Can Game of Thrones Still Surprise Us? (SPOILERS) – Wisecrack Quick Take

I wonder how much not having a book to go off changed the show direction

Jared! loved that you presente the "real life Jared", rather than the voice only Jared, please continue doing this

it's time for all that was set up to be payed off. If it was just a mess and then ended ,what would be the point

They fucking killed Hodor, that's when the show died

I think the flaw is in the fact that it is a story. For the most part we wanna see Cerci be mounted by horses, Jaime come full circle, and Jon and or Dany, on the throne. In the back of most of our heads, it's what we want to see. That and the Lord of wine and tits, be the lord of wine and tits

The stab sounds

I agree with this summation. I would just piggyback these thoughts by saying that the magic of the first 5-6 seasons was mostly due to D&D being able to pull the storyline and dialogue directly from the books and having GRRM right there to help fill in the blanks. Now that they are basically on their own and are well beyond the books in all aspects you can see that D&D are just studio guys, not visionaries in the way GRRM is.

I have no doubts that the books will maintain the quality and edginess that we have come to expect from the series, but the same cannot be said of the show. The show will maintain it's beautiful aesthetics and epic feel, but the story and the dialogue have suffered and will continue to do so.

D&D's lack of vision is so obvious that it seems as though they are trawling reddit boards and wikia pages, poaching fan theories to fill out their story and give cheap fan service; something that surely has made GRRM's eyes roll a time or two (Cleganebowl anyone?).

I still wait for the final season with baited breath, but the show is clearly not the same anymore and I'll have to wait for "The Winds of Winter" to get the payoff I truly seek.

Hes right i couldn't put my finger on it but something about this season felt a little different. Ill still be around for season 8 though on like fucking 2019 😂

Petyr Baelish was accused and killed in just one episode. Ned Stark, Lyana Arryn and so many of Petyr's victims died in so many. You see the pattern? I would kill Petyr slowly and painfully, but GOT proved that bad things happen often, while justice is very short. And that's true, in some sense. However, watching Petyr claw at his neck just felt off-putting. Perhaps they should have said it, insted of just showing it.
P.S. Season 5 was the one that lost my interest. Still, I watched on, hoping they will redeem themselves. And now, when the show has a huge budget, how can I not look at the wonderful presentation, but lackluster story. Right now, I want to see the action. That was not the GOT I grew to love.

The last season is going to go back to breaking the rules. Keep in mind that there’s suppose to be a bitter end to the story, so season 7 being typical is basically restoring our shock pallets, making season 8 that much more shocking when it gives us all the bitter sweet parts it’s sure to give us. No ones safe in the last season of series

Ay! Gendry didn't cross all of Westeros to get the message to Daenerys, he ran to the Wall, and brothers sent ravens. Although still – it's all fucking impossible. 1. Gendry couldn't be too fast in this siberian cold; 2. Gendry could have got killed by animals or the undead for the reason he was alone 3. How Snow and his team survived on their existing supplies (I mean food) for supposedly a week or so, beats me. I can imagine them sleeping huddled and covered with their cloaks maybe, but you need to spend daytime walking, or you freeze. And next time we see them, they STAND bored and tired on the rock.

the fact that the show is now going so well for our heroes makes me feel a very strong sense of foreboding that we're going to see a Red Wedding type of twist before the end comes. Get everyone feeling safe and secure that the heroes made it and the SPLONK! They all die!

I still enjoyed season 7, but all the things that made Game of Thrones great (unpredictability, ruthlessness of killing loved characters, no clear good/bad guy, etc.) isn't present. Yes it's the end of the series and the White Walkers are the final enemy, but still. Think about it, how many major characters died this season? Pretty much only Littlefinger (which was beyond bullshit) and Viserion. When was the last time a major hero died too? Hodor I guess lol

I atest all of the problems with this season to there only being 7 episodes and D&D failing to recognize the stories and development of literally any character that isn't Jon/Dany/Cersei. Why is Tyrion suddenly such a bitchass? Why did Varys and Littlefinger – the Spider and the starter of the War of Five Kings – do literally nothing all season? Why did Randall Tarly have no problem switching from Tyrell to Lannister, but then won't bend the knee to Dany?

Season 8 better knock it out of the fuckin park or everyone will roast this show until the end of time at this rate. I'm also interested to see how the last two books are going to go at this rate. Will angry nerds spite the show completely and say the books are better no matter what happens? Will the books be able to live up to the hype presented from the show? Who knows.

Perhaps its because it is in fact impossible to balance realism and randomness against fantasy epics and satisfactory character arcs. And until GRRM wraps up the series this show only goes to prove that is may not be possible at all.

Wasn't it around the end of the 5th season was when the show caught up with the books and started to weave it's own narrative with GRRM's plot points? Although this may be more of a correlative observation, I think the show writers are now flowing into classical storytelling, as you enumerated, by using the typical narrative archetypes because they don't have the detailed story of the books to guide them. By that, they cannot anticipate the causality of the actions the characters create and only know the plot points from GRRM.

The series already took off from its origin material, cutting off main characters and so on, but it was still somewhat close to it, now that there are no books to base on, they just got back to the formula, the ice dragon shit was pretty obvious from the moment she landed on westeros. I was actually struck when Cersei spoke of the golden company in the season finale, considering that in the books they are already in Westeros and serving another lord who`s pretty solid as a contender for the throne (the other Targaryen alive) or how they decide to mention Jon's real name Aegon (the other living and breathing targaryen in the books).

"Why is this happening? It goes back to the three act structure." Three act structure my ass. Season seven is shit awful because D&D are fucking retards either incapable or unwilling of writing a believable and interesting story. This latest season has been nothing more than high budget fan-fiction. The abject failure of season 7 has nothing to do with a 3-act structure. Bad writing is bad writing and Benioff and Weiss are some of the worst. I mean goddamn. They make Tommy Wiseau look like a fucking literary genius.

I remember George saying in an interview with the cast something like this "I don't read fan theories or any of the like. I dislike the idea that someone out there has figured it out. I want to surprise those who come to read and watch. But the fact that people keep asking me to surprise them makes writing complicated. There are communities, groups of people on the web that talk about every detail to come up with a theory. I mean, I could bring down the aliens into Westeros and that would surely surprise them. But what kind of resolution would that be? So that's why I don't read feedback or fan mail, I don't want to know for myself that people have figured it out for a long time."

Base off from that statement George just wants to say that at some point you have to concede to old tried and proven techniques or else you'll be going out with a hiss instead of a bang. Like the example he gave, something fucked up could happen like let's say, a plague suddenly came into Westeros suddenly snuffing out any chance for the living to survive. I mean, that'd shock a lot of people but it just wouldn't be satisfying.

I would argue that GoT lost it's edge to hammer home a better ending, a satisfying ending And sure, we can complain that it's going to get predictable towards the end (especially with all the looming fan theories out there). But in respect to the variety of audience it has and the media it was presented in, they did a bang up job with the series. I can't wait to see the ending.

You offload a bunch of spoilers 0:18 on us and THEN give the spoiler warning!? One minute in… 1:20 That's fucked up, mate. No, I don't mind having been spoiled, I knew what I was in for, choosing to watch analysis before the show. I actually hate these excessive spoiler warnings for their obvious redundancy. But worst of all that is when you even get the spoiler warning wrong. Warn, then spoil! Not spoil carelessly and then warn after the fact… Ill timing my friend, ill timing. p.s.: Cool, I have a Zombie dragon to look forward to! When I finally get around to watching season 7.

I didn't know Margery died but I'm not surprised at all I saw that one coming a mile away.

I don't know, I figured all these characters have lasted this long because the "lord of light" has a purpose for them and as soon as they've fulfilled that purpose they can drop dead. I love GoT but they show lost any stakes for me as soon as Jon came back to life, so I never noticed much of a difference this season.

agreed

Didn't Berserk do the samething as game of thrones.

I think for the show to not have a cliche ending it needs to end like Final Fantasy XIV. Basically, the white walkers need to win while everyone else is killing each other.

I think any perceived problems with the last season are really problems with the preceding two. Those seasons spent so long meandering around, all the characters off doing totally unrelated stuff, that now they have to rush to get to the resolution, and we can feel that rushedness in this last season.

As for not delivering on promises… I'm not so sure. I think the subversiveness of the show will stand regardless of the way it ends. I also don't think this drive towards a more classical resolution has come out of the blue. Around season 5 it started to feel to me like this story is a gigantic filtering machine sorting the characters into two sides and setting them up for a final showdown. These are the sides in a war that is larger than any family or political conflict, it's a war of symbolism or abstractions – that is, a song of ice and fire.

And I think it's beautiful to watch all of this unfold. The only problem is that they've screwed up the pacing. They did that in seasons 5 and 6, we are just now feeling the effects of it. It's still an awesome show.

I was kind of hoping the white walkers would end up killing everyone. They would go down fighting over their petty differences while ignoring the larger threat.

I hate that i agree and I hate that I didn't like Game of Thrones this season as much as I did during the earlier portions of the show from season 2-5 I was hooked!
The Red Wedding was something I heard about long before I watched the show and I still didn't know what it truly was until I saw Rob's wife get repeatedly and brutally stabbed in the baby that this show was going places I couldn't even fathom, then season 4 topped it by pushing Geoffrey/Jeoffry outta the way in favor of bringing in a much darker character in Ramsey and then topping that by having us watch the Mountain crush a man's skull.

I hope we still get that bittersweet ending like George R.R Martin promised at the very least

Come on… The book material has ended, Martin, doesn't work with the creators for quite some time and they have only bulletpoints, so they stick to what they know. Formulaic TV with lots of cool scenes but no substance. This is not for viewers satisfaction. So please stop even trying to excuse them.

Just look at the whole subplot of Littlefinger, Sansa and Arya. That could've been two full seasons, or the very least one full season long, main focus intrigue. Instead, we had few scenes and surprisingly a good ending. Why? How? When exactly Bran got mixed up into this? And considering he can see things, why was that even an intrigue in the first place? Why Arya confronted Sansa about the letter? Think about it. If Arya believed what she said about Sansa betraying their family and trying to betray Jon, would it matter if Littlefinger tried to instigate some inner fighting between them? And if she didn't mean it, why did we even see that scene? The entire story arc makes no sense and the end is so abrubt that it just posses questions upon questions.

Also I have a question. Seeing how the good guys are constantly loosing, would it really be such a bad thing to end the show with Walkers counqering Westeros?

All in all, GoT is suffering from bad writting. And it is not just this season. It was going down hill for some time. Granted, maybe they don't want to make up their own stories, in fear that when the books do come out it will be so different. But then again there already have been so many changes that I don;t see that as an excuse. Clearly they are way over their heads. Maybe they hoped Martin will finish the story before they got to this point. Well, though luck. Their true "talent" is now on display.

Westeros now feels like a sandbox with little kids jumping around it however they please while playing an imaginary fantasy game.

great video and superb analysis! couldn't agree with you more

I'm sorry but I thought this show was more predictable than people give it credit. Although it doesn't help when one of the characters is played by Sean Bean.

The thing is, the illogical transporting type stuff wouldn't be so jarring if realisitic travelling wasn't such a huge part of the early show. I think they could have saved the series by having Cersei get Gregor to kill Jaime in the last episode.

"Now all the characters we like are on one side."

I guess you don't like Cersei? She's on her own side.

Why – because it now watches like fan fiction

Has anyone else not been able to escape that fucking ad for the Orville? Literally every video I've watched for two weeks had the same trailer on it and it's making my want to die

Seriously guys, you need to stop with the sound effects :/

show is being rushed too much they need to slow the fuck down before they ruin the show

First, I really love these videos. Second, I'm not quite shure if you can say this about the whole season. In episode 4 for example I wasnt happy about any of the soldiers being killed. If I would follow your thesis I should have supported Danaerys. I still think there isn't the clear good and evil thing throughout the season but it decreased.
I can also understand why the show is now what it is, because they want to give us closure. They're "cleaning up" the conspiracy theories.

7:06 "Why is this happening?" – Because the show isn't operating off of a source material anymore.

It pulled a Star Wars prequels on us all 😔

Please please please do something over Twin Peaks