Game Of Thrones creators somehow narrow down one single thing they’d change about series
Of all the things David Benioff and Dan Weiss would change about the series, the lighting would not be one of them, apparently
Aux News Game of Thrones
Ask any of the Freefolk for one thing they’d change about HBO’s Game Of Thrones, and they’d probably reveal a litany of issues. The White Walkers’ finale. The coffee cups. The lighting. Some would prefer to just redo the whole final season. But Game Of Thrones’ former showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss, who have a history of looking at the show very differently from the fans, are pretty clear about where they screwed up: Not enough Mord the Jailer.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter while promoting their new show 3 Body Problem, Benioff and Weiss were clear about a dearth of Mord. “One thing I know I wish we could have done is there’s the character Mord the Jailer,” Benioff said. Weiss agrees, calling it a “mistake” not to bring the character back, even though they “always talked about doing it.”
Ultimately, their plans for Mord the Jailer were the stuff of Monday morning quarterbacking. Weiss said they had a tavern scene with either Brienne or The House that would’ve been perfect for old Mord. “But we realized too late that Mord could have owned the tavern,” Weiss continued. “We could have had that actor in the background acting exactly the way he did as a jailer, except now as a small business owner. It was just such an obvious, no-brainer, day-after idea.”
So, just to clear it all up, The problem with their show wasn’t the gratuitous depictions of sexual abuse, Daenerys’ rushed heel turn, the murky, underlit cinematography, or the whimpering end of the White Walkers. It was a distinct lack of Mord the Jailer, played by Ciaran Bermingham for two episodes in 2011, as a small business owner, treating his bar patrons and employees like an imprisoned Tyrion Lannister. Yeah, that would’ve fixed things.
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Ah yes, who could forget that much beloved Game of Thrones character, the House.
His family words were “Its never lupus”
“ANY MAN WHO DIES OF LUPUS I’LL RAPE HIS FUCKING CORPSE!!!”
I’d never bet against him.
Sandor “The House” Clegane is my favorite character.
This was the house.
After waiting for it for so long, I found the final battle between The House and The Mountie to be a letdown.
His full name is The Mountie Who Rides.
“The House” is the undercover identity Phil Leotardo briefly used in season 6 of The Sopranos.
Who says they can’t write well? That’s some AAA trolling right there.
Needs more snark.
“So, just to clear it all up, The problem with their show wasn’t the gratuitous depictions of sexual abuse, Daenerys’ rushed heel turn, the murky, underlit cinematography, or the whimpering end of the White Walkers.”
Yeah, isn’t it CRAZY that the creators of an ultra-popular, TV show are mostly happy with the show.
“Yeah, that would’ve fixed things.
A nice glass of Drain-o before you go to bed would help a lot of the bullshit at this asshole of a website.
It’s funny I watched the series a couple years ago, and that one episode everyone complained about being to dark to see anything, I didn’t really find that bad. Since most people were running around with torches I could still see what was going on. IMO The Walking Dead had MUCH worse dark episodes, there is one part where Rick was hunting Negan in a basement and you could see literally NOTHING save one or two small glints of light off something shiny.
The dark lighting absolutely was not problematic for me. Now the pacing, scripting of the last 1.5 seasons, that was an embarrassment for a show that was probably the best spectacle TV ever before that. They really should have done one extra season to build up to the heel turn. It seemed like they just wanted to be done with it, and the show lost it’s ponderous intrigue and tension.
I can agree with that. The one thing that baffle’s me is the “unexpected heel turn” by Danerys, like how was that unexpected. I 100% saw it coming. Sure she went on and on about being better than her family, but like she tried to be good and the world said no fuck you. Freed the slaves, the slavers killed the slaves, and like the straw that broke the camels back was when they killed he second dragon, who she saw kind of as “kids”, she was like ok fine fuck you I tried but you all kept poking the bear, burn it all down. You know maybe don’t taunt the person in control of Westros version of nukes.
It wasn’t unexpected (she was kind of positioned as an antagonist from day one), but, like everything else, the final act of that transformation happened way too fast, like instantaneously. It was clumsy af.
Yeah like I knew she was gonna have a hell turn, and IMO it was obvious why, but like you said it was really rushed in the end.
It’s still very funny to me that they rushed through the last season so that they could do Star Wars, and then the last season was so awful that they lost Star Wars.
I don’t really think we can say that was why they lost Star Wars. Given that like most of the star wars movies Disney tried developing never materialized.
I loved the rough justice of that. I was like man, you think GOT fans are crazy—just wait until you piss off the Star Wars fandom. Get someone else to start your car, is all I’m saying.
There’s a book they should adapt next:
Let’s hope lessons are learned and they do right by Three Body…which deserves the treatment GOT got for 4 seasons. At least the ending is already written for them.
I can kind of sympathise with everyone involved that they didn’t want to live in Northern Ireland for 6 months of every year.
I consider it to be too dark if you can’t make out the chiseled good looks of the greatest bouncer of all time.
I had NO idea he was even in there lol.
That’s gonna make an ocular patdown just a bit more challenging.
Viggio Morgenstein!
Everyone now and then when I get in a mood and think I’m bad at my job, I look back to that episode and think well, at least I didn’t fuck it up as badly as they did with that episode.Here is a very good in depth analysis on why everything they did was wrong:
IIRC, after the complaints that followed the initial airing of that episode, they actually lightened it up for subsequent airings / streaming.
Maybe so, I didn’t watch as it was airing so it might have been a brighter version. But since there were torches everywhere even though it was overall dark, that at least IMO gave me the ability to follow what was happening. I just hate when scenes or movies are too dark that even in a light controlled room, with a good/decent tv you can’t follow ANYTHING. There were similar complaints leveled at that HOTD episode, but again it was dark but I could see see, and I don’t have some fancy high end OLED, just a nice, but not top tier LCD.
I don’t know about it being brightened after the fact, but I do think that it absolutely depended on what device you watched it on. I’ve seen it on two different computers and a smart TV, and the shiny new smart TV was by far the easiest to see through the darkness.
Maybe so I didn’t think it was that bad the torched let you follow the action even if you couldn’t identify individual characters. TWD episode I mentioned was FULLY black save for occasional glint, and IIRC the scene was during the day, they were just in a basement. I mean I know it was to build tension in that scene but there are ways to shot super dark scenes and still have some visibility so you can follow what’s happening. GOT and TWD aren’t the only offenders, it seems to happen more often and it’s annoying
A big problem was that it was, at the time, streaming exclusive; and thus the whole episode being shades of dark brown and grey with intermittent snow, it was a blurry mess to most viewers.
It was a streaming exclusive while it was still airing on cable HBO, didn’t know that.
Whoops, I forgot about the TV channel that doesn’t exist in most of the world :PBut yeah, fair point, I’d be interested to see the proportion of cable viewers vs streaming the day it aired; but my main point is that for the latter the episode was pretty much scrambled from compression.
They are obviously trolling here and they are right to do it. The backlash that was unleashed upon them by a part of the internet community was idiotic. The 2 final seasons were problematic, in my opinion season 7 much more than 8, but in the end the only responsible for this situation was GRRM that wrote himself in a corner and 13 years later he still has no idea how to continue his story. They had no choices but to do “bad writing” to get an ending. In the meantime, they also wrote some of the best episodes and scenes of the series, and they were not in the books.
Nope. They knew the series was unfinished when they took the job. And HBO would have given them as many seasons as they needed, but they were in a hurry to leave, so decided to rush the conclusion through in 2 truncated seasons. If they were no longer interested in doing the show, they could have passed it off to others with more passion for the project. Instead they just half-assed the conclusion. That’s all on them.
“In the city, the line between nightmare and reality was fluid, just as
the context of the words killer and death had shifted over time. Perhaps
Mord was responsible. Perhaps we all were.”
OMG, you fucking pussies are still whining about THAT?Fuck off, and keep fucking off.
I think, now that all has been said and done, the thing that bothers me the most has evolved.Now my largest issue is the end of the White Walkers. We spent the better part of a decade hearing about Winter, and the Walkers. They, in fact, began the series. Winter this, winter that. And then we were done with them in a very unceremonious fashion. If I choose to ignore the fact that basically every single character met a rushed, unearned, and quite frankly boring, end—then that’s the criticism I’d dig hearing them explain away.I had a lot of fun watching that show. I was sad that my disappointment was so great.
I think the problem is the show (and possibly the books) set up two completely different climaxes that had to be addressed equally, and it ultimately undermined the tension of The Long Night.
The two big conflicts – the Battle for the Throne and the Battle for the Living, were the 1A 1B narratives that drove the whole show. But with Cersei deciding not to intervene, it left us with two climactic battles that had to happen, independent of one another.
So in order to make it work, they decided on a total undermining of Dany’s conflict in choosing to fight for Jon instead of heading straight for Cersei; she worried that helping the North would cost her the resources to fight for the Throne. And it appeared that it would; many many many *many* Unsullied and Dothraki died. Many Northmen died. AND a dragon died.
….And none of it mattered. Because she took King’s Landing with ease.
Thus, The Long Night became essentially inconsequential to the plot, because the way they structured it, one war had to be the prelude to the other.
Yeah, I think the main conflicts could have been handled much better. Like main battle would have been against cercei and then a bit of huffing and puffing to get rid of the dead. And some stabiti-stab against Dany at some point.
In general I do not have any qualms about who died, etc. My main issue was that last 2 seasons were just action and pretty senseless. None of the siege tactics made any sense, people teleported everywhere and there was next to no dialog. Fuck, I could have skipped all battles if there had been some drama in the mix.
So yes, the 1A/1B thing is the big structural issue, and it’s likely that Martin never figured out how to reconcile the two in a satisfying way.But there had to be some way to converge these two plotlines so that the final battle with the White Walkers also settles the succession crisis around the Iron Throne.Seems like it would have been pretty straightforward to just have the White Walkers march as far south as King’s Landing during the war (they could have even included a Battle for Winterfell, which the humans lose, forcing a retreat). And that way whatever was going on with the White Walkers would have helped resolve the eventual king or queen, by having multiple claimants die in the battle.
Wow…what a really good evaluation of what I couldn’t quite put a finger on aside from a general “meh that sucked” and some ideas why…I mean yeah A LOT of it sucked but it was beyond the simple rushing and dumbing-down the plotlines. Nice post.
I know everyone hates that it is Arya that kills the Night King and Jon Snow doesn’t really do anything. I’m actually fine with that. Jon Snow is a boring character played by a boring actor and a climactic showdown between him and the blue guy would be boring. However, what I can’t abide is how goddamn gutless that episode is about character death. Vanishingly few named characters bite it. Like, shockingly few. My theory is because they were worried about how people on Twitter would react when their precious Blorbos met grim ends.
Which makes it even funnier that they then had to watch aforementioned Blorbos be ruthlessly character-assassinated in the remaining three episodes.
Anyway, Jamie should have been the one to fight the Night King and die as a result, leaving Cersei to go absolutely even more bug-nuts and do anything interesting at all.
I don’t mind Jon not killing the night king. It’s super odd though that the huge reveal, arguably the biggest of the book series if he ever gets to it, that he’s a Targaryen is just there so he feels weird that his girlfriend is his aunt.
I know everyone hates that it is Arya that kills the Night King and Jon Snow doesn’t really do anything.I don’t. Arya had been telegraphed for a while as his assassin—the knife switching hands during her sparring session with Brienne and they made a point of showing how quietly she could sneak up on people. Heck, even her water dancing lessons helped her. It made perfect sense to me, especially because Martin loves to subvert tropes like The Hero Kills the Big Bad.There’s a lot I hate about the last season but not that.
It’s about the execution of it. The actual moment was really good. It just should have been set up better. Was it Beric Dondarian who got revived like six times so he could save Arya so she could do that? There wasn’t anyone else the lord of light could use? I think they could have done something interesting with Melisandre’s god and the faceless men’s god of death. “not today” indeed. But they didn’t want to spend time on R’hollor or why Beric and Jon were able to be revived. You could make a nice parallel with the ice zombies but no, they just wanted to wrap it up.
Yeah, that didn’t bother me.The fact that a generational, pervasive, existential threat to the entire fucking world was dispatched inside of 90 minutes from the start of their assault.
The fact that a generational, pervasive, existential threat to the entire fucking world was dispatched inside of 90 minutes from the start of their assault.Yup. As relieved as I was at the end of that episode—they next day I was like, how come they suffered so few deaths? That should been a siege of at least a week. (Realistically, it would been months but no one would’ve watched a show dealing with a months-long siege in the ice and darkness.)
I liked that she was the one to end him. Consider that she was somewhat in service to the god of death, who had up to that point been cheated out of all those deaths by the night king reanimating an army of white walkers. Arya repaired the balance in that sense.
What bugs me has remained pretty consistent: the early seasons did a great job of building up three clear major factions and a bunch of minor ones that all had conflicting goals and likeable, three-dimensional characters. While far from morally perfect, many were at least good-ish but legitimately seemed like they might end up killing each other just because of their goals and circumstances. The Lannister side, clearly the worst one from an ethical perspective, had arguably the best developed character and a handful of charming low-level employees who were just caught up in the action.
That’s a real highwire act and an approach to war narratives that even much more modern and “serious” efforts almost never achieve. It’s not a matter of heroes and villains or even a group of conflicted soldiers and their nameless victims. It’s about different groups of complex people and societies with dreams, worldviews, literature, philosophy, art, and a thousand other things, many, even most of which will get unjustly and inaccurately flattened down or eliminated when they become “the losers.” Three-dimensional people you know and like will kill other three-dimensional people that you would’ve known and liked if the circumstances of your birth been geographically different, and vice versa. That’s a more a powerful anti-war statement than nearly any movie we’ve produced on the subject. There were times when I couldn’t have told you what I even wanted to happen, let alone what I thought would.By the last season it’s a hero squad versus overlapping villain groups. Yawn.
Yep. The handling of the White Walkers was fucking awful. Should have been the better part of a season. Minimum.
arya had to girlboss
If the show ended with the melting of the throne it would be remembered much more fondly.
The idea that nepo babies would refuse to write an ending where inherited authoritarian power in and of itself is the problem is the most coherent thing about their run, to be honest.
Pretty sure that ending came from the RR himself
“One thing we wanted? Less AIDS in the pool. Some, yes, just less.”
For me it’s their failure to incorporate the line ‘fat pink mast’.Or just maybe Ed Sheeran had no business being on the show, let alone singing.
I just wish they’d also included that sweet-voiced minstrel butchering a few villagers.
Is it all of the final three seasons? Because that is the one thing I’d change.
To be very slightly fair to the show runners, at least half of that is on George RR Martin for not finishing the source material that they were adapting.
His ending wasn’t going to be much different. Maybe done better, but not all that different. He’ll never finish after the backlash.
And as I have said many times, D&D were following outlines from GRR. So while it may take years and be a few thousand more pages of text, the overall ending of the books will be very similar to the show. At least it would have been. I am fairly certain part of the reason Martin has just stopped writing the books is because he saw how his planned ending was recieved and doesn’t know how to fix it for the book
Right, that would forgive a fan fiction or random user post for finishing the story. They’re professionals, this is what they do. So just like if they had produced a brilliant ending and received all the credit, they get all the credit for the bad ending too.
“Yeah, that would’ve fixed yhings.” Yeah, because it definitely wasn’t massively popular and a cultural phenomenon or anything. It totally needed “fixed.”It obviously had its issues, especially once the show passed the point of the books, buy acting as if it was somehow a failure and needed to be fixed is just asinine.
It’s like I always say: Mord money, Mord problems.
Personally I think their greatest sin was not casting Pete Trewavas as Marillion the Bard.
Pretty on point that those two chuckleheads biggest regret is not featuring more of some minor character most people forgot about.
ah yes, the chuckleheads who created the worlds biggest TV show which you watched for a decade 🙂
I wasn’t watching because of them, and the show’s quality went down when they didn’t have any of the books to adapt anymore.
You’re acting like adapting a book is easy
They created and ran the hugely successful show you watched for a decade. Sounds like you’re the chucklehead for not being able to handle that fact.
Here’s the ONE (1) thing that I would change:
Wait until George RR releases the book “The Winds of Winter” before writing and shooting season 6.
I suppose when a program succeeds despite its showrunners, it’s only a matter of time before the wheels fall off.
I’ve always find it hilarious when people claim that a TV show they were glued to for a decade had braindead creators/showrunners.
Me too. Thankfully I never said they were braindead. Also, the showrunners were not the creators. GOT’s success was based mostly off the strength of its cast and Martin’s story telling and world building.
Wait, you now claim Benioff and Weiss did not create the show? They had no involvement with the casting? What the actual fuck? I am backing away slowly…
You have issues with reading comprehension and yes, should back away. If you think I am in the room with you then you’re having problems.
I mean they did address how he spent Tyrion’s gold in the books. He got himself a set of shiny gold teeth.
This is likely a controversial view… but I’ll defend the end of GoT if not to the hilt, at least to the pointy end.I really liked the notion that the end of GoT was the culmination if hundreds of years of bloody war after bloody war, and that it’s only through compromise, dialogue, and constitutional change that violence comes to an end. The point wasn’t about Bran sitting on the throne; the point was that Daenerys and the White Walkers had both brought civilisation so close to the brink that the only to change things was to change how government operates.I also largely bought Daenerys’ heel-turn. It was a bit swift, but equally, her character has always resorted to the violent solution when the more diplomatic, compromising option was too hard. Don’t get me wrong, there was also big problems. Season 7 was too rushed. Jamie and Brienne did not need to get it on and it undermined who they were to each other. The Hound/Mountain resolution was weirdly videogamey. And, most importantly, it’s problematic that the two most prominent female characters spent the last few episodes going mutually batshit.But overall, I still think there’s a lot more to like about the last few episodes, and I’m provoked by what they’re trying to say, however clumsy the execution.
The correct answer is better writers. That would be an umbrella solution to many problems.
Pretty obvious trolling here. They know very well what everyone thinks of the last two seasons, this is just them saying “Yeah fuck you too” in what they believe to be a humorous way.