Geeze I forgot about them being taken to Craster's Keep. I do not see how it serves the plot.
It allows Locke to get close to finding Bran and for him and his party to be in danger. And being in danger = high stakes, and by law of the transitive property, high stakes = good drama, ergot they thought: danger = good drama.
Except they forgot that senseless danger = no drama.
As I stated in Episode 5's Reactions thread, Craster's could have very easily been fixed with a few tweaks and a bit of humanity given to Qarl and the other mutineers (not much, but a bit).
Geeze I forgot about them being taken to Craster's Keep. I do not see how it serves the plot.
It allows Locke to get close to finding Bran and for him and his party to be in danger. And being in danger = high stakes, and by law of the transitive property, high stakes = good drama, ergot they thought: danger = good drama.
Except they forgot that senseless danger = no drama.
As I stated in Episode 5's Reactions thread, Craster's could have very easily been fixed with a few tweaks and a bit of humanity given to Qarl and the other mutineers (not much, but a bit).
Well said. They turned them into a caricature of "bad guys". I thought they actually wrote it well on Jon's end with Slynt and Thorne's reasoning.
But on Bran's end, it was all rather lame. Not to mention Jojen is literally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and telling them everything is going to be okay... He even tells the main antagonist he's going to become a corpse that night!
It leaves nothing to the imagination.
"I can see it. You have more of the north in you than your brothers."
It allows Locke to get close to finding Bran and for him and his party to be in danger. And being in danger = high stakes, and by law of the transitive property, high stakes = good drama, ergot they thought: danger = good drama.
Except they forgot that senseless danger = no drama.
As I stated in Episode 5's Reactions thread, Craster's could have very easily been fixed with a few tweaks and a bit of humanity given to Qarl and the other mutineers (not much, but a bit).
Well said. They turned them into a caricature of "bad guys". I thought they actually wrote it well on Jon's end with Slynt and Thorne's reasoning.
But on Bran's end, it was all rather lame. Not to mention Jojen is literally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and telling them everything is going to be okay... He even tells the main antagonist he's going to become a corpse that night!
It leaves nothing to the imagination.
Jon's end was done well, which if you look at my thread Craster's done right, you'll notice I didn't change anything with regards to Jon, because Jon's end was fine.
As for leaving nothing to the imagination, well yeah, that's a problem with a visual medium. The rule of a visual medium is: Show, don't Tell. However by showing, the imagination has far far less room to maneuver than it does compared to a novel and the written word. They could have tried to counter this by adding in thematic elements to the visions which like Lady Dyanna pointed out with regards to the House of the Undying, gives a new and different meaning to the visions Dany sees--as there, they are all things that Dany has sacrificed in order to be the Mother of Dragons. Similarly, here they could have shown Jojen the things he was giving up in order to get Bran to the Three Eyed Crow, which would have worked, but oh well.
However I will say leaving very little room for the imagination is also the problem with prophesy in stories in general. You know it's going to come about in some manner (whether it's ironic or not), so investment in the story goes down tremendously, at least for me, as that narrows the possibilities that could come from the story.
Well said. They turned them into a caricature of "bad guys". I thought they actually wrote it well on Jon's end with Slynt and Thorne's reasoning.
But on Bran's end, it was all rather lame. Not to mention Jojen is literally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and telling them everything is going to be okay... He even tells the main antagonist he's going to become a corpse that night!
It leaves nothing to the imagination.
Jon's end was done well, which if you look at my thread Craster's done right, you'll notice I didn't change anything with regards to Jon, because Jon's end was fine.
As for leaving nothing to the imagination, well yeah, that's a problem with a visual medium. The rule of a visual medium is: Show, don't Tell. However by showing, the imagination has far far less room to maneuver than it does compared to a novel and the written word. They could have tried to counter this by adding in thematic elements to the visions which like Lady Dyanna pointed out with regards to the House of the Undying, gives a new and different meaning to the visions Dany sees--as there, they are all things that Dany has sacrificed in order to be the Mother of Dragons. Similarly, here they could have shown Jojen the things he was giving up in order to get Bran to the Three Eyed Crow, which would have worked, but oh well.
However I will say leaving very little room for the imagination is also the problem with prophesy in stories in general. You know it's going to come about in some manner (whether it's ironic or not), so investment in the story goes down tremendously, at least for me, as that narrows the possibilities that could come from the story.
Hadn't seen that thread yet, thanks for the link!
I do think that mystery and anticipation are possible in a visual medium. Many shows/movies do this quite well. The lead up to the Red Wedding is a good example. But this is one case where the writers really didn't try to build any sense of doom. I'll check out the link and post there so I don't repeat things you may have already talked about here.
I will say that I think the prophecies (in this series at least) lead to far more questions and speculation than they do to answers. In the case of Bran and company at Craster's Keep, Jojen's sight did the opposite.
"I can see it. You have more of the north in you than your brothers."