Yesterday HBO announced the 'Iron Anniversary', a month long celebration commemorating the ten year anniversary of the Game of Thrones series premiere.
“This April, to mark the 10th anniversary of the hit series’ premiere, HBO has launched The Iron Anniversary, a month-long celebration to commemorate the series, engage passionate fans, and ignite audiences’ excitement for the next iteration of the franchise, with “House of the Dragon” slated to begin production this year. A custom spotlight page on HBO Max with personalized curations, a binge-watching marathon, special-edition products, and more, will launch throughout the month,” HBO said in an official press release."
You have to admire their courage. Naturally the Internet hasn't quite gotten over that whole 'the last series was a dumpster fire' thing and like an angry crowd turning on a struggling comic Twitter had something to say.
It's not surprising that HBO would want to drum up a bit of buzz to celebrate their global phenomenon, and while I wasn't expecting a month long apology tour, I think "misreading the room" is the phrase that applies here.
It's pretty incredible just how definitively the last six episodes of Game of Thrones undid it's legacy. Not since Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films had a fantasy series so dominated popular culture. Game of Thrones was everywhere. In the final years you'd have struggled to find someone who wasn't engrossed, and while it had its ups and downs the series had the kind of momentum and audience that most shows could only dream of.
During its run the show garnered a staggering one hundred and sixty Emmy nominations, taking home fifty nine, it's finale drew close to twenty million viewers and critics would regularly name it in the same breath as The Wire, Breaking Bad and The Sopranos.
But for all that acclaim and feverish devotion from legions of fans ... no one talks about it anymore. No one revisits it. No one dresses as dothraki. People have certainly stopped calling their daughter Khaleesi. My wife and I regularly try and decide if Dexter or GoT had the worst finale, but Dexter's decline was so protracted the finale barely registered, and frankly it was so bonkers it's at least good for a laugh. Even Lost, with its baffling final season still generates some discussion. Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof arguably face planted that finale but there was at least ambition there.
Game of Thrones by contrast shat the bed in the worst possible way. It's no secret that by the sixth series the show had surpassed the books, leaving show runners David Beniof and D.B. Weis to cobble together the last third of this epic saga from notes and half finished ideas scribbled down by George RR Martin. Rather abruptly all the character work and personal relationships took a back seat to the plot lurching forward at a breakneck speed culminating in a finale that felt rushed, truncated and deeply unsatisfying.
Even the most forgiving fans would be hard pushed to defend it.
At the time of writing there are currently four hundred and eighty two spin offs and prequels currently in development and I just can't see where the appetite for any of it is. Even decades long fans of George RR Martins A Song of Ice and Fire book series seem to have lost their enthusiasm for his remaining books with some wondering if he'll even bother finishing them at all now.
Maybe "House Stark: Ned's Revenge" or "Arya: Fury Road" will be runaway successes but the chances of lightning striking twice are slim to none. Game of Thrones was almost one of the best television shows of all time. Ten years later, no one cares.
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Do you think what I've said is load of old bollocks? Please let me know.