I was all for the split until I watched the last ep of GOT.
It’s only 3 weeks
I was all for the split until I watched the last ep of GOT.
It’s only 3 weeks
Problem with the Unsullied and their Greek phalanx style is that method of warfare wasbeen superseded long before Europe developed knights and all that.
Not exactly, it was phased out, due to the advent of heavy infantry as well as organised heavy knights, but a form of phalanxes survived until the 1800s. From the Roman legions, the shield walls of Germanic barbarians, through to pikemen of the middle ages as well as the square formation of Infantry of the Line during the Napoleonic Era, it all comes down to a single unbroken wall of soldiers, bristling with weapons to slaughter a charging enemy, coupled with a wall of shields to prevent death.
If the unsullied compacted their line, even with shorter spears, they would have slaughtered more undead than anything else. You have the front rank with spears at the furthest, second rank would have spears sticking over so anyone that misses the first rank spears is impaled on those, and then continue over the next ranks. Once it’s to far to be effective, the rear ranks hold spears up, at an angle, to prevent anyone from trying to jump over. For the greatest soldiers in the world, the whole concept of fighting one rank at a time and not supporting each other, seems completely pointless and ineffective.
Another fact is that the whole point of spears, is to stop the enemy from closing with a solider. They’re meant to be used to hold the enemy back in a line, once a solider is past the spear point, that’s it, end of story. 9 times out of 10, in one on one combat, a swordsman will slaughter the spearman.
Actually there were two factors that made Roman style heavy infantry obsolete. One was the development of the compound bow and it’s use on horseback by the Mongols and the second was as follows.
Sending an army of heavy infantry into a war of attrition makes sense when you have just one enemy and your army is the better trained. When, as happened with the Western Roman empire, you have more than one enemy on your Northern, Southern and Western borders then a war of attrition is something to avoid as you will win the first battle but lose the second, third and fourth.
In the case of the battle of Winterfell, just terrible tactics to engage in a war of attrition when there is another army to the South waiting to pick you off. Also, in the books and the early episodes the scripts seemed to be written by people with a basic understanding of military tactics, now it seems to be determined by viewer surveys.
Disagree on the attrition on the Winterfell battle. Up against an absolutely mindless enemy that will never break, will never lose moral and outnumbers you by that much, the ONLY correct tactic is to wear them down and kill the lot. Of course it doesn’t help when the enemy can raise the newly dead at will.
So I watched it again last night.
Played with the contrast and brightness but just ended up setting it to dynamic, which did seem to work. But I don’t really want to have to play with settings to watch a telly show in this day and age.
Story still smacks of second rate writing with a top shelf budget. But that’s been the scenario since they got past the books.
And even thou I knew to look for it, I saw no indication that Jon saw Arya and was distracting the ice dragon for her.
Brutal
GOT Endgame
Cersei faces the forces from the north (Team “Is that Incest” v Team “Brotherfucker”) outside Kings Landing, 20,000 Golden Company Mercenaries facing a quarter of that number of shagged out Northerners, Dothraki dregs and Iron Islanders plus a couple of dragons. She’s all smartass and smirky, offers to save her brother/lover, who says 'Fuck that"
We get CleganeBowl as a taster and they both die, then…
…just as the Golden Company are about to charge and fuck Team “Yeah, that’s probably incest”, the wee baldy guy from the Iron Bank shows up and says “Yo! bitch, them troops ain’t yours to command, we’re calling in your marker” leaving Cersei more fucked than when Bran saw her for the first time.
Team “It’s definitely icky, even if its technically not incest” decide to imprison her, but as she’s being led away the midget version of Dillon Harper, disguised as her mum jumps her and guts her like a fish. She’s given a stern talking to by the newly crowned Mr & Mrs “Probably shouldn’t breed” and promptly slaughtered by Jaquen H’gar who’s been disguised as Varys the whole time and cant stop talking in that semi-falsetto.
What’s happening in Dorne? Last time there was an episode featuring Dorne it had a new ruler who was quite keen on revenge and who had a pathological hatred of Cersei. Could it possibly be that the armies of Dorne will turn up at the last possible moment when all seems lost and save the day and 99.9% of the principal cast.
hmmm
Ugggggh.
Good or bad? Watching today as was out last night
Rushed
good and bad
Some thoughts on S08E04:
The over-arching theme for mine is that the survivors of the Battle of Winterfell have learned pretty much nothing from it. It was like a flick had suddenly been switched for most of the characters and they’re back to plotting and scheming against each other. While there was a little bit of partying and some good, albeit predictable humour, I really don’t see a change in any of the characters. Like they’re treating the Night King’s defeat as just another enemy. It’s like it hasn’t sunk in what they managed to achieve, despite the odds. With even just another episode or two, that could’ve been fleshed out much better, but as scooter said, it has been rushed. Someone needs to tell me again why they only needed to have six episodes for this last season because they really needed more.
I have absolutely no idea why you’d send almost all of your most important people by boat when they’ve already suffered a massacre from Euron Greyjoy’s fleet. One could argue it is possible. In that case, its easy to argue that its completely nonsensical of Dany to put them in that position, she doesn’t have a proper battle commander to advise her, and she just ignored everyone else who tried to advise her (she may well have just ignored a proper battle commander’s advice anyway). She’s never had one, so one by one she has continued to fall into Cersei’s traps, just like she did with Tywin a few seasons back when he made sure Jorah was banished from Dany’s inner circle. Now her inner circle has just about dissipated, she’s going to be pushed over the edge and undo any good work she had done in the first five or six seasons. One could also argue it’s shit writing intended to create drama with the final scenes of the episode. Perhaps it is a bit of both.
I may have said this before but I thought Sansa was foreshadowing Jon Snow’s fate in her “the lone wolf dies but the pack survives” comment at the end of last season, and it wasn’t a reference to Ned (from a writer’s perspective). Jon Snow’s decision to tell a few more people about his lineage is pretty much going to ensure he won’t finish the series alive. Varys hinted as much. If Jon Snow does survive the season, it’s fan service as far as I’m concerned.
Jon Snow didn’t even go over to pat Ghost before he left? WTF was that all about? I was really disappointed with that.
One could even argue the world would’ve been better off if the Night King won the Battle of Winterfell. Humans haven’t learned their lesson.
They had to do that episode though to fill in and prepare for the ending. There was always going to be a filler episode.
But I found myself bored and looking at my phone a couple of times during this one.
just too rushed. Another episode to flesh out the plot as they make the trip to Kings Landing would have been much better. It’s a shame. I hate that such a great show is being rushed toward an ending because they wanted to spend all the money on a night time battle. Surely there was room for one or two more episodes to do the whole series justice. Oh well. The next two episodes might be amazing and I’ll be able to forgive this rushed one.
I think the Ghost bit was an extraordinarily heavy-handed attempt to show Jon turning his back on his Stark heritage as he rides south to support his Targaryen family.
Jaime and Brienne was just next-level awful. Theirs is supposed to be a relationship of hard-won mutual respect despite wider society treating both of them unfairly (Brienne as a misfit female warrior in a patriarchal world, and Jaime as a disgraced kingslayer who actually saved millions of people). This development turned it into a shitty penny dreadful romance novel for absolutely no reason, as three scenes later Jaime is running back to Cersei. The two options here are that Jaime’s entire arc coming to realise that Cersei is a horrible person has been for nothing, or far more likely, this is just the writers’ shitty attempt at misdirection and he’s going back to kill Cersei in an EPIC TWIST!!1 The prophecy groundwork for Jaime killing Cersei has been in place for years. Why portray it so badly?
Bronn wandering into Winterfell unchallenged, delivering a threat and then wandering back out? Lazy as fuck writing.
I’m prepared to eat shit on this one as a fantasy TV show, but the entire world of the books and shows is based on the idea of dragons being a virtually invincible foe. The whole political system as it stands follows on from one family turning up with a handful of dragons and being utterly unstoppable. How did nobody on the entire continent think of ballistas at any point during the Targaryen invasion if they’re so effective? Nobody in Essos thought of it when she had more enemies and smaller, weaker dragons? Then an entire fleet goes unnoticed even though Dany is flying recon, the Ironborn manage three direct hits on the moving smaller dragon, then fail to hit the larger, closer dragon moving in a straight with about fifty shots? I can eat that as shitty dramatic television, but following on from that, Dany clearly doesn’t just burn Euron’s fleet because she’s scared of losing her last dragon. So if there’s to be any consistency from here on, Drogon is off the board for the rest of the story. Just whack a ballista everywhere you don’t want to be attacked by a dragon and you’re safe. In fact we see exactly this situation in the last scene.
Which leads to the most egregious thing in the whole episode. For about five seasons, Cersei has been shown to be utterly selfish, hateful, obsessed with revenge and more than a little bit unhinged. Dany turns up with a handful of Unsullied and the two most important people in her administration trusting that Cersei won’t just wipe them out because honour, which seems suicidally stupid. Then Cersei, whose obsession with killing Tyrion has been a fundamental aspect of her character for years, doesn’t kill Tyrion because…? Not because she fears Dany’s retribution, because she kills Missandei seconds later. Not because of the rules of engagement, because she has no respect for rules of engagement. She blew up a church containing most of her court for fuck’s sake. So are we supposed to believe that deep down she loves Tyrion and doesn’t want him dead? Even though 20 minutes earlier we saw Tyrion encounter the assassin that Cersei sent to kill him? And there are like 20 ballistas on that wall. Just goad Dany into flying the dragon into range and take him out because ballistas are dragon kryptonite. War over. You win.
None of the characters make the slightest bit of sense anymore. It’s clear the writers were only given the major plot points and left to their own devices to join them up because the writing is bordering on incoherent now. At least the wait for the books is exciting again.
Well you know there isn’t going to be any consistency. Dany now looks pretty intent on burning Kings Landing to the ground so Drogon has to be a major factor in that. Also, for those keeping track, would there still happen to be any wildfire left in the city? I know some were used in the Battle of the Blackwater, and the stash beneath the Sept of Baelor has been used. I assume some is left somewhere in the city.
I know there are writers on this forum. Does this last season or two feel like they determined what they “needed” to achieve in the story before actually writing it? I always think a writer is in big trouble if they’re scrambling for reasons to get from A to B in a story. The last season and a half has felt really forced to me, like that’s exactly how they went about it and exactly what has happened. For writers who must be earning a shitload from this series, that is terrible.
Just on “projectile weapons”:
On the Ringer’s Talk the Thrones they did mention that these had been used in the past in Westerosi history, referred to as “scorpions”, including one dragon with rider being taken down over Dorne with an arrow to the eye. In fact, Dorne was never properly conquered but ended up agreeing to peace.
So that explains that, yes, they are fallible, but that bullshit where pirate boy has his first ever proper shot at a moving aerial target (hey, no other dragons to practice on), taken from a fucking boat, and hits first 3 shots, without the need for even a range finder was utterly ridiculous. Cheap dramatic plot device, to ensure the relative good guys don’t go into battle from a position of strength.
In fact, as has been referenced above, this was again a rushed episode trying to thunder towards whatever conclusion is there.
The first half of the episode was good, and did well to have some moments of triumph but start to dangle the problems of what comes next. It should have been an episode of its own, but they’ve decided we’re not ready for a slow paced episode at this stage.
The 2nd half was laughable, rushed, poorly written, full of the worst plot holes and character and logical inconsistencies. I find it much easier to believe in all the magic bullshit like dragons and zombies etc (which, have pretty much been written out of the world now), than the sheer stupidity and behaviours totally at odds with the characters who have been built up over 7 and a half seasons. Had the show been like this all along, how many of us would give a shit about it? I’m just in it for the invested hours now.