Game of Thrones Season 8 - Explained Finally

_{Author: MikeW Date: 2019-10-30T18:53:17+00:00}

Post Icon Ever since season 8 of Game of Thrones ended, we have wondered, what happened. Did Dan and Dave just phone it in because of all that Star Wars money? They just didn't care? Or maybe they are just incompetent. Well folks, its beginning to look like the latter. To their credit, Dan and Dave were brutally honest about their Game of Thrones experience at the Austin Film festival over the weekend (Oct 26-27, 2019).

Forbes - Worst suspicions confirmed

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2019/10/28/game-of-thrones-showrunners-david-benioff-and-db-weiss-confirmed-the-worst-suspicions-of-the-fanbase/#628f403ef37c

This is a great overview of the interview.

Boy Genius Report: ‘Game of Thrones’ creators confirm that they had no clue what they were doing

https://bgr.com/2019/10/28/game-of-thrones-season-8s-bad-writing-finally-almost-explained/

Complete list of the live tweets from the Austin event.

Key highlights for me included:

Were surprised they were hired for the job as they had not run a film or tv show before.
Tried to remove as much fantasy elements as they could from the story. They didn't want only fantasy fans watching the show. Were more interested in "wives and NFL players".
- Broad appeal, good. Not respecting your source material, bad.
- Given what they said, they still built up a number of fantasy elements with no payoff.
  - Killed of the Night King like a punk.
  - No Prince that was Promised stuff.
  - So much lost opportunity.
Actors greatly influenced writing of many of the characters.
- Probably a really good thing. The actors probably did a lot more research about their characters than D & D.
Didn't get any feedback from fans or from other writers. Pretty much only had D & D and one or two other people involved.
- This is how you end up with Bran as King and kill Cersei with a roof.
Benioff once said: “Themes are for eighth-grade book reports.” He didn't really have much respect for the original material.
- That explains why there is NO payoff for any of the prophesy included in the book. Thusly producing a mess of a last season.
When asked if they tried to break down the major themes from the books. They essentially said no. The show was just about power.

Based on this, what amazes me is how good seasons 1 - 7 are compared to season 8. They could have ruined the show much earlier on.