"Game of Thrones more hack writing" Topic

Season 5 ep 9, Stannis kills Shireen his daughter…..a rip off of Iphigenia killed by Agamemnon and then we have the death of Caesar when they surround and stab Jon snow, the only thing lacking was Et tu……

Really, they can't come up with anything more original…….

and the characters continue to wander about bumping into each other with senseless rapes and murder.

Blue-eyed zombies were mildly interesting….kind of like the Naked Jungle where Charlton Heston takes on army ants….

Harrumph.

All I can say is that the world needs more hack writing.

Why stop there if you want to be grumpy about it?
I can think of many scenes that remind me of other movies.
Wun Wun throwing zombies off his back is reminiscent of T Rex in Jurassic Park and the raptors.
Oberyn's duel with the Mountain is right out of Princess Bride.
Seizing the sword with bare hand: Rob Roy.
Joffrey and Sansa on the veranda: Anakin and Padme.
I could go on. If you like being reminded of other movies, the French call it "homage". If you don't, it's a blatant ripoff.

Stark, Lamnister. York, Lancaster.
Jaime and Cersei are reminiscent of the rumors about Anne Boleyn and her brother. Or is that Margaery and Loras?
Is it Glencoe or something else that the Red Wedding refers to?

What it all boils down to is that if you like the show, you recognize Martin's DELIBERATE historical and cinematic references and love them
If you hate the show to begin with, you will call them blatant ripoffs.

Can I call you a grumpy old coot? No, I had better not. That would be a personal attack. Instead I will pay "homage" to Sgt Hulka in Stripes. "Lighten up, Francis." Or is that a blatant ripoff?
I am not going to tell you you have to like it. But attacking it for what Martin deliberately intended is a bit much.

Sneakgun: All I can say is that you are in a distinct minority, and therefore… wrong. 8)=

I stopped the page after the child rape "scene" in book 1, not anticipating anything after that than a lazy hack looking to push as many "shocking scene" buttons as he could.

Old Coot

This one is not as bad as the post complaining about the impracticality of the armor design.

But either way: if the entertainment industry satisfies all of your cerebral requirements, you're a blithering idiot. If you think it SHOULD, you're set for a miserable existence.

If they get more right than not, click the clicker, and give them the liver treat. It's bound to sink in eventually.

The Beast Rampant
… if the entertainment industry satisfies all of your cerebral requirements, you're a blithering idiot. If you think it SHOULD, you're set for a miserable existence.

+1

Wow, you ever get the feeling that needs to switch to decaf?

I'd certainly be more impressed if our literary / television critic knew how to construct a sentence himself.

Hack writing?
If you mean to say that the writing will never be placed on a reading list for school children 20 years from now….well, sure.

Let's be more realistic. This is a business. Most every story used in the entertainment business follows a formula. Following your first statement, a "Rip-off" of what has been done before….how about keep it as a homage.

Every western copies every martial arts movie--or is that the other way around??

Every horror movie follows the same basic set of rules.

Most Sci-Fi movies have great effects---but the story line can be traced back to classic literature

Just take the entertainment for what it is…or don't bother to watch it at all

ALL sci-fi and fantasy is history with the serial numbers filed off at some level.

-Will

Hack writing?
If you mean to say that the writing will never be placed on a reading list for school children 20 years from now….well, sure.

I agree.
Remember the glut of excellent tv miniseries back in the 80s?
My favorites were Shogun, The Winds of War, War and Remembrance, Centennial, Lonesome Dove? Etc?
Which of them were based on what could be called "literature"?
The "Winds" series were both about 50% history and the rest soap opera, yet excellent viewing and reading. YMMV of course.

And what about the second iteration of Battlestar Galactica? One can find echos of Greek mythology there, even more blatant than the Stannis Agamemnon one. Yet it was a cracking good show, up to the last episode of course.

Complaining about how much history is in a popular entertainment is stranger than complaining how little is in it.

The fact that I saw "parallels" in GoT ("Et tu Olly?") is more to be self congratulatory than condemning of the author.

(The serial numbers crack above by wmninsing…. +1)

You have to give the 2nd Battlestar Galactica credit-throughout the series they kept saying "This has all happened before,and it will happen again."

There are something like twenty basic storylines in the world. You can move things around and mix them up, but that's really it. The ingredients may vary, but the cake's the same.

I think Shakespeare would argue it's the words you use and how they are connected that makes the difference.

The only definition of "hack" writing we can all agree on is "He writes that crap I don't like."

I'm really shocked by how much GoT has gone down in my estimation. After the first 2 books came out I was telling everyone how good they were. Then I started to lose interest around book 4 as the story sort of slowed down and started wandering. Now I completely don't care about it and only watched the first couple episodes of the series before losing interest.

It started out as a trilogy, with a radically different approach now.
Martin had as much incentive to keep it concise as Robert Jordan. He was free to wander off on any tangent he wished. And do he did. Then along came HBO.

You must also be quite upset about that trashy rip off West Side Story.

And I'm sure old coat is upset about Juliet's age for that matter.

Martin makes us look at and contrast what a world of "traditional values – obey your parents and marry this guy" was like compared to our modern world. Age of consent has slide forward (Henry VII's mom was 14 when she conceived).

TomT

So, is there a POINT to Stannis sacrificing his daughter? He didn't do that in the books, and tto me it strikes me as Martin reading his twitter feed and seeing Stannis the Mannis, and thinking "People like a character, better make him do something mindlessly evil, because my next book is NEVER coming out."

However homage or hack writing, I get the distinct impression all of us have fallen for masterful bit of trolling.

Stannis hasn't sacrificed Shireen in the books YET.
And as we all know, the series is outpacing the books. Book 6 will not be out until after Season 6 is over, btw. Breaking news.

Benioff and Weis had many long talks with Martin about how the story arcs out. Believe me, the Agamemnon parallel is coming up. B&W were horrified about it (I read this on line) and eager to film it.
I see a lot of the tragic Greek hero in Stannis, as well as Macbeth. In a classic Arisrotelian way, he has greatness which is undone by taking his virtues to a tragic extreme.
And he knows exactly what he is going. "Forgive me", he asks Shireen.