Game of Thrones: The Final Season (April 14, 2019)

The first promo for the final season dropped today. There is no new footage, but it does confirm that the season will air in April 2019.



I am so ready. I just finished a complete rewatch of the first seven seasons. #ForTheThrone

 

Sorta final...because there is going to be a prequel.

Thanks for the reminder

 

Last season was the first that I watched on HBO rather than buy on Blu-ray. It's now been so long that I'll have to buy it so I can remember what happened.

 

Last season was the first that really annoyed and disappointed me. To the point that my expectations for the final season have been severely dampened.

 

yeah it was pretty poor from a narrative standpoint. and nothing about the trip beyond the wall episode made any sense.

 

it's been gone way too long...lost interest....but, my wife didn't...LOL.

 

well put...many of us feel this way.

 

I loved the slow-ish burn political intrigue and mysticism of the earlier series. Now they have to wind it up as fast as possible it's become a bit disjointed and disappointing. Looking forward to the prequel more.

 

Prequel (s)?
Originally five, think honed down to one now.

 

Media won't be available till the end of the year though, nov.dec 2019. Another 12 months for blu ray.

 

That would be a smart move if that's true. We don't need 5 GoT prequel series.

 

Doing the rewatch and seeing all the episodes in order, I would agree that the writing has gotten weaker in the past few seasons (I could say after they ran out of book content, but I think this really began in season 5 which adapted books 4 and 5). However, the production has gotten better and better as their budgets have gotten higher. There are some scenes in the first season--such as Jaime confronting Ned outside the brothel--that look so cheap and set-like compared to later years.

I think seasons 2 through 4 were the real sweet spot for the show. Great acting, writing, production values and characters. I'm still excited to be getting the ending, though. I'm a book fan as well and we may never get an ending to the series. And I'm still rooting for my favorite character, Jon Snow. Have been since 2011.

 

I don't think they ever intended more than one. They simply solicited scripts, found four or five worthy candidates, and then gone down to the hard work and identified the one most likely to be a hit series.

 

I think this is spot on. The moment the series eclipsed the books the show's dialogue got noticeably weaker. Luckily the content is strong enough to overcome it. Usually.

And I only found a couple of eye rolling moments last season. Gendry running 100 miles to get help through the icy tundra in about 10 minutes was one of them. It's biggest sin might not even be its fault. With it ending... every story line is seemingly coming together. So a whole lot is happening at once.

 

I’m stunned to read that Fire and Blood, GRRM’s new fake history book about the Targaryens, is over 700 pages long. No wonder the Winds of Winter isn’t finished yet!

 

6 EPISODES?!?!?!
Boo, I say.....
I woulda padded the season with less 'fight scenes' and more 'character-interaction'....
Between people who've never met each other, and reunions..... I could see an extra 4 hours added to the season!

 

I've lost all interest... *shrug*

 

And many don't. And the scores on IMDB suggest the fans were very happy with the last season. I thought it was great. The only negative for me was the Sansa/Ayra/Littlefinger plot which didn't work from a narrative point of view and was really unnecessary and pointless, almost like it was invented to give Sansa and Ayra some screen time.

 

Most of it was already written several years ago. A good portion of it is reprinted from the World of Ice & Fire encyclopedia that came out a few years ago. Other bits have been published in short story collections over the last few years. I do wish George would buckle down and finish The Winds of Winter, though. I've read the entire series through twice waiting for that book to come out.

The six episodes are each supposed to be at least 60 minutes long, according to director David Nutter during an AMA on Reddit. They could have added more episodes, but the scale of the production of these episodes is simply gigantic. It is really like producing six films, not six television episodes.

The episodes are broken down thusly:
Episode 1: Directed by David Nutter, Written by Dave Hill
Episode 2: Directed by David Nutter, Written by Bryan Cogman
Episode 3: Directed by Miguel Sapochnik, Written by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss
Episode 4: Directed by David Nutter, Written by Benioff & Weiss
Episode 5: Directed by Miguel Sapochnik, Written by Benioff & Weiss
Episode 6: Written & Directed by Benioff & Weiss

They brought back two of the strongest directors the show has ever had. David Nutter has directed six episodes of the series, including episode 3x09 "The Rains of Castamere" (the Red Wedding episode). Miguel Sapochnik, in my opinion, is the best director the show ever had. He has directed four episodes of the series including both "Hardhome" and "Battle of the Bastards." I am expecting Episodes 3 and 5 to be the major battle episodes, as Sap is their best battle director.

Benioff & Weiss have directed two episodes of the series, both solid entries. The best of theirs would be the season 4 premiere ("Two Swords") which featured the classic "chicken" scene in the tavern with the Hound and Arya killing all the Lannister soldiers.

Hill, Cogman, Benioff & Weiss have between them written all but seven episodes of the show (Vanessa Taylor wrote 3; GRRM wrote 4).

 

It's even more complicated than that!

Originally, GRRM set out to write a "sidebar" on the Targaryen Dynasty for The World of Ice and Fire which quickly outgrew it's usefulness for a highly illustrated coffee-table style book. Elio and Linda Antonsoon ended up writing the actual text, summarizing and condensing the content from George's original text. Only the section on Aegon's Conquest (and a few sidebars) in TWOIAF were directly taken from George's text.

Excerpts from George's original work were later repurposed as three short stories for various anthologies. In the case of "The Princess and The Queen," it was only published in highly abridged form (the printed story is 30,000 words while the full version is reported to be 80,000 but I suspect that count includes content that was later published as "The Rogue Prince"). It's unclear how much, if at all, "The Rogue Prince" and "The Sons of The Dragon" were abridged, but in any case at least we can now read them in their proper context.

Despite it's 700+ page length, Fire and Blood is only PART I. But we probably shouldn't expect PART II quite as promptly. Whereas George had already written MOST of this book already (he only had to fill in a couple holes to make it publication-ready), he only wrote an outline for the second half of the dynasty for Elio and Linda and will have to start almost from scratch to flesh it out into a full fledged book in it's own right.

I suspect a lot of fans would prefer if GRRM didn't bother with this side material and focused instead entirely on ASOIAF. That's fair enough, but even if I'm in a minority of one I gotta say I just LOVE these "fake histories." I can't wait to fully dive into Fire and Blood.

 

Thanks for the info! I really enjoy the histories as well. I loved reading about all the different Targaryen kings and the complicated history of the Targaryen house. George is really amazing at world-building. It's one of his greatest strengths. I suppose I wish he would wrap up ASOIAF and *then* he could write all the histories he wishes.

 

I don't want it to end

 

I'll binge watch the entire series again in advance of these final episodes seems like forever (Aug 27/2017) since the last EP of Season 7.

 

I wonder if HBO and Dish will settle by April. Sigh.

 

Speaking of all this prequel stuff.....
Wouldn't it be cool if it came through Same & Bran;
I have a fantasy of Samm talking Bran, "You know, it's not worth it having just one person know all you know! Why don't you just tell me what you see, and I'll write it down?"-cue the prequel....