R571, you keep missing the point. The Battle of the Blackwater wasn’t all about CGI (military explosions played a smaller role there). The Battle of King’s Landing was. See the difference? And guess which one the majority of people around the world liked more. Surprise, surprise - the one with less hollow CGI & perfunctory explosions, and more attention to plot & character.
For example, Lena Headey, playing Cersei, was in very similar situations in both battles (hoping to escape death in a besieged castle). But she was given exponentially more interesting text & character nuance in the Blackwater Battle. So much so that her performance was praised by many publications. By comparison, with all the CGI eating up all the script-time in the KL Battle - Cersei was left with virtually nothing to do during the battle, boringly staring out the window.
[quote] Oh. Game Over! Kapow! Now there's your geekness showing again. Applying video games terms to fiction writing.
I thought you understood sarcasm? I’m applying the same teenage vernacular that D&D used to describe events in their own silly script: “Jon and Sansa “failed geography” [in high school]”; “Daenerys ‘kinda’ forgot about the Iron Fleet’ “, etc.
Benioff himself said: “I was a huge fantasy geek growing up. I was the dungeon master in my D&D GAME.”
[quote] Martin said that he wrote GoT as a novel because he was frustrated with the budgets and technology restraints of the TV industry in the early 90's. That his imagination was so vast that the CGI didn't exist to tell his story with the glorious detail he saw it in. How grateful he was that he got to see his story unfold using technology that finally caught up to his imagination. (and the money}
A more “vast world … with glorious detail”? What, like Season 8’s pitch-dark, budget-saving Battle of Winterfell (in the the near-finale of the entire series) where you can’t even see half of any “glorious detail”? Or Season 8’s Battle of King’s Landing where Daenerys just torches any “detail” at lightning-speed in a matter of seconds?
Creating a “vast world” does not mean neglecting all the other aspects of the screenplay.
You mentioned Star Wars: well, this was exactly like the Prequels - increasingly more CGI and green screen, increasingly less intelligent dialogue, motivation exploration, emotional resonance, etc. It became hollow.
[quote] And most likely he was intending to have Dany get shanked by Jon mid kiss!
That’s moot. But in Martin’s Azor Ahai prophecy he didn’t “shank” his partner, he used a sword. You can’t surreptitiously “shank” anyone with a big sword. Using a sword suggests a Targaryen vs Targaryen stand-off.
This scene was not as much a reflection on Daenerys, as it was on Jon Snow. Snow’s character, as developed in the show, is extremely honour code-bound, whereas stabbing someone unawares or in the back is not a strategy for an honour-espousing character. Because it’s cowardly and weak - there was no one else there, there was no need for “secrecy”. It’s a method usually reserved for slimy characters. But Snow is not supposed to be a cowardly or weak character. A cloak-and-dagger move is not Snow’s modus operandi.
Also, it’s hilarious how Tyrion & Snow’s plan made no accomodation whatseover for Drogon and the Unsullied & Dothraki’s potential reaction. So they planned to depose the monarch - ok, then what? What if Drogon (a gigantic Godzilla) goes into a rage-filled frenzy after seeing his maternal figure dead - and barbecues the rest of KL? But Tyrion and Snow, in their dialogue, didn’t even [italic]mention[/italic] Drogon once! As if he’s completely unimportant and irrelevant. Their plan was reckless - ironically, it could have resulted in even more catastrophic destruction, with an uncontrollable rage-filled dragon and a horde of foreigners wreaking more havoc as revenge.
And the cherry on top of this silly plan, is that Snow gets punished for it, while Tyrion admits “Jon committed a CRIME” and then gets rewarded. Lol, how was it a “crime” - Tyrion was the one who suggested it himself!