Before ‘Game of Thrones’ Season 8, a look back at the earliest reviews

It’s hard to even fathom right now, at a moment when it feels like Game of Thrones is the biggest thing on the planet. But when it premiered on HBO back in 2011, the response was less than enthusiastic.

There’s a reason for that, of course. The show’s original pilot, which never actually aired, was deemed a mess and largely re-filmed before the Season 1 premiere. That unaired pilot also featured several cast differences, including Tamzin Merchant in place of Emilia Clarke in the role of Danaerys Targaryen.

The Episode 1 premiere that did air was largely but not completely re-shot — a few holdovers from the first version of the pilot stuck around. The result, as many critics noted, showed promise but was ultimately uneven and not a great representation of what the show could (or would eventually) be.

Here are some review snippets that paint an illuminating picture of HBO’s first-ever journey into Westeros.

Ginia Bellafante, The New York Times

When the network ventures away from its instincts for real-world sociology, as it has with the vampire saga True Blood, things start to feel cheap, and we feel as though we have been placed in the hands of cheaters. Game of Thrones serves up a lot of confusion in the name of no larger or really relevant idea beyond sketchily fleshed-out notions that war is ugly, families are insidious and power is hot. If you are not averse to the Dungeons & Dragons aesthetic, the series might be worth the effort. If you are nearly anyone else, you will hunger for HBO to get back to the business of languages for which we already have a dictionary. 

Margeret Lyons, Vulture

I have a few lingering beefs, though. (1) I still find parts of the show deeply, deeply boring. Please, don’t show me sword fighting — give me more of that national debt conversation! How riveting. (2) I need a little more development from the characters who are changing — wait, Daenerys is now into her husband? Totally? — and a little more depth from the ones who are just evil. (I’m looking at you, Prince Draco Malfoy.) (3) Enough boobs. Seriously, I know, it’s HBO, the boob capital of the world or whatever, but this week was chockablock with ambient bare breasts. I’m sure the people out there writing their dissertations on “The Male Gaze in George R.R. Martin’s Work” are having a field day, but I’m finding it irritating at this point.

Todd VanDerWerff, The AV Club

Sadly, tonight’s pilot—which will likely be the only taste many viewers ever get of the series—is the weakest of the first six. It’s so taken up with making sure everything is set in place that it largely forgets to do anything other than offer up a long series of stilted introductions. It’s smart about only introducing the characters viewers absolutely NEED to know to proceed in the series, but there are still roughly a dozen of these characters, and even with a one-hour, five-minute running time, it’s something of a sprint to the cliffhanger ending that actually kicks off the bulk of the story.

James Hibberd, Entertainment Weekly

Sunday’s heavily re-shot super-sized 65-minute pilot — despite its big revelation and shocking ending — is one of the more sluggish-feeling of the first six episodes of Thrones I’ve seen. So if you watched Thrones and didn’t see what all the fuss was about, you must stick with the series through next week. And if you loved Sunday’s debut, you’re going to lose your head in the weeks to come.

Hank Steuver, The Washington Post

It’s about becoming (or not becoming) the kind of viewer who can sign on to such a daunting amount of Dark Ages hoo-hah. That’s a personal genre choice, and one I’m pretty sure I made as far back as 1981, when a friend’s sleepover in middle school turned into my first and final encounter with Dungeons & Dragons. I was so quickly bored by the whole idea that I wound up in the kitchen, helping my friend’s mother make Rice Krispy treats. My fate — and my kingdom’s — were thus forever sealed. 

TK Burton, Pajiba

The show wasn’t perfect. The transitions seemed a bit jarring at times, and you could almost feel scenes being cut out, creating an occasionally discordant sensation when the setting would shift. While the production was top notch, the scenes across the Narrow Sea featuring the Targaryens seemed too small, as if they didn’t have enough extras or they ran out of costumes. The pacing was steady and even, though at times a bit too much so. That’s the consequence of an introductory episode to a show with so much going on — there’s little action, and if folks were expecting a rousing medieval tale of wizards and clashes of swords, well, they’ll get some of that, but not for a while.

There were more positive takes as well (and more positivity in some of the above reviews than you’re seeing here), but a large number of critics took issue with the series’ opening episode. As you can probably tell from some of the snippets above, it also took some time for the right critical voices for tackling a show like this to emerge.

Of course, Game of Thrones had transformed into a bona fide hit by the end of Season 1. It would take a few more seasons before the show became the cultural phenomenon it is now, but it was clear to viewers by the end of that first season that HBO was on to something.

Now, with the Season 8 premiere — the final season! — just hours away, it’s fun to read back through all of these early reviews and spot the differences: the ways the show has changed, the ways public opinion of HBO has changed, even the names of the top voices leading discussions online.

Game of Thrones Season 8 premieres at 9:00 p.m. ET on April 14. Catch up on everything — I mean it, literally everything — right here.