Exactly. All that time and this is what they delivered? Makes me wonder how much worse it would have been if they hadn't taken so long. Gives me the impression the show runners were just over it and ready to move on.
Apparently the Studio offered the production crew more time. They turned it down. I think the producers had a enough of GOT and just hurried the process.
I thought - but obviously was wrong - that the penultimate episode was so over the top and lacking in any creativity beyond a simple mass slaughtering of the innocents that the only way to save the series would be to essentially make it a vision Jon Snow had (perhaps with the assistance of the somewhat omniscient Bran). Not too creative itself, I'll admit - didn't Dallas do something silly like that? - but how other to explain the absolute waste of an episode in a six-episode season? Just to get us really pissed at Daenerys like it was a Mel Gibson revenge movie? I guess so. But didn't we already think Daenerys was a dangerous, tyrannical demagogue who'd kill anyone who got in the way of her self-righteous attempt to "free" the world? I know I did. I was hoping she'd be offed at least two seasons ago.
"The eighth and final season of the wildly popular series was quite polarizing, to say the least. More than 1.8 million annoyed fans signed a petition urging HBO to hire “competent writers” and remake the final episodes."
Getting burned by Mr. Martin has caused me to change my reading habits: I now will no longer start any series until the final book is published.
If you want to place blame, do it correctly. Email George RR Martin and explain to him how he dropped the ball on his own creation. He’s the lazy loser. Benioff & Weiss did the best they could being, essentially, handcuffed for two seasons. Martin knew the series was coming to critical mass and he didn’t care. He knew the deadlines, ignored them, and then floated out vague notions of displeasure in how the series was being wrapped up. All the while he had every opportunity to make sure it went the way he envisioned it and it didn’t happen. Disappointment; funny how that works ...
I really hope that he is able to complete the series. Looking back, the first 4 books were all published before the show premiered, with the 5th being published shortly after the first season. The success of the show likely brought pressure, and attention, that he never experienced before. As the show got more popular, a new fan base become thirsty for more material. Now it’s been 9 years since the last book, and it is at least a year away. With the negative views of the last two seasons, especially season 8, people are now looking to George to, as they say on Quantum Leap “put right, what once went wrong”. Personally, I wish him the best and hope the books come out, but at this point I don’t expect the series to reach a conclusion.
If I recall correctly, Benioff and Weiss were slated to produce the next Star Wars series so they were rushing to get GoT done so they could go to that. Unfortunately for them, and the fans, they wound bailing (or got canned) from Star Wars so now I have no idea what they're doing. I imagine they did the best they could with the 'outline' Martin gave them and the budget constraints. Never the less, the last season was very anticlimactic for a show that had been so excellent for so many years.
Actually, that was a face saving piece of media spin. Dan and Dave had a wealth of material from George, months of meetings, but chose to go their own way with the final two seasons. Disney dropped them shortly after the reactions hit and the reality emerged that Dave and Dan - formerly great at assembling talented teams of people to work around them - turned out to be less than talented themselves.
Maybe they can hire Zack Snyder to re-edit and reshape the final season when he’s done with Justice League. It can be a new trend where we get a Snyder cut on everything that disappoints.
Moral of the story (which I might have said before, cannot recall LOL): do not do a TV adaption of a series of books until the author has finished them all and the whole damn story is complete. It's the internet; people love to complain. No, the GoT ending did not totally stick to landing, but it wasn't nearly as totally awful as many make it out to be. But the internet has to internet.