had an on-the-court and in-the-stands brawl with fans of the Detroit Pistons … and then you said “but it’s a fantasy novel so I’m going to take it up a notch.”
Considering the events of the past few years this sounds like a strong argument for reality being a simulation.
Yes, when I was in high school back in the 80’s, most of the popular girls were dating guys in their 20’s, one was even dating a guy in his early 30’s, she would even bring him to school functions, none of the teachers said anything. I do remember at one school party, we were playing a game, and that guy was standing off with the teachers making small talk, they did look a bit uncomfortable, he didn’t though. Different times.
Given the west’s view of arranged marriages and lack of understanding on the subject, I don’t trust your judgement either. Plenty of people are married to people they didn’t choose and/or are substantially younger or older then their partner, yet their wedding night does not end in rape. In a time and world, where arrange marriages are a norm, Danaerys would’ve known what her wedding night would be like and would’ve been prepared for it.
Plenty of people are married to people they didn’t choose and/or are
substantially younger or older then their partner, yet their wedding
night does not end in rape.
A 13 year old who is married to a 28 year old is absolutely rape, I’m not particularly concerned you don’t trust my judgement just based on this comment.
This isnt about your personal definitions of rape and consensual sex. You might consider consensual sex between 13-year-old and a 28-year-old a rape. And that’s fine. But, we are talking about how she should’ve consent, whether or not you feel she is of consenting age or not.
Yikes, stop telling on yourself.
Ok, now you’re just resorting to petty insults. Your little brain has given up but your ego tells you to not admit defeat.
You’re working pretty hard to justify raping 13 year olds here
Be respectful, that’s Alan Dershowitz you’re speaking to.
Had I two stars to give, they would go to you, because 1. your comment made me chuckle, and 2. your user name is just the tops.
You’re going to make my brain explode. You people have changed the definitions of terms we’re using mid-argument. The argument was that she should’ve consented. But now you’re like, in this context, rape is rape, and consensual sex is also rape. Which is fine, but that wasn’t the argument we were having.
We get it, you want to fuck kids. Gross.
Wow. If I keep going, I think, I could witness an argument about arrangement marriages during medeivel times and looking at other people perspectives end in a “yo mama” joke.
I’ll take a “yo mama” joke over arguing that 13 year old children can consent to sex with an adult.
That wasn’t the argument we were having, but if that’s the one you want to have, let’s have it: no, 13 year olds can’t consent to sex. Next.
If it helps, neither of them actually thinks that you’re a child molester or rapist, so there’s that.
You underestimate the stupidity of people.
“That wasn’t the argument we were having”You’re the one brought up arranged marriages and how you were better educated on the subject, my dude. And there’s lots of places left in the world where that means the bride is a very young teenager.You all caught up now?
I was arguing that a marriage like that could definitely end in sex that Danaerys is consenting of. Wether it’s still considered rape or what the moral implications are is not what I’m arguing.
“I was arguing that a marriage like that could definitely end in sex that Danaerys is consenting of.”We know that already. What you don’t seem to get is that, at 13, most of us here consider her unable to consent at that age.
No, I get that more than anyone else here as I’ve said “that’s not what I am arguing” a million times. People with terrible arguing etiquette change the subject or their stance when they are losing without even realizing that that‘s what they are doing. You are no better either. You are still trying to paint me as someone who encourages child marriages, when I’ve not said anything to that effect.
I’m following you. Here’s what I think which I think agrees with you but doesn’t necessarily pertain to GOT (TV or book):Arranged marriages aren’t default bad and remember they aren’t just limited to royalty. In the South Asian context, a great deal of care is put into arranged marriages in most cases to try to make sure it will work well. Also, in the South Asian context, child marriages used to be very common and are still around today. This took a lot of forms. It wasn’t always adult male marrying child female. Often it was two children. In the vast majority of cases, the bride moved in with the groom’s family. The girl members of the groom’s house took care of the bride; she became like a sister. Sex didn’t happen until she was old enough. Generally, that was after she menstruated which wasn’t actually old enough for her to have a healthy childbirth and recovery.
People with terrible arguing etiquette change the subject or their stance when they are losing without even realizing that that‘s what they are doing. You…you think that there’s any “winning” this thing?What’s the prize on offer?
It is now, it wasn’t in the Middle Ages, and 21st century 13 year olds are very different animals to their counterparts even a hundred years ago in the western world. My father was in the army at 15 and that was as recent as the 1950s. Writing fictional “historical” characters with our sensibilities would make for absolutely terrible writing; the past is very much a different country and they didn’t think or behave remotely like us.
It’s your absolute right to be ignorant of history, perspective, and nuance.
Nice redirection I guess.
Yes, that is true. It is also true for Sansa being in an arranged marriage — that she actually had more consent about than Dany did — to Ramsay.
Does any of that preparation allow the bride to say no to anything?
It is considered weird for the bride to say “no” to sex on her wedding night regardless of how the marriage was setup.
Being considered weird isn’t the same thing as forbidden
And what’s your source on that? Fox News?
Is that your way of saying you disagree? It’s hard to tell the way you keep sidestepping.
You’re telling me that in arrange marriages, women are forbidden to refuse sex to their husbands. You don’t think you need a reliable source to make such a claim? Give me a source and I’ll agree with you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marital_rape_laws_by_country
Welcome to the middle ages… bronze age… stone age… welcome to 90% of human history. But please, go on and be butt-hurt about relatively faithful representations of reality.
“Been prepared for it” IS NOT THE SAME FUCKING THING AS CONSENT
Your point? I’m pretty sure she didn’t consent to being orphaned and exiled to another continent upon threat of murder. One makes the best of a bad situation.
Yes, this tells us more about what Martin does and does not feel comfortable whacking off to than it tells us about the characters in the scene.
Hey, check this out:You can “consent” to being sent to prison, because you have to go, because someone is making you.It doesn’t mean you “want” to.
I’m not sure what the point of this linguistic nitpick is considering it doesn’t apply to what happens in the book.
Yes it does. I am explaining his use of the word consent as being different from yours. He is using it to mean essentially never having another choice besides death within the context of Daenerys’ culture and circumstances, not “being really into it”, which is what you seem to mean.She went along with it because she had to. Whereas the TV show portrayed it as straight up assault.
It’s been awhile since I read it, but I’m pretty sure Dany agreed to have sex with Drogo because she knew she was about to be raped so decided to go with it. There was no part of that scene in the book that made me think it was cute, romantic, or anything but icky. Sort of set the tone for a lot of what goes on in the rest of the book. GRRM might think he’s Mr Woke in regards to sex and sexual violence but there is an awful lot of it in there
“He stopped then, and drew her down onto his lap. Dany was flushed and breathless, her heart fluttering in her chest. He cupped her face in his huge hands and she looked into his eyes. “No?” he said, and she knew it was a question.The next part is even less suitable for work, but it literally involves how turned on she is.
I just re-read the whole passage, and I think you’re misremembering if you don’t think it was written to be romantic.
I just reread it. It is concensual but there’s a huge power imbalance in that she really doesn’t have much of a choice in the matter- she has to have sex with him because she was married off to him. Her brother even tells her to make sure to please him because that would make their alliance better. So yes, she does say “yes” but it’s still pretty icky
well, it’s a book/show that is based on the middle ages. The rules and mindset of the era was much different.
The author and filmmakers have to chose how they want to portray it.
I think both versions (book and show) depict it an way that is consistent of that era.
And both are absolutely not okay in our times. But so is killing people with a sword.
Considering the difference here is Dany’s mindset, there is absolutely no way to know how realistic either version would be in any era where that was common.
Exactly, you chose which one you think is better, but I don’t think the book version is supposed to be taken as an argument to bring back arranged marriages with 13 yo girls. And I don’t think the point of the scene in the show was to be“exciting” as some people assume here.And I think how it differs also changes a lot about Drogo’s characterization.
In medieval times, marrying off your 13 year old was normal
*sigh* Yes yes, it’s completely unacceptable to modern sensibilities. It was however expected from children of noble families for centuries, and seen as fulfilling the destiny expected etc etc… She may not be ‘able to consent’, but as a book POV character she believes she can. Why is this so hard to understand? She also thinks she can fly and walk through fire…
I think it is even more non-consensual than that even, because we not only have the arranged marriage and the underaged aspect, but, if I remember correctly, Dany also gets threatened with a beating (“bringing out the dragon”) by her brother if she does anything to jeopardize the alliance with Drogo.What the shows handling of it does, however, is make her falling in love with Drogo even grosser than what was already pretty gross in the books if you stepped out of her POV, and it made so much less emotional sense.I only watched the first 3 and a half seasons, but no adaptation decision seemed worse to me, because it broke my suspension of disbelief regarding Dany’s emotional arc and characterisation, and that was terrible for such a crucial character that we are hanging around with for extended periods of time.
Lawl, yeah, came down here for this comment and glad to see it on the top.We see you, Martin, you old goat.
Let us be very clear. George R. R. Martin is a perverted old fuck who gets off on rape too.Let us consider the tale of Jeyne Poole in the books:In the show, Sansa agrees to marry Ramsey, knowing exactly what that means. She was in over her head and whatever plan she had going in was out the window in five seconds, but she still willingly walked into that marriage. She is an active participant in the escape, killing the sicko girlfriend and helping Theon as much as he helped her. In the books, Jeyne Poole is one of Sansa’s running buddies. She’s the daughter of one of Ned’s staffers. She’s in King’s Landing with the Winterfell gang when shit goes down and her dad is killed. Sansa is trapped with Joffrey and Jeyne is trapped.Littlefinger grabs her and turns her Northern ass out, putting her in one of his brothels.A little later, Roose and Tywin are pondering the Northern problem. Roose has Winterfell, but he needs a Stark daughter to marry Ramsay to pacify the people. So, Littlefinger says, “Look, I’ve got a Northern chick here.”Figuring that no one has seen Arya for years and no one paid her much attention anyway, they could pass Jeyne off as Arya. She’s already got whipping scars from Littlefinger’s sick customers and she tells Ramsay she’s “been trained.”Ramsay abuses the shit out of her, makes Theon fluff her up to get her ready and it’s implied he makes her fuck the dogs. And when Theon finally gets her out of there, she’s like an anchor, begging to go back to Ramsay because she’s just broken.All the outrage from book-lovers over Sansa told me was that people cared more about rape when it was a virgin rather than a prostitute. I thought you woke people were supposed to be better than that.Now.. the Jaime/Cersei thing…. Dat was fucked up, mostly because if you read the interviews, it is clear that Lena and Nikolaj clearly thought there were filming one thing and the director/showrunners and editors cut it a different way. In the books, that is meant to be, “C’mon baby!” “No!” “C’mon, baby!’ “NO!” “C’mon, baby, please!” “OK, FINE!” (Still on the spectrum of not okay, but not what we saw on film)
Fuck you SJWs! Clutching your pearls at sexual assault while eating up genital mutilation, torture, gore and infanticide. You ruined this show and got the ending you deserved for it. LOL!
You laugh, but they were REALLLLL fucking selective about what they were outraged about
I finally, belatedly got around to watching that last season this week, and finished it off last night. It does feel rushed (though the episodes are long), constricted (only two locations really) and has a lot of headscratchers. (what does the Night’s Watch even do now? what are these imported armies going to do? Is the best Cercei could do for villainy this season was stand around looking out a window? Is “knowing the scorpions exist” all it takes to make the difference between two dragons getting their asses kicked to one kicking ass? If there were stashes of green blow-uppables all over King’s Landing, why didnt…ugh, never mind) It’s not a crowdpleaser, and I wouldn’t really call it a big swing either, except in the sense of how fast and hard Danaerys leans into psycho villainy.
But I’ll give it this – this show came up with some really scary dragons, and never turned them into wondrous, magical beings who are verbal and wise, you know, Falcor type shit. They were scary as hell and stayed that way right to the end.
I didn’t get around to watching it until this summer and only did so after rewatching the entire series. It’s sloppy, for sure, but it’s nowhere near as awful as people made it out to me to be. I think the show would have benefited from more episodes/a longer season to flesh out the storylines, but I didn’t have a problem with the actual plot points themselves, just their execution.
This all the way.
I rewatched the final season a few times since airing. Is it sloppy? Sure.Should they have took the year off before Season 7 and shot S7&8 as one long season instead? Yes.Would I personally change some things in editing? Yeah. Cut the Long Night into two episodes. Edit episodes 4,5,6 into 4 episodes. So it would end up being a 9 episode season.But is it a disaster worthy of all this scorn? No. It just didn’t live up to the pressure and hype of being the biggest show on television and the added pressure of finishing off a story that started in the early 90s that the author may never finish.
Always thought that no matter what happened, the final season or two would have been hated upon because it’s much easier to build worlds and generate plot than trying to tie everything together. So many people expected so many different things that there was no way they wouldn’t have pissed people off. I also think the show got so popular and big that it was due for some sort of backlash and blacklash did indeed happen
I mean that goes for the books too. AFFC is my favorite, but it’s just spinning out into worldbuilding/soap opera.
It wasn’t…horrible, it was just Hacky. Like Generic Television Show Hacky.The last season of GoT felt like the last season-and-a-half of NYPD BLUE, where you felt the quality of the writing take an abrupt dip as Andy Sipowicz got married to a cute younger woman (again!), got her pregnant (again!), took and passed the Sergeant’s Exam, and became the head of 15th Precinct Detective Squad. I’m sure that by the start of Season 12, Dennis Franz was just counting down the days until the series ended….
Couple reasons why that happened: the final two seasons (which read like a split season) took way longer to film than normal. The final six episodes took them nine months instead of their normal six for ten episodes. Miguel Sapochnik talked about this in the IndieWire podcast he did. Basically the battles are brutal to film and The Long Night was an insane undertaking. I don’t think their cast or crew would have lasted doing it in one shot.That said, I think season eight did need one more episode between four and five to just let everything breath more. It felt like a lot of hurry up and then slow down. It needed something more to just let the audience come down. That said, I don’t think GRRM knows how he is going to land the ending either, so good luck seeing that. And I don’t think his wishy-washy comments and overly-complicated and expensive scripts when he was still writing for the show helped much at all.I do just want to cut in here and say that Drogo raped Dany to the point she wanted to commit suicide in the books. It was bad and the wedding night was dumb and showed that GRRM does not understand how young girls work.
I also found an old interview with Benioff where he talks about the rape between Cersei and Jaime (which does not read as consensual in the books either) and this is what he said:
Let’s talk about one of the darkest moments in Game of Thrones, the hideous wedding-night rape of Sansa by Ramsay Bolton. Was it a difficult decision to do that? Did you have any idea that there would be something of a backlash?For sure, because there had been a scene in the previous season with Jaime and Cersei, where it was not quite as violent but was very much a non-consensual sex scene, and there was a massive uproar about that. And this was darker. (source)So they knew that it was not consensual and was also less violent than the rape to Sansa. The rape to Sansa is based on a rape that Jeyne Poole was subjected to which is 10 times worse in the books (dogs rape her etc.)As for the prank: I don’t think it was their greatest idea, but the cast got them back more than once.
In my head, with all you know having to ignore contracts and what not because I don’t know that info, The end of S6 is when the production pause should have happened. It’s the perfect pause moment, Starks back, Cersei takes KL, and Dany on her way.Instead of filming S7 in 2016, they should have used 2016 for scripts and preproduction of the final season(s, however they would break it). Shoot for 8 months in 2017, shoot for 8 months in 2018. Launch the first half of the season in late 2018, and launch the back half in 2019 like they did. As far as the prank, people getting offended by that are looking to pile on. That story is from 2009 after they shot the pilot. They joked about the two kids not being able to go to the party because it’s for adults. And they obviously were invited. It’s dumb.
The final season was great. But there was so much discourse around GoT, it was so constantly under a million microscopes, that there was no way it was going to succeed.
If it’s not a 10, it’s a 2. Welcome to toxic fandom.
The reality is they wanted to be done with the show, and cut some corners to make it happen. It wasn’t great, but if the alternative was a different set of showrunners taking over, or recasting major roles because contracts were expiring, or (etc etc)… it was an ending. One thing you can’t say about the books – at least the TV show had an ending.
Here’s the deal: I can argue persuasively that the outcome of just about every character was the right one, including Dany going batshit.They just fucked it all up getting there.
Oh for sure. Outside of the rush to the finish line (and just plain stupidity like Dany forgetting about the Iron Fleet or Arya being the one to do the Night King in) their issue was that at a point, they were too scared of making these characters morally ambiguous in case they lose sympathy from the audience, yet they still arrived at the conclusions that required of them to be at least a little bit darker. Look at Tyrion who basically lost any semblance of an arc after season 4 because they didn’t want him to grow more evil nor did they want to lean more into the idea that his depression robbed him off the edge he needs to succeed at the job (it’s sorta kind of implied maybe? It’s so poorly done though that at this point I accept it’s just my headcanon).Shae is another prime example – she’s a completely different character in the show, with genuine love for Tyrion, courage and agency, yet she still betrays him over stupid “woman scorned” bullshit that this version of the character would have never fell for. It’d make more sense if she’s taken Dontos’ place in that arc and the role of “betrayer” fell to Ros (paying off the foreshadowing of Cersei mistaking her for his favorite), but they killed that pathway off when Esme Bianco refused to do more nude scenes.Like, in hindsight it’s pretty clear Dany is heading towards madness in the books. She’s much more rash and her final released chapter heavily implies that she’s beginning to lose it and resent all the hardships on the way to the throne. There’s also f!Aegon around who will likely be in a much better position to feed her resentment even further than Jon ever was. Instead they’ve done it so poorly that it all looks that if Snow just decided to take one for the team and schtump her a few times, this tragedy could have been avoided.
“that is objectively very funny, but it still made them cry.”I wouldn’t say it’s funny at all. Everything I hear about these dudes makes them sound like gigantic douchbags.
Oh unclench.
I’m fully unclenched but ‘pranks’ that aren’t actually funny and just make people cry are the domain of true and proper assholes.
Uh-huh, and if they had done a better season 8, you’d be like, “Aw, look how they bonded with their young actors.”Here are the reasons to be outraged as a fan:* Season 8 sucked* Season 7 wasn’t all that great.That’s it. That’s the list.
Hey look how wrong you are!I didn’t watch a single season(haven’t seen a single episode, actually) of Game of Thrones. I’ve disliked Martin’s writing since back when he was doing sci fi short stories, never got into the GoT books and have no interest at all in the series.
It’s just that everything I hear about these guys makes them seem like major assholes. Pulling unfunny ‘pranks’ and laughing about teenage girls crying doesn’t do anything to better that perception.
Here are the reasons to be outraged as a fan: Oh fuck off…
Anyone who thinks season 8 (which was indeed quite bad) is an outrage needs to readjust their expectations about entertainment and what it does or doesn’t “owe” them. Most tv shows get bad over the course of time. As a child of the 80s, I’m just impressed they wrapped up the story rather than running things into the ground and getting canceled after most people stopped caring.
The only thing I’m “outraged” about (and it’s really more of a vexed exasperation) regarding Season Eight was that it ended exactly like you’d expect a hack television show to end.
Martin’s A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE has its issues (including no ending!), but it’s also doing a remarkable job of creating a fully lived-in fantasy universe that closely resembles our own history in both its glory and its ugliness. Season Eight of the show feels like “Okay, the Network says we’ve got six episodes to wrap this up — so, does Daenerys do a Heel Turn, or does Tyrion…?” “Peter says he won’t turn heel unless he gets a barbed-wire basebat bat to do it with — so, Emilia, I guess?”
I swear, I’ve seen more convincing storylines on WWE RAW.
I doubt this is a new thing to 2020, but it’s new to ME in 2020. I love the mode of “Make up a ridiculous, unreasonably unbelievable story about how the person you’re talking to would react (according to your preconceived notions) and then yell at them for acting that way.It’s just amazing.
I remember a season where they spent most of the time showing an unimportant side character being tortured. That season wasn’t great tv.
So… you were just in it for the boobs and Tyrion being a smartass. Got it
Apparently you were in it for the rape and dudebro solidarity, DaBard3.I think the Rabid Puppies are calling you….
No I wanted good seasons and good episodes without long gaps between seasons. That’s why I was in for it. But in HBO just as in life you take what you get not what you want. I just posted to remind people that 7/8 weren’t the only weak seasons.
Even if they had a stellar season eight, making children cry so you can have a laugh an asshole move.
You left out not including Tom Bombadil in the show.
That and replacing Sebastian Shaw with Hayden Christensen
Hi-yoooo!
Maybe you need to “clench” a little more, as in at least pretend to have some empathy.
Tell you what, if Sophie Turner and Maisie Williams come out and say there were irrevocably scarred and now can’t eat a Big Mac without PTSD, I’ll change my tune. Because right now, you guys are assuming they didn’t get over it. Maybe you don’t think women are strong enough to get over it. That seems like something you ought to get looked at.
Tell you what, DeBard3 — you can just take your DudeBro attitude and go play with your other basement-dwelling Trumpite pals.
Y’know, maybe I’m being too easy on these guys. Turner was at least traumatized. The woman took McDonald’s on her bachelorette party!https://www.cosmopolitanme.com/content/23099-sophie-turner-bachelorette-party-out-celebrationsI also wish we called more things “hen parties”
Exactly – any joke that makes two teenage girls cry is, objectively, not funny at all. That “it was funny” disclaimer at the end of those stories just sounded like someone being worried that they sounded too critical of someone who holds more power in the industry than them, and trying to course correct.
I’m not saying their particular jokes were funny, but whether or not making a child cry is funny depends very heavily on the particular child. Plus, I don’t think that it’s really possible to define humor objectively?
Well, I used the word “objectively” specifically because the person quoted in the article did, and it’s in response to that, but yeah, I do think I have some hard, fast rules about some aspects of humor. They might not be everyone’s rules, but if someone does enjoy seeing a child emotionally manipulated and upset for an adult superior’s amusement then that surely says something about them and their capacity for empathy?
Well, there’s obviously some appeal to it based on the success of The Hunger Games, but yeah, I tend to think the success of those movies (as well as GOT) points to some kind of deviancy on the part of the viewing audience. I worry that anyone enthusiastic enough about a show that features regular child abuse and murder to read and comment on an article about the behind the scenes events of said show probably has some very serious skeletons in their closet and should be kept away from small children.As far as humor goes, all I can say is it’s a funny thing.
Have you seen how intolerable teenage girls are when they’re happy? Benioff and Weiss made the right call.
Kate – so you are saying the objective barometer for humor is unquestionably decided by the emotions of a teenager? If a joke makes them cry…there is no humor in it? Period?
There is no logic in these type of blanket statements…but this one in particular takes an entire idea (humor) and makes a subset of people the gatekeepers for whether these ideas of comedy are valid.
Maybe you’re onto something Kate Monday – because your comment wouldn’t make those teenage girls cry, but it certainly made me laugh.
You seem to be missing that the original quote said it was “objectively funny”, and that I’m responding to that, but also, no, it’s not funny to make kids cry, especially if it’s an adult in a position of power who’s intentionally upsetting a child for their own personal amusement.
It could be funny but they’d have to fit the Clueless/Mean Girls stereotypes of awful teen girls. And ideally not be an adult superior telling the joke.
Yeah, yikes. Even if the “the guy you recommended isn’t working out and we’re gonna fire him” prank works in context between friends, it sounds less cute than they seem to think it is.
Yeah, especially as it went on for a while and is the type of ‘joke’ that could end up affecting someone’s career or prospects. I think a good rule of thumb is that if you tell a joke or pull a prank and you’re the only one laughing you’re either not funny, an asshole or both.
Funny would be the girls post a picture of themselves at McDonald’s and say “here we are at the wrap party for underaged actors, and we didn’t even get our per diem.”
They really come across as dicks in all those stories. Wonder if Netflix is feeling buyer’s remorse? At least Disney apparently had the option to cut the duo loose from Star Wars after they let the world know they couldn’t tell a coherent story without a blueprint laid out in front of them.
Every time I hear the word “prank” in relation to a grown ass man in a workplace, I cringe. I think Oh Hello properly buried the entire concept. Too Much Tuna is exactly as funny as any prank executed, which of course is a little funny but mostly confusing and weirdly aggressive. If you are an adult pulling a prank, rest assured you have the dignity and swagger of Nick Kroll and John Mulaney in old man makeup.
Yeah Too Much Tuna isn’t a horrible prank, at least nobody is getting hurt or made to feel bad.Plus the resolution in that Pittsburgh pawn shop was pretty hilarious.
“Yes, that is objectively very funny, but it still made them cry.”
It’s quite funny, especially considering Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner -two teenagers at the time and not FOUR-YEAR-OLDS- fucking CRIED.
Objectively funny.
Fuck you SJWs! Clutching your pearls at sexual assault while eating up genital mutilation, torture, gore and infanticide. You ruined this show and got the ending you deserved for it. LOL!
Fuck you SJWs! Clutching your pearls at sexual assault while eating up genital mutilation, torture, gore and infanticide. You ruined this show and got the ending you deserved for it. LOL!
The scene in the book was rather squick-ish, although obviously they could have done it better. The key to the overall sequence of events is basically Daenerys facing mounting dread over what is to come, to be relieved when it’s not as awful as she thinks it was going to be.
These douchebro showrunners. Pulling pranks on teenage castmembers and being so proud of it. Amazing how often bullies of every kind pull this shit and think the harm they’ve caused is erased by a cheery “Just kidding!” Fuck them.
Yeah, the “it was a joke!!” defense has been used by so many assholes against so many people (and frequently men telling women they ‘can’t take a joke’ – hell, I had someone on The Takeout last week tell me they were sorry I had “no sense of humor”). Fuck off, if you need to portray me as a humorless scold to make yourself feel better then fine, but that doesn’t make cruel jokes “pranks” funny.
I like Kit Harington well enough, but the quote about not wanting to be an action hero like Bruce Willis made me laugh. You won’t have to worry about that one, Kit. As for the rest, it sounds like the usual shitshow that I wish had ended sometime in season 3.
He’s like three inches taller than Tom Cruise.
‘A deal was made that each of the yachts would back off a quarter mile so they wouldn’t be in the shoot during filming. “Everybody agreed to do it—except one person,” says director Alex Graves. That person, according to “multiple people working on Thrones,” was Bruce Willis.’Surely this is the precise time to send Hafþór Júlíus down for a quiet chat asking Willis to move his yacht? And if that failed, he is an actual Viking which would make for some tremendous B-roll footage.Will no one release me from my grey shackles?
Pissed at having to move my giant yacht out of a shot? Yeah, we’ve all been there.
Bless you, Bruce. You tried to warn us.
What else does Bruce Willis know that we don’t?
I think he knows what’s going to happen like ten seconds before it does or something stupid, IDK I never watched that one
I thought that was Nic Cage.
He was trying to get Oberyn to stop dancing and just kill the Mountain
This was some television show or something, right?
The best thing the GOT showrunners ever did was convince everyone that it’s their fault GOT sucks.
Bruce Willis morphed from John McClane into Archie Bunker. The difference is that Willis is real and ridiculously wealthy with no feasible reason to be the grumpy fuck that he is.
OK, has anyone read the oral history? Did Sophie and Maisie — who were like 12 and 10 at the time — actually get to go to the party? Because you noobs are carrying on like they went to McDonalds and got stranded there with their Happy Meals. Clearly, they got to go to plenty of parties.
By the way, for everyone all clenched up… Turner and Williams WENT TO THE WRAP PARTY! HAPPY ENDING! YAY! HUGS!
https://ew.com/tv/game-of-thrones-new-pranks/Apparently, there’s an entire chapter of pranks, including the cast giving it right back. You people need to really relax.
would love to know if the creators explain why the final season was short and if they think the dark willow turn for Daenerys was too abrupt?
So many of these behind the scenes stories and jokes nowadays come off as unprofessional in the best light and abusive in the worst.
Let’s not forget that this was all stolen from Katherine Kurtz’s Deryni novels, from the underaged marriage to the brother sister incest to the alternate Medieval European setting to…well most of it.
“I don’t want to be Bruce Willis”
No worries there, you sawed off, limey prick
-Rigg was a badarse. -Bruce and the pranks were hilarious. Oh, boohoo, they cried ‘cause they thought they weren’t gonna get to go with the grown-ups…anyone who wants to try to use something like that as evidence of D&D’s d-baggery when there are now actual mounds thereof, is far too feeble-minded to exist. -GRRM wasn’t wrong re: “rape.” -A teen can either consent to sex with anyone of any age, or not at all. Take your pick.