Posted by bronxcheer on 1/24/2020 1:39:00 AM (view original):
I recently re-watched Game of Thrones but skipped over all the parts involving Daeneyrs and her damn dragons and Bran with his three-eyed raven and magic trees. Much better as a political intrigue show.
And yet in the real world we have nuclear weapons, massive destructive potential even with many advanced conventional weapons and we have AI and modern technological suveillance as well as the internet.
Now, given that the characters, even if they are wizards, or princesses or queens of imaginary kingdoms or fairies, etc. are essentially human characters that must make choices and do so based on human motivations and intelligence (since we can't actually, as the authors of such tales, imagine how we would think if we were a different species, and must use our own capacities as the grounding even in fantasy - "Man is the Measure of All Things" wrote someone or other in the Renaissance), I ask you this?
How different are the story, the human motivations and ambitions, the choices and so the story itself if instead of Bran we have an AI algorithm and a form of Internet and instead of dragons we have a fleet of bombers armed with nuclear weapons?
Same story, no more nor less realistic, merely using items from the real world instead of the imagination. But there is nothing in Game of Thrones - nor in any other form of literary or film genre, that is not already in human life, even if given a non-human form in the story. There can't be really.
The dragons are nukes, Bran is an AI attached to the Internet. Now watch it again, and you will find two things I think: 1. the story has not changed one iota, and 2. it is less fun this way than in the original with the dragons.
Follow your logic and we literally would have no art, no imagination, only journalism.