@ormgaard: Although I’m often a fan of slow-paced movies others find boring, this one wasn’t. I was surprised, because I was expecting it to be. The action is well filmed, and while I wouldn’t call it an action movie, it has enough going on that it didn’t feel slow.
It was a legitimately good movie. Well acted, beautifully shot, and different from the other seasonal offerings. I want more movies like this, as I’m rather burned out on comic movies and Star Wars.
@totallytc: This is so apt. Exactly how I feel. It sucks because the first 3 seasons were my favorite of any show, ever. Just so exceptional. 4 and 5 were strong, but after that, it was watching something I loved deteriorate into a shadow of itself. Like you, it made me sick and I can’t even rewatch the first seasons, knowing what it becomes. I’m well aware how dramatic this sounds, and this isn’t typically my style, but I don’t think before or since have I loathed the direction a franchise took so much as GoT.
@silentchief: Yep. They went from innovators and creators of some of the best games I’ve ever played to just another corporation willing to cling to whatever ideology they can convert into dollars.
@poe13: Yeah dude, we definitely complained. I was quite a whiny little shit, although not a bad kid overall, if memory and bias do me justice. Regardless, there's the usual childish stuff to cry about, where everything is perceived as "unfair," and then there's a hopefully matured adult psychology. The latter realizes that, while MANY things are certainly unfair, not all arise as a consequence of intentional or malicious behavior. In fact, many are entirely innocuous. Consider: if one person is born in a town X with abundant water, and another is born in town Y in the middle of a barren wasteland, it's arguably "unfair." But there's nothing beyond mere happenstance. Nobody wished one city to prosper and the other to fail. A child may whine about the denizens of town Y, but an educated adult would hopefully not. Instead, he'd do better to improve himself and search for alternative means of survival.
TL;DR: save complaining for instances of real, intentional bigotry. Stop calling everything which doesn't suit your taste some type of "-ism." It weakens discourse and society and we all expend entirely too much energy focusing on it instead of being productive/happy.
@theguyskt: Thank you. I think your attitude, while perhaps a little acerbic (as is mine), is precisely the correct response. I don't hate anyone based on race (stupidity is another matter), and I've gotten to the point where I'm not just going to passively sit there and leave it unchallenged. People with actual morals aren't just going to allow this presumption that everyone has a racial agenda, that everything needs to focused on a person's race. It's nonsense. I imagine most people live their lives the same way I do. They judge something on its merits as either good or bad. A story, a painting, a book, an idea, a religion. I don't care what color the artist/thinker is. I don't care what their hair looks like. If their idea is good, it gets my approval. If it stinks, then no amount of guilting is going to change that.
OH, FFS. Get out of here with your "white savior" tropes. The story is an unmistakable classic, as revered as it is brilliant for sci-fi/fantasy. It was written in another era, and there's nothing wrong with a white writer creating white characters. There's nothing wrong with characters of other races, either. Lawrence of Arabia, Dances with Wolves, Avatar. They all have an element of the same, and Lawrence of Arabia was largely based on actual history. That doesn't make them bad stories. If people want to create excellent stories with diverse races, by all means, they should do so. Many certainly have.
I can't wait for a world that's truly progressive, when people stop whining incessantly about race and relegate it to the truly insignificant thing it is: a negligible variation of physical characteristics. Then we can focus on something more substantial, like character, or culture, or...really anything else.
@JamesHetfield89: That's a fair take, from what I remember. I don't want to spoil it for anyone, so, obligatory ****SPOILER***** (kinda)
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I think, like Dune, that the first book is fairly self-contained, in that it establishes the world, makes some decently interesting introductions, and ends on a note that is both conclusive of the action in the first book while opening the door for what will obviously be a long arc for the main character. If they do this effectively, I think they'll establish some goodwill, which they will hopefully build upon while editing out some of the "slog" you allude to. I never made it that far, so I can only imagine.
What purists fail to grasp, time and again, is that while certain things make for decent reading, they don't always translate well to the screen. A deft filmmaker/editor will understand that some things are better streamlined. A great example is I love the LoTR movies (in fact, I consider them the best fantasy adaptation to date). They entirely capture the spirit of Middle Earth--its wonderment and looming danger. But as faithful as Jackson was, even he understood certain things had to go. For notable instance, he doesn't distract us with a scene of Tom Bombadil skipping around the river. He blends the characters of Glorfindel and Arwen together, so she has something significant to do early on, and it's an awesome scene.
For all the failings of the Game of Thrones show (later on), at least it didn't give us the visual equivalent of 10 pages dedicated to the napkins and silverware on a table. Stuff like that needs to stay in books, or peek its head into cinema only very briefly.
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