Game of Thrones: A Better Ending?
The actors and film crew did themselves proud. The cinematography was exceptional (except for those dark bits where we couldn't see anything ;)).
As for the writers...?
I'm embarrassed for them.
If, like me, you were left unsatisfied by the direction they took the show, the video below might help you feel better. It also proves what could have been achieved with more emphasis on completing a story to its full potential and less on legend-making visual effects (it strikes me that those who were happy with the finale are either in the pen with the rest of the industry sheep or the visual content is more important to them than the story content. Here, on this blog, it's always about story). But, before anyone cries Brexit!! -- Oh, sorry, got confused for a moment there, but it is a similar criticism: there is no perfect version of Brexit; there is no perfect ending of Thrones -- no singular scenario would have kept everyone happy.
I say bollocks to that, if you'll excuse my more colourful language on this occasion.
There are a multitude of alternatives that would have been more satisfying on story-level than the flaccid version D&D felt fans 'deserved', and a multitude of writers who would have happily seen it through to the best ending and tied up all the plot threads more than adequately. Unfortunately, D&D refused that idea, as word has it, but their eagerness to cut plot corners and get the hell out of there was glaringly evident. No wonder more than 1.5 million fans have signed the petition for a remake (no one thinks that will happen, realistically, but I think there is a genuine need to vent, and to make their voices heard, much like the Brexit vote, and the current Gillet Jaune movement in France -- a need to be acknowledged and their opinions valued, not dismissed as irrelevant. But that subject is for another, more ranty blog that I haven't yet started). It's possible the damage could be so bad, fans of the world of Westeros might even abandon watching the future prequels currently under development.
Having my own list of series finales that have left a bad taste in my mouth, I'm waning towards waiting for television series to finish entirely and only binge-watch them if the fans find the ending worthwhile. I'm fed up with getting invested in characters and plot lines that amount to nothing because Californian pretentiousness to do the unexpected and come across as 'fresh', 'new', and 'exciting' means cocking up decent stories for the priority of career. D&D did not 'break the wheel' -- which is what I assume they hoped they had intended in the TV world, in some kind of inflated idea of a symbiotic metaphor with the themes of the show, mistaking themselves to be the creative story talent here and not GRRM, the originator of the whole thing -- they just broke a really good story into smithereens. They should get themselves a dairy -- that way they'll have plenty of grease to ease out their big, fat heads from the next project they derail.
The backlash just goes to show how important story still is to people, even after millennia -- it's much of what our whole societies and survival are based on, historically.
The video below is just one alternative -- and better -- ending, not even devised by a professional script writer (to my knowledge).
As for series eight (and especially episode 6): Let us never speak of it again...
