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Game of Thrones Complete Seasons 7-8 Edit

almightycutie

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Fan edit is complete. Message me for a link.

I hated the final seasons of Game of Thrones but I saw a lot of potential to make a satisfying conclusion to the story, mostly by rearranging scenes. I combined both Seasons 7 and 8, completely rearranging everything to make an 11 episode season finale. It’s not perfect but I think this is as good as it can get. I’ve been working on this edit for a few months now and am about 95% of the way done. I would love feedback, especially with some of my dialog. I'll be posting a few more clips where I am planning on getting voiceover and get some feeback.

The major things I wanted to fix were sudden changes to character arcs, plotlines that didn’t have a payoff, fast traveling toned down, and then to focus the story by having the first half be about the downfall of Cersei and the second half the attack of the White Walkers. I have more details below.

I’m currently looking into help for some minor visual effects (blood splatters and changing eyes to white) and getting some voiceovers mainly for Bran, and a few lines for Jon. I wanted to get more eyes on it, especially the parts where I change the lines to have the best possible content for this. I'm mostly happy with the additional lines I've added but I would love to get other opinions on it.

If you’d rather just watch the episodes when it’s finished and enjoy the updated content then ignore everything below.

--

And my details and reasoning for the edits:

Cersei’s Downfall Arc (Episodes 1-6)

Dany still arrives in Westeros and plans her conquest. I tried to take out as much as I could of Tyrion looking at Dany as a monster. There is still a bit of tension when some of Tyrion’s plans fail, but it does not build to the Mad Dany plotline. 

Sadly, Varys has no story in the final seasons other than plotting against Dany, so he is mostly gone now except for being a background character. 

I completely removed Tyrion trying to reason with Cersei. He no longer goes to King’s Landing to talk to Jaime or Cersei. After Dany destroys the Tarlys on the Road and nearly kills Jaime and Bronn, she goes straight to Kings Landing. She no longer loses one of her dragons either, she goes right in and destroys Euron’s fleet and him in the process. She then takes out the Golden company, and then everyone surrenders. But she isn't done yet. She doesn’t go crazy, but instead heads straight for the castle and burns Cersei. 

This fixes a lot. Cersei still mostly just drinks wine, but there is a lot less so it doesn’t feel like she’s a useless character anymore. And of course, Dany doesn’t go mad which was so against her character this whole time. 

Onto Jon. He still visits Dany in dragonstone and she still wants him to bend the knee, but his reason for leaving for the wall changes. He now gets a vision through Bran of the Night King. Bran wants to guide him past the wall, behind the Night King’s army to assassinate him before he can make it to the Wall. Jon leaves Dragonstone before Dany goes on the Road to attack Cersei’s armies. I hated the capture a zombie plotline, but I’ll get into that in the next section. One big fix here was Jon fast traveling up to the wall within the same episode as he left. He now arrives 3 episodes later. 

There are two character problems in this section. 1st is Jorah. In the original season 7 he arrives at Dragonstone after being cured, he hears about the mission to capture a wight and asks to join, and then leaves instantly. I couldn’t keep his line in that justified him leaving so now he just arrives in Dragonstone and then leaves with Jon without any reasoning. It goes against his character which I assume he would stay with Dany. Couldn’t fix it though. 2nd is Gendry. Since Tyrion no longer goes to Kings Landing to talk to Cersei there is no reason for Davos to go there either. In this edit Gendry just appears with Davos to go talk to Jon. He doesn’t get his proper introduction but I don’t think it’s super important as this scene serves as his intro enough.

Aside from the voice over and visual effects this section is fully completed. 

--

Night King Arc (Episodes 7-11)

Before I get to all the Night King stuff some explanation of a lot of what was removed. Littlefinger’s plot was only getting Sansa and Arya to go against each other, so I removed this completely making him hardly more than a backing character, same as Varys. He also doesn't get outsmarted by them and killed. I really like both him and Varys but there just wasn’t footage I could use to make a decent story for them. All of Sansa being against Dany is also removed. It doesn’t make any sense in this edit. 

Onto the edit: Jon arrives at the wall and the plot continues as normal except for some additions of Bran talking to Jon in visions. All the capturing a zombie plot are gone, now once they get further in it appears that the Night King knew what was happening and wanted Jon to come North. Bran is confused as to why he would draw Jon up there just to kill him off slowly. Then Bran realizes that the Night King was using Jon and Bran to draw Dany North to capture her dragon to get past the wall. 

This provides much more depth to the Night King. He has some actual tactics. It also gives more character to Bran who lost basically all character in the final seasons.

Rather than two episodes of “before the battle for Winterfell” I condensed them into one, cutting out a lot that I thought was unnecessary including the whole Gendry/Arya relationship. I focused instead on her relationship with the Hound and left it at that. Jaime’s arc is done now after he knights Brienne. No more sex scene or going back to Cersei. I think it ends perfectly with the knighting, and then he can die in battle. 

The battle for winterfell is split into two episodes. This gives some illusion of a longer battle, but also the way I arranged it just works better as two parts. The battle starts the same with the Dothraki charging out and all dying. This makes a lot more sense when they don’t respawn the next episode. I took some of the main characters out of the first fight outside the wall. I hated having every major character on the front line. Ned’s death also gets pushed to be later when the army breaks into the castle since he’s no longer in the first fight. The calling for the trenches to be lit is removed. Now Melisandre just goes straight out to light it. There was no need for that dumb little plotline. The first battle episode ends when the Night King raises the dead. 

The second episode starts with Arya sneaking through the castle. I actually liked this section but it was so out of place in the original episode, going from heavy battle to this really quiet section. It works much better now. The fight continues and has Sam, Jaime, Pod, and Brienne all dying to the horde. The Night King’s end is much different now. Right before he dies Bran tries to go back to the Night King’s creation to beg the Children to stop. Bran gets stuck and becomes the actual Night King way in the past, but it also changes him in the present. Then Arya jumps on the Night King, but doesn’t immediately kill him. The Night King snaps her neck and kills her instantly. Bran wargs into her and uses the knife to end the Night King. After he dies then it shows all the walkers die and ends with Jorah and Melisandre dying. 

All the deaths give a lot more weight to this episode, especially with Arya. And the changes with the Night King give him an actual story, and reason for why he was trying to stop Bran. While it’s not explicitly explained, you can assume he wanted to stop Bran from creating himself. Also, this technically makes it Bran who kills the Night King who, aside from Jon, feels like the most important character to kill him given how tied his story is with the Night King (especially in my edit).
Afterwards there is a short funeral, and I removed Jon's speech, and I brought in the unused track - Stay a Thousand Years. I thought it fit nicely over this.

The end of the show has Dany in the throne room. Jon knows now that he is the rightful heir. He doesn’t want her to rule. But he doesn’t want it either. Instead of them ruling he calls on the dragon to burn the throne down. This gives some actual reason for Jon’s heritage being in the show. He uses it to end the reign of kings. He and Dany then fly away afterwards and there is a short montage of all the characters still alive. After the montage are the final clips. The show is going to end on the discovery of the Night King symbol with the burning child (from the end of Ep1 S8), and then Bran warging away. This has an open ended approach for Bran and the future of the Night King, and also gives at least a bit more importance to the Night King symbol. 

Jon and Dany’s arcs are complete, and their last shots will be them flying away on dragons. Both Varys and Littlefinger will be lurking at the end giving them open ended endings. The Hound’s arc ends nicely with him overcoming his fears to save Arya once more. He doesn’t need to go back for revenge after all of this. Jorah and Theon already had good ends I thought. 

I’m still working on the very end of the final episode, but aside from that and the visual effects/voiceover, this section is nearly done.
 
I'm into most of your ideas and some of them I'm really curious to see how you pull it off.  This is 1000% ambitious and I can't wait to see this come together.  Some of the new deaths mentioned I'm not into, but that could be because of my emotional connection to them, but really I guess I just can't bare to see Arya die lol.
 
musiced921 said:
I'm into most of your ideas and some of them I'm really curious to see how you pull it off.  This is 1000% ambitious and I can't wait to see this come together.  Some of the new deaths mentioned I'm not into, but that could be because of my emotional connection to them, but really I guess I just can't bare to see Arya die lol.

Thanks! I'm excited to get people watching once it's finished. I'm really happy with how it's turned out so far. 

As for the deaths, I originally didn't have Arya die. But I wanted to make the Night King's death more meaningful and this was the only way I could come up with to make it work well. Also having such a big main character die gives a lot more weight and impact to the Night King which was such a weak point of the original.

I'll be posting a couple more clips over the weekend and the voiceover script to get feedback!
 
Intriguing - I'll have to give your clips a watch later. I like the idea of killing Arya with the Night King, but since I believe Mad Dany is baked into the core idea of the series and just executed poorly, I'd prefer to see an edit that focuses on building up to that properly rather than one that cuts it completely. But that's just me - I'm certainly open to having my mind changed and very excited for hopefully many future GoT edits post-S4!
 
This sounds amazing! I do take issue with all of the character deaths your adding during the battle with the Night King though (then again, I don't like it when characters die for no justifiable reason).
 
This sounds really exciting. Like your outline for the revised scene, makes a lot more sense to me than what we got officially. 

Particularly thought The End of Cersei and Jon Burns the Throne were strong from the clips you presented. Are you just going to get soundalike actors for Jon and Bran?
 
Here is a new clip to show some of my progress.

Bran Warns Jon

It shows some of the VFX, and also my incomplete voiceover for Bran (this is just one draft, still going to get some more recording done for this and then blend it nicely).

I'm aiming to finish the whole thing by the end of next week.
 
Crazy that you want it done by the end of next week. Good luck! The newest clip is an impressive upgrade. Is that just you doing the Bran VO?
 
This list looks insanely good, very exited to see the finished product
 
almightycutie said:
Here is a new clip to show some of my progress.

Bran Warns Jon

It shows some of the VFX, and also my incomplete voiceover for Bran (this is just one draft, still going to get some more recording done for this and then blend it nicely).

I'm aiming to finish the whole thing by the end of next week.

Great clip! Impressive VFX additions. Voice volume is pretty low, in a future draft, you'll want to increase it, but that's a minor problem.
 
I've had a few difficulties, that I'm not sure I can fix. Wondering if anyone can help me out. After the battle for winterfell there is a short funeral scene. It would really drive home the deaths if I could show all the characters that died the night before, at least the big main ones. Obviously in the original show Arya, Brienne, Jaime, and Sam do not die.

I pulled a small shot of Jaime on the beach while fighting Euron, recolored it and added some smoke to work his death into the scene. I also blurred the shot of Jon walking up to Lyanna Mormont's body. I was trying to pass it off as Arya instead, though not sure if it worked all that well. I couldn't find anything else for her. 

As for Brienne and Sam I just have nothing so they are not even in the funeral at all. If there are any shots of either of them that anyone could think of with them laying on the ground (maybe after being knocked down), even if it's just a single frame, then I might be able to work it in. This would really pull it together.  

I'll post a clip of the funeral scene when I get a chance, probably tomorrow morning.
 
What if you tried, during the funeral scene, to have Jon looking somber as he does during the it, but do little cutaways to each character from earlier in the series to show him mourning their deaths?  Like a funeral montage of those fallen.
 
I thought about implementing that today, but after thinking it through I don't think it will work. That type of montage just doesn't fit within the Game of Thrones universe. It's always been more gritty than that. I need to either show them dead somehow or accept not having them at the funeral. I think the scene works still, just not as well as it could.
 
almightycutie said:
Night King Arc (Episodes 7-11)

Before I get to all the Night King stuff some explanation of a lot of what was removed. Littlefinger’s plot was only getting Sansa and Arya to go against each other, so I removed this completely making him hardly more than a backing character, same as Varys. He also doesn't get outsmarted by them and killed. I really like both him and Varys but there just wasn’t footage I could use to make a decent story for them. All of Sansa being against Dany is also removed. It doesn’t make any sense in this edit. 

The second episode starts with Arya sneaking through the castle. I actually liked this section but it was so out of place in the original episode, going from heavy battle to this really quiet section. It works much better now. The fight continues and has Sam, Jaime, Pod, and Brienne all dying to the horde. The Night King’s end is much different now. Right before he dies Bran tries to go back to the Night King’s creation to beg the Children to stop. Bran gets stuck and becomes the actual Night King way in the past, but it also changes him in the present. Then Arya jumps on the Night King, but doesn’t immediately kill him. The Night King snaps her neck and kills her instantly. Bran wargs into her and uses the knife to end the Night King. After he dies then it shows all the walkers die and ends with Jorah and Melisandre dying. 

Jon and Dany’s arcs are complete, and their last shots will be them flying away on dragons. 

This sounds potentially amazing, and you are a hero for attempting it.  I wouldn't make all the same story choices you have, but I'm okay with most of them (given the alternative). 
Your first arc, in particular, sounds pretty good.  
-I would massively miss Cleganebowl, as that was fantastic and had been reinforced since practically the first episode...
-Varys and Tyrion were wasted in the real final seasons anyway.  Not much you can do about that.

2nd arc, a bit more problematic for me.
-Is it really necessary to take out the entire Littlefinger plot?  It seems massively important to Sansa's character arc for me, with her coming in to her own.  It's also hard to imagine Littlefinger just sitting back and not doing anything amidst all this chaos, and it's a real payoff to see him get his comeuppance.  
-Totally agree with you that Arya's sneaking sidequest was very good but very misplaced.
-I watched your "End of Night King" scene, and it actually could be pretty good with the right V.O.  However, it doesn't seem to me at all that Bran wargs into Arya.  I think I would need some closeup shots of both of their eyes changing inserted as well as a brutal neck snap sound effect.  Then I think I could see the Jump->Die->Warg->Stab sequence being sold.
-I would have to see how it's done, of course, but the idea of the final Jon/Dany shot being them flying away on dragons just sounds a bit YA fantasy novel to me.  It's hard to imagine such a "ride off into the sunset" happy ending for this show.  Maybe a toned down version would work for you?  Simply a shot of Dany sitting at a party smiling and Jon smiling back, or something that implies they finally have a moment of rest?  A Starbucks latte perhaps?
 
almightycutie said:
I've had a few difficulties, that I'm not sure I can fix. Wondering if anyone can help me out. After the battle for winterfell there is a short funeral scene. It would really drive home the deaths if I could show all the characters that died the night before, at least the big main ones. Obviously in the original show Arya, Brienne, Jaime, and Sam do not die.

I pulled a small shot of Jaime on the beach while fighting Euron, recolored it and added some smoke to work his death into the scene. I also blurred the shot of Jon walking up to Lyanna Mormont's body. I was trying to pass it off as Arya instead, though not sure if it worked all that well. I couldn't find anything else for her. 

As for Brienne and Sam I just have nothing so they are not even in the funeral at all. If there are any shots of either of them that anyone could think of with them laying on the ground (maybe after being knocked down), even if it's just a single frame, then I might be able to work it in. This would really pull it together.  

I'll post a clip of the funeral scene when I get a chance, probably tomorrow morning.

It seems like there should be a fair few clips of each of those characters looking like they're falling down in pain, no?  Off the top of my head:  from that fake Arya trailer-
D2a5E4oWsAEagu9.jpg


Maybe a couple shots from this for Brienne:
Sandor-Clegane-and-Brienne-of-Tarth-sandor-clegane-37234554-4256-2832.jpg


I thought when Sam got overwhelmed in the Battle of Winterfell was fine as it is.
gi3-772a.jpg

Jon looks over and sees him go down, but can't stop to save him (again).  Fine, good.  Just add a blood-curdling scream to it and it'll be apparent that he died.  

Of course, if you find a couple seconds of footage from the above scenes, you'll have to recolor it, but just make it dark as hell and then it'll fit with the Battle of Winterfell just fine.  :)
 
At least you changed who kills The Night King.  I will never like it being Arya as that was always Jon's kill in my book.  Is Bran more likeable if he kills The Night King now though ?
 
Random said:
At least you changed who kills The Night King.  I will never like it being Arya as that was always Jon's kill in my book.  Is Bran more likeable if he kills The Night King now though ?

I doubt Meera thinks so.....

a891804b25e49ac7061f5abe5297e9e5.gif
 
musiced921 said:
Random said:
At least you changed who kills The Night King.  I will never like it being Arya as that was always Jon's kill in my book.  Is Bran more likeable if he kills The Night King now though ?

I doubt Meera thinks so.....

a891804b25e49ac7061f5abe5297e9e5.gif

If it makes her feel better we can say she died off screen HEY O
 
mnkykungfu said:
This sounds potentially amazing, and you are a hero for attempting it.  I wouldn't make all the same story choices you have, but I'm okay with most of them (given the alternative). 
Your first arc, in particular, sounds pretty good.  
-I would massively miss Cleganebowl, as that was fantastic and had been reinforced since practically the first episode...
-Varys and Tyrion were wasted in the real final seasons anyway.  Not much you can do about that.

2nd arc, a bit more problematic for me.
-Is it really necessary to take out the entire Littlefinger plot?  It seems massively important to Sansa's character arc for me, with her coming in to her own.  It's also hard to imagine Littlefinger just sitting back and not doing anything amidst all this chaos, and it's a real payoff to see him get his comeuppance.  
-Totally agree with you that Arya's sneaking sidequest was very good but very misplaced.
-I watched your "End of Night King" scene, and it actually could be pretty good with the right V.O.  However, it doesn't seem to me at all that Bran wargs into Arya.  I think I would need some closeup shots of both of their eyes changing inserted as well as a brutal neck snap sound effect.  Then I think I could see the Jump->Die->Warg->Stab sequence being sold.
-I would have to see how it's done, of course, but the idea of the final Jon/Dany shot being them flying away on dragons just sounds a bit YA fantasy novel to me.  It's hard to imagine such a "ride off into the sunset" happy ending for this show.  Maybe a toned down version would work for you?  Simply a shot of Dany sitting at a party smiling and Jon smiling back, or something that implies they finally have a moment of rest?  A Starbucks latte perhaps?

It seems like there should be a fair few clips of each of those characters looking like they're falling down in pain, no?  Off the top of my head:  from that fake Arya trailer-
Maybe a couple shots from this for Brienne:
I thought when Sam got overwhelmed in the Battle of Winterfell was fine as it is.
Jon looks over and sees him go down, but can't stop to save him (again).  Fine, good.  Just add a blood-curdling scream to it and it'll be apparent that he died.  

Of course, if you find a couple seconds of footage from the above scenes, you'll have to recolor it, but just make it dark as hell and then it'll fit with the Battle of Winterfell just fine.  :)

These are some fantastic critiques! I'll try to respond to most of this.

- I tried really hard to keep Cleganebowl. My original intentions included it, but I just couldn't figure out a way to keep it in. There is no reasoning for him to be there since I moved the fight against Cersei to be before the battle for Winterfell. I think his arc still wraps up nicely though.

- While I didn't mind LF getting outsmarted and killed by the Starks at the end, I personally hated the Sansa vs Arya thing. I felt that it was all really unnecessary and harmed their characters. In my cut their relationship is much stronger, though it does suck that LF is basically removed. This will probably just be a thing that we won't agree on.

- The End of the Night King scene has been updated quite a bit from the clip I posted. The warging gets a bit confusing, but now I have Bran go into one of the CotF and try to stop her from stabbing the NK. The future NK prevents this from happening and pushes Bran into the original NK and forces him to be stuck until he transforms. I'll post a clip of this once the voiceover is up. I should have a new set of takes tomorrow. Some things holding this back is that the warging to the past is just a bit confusing. I'm not sure how much clearer I can make this with what I've got though. The Arya getting killed is also not super clear. I think your advice to get a better neck crack sound will help. I think the warging there works pretty well though, and I had a shot just a bit later that showed her on the floor covered in blood and it looks like she's dead which sells it nicely.

- The Jon/Dany flying off is a bit cheesy. Especially with how I started the scene. After Jon has the dragon burn the throne I had them do a quick kiss that fades to black while music starts to build behind them. It all works pretty well, but it is a cheesy ending for them. I did the flying dragons part though to work in a transition for that montage sequence. It transitions from Kings Landing to Winterfell with a couple bursts of their flying sequences. I'll post a clip of this tomorrow with the other one from above, but I'm thinking you're right, I'll probably need to tone this down to get it to work better.

- The scenes you showed are great. Do you have a link to that Arya clip? I have no idea which trailer you're talking about. I'll definitely try to pull a shot from that scene with Brienne too. For Sam, his last shot is him getting overwhelmed in the battle, and it does mostly look like he dies. It's hard to completely sell it because the show always shows dead bodies after they've been killed, and if they don't then it usually means that character survived somehow. I think what would really pull it off would be to show him in the funeral scene. I just couldn't think of a shot of him being knocked down on the ground that wasn't from like Season 1. 

- Lastly I should address the Voiceover. What I have so far is pretty well done, but it's not perfect by any means. I'm assuming some people will get taken out of the experience because the voices aren't perfect. There's just nothing I can do about this though. I have a pretty finalized version of the clip where Bran first warns Jon about the NK. I'll export it and post it here tomorrow along with the other ones so everyone can get a taste of what his voiceover will be sounding like.
 
Here are a few new clips:

Bran Warns Jon with voiceover - 
The Night King dies with voiceover - 
Ending Montage - 

-AC
 
I know you'll likely make different choices than would satisfy me, but I'll see if I can offer workarounds anyway for you to consider.

-If I have to choose between losing Cleganebowl or losing The Hound at Winterfell, I'd try to find a way to cut him out of Winterfell.  

-Yeah, I didn't mind much, but I know a lot of people didn't like the Sansa/Arya division.  TBH, I think this is another case of botched execution.  It became clear to me in the end that Arya and Sansa never would've betrayed each other.  There was no doubt.  They immediately saw right through Littlefinger, and just had to figure out how to spring his trap.  However, the showrunners seemed to really want to play up building tension, making you believe LF's plan was working...it was over the top.  It's fine to show tension between the sisters (unrelated to LF's plot), but I think it would be possible to recut and re-edit the dynamic to remove all that audience manipulation.  He could still try that plan, and still have it fail and the sisters get their justice and come into their own.  But the BS is trimmed out.

-The Bran Warns Jon clip worked really well for me.  I think I saw somebody else comment that the voice was too low in the sound mix though?  I'd agree.  The delivery was great!  It should be soft and whispery, just with the relative sound levels adjusted to be able to hear it better.

-The Night King Dies clip didn't work quite as well for me.  Again, the V.O. level is hard to hear.  What I did hear, some of the performance was very good.  The screams were great!  You should have more confidence in that part and really crank up the volume.  On the other hand, some of the other lines were not so strong or convincing to me.  I would advise trying to refine the delivery.  The warging into Arya actually did work for me!  But the neck snap, not so much.  The shot of her dead was from King's Landing... I didn't suggest this one before because it's too obvious of a visual difference for me.  She's clearly in a city street, covered in ash, not snow.  I actually can't find the Arya shot I linked before!  lol  I'll look for it, though.

-The Ending Montage.  I think this is a fully-realized ending that takes a definite stand and executes the idea very well.  Unfortunately, it's an idea that I dislike about as much as the "Dany burns women and children" idea.  For me, this ending feels completely out of place with the rest of the series, an abrupt right turn into "And they lived happily ever after" territory.  I'm sorry, but it would be the nail in the coffin for a fanedit, as far as I'm concerned.  Not to sugarcoat it or anything.  ;)

Thanks for being open to feedback.  I'd love to see a version of GOT that could replace my copies, but I'll try to find some shots or view clips even if you go in a different direction.
 
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