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I think many people fail to appreciate the colossal failure of Season 8.

Game of Thrones was the hottest thing on TV for years. The later seasons were definitely not as good as the earlier but the show was still hyped. Everyone talked about it when a season hit. Memes ran wild. It set the standard for the entire year of television.

Then Season 8 happened.

And no one talks about Game of Thrones anymore except to talk about how awful season 8 was. Even fan forums and the Game of Thrones subreddit are absorbed ultimately but the series awful final season.

That isn't just a bomb.

That's a fething achievement.

Game of Thrones should have continued being the talk of the net for years to come. It should still be selling big box DVD collections like they were big ticket items. Instead, all anyone remembers is how it ended. The final season was so bad, it made everyone forget how good it was when it started.

Of course the showrunners have found their careers floundering. Worse men have fethed up less with shittier shows.

Season 8 was bad, indeed. So was season 7.

Do you think that failure was caused by making Daenerys a villain? IMHO the show failed because the last two seasons rushed all the subplots and the main plot. And, also IMHO, the main strength of GoT was having multiple protagonists going their own path, while in the last two seasons they were all merged in a couple of places. Lots of standalone stories that were part of the same universe, then it just took a few episodes to end them all and keep just one story with countless named characters, Avengers style.

We heard about the hordes of undead coming since years and the moment they really came they only manage to last one episode? Lol.

That "rush" was the consequence of having to write an extremely complex plot from scratch since they've already portrayed all the books' material. The producers/writers probably felt like it was an impossible task for them, or a not worthy one, so they tried to finish it as quick as possible.

The mad queen was the only interesting thing in the last two season of GoT.

Honestly, I think it was a series of things. Not any one thing.

None of the series long plotlines ended in a satisfactory manner. Rather everything ended in a manner that 'ended' the show. Stuff just wrapped up to wrap up, even when wrapping up made not one iota of sense. I think Danny's ended actually made complete sense but by the time it came it wasn't the bitter sweet for the ending but the crap cherry on the gak cake.

I've said numerous times when discussing it with people... I have no real gripe/issues with how the story ended, and what I mean by that is the final ending points of the story.

Danny going mad queen, Jon killing her for the good of the realm, The Night King being stopped at winterfell... Etc Etc Etc... I have no issue with these as plot points, no gripe that they were the ending points of stories or some characters arcs etc.

What I have the specific issue is the execution of it, those last 2 seasons would have been plot points that took 5 seasons to come around in the first half of the show.

The producers evidently wanted to move on, they were desperate to do so even, to the point they happily rushed through and thus ruined the show for their own selfish needs. This shouldn't happen, it shouldn't be allowed to happen but it did happen. The show should have respected that Benioff and Weiss wanted to move on, and put the show in the custody of other people who would have cared about it and treated it with the respect it deserves.

However, I cannot lay all the blame at the producers, as I am sure some of the actors, especially the younger members of the cast were wanting to move on also by that point. A 3-5 year hiatus at the end of season 6 could have potentially worked, and not doing the double whammy of trying to finish it in two seasons, but also making the seasons shorter. Massive shame.

Edit: I am probably a little too hard on the producers, they evidently ran into huge issues when the source material dried up and they had to create dialogue, and build up to huge plot points with little to work with in regards to detail. It's not a full excuse for what they did, but it is a contributing factor. I also consider that the producers knew it was going to be a difficult, if not absolute train wreck once the source material was exhausted and they wanted out with minimal damage to their reputation(s) as possible.

They should have known they would outpace GRRM, especially when they started contributing to him not writing by having him do all sorts of press tours and giving him any excuse not to write.

But anyways, we could beat this horse until it rises from the dead and beats us back. Nothing will change.

So I give us a different kind of villain than Joffrey.

Hazel and Cha Cha from Umbrella Academy(The Show). Charismatic, entertaining, not incredibly sadistic. You almost want to root for them, if they were not trying to kill your Protagonist.

I cut the GoT showrunners a lot of slack because the show started its descent at exactly the same time as the books and I really don't think that's a coincidence. As soon as they got to Feast of Crows/Dance of Dragons the show was noticeably less tight, just like the source material. I wouldn't expect them to know how to finish the story considering the mastermind behind it all couldn't figure it out after 20 years.

One from the 80’s, for Dakkanauts of a similar fine vintage.

Mr Bronson, Grange Hill. Portrayed by Michael Sheard, who others might recognise as Admiral Ozzel in ESB, and Hitler from Last Crusade. Also Remembrance of the Daleks, where he might as well have been playing Bronson again

What a wonderful character. Pompous, authoritarian, bit of a bully but impeccably spoken. And, underneath it all, not a bad person. Just a Gentlemen of a certain age and world view struggling with the rapid societal change of the period.

Dunno if BritBox offers the same goods Internationally, but I can recommend Grange Hill. It was a genuinely groundbreaking and often controversial show. Notorious for pulling no punches, and showing a realistic view of secondary school life. Kids die (one falls off a car park, another drowns in the pool, Danny Kendall found dead in a stolen car). Drug addiction via Zammo. All sorts of real world unpleasantness occur. Yet, never in a shock value way.

There is going to be an updated Grange Hill film soon apparently. Wild.

I’m all for it. I genuinely don’t know how well it might be received, but with it being Phil Redmond’s baby, I’m hopeful.

One I haven't seen here that I think has been particularly well done (well, I havent finished season 3, so opinion may change), was Wednesday from American Gods.




All in all, I loved the slow build and letting peoples imaginations run a bit.

Going to throw in Zygon from Starchaser: The Legend of Orin.

Dude was vicious, had his entire plan locked up, and wasn't undone until magic star fairies and the magic sword did him in. I was honestly crushed with the way he killed Orin's escape companion early on in the film.



I'd also like to throw in Mok, from the movie Rock and Rule. Deliciously wicked.

One thing I'm surprised hasn't popped up in this thread is Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men, Javier Bardem plays the character exceptionally well. I find it's one of the few movies which is arguably better than the book.

Amy Dunne in Gone Girl is also a great villain, I hadn't read the book so the twist when I saw it on film was something of a surprise.

Livia from the Sopranos is also easily a good villain.

xerxeskingofking wrote:
Captain Barbosa, specifically in the first Pirates movie, before his switch to villain protagonist.

The man has charm, and the charisma to pull off being the captain, but also the intelligence, skill and steadiness to KEEP being the captain, unlike (CAPTAIN!) Jack Sparrow, whose just too unpredictable, for all his skill and luck, to be a good leader.

the way he spends most of the 2nd act charming the audience with the tragedy of his backstory and the hell of his current existence, and making us want him to succeed in his quest to become human again....right up until this moment:
(paraphrasing form memory here)

Sparrow: ok, so we've caught up to them, why do i go over, get the final piece of the treasure, and we can be on our way?

Barbosa: See, thats the kind of thinking that lost you the Pearl, Jack. People are so much easier to search when dead.


wham. that charming, charismatic man with the tragic backstory....cool motive, still a murderer, pirate and general Bad Dude.

In this vein, the original iconic film pirate, Long John Silver. The Robert Newton portrayal in the 1950 film, which single-handedly created what has become the traditional pirate in cinema and television. Pirate talking with a heavy west country accent? That's thanks to this portrayal of the most iconic fictional pirate.

He's a stone cold killer, calculating, ruthless (he has one leg and still wields almost total fear and control over able-bodied men who are more than willing to kill to advance their position, that says something), and also just so goddamn charismatic that even after the events of the story you still want him to get away with it.

Was Livia from The Sopranos the woman who gave us the “Where’s Janice?” from all those prank phone calls?