|
CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
|
Positive:
159
Mixed:
11
Negative:
1
|
Watch Now
| Buy on |
|
| Stream On |
|
Critic Reviews
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.
Read full review
Uncle BarkyMar 28, 2013
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.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
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?
Read full review
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.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
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).
Read full review
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.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Apr 25, 2016Apr 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.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Mar 28, 2013
Season 3 Review:
The tapestry of characters in George R.R. Martin's fantasy kingdom has grown so huge now that only the most avid fan can hope to identify them all, let alone keep track of the family ties, alliances and enmities which make this quasimedieval world so dangerous to nearly everyone in it.
Read full review
Apr 14, 2011
Season 1 Review:
All of which is to say that even for the most open minds, Game of Thrones can be a big stein of groggy slog. On the plus side, the first six episodes are impressively free of sorcery and special effects, and instead rely on the stuff of any deeply dark HBO epic: corruption, deceit, illicit sex (incest in this case), unflinchingly gory violence, and a willingness to kill off a prominent character or two in the service of plot.
Read full review
Apr 13, 2011
Season 1 Review:
While the first episode is a solid and visually rich scene-setter for the tale to come, there's a lot of dry, sometimes clunky exposition to get through before the story really gets going in the fifth episode, which is far and away the best hour of Game of Thrones I've seen.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Mar 28, 2013
Season 3 Review:
[Peter Dinklage, Ciaran Hinds, Paul Kaye, and Dianna Rigg are] all fun to watch, even when their characters don’t have anything in particular to do besides relay information that we need to keep up with the story or keep straight the seven (so we’re told) warring families.
Read full review
Mar 29, 2012
Season 2 Review:
The new season of this dense medieval fantasy set in a land called Westeros serves up a whole bunch of wartime posturing, a seemingly endless number of would-be rulers and the usual sex and (sometimes in the same scene) violence. But it sure doesn't give viewers much to latch onto.
Read full review
Apr 8, 2011
Season 1 Review:
The production has a satisfyingly brooding, ominous look and it's possible to see the basic appeal for role-players and other fans of a realm that provides a limitless playing field for their own imaginations. Thrones also has wolf pups, which is always cool. But then we're back to the familiar favorites of the infantile.
Read full review
Current TV Shows
By MetascoreBy User Score