BEFORE YOU COMMENT! I misspoke in the Star Wars section - I meant to say Rise of Skywalker (which sucks) rather than the Last Jedi (which I quite like) - specifically insofar as the Rise of Skywalker feels like a completely unplanned panic response to the Last Jedi.
Interesting I was going to ask if you confused these 2 because you said Last Jedi but showed Rise of Skywalker (Picture), so I was a little confused. I also hope that they will greenlight and produce an animated Show of GoT, it would solve a lot of Issues the show had. One being Age restrictions, another one being Animal security and care and training (the excuse why the Direwolves were cut from the Show). But I hope they will use a different title, you can catch a lot of old Viewers with the same Title, but Show-Only-Fans will always say it is not as good as the Original. Which won't be true, especially with the last 5 Seasons. So I would prefer a new Title ... maybe you could make a short about that and ask the Community for Titles I bet we could create some funny and serious propositions.
Leaving out the Davos White Harbor storyline is a decision I'll always be disappointed by. Missing out on the Manderly/Frey animosity is bad enough, but not getting to hear the passionate speeches of Wylla and Wyman is a huge letdown
Yeah they wouldn’t even have to change the story much and they could’ve got the conspiracy done in the season to build up to the battle of the bastards. The payoff of Jon Snow being made King in the North would’ve been even better.
The quote you're referring to is from François Truffaut, who said that there's no such thing as an anti-war film. However, decades later, there are a few film that have been praised for being successfully anti-war. One of them is _Grave of the Fireflies._
Yes, another person who wants animated ASOIAF! I genuinely believe that it’s the best way to adapt the books, especially in comparison to how limited the fantasy elements end up looking in live-action.
Honestly, live action is probably the straight up worst medium for fantasy. Theater has it most difficult, then shows and movies. Audio or Text only mediums are good (songs/podcasts and books/poems etc), while visual mediums like art/drawings, comic books, video games and animation are all quite viable. It is sad that live action is the most prestigious (and probably most profitable) when practically every other medium is a better fit (we are talking about stories that usually originate in books anyway).
The worst change they made was having Littlefinger give Sansa to the Boltons. There was no justifying it whatsoever. Even the most casual of fans knew that Littlefinger would NEVER do that and that it was a terrible idea. That was the moment they irrevocably broke the series beyond repair. As to your "easy layups" section, D&D no longer cared whether or not there were scenes that could be amazing with a little effort. They optimized 100% for the easiest choice possible. If they had a choice between an easy layup book scene that would be easy to adapt, but take a tiny bit of effort, or a half-assed made up scene that moves the plot forward and takes no effort, they went with the latter.
It was definitely one of the worst decisions, in that it turned Littlefinger into an idiot, giving away his most valuable playing piece to a monster for nothing, and because it broke Sansa's storyline, and brought in the idiotic "abuse makes you stronger" trope. I hate that change as much as I hate what they did to everything to do with Dorne - I'd rather they'd left the entire Dorne plot out than having to deal with the trash they gave us, inadequate felines and all, and speaking of missing speeches, what about Ellaria Sand's perfect speech about the futility of revenge; how a skull can't make her laugh, or warm her bed? Nope, she just stabs Prince Doran for no reason, and succeeds him for less reason. Not to mention what a waste of a great actor like Alexander Siddig that entire mess was. I'm pretty sure that they summed it up when they said that "themes are for book reports", and showed us that they only wanted to film the kick-ass battles, with a side of gratuitous sex. What was wrong with the canon sex in the books?!?
Yeah, I know why they would want to replace Jeyne Poole (who was basically just an extra in the first season) with Sansa, but how they got there was stupid.
What always annoys me about it is Jeyne Poole was only in like 2 scenes in the first episode. So they always had the intention of giving Sansa to the Boltons, which never made sense in the first place.
@@thereallofigirl I wouldn''t say "they always had the intention". A Dance With Dragons hadn't even been published when they were filming the first season, and they didn't know how long the show would run. I don't think the Boltons are even mentioned in the first season.
To make it worse they tried some real lazy writing to make up for it where Littlefinger says he made a mistake. I argue the changes made to Jon Snow's story are the worst because he is the main character. And that change to Sansa leads to her story directly undermining Jon's story. It was so diabolically stupid on so many levels.
It’s crazy how D&D cut the shows two GREATEST speeches, which they EASILY could’ve copied bar for bar. Broken Man speech and the North Remembers speech not being adapted genuinely feels criminal.
What's even weirder about their unwillingness to adapt AFfC and ADwD is that those books are FILLED with political intrigue, which was the stuff that they liked the most?? Why were they afraid to adapt Cersei losing her mind and Jon struggling with the complicated politics at the Wall?
Because the show slowly but surely became another Marvel clone full of good guys whooping the asses of bad guys while cracking a joke every two minutes
Cersei probably got adapted closer than the average Feast POV. She agrees to the Faith Militant re-arming, tries to use them against Margaery, then gets arrested herself and forced into the Walk of Shame.
It’s not a single moment but D&D basically refusing to have Tyrion go down his darker path I think really messed up not only his character but the overall ending. In the era where Walter White was popular I could never understand white washing him
I get the vibes that they didn't want Tyrion to go down his dark path and essentially become a bad guy since he was a fan favorite to the audience. And so simply omitted it without thinking of the consequences later on
5:00 everything they cut and changed was purely to show off celebrity actors so they could win Emmys, thus boosting D&D’s profile so they could jump ship for a movie career. Case in point, Lady Stoneheart - they later admitted (I think it was Cogman) that they cut her out “because it would have made Jon Snows’s death and resurrection less impactful”…and I think that statement was actually genuine: they wanted to hype up Harington’s role for awards. Mentally step back and realize all this happened just to show off their favorite actors. Even Season 5 Dorne only exists, as they say in the commentary, in order to show off India Varma: “we reconceived the role to make it worthy of the actor’s talents”. It’s not that they cut Arianne Martell because they “dislike” her, or to streamline the story (adding back Dorne at the last minute was very bloated)….As you say they had no real interest after book 3…but we have to understand from an out-of-universe perspective, they were just burning through material quickly to get done, and trying to “show off” the leads who could win awards, to pad their resumes. Similarly, Wyman Manderley’s speech was cut and turned into a Lyanna Mormont speech…to show off Bella Ramsay. Similarly, and a huge example…do you genuinely believe that they had Ramsay rape Sansa, “because they didn’t want the cost of hiring a new actress to play Jeyne Poole”, as you say? Or because they wanted Sophie Turner to win them an Emmy for acting the hell out of a rape scene ?
GRRM has said he disliked how Tolkien brought Gandalf back from the dead stronger than ever, which is why he wrote his undead so much differently. Look at how D&D handled other undead characters: Beric was recast after the first season (few would remember that actor), the Mountain (who'd already been recast multiple times) was hidden behind a helmet so it didn't matter who was behind there. Lady Stoneheart is supposed to be quasi-mute, but it wouldn't make such sense to bring back Michelle for a non-speaking role. Jeyne Poole was basically an extra in the first season. Viewers would not remember her at all, and wouldn't care the way they care about Sansa. Getting Theon to monologue about his memories of Jeyne Poole in Winterfell wouldn't cut it. And if they did cast some actress to play Jeyne, they'd still be stuck with the fact that Sansa only has 3 chapters in Feast/Dance and they'd already had her meet with the Lords Declarant about Lysa's death in season 4. They were able to remove Bran from the show for an entire season, but he's also the most removed from the political story at that point and had the youngest remaining regular actor (Rickon was basically offscreen until he was killed).
@@thedragondemands5186 Each season is ~10 hours of TV, building up Jeyne Poole means sacrificing something else. Jeyne is going to disappear after the first season because she's not a POV character or in the vicinity of other POVs until Theon in ADWD. That's multiple seasons offscreen for a very minor character.
@@clownpendotfart I understand while including Jeyne as fake Arya is unviable but that said, putting Sansa in that place was absolutely the wrong choice as well. It doesn't make any in-universe sense and is entirely out of character for Littlefinger to give Sansa to the Boltons. They should have just cut the fake Arya plot entirely or given the role to new character to show off how bad Ramsay is and to have Theon be a hero by saving them. Like Alys Karstark or Wylla Manderly.
You're onto something here; I think D&D ultimately saw the show as an exercise in career development and, once they were known for it, rapidly lost interest in the project. Those of us who had some genuine intellectual skin in the game can take some small, vindictive solace in the fact that their subsequent careers have consisted of basically nothing.
@@dominiqueodom3099 They did get more projects, and have a big development deal with Netflix after a big bidding war over them. Fans who think the industry hates them are deluded.
@@clownpendotfartwhile the industry doesn't hate them, it seems their credibility has taken a dive... They had a project alongside HBO called "Confederate", which was unceremoniously scrapped, and before the last season of GoT, Disney wanted them for Star Wars. Netflix had them make a mediocre musical comedy before giving them the 3 Body Problem too. So I guess they did get a second chance, but still... The fact that they needed one is still a bit telling. Also, going by fans of the books, it seems they already made a good job at turning a (perceived) masterpiece into a mediocre show. I'm not one to cheer for other people's failure, but god damm if they don't have me doing it!
What are u talking about the season is great I loved the moment where Arya teleported behind the night king got on her secret trampoline and jumped silently to the night king and killed him I mean the whole point of GOT is to surprise us and what is more of a plot twist than that. I mean who has a better story than Arya the Teleporter.
03:26 removing the Young Griff storyline has to be up there. Especially the stuff with the bells at King's Landing is so obviously something recycled from what George told D&D but completely nonsensical.
If there was a good way to write the Young Griff storyline, GRRM would have already written it. His failure to do that over the course of 13 years indicates it's a path to be avoided, particularly in a TV show that must economize in way that books don't have to.
@@clownpendotfart George has said that he wrote 3/4 of the book so it is entirely possible that he wrote the Young Griff stuff and that it is other characters/storylines that are holding him up (such as Dany and the Meerenese Knot, perhaps) from finishing.
@ Yeah it’s one of the thematically most important things in the story and without it brienne and Jaime just kinda meander around for like 2 1/2 seasons
SAME, like they could have easily added it in and built up references in case the audience forgot who Tysha was. Like Oberyn going on what Tywin and the Mountain did to Elia and her babies, Tyrion being married for the second time, etc.
It's long been my opinion that the moment GoT began to die was when D&D discarded GRRM's first script for The Rose and the Lion that may have begun introducing characters like JonCon and other people required for the Faegon story.
As well as all the references in Bran's visions. Like we got confirmation that Robb warged into Grey Ghost. And thsy in the show, the last thing he saw before his sevond death was Arya. 😢
The Sansa plotline in seaon 5 is problematic to understate things. The Stannis storyline is also annoying because they build him up just to come up with reasons for him to be in a worse position, similar to dany in seasons 7-8. Even more infuriating is the fact that they gave Jon his storyline, rallying up the north to fight the boltons just to have a cheesy superhero showdown versus Ramsay. Dorne is basically cut with Aryane gone, FAegon is cut, it's like the took out all the meat of a sandwich and just left the two slices of bread with some mediocre sauce in the middle and rushed it to the end.
Hasn't George said he wanted to do a 5 year time skip, but that it'd require retcons to pull off and the books were already published? They should have just made the show with this in mind. It'd give them an original ending, different from the books but in a good way. They already got rid of some foreshadowing for things GRRM ended up not going for. Great video!
Changing the battle of ice and leaving out the whole grand northern conspiracy was a missed opportunity as well. I think I’m looking forward to seeing that play out in WoW more than anything else.
Good video! For me, one of the biggest disappointments in the show was throwing away the book version of Euron. I think Euron's actor TOTALLY had the range to be the crazed bloodthirsty eldritch pirate. But they made him a fairly one note character who was more of a plot device than anything.
Excellent video (as always), Quinn! 🙂 Two things I want to add: 1.) D&D always said they want to make 7-8 seasons at most. The only way they could achieve that is by contracting the plotlines after season 4/book 3. But GRRM was massively expanding the plotlines in book 4 and 5. I guess that's why they decided to do their own thing (as you said, after the Red Wedding they thought they're that good 🤦♂🤦♂), otherwise their 7-8 seasons would've been impossible to keep. If they stayed with the books, they would've needed *at the very least* 10 seasons. 2.) I think introducing Lady Stoneheart more than a season after the Red Wedding at the end of season 4 would not be an issue: The Hound "died" at the end of season 4 and was re-introduced in the middle of season 6, and Bran also took a break during season 5.
What shocks me the most is how they just erased all magic from a high fantasy universe and how they sexualized all non-straight characters. I hated that they ignored all the complexity of the northern and essosi politics. I hated that they turned Jon Snow into a generic hero with no ambitions and flaws or when Varys and Tyrion became human rights lawyers. They also kind of forgot that Sam and Brienne are POV characters. And gods, they butchered my girl Dany so much.
It doesn't really shock me, unfortunately. They were a couple of frat boys writing for fellow frat boys. Maybe smarter than average and capable of good work when they're interested, but once they were done with what they really wanted to do, (the Red Wedding), they went into auto-pilot and let their worst instincts take over.
They didn't erase all magic. The White Walkers/Others appear more in the show than books, and they had Leaf throwing fireballs rather using a torch. They resurrected Jon Snow, which STILL hasn't happened in the books. They revealed the truth behind Melisandre's glamour, which (again) still hasn't happened in the books. They had an undead/wighted dragon, which is something that has also never happened in the books.
@@clownpendotfart everything that was adapted ended up being executed in the worst possible way and still had to be simplified to end the show quickly.
I will die on the hill of Sansa‘s wedding to Ramsey being the end of GoT‘s prime. It made no sense for any of the main characters involved and was just cruel for the sake of being cruel.
The worst choice they made adapting FeastDance was definitely moving Sansa into Winterfell with Theon. That decision shows a total lack of understanding of even the surface level events of both Sansa and Theon's plotlines, as essentially the only commonality between book and show for the Winterfell plot is Ramsay gets married and r*pes his wife. It's frankly disgusting, and I compare what they did to Sansa to if they had let Sam randomly fall off the boat and drown on his way to Oldtown. They completely derailed her storyline for no reason other than to send a major character to a needlessly cruel fate, and in following it up they didn't even explore the effect that experience would have on Sansa, it just gets brushed aside as soon as she's out of Winterfell. Honorable mention to the Dorne and Riverlands plotlines, by not including Arianne, the literal protagonist of the Dorne plot, and then randomly sending Jaime there instead of Riverrun, it's worse than just cutting those arcs, as what we got instead essentially leads to the opposite thematic conclusions the book leaves you with. Dorne is behind glass for the first 3 books and 4 seasons and that intentionally gives you a sense that the people of Westeros consider it to be a strange land, and lesser to the rest of the kingdoms, and the familial tragedy of the Martells then humanizes this place and shows you that all the things you heard about Dorne before are really just racist bullshit pushed by the Westerosi elites who want to keep women and foreigners and common people down. Meanwhile for Jaime, his trip away from King's Landing in the book gives him the chance to define who he is when his corrupt and manipulative family members are out of the picture, and his conclusion is to reject Cersei's cry for help and try to make peace for the realm instead. In the show, we send Jaime to Dorne so we can see this foreign land from the same Westerosi perspective we've already gotten, and everything we see basically confirms that Dorne is a nasty desert country full of crazy ladies who will kill you without a second thought but are also always down to fuck, and the men are cowards who are simply made of lesser stock than the rest of Westeros, and Jaime walks away from it resolved to protect what remains of his family, even going so far as to say to Cersei on his return, "fuck everyone that isn't us." It's character assassination for one of my favorites, it's blatantly racist and orientalist, and again, they literally cut the main character of the plotline they were supposed to be adapting. Nothing's gonna top how they brutalized Sansa for me but the Dorne plot is rightfully maligned for how many different and ridiculous ways they fucked it up.
I agree it would have been better to just cut Dorne then what they did. But it's ridiculous to say that giving Sansa that plotline is equivalent to killing her. She remained on the show and got to do more acting that Bran's actor did. And it's not like she had that many chapters in Feast/Dance for them to adapt.
I was a show fan before i became a book fan. Honestly, im of the opinion that Dan and Dave only wanted to do the Red Wedding cause after ASOS is done, everything just flops
If it’s ever re adapted is love to see it as an animated series. With war of rohirrim coming out if it does good can be a new era for animated fantasy media and with that an animated ASOIAF that is more in line with the books (maybe eps r even each pov like the books) would be amazing.
The Tysha confession scene from Jaime when he confesses to Tyrion is one of the best scenes in the entire series to me. I was gobsmacked when I watched D&D's version of it, and bitterly described just how badly they'd f(cked it up to my wife as the credits rolled on that episode.
I think the worst decision they made by far was the choice to have littlefinger sell Sansa to the boltons. Makes absolutely zero sense for littlefinger to do that and it was a hollow attempt to emulate the books while at the same time ignoring them
Before getting into GoT/ASOIAF I thought I’d read the books first because I’d heard the show ended so poorly (which I thought was due to running out of books). But I quickly realized that wasn’t the reason at all
Not adapting Aegon and Jon Connington is crazy. I cannot fathom how they came to that decision. The Tysha confession too is a terrible omission, ruining Tyrion’s character development. I’ll personally always be pissed that they omitted two of my favourite characters, Victarion Greyjoy and Wyman Manderly.
@@clownpendotfartand fAegon was widely thought of as a pointless late addition until 20 episodes of Cersei drinking wine in the red keep made his likely role in the story painfully obvious. Without knowing exactly what/when GRRM told D&D about the end game, omitting fAegon seems like a perfectly reasonable decision. And love George but the past 10 years have given me the distinct impression that he’s probably an absolute nightmare to work with. Could see them being desperate for more information on fAegon and George just keeps on circling back to their not being enough horses on the show or whatever.
@ removing what is clearly an essential part of the story, especially the endgame doesn’t simplify the story. Yes it means that you don’t have to spend time introducing the characters and the plot line, but it also means you have to force a square peg through a round hole in attempting to make the story work without that crucial piece. That’s a lot more difficult than just playing out the story as it was intended. The lack of Aegon is arguably the main reason the house of cards came tumbling down at the end.
@ it’s very clear from reading ADWD that Aegon’s story is going to be essential to the ending, especially for the King’s Landing/Iron Throne side of the story. We don’t need Winds or Dream to be able to infer that. George has even said there will be a second dance of the dragons. The destruction of King’s Landing is almost certainly going to be a consequence of that, thus making so much more sense than the TV version. If this is the case then how is that not essential to the story? And that’s just the broad strokes of Aegon’s story.
I think the scenes I wanted to see most were Tyrion playing cyvasse with young griff, the scene between Jamie and his aunt about Tyrion being twins true son, and to have the tyrells be the family they are and not cut down to 4 people.
Cutting Lady Stoneheart is the major turning point for me. They cut half the story out and missed a great opportunity for 1.) cool scenes with undead Catlyn and 2.) the degeneratation of the brotherhood without banners which fits the theme of the whole story very well
If it was possible to write a better follow-up to Feast/Dance, then WHY HASN'T GRRM DONE THAT OVER 13 YEARS!? I would argue that, in hindsight, the mistake was adhering too closely to those books and starting things like a Dorne plotline that they subsequently scrapped quickly because it just wasn't working. With perfect knowledge that GRRM wouldn't be writing the last two books, they needed to deviate earlier to come up with a way to reach his intended ending with a minimum amount of plotholes. Of course, they didn't know all this in advance and wouldn't have years to spend coming up with a more workable story than GRRM has over the decades. I don't think D&D ever said they disliked magic. They included a lot more material focused on the Others/White Walkers than the books have, and even made Leaf throw fireballs instead of burning wights with a torch. But things like the direwolves were impractical/expensive to have a lot of screentime. People talking in a room is relatively cheap and can make for good TV when you've got good actors. I think the septon's speech is worse in the show. I don't think it got changed because of animosity toward GRRM, but instead because they were writing a plot about Sandor (who is not a POV in the books) trying to assimilate into a more peaceful life rather than one about Brienne understanding what causes men to turn to brigandry. Sandor doesn't need any lessons on how men can be changed by war, he's already defected from an army to become an outlaw. There is a github repo called "got-book-show" from "joeltronics" which presents a scrollable grid of all episodes (up through season 6) compared to the chapters they draw from. A Feast for Crows is sparser, but far from empty. Most columns have an entry, though many of them are dotted rather than filled-in. And his page, while the most comprehensive I'm aware of, is still out-of-date and the Game of Thrones wiki contains more such entries that it's missing. D&D did NOT direct the Red Wedding episode of the TV show. David Nutter did. I wasn't expecting you to give them more credit than they deserve in this video! It's just false to claim that D&D were rushing to get to Star Wars. They publicly announced that the plan was for seven seasons LONG before the Star Wars opportunity came up. The cast have said that they wouldn't have been willing to do more seasons. If you want to claim they were rushing to be done with the show and to have a break from such a grueling production, you'd be closer to the mark. The most disappointing thing about this video is that you never even consider the problem of what do with Winds/Dream. The showrunners do not have the option of faithfully adapting Feast/Dance in a way that pleases you, then just sitting on their hands waiting for GRRM to write the remaining books. They need to write each season in a way that enables them to reach the end. If faithful adaptation of any material from GRRM's books impedes that, then they must discard that.
1:25 Quinn I think this graphic is actually rather recent. The "seasons" thing is pointing out the pacing of the show and how they rushed the last two books not to mention the final seasons by likely following George's plot points but not understanding how he would have written it.
the fact that the red wedding is what began the decline makes me so mad bc in retrospect the episode wasnt even that good!! compared to the book scene. robb & catelyn die, and the shock value of that alone was enough to carry it for the show, but pretty much all of the background characters were basically just that. mostly nameless characters that the show didnt take the time to set up, or even show their deaths in detail. unlike in the book where we all know each of them individually, and watch them all fall one by one. also, them having robb bring his pregnant wife to the wedding just so she can be stabbed, and the storyline wrapped up neatly... i was watching a RW reaction vid yesterday and they were so mad at robb for bringing her, and theyre right! robb stark wouldnt have brought her into danger, but D&D did. and then they had catelyn kill walder's 8th wife, rarher than aegon. something about that is very wrong too. not a son for a son, and i just cant see cat killing a young girl, married into the family, instead of one of walder's "beloved" children.
@@clownpendotfart i understand, and would agree with that, however, with them splitting Storm into two seasons, and also having the first two seasons to build some of the Northerners up a bit more, like the Mormont women, etc, they did kind of have the chance, more than most shows. but they spent a lot of time in season 3 having us meet Healer Talisa™ from Volantis (?), rather than Jeyne of House Westerling, and changing Robb's story with her so that we could... watch the actors kinda smoulder at each other a lot, and eventually have robb actually Decide to dishonor the Frey alliance in a more premeditated fashion, rather than being more forced into "betraying" them due to his own unadulterated shame and guilt at having been 'seduced' once while in a vulnerable state, but not wanting to dishonor her either. even acting with honor towards the vassal house of the enemy themselves.
@@ccorvid Robb isn't a POV in the books, so that stuff happens off-page and Catelyn merely hears about it later. Separate from the POV format of the books, his relationship can be shown onscreen (and users would probably be upset if that was just something heard about after-the-fact), and GRRM said it made him wish he could have written some Robb POV chapters (but then he always has more stuff he wishes he could write, like Harwin Strong's perspective on semisecretly fathering Rhaenyra's children).
That Robert/Cersei scene in season one is slightly based off of a thought that Book Cersei has in AffC, when she reflects back on a time she chipped Robert’s tooth in a fight, and then he later brags that he chipped it in a melee. She then thinks that their marriage was a sort of melee. It’s so much better in the show though. Also my favorite show scene.
they did the martel’s so dirty… a whole scheming subplot to usurp the throne and get dragons and its all reduced to “you want a bad girl, you need the bad 🐈”
Post Jaime taking riverrun with jeyne westerling being pregnant and Jaime speaking to her mother while she went apeshit was so good. I'll never understand why they changed her to talisa and made her background somewhere from essos. It's just so awkward with why they made that change. Another change I didn't like is Tyrion becoming evil arc. Dudes a literal villain but they make him into a neutral good character in the show. He's so much more interesting being angry. Cutting out the sailing on the royne where he finds out who griff really is over a game of cyvasse and d&d cutting varys long game is so dumb too. Cutting quathe also. So stupid. Why?
I will never forgive the show for cutting Princess Arianne Martell, not my favourite plot line but I love 🧡 the character. But the North’s Loyalty to the Stark is dumbest plot line to drop, the difference between the Starks and the Bolton’s are the Starks rule through Love and Respect whilst the Boltons rule through Fear and Death. One guarantees every lasting loyalty the other guarantees you loyalty for as long as you have the most power and the second you loose it, they’ll turn on you.
Insane that they cut plots almost exlusively progressed through dialogue. Think of how many shows love to meander through nothing plots for most of a season just to keep the budgets low, and you drop 1.5-2.5 seasons worth of good cheap plots.
The very least that the writers can do are just do fan service. Most fans are happy with Sandor Clegane ending with his brother even tho book fans knew that not what would happen in the book. Daenarys should be queen with Jon as king consort. Jon kills Night King. Sansa as Regent of Vale. Arya vibing in Braavos as assassins. Jamie and Briene happy together. Cersei probably ended up dead by Jamie. Stannis wins over Boltons but died heroic death, etc for example. That could spare the embarrassment of terrible ending. Or heck, ended it at A Storm of Swords.
Yeah that would have been better than what we got. Just curious though, so are you saying that in this scenario Sansa would be betrothed to Sweetrobin? Is that how she comes out as Regent of the Vale?
@@Lord_of_Karhold I don't know. Just a theory I got. I mean I really don't see Sansa ruled North as Queen tho. Also, Vale had been ruled by women for many times like Lady Arryn during Aegon Conquest and Lady Jane in Dance with Dragons and Lyssa Arryn. Kinda feel like GRRM basically winking at us desperately at this point.
Breinne bro they killed my girl. I know it's difficult but her inner monologue was só good, her self doubts and How she unknowingly overcomes them... Amazing. But its Impossible to do all that whitout Lady Stoneheart.
It's impossible to have an inner monologue onscreen unless you have people voice it like David Lynch's Dune, and there's a reason people don't imitate that.
great video, Quinn!!! it never ceases to amaze me how the asoiaf fandom seemingly ought to have run out of things to discuss a long time ago, but something comes up again and again! but i guess it's no surprise with so many characters, plotlines, got, hotd, and all the what ifs... though I digress! thank you for your work, love it! and looking forward to seeing more of it :))
I understand cutting out and streamlining some plots that would have bored the audience like Brienne... but it is absolutely baffling they would cut out the Northern conspiracy stuff, Davos in white harbor, the mysterious assassinations and sabotage in winterfell is incredible... crazy they cut 90% of it.
I think the biggest issue in the show is the bending of the plot to revolve around a few antagonists. In the last 4 seasons, varys and littlefinger largely are inactive and dont really contribute much to the story, the dornish are lackluster to say the least, roose bolton largely isn't driving the story in the north, overlooking Ramsey's bad descisions and somehow bot receiving backlash for his part in the red wedding. This leaves us with cersei, ramsey and the others as the only obstacles while every other major character is one of the "good guys" who will go on to combat our three villans at some point
@clownpendotfart true, but the Harpy's sons still affect the story by giving Hizdar the means to propose to Dany, and the suspicion it brings him, which eventually leads to barristan acting against him and also hizdars marriage also causes quentyn to go dragon taming. All this is a result of the harpy's, they don't really have the same impact in the show.
Part of the reason has to be ego. They made some changes that were well received and possibly let it get to their heads. Examples of that are Ros, Arya as Tywin's cupbearer, etc.. But the accumulation of the changes and omissions eventually led to the downward spiral from Season 5 onwards.
They cut so many important characters from the books. FAegon & Jon Con would've saved season 5 at the least. The Dornish plot is also building nicely in the books and is likely gonna be another intresting thing come Winds. And don't get me started about Stannis...
I strongly dislike the Lady Stoneheart storyline but maybe it has a worthwhile payoff to justify its inclusion in the books. I was glad she was written out of the show.
Of the small scenes cut from AFFC/ADWD, the thing that most annoys me? Jaime slapping Red Ronnet for insulting Brienne. Not because we need Ronnet, but because the scene is so important for Jaime, allowing me to gaze at man he once was and say "no more" *and* because the audience would have loved the hell out of it. An easy lay-up, squandered.
I think after listening to Dan and Dave's interviews, all they really wanted to do was to adapt the red wedding. Once that was done, they didn't really care about the rest.
Imagine casting Ian McShane as a character that has the most amazing speech AND NOT HAVE HIM READ IT. Seriously if he had a Cameo account I’d pay him just to read it out, but to never get to see him act it out is so sad.
I would argue that the downfall of Game of Thrones began as far back as season 2, or at least it was on the cards back then. That's when the first big divergences from the books began. Yes, season 2 through 4 were still good in spite of that, largely because they were well-made and followed the events in the books in broad strokes, but that's when the first cracks started to appear, they just papered over them (I'm also still lukewarm on season 2 to this day, it just looks a lot better in retrospect when you compare it to the mess that the show became post-season 4.) However, after season 4, there was no more papering over anything anymore for a number of reasons: 1: they could no longer tie the events of the show to those in the books because they had already diverged so much. 2: they ran out of source material to adapt, and people realised they were a lot better at adapting stuff than creating it from scratch. 3: the best actors were gone, mostly because their characters were killed off (not much the show could do about that). 4: this is my most controversial opinion, but I think the showrunners stopped caring about GoT and seeing a faithful adaptation to the end. It became far too big and successful for them to care.
I've argued that the out of nowhere blindsided revelation of Aegon's true goal wouldve been the thing to push Dany towards her goal of heading towards Westeros
I don't quite know how to phrase this: I think, if the entire epos of ASOIAF was completed and D&D were to completely adapt it (instead of the reality that we have), the GOT show would've been better - so I technically disagree with your thesis, although I absolutely agree with most points brought up, especially the Red Wedding as focal point for the development and decrease in quality. My point: I feel like, if you're D&D and you really wanna adapt this part of the story PLUS it isn't even finished and you WILL definitely outpace the author, those facts will influence choices made along the way, even earlier than the point of your adaptation that run out of source material. In other words, you will "prepare" and adapt to you running out of material later on. It's easier to set the course by omitting characters and plot lines earlier rather than trying to figure out what the f to do with them once you run out of source material, and try to slim down the world to something you're comfortable and generally able to deal with by yourself (without the "help" of having source material). however this is not a standalone point and I think it does fit in your line of thinking and fundamental idea of what "went wrong" with the show. Especially the magical elements; they would rather trim them back extensively and early to NOT deal with them at all in later seasons, where they will be the focus of the source material that isn't available yet (and you D&D are neither interested nor talented enough to adapt it in the first place, let alone develop the story all by yourself). On top of that, the same would go for a lot of the themes of the books. As stated, they didn't think having (deeper, meaningful) themes would be necessary or good for the show - contrast that with the source material. Rather play it safe and loose early, throw it all out the window before you actually have to discuss, pay off, develop and resolve those themes. In other words: If D&D followed the source material more closely for longer - adapting all that it available faithfully - the drop in quality after that would've been EVEN WORSE (in my opinion). Let that sink in. So reasonably as they sometimes can be, they did the smart thing to dumb down, downsize and gut the story even before running out of books - but, if they had all of them and could adapt them like season 1 for example, I think they could've possibly done a good job at it.
that are some good points. I think the statements "they were put in an impossible position they didn't sign up for" and "they should have done better and still deserve a lot of criticism for their incompetence" can coexist and are both valid. The most upsetting thing there after all is the hubris and ego that contributed a lot. Being put in an impossible position to finish someone else's genius series with no idea how, and what did they do? Monopolize the writing and overall creative process, cut ties with George to polish their own image as the showrunners getting all the awards (GoT was for some reason on it's commercial and critical peak S5-6); not even trying to get more skilled writers on board. That is why I'll never really get on board with any position defending D&D.
*but they did run out of material. Almost nothing happens with the main plot in feast/dragons. Its literally just Brienne,Jamie,Asha,Tyrion travel logs. Feast and dance are just meandering filler. I still like them but god damn nothing happens in them*
I recall an interview where D&D read the red wedding and immediately set down the book saying they need to make this a show. I think they accomplished what they set out to do with bringing the red wedding to the screen then got bored and sought to bring the show to as fast as possible conclusions as possible so that they can move on to new projects. They just burnt out
Game of Thrones biggest problem was existing before the books where finished, sure GOT was gave us amazing moments and perhaps adapting in 2011 was the best thing we could ever have. Yes, me and other got to know and experience a fragment of this wonderfull story, but not having the full picture made things like ignoring the magical aspects of the story a risk when adapting ASOAIF, nothing was certain. Plus the way it (potencially) affected Goerge's plans will remain a unknown. But thinking this way about GOT won't stop me from loving what it was. In the end... it does no good to speak of roads not taken.
7:37 I never bought their budget excuses after season 3. HBO was throwing money at the show. They seemed to make stupid decisions because they could. Ending Barristan leaps to mind. A stupid death not connected with the story. Bro decisions like stunt casting and bad attempts to subvert expectations. I’ve commented very little on this so maybe I’m finally venting a little. Maybe not D&D but Dunning and Kruger attempting to rewrite George’s story..
D&D often understood the emotions of the characters. The hearts of their being, which allowed them to create some truly powerful moments. But they never grasped the world and story.
I've tried and put AFFC and ADWD into seasons 4 and 5 but its just to massive, you'd need 12 consecutive movies. Now figuring out how best to distribute the pov's over s4-6
Worst adaptation: Stannis' northern expedition/Euron Worst omission: Northern Conspirancy Worst addition: Asha circumnavigates Westeros then run away from some dogs
Since I have seen the work of Studio Fortiche years earlier, I do my quarterly prayer that they do an adaptation of ASOIF... but for any animation studio, it would require so much time and effort that it's unthinkable to accept a project like that
I think as they had the renown and recognition by the time season 3 I'm surprised nobody said let's switch to a 26 episode format. That would have created ample opportunities to introduce the missing storylines and characters. It could have been achieved within the budgetary constraints. I accept it might have ended up a bit like an Arrowverse type show. It would have then given scope to go on to a traditional 7 series show and not be stale if they did want to pursue further seasons. And those extra years mighy have given Martin the oomph to maybe finish the story. Forlorn hope, i know. The Red Wedding could have been the mid season finale and Lady Stoneheart epilogue the actual season finale. I would also have tweaked it so that is revealed that Talisa is Jeyne Westerling and not kill her with Robb. That would been an amazing twist. I also personally think as amazing Richard and Kit are in their respective roles, if all the Stark children were played by child actors there would have been stronger reasons in the narrative to develop the side characters and abandoned plots mentioned in the video. Some of Robb and Jon's more idiotic decisions make sense as, in the books, they are children or little more than children that have adult authority thrust upon them.
I could not possibly like this video enough. I've been harping about this for years. A Feast for Crows is my favorite of the books and they started messing with it before the ever got to season 5. There are two primary choices that I feel contributed to ruining the set up for the Riverlands going into season 5. The first one was replacing Jeyne Westerling with another character. We were robbed of Jaime's scene with Sybil Spicer and that whole Riverlands plot. The other was Jaime and Brienne getting back before the Purple wedding rather than after it. In a Storm of Swords we were robbed of Jaime having his first meeting as Lord Commander of the Kings Guard, and they also made the most anti grape character a rapist in the process. We were also robbed of Brienne's Feast plot line. One more big one that's related, they should have included lady Stoneheart! Argh...... 😡🤬🤬🤬
D&D were pretty honest from the beginning that the whole reason they wanted to do the adaptation was the Red Wedding. They didn’t love the series, they just thought that scene was cool and wanted to be the ones to do it.
I don't see how you can look at the first two seasons, or the season 3 episodes preceding the Red Wedding, and conclude they didn't care. Even season 4 is one of the best seasons of serialized TV around, even if it's a step down from season 3.
What was D&D's worst decision in adapting or not adapting books 4 and 5? I don't think there's a wrong answer to that question. Perhaps the best thing they could have done would have been to quit while they were ahead. It's fairly obvious now that these guys only ever saw Game of Thrones as a launching pad for their careers, and were in a hurry to move on to different projects once they got the recognition for GOT's success. And after season 4 they could have written their own ticket in Hollywood. So if they had just handed the show off to new show runners or at least complied with HBO's requests that they hire a full writer's room, it could have been a win-win for everybody. D&D could have moved on to their precious alternative projects, while other writers who'd have been all too happy to take over the most popular show in the world could've continued to actually adapt Martin's novels. And as these new writers wouldn't be in as much of a hurry to wrap things up they'd probably have been willing to continue the series with 6 more 10 episode seasons as HBO and Martin wanted, rather than 2 more 10 episode seasons, followed by truncated 7 and 6 episode seasons. And most importantly with 60 more episodes to tell the rest of the story rather than 33, the series might have reached a conclusion that could have satisfied its audience.
I have to say I disagree with the assessment that faithfully adapting AFFC would have made for a "rough" season of TV, and that the average audience wouldn't have appreciated it. Some of the most beloved TV shows of all time are just about "people talking". But I get the point Quinn is trying to make. AFFC is the first book in the series that doesn't have a climactic battle sequence, and a lot of its action sets up payoffs in future books, but I still think there's enough grade A material in AFFC to make for some great TV. And let's not forget it would have all been combined with material from ADWD, which takes place simultaneously, not to mention some of the stuff they cut from the later half of ASOS that could have been included in season 5, like all the politicing and scheming that led to Jon Snow's election as Lord Commander. The Kings moot, The taking of The Shield Islands, Arianne's queen maker plot, and Brianne and Jamie's respective adventuring through the Riverlands are all great storylines filled with great scenes, some of which would have even made for great action sequences. Overall I really appreciate this video and think that it makes lots of points that I agree with, but I just had to split that one hair.
Ive been arguing this viewpoint for years. It was blatantly obvious by the time season 5 aired with the Show only Jamie and Bronn in dorne plot and sansa marrying Ramsay. But i started noticing they were cutting material dating back to Season 2 and how they cut out the Harvest Festival in the North/the abduction of Lady Hornwood and the original introduction of Reek Aka Ramsay Bolton in disguise. Lets not forget about the Erasure of any important focus on The ironborn or the Dornish Factors post season 5. Just so much material that was wasted because it really did feel like The showrunners didnt want to expand on Important characters that werent The Lannister's/the starks/Dany and we ended up losing out on so many interesting characters like Lady Dustin and we had to see the lord Manderly completely emasculated by a 8 year old girl and lost out on the feud of the freys and Manderlys. My biggest missed opportunity is Victarion/Euron and the real potential of the Golden Company
I think you've summed up the core reason of why the show fell flat very well. After the red wedding, D&D were more concerned with making a name for themselves than actually making a faithful adaptation. In my opinion, they should have approached feast and dance the opposite way GrrM did. Half the story for all characters instead of all the story for half. As you've said, there's more than enough source material. In terms of what material I would have liked included, lady Stoneheart, Faegon, and the real Greyjoy plot are stand outs. Stoneheart, I'm sure, will be integral to Brienne and Jamies development, and likely one of the Stark girls as well, while Faegon and the Greyjoys will play a far more significant role in Danys madness than Missandei's death. Thats not to mention the silly choices made along the way. Littlefinger handing over Sansa, the sandsnake plot, the rushed pacing of the final seasons, the removal of magical elements, the list goes on. And the most unforgivable blunder, no Tysha/Penny storyline. Without Tysha and Penny, we don't see Tyrion's darker side, his cruelty, sadness and depression. We just get the smartest character of the entire thing suddenly become the most useless character for the remainder of the show. And finally, how can Gendry run back to the wall within a day, while seasoned rangers take weeks or months to make the same trip. GrrM will go down as one of the greatest fantasy writers in history. D&D won't. Everything after the red wedding is why
I assume it wasn’t fleshed out enough yet for the show but I hate how they changed the Dorne plot line which also leads to the exclusion of fAegon and Jon Con. Leaving it out does make Doran seem weak, not at all like the grass that hides the viper in the books. I feel like they could have done the marriage pact between Arianne and Viserys even without fAegon if they really wanted to and still had a Martell heir vying for Dany’s hand in marriage.
My biggest complaint in terms of lost plotlines is the entire (F)Aegon storyline. that omission did so much damage to the show. It ruined Varus' character. it made Tyrion's journey to Meereen boring. and they possibly adapted JonCon's future mental break and put it into Dany's conclusive arc without any regard to thinking if it would have worked in a narrative sense.
BEFORE YOU COMMENT! I misspoke in the Star Wars section - I meant to say Rise of Skywalker (which sucks) rather than the Last Jedi (which I quite like) - specifically insofar as the Rise of Skywalker feels like a completely unplanned panic response to the Last Jedi.
Interesting I was going to ask if you confused these 2 because you said Last Jedi but showed Rise of Skywalker (Picture), so I was a little confused. I also hope that they will greenlight and produce an animated Show of GoT, it would solve a lot of Issues the show had. One being Age restrictions, another one being Animal security and care and training (the excuse why the Direwolves were cut from the Show). But I hope they will use a different title, you can catch a lot of old Viewers with the same Title, but Show-Only-Fans will always say it is not as good as the Original. Which won't be true, especially with the last 5 Seasons. So I would prefer a new Title ... maybe you could make a short about that and ask the Community for Titles I bet we could create some funny and serious propositions.
Don’t worry about it all three were bad in their own ways
@@QuinnTheGM Thank the gods
I was writing a tweet at you asking how you could hate it when I saw this lol
All three movies appear to be unplanned, without the coordination that George Lucas as producer provided to his directors of Empire/Jedi.
Be honest you're just upset they cut Jon Con
That is completely valid.
It's a good reason to be upset
So am I!
i am spartacus!
Me too
Leaving out the Davos White Harbor storyline is a decision I'll always be disappointed by. Missing out on the Manderly/Frey animosity is bad enough, but not getting to hear the passionate speeches of Wylla and Wyman is a huge letdown
Yeah that was some of the best stuff in the series. Psychotic writing decision to cut the northern conspiracy shit.
Yeah they wouldn’t even have to change the story much and they could’ve got the conspiracy done in the season to build up to the battle of the bastards. The payoff of Jon Snow being made King in the North would’ve been even better.
Absolutely! Some of my favorite parts of the books!
There's a problem between the concept of"l "war is bad" and "war looks badass on screen"
The quote you're referring to is from François Truffaut, who said that there's no such thing as an anti-war film. However, decades later, there are a few film that have been praised for being successfully anti-war. One of them is _Grave of the Fireflies._
Yes, another person who wants animated ASOIAF! I genuinely believe that it’s the best way to adapt the books, especially in comparison to how limited the fantasy elements end up looking in live-action.
Honestly, live action is probably the straight up worst medium for fantasy. Theater has it most difficult, then shows and movies.
Audio or Text only mediums are good (songs/podcasts and books/poems etc), while visual mediums like art/drawings, comic books, video games and animation are all quite viable.
It is sad that live action is the most prestigious (and probably most profitable) when practically every other medium is a better fit (we are talking about stories that usually originate in books anyway).
The worst change they made was having Littlefinger give Sansa to the Boltons. There was no justifying it whatsoever. Even the most casual of fans knew that Littlefinger would NEVER do that and that it was a terrible idea. That was the moment they irrevocably broke the series beyond repair.
As to your "easy layups" section, D&D no longer cared whether or not there were scenes that could be amazing with a little effort. They optimized 100% for the easiest choice possible. If they had a choice between an easy layup book scene that would be easy to adapt, but take a tiny bit of effort, or a half-assed made up scene that moves the plot forward and takes no effort, they went with the latter.
It was definitely one of the worst decisions, in that it turned Littlefinger into an idiot, giving away his most valuable playing piece to a monster for nothing, and because it broke Sansa's storyline, and brought in the idiotic "abuse makes you stronger" trope.
I hate that change as much as I hate what they did to everything to do with Dorne - I'd rather they'd left the entire Dorne plot out than having to deal with the trash they gave us, inadequate felines and all, and speaking of missing speeches, what about Ellaria Sand's perfect speech about the futility of revenge; how a skull can't make her laugh, or warm her bed? Nope, she just stabs Prince Doran for no reason, and succeeds him for less reason. Not to mention what a waste of a great actor like Alexander Siddig that entire mess was.
I'm pretty sure that they summed it up when they said that "themes are for book reports", and showed us that they only wanted to film the kick-ass battles, with a side of gratuitous sex. What was wrong with the canon sex in the books?!?
Yeah, I know why they would want to replace Jeyne Poole (who was basically just an extra in the first season) with Sansa, but how they got there was stupid.
What always annoys me about it is Jeyne Poole was only in like 2 scenes in the first episode. So they always had the intention of giving Sansa to the Boltons, which never made sense in the first place.
@@thereallofigirl I wouldn''t say "they always had the intention". A Dance With Dragons hadn't even been published when they were filming the first season, and they didn't know how long the show would run. I don't think the Boltons are even mentioned in the first season.
To make it worse they tried some real lazy writing to make up for it where Littlefinger says he made a mistake.
I argue the changes made to Jon Snow's story are the worst because he is the main character. And that change to Sansa leads to her story directly undermining Jon's story. It was so diabolically stupid on so many levels.
Sorry guys it was me..... I killed Game of Thrones
As long as you're sorry.
Did you do the killing blow or did you poison it slowly since s3?
You really are the song of ice and fire
Busted!
No dude, WE killed Game of Thrones 🫂
It’s crazy how D&D cut the shows two GREATEST speeches, which they EASILY could’ve copied bar for bar. Broken Man speech and the North Remembers speech not being adapted genuinely feels criminal.
Also Doran's
The kings moot too
I will always grieve for Dorne @@pouncebaratheon4178
What's even weirder about their unwillingness to adapt AFfC and ADwD is that those books are FILLED with political intrigue, which was the stuff that they liked the most?? Why were they afraid to adapt Cersei losing her mind and Jon struggling with the complicated politics at the Wall?
Because the show slowly but surely became another Marvel clone full of good guys whooping the asses of bad guys while cracking a joke every two minutes
Cersei probably got adapted closer than the average Feast POV. She agrees to the Faith Militant re-arming, tries to use them against Margaery, then gets arrested herself and forced into the Walk of Shame.
@@clownpendotfart only for the Faith Millitant and everything surrounding it to be corrupted by the atheists running the show.
To transfer the mad queen arc to Dany I guess
It’s not a single moment but D&D basically refusing to have Tyrion go down his darker path I think really messed up not only his character but the overall ending. In the era where Walter White was popular I could never understand white washing him
Not only they refused it but made Tyrion a pacifist 😭😭
I get the vibes that they didn't want Tyrion to go down his dark path and essentially become a bad guy since he was a fan favorite to the audience. And so simply omitted it without thinking of the consequences later on
5:00 everything they cut and changed was purely to show off celebrity actors so they could win Emmys, thus boosting D&D’s profile so they could jump ship for a movie career. Case in point, Lady Stoneheart - they later admitted (I think it was Cogman) that they cut her out “because it would have made Jon Snows’s death and resurrection less impactful”…and I think that statement was actually genuine: they wanted to hype up Harington’s role for awards. Mentally step back and realize all this happened just to show off their favorite actors. Even Season 5 Dorne only exists, as they say in the commentary, in order to show off India Varma: “we reconceived the role to make it worthy of the actor’s talents”. It’s not that they cut Arianne Martell because they “dislike” her, or to streamline the story (adding back Dorne at the last minute was very bloated)….As you say they had no real interest after book 3…but we have to understand from an out-of-universe perspective, they were just burning through material quickly to get done, and trying to “show off” the leads who could win awards, to pad their resumes. Similarly, Wyman Manderley’s speech was cut and turned into a Lyanna Mormont speech…to show off Bella Ramsay.
Similarly, and a huge example…do you genuinely believe that they had Ramsay rape Sansa, “because they didn’t want the cost of hiring a new actress to play Jeyne Poole”, as you say? Or because they wanted Sophie Turner to win them an Emmy for acting the hell out of a rape scene ?
GRRM has said he disliked how Tolkien brought Gandalf back from the dead stronger than ever, which is why he wrote his undead so much differently. Look at how D&D handled other undead characters: Beric was recast after the first season (few would remember that actor), the Mountain (who'd already been recast multiple times) was hidden behind a helmet so it didn't matter who was behind there. Lady Stoneheart is supposed to be quasi-mute, but it wouldn't make such sense to bring back Michelle for a non-speaking role.
Jeyne Poole was basically an extra in the first season. Viewers would not remember her at all, and wouldn't care the way they care about Sansa. Getting Theon to monologue about his memories of Jeyne Poole in Winterfell wouldn't cut it. And if they did cast some actress to play Jeyne, they'd still be stuck with the fact that Sansa only has 3 chapters in Feast/Dance and they'd already had her meet with the Lords Declarant about Lysa's death in season 4. They were able to remove Bran from the show for an entire season, but he's also the most removed from the political story at that point and had the youngest remaining regular actor (Rickon was basically offscreen until he was killed).
@@clownpendotfart that's only an argument they should have built up Jeyne Poole more in the first place
@@thedragondemands5186 Each season is ~10 hours of TV, building up Jeyne Poole means sacrificing something else. Jeyne is going to disappear after the first season because she's not a POV character or in the vicinity of other POVs until Theon in ADWD. That's multiple seasons offscreen for a very minor character.
@@clownpendotfart I understand while including Jeyne as fake Arya is unviable but that said, putting Sansa in that place was absolutely the wrong choice as well. It doesn't make any in-universe sense and is entirely out of character for Littlefinger to give Sansa to the Boltons.
They should have just cut the fake Arya plot entirely or given the role to new character to show off how bad Ramsay is and to have Theon be a hero by saving them. Like Alys Karstark or Wylla Manderly.
You're onto something here; I think D&D ultimately saw the show as an exercise in career development and, once they were known for it, rapidly lost interest in the project. Those of us who had some genuine intellectual skin in the game can take some small, vindictive solace in the fact that their subsequent careers have consisted of basically nothing.
Oh the irony. They wanted The creative pull of game of thrones to get other projects,yet they revealed themselves to be hacks
@@dominiqueodom3099 They did get more projects, and have a big development deal with Netflix after a big bidding war over them. Fans who think the industry hates them are deluded.
@@clownpendotfartwhile the industry doesn't hate them, it seems their credibility has taken a dive... They had a project alongside HBO called "Confederate", which was unceremoniously scrapped, and before the last season of GoT, Disney wanted them for Star Wars. Netflix had them make a mediocre musical comedy before giving them the 3 Body Problem too. So I guess they did get a second chance, but still... The fact that they needed one is still a bit telling.
Also, going by fans of the books, it seems they already made a good job at turning a (perceived) masterpiece into a mediocre show. I'm not one to cheer for other people's failure, but god damm if they don't have me doing it!
What are u talking about the season is great I loved the moment where Arya teleported behind the night king got on her secret trampoline and jumped silently to the night king and killed him I mean the whole point of GOT is to surprise us and what is more of a plot twist than that. I mean who has a better story than Arya the Teleporter.
It made a whole bar cheer!
My big complaint about that: she didn't use any Faceless Man magic-tricks to disguise herself in order to get up that close.
03:26 removing the Young Griff storyline has to be up there. Especially the stuff with the bells at King's Landing is so obviously something recycled from what George told D&D but completely nonsensical.
If there was a good way to write the Young Griff storyline, GRRM would have already written it. His failure to do that over the course of 13 years indicates it's a path to be avoided, particularly in a TV show that must economize in way that books don't have to.
@@clownpendotfart George has said that he wrote 3/4 of the book so it is entirely possible that he wrote the Young Griff stuff and that it is other characters/storylines that are holding him up (such as Dany and the Meerenese Knot, perhaps) from finishing.
11:38 also similar in that they both had the original author's outline but both chose to basically ignore it, only taking bits and pieces they liked
The problems with game of thrones started in season 4 mainly with changing tyrion and jaimes last conversation and tyrion killing Tywin
thank you!!!
@@wolfgangstallionmusic5639
youre welcome?
Yeah outside of skipping Stoneheart this is basically where things go off the rails irrevocably
@
Yeah it’s one of the thematically most important things in the story and without it brienne and Jaime just kinda meander around for like 2 1/2 seasons
SAME, like they could have easily added it in and built up references in case the audience forgot who Tysha was. Like Oberyn going on what Tywin and the Mountain did to Elia and her babies, Tyrion being married for the second time, etc.
It's long been my opinion that the moment GoT began to die was when D&D discarded GRRM's first script for The Rose and the Lion that may have begun introducing characters like JonCon and other people required for the Faegon story.
As well as all the references in Bran's visions. Like we got confirmation that Robb warged into Grey Ghost. And thsy in the show, the last thing he saw before his sevond death was Arya. 😢
The Sansa plotline in seaon 5 is problematic to understate things.
The Stannis storyline is also annoying because they build him up just to come up with reasons for him to be in a worse position, similar to dany in seasons 7-8. Even more infuriating is the fact that they gave Jon his storyline, rallying up the north to fight the boltons just to have a cheesy superhero showdown versus Ramsay.
Dorne is basically cut with Aryane gone, FAegon is cut, it's like the took out all the meat of a sandwich and just left the two slices of bread with some mediocre sauce in the middle and rushed it to the end.
Hasn't George said he wanted to do a 5 year time skip, but that it'd require retcons to pull off and the books were already published? They should have just made the show with this in mind. It'd give them an original ending, different from the books but in a good way. They already got rid of some foreshadowing for things GRRM ended up not going for. Great video!
GRRM wanted to age up his young characters more, and the show had them start out older and age roughly 1 year per season.
Changing the battle of ice and leaving out the whole grand northern conspiracy was a missed opportunity as well. I think I’m looking forward to seeing that play out in WoW more than anything else.
Good video! For me, one of the biggest disappointments in the show was throwing away the book version of Euron. I think Euron's actor TOTALLY had the range to be the crazed bloodthirsty eldritch pirate. But they made him a fairly one note character who was more of a plot device than anything.
Excellent video (as always), Quinn! 🙂
Two things I want to add:
1.) D&D always said they want to make 7-8 seasons at most.
The only way they could achieve that is by contracting the plotlines after season 4/book 3.
But GRRM was massively expanding the plotlines in book 4 and 5.
I guess that's why they decided to do their own thing (as you said, after the Red Wedding they thought they're that good 🤦♂🤦♂), otherwise their 7-8 seasons would've been impossible to keep. If they stayed with the books, they would've needed *at the very least* 10 seasons.
2.) I think introducing Lady Stoneheart more than a season after the Red Wedding at the end of season 4 would not be an issue:
The Hound "died" at the end of season 4 and was re-introduced in the middle of season 6, and Bran also took a break during season 5.
What shocks me the most is how they just erased all magic from a high fantasy universe and how they sexualized all non-straight characters.
I hated that they ignored all the complexity of the northern and essosi politics. I hated that they turned Jon Snow into a generic hero with no ambitions and flaws or when Varys and Tyrion became human rights lawyers. They also kind of forgot that Sam and Brienne are POV characters. And gods, they butchered my girl Dany so much.
It doesn't really shock me, unfortunately. They were a couple of frat boys writing for fellow frat boys. Maybe smarter than average and capable of good work when they're interested, but once they were done with what they really wanted to do, (the Red Wedding), they went into auto-pilot and let their worst instincts take over.
They didn't erase all magic. The White Walkers/Others appear more in the show than books, and they had Leaf throwing fireballs rather using a torch. They resurrected Jon Snow, which STILL hasn't happened in the books. They revealed the truth behind Melisandre's glamour, which (again) still hasn't happened in the books. They had an undead/wighted dragon, which is something that has also never happened in the books.
@@clownpendotfart everything that was adapted ended up being executed in the worst possible way and still had to be simplified to end the show quickly.
Dark fantasy universe
I still remember what they said about the magic. That's unforgivable. Something about selling the story to non-fantasy fans(bar crowd).
In hindsight the lack of Bonifer Hasty doomed the later seasons.
I will die on the hill of Sansa‘s wedding to Ramsey being the end of GoT‘s prime. It made no sense for any of the main characters involved and was just cruel for the sake of being cruel.
The worst choice they made adapting FeastDance was definitely moving Sansa into Winterfell with Theon. That decision shows a total lack of understanding of even the surface level events of both Sansa and Theon's plotlines, as essentially the only commonality between book and show for the Winterfell plot is Ramsay gets married and r*pes his wife. It's frankly disgusting, and I compare what they did to Sansa to if they had let Sam randomly fall off the boat and drown on his way to Oldtown. They completely derailed her storyline for no reason other than to send a major character to a needlessly cruel fate, and in following it up they didn't even explore the effect that experience would have on Sansa, it just gets brushed aside as soon as she's out of Winterfell.
Honorable mention to the Dorne and Riverlands plotlines, by not including Arianne, the literal protagonist of the Dorne plot, and then randomly sending Jaime there instead of Riverrun, it's worse than just cutting those arcs, as what we got instead essentially leads to the opposite thematic conclusions the book leaves you with. Dorne is behind glass for the first 3 books and 4 seasons and that intentionally gives you a sense that the people of Westeros consider it to be a strange land, and lesser to the rest of the kingdoms, and the familial tragedy of the Martells then humanizes this place and shows you that all the things you heard about Dorne before are really just racist bullshit pushed by the Westerosi elites who want to keep women and foreigners and common people down. Meanwhile for Jaime, his trip away from King's Landing in the book gives him the chance to define who he is when his corrupt and manipulative family members are out of the picture, and his conclusion is to reject Cersei's cry for help and try to make peace for the realm instead. In the show, we send Jaime to Dorne so we can see this foreign land from the same Westerosi perspective we've already gotten, and everything we see basically confirms that Dorne is a nasty desert country full of crazy ladies who will kill you without a second thought but are also always down to fuck, and the men are cowards who are simply made of lesser stock than the rest of Westeros, and Jaime walks away from it resolved to protect what remains of his family, even going so far as to say to Cersei on his return, "fuck everyone that isn't us." It's character assassination for one of my favorites, it's blatantly racist and orientalist, and again, they literally cut the main character of the plotline they were supposed to be adapting. Nothing's gonna top how they brutalized Sansa for me but the Dorne plot is rightfully maligned for how many different and ridiculous ways they fucked it up.
I agree it would have been better to just cut Dorne then what they did. But it's ridiculous to say that giving Sansa that plotline is equivalent to killing her. She remained on the show and got to do more acting that Bran's actor did. And it's not like she had that many chapters in Feast/Dance for them to adapt.
I was a show fan before i became a book fan. Honestly, im of the opinion that Dan and Dave only wanted to do the Red Wedding cause after ASOS is done, everything just flops
If it’s ever re adapted is love to see it as an animated series. With war of rohirrim coming out if it does good can be a new era for animated fantasy media and with that an animated ASOIAF that is more in line with the books (maybe eps r even each pov like the books) would be amazing.
The Tysha confession scene from Jaime when he confesses to Tyrion is one of the best scenes in the entire series to me. I was gobsmacked when I watched D&D's version of it, and bitterly described just how badly they'd f(cked it up to my wife as the credits rolled on that episode.
They just couldn’t handle evil Tyrion
I think the worst decision they made by far was the choice to have littlefinger sell Sansa to the boltons. Makes absolutely zero sense for littlefinger to do that and it was a hollow attempt to emulate the books while at the same time ignoring them
Before getting into GoT/ASOIAF I thought I’d read the books first because I’d heard the show ended so poorly (which I thought was due to running out of books). But I quickly realized that wasn’t the reason at all
Not adapting Aegon and Jon Connington is crazy. I cannot fathom how they came to that decision.
The Tysha confession too is a terrible omission, ruining Tyrion’s character development.
I’ll personally always be pissed that they omitted two of my favourite characters, Victarion Greyjoy and Wyman Manderly.
It's easy to fathom: it simplifies the show not to introduce new characters, and GRRM hasn't written where that plotline is supposed to go.
@@clownpendotfartand fAegon was widely thought of as a pointless late addition until 20 episodes of Cersei drinking wine in the red keep made his likely role in the story painfully obvious.
Without knowing exactly what/when GRRM told D&D about the end game, omitting fAegon seems like a perfectly reasonable decision.
And love George but the past 10 years have given me the distinct impression that he’s probably an absolute nightmare to work with. Could see them being desperate for more information on fAegon and George just keeps on circling back to their not being enough horses on the show or whatever.
@ removing what is clearly an essential part of the story, especially the endgame doesn’t simplify the story. Yes it means that you don’t have to spend time introducing the characters and the plot line, but it also means you have to force a square peg through a round hole in attempting to make the story work without that crucial piece. That’s a lot more difficult than just playing out the story as it was intended.
The lack of Aegon is arguably the main reason the house of cards came tumbling down at the end.
@@sassquatch212 I don't think you can know what's "clearly essential" when we still haven't gotten the remaining books.
@ it’s very clear from reading ADWD that Aegon’s story is going to be essential to the ending, especially for the King’s Landing/Iron Throne side of the story. We don’t need Winds or Dream to be able to infer that. George has even said there will be a second dance of the dragons.
The destruction of King’s Landing is almost certainly going to be a consequence of that, thus making so much more sense than the TV version. If this is the case then how is that not essential to the story? And that’s just the broad strokes of Aegon’s story.
I think the scenes I wanted to see most were Tyrion playing cyvasse with young griff, the scene between Jamie and his aunt about Tyrion being twins true son, and to have the tyrells be the family they are and not cut down to 4 people.
Cutting Lady Stoneheart is the major turning point for me. They cut half the story out and missed a great opportunity for 1.) cool scenes with undead Catlyn and 2.) the degeneratation of the brotherhood without banners which fits the theme of the whole story very well
They left out Shit-Mouth. Imagine how fun that would have been with the right casting.
Leaving out faegon was their biggest fuck up
If it was possible to write a better follow-up to Feast/Dance, then WHY HASN'T GRRM DONE THAT OVER 13 YEARS!?
I would argue that, in hindsight, the mistake was adhering too closely to those books and starting things like a Dorne plotline that they subsequently scrapped quickly because it just wasn't working. With perfect knowledge that GRRM wouldn't be writing the last two books, they needed to deviate earlier to come up with a way to reach his intended ending with a minimum amount of plotholes. Of course, they didn't know all this in advance and wouldn't have years to spend coming up with a more workable story than GRRM has over the decades.
I don't think D&D ever said they disliked magic. They included a lot more material focused on the Others/White Walkers than the books have, and even made Leaf throw fireballs instead of burning wights with a torch. But things like the direwolves were impractical/expensive to have a lot of screentime. People talking in a room is relatively cheap and can make for good TV when you've got good actors.
I think the septon's speech is worse in the show. I don't think it got changed because of animosity toward GRRM, but instead because they were writing a plot about Sandor (who is not a POV in the books) trying to assimilate into a more peaceful life rather than one about Brienne understanding what causes men to turn to brigandry. Sandor doesn't need any lessons on how men can be changed by war, he's already defected from an army to become an outlaw.
There is a github repo called "got-book-show" from "joeltronics" which presents a scrollable grid of all episodes (up through season 6) compared to the chapters they draw from. A Feast for Crows is sparser, but far from empty. Most columns have an entry, though many of them are dotted rather than filled-in. And his page, while the most comprehensive I'm aware of, is still out-of-date and the Game of Thrones wiki contains more such entries that it's missing.
D&D did NOT direct the Red Wedding episode of the TV show. David Nutter did. I wasn't expecting you to give them more credit than they deserve in this video!
It's just false to claim that D&D were rushing to get to Star Wars. They publicly announced that the plan was for seven seasons LONG before the Star Wars opportunity came up. The cast have said that they wouldn't have been willing to do more seasons. If you want to claim they were rushing to be done with the show and to have a break from such a grueling production, you'd be closer to the mark.
The most disappointing thing about this video is that you never even consider the problem of what do with Winds/Dream. The showrunners do not have the option of faithfully adapting Feast/Dance in a way that pleases you, then just sitting on their hands waiting for GRRM to write the remaining books. They need to write each season in a way that enables them to reach the end. If faithful adaptation of any material from GRRM's books impedes that, then they must discard that.
1:25 Quinn I think this graphic is actually rather recent. The "seasons" thing is pointing out the pacing of the show and how they rushed the last two books not to mention the final seasons by likely following George's plot points but not understanding how he would have written it.
I love The Last Jedi because of how it actually sought to start a dialogue about the nature of the Force and the relevance of the Jedi.
The Last Jedi is still the best of the 3. The only one that actually tried to do something with the franchise.
@@mackherren1373 factual
the fact that the red wedding is what began the decline makes me so mad bc in retrospect the episode wasnt even that good!! compared to the book scene. robb & catelyn die, and the shock value of that alone was enough to carry it for the show, but pretty much all of the background characters were basically just that. mostly nameless characters that the show didnt take the time to set up, or even show their deaths in detail. unlike in the book where we all know each of them individually, and watch them all fall one by one.
also, them having robb bring his pregnant wife to the wedding just so she can be stabbed, and the storyline wrapped up neatly... i was watching a RW reaction vid yesterday and they were so mad at robb for bringing her, and theyre right! robb stark wouldnt have brought her into danger, but D&D did.
and then they had catelyn kill walder's 8th wife, rarher than aegon. something about that is very wrong too. not a son for a son, and i just cant see cat killing a young girl, married into the family, instead of one of walder's "beloved" children.
I feel the show could have easily shown how loyal Robb's men were. Like even if they were nameless, they were still people too.
You can't give minor characters the same prominence in a 10-hour-per-season TV show as you can in those books.
@@clownpendotfart i understand, and would agree with that, however, with them splitting Storm into two seasons, and also having the first two seasons to build some of the Northerners up a bit more, like the Mormont women, etc, they did kind of have the chance, more than most shows. but they spent a lot of time in season 3 having us meet Healer Talisa™ from Volantis (?), rather than Jeyne of House Westerling, and changing Robb's story with her so that we could... watch the actors kinda smoulder at each other a lot, and eventually have robb actually Decide to dishonor the Frey alliance in a more premeditated fashion, rather than being more forced into "betraying" them due to his own unadulterated shame and guilt at having been 'seduced' once while in a vulnerable state, but not wanting to dishonor her either. even acting with honor towards the vassal house of the enemy themselves.
@@ccorvid Robb isn't a POV in the books, so that stuff happens off-page and Catelyn merely hears about it later. Separate from the POV format of the books, his relationship can be shown onscreen (and users would probably be upset if that was just something heard about after-the-fact), and GRRM said it made him wish he could have written some Robb POV chapters (but then he always has more stuff he wishes he could write, like Harwin Strong's perspective on semisecretly fathering Rhaenyra's children).
That Robert/Cersei scene in season one is slightly based off of a thought that Book Cersei has in AffC, when she reflects back on a time she chipped Robert’s tooth in a fight, and then he later brags that he chipped it in a melee. She then thinks that their marriage was a sort of melee. It’s so much better in the show though. Also my favorite show scene.
I think Genna Lannister was a terrible omission
“Themes are for eighth-grade book reports" David Benioff
they did the martel’s so dirty… a whole scheming subplot to usurp the throne and get dragons and its all reduced to “you want a bad girl, you need the bad 🐈”
Always thought an anime adaptation would be phenomenal
Post Jaime taking riverrun with jeyne westerling being pregnant and Jaime speaking to her mother while she went apeshit was so good. I'll never understand why they changed her to talisa and made her background somewhere from essos. It's just so awkward with why they made that change.
Another change I didn't like is Tyrion becoming evil arc. Dudes a literal villain but they make him into a neutral good character in the show. He's so much more interesting being angry. Cutting out the sailing on the royne where he finds out who griff really is over a game of cyvasse and d&d cutting varys long game is so dumb too.
Cutting quathe also. So stupid. Why?
I will never forgive the show for cutting Princess Arianne Martell, not my favourite plot line but I love 🧡 the character. But the North’s Loyalty to the Stark is dumbest plot line to drop, the difference between the Starks and the Bolton’s are the Starks rule through Love and Respect whilst the Boltons rule through Fear and Death. One guarantees every lasting loyalty the other guarantees you loyalty for as long as you have the most power and the second you loose it, they’ll turn on you.
Insane that they cut plots almost exlusively progressed through dialogue. Think of how many shows love to meander through nothing plots for most of a season just to keep the budgets low, and you drop 1.5-2.5 seasons worth of good cheap plots.
The very least that the writers can do are just do fan service. Most fans are happy with Sandor Clegane ending with his brother even tho book fans knew that not what would happen in the book. Daenarys should be queen with Jon as king consort. Jon kills Night King. Sansa as Regent of Vale. Arya vibing in Braavos as assassins. Jamie and Briene happy together. Cersei probably ended up dead by Jamie. Stannis wins over Boltons but died heroic death, etc for example. That could spare the embarrassment of terrible ending.
Or heck, ended it at A Storm of Swords.
Yeah that would have been better than what we got. Just curious though, so are you saying that in this scenario Sansa would be betrothed to Sweetrobin? Is that how she comes out as Regent of the Vale?
@@Lord_of_Karhold I don't know. Just a theory I got. I mean I really don't see Sansa ruled North as Queen tho. Also, Vale had been ruled by women for many times like Lady Arryn during Aegon Conquest and Lady Jane in Dance with Dragons and Lyssa Arryn. Kinda feel like GRRM basically winking at us desperately at this point.
They were committed to reaching the destination GRRM told them about, which was supposed to be bittersweet rather than fan-service.
Breinne bro they killed my girl. I know it's difficult but her inner monologue was só good, her self doubts and How she unknowingly overcomes them... Amazing.
But its Impossible to do all that whitout Lady Stoneheart.
It's impossible to have an inner monologue onscreen unless you have people voice it like David Lynch's Dune, and there's a reason people don't imitate that.
great video, Quinn!!!
it never ceases to amaze me how the asoiaf fandom seemingly ought to have run out of things to discuss a long time ago, but something comes up again and again!
but i guess it's no surprise with so many characters, plotlines, got, hotd, and all the what ifs...
though I digress!
thank you for your work, love it! and looking forward to seeing more of it :))
I understand cutting out and streamlining some plots that would have bored the audience like Brienne... but it is absolutely baffling they would cut out the Northern conspiracy stuff, Davos in white harbor, the mysterious assassinations and sabotage in winterfell is incredible... crazy they cut 90% of it.
I think the biggest issue in the show is the bending of the plot to revolve around a few antagonists. In the last 4 seasons, varys and littlefinger largely are inactive and dont really contribute much to the story, the dornish are lackluster to say the least, roose bolton largely isn't driving the story in the north, overlooking Ramsey's bad descisions and somehow bot receiving backlash for his part in the red wedding. This leaves us with cersei, ramsey and the others as the only obstacles while every other major character is one of the "good guys" who will go on to combat our three villans at some point
Forgot, the sons of the harpy is literally a faceless generic bad guy that folds as soon as their ringleader are discovered
@@timothytzovolos153 It's not like the slaver antagonists in Dance are anything more than jabronies with no chance to win.
@clownpendotfart true, but the Harpy's sons still affect the story by giving Hizdar the means to propose to Dany, and the suspicion it brings him, which eventually leads to barristan acting against him and also hizdars marriage also causes quentyn to go dragon taming. All this is a result of the harpy's, they don't really have the same impact in the show.
Why can't he just fucking release what he has done? For fucks sake, I'm probably going to fucking die before I get to see The Winds of Winter.
Part of the reason has to be ego. They made some changes that were well received and possibly let it get to their heads. Examples of that are Ros, Arya as Tywin's cupbearer, etc.. But the accumulation of the changes and omissions eventually led to the downward spiral from Season 5 onwards.
They cut so many important characters from the books. FAegon & Jon Con would've saved season 5 at the least. The Dornish plot is also building nicely in the books and is likely gonna be another intresting thing come Winds. And don't get me started about Stannis...
I strongly dislike the Lady Stoneheart storyline but maybe it has a worthwhile payoff to justify its inclusion in the books. I was glad she was written out of the show.
Of the small scenes cut from AFFC/ADWD, the thing that most annoys me? Jaime slapping Red Ronnet for insulting Brienne. Not because we need Ronnet, but because the scene is so important for Jaime, allowing me to gaze at man he once was and say "no more" *and* because the audience would have loved the hell out of it. An easy lay-up, squandered.
This channel is so much better than the ASOIAF know-nothing channel @RedTeamReview
I think after listening to Dan and Dave's interviews, all they really wanted to do was to adapt the red wedding. Once that was done, they didn't really care about the rest.
Imagine casting Ian McShane as a character that has the most amazing speech AND NOT HAVE HIM READ IT.
Seriously if he had a Cameo account I’d pay him just to read it out, but to never get to see him act it out is so sad.
So what you're saying is D&D kinda forgot?
I would argue that the downfall of Game of Thrones began as far back as season 2, or at least it was on the cards back then. That's when the first big divergences from the books began. Yes, season 2 through 4 were still good in spite of that, largely because they were well-made and followed the events in the books in broad strokes, but that's when the first cracks started to appear, they just papered over them (I'm also still lukewarm on season 2 to this day, it just looks a lot better in retrospect when you compare it to the mess that the show became post-season 4.) However, after season 4, there was no more papering over anything anymore for a number of reasons:
1: they could no longer tie the events of the show to those in the books because they had already diverged so much.
2: they ran out of source material to adapt, and people realised they were a lot better at adapting stuff than creating it from scratch.
3: the best actors were gone, mostly because their characters were killed off (not much the show could do about that).
4: this is my most controversial opinion, but I think the showrunners stopped caring about GoT and seeing a faithful adaptation to the end. It became far too big and successful for them to care.
Cutting Aegon and JonCon totally crippled Dany's fall from grace arc. Cutting Robb's will legitimizing Jon was an unhelpful change too.
I've argued that the out of nowhere blindsided revelation of Aegon's true goal wouldve been the thing to push Dany towards her goal of heading towards Westeros
Hello there
Kenobi!
Game of thrones died the moment Katelyn Kennedy promisde dumb and dumber a star wars triology
It takes a lot of talent to ruin two separate franchises from two different networks at once
They were planning on just 7 seasons long before then, and the cast have said they wouldn't have been willing to do more seasons.
@@clownpendotfart yeah but like at least 10 episodes for season 7 and 8 would have made It less rushed
@@Matt-vh2ci Perhaps, but it should be remembered those episodes were longer than the show had originally been as well.
didnt finish the video yet but how could you say they should adapt feast and dance right when even george himself cannot handle it right now?
I fully agree with you! I used to have to make this argument all the time. I'm glad a creator finally spoke up.
I don't quite know how to phrase this: I think, if the entire epos of ASOIAF was completed and D&D were to completely adapt it (instead of the reality that we have), the GOT show would've been better - so I technically disagree with your thesis, although I absolutely agree with most points brought up, especially the Red Wedding as focal point for the development and decrease in quality.
My point: I feel like, if you're D&D and you really wanna adapt this part of the story PLUS it isn't even finished and you WILL definitely outpace the author, those facts will influence choices made along the way, even earlier than the point of your adaptation that run out of source material. In other words, you will "prepare" and adapt to you running out of material later on. It's easier to set the course by omitting characters and plot lines earlier rather than trying to figure out what the f to do with them once you run out of source material, and try to slim down the world to something you're comfortable and generally able to deal with by yourself (without the "help" of having source material).
however this is not a standalone point and I think it does fit in your line of thinking and fundamental idea of what "went wrong" with the show. Especially the magical elements; they would rather trim them back extensively and early to NOT deal with them at all in later seasons, where they will be the focus of the source material that isn't available yet (and you D&D are neither interested nor talented enough to adapt it in the first place, let alone develop the story all by yourself). On top of that, the same would go for a lot of the themes of the books. As stated, they didn't think having (deeper, meaningful) themes would be necessary or good for the show - contrast that with the source material. Rather play it safe and loose early, throw it all out the window before you actually have to discuss, pay off, develop and resolve those themes.
In other words: If D&D followed the source material more closely for longer - adapting all that it available faithfully - the drop in quality after that would've been EVEN WORSE (in my opinion). Let that sink in. So reasonably as they sometimes can be, they did the smart thing to dumb down, downsize and gut the story even before running out of books - but, if they had all of them and could adapt them like season 1 for example, I think they could've possibly done a good job at it.
that are some good points.
I think the statements "they were put in an impossible position they didn't sign up for"
and
"they should have done better and still deserve a lot of criticism for their incompetence"
can coexist and are both valid.
The most upsetting thing there after all is the hubris and ego that contributed a lot. Being put in an impossible position to finish someone else's genius series with no idea how, and what did they do? Monopolize the writing and overall creative process, cut ties with George to polish their own image as the showrunners getting all the awards (GoT was for some reason on it's commercial and critical peak S5-6); not even trying to get more skilled writers on board. That is why I'll never really get on board with any position defending D&D.
*but they did run out of material. Almost nothing happens with the main plot in feast/dragons. Its literally just Brienne,Jamie,Asha,Tyrion travel logs. Feast and dance are just meandering filler. I still like them but god damn nothing happens in them*
I recall an interview where D&D read the red wedding and immediately set down the book saying they need to make this a show. I think they accomplished what they set out to do with bringing the red wedding to the screen then got bored and sought to bring the show to as fast as possible conclusions as possible so that they can move on to new projects. They just burnt out
I don't think they were bored when making season 4. But later on I definitely think they just wanted to be done with it all.
Yes! I want an animated ASOIAF show too! I think it would be the best medium for it
Season 5 was a disaster since the first episode.
Game of Thrones biggest problem was existing before the books where finished, sure GOT was gave us amazing moments and perhaps adapting in 2011 was the best thing we could ever have. Yes, me and other got to know and experience a fragment of this wonderfull story, but not having the full picture made things like ignoring the magical aspects of the story a risk when adapting ASOAIF, nothing was certain. Plus the way it (potencially) affected Goerge's plans will remain a unknown.
But thinking this way about GOT won't stop me from loving what it was. In the end... it does no good to speak of roads not taken.
7:37 I never bought their budget excuses after season 3. HBO was throwing money at the show. They seemed to make stupid decisions because they could. Ending Barristan leaps to mind. A stupid death not connected with the story. Bro decisions like stunt casting and bad attempts to subvert expectations. I’ve commented very little on this so maybe I’m finally venting a little. Maybe not D&D but Dunning and Kruger attempting to rewrite George’s story..
The show was still cheaper than HOTD is.
3:35 its a bummer that they left out all of those scenes where jon connington was a person who exsists
D&D often understood the emotions of the characters. The hearts of their being, which allowed them to create some truly powerful moments. But they never grasped the world and story.
I've tried and put AFFC and ADWD into seasons 4 and 5 but its just to massive, you'd need 12 consecutive movies. Now figuring out how best to distribute the pov's over s4-6
Worst adaptation: Stannis' northern expedition/Euron
Worst omission: Northern Conspirancy
Worst addition: Asha circumnavigates Westeros then run away from some dogs
What kind of Ironborn would run away from a pack of dogs, seriously?
Since I have seen the work of Studio Fortiche years earlier, I do my quarterly prayer that they do an adaptation of ASOIF... but for any animation studio, it would require so much time and effort that it's unthinkable to accept a project like that
I think as they had the renown and recognition by the time season 3 I'm surprised nobody said let's switch to a 26 episode format. That would have created ample opportunities to introduce the missing storylines and characters. It could have been achieved within the budgetary constraints. I accept it might have ended up a bit like an Arrowverse type show. It would have then given scope to go on to a traditional 7 series show and not be stale if they did want to pursue further seasons. And those extra years mighy have given Martin the oomph to maybe finish the story. Forlorn hope, i know.
The Red Wedding could have been the mid season finale and Lady Stoneheart epilogue the actual season finale. I would also have tweaked it so that is revealed that Talisa is Jeyne Westerling and not kill her with Robb. That would been an amazing twist.
I also personally think as amazing Richard and Kit are in their respective roles, if all the Stark children were played by child actors there would have been stronger reasons in the narrative to develop the side characters and abandoned plots mentioned in the video. Some of Robb and Jon's more idiotic decisions make sense as, in the books, they are children or little more than children that have adult authority thrust upon them.
GRRM has said the show could only work on HBO rather than being like a broadcast show.
They should have included the chapter where Qarl the Maid bangs Asha.
I would LOVE an animated asoiaf adaptation, ideally in the arcane art style, that would give them enough time for George to release winds
The egos of D&D are the main source of the problems the show had.
I could not possibly like this video enough. I've been harping about this for years. A Feast for Crows is my favorite of the books and they started messing with it before the ever got to season 5. There are two primary choices that I feel contributed to ruining the set up for the Riverlands going into season 5. The first one was replacing Jeyne Westerling with another character. We were robbed of Jaime's scene with Sybil Spicer and that whole Riverlands plot. The other was Jaime and Brienne getting back before the Purple wedding rather than after it. In a Storm of Swords we were robbed of Jaime having his first meeting as Lord Commander of the Kings Guard, and they also made the most anti grape character a rapist in the process. We were also robbed of Brienne's Feast plot line. One more big one that's related, they should have included lady Stoneheart! Argh...... 😡🤬🤬🤬
Dude I have thought an animated version of asoiaf would be awesome for a long time!
One of my favourite non-book scenes is the conversation between Theon & Luwin at the end of Season 2.
D&D were pretty honest from the beginning that the whole reason they wanted to do the adaptation was the Red Wedding. They didn’t love the series, they just thought that scene was cool and wanted to be the ones to do it.
I don't see how you can look at the first two seasons, or the season 3 episodes preceding the Red Wedding, and conclude they didn't care. Even season 4 is one of the best seasons of serialized TV around, even if it's a step down from season 3.
The trouble w Game of Thrones?
Too many Characters.
Too many loose ends to tie up.
What was D&D's worst decision in adapting or not adapting books 4 and 5? I don't think there's a wrong answer to that question.
Perhaps the best thing they could have done would have been to quit while they were ahead. It's fairly obvious now that these guys only ever saw Game of Thrones as a launching pad for their careers, and were in a hurry to move on to different projects once they got the recognition for GOT's success.
And after season 4 they could have written their own ticket in Hollywood.
So if they had just handed the show off to new show runners or at least complied with HBO's requests that they hire a full writer's room, it could have been a win-win for everybody.
D&D could have moved on to their precious alternative projects, while other writers who'd have been all too happy to take over the most popular show in the world could've continued to actually adapt Martin's novels.
And as these new writers wouldn't be in as much of a hurry to wrap things up they'd probably have been willing to continue the series with 6 more 10 episode seasons as HBO and Martin wanted, rather than 2 more 10 episode seasons, followed by truncated 7 and 6 episode seasons.
And most importantly with 60 more episodes to tell the rest of the story rather than 33, the series might have reached a conclusion that could have satisfied its audience.
Please do release the Cerci video!
I have to say I disagree with the assessment that faithfully adapting AFFC would have made for a "rough" season of TV, and that the average audience wouldn't have appreciated it. Some of the most beloved TV shows of all time are just about "people talking". But I get the point Quinn is trying to make. AFFC is the first book in the series that doesn't have a climactic battle sequence, and a lot of its action sets up payoffs in future books, but I still think there's enough grade A material in AFFC to make for some great TV. And let's not forget it would have all been combined with material from ADWD, which takes place simultaneously, not to mention some of the stuff they cut from the later half of ASOS that could have been included in season 5, like all the politicing and scheming that led to Jon Snow's election as Lord Commander.
The Kings moot, The taking of The Shield Islands, Arianne's queen maker plot, and Brianne and Jamie's respective adventuring through the Riverlands are all great storylines filled with great scenes, some of which would have even made for great action sequences.
Overall I really appreciate this video and think that it makes lots of points that I agree with, but I just had to split that one hair.
Ive been arguing this viewpoint for years. It was blatantly obvious by the time season 5 aired with the Show only Jamie and Bronn in dorne plot and sansa marrying Ramsay.
But i started noticing they were cutting material dating back to Season 2 and how they cut out the Harvest Festival in the North/the abduction of Lady Hornwood and the original introduction of Reek Aka Ramsay Bolton in disguise.
Lets not forget about the Erasure of any important focus on The ironborn or the Dornish Factors post season 5.
Just so much material that was wasted because it really did feel like The showrunners didnt want to expand on Important characters that werent The Lannister's/the starks/Dany and we ended up losing out on so many interesting characters like Lady Dustin and we had to see the lord Manderly completely emasculated by a 8 year old girl and lost out on the feud of the freys and Manderlys.
My biggest missed opportunity is Victarion/Euron and the real potential of the Golden Company
The abduction of Lady Hornwood doesn't even happen on-page.
Can you get an imagine how good this channel is going to be when Winds comes out!
I think you've summed up the core reason of why the show fell flat very well. After the red wedding, D&D were more concerned with making a name for themselves than actually making a faithful adaptation.
In my opinion, they should have approached feast and dance the opposite way GrrM did. Half the story for all characters instead of all the story for half. As you've said, there's more than enough source material.
In terms of what material I would have liked included, lady Stoneheart, Faegon, and the real Greyjoy plot are stand outs. Stoneheart, I'm sure, will be integral to Brienne and Jamies development, and likely one of the Stark girls as well, while Faegon and the Greyjoys will play a far more significant role in Danys madness than Missandei's death.
Thats not to mention the silly choices made along the way. Littlefinger handing over Sansa, the sandsnake plot, the rushed pacing of the final seasons, the removal of magical elements, the list goes on.
And the most unforgivable blunder, no Tysha/Penny storyline. Without Tysha and Penny, we don't see Tyrion's darker side, his cruelty, sadness and depression. We just get the smartest character of the entire thing suddenly become the most useless character for the remainder of the show.
And finally, how can Gendry run back to the wall within a day, while seasoned rangers take weeks or months to make the same trip.
GrrM will go down as one of the greatest fantasy writers in history. D&D won't. Everything after the red wedding is why
I assume it wasn’t fleshed out enough yet for the show but I hate how they changed the Dorne plot line which also leads to the exclusion of fAegon and Jon Con. Leaving it out does make Doran seem weak, not at all like the grass that hides the viper in the books. I feel like they could have done the marriage pact between Arianne and Viserys even without fAegon if they really wanted to and still had a Martell heir vying for Dany’s hand in marriage.
This video openned old wounds. But I agree!
My apologies!
My biggest complaint in terms of lost plotlines is the entire (F)Aegon storyline. that omission did so much damage to the show. It ruined Varus' character. it made Tyrion's journey to Meereen boring. and they possibly adapted JonCon's future mental break and put it into Dany's conclusive arc without any regard to thinking if it would have worked in a narrative sense.
Couldn’t agree more!!!
-A Theory of Ice & Fire on quora
Haven't watched the video yet, but I'm guessing the problem was bad writers. I'll be back to edit this once I've watched the video