Not sure if that even makes sense, but "Game of Thrones" could be an excellent example of a down-to-earth fantasy. Magic and superstition have a tangible impact on the events - you could replace the dragons with nuclear weapons and it will still make sense. You can see blood, sweat, and all kinds of body fluids in a hostile world where there is (almost) no plot armor for anybody. Revenge is hardly direct, and good guys don't always get to win.
My favorite thing is the focus on the sociopolitical implications rather than empathy with individual characters. It doesn't matter if a major character gets abruptly killed mid-season; their house's story will keep going on without losing its main thread. Characters can change sides and do the most questionable things, but there will always be a detailed sociological setup that had led to those decisions. Everything is affected by chaos and chance, but it still seems to happen in the function of someone's story arc.
The early seasons are more focused on character development and world-building, with most minor battles happening off-screen. It's probably due to budget restrictions rather than storytelling necessities, but the action for each season is limited to one "zombie" episode and one traditional battle episode (usually the penultimate). The rest is primarily dialogue-driven. The second, third, and fifth seasons are the least eventful, but they also happen to have at least one memorable episode or a mind-blowing plot twist towards the end. The pacing got remarkably tighter from the sixth season, which also happens to be the first after the writers ran out of material to adapt from the books. There the writers did a remarkably good job and remained coherent with the source material.
Unfortunately, the writing took a significant turn for the worse with the seventh season, getting much closer to any other mediocre TV show, flirting with soap-opera level dialogue and filling pages with logical fallacies and forced or incoherent character development.
The meticulous construction of the source material has been both GOT's strength and weakness. For the portion that covers Martin's books, the central plot was mostly kept on hold while expanding the scope sideways, with tons of new characters and locations each season. This made the show remarkably rich, but at the same time it made it hard to wrap up coherently. It might have worked if they were planning to keep going on for decades, but there's no way that a couple of seasons could close so many meticulously built-up character arcs. From the sixth season onwards, you can clearly notice that the showrunners started to purposedly cut storylines and kill off characters just to make the load lighter and write themselves out of the corner with many situations. The overall direction of the plot is still coherent with the previous seasons, but the ways the characters end up to their outcomes became highly questionable. Many character arcs that have been carefully drawn over have been conveniently cut out, some regressed or lost their whole purpose, some even ended up being exploited for mere fanservice purposes. Another big flaw comes from the fact that the characters that would take on a more prominent role towards the end also happen to be the ones played by the most terrible actors in the cast, killing any further chance to add nuance to their relationships.
Regardless of the problems with the writing, the show has outstanding production value, compelling world-building, and, even at its worst, it always manages to be gripping and engaging. That's not obvious for a show that is made of 80% talking, 15% action, and 5% boobies in the air. It's also one of the rare cases where slow pacing becomes a necessity, as it takes time to remember all characters and their intricate relationships as the plot keeps turning, twisting, and subverting expectations. Characters are first introduced as either black or white, but as the show progresses, things get more and more ambiguous. It's rarely to the point you will change sides, but there were many moments I could get into the bad guys' shoes and empathize with them as much as with the protagonists.
Review by manicureVIP 4BlockedParent2022-06-10T17:18:47Z
Not sure if that even makes sense, but "Game of Thrones" could be an excellent example of a down-to-earth fantasy. Magic and superstition have a tangible impact on the events - you could replace the dragons with nuclear weapons and it will still make sense. You can see blood, sweat, and all kinds of body fluids in a hostile world where there is (almost) no plot armor for anybody. Revenge is hardly direct, and good guys don't always get to win.
My favorite thing is the focus on the sociopolitical implications rather than empathy with individual characters. It doesn't matter if a major character gets abruptly killed mid-season; their house's story will keep going on without losing its main thread. Characters can change sides and do the most questionable things, but there will always be a detailed sociological setup that had led to those decisions. Everything is affected by chaos and chance, but it still seems to happen in the function of someone's story arc.
The early seasons are more focused on character development and world-building, with most minor battles happening off-screen. It's probably due to budget restrictions rather than storytelling necessities, but the action for each season is limited to one "zombie" episode and one traditional battle episode (usually the penultimate). The rest is primarily dialogue-driven. The second, third, and fifth seasons are the least eventful, but they also happen to have at least one memorable episode or a mind-blowing plot twist towards the end. The pacing got remarkably tighter from the sixth season, which also happens to be the first after the writers ran out of material to adapt from the books. There the writers did a remarkably good job and remained coherent with the source material.
Unfortunately, the writing took a significant turn for the worse with the seventh season, getting much closer to any other mediocre TV show, flirting with soap-opera level dialogue and filling pages with logical fallacies and forced or incoherent character development.
The meticulous construction of the source material has been both GOT's strength and weakness. For the portion that covers Martin's books, the central plot was mostly kept on hold while expanding the scope sideways, with tons of new characters and locations each season. This made the show remarkably rich, but at the same time it made it hard to wrap up coherently. It might have worked if they were planning to keep going on for decades, but there's no way that a couple of seasons could close so many meticulously built-up character arcs. From the sixth season onwards, you can clearly notice that the showrunners started to purposedly cut storylines and kill off characters just to make the load lighter and write themselves out of the corner with many situations. The overall direction of the plot is still coherent with the previous seasons, but the ways the characters end up to their outcomes became highly questionable. Many character arcs that have been carefully drawn over have been conveniently cut out, some regressed or lost their whole purpose, some even ended up being exploited for mere fanservice purposes. Another big flaw comes from the fact that the characters that would take on a more prominent role towards the end also happen to be the ones played by the most terrible actors in the cast, killing any further chance to add nuance to their relationships.
Regardless of the problems with the writing, the show has outstanding production value, compelling world-building, and, even at its worst, it always manages to be gripping and engaging. That's not obvious for a show that is made of 80% talking, 15% action, and 5% boobies in the air. It's also one of the rare cases where slow pacing becomes a necessity, as it takes time to remember all characters and their intricate relationships as the plot keeps turning, twisting, and subverting expectations. Characters are first introduced as either black or white, but as the show progresses, things get more and more ambiguous. It's rarely to the point you will change sides, but there were many moments I could get into the bad guys' shoes and empathize with them as much as with the protagonists.
S4 > S1 > S6 > S3 > S2 > S5 > S7 > S8