Some thoughts on this season of Game of Thrones (and the finale specifically)

I maintain that stretching 400 pages out over 10 hours was frickin' dumb.

To put this in perspective for a moment: On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the novel, is 258 pages long and uses a larger type than A Storm of Swords. The (extraordinarily faithful) film adaptation is two hours and twenty minutes long. There are 34 lines of text per page in A Storm of Swords and 32 in OHMSS, so let's engage in some completely specious math and claim that you can wrangle about one hour out of about 100 pages of Storm text. This squares nicely with the first two seasons.

Applying the stretching ratio that the Game of Thrones producers inflicted on us this year, we'd be looking at a six-hour long OHMSS. Bugger all would happen - granted, Fleming is a more concise writer than Martin.

Speaking of OHMSS - no, not the bit where there's a wedding where one of the happy couple dies right after, or the dark-haired awkwardly-acted hero's ginger love interest dies shortly after a battle at a high altitude in a snowy clime, or even the fact that Diana Rigg's in both, although that last bit is hi-frickin-larious - OHMSS was directed by someone capable of staging fight scenes. I mean, huffing kell, Peter Hunt is basically responsible for the lightning-fast editing of films today - a bit of hyperbole, but I stand by it - but the key difference is YOU CAN TELL WHAT THE HELL'S GOING ON. THERE ARE ENOUGH SHOTS AT WIDE ANGLES AND THE CAMERA NEVER CROSSES THE 180 LINE. This is like, filmmaking 101, but apparently some people need a refresher.

Alex Graves is not capable of staging fight scenes.

I could go back and watch it again, but I'm pretty sure the Mountain/Viper fight in episode 8 was about 50% reaction shots. I'm so glad that all of these people were more entertained than I was by the fight they got to witness.  Good for them. This is, like, one of the biggest and bestest duels in the books and I was really excited to see it.

SPLOILERS


This time around, we had a zany sped-up Sinbad knockoff and this bit where two heavily armored blokes were wailing on each other. 1) speeding up stuff is not in and of itself bad - again, Peter Hunt, any 60s Bond film, take a look - so long as you're doing it to KEEP THE FLOW OF THE SCENE AND NOT JUST TO DESPERATELY TRY TO MAKE YOUR SCENE LOOK MORE INTERESTING/INTENSE.  2) I don't know how he managed to screw this up, given that one is a light-haired woman and the other is a dark-haired man - maybe because the man had longer hair, maybe because Alex Graves evidently shot the entire scene with shadows on the characters, or perhaps because Alex Graves kept screwing up the editing so that in one shot the Hound was on the left and Brienne was on the right and in the next shot the Hound was on the right and Brienne was on the left.

Compare that fight to this fight. (Start at 2:30) It's sped up, rapidly-edited (check out how quickly they move from the sand to waist-deep water), and the light source is behind them for a good chunk of it. AND YOU CAN TELL WHAT'S GOING ON, even in a doinky little YouTube video where they didn't bother to set the margins right. This is because Peter Hunt was a director.  Alex Graves is a hack.

Also there was this zany Sinbad knockoff for no reason except to DROP WINDS OF WINTER SPOILERS ON US HOW DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARE THEY I ENJOY BOTHERING ALL MY ILLITERATE FRIENDS (ALL NINETEEN OF THEM) BY DANGLING JUICY SPOILERS OVER THEIR HEADS BUT I CAN'T DO THAT IF THIS SHOW WON'T BOTHER TO STICK FAITHFULLY TO THE GOSPEL OF GRRM etc, etc. Did TBS's contract run out or what?  Did they think an episode where Brienne and the Hound beat the snot out of each other was going to lack for action?

The Brienne/Arya scene was pure fanfic and you know it was. Jaime and the White Book - gabberfrakky, Jaime and the White Book is basically my favorite scene in the entire novel series. It was glossed over for frickin' twincest. Jaime's back where he was, moral-compass wise, before he got his hand cut off. Great. So glad we spent two seasons accomplishing jack-all. There was no Lady Stoneheart. VARYS WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

TYSHA.

TYSHA! SAY HER NAME, FATHER (yes, air that on Father's Day, great).

I am amazed that they had time for sex and nudity and a new romance that literally cannot go anywhere because Grey Worm literally doesn't have the parts for it and couldn't be bothered to stick in, in the six hours that they had TO MAKE UP, STUFF THAT I CARED ABOUT! I AM AN ENTITLED FAN PRONE TO RAGE GRR ARGH but really...

Dear HBO. Tonight you murdered my favorite character (on the privy, in a scene that was at the very least well-acted, and yes, I know that having him as my favorite character means that I'm messed up in the head, well aware) and, lacking any semblance of a recognizable Jaime Lannister from the books - seriously the greatest literary character of my lifetime, has been totally absence from the show since he raped his sister back in 4X03 - or any particular desire to watch Daenerys continue to exhibit the political acumen of Ned Stark, I can't say that you've piqued my interest going forward.

Was anything improved from the books? Well, hrm. Quite like Show!Tywin, perhaps because he has more scenes and isn't shown almost exclusively from the perspective of his family member he hates the most. As I said above, at the very least his death scene was well-acted - normally I'd complain about the repetitiveness of him trying to get off the chamber pot and back to his bedroom, but it really drove home one of those little character tics of his (also, Tywin both comes to and loses power in King's Landing in scenes were someone/thing takes a shit, funny). Now that he's gone I'm looking forward to Cersei wrecking House Lannister, but Jaime's character arc - the thing that makes Feast better than Dance DON'T EVEN START, YOU KNOW IT'S TRUE - is essentially ruined.

As for Jon Snuh... well, Kit Harrington kind of sort of re-learned how to act, so there's hope. And killing off Pyp and Grenn means we don't have to suffer through him flunking Leadership 101 and sending them away... or perhaps it makes his decision to send Sam away even more dumberer. Time will tell.

More later. It's late, and the Captain insists he has to shove off for Braavos right now.