Recently I thought it would be a good idea to revisit Game of Thrones. As most agree the first seasons were excellent and it fell apart somewhere toward the end, when George R. R. Martin’s source material ran out. There was a vague outline of what once was Game of Thrones, but at the same time it was something very different entirely.
I went into this second run thinking; surely it couldn’t have been that great of a difference.
Turns out it was.
The Good – the early seasons
Dialogue
Dialogue and conversations in the earlier seasons were really gripping and intense. I just loved the feel of it all when I watched the first minutes of the first episode. Even now I pine for it and almost want to re-watch it again….knowing I will only get disappointed later on.
Alright, I’ll stop being cynical as this is supposed to be about the “The Good” of the show.
Earlier-season dialogue did a number of things very well. For one thing, they explained characters’ intentions and personality traits without getting bogged down with too much over-exposition. This is very visible in Jaime Lannister for example. The way he exudes arrogance on the one hand but wants to be respected and admires others (like Barristan for example) is evoked in little snippets of dialogue and even just facial expressions. The way he tilts his head before engaging Ned in battle says “come on Ned, let’s see what you got” without the need to explain it. A sharp contrast to later content. The way he nods towards Barristan while summoned by Robert Baratheon to talk about war stories also shows deep respect for the old knight. These are just 2 very small examples of which there are dozens, if not hundreds.
Acting
A direct result of the good dialogue and these two really intertwine together. All actors are great and believable, and they have you engaged from the get-go. Of course, Sean Bean’s Eddard Stark seemed like the good guy and ultimate winner from the beginning, but as everyone soon learns, this is no standard fantasy fare and we’re in for a rough ride when Ned gets decapitated at the last minute. Varys seems like a snake and right bastard until the shows peels off his true motives and background, something that Conleth Hill portrays very well. The wordplay between him and Aiden Gillen’s Petyr Baelish is masterful and deeply captivating. I’m not exaggerating when I say I’d rather watch one dialogue between them than the entire last season.
Everything is layered, interesting and moves at the right tempo while not sacrificing any character depth of more visceral scenes. Excellent.
Audiovisual experience
Set pieces are excellent, varied and very believable. Granted I’ve never read the source material, but I loved the way everything looked believable within it’s fantasy context. Everything had a very visceral feel to it, including but not limited to combat (both on small and larger scale). Locales looked like they exist and believable as places that people lived and thrived in. Once the dragons came into play I think this took a bit of a hit but hey, that was understandable considering technology at the time and the fact that – unfortunately – dragons had to have a role in this. But that’s a personal thing, I don’t like extreme high-fantasy tropes such as dragons and much prefer person-to-person interactions between humanoids in a fantasy setting.
The Bad – the latter seasons
Acting
The later seasons and season 8 in particular are really hurting for good dialogue. In the earlier seasons, dialogue was carefully crafted and the acting was better for it. Fast forward to season 8 and it’s a lot of shouting “Come on!”, a lot of solemn staring towards….something I guess and a lot of mean mugging and looking at fellow actors teary-eyed. It gets cringey at some point and especially characters like Daenerys get very stale very quickly. The whole thing feeling rushed doesn’t help obviously and the emotions it evokes hurt tremendously because of it. Not at one point did I feel emotionally invested towards anything and at some point I just wished they got it over with. This goes to show that something can really only be as good as its source material. Most of the time.
Audiovisual experience
Looking back, this has a different feel as well. Some things somehow feel less visceral, like combat scenes for example. In the earlier seasons these felt involved and dramatic, just take the fight between The Viper and The Mountain for example. I’d rather re-watch that 10 times than watch the Battle against the Night King once. There is barely any visibility and it all acts out so very generically fantasy-esque. Oooohh here comes the dragon to save the day but oh no here’s the Night King! Dany mean-mugs and acts tough riding a dragon and tries to incinerate the Night King! It fails! Out of nothing, here comes Aria to kill off the Night King in a very anti-climactic way! All the while barely seeing – and thus, feeling – anything. It just felt like going through the motions, as if playing a very predictable fantasy RPG.
Same thing when Daenerys torches King’s Landing. Now granted everything in the world of effects ages, but this has not aged gracefully. The burning looked very fake, the silly “thoom” sound effect when towers came crashing down did not fit the general aesthetic of the show at all and blood effects seemed like specials effects tacked-on rather than someone actually getting their arm chopped off like in earlier seasons. This really hurts believability and I felt like I was watching a Fast and Furious spin-off sometimes.
Dialogue
This harks back to my earlier point about Acting. The back-and-forth between key characters was sublime and made fairly mundane topics intensely interesting to follow. The delivery of Charles Dance, Conleth Hill and even Rory McCann for example is far better in the earlier seasons than in season 7 and 8 (obviously not applicable to Charles). You never quite knew what everyone’s intention was and whether they were being straightforward or conniving, helpful or self-centered. To be fair it doesn’t help that a lot of characters get killed off that have great actors playing them. But even looking at existing characters, dialogue gets very flat, stale and predictable. Characters are mostly grim, aloof, or angry with not much range in between.
Character arcs
Speaking of characters, this is perhaps one of the most annoying “features” of the later seasons. Character arcs get cut short or just plain ignored or compressed. Just a few examples:
- Dany suddenly descends into madness after hearing the tower bells. This could have been expanded upon so much, looking back into her family history of madness.
- Bran just gets…weird all of a sudden. Of course he’s the Three-Eyed Raven after some point in his story, but Max von Sydow played him much differently. Bran just seems creepy for no particular reason and there is really zero point in selecting him as king. Why not have him delve deeper into Westeros history? So much could have been expounded upon but no dice.
- Jaime loses his hand for a reason, which seems to be to become a better man. He does, but throws it all out the window for some reason after finding some redemption. To top things off, we never see him regain any of his glory as a former swordfighting-master. Of course that was the point of his hand getting chopped off, but either have him find some redemption and stick to it, or have him become great with a sword in his other hand once again. Now it was just….nothing really and he just dies. “That’s that, let’s kill the next important character” the showrunners must have said.
- Arya becomes a faceless man and can suddenly….fight very well? Alright, I suppose that’s halfway realistic. But in the end she aborts her mission – which is to kill Cersei – and just goes “somewhere” and stares off into the distance. Sure she’s always been the adventurous type but why is she going west of Westeros? To do what exactly?
- Sansa has grown, I’ll give the showrunners that. She’s markedly different from what she was before and the experiences she had with Ramsay and Joffrey really helped shape here. A little bird no more, indeed.
- Varys. He was always the voice of the “Realm” as he so eloquently put it and just like that, he was killed off. At least had him make an attempt on Dany’s life through a covert operation or something similar. Nope, just burn his ass to death. Next! Also, Conleth Hill was criminally underused in the latter seasons. To be fair, even his dialogue and scenes got less interesting as the show progressed. Or regress rather, I should say.
- Tyrion. He becomes a sniveling little simp towards Daenerys at some point, almost becoming subordinate and losing the sharp edge he had in conversation. Such a waste of an excellent character.
- Gendry. He was Robert Baratheon’s bastard son just to get….Storm’s End? And Arya giving him the finger? Ok….great I suppose.
- Theon. Well I suppose he’s not a complete disaster. He found redemption somewhat and regained some parts of his former personality after being stripped of it by Ramsay. However he just gets wasted near the end, literally brushed aside.
- Barristan Selmy. I understand this was not really in the later seasons but still, it felt like they didn’t know what to do with him and just straight offed him. What a waste.
Of course, like I mentioned before, it doesn’t help that the show had loads of great characters and most get killed off. Tywin, Viserys, Littlefinger, Varys, Joffrey, Theon, Ned Stark, Margaery Tyrell, The Queen of Thorns, Oberyn Martell, hell even the High Sparrow was mildly interesting. I could go on but you get the point. Without great source material and dialogue to rely on, the remaining characters could not carry the high level of content of earlier seasons.
In closing
All in all, I think they really dropped the ball in the latter seasons. Not really an earth-shattering insight as most people think so, but binge-watching brought this to light even more than watching the show timed all that time ago. The decline is really steep and quick and it’s all the more tragic for it.
As Jon Snow put it in one of his final lines:
It just doesn’t feel right.
Right you are Jon.