I'm joking of course.Quoting DavidSeven (view post)
But quite the bummer that the rushed season has obviously hurt the show's character development despite the setpieces we've been given, and in a way, have been wanting.
I'm joking of course.Quoting DavidSeven (view post)
But quite the bummer that the rushed season has obviously hurt the show's character development despite the setpieces we've been given, and in a way, have been wanting.
She's a literal scion who bought her way into the industry. It doesn't take talent to throw money at Paul Thomas Anderson or Darren Aronofsky and let them do whatever they want.Quoting DavidSeven (view post)
I don't think much of her as a producer or CEO. Annapurna has no editorial voice and Ellison hasn't done a good job of differentiating the brand in the marketplace, especially compared to her immediate competitors like A24 or Blumhouse.
For someone who hasn’t differentiated her brand, it sure seems like she has differentiated her brand enough for you!
That being said, I am dismissing her Tweet not on account of her age or background or gender but because it’s on Twitter. After all, the biggest problem with the show is that it used to consist of an entire novel’s worth of ideas condensed into one season, and now it consists of an entire Tweet’s worth of ideas condensed into one season. They should have at least looked into an Instagram caption or something with some real room for nuance.
This was the root of my post. Shes the daughter of the third richest person in America, woke up one day and decided to be a Hollywood producer. She's the least qualified subject matter expert I would turn to for thoughts on a creative narrative. Everyone on this forum is more qualified than her.Quoting Irish (view post)
Except for goddamn Lazlo.Quoting Dukefrukem (view post)
Quoting Ezee E (view post)
last four:
black widow - 8
zero dark thirty - 9
the muse - 7
freaky - 7
now reading:
lonesome dove - larry mcmurtry
Letterboxd
The Harrison Marathon - A Podcast About Harrison Ford
I linked her Tweet, not because she's any sort of expert on the matter, but because she's a fairly well-known and influential person in the industry who blasted the GoT showrunners by name. That is not the sort of thing you see every day. And, as Peng mentioned, it's not like she stating anything that's controversial. These guys are getting pummeled in every corner of the internet for these last 2-3 episodes.
letterboxd.
A Star is Born (2018) **1/2
Unforgiven (1992) ***1/2
The Sisters Brothers (2018) **
Crazy Rich Asians (2018) ***
The Informant! (2009) ***1/2
BlacKkKlansman (2018) ***1/2
Sorry to Bother You (2018) **1/2
Eighth Grade (2018) ***
Mission Impossible: Fallout (2018) ***
Ant-Man and The Wasp (2018) **1/2
Hope you took it as a joke!Quoting Lazlo (view post)
Maybe I’ve watched each season a few too many times, but her willingness to wipe out cities has been around for a long time. The show needed an additional episode to highlight her madness, but people being completely blindsided by her going full crazy haven’t been paying attention and have been blinded by their love for the character.
“What we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, er... an eating machine. It's really a miracle of evolution. All this machine does is swim and eat and make little sharks and that's all.”
The “how” has been shoddy that it calls the “what” as questionable. It’s not the first time the show has pulled a rug under the audience towards a feel-bad big incident, but the events surrounding those feel logical and strongly written in detail whereas this... doesn’t (and I’m understating it big time). It feels ridiculous in the moment so that’s why people reject it, not because it exists.
Midnight Run (1988) - 9
The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) - 8.5
The Adventures of Robinhood (1938) - 8
Sisters (1973) - 6.5
Shin Godzilla (2016) - 7.5
I haven't rewatched any of the seasons, but my impression is that she was willing to wipe out cities when she thought it was necessary to conquer them. That wasn't the case here. She won. Then she systematically destroyed the city for no good reason (the idea of "ruling by fear" doesn't wash with me because she knows full well it isn't necessary to kill everyone to accomplish this. When she toasted the two Tarly's last season while a few dozen of their men watched, all of them bent the knee immediately after they saw what she was capable of).Quoting Scar (view post)
If she had done something that played to her baser instincts, like letting a few thousand innocents die in collateral damage as she thought it necessary to take down the Red Keep, that would have been a question of judgement, not of her mental state. And it would have made people consider trying to remove her from the Throne. But that's not what the writers needed. They needed a good reason to kill Dany in the final episode, and anything other than the most extreme war crime wouldn't have been sufficient justification.
Yeah, the prior instances in which she was willing to kill innocents always seemed tethered to some larger strategy or at least an element of closely woven retribution. Setting fire to a bunch of low-born commoners really serves no function whatsoever. She had already won the throne, and she should know Cersei doesn't care about the people she's burning alive. I could be wrong, but I don't think there's anything in the show that suggests that she would indiscriminately slaughter thousands of people by simply going "mad". She might do something like this to send a message or to punish the allies of her enemies, but not just because a light went off and she went berserk.
letterboxd.
A Star is Born (2018) **1/2
Unforgiven (1992) ***1/2
The Sisters Brothers (2018) **
Crazy Rich Asians (2018) ***
The Informant! (2009) ***1/2
BlacKkKlansman (2018) ***1/2
Sorry to Bother You (2018) **1/2
Eighth Grade (2018) ***
Mission Impossible: Fallout (2018) ***
Ant-Man and The Wasp (2018) **1/2
One part that immediately springs to mind is from season 2, when she was not allowed access to the city in the desert. She proclaimed that once her dragons have grown, she will return to the cities that have wronged her and destroy their armies and their cities.
“What we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, er... an eating machine. It's really a miracle of evolution. All this machine does is swim and eat and make little sharks and that's all.”
Let's face it. Thrones got to the level that there was really no way to please the audiences. It may have a Sopranos-like effect where in a few years, it gets more appreciated.
I feel like the closest any final season got to being widely approved was Breaking Bad.
Sopranos, Oz, The Wire, Seinfeld... all accused of having pretty bad final seasons.
But those are divisive, and mostly for the very end itself, not plain bad in a simple scene-by-scene writing basis on the way there like this. It’s bashed mostly for the execution of their ending’s choices, not for the choices themselves like those shows.
Midnight Run (1988) - 9
The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) - 8.5
The Adventures of Robinhood (1938) - 8
Sisters (1973) - 6.5
Shin Godzilla (2016) - 7.5
The Wire was ridiculed pretty hard for everything in its last season from what i remember. The "serial killer" subplot being criticized especially as being something that the show wouldn't normally have in its first seasons. I think some of the journalist stuff was looked down upon too as being too on the nose.Quoting Peng (view post)
Oh, yeah, just was like, didn't expect to get brought up in this conversation, haha!Quoting Ezee E (view post)
last four:
black widow - 8
zero dark thirty - 9
the muse - 7
freaky - 7
now reading:
lonesome dove - larry mcmurtry
Letterboxd
The Harrison Marathon - A Podcast About Harrison Ford
The key part is the one I just bolded. I have no particular love for the character, no more than for other characters (and I like Cersei a lot better from a writing and acting point of view) but there is no natural progression to her madness, we're just supposed to buy it on account of her mad close-ups and what we know of her family. She's a just ruler until she becomes a crazed psychopath. Hell, Jon Snow and Arya have done more fucked up shit than her.Quoting Scar (view post)
This is definitively too much. I hate this season as much as the next discerning fan but to spit out hate against people because they didn't close a show in a satisfactory manner is a worrying phenomenon. And to see it coming from colleagues (like that Megan Ellison tweet) is frankly disgusting.Quoting DavidSeven (view post)
I know they win a lot of money but none deserves personal attacks for writing fiction badly. Come on.
Last edited by Grouchy; 05-16-2019 at 09:21 PM.
An idea that would make her descent into madness more believable:
I watched The Wire long after it originally aired and I had no problem with either of those things, for what it's worth.Quoting Ezee E (view post)
Yeah, in retrospect, I don't have a problem with it either. It came up mostly as discussion week between week.Quoting Grouchy (view post)
I was also thinking about this series and how it spanned across books.
Season 1 = Book 1
Season 2 = Book 2 and some of Book 3
Season 3 = Book 3 (and still not all of it)
Season 4 = Book 3, 4+5
Season 5 = Book 4+5
Season 6 = Book 4+5+6
Guessing -
Season 7 = Book 6 (?)
Season 8 eps 1-3 = Book 6
Season 8 eps 4-6 = Book 7
All of Book 7 in 3 episodes, as I would see it.
I’m trying to imagine how thick the second half of Episode 4 would be in book form. 200+? 300+? Half a book?
Midnight Run (1988) - 9
The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) - 8.5
The Adventures of Robinhood (1938) - 8
Sisters (1973) - 6.5
Shin Godzilla (2016) - 7.5
As I read through the books, I've become seriously obsessed with this line of thinking and how would it be possible to adapt it faithfully as a TV show. The trick the writers pulled was to push all storylines leading to the Red Wedding forward in the third season and then to move a little into the fourth book for the fourth season, and also to be able to use that massacre for the finale. In the books the Red and Purple Weddings happen almost simultaneously. Then they chose the healthier route of just departing from the books, because there are many storylines (Dorne, Greyjoy, most of Jaime, Tyrion and Brienne) completely absent from seasons 5 and 6.Quoting Ezee E (view post)
My solution would be to do Season 1 and 2 pretty much exactly as they are, then have Season 3 be the third book with sixteen episodes and a massive, epic, unfilmable 20 episode season combining Book 4 and 5.
Last edited by Grouchy; 05-17-2019 at 01:30 AM.
I'm just about to get into Book 4/5.
The last few hundred pages of Book 3 would've been pretty great to read without knowing what was going on. Heck, it's great to read knowing what's coming in. Kings are killed left and right. I think the show did a pretty damn good job separating the weddings.