that there are really very few people who analyze popular books or movies as rigorously as you do in terms of logic and moral consistency, so writers don't bother catering to them. Personally I think I'm already more critical of plot holes or character inconsistencies than the average viewer, which does often leave me mildly or not so mildly unsatisfied about plots, but still not even close to how you see these things. Which of course is one of the reasons why I'm always interested to read your reviews even when disagreeing, they always have some perspectives I hadn't even thought of.
And there's a similar situation with the issue of characters telling each other things which if you think about it they really should've known already, as you mention below and in various other reviews - yes, that's for the benefit of the viewer more than the actual character being addressed, but TV/movie writers just wouldn't be very successful if they assumed every viewer has the background knowledge that you do, because so much would just go over most viewers' heads.
I should first of all clarify that I haven't even GoT beyond season four - and it has been absolutely ages since I last read the books, so on some of your points I'm not able to comment.
I'm not entirely convinced by your view of what Martin wanted to do with the Lannisters though. If Joffrey is the way he is purely because of Tywin and Cersei being evil, it doesn't make any sense that Tommen and Myrcella are so meek - his character and how he developed to that point is more complex than that (and Robert bears some degree of responsibility for it as well).
Also, show Cersei (at least in the seasons I've seen) is absolutely a hard and ruthless woman by the standards of any TV show - as established very early on in the notorious 'the things I do for love' scene. But yes, they made her more complex than in the books - the primary reason imho being simply that they thought it would make a better show, which for most viewers I think it did. There are still some characters on the show who are downright psychopathic and evil - Ramsay Bolton obviously, or the Mountain to the extent that he has any personality at all. Joffrey to some extent, though thanks to great writing and acting (it's a shame that actor has been struggling to get good roles ever since), you can still feel somewhat sorry for him in a way you never would for Ramsay. But when it comes to Cersei, I think it's very important that she got a bit more nuance. When she's having those conversations with Sansa, of course the viewer knows that in part she's being hypocritical and only pretending to be kind - but not entirely, there's still a part of genuine sympathy for a young girl having to survive in the viper's nest of the court. Cersei and Tywin are still generally the obvious antagonists, viewers are unlikely to openly root for them as they might for Daenerys, Tyrion or the Starks, but it makes for far more interesting viewing than a more unambiguously evil villain.
In some ways it reminds me a bit of the absolutely brilliant major change that the House of the Dragon writers made in their adaptation, when they made Alicent the best friend of teenage Rhaenyra prior to Alicent's wedding to Viserys, instead of having her be a rival from the start. Makes the entire thing far more poignant and makes it more difficult for viewers to side wholeheartedly with one side or the other in the civil war that follows.
As for Tywin failing to draw the logical conclusions after talking to Arya, I'd need to rewatch those scenes to really comment but you're probably right that it's implausible. I seem to remember wondering if he actually did draw his conclusions but just privately decided not to act on them - but that may be just as implausible.
From what I've seen, show Cersei and Tywin, while being softened and made more sympathetic like we discussed, are still the same on the crucial point of single-minded devotion to House Lannister and their family - whatever it takes, no matter how many bodies they have to step over in the process (a trait they share with various other characters, like Olenna). While Jaime, both in the books and the show, perhaps had such a mentality in his youth but certainly not anymore after he killed Aerys, however much he tried to pretend otherwise. Then after he loses his hand and travels with Brienne, he's forced to confront himself and the various ways he's been deluding himself for all that time, while getting influenced by her idealism and the horrors he sees along the way. All that can still work and be sufficient to give him a worldview totally incompatible with Cersei's on the show, even if show Cersei is more capable of genuine love than her book counterpart. So I don't think the changes to Cersei/Tywin necessarily made Jaime's character arc impossible - but very likely you're right nonetheless about the yo-yoing. Shows that go on for that many seasons do tend to do that...
Right, this thread wasn't actually about GoT.
In Nolan's Odyssey, very much unlike the original, the impression I get is indeed that gods are only intervening to a very limited extent, as Athena might as well be a figment of his imagination and Poseidon probably does cause some of the bad luck plaguing Odysseus but is never seen doing anything directly. I guess you could view it as the gods having been more active in the past but gradually distancing themselves from the Greek world as a response to the deterioration of xenia (and one might add the desecration of their temples, like that rather silly fight scene where Odysseus reveals he's not really a weak old beggar), which then weakens the Greek defenses against the foreign invaders?
Yeah, I don't generally think much of that movie.
Indeed. It would've made far more sense with a mere handful of men inside the horse - but then of course they couldn't have had the extended fight scene while the men are struggling to open the Trojan gate. I certainly wouldn't have minded if they'd cut that fight scene and had the Greek army invade the city before any Trojans could react, that whole battle doesn't serve any purpose beyond visual spectacle, but I suppose often the visual spectacle is in fact the point in Hollywood.
