Even Rotten Tomatoes 'Hated' The Battle of Winterfell
Given the immense anticipation leading up to episode 3 of HBO fantasy juggernaut Game of Thrones93%, the assumption was that the battle against the Night King’s army at Winterfell in “The Long Night” would be unequivocally epic. But you know what they say about assumptions.
Critics and fans hung on for two relatively mellow first weeks of the final season. It was fine that the premiere, “Winterfell,” was mostly filled with character reunions and episode 2, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” favored sentimentality over conflict, because everything was building to the #BattleofWinterfell (though that hashtag had been seen before).
Alas, not everyone was blown away by the latest battle at the Stark ancestral home, as demonstrated by the episode’s unusually low (for the series, that is) Tomatometer score: 77% with 79 reviews so far (at 3 p.m. PT on April 29).
**SPOILERS**
Okay so the talk of the WORLD the last few days has obviously been the Battle of Winterfell and subsequently, how it left a lot of people disappointed. Rotten Tomatoes even hated it, to a tune of a 77% rating, which in a vacuum is still pretty goddamn good, all things considered.
Let me be the first to say – I absolutely fucking loved everything about it. Well… almost everything.
1. The scene where Jon and Dany are watching the Dothraki charge from the cliff in the distance was incredible. It’s absolutely the coolest imagery I’ve ever seen in a TV show or movie. 10s of 1000s of fire sickle wielding savages charging and army of dead people to save the world, only to get annihilated in 30 seconds had my heart racing 1 billion BPM. But after that, they should have quickly transitioned to dusk so we could, ya know, see what was happening. That goes without say.
2. I wish there was more Tormund. His horny ass is awesome and he was hardly in the episode.
3. I wanted 1 more main character death. Kill off Jamie or Ser Brienne or whoever. Actually kill off that flaming PUSSY Samwell. God I can’t stand him
4. I was NOT happy with my guy The Hound. He kinda bitched out big time and just happened to be in the right place at the right time when him and the lord of light guy saved Arya in the Library
5. The Night King story just kind of abruptly ending was… eh. But it didn’t ruin the episode for me, not by a long shot.
And that’s what I want to get at. That for the last decade people were picking apart what the Night King was so hell bent on destruction for. I understand those people need to know what his deal was and this episode didn’t answer it. But I’m okay with that, and am of the opinion that he was just a bad science experiment gone WAY wrong. That the Children of the Forest needed help defending themselves against man and thought “hey let’s create this undead army to protect us” and instead it backfired and the creatures they created were didn’t do that and instead tried to take over the goddamn world. The “I read the books” people probably hated this, and I kinda get it.
But overall, it was awesome to me. It’s everything I wanted the battle vs. The Dead and to have my girl Arya be the hero really hit me in the feels as those goddamn millennials say. I’d give it an 8.0/10 score. It was an easy top 3 episode for me.
And as Daniel Katz said, person vs. person conflict is usually better anyways:
At least it’s better than people vs. supernatural conflict anyways. The Dead are/were emotionless freaks hellbent on destruction. The hate you because they’re hardwired to hate you and want you dead. They don’t GAF about some Iron Throne. They GAF about wanting you dead and that is IT. Think of it in present day times; we create AI for whatever reason and the AI ends up taking over the world against their original purpose. That’s what I think the Night King was.
But with Cersei vs. the Dragon Queen, Cersei vs. the Starks, and even going back to the Barratheons vs. the Targaryans, these are all conflicts that are bred from emotion and more specifically emotions such as pride, vengeance, hatred, loyalty and anything else that eventually manifests into a feeling of “I want to kill this person, literally”
So fuck outta here with the Night King. He wasn’t ever taking over the Iron Throne and was just a (rather large) speed bump on the path to whoever does end up taking it. So construct a completely bad ass battle scene, literally one that almost cost $100MM and was 82 mins straight of death and carnage, and move on to the Battle of King’s Landing or whatever is next.