Thunderdome

Why ‘Game of Thrones’ Season 8 is the Worst Adaption Ever!

Do you think you have heard every complaint that’s ever been made about Game of Thrones — Season 8?

You know nothing, Jon Snow. (Warning: Spoilers, more spoilers, and a wee bit sweary)

Thunderdome is a Fanfare series where our writers good-naturedly debate some matter of pop culture and then leave it to the readers to decide. Read each post and vote at the bottom!

Okay, so from the very first moment I watched GAME OF THRONES, I was totally mind-blown.

At the time, I hadn’t read any of the books. I didn’t know a thing about the storyline. I just watched the first episode in the first season, lo these many years ago, and my mind was totally freaking blown!!!

So right away I wanted to see the whole damn thing. The only problem was, that I was economically challenged and could not afford an HBO subscription, which was a lot harder to come by up here in Canada. So I settled for buying each season on DVD as they came out, kicking back over the Christmas holidays, and binge-watching them.

A bottle of beer, a hot turkey sandwich, a good comfortable easy chair, and an abundance of nudity, carnal pleasures, and random hacking swordplay.

Ah…the simple pleasures.

You know nothing, Jon Snow.

As each year rolled by I picked up the season DVD and watched them. I usually smoked the whole pack, meaning that when I picked up the season 3 DVD I started out by rewatching season 1 and 2 all over again, before rolling into 3.

I have done that all the way up to season 7.

Now, a lot of reviews that I read had the opinion that Season 7 of Game of Thrones was the season that the series began to turn to shit.

It’s true.

Oddly enough, I enjoyed season 7 enough to watch it two or three times right on through — which wasn’t all that hard, given that there were only seven fucking episodes in the season, which seems a little stingy to me.

I mean, just think about it.

Arya getting using all of her Faceless Man assassin skills to get some kickass payback on Walter Frey and his clan for massacring her family.

I mean that’s fucking entertainment, now isn’t it?

Just think about it? We had the Dothraki taking on the Southerners, with Daenerys Targaryen flying in on a dragon to take on those white-walkers while no-nothing Jon Snow was fighting for his life on the North Wall right on up to that cliff-hanging season ender when the Night King takes down the whole fucking North Wall, taking the balls off of the Night Watch once and for sweet fucking all.

(If I’m getting some of those details screwed up, I apologize. It’s been a few years since I watched the whole thing.)

Anyway, a lot of folks feel that the series had turned to shit in Season 7, but I’ll tell you when it turned to shit.

I’ll tell you EXACTLY when the whole series turned ca-ca and died.

Game of Thrones turned to shit when HBO started referring to it as GOT!

Listen up world.

KFC is KENTUCKY FUCKING FRIED CHICKEN!

Every time I hear somebody substituting initials in place of real fucking words, I die a little. It’s true. Something withers in-fucking-side of me.

I hate acronyms.

I hate initialism — which is the buzzword that turned a local Donair shop, King of Donair, into KOD, which sounds like they sell fucking cod fish, now doesn’t it?

Listen up, HBO — it’s GAME OF FUCKING THRONES — not GOT!!!

It makes me want to scream like Sam Kinison!!!

Anyway, I liked Season 7, just fine.

Don’t listen to what that statue of Roger Ebert tells you.

Anyway, I’m supposed to be talking about Season 8, now aren’t I?

You’re probably getting pissed off having to wait for Season 8, now aren’t you?

Well, it’s coming folks.

It’s coming like Winter, and I wouldn’t lie to you.

I waited a whole damn year to get to watch Season 8.

You know the story by now.

I had to wait for Season 8 to hit DVD.

I ignored every freaking review I saw, refusing to risk the slightest chance of an inadvertent spoiler.

More fool me.

I watched it straight through.

I sat there for ten fucking hours staring at what amounted to a blacked-out television screen, with a few fucking dots on it.

It was worse than playing slow-mode Pong with a blindfold on.

That’s the start of it.

I paid $30 bucks for a DVD of solid black and blur!

YOU SEE NOTHING, JON SNOW!!!

The first two episodes of Season 8 were fine, although a little draggy. They hauled out nearly every single character who had appeared over the last 7 seasons, and kind of pretzel twisted them into place into a sort of super-Jenga Game of Thrones. I mean, before those two episodes were up I was caught up to speed. Besides just the convenience of that whole LAST-SEVEN-SEASONS-ON-GAME-OF-THRONES recap, I was also reminded how to care about these characters and I was looking forward to seeing how these characters ended up in the next episode — the big battle of the forces of life versus the walking dead.

The key word to remember in that last sentence would be “seeing”.

Believe it.

he next thing I knew I was watching Daenerys Targaryen the Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains and Lover of Copious-Fucking-Titles burn up a whole entire city with her dragon. Now, that sounds cool, and (for a while) it was bright enough to see — but that visibility soon fell prey to the smoke and the fire that was generated by the dragon’s breath.

I mean, all along we’ve been cheering Daenerys on and then she just loses her fucking mind and starts destroy every-fucking-citizen in the city.

I mean, it’s like she decided to take over the city by burning it to ashes. I mean, we’re talking totally fucking urban annihilation!!!

Worse yet, the whole screen is filled with flame and dragon smoke. I don’t even know if they had any fucking actors up there on the screen!

But I’m stubborn, so I kept on watching and I kept on wondering about one single stupid glitch.

Right about when Daenerys loses her dragon to a chucked giant spear.

I mean, we’d already seen how readily a well-aimed ballista could skewer a dragon.

Now here was Daenerys with her VERY last dragon just blasting those ballistae (alright, so they called them scorpions, but whatever you call it, it is a big freaking dragon-killing crossbow) and she is just roaring right in there against that fortress full of big freaking dragon-killing crossbows without a care in the world. All of a sudden she is Eddie freaking Rickenbacker shooting down the Red Baron while Snoopy yells out fighter maneuver techniques from the sidelines.

I mean, why wasn’t that explained? All of a sudden she knew how to avoid and destroy those big freaking dragon-killing crossbows, even though she only had one freaking dragon. Did she secretly practice midair dodgeball techniques? Had she studied with Mandrake The Magician and was gesturing hypnotically while she was flying over those big freaking dragon-killing crossbows and wreaking havoc?

I mean, even if they had spent one single freaking scene with her talking a blacksmith into building some kind of armor for that dragon, that still wouldn’t have explained her sudden ability to simultaneously dodge those crossbows and blow the whole city down in flames.

Meanwhile, old Jon Snow is tagging along after her like a rescued puppy, saying “She’s my Queen. Okay, so she’s massacring every human in sight and burning this city down like she is planning a fire sale — but hey, she’s my Queen, right? So whatever she does, is cool by me.”

It probably wouldn’t be all that politically correct for me to point out just how badly Jon Snow has been whipped.

So, not only has Jon Snow been whipped — but he’s whipped so good that it shook his brain cells loose.

Speaking of loose brain cells, what the hell happened with Tyrian Lannister, anyway?

I mean, wasn’t he supposed to be the crafty one?

“Your strategy has lost us Dorne, the Iron Islands, and the Reach,” Dany said to Tyrion.

“Whoops,” Tyrion said. “Guess I fucked up.”

And that isn’t all.

Tyrion also counseled Daenerys to not help Jon Snow battle the White Walkers beyond the North Wall. He also advised her against helping Jon Snow and his crew while they were being attacked by White Walkers beyond the Wall.

Basically, all he does throughout the bulk of Season 8 is glower.

Occasionally he’d brood.

More often than not, he’d sulk.

Worse than all of that was the director’s insistence upon taking copious amounts of screen time as their characters stared sullenly at absolutely nothing at all. I mean, you want to take every Sergio Leone spaghetti western gunfight and run it in extra-slow motion and you will get an idea of how excruciatingly slow these all-too-frequent shots were to the average viewer.

And the big-time, super-dramatic end of the Winter King?

Does Arya Stark use any of her freaking ninja Faceless Man assassin skills to maybe infiltrate the army of the dead, risking life and limb to finish off the Winter King?

No!

The epic fucking battle we’ve been waiting seven fucking seasons to see finishes with a minute-long, Jackie Chan, mumbly-peg, magic knife, Matrix bullet-time, blink-and-you’ll-fucking-miss-it death blow.

Not to mention the fact that Cersei Lannister — one of the most underused characters in the whole damn series, spends damn near the whole six-episode season standing on her balcony staring wistfully at the end of her paycheck.

And what about Jaime Lanister?

After spending several seasons redeeming himself in one of the most epic, beautiful character turns in the whole entire series do the star-crossed lovers Jaime and Brienne of Tarth wade into battle together and go down into death like Romeo and Juliette with broadswords?

NO FUCKING WAY!

He dumps Brienne — I am not worthy, it’s me and not you, blah-blah-bullshit-blah, and runs off to hide-out from the battle with his sister Cersei (after dragging her off her balcony), in a fucking CRYPT!!!

Yeah.

There are no dead people to come back under the Winter King’s magic in a fucking crypt, now is there?

What about the death charge of the Dothraki at the Winter King’s army? You know, where all you see of them is a bunch of torch blips, looking like a banzai suicide charge game of Pong?

That clip ought to give you an idea of just how dark and unwatchable the whole final battle was. It only got dimmer and darker from there. The whole Dothraki forces, flaming swords and all, decimated in a single stupid pointless banzai charge.

Yeah, sure, you could say it was symbolic.

But these were the fucking Dothraki screamers we had heard so much about.

And where the fuck was Daenerys and her dragon at this point of the game?

Don’t get me started about Tyrian popping up in the Grand Council meeting, telling a pretty little story about “who has the best fucking story ought to be King” and can we please forgive and forget that death sentence you gave me, and hey, seeing that I’m still drunk and making up things-to-know, maybe you ought to give me that cushy job as the Hand of that King that I just got elected with my fucking pretty story?

I think that was the last episode. The heroes divvied up what was left of the kingdom and gave each other fat cushy political jobs to do and we all live happily after on our fucking residual checks, amen.

I don’t know.

I kind of lost track.

I kind of lost my will to live.

Season 8 was harder to follow than those first two years of “What-fucking-day-is-today” Covid-19.

It must be the day of beers.

That’s it.

So yeah.

The boneheaded bozos behind Season 8 of Game Of Thrones truly fucked up.

I may never watch the damn series again.

Go ahead.

Call me stubborn!

What say you?

Based only on the arguments presented (you have read all of them, haven’t you?) and not on personal preference: who wins this bout? Voting closes on July 21 at 6:59 AM.

The entries:

• Cats: Max Borg
• The Dark Tower film: Eric Pierce
• Game of Thrones, Season 8: Ginger Bangs
• The Golden Compass (2007): Simon Dillon
• The Last Airbender film: Laquesha Bailey