-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
I need my spectacle. Is there any TV show that comes close Game of Thrones in regards to production values?
- Thread starter Memento
- Start date
Each episode of Game of Thrones cost around a hundred millions dollars to place, putting each episode at around 10 million dollars. There's nothing even remotely close among multi-season TV shows, and especially not any that lasted 8 seasons.
The decreased episode count for season 8 was at least partially offset by increased budget per episode and increasing costs to renew contracts for the 8th season.
The decreased episode count for season 8 was at least partially offset by increased budget per episode and increasing costs to renew contracts for the 8th season.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms 2010.
English Subtitled and all on youtube in 1080p.
Cinematography is mediocre though.
English Subtitled and all on youtube in 1080p.
Cinematography is mediocre though.
The Lord of the Rings series probably will top it.
Maybe the Witcher as well, although that wig ain't inspiring confidence.
While it's not a spectacle driven show, I have to mention Hannibal here. I remember it as a visual feast.
The conclusion is fucking amazing. It's such a goddamn good show.
You can feel the money on screen tho, with all the beautiful locations and the super high IQ on 4K
They really needed to reel the budget in. Half of the scenes are just excuses for the cast to have massive rave parties.
We get a half assed final confrontation that's over in minutes but yet they hire out the Eiffel Tower for an unecessary 15 or so minutes of fan-service that could litteraly have had the same, or better, emotional resonance anywhere else.
I'm thinking there's going to be some really good stuff in the LOTR show. Bezos is throwing all of the monies at it - he wants a GoT-like success on Amazon.
They really shoulda named the damn show Kublai Khan, but I guess it just wouldn't be as catchy thanks to a stupid game kids play in a pool. lol
I started watching black sails but binned it after a few episodes... I feel like I need to go back to it now after this thread!
GoT was/is one of the best produced TV shows of all time. The scale and scope of those different regions really is like little we've seen before.
I am pleased to see Westworld get a few mentions though. That first season was off the charts.
I am pleased to see Westworld get a few mentions though. That first season was off the charts.
Can I throw in a wildcard and just name drop the Lost pilot episode in specific? With the GoT-tier budget ($10-14 million), JJ Abrams in the director's seat, and Giacchino scoring with a live orchestra, it's hard as hell to believe TV like that was being done on network TV back in 2004. Still an all-timer.
Joining in the Black Sails recs! It's also the closest I've ever seen a live-action television series get to the intricate plotting detail of the ASOIAF books (where ironically GoT itself failed). It was incredible to look back at Black Sails at the end of it all and realize how the fates of so many characters were foreshadowed in the first episode of the season - and it all makes perfect sense.
It was hilarious that the GoT finale mirrored Black Sails' finale in a way, with both shows having a character musing on the role of stories in history - which is a concept that Black Sails explores thematically throughout the whole show. Remaining as spoiler free as possible, I think Black Sails has the effortlessly superior musing on the matter:
"A story is true. A story is untrue. As time extends, it matters less and less. The stories we want to believe those are the ones that survive, despite upheaval and transition and progress. Those are the stories that shape history."
I'm reposting a slightly edited write up I did for the 2017 ERA TV Show of the Year thread on why y'all should watch Black Sails if you haven't already:
Encompassing all the Black Sails did and means in the television landscape is hard to do without a mammoth essay, and without spoilers. Black Sails is a show that gave the forgotten ones throughout history a voice: the LGBTQ community, women, women and men of color. In turn, it shows why those voices were silenced and forgotten. All of this came to a head in Black Sails final season, in an absolutely devastating, cathartic, and nuanced way.
Black Sails has such an unprecedented density and vibrancy when it comes to dialogue, and the show's narrative is teeming with literary/character parallels and foreshadowing. The amount of respect that the creators had for its viewership in that regard was certainly a surprise, even more surprising considering it was a blockbuster action adventure drama with a big budget and scale. (So much of the ending of the show and the character's fates are foreshadowed in the first season, the amount of rewatch bonus with Black Sails is absolutely ludicrous.)
The characters of Black Sails exist in this beautiful and rare complicated world where everyone is morally gray, but the show takes an incredible amount of time to give you an understanding of these characters and their histories and motivations. This becomes particularly relevant in its finale season, when everything the show has been building towards comes to a head. Every leading character in Black Sails drives the show towards its endgame, instead of characters being pushed around as the plot dictates. The characters being who they are, and all they've been through - the show could not have ended in any other way. The complexity to the female leads and supporting cast is refreshing, and I've truly seen very few shows allow their female characters to just exist, in all their angry, flawed, clever forms. LGBTQ leads drive the entire narrative of the series, and gay/bi/poly relationships are explored and respected. Black Sails turns what we thought we knew of the legacy of Captain Flint, Long John Silver, and the events leading up to Treasure Island on its head. The show expertly melds history with fiction, with historical figures and fictional characters alike brought expertly to life. There has also never been a male lead like Captain Flint before, and I certainly hope he won't be the last.
The show has an important legacy, too, as I said above. Black Sails is a complete deconstruction of how women, men and women of color, and LGBTQ people are treated and remembered by history. Considering the respectful treatment and depth of all the leads on Black Sails, other period dramas don't have an excuse for not telling these stories, let alone modern day dramas.
Black Sails' strength isn't just in its narrative. Its production design, costume design, and art direction is extraordinary, alongside incredible cinematography and nail-biting fight choreography and ship battles seen on an extraordinary scale (think Master and Commander for television, with a lot of Black Sails' directors also working on Game of Thrones). Bear McCreary's breathtaking score is the icing on the pirate cake.
Watching Black Sails can be a bit of a monkey's paw. Once you watch it, very few things fill that void. Join my neverending pain. Watch Black Sails, ERA!
(If you don't mind a little less spectacle, but still want riveting historical dramas, huge recs for Deadwood and The Terror. For spectacle that still has great writing, I've fallen in love with The Expanse. One of the writers of the books was an assistant to George R.R. Martin, so there are similar sensibilities in storytelling, especially when it comes to politics. Both writers of the books are also consultants on the show for the writer's room, which is fantastic.)
YES. Perfectly said. Black Sails is the motherfucking GOAT.
In a dream world, Johnathan Steinberg and Robert Levine would have been the showrunners for GoT... but then we wouldn't have gotten Black Sails. (If HBO ever reboots GoT, Steinberg and Levine would be the dream showrunner replacements.)
It was hilarious that the GoT finale mirrored Black Sails' finale in a way, with both shows having a character musing on the role of stories in history - which is a concept that Black Sails explores thematically throughout the whole show. Remaining as spoiler free as possible, I think Black Sails has the effortlessly superior musing on the matter:
"A story is true. A story is untrue. As time extends, it matters less and less. The stories we want to believe those are the ones that survive, despite upheaval and transition and progress. Those are the stories that shape history."
I'm reposting a slightly edited write up I did for the 2017 ERA TV Show of the Year thread on why y'all should watch Black Sails if you haven't already:
Encompassing all the Black Sails did and means in the television landscape is hard to do without a mammoth essay, and without spoilers. Black Sails is a show that gave the forgotten ones throughout history a voice: the LGBTQ community, women, women and men of color. In turn, it shows why those voices were silenced and forgotten. All of this came to a head in Black Sails final season, in an absolutely devastating, cathartic, and nuanced way.
Black Sails has such an unprecedented density and vibrancy when it comes to dialogue, and the show's narrative is teeming with literary/character parallels and foreshadowing. The amount of respect that the creators had for its viewership in that regard was certainly a surprise, even more surprising considering it was a blockbuster action adventure drama with a big budget and scale. (So much of the ending of the show and the character's fates are foreshadowed in the first season, the amount of rewatch bonus with Black Sails is absolutely ludicrous.)
The characters of Black Sails exist in this beautiful and rare complicated world where everyone is morally gray, but the show takes an incredible amount of time to give you an understanding of these characters and their histories and motivations. This becomes particularly relevant in its finale season, when everything the show has been building towards comes to a head. Every leading character in Black Sails drives the show towards its endgame, instead of characters being pushed around as the plot dictates. The characters being who they are, and all they've been through - the show could not have ended in any other way. The complexity to the female leads and supporting cast is refreshing, and I've truly seen very few shows allow their female characters to just exist, in all their angry, flawed, clever forms. LGBTQ leads drive the entire narrative of the series, and gay/bi/poly relationships are explored and respected. Black Sails turns what we thought we knew of the legacy of Captain Flint, Long John Silver, and the events leading up to Treasure Island on its head. The show expertly melds history with fiction, with historical figures and fictional characters alike brought expertly to life. There has also never been a male lead like Captain Flint before, and I certainly hope he won't be the last.
The show has an important legacy, too, as I said above. Black Sails is a complete deconstruction of how women, men and women of color, and LGBTQ people are treated and remembered by history. Considering the respectful treatment and depth of all the leads on Black Sails, other period dramas don't have an excuse for not telling these stories, let alone modern day dramas.
Black Sails' strength isn't just in its narrative. Its production design, costume design, and art direction is extraordinary, alongside incredible cinematography and nail-biting fight choreography and ship battles seen on an extraordinary scale (think Master and Commander for television, with a lot of Black Sails' directors also working on Game of Thrones). Bear McCreary's breathtaking score is the icing on the pirate cake.
Watching Black Sails can be a bit of a monkey's paw. Once you watch it, very few things fill that void. Join my neverending pain. Watch Black Sails, ERA!
(If you don't mind a little less spectacle, but still want riveting historical dramas, huge recs for Deadwood and The Terror. For spectacle that still has great writing, I've fallen in love with The Expanse. One of the writers of the books was an assistant to George R.R. Martin, so there are similar sensibilities in storytelling, especially when it comes to politics. Both writers of the books are also consultants on the show for the writer's room, which is fantastic.)
gonna just repost this from a different thread about game of thrones from a while back:
Black Sails is like, what if Game of Thrones was good.
It's the level of quality I expected when HBO announced their adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire, owing to their lineage of producing excellent historical fiction shows (Deadwood, Rome, Carnivale etc.), the potential that D&D absolutely failed to deliver on in any way. I never expected to see something reach that high again in my lifetime.
- Large-scale battles that are won through faction leaders developing coherent strategies and executing their tactics well in the field, as opposed to characters that - the audience is told - are supposedly intelligent and capable commanders who, displaying nothing but sheer incompetence in battle, are almost invariably saved by reinforcements at the last minute. I'm rewatching Season 1 currently, and Flint's strategy to get the Andromache to stop turning is already more interesting than any battle on Game of Thrones, and it's probably the simplest move he ever pulls. It's so much more fun to watch political conflicts between characters and factions when they're not being dumbed down at every turn to suit the narrative.
- Spectacle in general
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjIwtyaxOcQ
- Genuinely surprising plot twists that don't always rely solely on the Game of Thrones style of shocking the audience by killing characters, usually through manufactured drama and having characters make inexplicably dumb and uncharacteristic decisions. Twists that serve to recontextualize whole seasons of character interactions and motivations. Just pitch-perfect storytelling all around, really
[major season 2 spoilers]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3X1C2ZhteI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bFeWdByC9Y
- In addition to maintaining a cohesive set of themes throughout its frequently dark and serious narrative, the show also never forgets to be super entertaining and funny
- Surprisingly great representation of LGBT characters and POC - three of the most powerful/pivotal characters are black women.
https://www.inverse.com/article/109...sails-is-quietly-tv-s-most-revolutionary-show
https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/black-sails-best-show-2017/
- A generally solid cast with no weak links as bad as Kit Harington and Emilia Clarke
- god-tier score by Bear McCreary that eclipses anything from GoT and it's not even close
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nQkqnDEanE&index=4&list=PLTD-7wUN5nd7pEnooSJnTtZgG5NATTZ0p
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1KmZI97DXk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBRPjEPjxWs
- perhaps most importantly, Ray Stevenson (AKA Titus Pullo) is in it and he plays Blackbeard
Netflix really should have tapped these guys to do The Witcher starring Zach McGowan and Luke Arnold, or better yet, give them (and Bear McCreary) a Star Wars
YES. Perfectly said. Black Sails is the motherfucking GOAT.
In a dream world, Johnathan Steinberg and Robert Levine would have been the showrunners for GoT... but then we wouldn't have gotten Black Sails. (If HBO ever reboots GoT, Steinberg and Levine would be the dream showrunner replacements.)
Watch Vikings. Far better than Game of Thrones. The last couple of seasons have struggled a bit, but the first seasons are masterful.
I managed to persuade both of my colleagues at work to watch it. They loved it and agreed it's one of the best shows they've ever watched.
People really went a HP series ?
Everybody knows what happens, and the material is very medium at best. What's the point even ?
Everybody knows what happens, and the material is very medium at best. What's the point even ?
gonna just repost this from a different thread about game of thrones from a while back:
Black Sails is like, what if Game of Thrones was good.
It's the level of quality I expected when HBO announced their adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire, owing to their lineage of producing excellent historical fiction shows (Deadwood, Rome, Carnivale etc.), the potential that D&D absolutely failed to deliver on in any way. I never expected to see something reach that high again in my lifetime.
- Large-scale battles that are won through faction leaders developing coherent strategies and executing their tactics well in the field, as opposed to characters that - the audience is told - are supposedly intelligent and capable commanders who, displaying nothing but sheer incompetence in battle, are almost invariably saved by reinforcements at the last minute. I'm rewatching Season 1 currently, and Flint's strategy to get the Andromache to stop turning is already more interesting than any battle on Game of Thrones, and it's probably the simplest move he ever pulls. It's so much more fun to watch political conflicts between characters and factions when they're not being dumbed down at every turn to suit the narrative.
- Spectacle in general
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjIwtyaxOcQ
- Genuinely surprising plot twists that don't always rely solely on the Game of Thrones style of shocking the audience by killing characters, usually through manufactured drama and having characters make inexplicably dumb and uncharacteristic decisions. Twists that serve to recontextualize whole seasons of character interactions and motivations. Just pitch-perfect storytelling all around, really
[major season 2 spoilers]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3X1C2ZhteI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bFeWdByC9Y
- In addition to maintaining a cohesive set of themes throughout its frequently dark and serious narrative, the show also never forgets to be super entertaining and funny
- Surprisingly great representation of LGBT characters and POC - three of the most powerful/pivotal characters are black women.
https://www.inverse.com/article/109...sails-is-quietly-tv-s-most-revolutionary-show
https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/black-sails-best-show-2017/
- A generally solid cast with no weak links as bad as Kit Harington and Emilia Clarke
- god-tier score by Bear McCreary that eclipses anything from GoT and it's not even close
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nQkqnDEanE&index=4&list=PLTD-7wUN5nd7pEnooSJnTtZgG5NATTZ0p
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1KmZI97DXk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBRPjEPjxWs
- perhaps most importantly, Ray Stevenson (AKA Titus Pullo) is in it and he plays Blackbeard
Netflix really should have tapped these guys to do The Witcher starring Zach McGowan and Luke Arnold, or better yet, give them (and Bear McCreary) a Star Wars
Great show. Very pretty and I second this. Of course not on the same level as GoT but it does look great.
But god damn do I hate hearing Max talk.
Recently finished the first series of Black Sails. Was not expecting Master and Commander level naval combat scenes but it gave them to me. With actual tactics in the battles and the main characters losing when they should lose instead of ass pulling a win. Amazing show so far. The other posts about it here have me very excited to watch the rest.
gonna just repost this from a different thread about game of thrones from a while back:
Black Sails is like, what if Game of Thrones was good.
It's the level of quality I expected when HBO announced their adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire, owing to their lineage of producing excellent historical fiction shows (Deadwood, Rome, Carnivale etc.), the potential that D&D absolutely failed to deliver on in any way. I never expected to see something reach that high again in my lifetime.
- Large-scale battles that are won through faction leaders developing coherent strategies and executing their tactics well in the field, as opposed to characters that - the audience is told - are supposedly intelligent and capable commanders who, displaying nothing but sheer incompetence in battle, are almost invariably saved by reinforcements at the last minute. I'm rewatching Season 1 currently, and Flint's strategy to get the Andromache to stop turning is already more interesting than any battle on Game of Thrones, and it's probably the simplest move he ever pulls. It's so much more fun to watch political conflicts between characters and factions when they're not being dumbed down at every turn to suit the narrative.
- Spectacle in general
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjIwtyaxOcQ
- Genuinely surprising plot twists that don't always rely solely on the Game of Thrones style of shocking the audience by killing characters, usually through manufactured drama and having characters make inexplicably dumb and uncharacteristic decisions. Twists that serve to recontextualize whole seasons of character interactions and motivations. Just pitch-perfect storytelling all around, really
[major season 2 spoilers]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3X1C2ZhteI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bFeWdByC9Y
- In addition to maintaining a cohesive set of themes throughout its frequently dark and serious narrative, the show also never forgets to be super entertaining and funny
- Surprisingly great representation of LGBT characters and POC - three of the most powerful/pivotal characters are black women.
https://www.inverse.com/article/109...sails-is-quietly-tv-s-most-revolutionary-show
https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/black-sails-best-show-2017/
- A generally solid cast with no weak links as bad as Kit Harington and Emilia Clarke
- god-tier score by Bear McCreary that eclipses anything from GoT and it's not even close
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nQkqnDEanE&index=4&list=PLTD-7wUN5nd7pEnooSJnTtZgG5NATTZ0p
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1KmZI97DXk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBRPjEPjxWs
- perhaps most importantly, Ray Stevenson (AKA Titus Pullo) is in it and he plays Blackbeard
Netflix really should have tapped these guys to do The Witcher starring Zach McGowan and Luke Arnold, or better yet, give them (and Bear McCreary) a Star Wars
Bless up to this post. Fuckin criminal that no award recognition was given to Toby Stephens' Flint or Bear McCreary. Especially after that last monologue from him in the series
Season 1 was a bit slow but 2-onwards cemented it into being the show I hoped Game of Thrones would be. Tons of charismatic characters and political intrigue and power dynamics
Also Rome was dope and probably the show with the highest production values until GOT (also better writing and acting but that's just business as usual)
While I do like Rome, they are different shows with a much different feel and atmosphere. They take place atleast 400+ years apart.
I think Spartacus is one of the rare shows where the cheap effects are a plus. The cg blood and ridiculous violence was entertaining. The dialogue style is also underrated.
I'm confident to say that the action will never disappoint you and now that you've made it through the first season, you'll probably enjoy it even more now because the dialogue gets an upgrade in season 2.
Another vote for Black Sails, it's an amazing show. Vikings is also very good with a compelling story and some huge battles.
