Why Game of Thrones is Stupid

Because it has dragons - and dragons are stupid.

Any story that has dragons is immediately suspect.  When you think of great stories - The Godfather, Casablanca, Bridge on the River Kwai (just to stick to movies) - none of them have dragons.  And I'm pretty confident that they would not have been substantially better if they did.  Even movies that you think could make good use of a dragon - Mad Max: Fury Road, Raiders of the Lost Ark, My Dinner with Andre, et al. - don’t really need any (except maybe for that last one).  And even Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon doesn't actually have a dragon in it; and the title itself goes to great lengths to reassure the viewer that if by some mishap or oversight there were a dragon in this film it will remain hidden - you will not see it.

Dragons are for children’s stories.  The only time I know of when a dragon shows up in an adult story (and by “an adult story” I mean a story for grown-ups, I don’t mean a pornographic story - though to judge by the tastes of Game of Thrones fans dragon-porn would be right up their alley*) is in Richard Wagner’s operas Das Rheingold and Siegfried.  And even there the dragon doesn’t do much.  Mostly he sits on a pile of gold and waits for the hero to come along and kill him.  And traditionally that’s all dragons ever do - sit on piles of gold and wait for death.  Now, I ask you, what kind of a life is that?  They don't go out.  They don’t have any friends.  They don't buy anything.  They live in a cave.  They’re pathetic.  No wonder they have anger and rage issues.  In fact, if a dragon had cable TV and a bag of chips, he would probably be binge-watching Games of Thrones right now.

*  But, of course, only if one of the dragons was tortured and killed in the process.