‘Game of Thrones’ star Carice Van Houten on finale backlash: “It feels a bit ungrateful”

What the fuck does she care? She got her tits out for money. I don't think the artistic claims of the show, such as they are, reside in any way in her part or performance.

I think she sounds much more reasonable than some of the fans (and R1.)

She was answering questions about what interviewers are going to ask her questions about. She didn't say anything scandalous or unhinged or arrogant.

It's crazy for fans to feel entitled to better endings or different endings. That they were disappointed, fine, no reason that they shouldn't share their disappointment, and no reason they shouldn't have wished for better or different, but for they to demand "correction" and amends to meet their vision of how a series should have ended is insane.

Every criticism of the finale that I read - and I mean every single one - was focussed exclusively on the show runners 'Dan and Dave'. All the actors were complimented for being able to pull it through to the extent it was pulled through.

And even among the anti-Dan and Dave comments, I don't think I ever saw "die, bitch, die!" type of comments. More like accusing them of being lazy, greedy, wanting to move on to another show, not listening to George Martin, blah blah blah.

[quote]Elsewhere, author George R. R. Martin is currently working on the sixth A Song of Ice and Fire book, The Winds of Winter...

...as he has been doing for the last 378 years.

You know, I served you a delicious salad followed by an amazing soup. Then some succulent appetizers. So what the finale course was a plate of shit, you are so ungrateful.

The ending wasn't great, but the backlash over it was over the top. The Freefolk subreddit is absolutely insane. It's just a tv show!

I love what this actress brought to this role.

To watch the series required a lot of time and when you spend that much time with something you become invested. People connect with the characters and they become “”real” in a sense. Even as a casual watcher I was instantly tipped off by the way the characters and tone of the show had changed in that final season. Fans are entitled to have whatever type of response they are genuinely feelings.

You can’t have it both ways lady.. accepting the adoration and accolades but ignoring criticism - valid critiques and view points held by the majority of viewers.

And as R3 said, 999% of the case and crew were showered in praise and it was just those idiotic show runners no one could stand

Me too, R7, both of them.

[quote]Fans are entitled to have whatever type of response they are genuinely feelings.

Of course, but are they entitled to a rewrite? To reshooting? Are they entitled to mutiple rewrites and multiple reshoots to make the story that they each sub-faction wanted?

There are two types of people in the world: those happy (or happy enough) with the ending of The Sopranos and idiots who think they story is theirs because they "invested" in it.

If you don’t have a punchline, don’t tell the joke.

Don’t string along your audiences if you can’t deliver a satisfying ending - a problem a lot of shows have. If you’re going to pitch an idea for a story that has enough going for it to last multiple seasons, you’d better have an ending.

That being said, it was promoted from the get-go that the writer of the novels this series was based on had not yet completed the series, yet the series began filming anyway.

That was the tip off: Audience beware.

That’s how Lost lost me. That first season when there were delays between episodes and they started showing re-runs after what - three? I checked out and never went back.

When people were bent out of shape about the ending, I felt no regret.

I could never decide if Breaking Bad had the best finale ever, or if I was overrating them because they actually HAD an ending and stuck it (unlike the Sopranos or Mad Men, to cite some supposedly historic TV).

[quote]Don’t string along your audiences if you can’t deliver a satisfying ending -

Too subjective. Satisfying to everyone? There are some people who are fine with the final season, myself included. I'm satisfied. But it's obvious others aren't. The showrunners can only do what they seem fit to do. They can't write for everyone because it is impossible. They can only be true to their vision.

The overkill is as r10 points out, those clamoring for rewrites and reshoots and projecting their hatred on the final season on the actors. There are fans who were hating on the actors for sticking up for Dan and Dave. I understand where Van Houten is coming from because people act as if the final season negated the quality of the previous seasons.

She has a right to her opinion but its not helpful to her career to express it.

She lost me when she said the writer's are "fucking amazing" or whatever. Once they ran out of Martin's material to crib from, their shocking lack of talent and creativity was laid bare. The show plummeted in regard and popularity once they were helming the story and writing all the dialogue, and they knew it, and that's why they bitched the final seasons. It was a little tantrum, "if we're not good enough for you, we won't even try!"

Van Houten did a splendid job with the limited, erratic material she was given. Supporting one loser claimant to the throne, with crazy prophecies, extending even to burning his daughter alive. Then showing up at the last minute to provide heroic, if fruitless help, to the defenders.

All of which were events not in Martin’s books, but tacked on by ‘Dan and David,’ as melodramatic outcomes piled up on one another, making for an abrupt and unsatisfying conclusion.

Oh well. It’s only a movie.

I get what she is saying about the unhinged people in the fandom, but the ending really did suck very very much.

I don't remember this kind of anger about a show's finale before social media.

Lots of people hated the end of Lost. And The Sopranos got a lot of WTFs???

But there were other big show finales - MASH, Mary Tyler Moore, for example that people just watched and then went on to something else.

These "fans" get too personally involved and go around the bend.

Another reason that Social Media has been a very bad thing for society.

Carice Houten gave an excellent performance with everything she was asked to do. She shouldn't take complaints about the writing personally, she didn't write it.

[quote]Too subjective. Satisfying to everyone?

How about satisfying to the writer, at least?

You site Sopranos as an example r13.

When David Chase put a mafioso in front of a therapist to grab our attention, is that the ending he had in mind?

Was that scene really what he had pictured in his head when he came up with a story he thought required having years to tell?

—R11

I actually liked the ending. It was tonally consistent with the entire show. I know a lot of people expected a glorious uplifting celebration, with medals and marriages and dragons doing flybys to honor the great win. But that was not this show. It was fantasy for people who don't like fantasy, that's how it was conceived. A war story written by a conscientious objector. There's wasn't going to be any glory.

There were one or two clumsy moments but it's as I anticipated. I was pleasantly surprised the the Stark kids prevailed..

GoT fans are insane though. Whenever GRRM tweets anything he gets death threats from crazy fans cos he hasn't finished writing his book yet.

Life is fucking chockablock full of disappointments, not least in film and literature and television.

How many good horror films start off well and end wishing you'd stopped watching after the first 45-minutes? (The great majority, I'll wager; exceptions are quite rare.)

How many books have you read that started brilliantly, and then fed your attention as they progressed only to fall apart at the end with a hurried or trite ending?

How many television series have drawn you in with a great and novel premise and chugged along nicely but then disappointed at the end?

How many times have you taken a course or watched a documentary that started well but lost you at the end?

How many people have you met who made a great first impression and a second and a third but then, well, you know...

Life would grind to a worse than Covid-19 halt if everyone had a tantrum at some disappointing outcome.

You completely missed the mark on why people were unhappy with the last season r21.

[quote] I was pleasantly surprised the the Stark kids prevailed..

So was I considering what happened to Ned, Catelyn, Robb and Rickon, I assumed only Jon and Arya would be left standing.

Today's the one year anniversary of the finale and I know EW or Vulture has already posted a piece looking back on the missteps. I rather just think of the good.

[quote]GoT fans are insane though. Whenever GRRM tweets anything he gets death threats from crazy fans cos he hasn't finished writing his book yet.

GRRM said thanks to the lockdown he will be able to get down to writing. I don't know why he's lying to himself. He lost momentum and its understandable, especially seeing that the show got to a finale before he did. Now, no matter what he writes, the show will be seen as the definitive ending. The show, for many, is the definitive reality despite the differences between books and series.

No I don't think I am. The biggest complaint I hear on-line is "What the fuck? Bran won the Throne?"

No one was going to win the the Throne. It was soooooo fucking obvious that there wasn't going to be a throne at the end. That there was no winning here. It was also obvious that Kings Landing was going get a new asshole ripped in it.

But nope people still think Bran WON the Game of Thrones. So many people who never read the books. There was no winning here. Just surviving and picking up the pieces. The pointlessness of endless conflict.

Yes people rightfully bitch about Cersie. She was poorly used.

Martin wrote himself into a Gordian continuity knot. He must employ a team of researchers whose job is to vet everything he produces against everything that came before, he'd have to, there's no way he's keeping all that in his head over decades. The book isn't finished because he's bored of the story and can't bring himself to take on the monumental task of tying off all those subplots within subplots and all those literally thousands of characters, I wouldn't either. I just imagine him facepalming every time he thinks of facing that blank page. He did it to himself, together with his editors who refused to reign him in and allowed the series to blossom into the epic mess it's become.

There's been a rumour in writing circles for a while now that Martin will finish the 6th and then pass the series off the Brandon Sanderson, who does seem the most likely candidate, though he isn't as clever a writer as Martin is (or was at his best, who knows now). Speaking of, Sanderson has a great series on fiction writing on YouTube and other places.