Game of Thrones

[Boris13c]

anyone else just nuts over Natalie Dormer?



she definitely gives the impression she could be all sorts of wonderful trouble

[UOK]

Natalie Dormer is one of my faves. She's got incredible eyes and cheekbones. And lips. And yeah, just

yeah

[Boris13c]

Time to revive the thread since the new season is upon us. And it certainly started in an interesting fashion in episode 1.

As we approach week 4, many interesting things are afoot.

[Boris13c]

Season 7 was pretty awesome in so many ways ... Littlefinger meeting a well deserved demise was just one of many many highlights

and Season 7 is all we're going to get for a while ... Season 8 (the final season) won't air until 2019

Game of Thrones star says final season won't air until 2019

Game of Thrones‘ final season won’t return until 2019 — that’s according to series star Sophie Turner.

While HBO has yet to confirm the season 8 premiere year (which EW first revealed was the most likely option back in June), Turner let slip in a new Variety interview that “Game of Thrones comes out in 2019.”

Her quote follows news that GoT — which is currently shooting its final six episodes — will continue filming until the summer of 2018 (which also suggested that the show wouldn’t be back until the following year given the amount of post-production work required for each season).

The 2019 date arguably benefits HBO a couple ways. Since Game of Thrones season 7 aired last summer, the show is competing in the 2018 Emmy awards, which air next fall — which allows HBO to focus GoT publicity efforts on its Emmy campaign next year rather than promoting a new season at the same time. Also, when you’re a subscription-based network, keeping the highest-rated show in your history around for a bit longer never hurts either.

But ultimately the reason for the pushback seems to stem from GoT showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss simply looking to take their time and make the final season as epic as possible. The Emmy-winning duo explained previously they wanted to spend a year and a half making the fantasy show’s climactic round. Former GoT actor Jason Momoa recently visited the season 8 set in Belfast and declared the final season is “going to be the greatest thing that’s ever aired on TV. It’s going to be unbelievable. It’s going to f— up a lot of people.”

I like Jason Momoa's preview of things to come

[Boris13c]

Season 8 - the final frontier

This is slated to be the last season of GoT ... and it has had a very good run in my opinion.

Episode 1 was a nice start, and I really liked Episode 2. Lots of things coming together in Episode 2 that made for entertaining story lines.

Based on the end of episode previews, it very much looks like the shit is ready to hit the fan in Episode 3 this weekend.

[thunderspirit]

Yep. More deaths on the horizon than a Shakespearean tragedy festival.

[Ormazd]

Yep. More deaths on the horizon than a Shakespearean tragedy festival.

I fear it will be mayhem on the Infinity War scale - with half our beloved characters dying.

[wab]

What a crazy episode last night. The ending was 50% shock and 50% head scratcher.

[UOK]

What a crazy episode last night. The ending was 50% shock and 50% head scratcher.

It was intensely stressful, namely because the HBO GO servers were trash and the episode was shown with approximately 1% illumination, so for 90 minutes my girlfriend and I watched a bunch of dark blurry pixels flurry around chunks of fire.

[wab]

What a crazy episode last night. The ending was 50% shock and 50% head scratcher.

It was intensely stressful, namely because the HBO GO servers were trash and the episode was shown with approximately 1% illumination, so for 90 minutes my girlfriend and I watched a bunch of dark blurry pixels flurry around chunks of fire.

Right? I was yelling at the TV "did he die?! who was that!? wait...what happened there!?"

[The Marshall Plan]

What a crazy episode last night. The ending was 50% shock and 50% head scratcher.

It was intensely stressful, namely because the HBO GO servers were trash and the episode was shown with approximately 1% illumination, so for 90 minutes my girlfriend and I watched a bunch of dark blurry pixels flurry around chunks of fire.

Right? I was yelling at the TV "did he die?! who was that!? wait...what happened there!?"

I watched the show on Hulu with a 4K TV and I couldn't see shit during the whole fight.

[Ormazd]

I rewatched it with brightness maxed. A lot better.

[Boris13c]

What a crazy episode last night. The ending was 50% shock and 50% head scratcher.

it certainly resulted in a lot of death and destruction ... and the preview for the next episode showed the Dragon Queen talking about winning the next battle ... I mean, who do they have left to even fight?

It was intensely stressful, namely because the HBO GO servers were trash and the episode was shown with approximately 1% illumination, so for 90 minutes my girlfriend and I watched a bunch of dark blurry pixels flurry around chunks of fire.

Right? I was yelling at the TV "did he die?! who was that!? wait...what happened there!?"

was this just a problem with your apps? I watched on HBO via my DirecTV and had no issues

[UOK]

What a crazy episode last night. The ending was 50% shock and 50% head scratcher.

it certainly resulted in a lot of death and destruction ... and the preview for the next episode showed the Dragon Queen talking about winning the next battle ... I mean, who do they have left to even fight?

It was intensely stressful, namely because the HBO GO servers were trash and the episode was shown with approximately 1% illumination, so for 90 minutes my girlfriend and I watched a bunch of dark blurry pixels flurry around chunks of fire.

Right? I was yelling at the TV "did he die?! who was that!? wait...what happened there!?"

was this just a problem with your apps? I watched on HBO via my DirecTV and had no issues

It's a mixed answer. I stream through an AppleTV from 2014 or so, and the HBO NOW app/web client is kind of crap as it is. Lot of people who streamed on their PCs had similar issues.

[Ormazd]

It wasn't any better on the live HBO feed via FIOS.

[Boris13c]

What a crazy episode last night. The ending was 50% shock and 50% head scratcher.

it certainly resulted in a lot of death and destruction ... and the preview for the next episode showed the Dragon Queen talking about winning the next battle ... I mean, who do they have left to even fight?

It was intensely stressful, namely because the HBO GO servers were trash and the episode was shown with approximately 1% illumination, so for 90 minutes my girlfriend and I watched a bunch of dark blurry pixels flurry around chunks of fire.

Right? I was yelling at the TV "did he die?! who was that!? wait...what happened there!?"

was this just a problem with your apps? I watched on HBO via my DirecTV and had no issues

It's a mixed answer. I stream through an AppleTV from 2014 or so, and the HBO NOW app/web client is kind of crap as it is. Lot of people who streamed on their PCs had similar issues.

it was a much darker episode than usual for sure, but I was able to adjust the tv so I could see well enough

as a note, the darkness of the episode was noticeable enough that it warranted an actual news story ... and in that story, the creators said the lighting was like that on purpose and by design

[thunderspirit]

Yeah, I have to believe the lighting was pretty much an artistic choice, both to set the mood and to reflect "the night is dark and full of terrors".

The fog/blizzard, the Dothraki flames going dark, the hide-and-seek scene with Arya and the wights. All part of the Living army not knowing what exactly was happening.

[Boris13c]

they could have possibly improved the lighting a bit without losing the intended effects of it being night ... but there is no doubt having that battle at night was the right call and the resulting chaos seemed to be an appropriate approach to this showdown which was completed by the surprise hero

at least that was a surprise to me anyway ... and I won't spoil it by going into the details of that in case some haven't seen the episode yet

[G08]

I was watching via Xfinity on my OLED and we couldn't see shit either. Glad it wasn't just us!

[Boris13c]

I'm not sure what to make of how this final season is going ... and the episode this past Sunday was to me a confusing mess ... it was almost like they forced 2 episodes into 1 and in doing so bypassed parts of things in an unsatisfying way

maybe their rush to do too much is why a Starbucks coffee cup made it into the episode (HBO has now digitally edited the episode to remove it - https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2019/5/7/ ... ks-removed" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; )

a few strange and unfortunate twists in the story line had me scratching my head

so the first 2 episodes of season 8 were satisfying, but these last 2 weren't IMO for a multitude of reasons that can't be discussed without revealing spoilers

[cblaz11]

I thought the battle of Winterfell was amazing....especially when the music played the final 5 minutes or so.

Last episode..to me, was bad. It’s clearly going to be a fight till the death, why not kill them all when Dany and her squad was rolling 20 deep outside the gates of Kings Landing?

Prediction....Jamie kills Cersi, Sansa works behind the scenes to set up Aria killing Dani.

[thunderspirit]

Last episode was bad. I was still entertained, mind you, but it didn't stand up to scrutiny and reflection.

Ending one major threat in Episode 2, while epic as all get-out, left the rest with a very "meh" feel. I'm hoping for a rebound, but not holding my breath.

[Boris13c]

it's almost like they're just mailing it in to finish the series ... they have lost touch with all nuance and intrigue and back story which resulted in this last episode missing many points that should have instead been intriguing elements to a bigger picture

there is no intrigue, and I fear the final episode may be some real schlock instead of any satisfactory conclusion, which would be a shame

I guess Martin not finishing his book to give these guys a solid blueprint was a larger negative than anyone thought

[Boris13c]

a more humorous side story to the mess that was episode 4 - the coffee cup

Starbucks got an estimated $2.3 billion in free advertising from ‘Game of Thrones’ gaffe, and it wasn’t even its coffee cup

Starbucks gained an estimated $2.3 billion in free advertising over the last few days after a modern-day coffee cup was spotted during a “Game of Thrones” episode — and it turns out it wasn’t even a Starbucks cup.

On Sunday, eagle-eyed fans of HBO’s fantasy epic noticed something out of place during a feast scene. Photos and videos of the moment went viral on social media within hours of the show airing.



The label is muddled in shadow, but many fans speculated that it was the iconic green siren from Starbucks — and most of the jokes and discussion called out the Seattle coffee chain by name. Turns out, it was just a craft services cup.

Stacy Jones, CEO of marketing company Hollywood Branded, put the estimated value of all the buzz at $2.3 billion. Jones cited PR subscriptions service Critical Mention, which has tallied 10,627 mentions of Starbucks and ‘Game of Thrones’ online and on TV and radio around the world.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime collision of opportunity for Starbucks,” she said. “But really, this is just the tip of the iceberg, because what isn’t being monitored or estimated is the word of mouth and social media on top of this.”

Separately, social media analytics and monitoring platform Talkwalker counted more than 193,000 mentions within 48 hours that cited both Starbucks and “Game of Thrones,” or a variation of the series’ hashtag, on Twitter, in social forums, blogs and news sites.

Starbucks declined to comment.

As of Tuesday, the coffee cup had been edited out of the episode, but chatter about Starbucks and the episode on Twitter and Reddit continued.

[Ormazd]

Man, if you thought Episode 4 was bad...

Episode 5 was Dexter finale level bad.

[Boris13c]

seems they are determined to simply end things in whatever way pops into their heads at any given moment ... episodes 4 and 5 did not appear to me to be well thought out nor well executed

wonder how they will end this? there seems to be 2 distinctly different paths they can follow ... or perhaps a wild card 3rd path no one is considering

[thunderspirit]

I think the biggest problem they have is the arbitrary timeline the creators self-imposed. It's forced the character development necessary to show a slow decline into Episode 5's culminating action to be stripped away.

There have been numerous hints of that side of that individual, going back to Season 1. Just not taken to that extent.

Beautifully-shot episode, incidentally, with terrific pacing (of the episode, not of the plot development).

[Boris13c]

so that begs the question of why they decided to force this all into a condensed season rather than take the time to let things develop? they are passing over things, and since we don't have a book to reference, are left kind of in the dark guessing on many things ... which is unfortunate

there we so many better ways they could have told the story of Daenarys and her twists and turns ... the way they chose to depict it was simply not in line with her entire character development up to this point

[wab]

I thought it was a good episode, aside from one disappointing part that I won't mention to avoid spoilers.

The fact is, this was hyped for like two years and just won't live up to whatever has been built up in people's minds. So I'm just taking it for what it is.

[Boris13c]

The fact is, this was hyped for like two years

and that's what pisses me off ... they had 2 years to truly tell a compelling story ... and to me, they failed ... primarily because they destroyed in short order strong character development that happened over 7 previous seasons

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss obviously needed RR Martin to finish his damn book, because left to their own devices, they are lazy and incompetent story tellers

can't wait for them to fuck up Star Wars