[Stuart]

I've generally enjoyed the season, but it hasn't been as good as previous seasons.

The main problem is they've provided very little context for things happening, which has meant it feels like a lot has happened solely because the writers needed it to. The Night King's death for instance. They spent most of the series telling us how invincible he was, and how he was coming with his army of the dead to defeat the living, only for him to be killed by a small woman with a knife, then have his entire army collapse because of course they are all directly controlled by him (fairly certain this was never even implied before) Little bit of an anticlimax that.

Then there was Dany turning evil. I'm no expert on mental health, but I suspect people can actually turn evil that quickly. That said, the way it was done still felt a bit like they were panicking because they realised they needed a reason to kill Dany off so they could make Bran king, and they realised they were running out of time.

Then there are the special effects. Previously, GoT has looked and sounded beautiful. It was brilliantly shot, had excellent special effects and awsome music. The music has been awesome throughout this season as well, in some places improving what would otherwise be extremely boring scenes. The CGI has let things down a little. Previously when they showed Dany flying on her dragon, it's looked exactly like it should, like a young woman flying on the back of a firebreathing dragon. Nothing to signpost the CGI, or the fact there was any compositing going on (beyond the obvious fact that without special effects, the shot would be impossible due to Dragons not existing). This season, the Dragon flight scenes (particularly during the battle of winterfell) have looked like a young woman sitting in front of a green screen, being superimposed on to the scene, and on top of the CGI dragon. CGI, when done well, should look like it's part of the scene, not created 18 months later and superimposed.

Then there are the battles. Large scale battles, filmed by a good director, look impressive, but still have an emotional kick for the viewer because while they show huge crowds of people fighting, they predominantly focus on a few characters, and show clearly what is happening. Like the final battle against the original evil at the end of Buffy the Vampire slayer. Yes, they used CGI to generate thousands of soldiers, but they focused tightly on the good guys and the individual fights they were having. If the director spends most of the scene showing large views of the battle, I just think all they've done is muck around with MASSIVE a bit (MASSIVE is the software used in GoT, Buffy, and a lot of films and TV shows, to generate large crowds) and let it render. I don't care beyond that.

Game of Thrones has done this previously as well, with wide shots showing the shear level of destruction, but focusing tightly on a few characters. It doesn't seem to have done this so much for this season though.

Then there is bad lighting making things difficult to see, Sorry, GoT Director of Photography, telling people that if they can't see a video well, they are in the wrong lighting conditions is like Steve Jobs telling people who got bad signal on their iPhone "You are holding it wrong". You are making a TV show for people to watch. If you don't make it at least visible in normal lighting conditions, you have failed. I don't have stunningly high end equipment at home, but I have a fairly decent LG 4K TV, and the only way I could see anything was to turn all the lights off, and close the curtains. You can make it so it looks better in the dark (a lot of shows look better in the dark), but people do need to be able to see it.