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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
159
Mixed:
11
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews
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 18, 2011
Season 1 Review:
The kingdoms are gorgeous to look at, down to the last loving detail - you could be entertained just by watching for the inventive suits of armor. The violence is spectacular; the sex is twisted. The producers even had a language invented for the Dothraki, which should please the Dungeons and Dragons crowd.
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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 14, 2019
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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Mar 28, 2014
Season 4 Review:
A sprawl of engrossing setup. [4 Apr 2014, p.61]
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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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 13, 2011
Season 1 Review:
The characters are so richly-drawn, and so wonderfully-played, that the exposition ultimately isn't that great a stumbling block. I wanted to know more about these characters, and within an episode or so was eager for any bit of backstory that helped better clarify all the relationships.
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IndieWireApr 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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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 14, 2019Jul 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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Apr 14, 2011
Season 1 Review:
Though some of the visual cues will be very familiar to fans of "Lord of the Rings" or even "The Tudors," Game of Thrones quickly finds that rare alchemy of action, motivation and explanation, proving, once again, that the epic mythology remains the Holy Grail of almost any medium.
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Apr 14, 2019Jul 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 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 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 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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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]
Mar 28, 2013
Season 3 Review:
There's event television, and there's Game of Thrones. [8 Apr 2013, p.41]
Mar 30, 2012
Season 2 Review:
Can. Not. Wait. [9 Apr 2012, p.39]
Apr 14, 2011
Season 1 Review:
What's amazing is how quickly it all falls into place--the show goes like a shot. [25 Apr 2011, p.43]
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 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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Mar 30, 2012
Season 2 Review:
Game is a genuinely mind-boggling piece of adaptation, cast more or less perfectly (except for Kit Harington's Jon Snow, who relies too much on the soap opera actors handbook of serious faces), with expert control of the story lines, gorgeous and diverse settings, and such seriousness of purpose and consistent internal logic that I find the least realistic thing about it to be that the men of [N]ights Watch don't wear hats.
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Apr 14, 2011
Season 1 Review:
You can't just watch this series. You have to commit to it, the way you had to commit to "The Wire" or "Deadwood" to appreciate them as something other than impenetrable fetish objects. Bear in mind I'm not saying that Game of Thrones is a creative achievement on the same level as those other masterful HBO series, which looked, moved and felt like nothing that had come before.
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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 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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Apr 18, 2011
Season 1 Review:
The narrative structure of the series is not at all as ambitious as its price tag may suggest. Benioff and Weiss have chosen the easiest way to tell this story, and the show suffers from it. Following from that stunning close-up that opens the show, Game of Thrones does its best work in the close-up mode. The reason to keep watching this show lies in a handful of intricately drawn, engagingly performed characters.
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