Attention! This is the Game of Thrones review 8, the final season of the television series Game of Thrones: in the next lines we will analyze how it went, so you will inevitably find previews and spoilers. Don't read any further if you haven't seen this season yet!
No journey lasts forever. Sooner or later you arrive at your destination and, looking back, you can't help but think back to all the moments, good and bad, we experienced along the way. Each trip has its ups and downs. There are the unforgettable moments, for better or for worse, that you always carry inside, and then there are those moments when, invariably, you asked yourself: why did I leave? We traveled for nine years with the Starks, we made long stops and very long stops, anxious to reach the next stop, even if sometimes we thought we would have done better to stay in Winterfell. And once we arrived at our destination, which for some was a bit like coming home, we didn't find a single valid reason to regret the whole way we traveled to get to the Throne of Swords. We are left with the good and the very bad moments, aware that nothing is perfect, least of all a high-budget television series based on a cycle of novels that has not yet been completed. Game of Thrones, however, is not a television series like any other.
A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin they were already famous before HBO bought the rights to make a TV series with real actors, but already the first episodes of the initial season had convinced viewers that they were faced with something special in which writers, directors and actors were really giving their all. Nothing like this had ever been seen on TV and within a few weeks Game of Thrones became a real mass phenomenon. This would explain why thelast season, the one that should have unraveled the tangled skein of the previous seven seasons, has sown so much discord. As they say, the bigger they are, the more noise they make when they fall, and the last season of Game of Thrones was undoubtedly less impactful than the previous ones. Here, it is important to make this clarification before analyzing it a little more in depth. The rating we gave to the season is not a mathematical average of the one assigned to the episodes that make it up, but a judgment expressed precisely in relation to what the series has managed to convey to us in the past years.
An unexpected ending
"If you think there could be a happy ending, you haven't paid enough attention": Ramsay Bolton said to Theon Greyjoy, when the latter was his prisoner in the third season, episode six. The joke, over the years, has practically become the most representative meme of Game of Thrones, a series that has accustomed us from the beginning to unspeakable tragedies. It was these twists that made Martin's tales famous, an author who delighted in exterminating entire families, suddenly killing even the protagonists of his books in order to keep readers constantly on their toes. From this point of view, the happy bittersweet end of Game of Thrones television was not at all obvious. If we had bet on the massacre of the cast, we would have lost, since most of the supporting actors made it alive at the end credits of the sixth episode. They Strong, after having lived through horrible vicissitudes and having received one defeat after another, they have won the game of the throne: Bran is the new king of Westeros, Sansa reigns over the autonomous North, Arya will live new adventures in unknown lands.
Un open endingall in all, which reassures us about the future of this world, finally in the hands of a council of mostly honest and loyal minds. Bran he has surrounded himself with loyalists who, moved by a sense of duty, honor or altruism, will help him rule the Six Kingdoms in the best possible way. The "bad guys" have lost: Cersei is dead, Euron too, the Night King has been defeated. It was hard to imagine the writers David Benioff and DB Weiss, orphans of Martin's base since the fifth season, they wanted to end the series on a positive note, but the ending works and gives us a victory on several levels. After all, it would probably have been more obvious to continue exterminating the cast just to amaze the audience, in a final season that necessarily had to close the subplots in which we have invested our time for years. In this sense, it was perhaps the sudden departure of the King of the Night to shock the viewers who had by now framed him as the "big bad" of the series and that instead Arya eliminated in the middle of the season, putting a point on the invasion of the dead that should have been the greatest threat ever faced in the western continent.
What we liked
The long night, the third episode of Game of Thrones 8 in which Winterfell defends itself from the attack of the White Walkers, in this sense was almost only an excuse to bring together in the same set most of the actors who, in previous years, they have experienced separate misadventures. It was good to see Jaime Lannister fight alongside the Starks and redeem their honor, before giving in to the inevitable desire to return to their sister. A decision that fans of the good Nikolaj Coster-Waldau they have not digested but it seems absolutely human to us: Jaime has loved his sister for a lifetime, he killed for her and she has had four children, a past that no one would be able to put behind him. The Lannisters have always been complicated characters, but we believe they all agree on one thing: net of a more unfortunate role than in the past, the extraordinary Tyrion of Peter Dinklage he literally dragged the show every time he appeared on stage. In short, it was nice to see all of these characters interact, although not always in the best or most sensible way possible. Showrunners suddenly found themselves managing a huge cast in just a few episodes, and giving each character the time they needed before disappearing was a titanic undertaking.
All in all it went well like this, also because for many fallen - like Jorah Mormont, Beric Dondarrion or Theon - the storylines were already over. The writers therefore had to navigate between the deepening of the characters, the timing of the script, the great action scenes for which he was called to the camera again. Miguel Sapochnik, a revelation director who directed the best episodes of the series hands down with the support of an extraordinary team of make-up artists, special effects wizards and costume designers. The excellent soundtrack of Ramin Djawadi he followed each scene, punctual and precise, exalting even the weakest ones. From this point of view, Game of Thrones 8 did not disappoint us at all, giving us some glimpses that would not have been out of place in a real cinema, exciting moments and thrilling sequences. And for once, HBO hasn't felt the need to please the audience's hormonal storms by stealing time from history to show completely free sex or nude scenes. From this point of view, the moral of the whole story is ironic: it is not the richest and most beautiful who make the world a better place, but the crippled, the dwarves and the marginalized.
What we didn't like
The final season of Game of Thrones all in all satisfied us, but we cannot deny that it was made in a hasty and, sometimes, even crude way. If we were to stop and analyze every single plothole, our review would become an essay: yes, we have also noticed some inconsistencies in the script - like the Unsullied and the Dothraki which decrease and increase as needed, to name one - but it didn't seem to us that they particularly distorted the message that the story wanted to convey. There is no doubt that the absence of a solid base, such as Martin's novels were, has affected some aspects of the narrative, especially as regards the dialogues and the timing of the story, but net of a little careful editing and some blooper who caused a bit too much sensation (the story of the Starbucks cup and the plastic water bottles by now you all know) we had more than anything else the clear impression that the writers wanted to close with the series as soon as possible for devote himself to something else, perhaps in a distant galaxy far away.
The fact is that, accustomed to the very high quality of the first seasons that made Game of Thrones famous, and after two years of waiting for these last six episodes, it was normal to expect something on the same level, while theeighth season he got into gear from the very first minutes, arranging the pieces on the board perhaps too quickly to savor the intent of each move. And so Game of Thrones, a series that captivated us with its slow political intrigues and eerie moments of flat calm, suddenly became a war and action fantasy series. Eight years later, in short, we had the feeling that finally the writer's block has also hit Benioff and Weiss, as well as Martin, and suddenly even Game of Thrones has suffered all those small and big problems that every television series sooner or later passes through. One thing is sure: the final season of Game of Thrones would have needed a few more episodes. Perhaps an entire ten-episode tranche would have helped the writers to better unravel certain narrative junctions, making the passage of time and the weight that events have had on the characters clearer.
The evil turn of Daenerys Targaryen it is probably the best example we can do to express our perplexities. That Dany did not have all the wheels in place, books and TV series have suggested cryptically but not too much, and on several occasions. Dany was used to being seen as a messiah, a bringer of freedom before which everyone bowed, willing to rebel and bet their lives in order to hand over power to her. Dany arrives in the western continent and everyone distrusts her, she loses two "children" out of three, she loses her most trusted adviser, her best friend, the love of her partner who turns out to be the true heir to the throne, as well as a relative. Alone and desperate, Dany sees in that city of King's Landing who does not bow before him an enemy to be crushed. And sbrocca. Dany has always considered herself right, a force to which everything is granted for the greater good. Game of Thrones teaches us that humans are horrible individuals, especially those who have the power and purpose to use it for. And the turning point of Daenerys was the definitive twist with which to close the series, dismantling the figure of the protagonist piece by piece. It was the twist that everyone wanted but no one was ready to accept.
It was, however, also a transformation that could not and should not have been resolved in a single episode. The script hastened a crucial change that needed to breathe longer, sow doubt in viewers, and instill fear that, yes, maybe Dany really was in danger of becoming Darth Vader. And so the script sacrificed Daenerys, but it sacrificed Cersei too - the exceptional Lena Headey only had 25 minutes of screentime all season - and, in a sense, even Jon. Many have complained that Jon Snow, the other undisputed star of the series, hasn't done much all season, just being there, while Arya he did all the dirty work for him. There was one prophecy that everyone assumed he was talking about Jon, the promised prince, but perhaps we can interpret the matter in two ways. In the first, the prophecy ended in nothing. After all this is Game of Thrones, where there is not always a deep meaning in what happens. Maybe the prophecy was bullshit.
The second interpretation, on the other hand, makes us think that perhaps Jon had already accomplished the feats for which he was intended, triggering a chain reaction that led Jon Snow the bastard into the fateful throne room where he killed Daenerys and indirectly destroyed the symbol. of dynastic power. But perhaps even this aspect of the story would have needed more time to fuel, to be remarked, to make even less subtle that his last look at the Barrier in the series finale, when Jon really leaves it all behind. Ultimately, everything we found negative in Season XNUMX comes down to haste. The unbearable Euron, the Night King defeated in a single episode, the same meeting with which the representatives of the Seven Kingdoms elect a new ruler.
The question we asked ourselves, as we watched each episode feeling this kind of breath on our necks, is the following: did we have fun? Yes, absolutely. Game of Thrones has given us an extraordinary visual experience again this year and above all it has given us one close. Inadequate, if you like, but he gave it to us anyway, and until Martin finishes writing his books, we have to be content. After all, it's just television. In the meantime we look around and see angry fans who open petitions to redo the season, even if they had served them a Rianata when they had ordered a Margherita, unable to realize that a television product made and finished cannot be redone: just stop following it. Yet the latest episode of Game of Thrones has scrapped thirteen million spectators, not bad as a result for a series that didn't want to see anyone anymore.
Comment
Resources4Gaming.com
7.7
We have followed Game of Thrones for many years and, as happens in these cases, although Game of Thrones is a more unique than rare event, we would have liked the series to really end with a bang, surpassing every previous season in all respects. , closing every subplot perfectly, without holes, without slips or nonsense. Unfortunately, this did not happen. The ending has satisfied us and in our opinion it closes with dignity the story of the throne of Westeros, but perhaps it would have taken a few more episodes to do justice to the iconic and unforgettable characters who have accompanied us all this time. An imperfect season, in short, but still exciting. And basically the important thing is always and only that.
PRO
- The allegorical meaning of the ending
- Peter Dinklage
- The excellent direction in some episodes
- The haste of the narrative
- The slips in editing and writing
- A few more episodes would have been needed
