sapochnik and djawadi firing on all cylinders, including the cast. so happy GOT is back

So the show got renewed for a second season and the premiere episode numbers are now up to 20 million (surpassing the series finale of Game of Thrones) in the US alone.

When people 3 years after the finale say that Game of Thrones became culturally irrelevant they show that they have no clue what they are talking about. You don't get The Witcher, Wheel of Time, The Amazon LOTR show and even this spinoff show without Game of Thrones.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv ... 235208276/

Sapochnik leaves the show, Alan Taylor returns to Westeros and will direct some episodes of season 2. Condal will remain alone as showrunner.
I understand Sapochnik's decision, he's been working in this universe since 2014. It's sad, because he's so good at handling this universe. But hopefully, he'll get to do other great stuff. Can't believe that Marvel hasn't approached him yet. He deserves to handle a big action film, like the next Captain America or the next James Bond.

This is now available to watch for free on Youtube. What the fuck is even happening anymore? lol

Disappointing that Sapochnik is leaving but it does make sense. Hopefully he'll develop other interesting projects, he deserves it.

Master Virgo wrote: ↑

September 2nd, 2022, 1:46 am

This is now available to watch for free on Youtube. What the fuck is even happening anymore? lol

They did the same with the very first episode of season 1 of the Harley Quinn animated show. It's a nice way to get people interested to watch more.

Panapaok wrote: ↑

September 2nd, 2022, 8:33 am

Disappointing that Sapochnik is leaving but it does make sense. Hopefully he'll develop other interesting projects, he deserves it.

He's not leaving, he's staying on as executive producer.

Harley Quinn is one thing, giving away the pilot of a $200 million show that is also a spin off to their most successful show ever, for free, is a whole new territory. The question is, how desperate is Warner/Discovery at this point?

Anyway I suppose you could say that both this and the LotR thing are off to a semi decent start of sorts. But honestly I have found no early hooks in either of them. I don't feel immediately invested in any of these characters or storylines yet.

Well made, expensive looking but kind of empty and way too much in debt of their better predecessors.

Also in both cases the history that precedes the present feels like a much more wondrous place with opportunities for more exciting storytelling. I couldn't stop asking during both shows, why are we here when we could have been there?

Like you name your show House of Dragons, but it's not about the Doom of Valyria or Aegon's Conquest, or even the mad king and all that. Instead it's just King Mediocre the first and his mediocre court and the adventures of his mediocre rule.

The show feels too inclusive for its time. Like come on guys, we are better than that.

Master Virgo wrote: ↑

September 2nd, 2022, 2:43 pm

Harley Quinn is one thing, giving away the pilot of a $200 million show that is also a spin off to their most successful show ever, for free, is a whole new territory. The question is, how desperate is Warner/Discovery at this point?

Anyway I suppose you could say that both this and the LotR thing are off to a semi decent start of sorts. But honestly I have found no early hooks in either of them. I don't feel immediately invested in any of these characters or storylines yet.

Well made, expensive looking but kind of empty and way too much in debt of their better predecessors.

Also in both cases the history that precedes the present feels like a much more wondrous place with opportunities for more exciting storytelling. I couldn't stop asking during both shows, why are we here when we could have been there?

Like you name your show House of Dragons, but it's not about the Doom of Valyria or Aegon's Conquest, or even the mad king and all that. Instead it's just King Mediocre the first and his mediocre court and the adventures of his mediocre rule.

I take it you have not read Fire and Blood then? The Dance of the Dragons is not the story of 'king mediocre the first and his mediocre court". It's mostly not even about him and in the book he's barely a character at all, which is why I'm glad that they managed to imbue him with so much personality on the show. Every character involved has a hand in the sad and horrifying events that are about to unfold. The king's bad decisions and obliviousness are the catalyst for a lot of terrible things down the road but it takes 30 years of tensions for an actual continental conflict to start (hence, lots of time jumps during season 1). Viserys' failures as a king mark the beginning of the end for the Targaryens. ..."Epic tragedy" is what I'd call this story actually.

The Doom of Valyria or Mad King/Robert's Rebellion seem tied to the resolution of ASOIAF so I doubt the adaptations will go anywhere near that stuff, since the readers don't know most of the actual details yet either. What they could go into is either the various Blackfyre Rebellions (there are like 3 of those lol) or Maegor the Cruel or even Jaehaerys' reign, though that one would be generally peaceful so fewer battles, more intrigue. They can hop around the timeline because, from what I understand, they could make House of the Dragon an anthology show focused on various moments in the History of House Targaryen, meaning they can always come back and look at Aegon's Conquest if they wanted to.

See, I am kind of tired of people not knowing what they want from GRRM's world. One day they are saying "GOT used to be all about the characters and the quiet moments, man. Why don't they build up stuff like they used to instead of constantly giving us stunning action set pieces?" And then when one of the prequel shows does exactly that for like its first 2 episodes (the story is likely to last 3 to 4 seasons) the same people will still go "booooooooriiiiing, where are my dragons?" GOT built up to the Red Wedding since the end of season 1 and most people didn't realise it until episode 9 of season 3 was almost over LOL. Stuff like Rhaenyra choosing Ser Criston Cole to be on the Kingsguard will have ENORMOUS implications for the story but I guess waiting for things to play out is just not as appealing as instant gratification without set-up or payoff.

This is a story about flawed people doing occasionally good and terrible things. That might make it more difficult to find a less unambiguously good person to latch onto and to root for (though currently they are doing a good job imo of making us care for Rhaenyra) but it also means that the characters feel more like real people populating a fantasy setting than fantasy cliché characters playing out fantasy tropes.

So to answer your question: why are we here? Because this story is a tragedy on an epic scale and THE turning point for the Targaryens post conquest from which they never managed to recover and there's a sad beauty in telling that kind of story with great actors, beautiful cinematography, awesome music and great special effects that allow for the actual scale of the story to be shown on-screen.

blackColumn wrote: ↑

September 2nd, 2022, 7:30 pm

The show feels too inclusive for its time. Like come on guys, we are better than that.

GRRM approved the diverse casting and even if he hadn't it should not be seen as a problem anyway. Plus, you don't seem to have heard of the Moors in medieval Spain, for instance. Like, medieval European settings were much more heterogeneous than Hollywood cinema would have you think.

OK, fair enough. Just saying that the show, right now, is too much about a bunch of old politicians talking and talking about the same damn thing.

And the younger main characters are just not that interesting to carry all this. Like comparing to GoT, in a combination of storytelling and casting, Arya, Jon, Tyrion and Dany made me care about their journey very early on. Each could have been a lead character of a full novel or movie. There is no such thing happening here.

It's like going from Luke/Han/Leia to Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan/etc. And most of us eventually grew to love the new Obi-Wan, but he was a bland co-lead for an entire film, and that never needed to be the case.