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[Spartan Rex]

There's A Fan Backlash Brewing Against The 'Game Of Thrones' Battle Of Winterfell

The show's biggest ever battle didn't meet expectations

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Fair warning: if you've not managed to see 'The Long Night' yet then you're probably not going to want to read this. How, though? How've you managed that?
If you actually managed to see it, the newest episode of Game of Thronesfinally gave fans the much-trailed and extraordinarily ambitious Battle of Winterfell, where the forces of the living had their showdown with the Night King's undead army. And do you know what? It was quite good.

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There's a bit of a backlash brewing against the final season's tentpole clash, though. Some fans bemoaned the way that second- and third-tier characters with little left to add were merrily chucked into the meat grinder while Daenerys and Jon Snow spent the battle dancing through improbable last-ditch escapes, going against the show's general ethos of killing exactly who you don't want to die at exactly the point you were least expecting it and becoming more disappointingly conventional in the process.
Obviously, the fact that it was all so dark the action might as well have been taking place at the bottom of a mineshaft didn't help either, with a fair few viewers resenting having to squint at vague black shapes moving in front of or possibly behind other vague black shapes. The chaotic, disorientating direction didn't help either.


"The battle was completely bungled," u/DarthMosasaur said on Reddit. "I kept thinking of the final battle from Saving Private Ryan - we knew where everyone was, what their jobs were, and where the enemy was coming from. This battle was a total mess."
Then there was a lot of criticism for the actual tactics of the battle. You'd think that the presence of the undead at one's door would concentrate minds, but apparently not. Reddit's military-industrial complex was particularly perturbed at the way that the Dothraki cavalry was launched blindly into the waiting clutches of the White Walker hordes, though that wasn't the only embarrassing tactical error fans felt aggrieved by.
"Let's put the artillery before the lines, so it can be smashed," began a sarcastic assessment from u/EggInPain, who famously masterminded the breakthrough at the Battle of Amiens in 1918. "And let's light the tranches [sic] not when they are trying to climb the walls and we can trap them between the wall and the fire, but when they can just look at it and wait it off. And let's land the dragon instead of flying and burning the s*** [out] of our own dead."
Then there were accusations that the White Walkers suddenly seemed able to stab straight through plate armour, that while everyone was shouting to light the trenches Jon was sat on a bloody great dragon, and that an armageddon-level threat to Westeros could be undone by a tiny assassin jumping out of a tree.
Still, if you play something up as The Biggest Battle Ever Filmed Ever then you're going to find some pockets of harrumphing.

 

[Robopredinator]

The only shots that stood out to me were the Dragons above the clouds.

There was quite a few shots that stood out to me including this one. It reminded me of that moment in Batman '89 when he takes the batwing above the clouds.

 

[Spartan Rex]

The Dothraki Deserved Better From Daenerys


Her bloodriders followed her across the Narrow Sea only to be forced to carry out a ridiculous plan in the Battle of Winterfell

By Danny Heifetz

HBO/Ringer illustrationIn Game of Thrones Season 6, after Daenerys Targaryen has burned all of the Khals in Vaes Dothrak and consolidated their various Dothraki hordes into one massive Khalasar, she makes them a bold promise. Standing on top of Drogon, Dany announces she will not name just three bloodriders, as is Dothraki tradition. Instead she will give them all the honor.
“I will ask more of you than any Khal have ever asked of his Khalasar,” Dany says.

That turned out to be true.
On Sunday’s episode of Game of Thrones, “The Long Night,” the Dothraki and their horses were taken off the chessboard. In a plan Dany approved, they charged headfirst into the army of the dead with predictable consequences. As the Dothraki’s flaming swords flickered and faded in a matter of seconds, so too did much of the Dothraki culture: “What [the other characters] see is the end of the Dothraki, essentially,” series cocreator David Benioff said in an Inside the Episode segment after the credits on Sunday night. Perhaps there are Dothraki stragglers Dany left in Essos, but the tribe as we knew it is gone.

In a show about badass warriors, the Dothraki were perhaps the most badass. (“A Dothraki wedding without at least three deaths is considered a dull affair,” Illyrio Mopatis tells Dany at her nuptials in the pilot episode.) The Dothraki were the first followers to place their trust in Dany, and they did so twice: first when she birthed her dragons and again after she burned down Vaes Dothrak. Yet when the Battle of Winterfell came, Dany—their Khaleesi—failed them.
In the opening minutes of Sunday’s episode, the massive Dothraki horde is at the front lines when Melisandre, the red priestess, returns from … somewhere, and she asks Jorah to command the Dothraki army to raise their swords. He complies. What follows is one of the most stunning visual sequences in a series replete with them.

Seeing thousands of Dothraki swords light up in flames was jaw-dropping. It was also the moment that sealed their fate. The Dothraki have two rules:

1. No weapons in their holy city.
2. Don’t mess with witches.

No one should understand the second one better than Jorah, Dany’s most trusted adviser who was there in Season 1 when a witch’s magic left Khal Drogo in a vegetative state and killed Khaleesi’s unborn child. That made it all the more surprising that he would accept Melisandre’s help before the battle with the army of the undead. He should know that a witch sending the Dothraki into battle is like the New York Jets making the Super Bowl and having Tom Brady read the pregame introductions. Yet when Melisandre asks Jorah whether she can grace their swords, he obliges. No wonder they all promptly die.
Perhaps the Dothraki trusted the magic because they knew the plan—ride headfirst into the Night King’s army—was basically a suicide mission. There is an entire tactical analysis explaining why this is such a dumb strategy, but at the risk of beating thousands of dead horses, it’s worth breaking down just how stupid it was. Jon’s and Dany’s armies dug trenches, built a flame moat, and created dragonglass barbed wire and then had the Dothraki and Unsullied stand in front of those barricades rather than behind them.They also put the artillery in front of the Unsullied rather than behind them, and they didn’t seem to stock up on enough supplies for the battle. Look how many flaming doughnut holes (it’s a technical term) they had:

HBOI count 10 spare flaming doughnut holes plus some assorted bricks to launch. That’s not enough! The trebuchet could take 90 seconds to reload, and they’d still be out of ammo with more than an hour left in the episode. That’s before we get into their aerial naivete. It’s a baffling plan considering that when the Dothraki took on the Lannisters in the Loot Train attack, they had the element of surprise plus a dragon flanking the enemy. See how Dany attacks the Lannisters from the side as the Dothraki approach them head on?



Why is that not what happened in the Battle of Winterfell? These tactical failures were explained on a postshow segment with creators D.B. Weiss and Benioff. Jon and Dany’s plan is to draw the Night King out into the open and attack him 2-on-1: “One thing they couldn’t have foreseen was Dany’s reaction to seeing the Dothaski decimated,” Benioff said. “Jon is the person who wants to stick to the plan but the Dothraki aren’t Jon’s. They’re not loyal to Jon. They’re loyal to Dany, and I think Dany can’t bring herself to watch them die, and so the plan starts to fall apart the second she gets on her dragon and so he does too and then we take it from there.”
Double-teaming the most important player on the other team is a great strategy. But what did Dany think was going to happen? She signed off on the Dothraki leading a charge into an army of the dead in pitch blackness and was stunned when it didn’t go well. With bringing her dragons north of the Wall, using the Unsullied as policemen in Meereen, and then sending in the Dothraki on a solo quest at the Battle of Winterfell, she has a remarkable talent for getting those devoted to her killed.
None of this helps Dany’s questionable track record as a liberator, but that might say more about the real-life writing than her fictional character. The cultures Dany has spent so much time around—from those of Astapor and Meereen to the Dothraki—often feel like plot devices, not people. The culture considered “savages” by Westeros were the ones who died in the darkness on Sunday. Perhaps Benioff and Weiss chose for the Dothraki to die in that fashion because the fiercest fighting force fading in a flicker sends a message of the Night King’s strength. But it’s also probably because most fans would be hard-pressed to name one Dothraki character beyond Drogo, who died in Season 1. The Dothraki were expendable, and, as The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer pointed out, it’s something to keep in mind as Weiss and Benioff gear up for their next project.
The Dothraki’s death was aesthetically pleasing, but narratively, it served as the setup for the story of another culture, for Dany’s story. She asked for the Dothraki’s faith—they certainly gave it to her. But it’s hard to feel like she kept her end of the deal.
Disclosure: HBO is an initial investor in The Ringer.

 

[Spartan Rex]

Game of Thrones cinematographer hits back at episode darkness complaints: "People don't know how to tune their TVs"

The night is dark... and that's totally fine.


BY LOUISE MCCREESH


The series aired its much-hyped White Walker showdown on Sunday night (April 28), destroying the show's undead threat and smashing a huge TV record in the process.

HBO​

However, a lot of viewers complained about being unable to see what was happening in the episode due to the show's dark lighting – and 'The Long Night' cinematographer Fabian Wagner is having none of it.
Speaking after the episode aired, Fabian argued that the episode isn't too dark at all and placed the blame squarely with viewers for not tuning their TVs correctly or watching the episode on iPads

HELEN SLOAN/HBO​

Related: Game of Thrones' Battle of Winterfell episode just broke a massive TV record
"A lot of the problem is that a lot of people don't know how to tune their TVs properly," he told Wired.
"A lot of people also unfortunately watch it on small iPads, which in no way can do justice to a show like that anyway.
"Another look would have been wrong. Everything we wanted people to see is there.”

 

[a-dev]

My brother knows his ***t when it comes to this stuff. He tried everything and nothing worked to improve visibility - all that happened was blacks became hazy grey. Nothing he was able to do brought out any new detail so I'm calling bull***t on that.

I believe him where he says ''everything we wanted people to see is there'' however - I just think they went too far with the darkness and blizzard conditions - far from increasing tension for me it spoiled it because oftentimes I had no idea who I was looking at.

 

[Wor-Gar]

My brother knows his ***t when it comes to this [phone calibration] stuff. He tried everything [to make the phone look better] and nothing worked to improve [my 3 inch screen] visibility - all that happened was blacks became hazy grey [on my 3-year old phone]. Nothing he was able to do brought out any new detail [on my phone which is also badly cracked from a fall] so I'm calling bull***t on that.

 

[Mr. Green]

LOL, you fixed him good, too good.

 

[a-dev]

My phone is actually over 10 years old I would say. It's a Nokia candybar-style phone, with a small screen and physical buttons

 

[rushmore223]

I don't know if my TV is better than some others in here, or if I'm better at tuning it, but I had no problem seeing what was going on.

I can't argue that maybe some of the tactics weren't sound, but seriously, are we really ripping it apart based on battle strategy? Because a lot of battle scenes in many of our favorite movies wouldn't really hold up to that kind of scrutiny.



Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

 

[Mr. Green]

Every military strategist know that the first wave are pawn. Those Dothraki are best on a open field. Normally they would do well but not against overwhelmingly huge numbers. They should do more gorilla tactics and like hit-n-run style. Heck everyone should just shoot those boulders and arrows as much as possible, at a safe distance.

Oh well, battle fields are usually chaotic. People gonna complain, like arming the giant at battle of the bastards. Guess the producers are doing something right if we're talking about it.

 

[nearmint]

Every military strategist know that the first wave are pawn.

Most military strategists don't have fire-breathing dragons at their disposal.

 

[ZE_501]

Most military strategists don't have fire-breathing dragons at their disposal.

Dragons are big targets and not particularly maneuverable.

Highly effective at causing morale break in normal troops, useless for that with the army of the dead.

Good at destroying massed infantry formations, but highly vulnerable to a prepared and motivated defender armed with either Scorpions or similar projectile weapons.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Spartan Rex]

Dragons are big targets and not particularly maneuverable.

Highly effective at causing morale break in normal troops, useless for that with the army of the dead.

Good at destroying massed infantry formations, but highly vulnerable to a prepared and motivated defender armed with either Scorpions or similar projectile weapons.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Exactly, that’s why the Dragon program was axed from the Pentagon budget.

 

[rushmore223]

Exactly, that’s why the Dragon program was axed from the Pentagon budget.

Damn bean counters!

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

 

[Spartan Rex]

https://www.elitedaily.com/p/these-...eason-8-episode-3-will-make-your-day-17251919

A rather dramatic difference:

https://www.reddit.com/r/gameofthro...ightness/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app

 

[EXOTICLEX]

 

[Spartan Rex]

Alternate universe victory for the Night King:

 

[pixletwin]

Im hoping we haven't seen the last of the Night King. Dany did have a vision where she was in King's Landing and it was snowing.

Hmmm. Snowing on the Iron Throne. I wonder what alternate meanings that could have.

 

[Spartan Rex]

 

[a-dev]

View attachment 452095
https://www.elitedaily.com/p/these-...eason-8-episode-3-will-make-your-day-17251919

A rather dramatic difference:

https://www.reddit.com/r/gameofthro...ightness/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app

I genuinely cannot believe how much I missed in those segments alone.