HBO's classic series "game of Thrones" ushered in the final season in April this year, with more than 17 million people watching the opening ceremony of the final season, which is enough to show how "everyone expects" the series. But judging from the reaction of fans and critics, the final season seems to be the most ugly season. So what's wrong with this highly acclaimed series? The following is a collection of reasons I collected for you. Let's have a look!
Why is the last season of the game of power so ugly?
Text: Zeynep tufekci
Compilation: Playful original
Many critics have put forward many reasons to explain why the "divine drama" has gone downhill, such as breaking away from the original screenwriter, compressing the plot and too many plot loopholes. However, in addition to these superficial reasons, fundamentally speaking, the failure of Quan you reflects a basic defect in the Narrative Culture: We don't seem to know how to tell a sociological story.
01
Why do we love game of Thrones
Before analyzing why the right tour in the final season has become bad, let's see why so many people are fascinated by right tour? In this era with many high-quality TV programs, what makes it stand out?
Quanyou can attract a large number of loyal fans, not only because of its excellent acting skills, exquisite photography, sound effects and editing, because these are not unique to Quanyou, but also these elements have been well maintained even in the "most ugly" final season.
Quan you is the most prominent and most talked about by fans, that is, it will frequently "cut off" some main characters without losing the main line.
For example, the first season of Quanyou revolved around ned stark, but the protagonist was suddenly killed at the end of the first season;
In the second season, rob, the successor of the stark family, became the protagonist again, which seems to be a common way of story continuation;
But in the third season, there was the famous "blood wedding". Rob, his pregnant wife and many protagonists were murdered in a particularly bloody way.
This unexpected episode once became the highest rated episode in the history of human TV series. The score of a single episode reached 9.9/10 on IMDB, which has also become a classic scene in the hearts of many drama fans. In this way, the story continues, but many characters do not
In fact, at present, most dramas on the market adopt a psychological narrative line. The protagonist is the key tool to build the story and attract the audience. The dramas need the audience to recognize and invest in these roles, so it will spend a lot of pen and ink to describe the protagonist's psychology. Therefore, it is obvious that these dramas can not kill a hard-working protagonist at will.
Quan you, a TV play that often kills the protagonist, marks a completely different narrative line, which is a sociological narrative line. In this kind of narration, a charming protagonist does not bear all the narrative responsibility. Of course, each character also has its own story and motivation, but the psychological and individualized description of these protagonists is only used as a medium. The core tells a sociological story, that is, everyone will be greatly affected by the external system and surrounding events.
The original author Martin seems to be very good at making the characters develop reasonably around a broader institutional background and norms in the general environment. When the play was adapted based on Martin's novel, because there were almost no dramas adopting this narrative line in the same period, Quan you was as rare as a friendly dragon in junlincheng, and this narrative method obviously resonated with a large number of fans of the play.
However, as the shooting progress of the play surpassed the original work, the narrative mode began to change
02
What did producers Benioff and Weiss do wrong
After the progress of the series surpassed the original work, Quan you was taken over by famous Hollywood producers Benioff and Weiss. Some critics attribute Quan you's downturn to their poor writing. It's easy to find a lot of unexplained plots in the final season
For example, the Dragon seems to switch back and forth between indestructible and extremely fragile;
The little devil known for his high IQ suddenly lost all his intellectual talent and became a vicious informant (he didn't make a right decision all season);
And no one knows what bran is now except to continue to be treated as a special stark.
But in addition to these superficial problems, even if the final season can successfully minimize plot loopholes, Benioff and Weiss cannot do well in the sociological narrative line adopted by Martin. Hollywood people are good at telling a personalized story of psychology, but asking them to tell a fascinating sociological story is as difficult as trying to eat melted ice cream with a fork, because they don't seem to understand how to write a sociological story.
After leaving Martin's original work, Quan you almost no longer killed the main characters, which is an important sign of the change of narrative line. The focus of the story shifted from the social environment to the individual. Benioff and Weiss made the characters loved by fans complete some amazing stunts, such as aliya killing the night King who played up for seven seasons in an incredible way.
This change of narrative line also directly led to the "collapse of human design" of the characters, especially in the description of Long Ma. Dany first wanted to be a person who broke the shackles. This moral choice brought heavy pressure to her. In the past season, we can see how she was gradually shaped by the tools she had, such as war, dragon and fire. There are many monarchs similar to Dani in history. They think they are the chosen children. Only they can lead the people. However, such leaders are often isolated by the people, surrounded by flatterers and inundated by the tendency of human self rationalization. Even if they revolt out of goodwill at the beginning, once they take power, they will become tyrants.
Along the sociological narrative line, how Dany turned into a cruel Holocaust murderer will be a fascinating story, but in the hands of two producers who don't know how to advance the narrative, it becomes ridiculous. Dany attacked King's landing with a dragon, and has heard the bell of surrender in the city. Then she doesn't know why she suddenly became furious, and her tyranny gene suddenly turned on.
In the episode, Benioff and Weiss attribute this change to the tyranny gene inherited by the tangorian family. Outside the play, Benioff and Weiss said that it was an unconscious moment. Dany didn't decide what to do in advance. When she saw red castle, the house built by her family when they first came to the country 300 years ago, she decided to start the massacre.
Benioff and Weiss affirm that this is the ending of the "crazy Queen" set by Martin for Dany, but although they know the ending, they don't know how to tell the story, so they can only turn the story into a momentary transformation, part from unconsciousness and part from genetics.
03
Why do we need sociological narrative?
The characteristic of sociological narrative is to enable the audience to put themselves in the position of any role, not just the protagonist. Under this setting, the audience can understand all roles, not just the protagonist or those good roles (in fact, no role is absolutely good or bad).
For example, Douban scored 9.5 in the recent fire, and the drama "the distance between us and evil" is a typical example of "sociological narration". It focuses not on the past experience of abnormal killers, but on the lives of the killers' families and victims' families, and hopes to trigger the audience's thinking about "whether we denounce evil or evil". The audience can put themselves in the position of all roles, so as to think deeply about "society" rather than "individual".
But it is true that the preference of mainstream dramas for psychological narration is understandable: when the audience tends to identify with heroes or hate anti heroes, the story is easier to tell. But too personal and psychological narrative line can not make us have a deeper understanding of events.
For example, only understanding Hitler's personality and psychology can not tell us why fascism rose. This does not mean that Hitler is irrelevant or indisputable, but that in that social environment, even without Hitler, another instigator may replace him in Germany. Like the classic moral challenge of time travel: will you kill Hitler as a baby? The answer may be no, because he may not be that important.
Through sociological narration, putting the characters in the context of system and society, Quan you shows us a series of vivid characters, and also creates some behavior that is neither completely sacred nor completely evil for these characters. The audience can understand that the characters who have done evil acts are only doing their own things, how the goodwill of the characters is subverted, and how the motives of different characters construct the behavior. The complexity of Quan you story makes it much richer than the simple moral story of good and evil struggle.
As a fan of drama, it's a pity that Quan you can't finish the final season in the original way, but we're still glad that there was such a play that brought people through a sociological narrative. Apart from the drama, in this historic era, I hope we can still mobilize all our sociological narrative imagination to face the challenges of the current society (technological change, climate change, inequality...).
For the ending of Quan you, Martin responded on his blog: "what will the ending of the book be? I've been hearing people asking. Will it be the same as the ending of the TV series? Or is it different? HMM... yes. Neither. Yes. No. yes. No. No. yes. No. yes."
Martin answered this question without hesitation. "This TV series is more faithful to the original than 97% of film and TV adaptations." I don't think the ending of the screenwriter will be very different from my version, but there may be great differences in some minor roles. "
The hasty final season does give fans a big psychological gap, but the ending must have been repeated in everyone's heart. Let's thank the emergence of the play together