How can you put realism in a fight with undead soldiers backed by unknown magics?? I have a hard time with putting 'realism' upon this battle as we don't have complete knowledge of the undead army. They kept adding new stuff/powers to the undead army every time we met them. Could this have been filmed better? Sure, but I can't say that the tactics are bad because of the unrealism.. you can't really do realism when one side isn't real and doesn't operate like anything real.
Having said that... still not sure why they put people in the crypt to protect them fighting someone that can raise the dead. Also Dany is an idiot that only gets dragons killed.
well, the way I look at it is this, and it was the first thing that came to my mind when that scene first happened:
OK, why are they doing a cavalry charge to open up this fight? ...so very far from their own army?
Sure, that can work if you expect your cavalry to break those infantry lines and get a good part of that army to flee in terror...but undead don't flee in terror. They don't care. Those things will run into, swarm on, and surround your cavalry--the exact opposite of what you want from an opening cavalry charge, right?
So, you can mix the fantasy with the real and still maintain logic and by doing so, criticize some stupidity in the writing. Sure, the undead aren't real, but it's suspension of disbelief: you take the world for what it is presented to you, and that is the reality and the logic that you deal with. You can work within that reality and question when such things are still quite stupid. ...there was also the gross underutilization of the dragons from the start, and of course the castle itself.
I think what people are saying about the earlier seasons vs these last two or three is very relevant: the fat man never wrote battle scenes or spent time on it. It was all about the aftermath, the setup, the politics. The earlier seasons did exactly that, and they were brilliant. Now, when you axe a lot of the intrigue and instead focus a lot of screen time on elaborate, expensive battles, you lose what the show was. ...it's not that I don't mind large exciting battles that are visually satisfying--I do enjoy them very much, regardless of whatever criticisms--it definitely changes the show and what we've come to expect. I thought the Battle of the Bastards was pretty awesome, but the Winterfell one...eh. All I keep coming back to is that the plan all along was to just kill all your own people in order to coax the Nightking out onto the field and engage Bran? That's what I tell myself, anyway. If you're strategy is to decimate your own army for a one shot chance to kill all of the enemy, then I guess they succeeded?