A Game of Thrones **BOOKS OFF LIMITS** v2

[Kybosh]

Haven't you guys ever heard of fast travel? Euron is just at a higher level.

[PsYcNeT]

Really, the pure 100% #1 highlight of this entire series was the Battle Of The Bastards.

I mean, I enjoy witty repartee and subtle lines dropped to overanalyze and circle back on 3 seasons later as much as the next guy, but come on. Movies move at a 2 hour pace. Why are TV shows expected to move at a 10 hour pace?

If expediting all this plotting garbage gets us a 2-hour long battle scene involving characters we have 70 hours of investment in as a cap to the series then I am more than content.

[getbak]

Originally Posted by blankall

Tyrion's whole plan didn't really work with the geography. Dragonstone is very close to King's Landing. Casterly Rock is clear on the other side of the island. You have to travel around Dorne and the Reach to get to Casterly Rock.

If the Lannisters are capable of marching an army across land so quickly to reach Highgarden, why wouldn't the Tyrell's just transport their army via land too. It would make a lot more sense just to strike at King's Landing and have the Tyrell's meet them at King's Landing to give them the local appearance, they were looking for.

If you look at the geography, the whole thing is pretty absurd. King's Landing is just too close to Dragonstone and too far, by sea, from the other key points to make any of this make sense.

The Tyrells were going to attack over land (until all the lords who were loyal to Highgarden switched their allegiance to Cersei).

Yara was supposed to sail down to Dorne to get the Dornish army and sail them up to King's Landing to attack from the other side. To march the Dornish army over land would have required them to march across all of Dorne and the Reach (and/or the Stormlands, which have been pretty much ignored in all this), and then they would have been on the same side of King's Landing at the armies from The Reach.


When Tyrion devised the plan, he believed Dany had unchallenged control of the seas with the Iron Fleet, so it would have been a quick hop down to Dorne and back.

He also believed that the armies of both Dorne and The Reach were loyal to Dany. It was believed that the only "Kingdoms" who were loyal to Cersei were the Westerlands (Casterly Rock), the Riverlands, and the Crown Lands (and possibly the Storm Lands -- but no one talks about them).

With King's Landing under siege from The Reach and Dorne, and Casterly Rock under control of the Unsullied, Cersei would have no support and nowhere to run. The war should have been short and decisive.

As the saying goes, all plans only survive to the point of first contact with the enemy.

Tyrion underestimated Cersei's ability to rally the lords of The Reach to support her. Once that happened, Tyrion's plan was screwed. They also didn't anticipate Euron attacking Yara's fleet and capturing the Dornish. That really ruined the plan.

Then, you add in the fact that Casterly Rock's gold mines are empty, and that was the only thing that made Casterly Rock worth anything. It was easy for the Lannisters to abandon it.

[JFK]

Originally Posted by Kybosh

Haven't you guys ever heard of fast travel? Euron is just at a higher level.

The biggest mistake Game of Thrones fans make are thinking they know the timeline exactly. The writers haven't posted days or times on any scene and kept it ambiguous for a reason. Jon Snow didn't travel from Winterfell to the east, then sail to Dragonstone in a couple days. Jamie Lannister wasn't at Kings Landing then assembled his troops and seized a castle in days.. we're probably talking months that fly by traveling, but that crap would be boring as hell. I'd rather watch Rowing with Gendry.

The timeline and when things happen are left to the imagination, and for those bored enough to fit it together, but nothing has been explicitly stated on the show ever.

So no, Euron didn't time travel around Westeros, months had probably passed, that stuff is just purposely left out.

As for Tinordi, since he's the chief whiner. That's awesome, you're really upset, but make one or two posts about your grievances then kindly GTFO? Anything beyond that is just annoying and brings down the enjoyment for the rest of us.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Except they wrote this specific episode.

How about you read the post I quoted.

I hate this critique of other peoples' critiques. "Sure it's bad but just ignore it!"

It's bad. It draws away from the show and perverts the narrative with an anything can happen bent. It erodes at the structure that makes the story so great. Characters doing stupid things makes you question the stakes in the whole affair which then dulls the emotional appeal and the motivations of the characters.

Lets walk through this. Cersei knows Dany is on Dragonstone with 3 dragons and a huge army and wants to take back Westeros. So what does she do? She splits her forces up to take Highgarden while Dany splits her forces up to take a symbolic castle with no strategic gain.

Now maybe we can all explain this because Varys is feeding Cersei all the info on Dany's plans. Sure that's plausible. But there's no screen time to create the mystery or punctuate the motivations of the major characters and their actions. Instead we get a mess, a total mess that makes no sense from a strategic or motivational perspective.

So no, I can't just ignore it and it's not being pedantic. It's about good story telling vs. bad story telling. If you want to ignore it fine, that doesn't mean that someone like myself wouldn't have meaningful criticisms of how the show is unravelling.

what are you even talking about? What does any of this nonesense have to do with the artistic and filmmaking choice to mess with time a bit for the sake of the story? Presenting various scenes one after another, despite it being improbable or straight up impossible for them to have actually occurred concurrently happens all the time in tv and movies.


Here's an example you might be able to understand. Watched The Martian? Near the end of the movie when they are saving Matt Damon there's a scene at NASA control where they explicitly explain that the audio feed is 16 mins behind (or so).

Yet when the drama plays out the filmmakers ignore their own explicitly stated time issues and cut seamlessly between live events above Mars and the radio transmissions being received back on earth, even though the audience has just been told this is impossible.

Now if you want to be pedantic and nitpick unnecessarily you could argue how stupid the movie was, how it took you out of the drama because of the obviously dumb manipulation of time and how the writers are morons for this obvious blunder by not remembering their own dialogue from minutes earlier.

Or you could just let it go and try to understand that the editing and sequencing used relies on the audience not being pedantic and understanding building tension and using their brains to understand that the time lapse is implied. Filmmakers will side with drama and storytelling 10 times out of 10 instead of being hilariously anal about exact timeline realism.

[dammage79]

In the end it ultimately makes sense the Cersei would leave Casterlyrock open as a trap and focus on Highgarden. They even laid it out in ep.1.Jamie says something along the lines of " we can't win a war without food, Highgarden has all the food". And if you recall we know there's no gold left in Lannisterville and they're so deep in debt with the iron bank that their lynchpin could be that the bank comes to collect.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Except they wrote this specific episode.



I hate this critique of other peoples' critiques. "Sure it's bad but just ignore it!"

It's bad. It draws away from the show and perverts the narrative with an anything can happen bent. It erodes at the structure that makes the story so great. Characters doing stupid things makes you question the stakes in the whole affair which then dulls the emotional appeal and the motivations of the characters.

Lets walk through this. Cersei knows Dany is on Dragonstone with 3 dragons and a huge army and wants to take back Westeros. So what does she do? She splits her forces up to take Highgarden while Dany splits her forces up to take a symbolic castle with no strategic gain.

Now maybe we can all explain this because Varys is feeding Cersei all the info on Dany's plans. Sure that's plausible. But there's no screen time to create the mystery or punctuate the motivations of the major characters and their actions. Instead we get a mess, a total mess that makes no sense from a strategic or motivational perspective.

So no, I can't just ignore it and it's not being pedantic. It's about good story telling vs. bad story telling. If you want to ignore it fine, that doesn't mean that someone like myself wouldn't have meaningful criticisms of how the show is unravelling.

Why didn't Japan attack Pearl Harbour when the carriers were there. Just terrible story telling.

Also how is this any different than Rob defeating the Lannister army. How did Ramsey not see the army from the Vale coming. The show has had the type of "flaw" that you are complaining about the whole time.

[RatherDashing]

Originally Posted by Oling_Roachinen

Well for one, that only really works if Euron, after attacking and parading the sand snakes and Yara around King's Landing, didn't have to do any travelling on land. That would require his fleet to be in Blackwater Bay. Moving a fleet of 1000 ships out of Blackwater Bay without being noticed by someone holding down Dragonstone doesn't quite add up, especially when the dragons are roaming around. You pretty much have to go within a couple dozen of kilometres of Dragonstone to get your fleet out of Blackwater Bay. It suggests Daenaerys is completely blind on Dragonstone, when that shouldn't be the case.

To sneak up on Yara's fleet, sneak out of Blackwater Bay, pass by Dorne (and no one communicating it to Daenaerys) and then sneak up on the Unsullied army (while Daenaerys knows of the fleet now) only really works if the fleet is invisible.

But she is pretty blind. They specifically mentioned that she wouldn't go out with her dragons to go after Euron, and a large part of her fleet has gone to Dorne/Casterly Rock.

Is Dorne even allied to Daenarys anymore? Euron killed or captured everyone who rebelled against Doran, who knows what's going on down there now?

Also, if Danaerys found out that the fleet was after Grey Worm, is there anything she could do? Can ravens be sent out to ships? They fly between castles but those are fixed points. Honest question, I'm not sure if we've seen it happen at any point.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by getbak

The Tyrells were going to attack over land (until all the lords who were loyal to Highgarden switched their allegiance to Cersei).

Yara was supposed to sail down to Dorne to get the Dornish army and sail them up to King's Landing to attack from the other side. To march the Dornish army over land would have required them to march across all of Dorne and the Reach (and/or the Stormlands, which have been pretty much ignored in all this), and then they would have been on the same side of King's Landing at the armies from The Reach.


When Tyrion devised the plan, he believed Dany had unchallenged control of the seas with the Iron Fleet, so it would have been a quick hop down to Dorne and back.

He also believed that the armies of both Dorne and The Reach were loyal to Dany. It was believed that the only "Kingdoms" who were loyal to Cersei were the Westerlands (Casterly Rock), the Riverlands, and the Crown Lands (and possibly the Storm Lands -- but no one talks about them).

With King's Landing under siege from The Reach and Dorne, and Casterly Rock under control of the Unsullied, Cersei would have no support and nowhere to run. The war should have been short and decisive.

As the saying goes, all plans only survive to the point of first contact with the enemy.

Tyrion underestimated Cersei's ability to rally the lords of The Reach to support her. Once that happened, Tyrion's plan was screwed. They also didn't anticipate Euron attacking Yara's fleet and capturing the Dornish. That really ruined the plan.

Then, you add in the fact that Casterly Rock's gold mines are empty, and that was the only thing that made Casterly Rock worth anything. It was easy for the Lannisters to abandon it.

Still a bad plan. The Unsullied are the main fighting force. To have them be so far from the action is a big mistake. Casterly Rock is on the other side of Westeros, making it geographically as far by sea as you can get from King's Landing.

His plan makes sense, with the knowledge he had, minus the actual geography.

I also think they could have dealt with the Tyrell's a lot better. Perhaps as their armies prepared to march out, they could have been betrayed by another house of the reach and simultaneously intercepted by Jaime. Or maybe their ability to defend highgarden could have been dependent on support from the Tarlys. It would have made a lot more sense than them just being bad at fighting.

The jumps you are expected to make in logic would be easier to swallow if there was some kind of consistency with time and geography.

[sureLoss]

Originally Posted by getbak

The Tyrells were going to attack over land (until all the lords who were loyal to Highgarden switched their allegiance to Cersei).

Yara was supposed to sail down to Dorne to get the Dornish army and sail them up to King's Landing to attack from the other side. To march the Dornish army over land would have required them to march across all of Dorne and the Reach (and/or the Stormlands, which have been pretty much ignored in all this), and then they would have been on the same side of King's Landing at the armies from The Reach.


When Tyrion devised the plan, he believed Dany had unchallenged control of the seas with the Iron Fleet, so it would have been a quick hop down to Dorne and back.

He also believed that the armies of both Dorne and The Reach were loyal to Dany. It was believed that the only "Kingdoms" who were loyal to Cersei were the Westerlands (Casterly Rock), the Riverlands, and the Crown Lands (and possibly the Storm Lands -- but no one talks about them).

With King's Landing under siege from The Reach and Dorne, and Casterly Rock under control of the Unsullied, Cersei would have no support and nowhere to run. The war should have been short and decisive.

As the saying goes, all plans only survive to the point of first contact with the enemy.

Tyrion underestimated Cersei's ability to rally the lords of The Reach to support her. Once that happened, Tyrion's plan was screwed. They also didn't anticipate Euron attacking Yara's fleet and capturing the Dornish. That really ruined the plan.

Then, you add in the fact that Casterly Rock's gold mines are empty, and that was the only thing that made Casterly Rock worth anything. It was easy for the Lannisters to abandon it.

Maybe underscores how useless Varys is now. As the former spy master for Westeros you would think he would have the contacts still to track Euron's fleet, know that the Tyrell bannermen were meeting with Cersei in King's Landing, and/or that the majority of troops had left one of the capital cities.

We knew that Qyburn had taken over the "little birds" in King's Landing but you would think Varys still had some contacts and spies in Westeros that could sniff some of this out. Not saying he should have been able to see all of the Lannister movements, but he shouldn't be completely blind to all of them either.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by sureLoss

Maybe underscores how useless Varys is now. As the former spy master for Westeros you would think he would have the contacts still to track Euron's fleet, know that the Tyrell bannermen were meeting with Cersei in King's Landing, and/or that the majority of troops had left one of the capital cities.

We knew that Qyburn had taken over the "little birds" in King's Landing but you would think Varys still had some contacts and spies in Westeros that could sniff some of this out. Not saying he should have been able to see all of the Lannister movements, but he shouldn't be completely blind to all of them either.

I think they are just trying to make Dany's whole crew seem naive and useless, but they've overdone it a bit. Tyrion's plan fails miserably. Dany is acting like a maniac, threatening everyone and going on about birthrights. Varys isn't really doing much of anything, despite just earlier having the means to bring the Tyrell's, Dorne, and Dany together.

Despite my gripes, I'm actually really enjoying the show. You just can't overthink it at all at this point. Even the first few seasons were like this. We're seeing more of an overarching strategy to the show now, which lends itself more to overthinking.

[FireGilbert]

That was a great episode. There were so many excellent interactions such as Dany and John finally meeting, the intense scene with Cersei getting revenge against the Dornish, and the epic ending at Highgarden. I also enjoyed the maneuvering and twists at the end as Tyrion's plan fell apart.

I agree with others however that you do have to suspend your belief a bit with some of the leaps in logic and travel, especially the Iron Fleet seemingly able to teleport. It is a shame since a major appeal of the show in the early seasons was realism and a attention to detail when it came to planning, logistics, and geography. I'm willing to cut the writers some slack however as they are trying to wrap up this epic story in a short amount of time.

[Mike F]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

Really, the pure 100% #1 highlight of this entire series was the Battle Of The Bastards.

Yes, yes it was! And that was because they took the time to set the stage, raise the stakes, and ramp up the tension so that the outcome was exhilarating and had an emotional punch. You had conversations between Sansa and Jon that warned of Jon's underdog status and Ramsay's scheming, the battle had a great, slow introductory staging, with the armies facing off and Ramsey goading Jon into rashness with Rickon, the battle itself was shot and staged magnificently, with the heroes taken to the brink of defeat, individually and collectively, before they're pulled from the coals by Littlefinger, and a thoroughly satisfying ending, with Jon, Wun Wun, and Tormund storming the castle, and Jon beating down Ramsay.

It had everything the battles in the last two episodes have lacked: context, great character moments, strategy, and coherent arcs to the fight that raised tension and allowed the outcome to be emotionally satisfying.

The same things were present (if to a slightly lesser extent) in the Battle of Blackwater, and it similarly had a very satisfying feel to the conclusion.

Now I acknowledge that you can't make every battle a Battle of the Bastards, but this show deserved for them to take the time to add some of these elements to the battles going on so that there was some degree of strategy, tension, and emotional kick to them.

[JFK]

Originally Posted by FireGilbert

I agree with others however that you do have to suspend your belief a bit with some of the leaps in logic and travel, especially the Iron Fleet seemingly able to teleport.

An important book note on chronology

Spoiler!

[Cecil Terwilliger]

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by Mike F

Yes, yes it was! And that was because they took the time to set the stage, raise the stakes, and ramp up the tension so that the outcome was exhilarating and had an emotional punch. You had conversations between Sansa and Jon that warned of Jon's underdog status and Ramsay's scheming, the battle had a great, slow introductory staging, with the armies facing off and Ramsey goading Jon into rashness with Rickon, the battle itself was shot and staged magnificently, with the heroes taken to the brink of defeat, individually and collectively, before they're pulled from the coals by Littlefinger, and a thoroughly satisfying ending, with Jon, Wun Wun, and Tormund storming the castle, and Jon beating down Ramsay.

It had everything the battles in the last two episodes have lacked: context, great character moments, strategy, and coherent arcs to the fight that raised tension and allowed the outcome to be emotionally satisfying.

The same things were present (if to a slightly lesser extent) in the Battle of Blackwater, and it similarly had a very satisfying feel to the conclusion.

Now I acknowledge that you can't make every battle a Battle of the Bastards, but this show deserved for them to take the time to add some of these elements to the battles going on so that there was some degree of strategy, tension, and emotional kick to them.

I think the problem is, you want every minor skirmish or plot-advancing battle to have weight, but frankly, any full-fledged battles remaining aren't going to be just little segueways into the next part of the episode, but will be full-on conclusions that will have 7 seasons of build-up.

[Johnny Makarov]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

My main critique is that this is all very slapdash and thrown together. I would accept all these rationalizations for how easily Highgarden fell, or for how Euron is everywhere at once, or for why Casterly Rock is a good idea if there was screen time spent fleshing these major plot points out. But there isn't, so we're just sitting around desperately holding on to the idea that the primary storyline isn't degrading into an absolute mess by coming up with our own rationalizations for why everything appears to be so stupid.

That's not good story telling. It's lazy, rushed, and betrays the earlier masterpiece of the show.

Might as well stop watching and rewatch the walking dead if you want slow and unrushed story telling.

[Erick Estrada]

The accelerated pace of this season is a little jarring as has been said but I imagine due to the budget of the show and the cost of all the battle scenes it's necessary. Nevertheless it's certainly made for engaging TV.

I don't read the books so maybe I'm ignorant but Euron Greyjoy's fleet seems nearly unstoppable. How did kind of a sidebar character amass such a dominant fleet that could pretty well decimate the Iron Fleet or any other fleet for that matter?

[GGG]

He took most of the Iron fleet when he took over the Iron Islands. The other two only stole a few hundred ships out of the thousand. Though apparently they took the crappy ones.

[Inglewood Jack]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

I don't read the books so maybe I'm ignorant but Euron Greyjoy's fleet seems nearly unstoppable. How did kind of a sidebar character amass such a dominant fleet that could pretty well decimate the Iron Fleet or any other fleet for that matter?

simple, he asked for 1000 ships to be built and it was done. other than having a size advantage in both battles so far, he seems to be able to just appear right on top of an opposing fleet with absolutely zero warning. it was sort of explainable the first time because it was at night and possibly foggy, but then he did it again in broad daylight at Casterly Rock. Grey Worm had no idea they were in the vicinity until he just looked up and saw all his ships already in the process of being burned and sunk.