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Critic Reviews
The GuardianDec 3, 2019
Season 8 Review:
The premiere pulled everyone and everything together; it was, for the most part, an almost nostalgic hour. ... It is the competing loyalties, the loves and enmities that enmesh the Lannisters, Starks, Targaryens and the rest, after all, and the questions Game of Thrones poses about conscience and corruption and the manifestations of power, that will propel us through to the end.
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Apr 14, 2019
Apr 14, 2019
Season 8 Review:
[The season premiere] does a lot of work in a short amount of time, but unlike some previous episodes that engaged in significant table setting, it never feels too rushed or like characters are being given short shrift in the effort to hurry to the next beat. It plays as elegant, for the most part.
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Apr 14, 2019
Apr 14, 2019IndieWireApr 14, 2019
Season 8 Review:
The episode might be full of laughs and warm reunions, but this atrocity, this eerie undead fate, is what all of these characters are facing. It’s a good reminder of what is at stake, and frankly, the episode could have used more of these weighty moments and heightened tension. ... This is not to say that the sweeter and lighter character moments are unwelcome. But they should also exist alongside the dangerous moments.
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Apr 14, 2019
Season 8 Review:
“Thrones” is doing absolutely stellar work within the bounds set around its current era: Highly burnished entertainment that lingers on no story point a beat more than strictly necessary to communicate the idea. Dwelling on the shows it once was and no longer is seems perhaps beyond the point.
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Jul 17, 2017
Season 7 Review:
The crisp editing of the Arya sequence, exploiting dramatic irony right up to the breaking point, was one among numerous scenes that seemed to indicate Thrones isn't just keeping up to its old standards but actually learning new tricks. Another was the introduction of Samwell Tarly's life in Old Town--who knew this show, which has mastered wartime action but had never produced a quickfire sequence quite like this one, with its repetitive chamber pots to be emptied, could be quite this sharp?
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Jul 17, 2017
Season 7 Review:
As per every premiere episode of Game of Thrones, the pace is slow. Setting up each new carefully constructed season--the complex weave of story lines, the huge cast, the breathtaking locations--takes time. But Benioff and Weiss have pulled it off once again, if not with a bit more humor than in previous seasons.
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Jul 17, 2017
Season 7 Review:
The episode played out like the slow-moving and exposition-heavy premieres of seasons past. ... But still, Thrones has often found as much greatness in its smaller moments as it has in wildfire explosions and murderous weddings. Sam highlighted this best. His bedpan-heavy montage was perhaps unnecessary, but added some levity and was an excellently edited bit of filmmaking.
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Jul 17, 2017
Season 7 Review:
There are very few shows that can deliver as much action and excitement as the season six Game of Thrones finale and there are perhaps even fewer shows that can make a table-setting episode this much fun, so it's all the more bittersweet that not only is winter here, but the end is in sight.
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Jul 17, 2017
Season 7 Review:
Once an engrossing but problematic show that alternately decried brutality and wallowed in it, that simultaneously valorized and exploited its women, Game of Thrones has become more empathetic, complex, and progressive in its final leg (though its racial politics remain iffy).
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Apr 26, 2016
Season 6 Review:
In short, it was an episode of Game of Thrones, a show with little interest in or aptitude for self-editing. The aspects that worked were no better-written or more artfully shot than those that fell slightly flat; they simply had a sense of urgency that was, even by the standards of a show whose premieres are slow going, was absent elsewhere.
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Apr 25, 2016
Season 6 Review:
Surprise has its place, and isn't mandatory in a table-setting episode like this, which did its best to catch us up on most of the characters (while skipping over the likes of Littlefinger, Sam, and Hot Pie) and show us where their stories may be headed after all that went down at the end of last season.
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IndieWireApr 25, 2016
Season 6 Review:
The bodies still pile up in a sprawling episode full of ongoing storylines, but there's a definite sense that there's hope for some of these hopeless sorts. ... [Arya's] journey, as a young woman in a severely patriarchal society, has always been extremely compelling, but with every season, she gets more agency and strength, and becomes even more captivating.
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Apr 25, 2016
Season 6 Review:
It’s too early to say for sure, but the first episode of the first post-Martin season already feels more woman-friendly, indeed a tad warmer and more embracing overall, than the preceding 50 episodes, which could feel thrillingly atavistic and occasionally inspiring but also cold, manipulative, and needlessly vicious.
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Apr 25, 2016
Season 6 Review:
Ultimately, even if not every element satisfied, the sixth-season premiere of Game of Thrones did what it needed to for me, putting this mammoth locomotive back on the track and showing again that even with less and less of Martin's published material to rely on, Weiss and Benioff know how to move it forward.
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Apr 25, 2016TV Guide MagazineApr 16, 2015
Season 5 Review:
It's a lot to digest but well worth the effort. [20 Apr - 3 May 2015, p.13]
Apr 13, 2015
Season 5 Review:
Everything that was always good about Game of Thrones is still good. The ensemble cast remains one of TV's richest, from top to bottom, and even actors who seemed weak in the past (like Sophie Turner, who plays increasingly embittered Sansa Stark) continue to rise to the level of much better material.
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Apr 13, 2015
Season 5 Review:
The level of craft and intelligence is so high here that Thrones earns the right to think of itself as doing for sword and sorcery what Coppola's Godfather trilogy did for the gangster picture: taking it seriously as modern myth without sapping it of old-fashioned entertainment value.
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Apr 10, 2015
Season 5 Review:
Beyond noting that occasional tic of too-self-conscious nudity, though, it's hard to overpraise a show that's tamed Martin's tale just enough to make it filmable and matched extraordinary characters with extraordinary actors while finding things to say about justice, religion, governance and the power--and limits--of compassion.
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Apr 9, 2015
Season 5 Review:
Quibbles aside, Game of Thrones is still remarkable for both the scrupulousness and the lavishness of its production, beautiful to look at and mostly engaging to follow, though there is something of the accountant’s method in Mr. Martin’s fantasy--progress through constant addition--that transfers into the television show.
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Apr 9, 2015
Season 5 Review:
It has been top-notch from the start--but in the new episodes available for review, the storytelling is more focused and straightforward, less aggressively confusing for casual viewers.... All you need to like to enjoy this unique series is exceptional and ambitious TV storytelling.
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Apr 9, 2015
Season 5 Review:
This isn't the best four-episode stretch the series has ever had--as with most cable dramas, the ends of GoT seasons tend to be stronger than the starts--but there's a sense of real forward momentum to the proceedings that hasn't always been there in the past. Again and again, my pulse quickened as I watched these four hours.
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Apr 8, 2015
Season 5 Review:
So the story moves slowly, focusing less on the game-changing moments that often come early in the season (Joffrey dies! The Unsullied revolt!) and more on long-term strategy. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially when it finally brings people (and story lines) together in this ever-sprawling world.
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Apr 8, 2015
Season 5 Review:
There are so many characters and storylines in this complex series that to keep their arcs moving dramatically forward, writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, creators of the series and custodians of novelist George R.R. Martin’s world, have to parse out so many bits of dialogue and scenes to so many different actors that large chunks of a season often feel like they bounce around frantically, spending little fragments of time with one character and racing across Westeros to service another ad infinitum.
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Apr 8, 2015
Season 5 Review:
We have fifth-season banquet of delights spread before us.... With each season, that load is spread out more and more, with young players coming into their own and crafty veterans added to the cast. The storytelling also gets stronger and more assured, pushing Game of Thrones to greater and grander heights.
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Apr 8, 2015
Season 5 Review:
There are so many fine performances here it’s difficult to single out just a few.... Benioff and Weiss have become inordinately adept at juggling an almost dizzying assortment of plots, but the manner in which those narratives intersect this time around has only enriched the show.
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Apr 7, 2015
Season 5 Review:
The unforeseeable effects and ostensible curse of murdering have always proved key to the show's tension, and as the story continues to build a kinetic rhythm and streamline the drama, the thunderous chaos stirred up by each life taken resonates all the more loudly.
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Apr 4, 2014
Season 4 Review:
This narrative pokiness is redeemed, as usual, by the machine-tooled professionalism of the production, the lavish attention to the mock-medieval costumes and setting, and the mostly crisp, understated acting by the international cast.... More than ever, though, you may find yourself impatient for the plot to wind around to the more engaging story lines.
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Apr 4, 2014
Season 4 Review:
The storytelling seems to have hit a new peak of relaxed confidence. In every scene you get a sense of steady forward motion. New characters are introduced and old characters deepened, and devious new plots are laid out so deftly that it's not until midway through episode three that you look back over everything that came before and laugh at yourself for not having seen a particular surprise coming
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Apr 4, 2014
Season 4 Review:
Game of Thrones continues to tease out the most meaningful stories from George R.R. Martin's still unfinished fantasy series, "A Song of Ice and Fire," straying where necessary to highlight a possibly neglected character or perhaps just to produce something slightly less depressing.
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TV Guide MagazineApr 4, 2014
Season 4 Review:
It's sexy, violent, witty, emotionally devastating and visually spectacular--those dragons are bigger and more unruly than ever--delivering an experience not unlike how the glorious Diana Rigg (as Lady Olenna, Queen of Thorns) responds when she first lays eyes on the Amazonian warrior Lady Brienne (Gwendoline Christie): "Aren't you just marvelous, absolutely singular!" Yes, she is, and so's the show.
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Apr 3, 2014
Season 4 Review:
Due to all this ambitious sprawl, Game of Thrones only occasionally puts together a satisfying standalone episode. There is too much going on, the one-hour limit too arbitrary.... It’s the particular power of Game of Thrones that as these characters descend further into the muck and the grime, the besmirching totality of violence, we’re still pulling for so many of them.
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Apr 3, 2014
Season 4 Review:
Game Of Thrones has not moved away from “sexposition,” prostitution, and casual rape as titillating plot points, and that will always tarnish what is otherwise a groundbreaking show. But the good outweighs the bad. Game Of Thrones was and is an astonishing achievement.
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Mar 31, 2014
Season 4 Review:
Martin’s fantasy world, with its ruthless lust for power, is surely not for the faint of heart, and the sheer number of subplots invariably means that one or two start to sag. Such criticisms, however, amount to nitpicking on a show that operates at such a consistently high level, from the spectacular cast to the sweeping and diverse backdrops, consistently conjuring a summer-tentpole feel.
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Mar 28, 2014
Season 4 Review:
A sprawl of engrossing setup. [4 Apr 2014, p.61]
Mar 27, 2014
Season 4 Review:
The first three episodes of season 4 grab the wide-flung stories of this epic and assemble them into a crackling narrative. [7 Apr 2014, p.41]
Apr 1, 2013
Season 3 Review:
If Game of Thrones still feels like it's just a bit weighed down by the sheer heft of its narrative strands, to say nothing of the seemingly endless backstories and mythologies, the series at least now feels like it has some firm footing and a newfound sense of certain direction that was lacking intermittently in the second season.
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