HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones - will this be just for nerds? (NO SPOILERS PLEASE)

Nerd shit is art. Not necessarily good art.

it would be cool if the show started diverging wildly from the books and turned into a totally different story

― lag∞n, Tuesday, April 29, 2014 8:36 PM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark

Given the season so far I actually kind of think this is happening

crosses fingers

yeah i really wouldnt be surprised if that happened once theyre done with book 3

Like mods feel free to delete if this is spoilery but it's not just the mutineer arc that's new, it's also weirdo Locke being sent to the wall

Also I hope the actors who play Bran and Tommen grow even more between seasons for some serious lols

What if Bran has basketball player genes

What if he's taller than Holdor by season 5

just got to pivot, his super power is yamming on fools now

They'll just have to invent some reason to never see Bran standing up.

Yeah but he'd have comically long arms

Can't wait XD

I haven't seen the most recent ep, and I haven't scanned the thread recently for fear of spoilers, but it occurred to me that as much as I enjoy this show, if it were summarily cancelled I wouldn't necessarily mourn it or go through withdrawal the way I might for shows I've liked more. I mean, I'd miss it, since I enjoy it, but not in the same way I've liked other Must-See TV. I'm trying to put my finger on why that is. Is it the campiness? The soapiness? The fact that half the cast could die and I probably wouldn't miss them too much, bar a couple of characters (who for all I know are slated to die)? Is the story/cast/arc just getting too big and unwieldy to balance with all the stuff and traits people have come to expect? I'm glad the budget, the author's pace and the relatively scant number of episodes per season are keeping this from totally spinning out of control. But still, something about the way the show plays undercuts its innately epic scenario. It's kind of a disorienting disequilibrium.

Sorry, thinking out loud a bit.

shd prob be its own thread tbh

if they cancelled the show i'd be bummed because i'd never find out what happened

I'd be bummed because no more Margaery ;(

XP

there are so many characters and so many plot lines and so many of the characters and plot lines are so far from intersection that it seems like a bunch of disjointed/separate stories. As a result of this, I don't really have any emotional involvement in any of the characters, and what involvement I once had (primarily around the Starks after the first season) has been diluted as secondary and tertiary characters continue to be added, seemingly with every episode

You don't have any emotional involvement with the Starks because they're all DEAD

There's no sympathetic core because GRRM killed off the Starks

Now you're just watching to see how it all resolves and maybe you have a personal fav or two but GRRM has also trained you to not invest too deeply in any one character

"Dat Margaery tho

Wish she'd sneak into my room"

no kidding, she is like the best babysitter ever

also this

http://static1.purepeople.com/articles/8/13/51/18/@/1360386-natalie-dormer-attends-the-20th-annual-950x0-1.jpg

but GRRM has also trained you to not invest too deeply in any one character

that's true; however, i think that training is kind of lazily done. it's easy to water down interest in any one plotline by just jamming in dozens of others. i feel like his goal with the books at least was to differentiate interest by creating competing parties with more or less legitimate claims (so there was no clear protagonist / antagonist) and drive the plot through their competition. this is easier done in books, where a lot of plot development can pivot on a few pages. in the screen version, i feel like you have a bunch of rushed exposition and due to the format you only get a few moments a week with any given character or plot line. it's hard to get invested at all that way (and i'm guessing complete lack of investment is too far in the opposite direction) even if it's the only way the show can move.

there's no way to NOT diverge from the books because literally nothing at all happens in the last two books. basically if anything happens, it's a divergence.

I also find (haven't read the book) that a lot of the exposition or character beats and stuff get shorthand repeated so much I kind of wish they spent the time doing other things. Like the new dude who likes to sleep with men and women? I get it. But they've reiterated that a few times already in the clunkiest manner possible. "Hello there, I like men and women." Or the way every time we see Stannos, he's the same grump, in the same way, with the same issues brought up. "I understand you like the witchy woman, but look what it is doing to you" or whatever. A lot of telling, not showing. I'm still honestly not even sure what the Stark girl and hound are doing or where they are going and why. Same with Bran. Just a lot of too and from. At least the people in King's Landing seem sort of trapped in a prison of their own devising, with Tywin the only guy apparently playing the long game (Oh, by the way, there is an army with dragons and freed slave warriors approaching, we should keep that in mind).

I should stress again that I think this is being done as well as it can be, afaict, but I don't know how sustainable it is as a story. Though I guess there really is no story, just a situation.

I'll probably eventually read the books, though, so maybe that is GRRM's own long game.

Book marketing strategy #1: Have HBO create a hit show from it.

What if he's taller than Holdor by season 5

― 龜, Tuesday, April 29, 2014 9:27 AM (1 hour ago)

All he does is say his name and you still got it wrong ;)

龜: "Your name, please"
Hodor: "Hodor"
龜: "Sorry?"
Hodor: "Hodor"
龜: "Holder?"
Hodor: "Hodor"
龜: "Oh. How can I help you?"
Hodor: "Hodor"

how has no one done the attorney general eric hodor bit on snl yet

lol

those who've read the books tend to say the last few are pretty much plotless, but that's not always a mortal flaw for fantasy. for me, anyway. but the other thing that really matters to me is the really geeky world-building, mythology, history, etc. stuff. i dont think the show has really done at adequate job with that stuff at all. though im not sure it's really possible give the constraints. but there may have been some more imaginative ways around that--particularly given how much time they waste on basic exposition of established plot points (as noted above). given that tv shows are a now more a text that can be returned to at will maybe they'd be better off (aesthetically) just letting the audience figure things out.

as a wheel of time veteran, i feel like im very experienced in the nearly avant-garde potentialities of plotless and boring-as-shit fantasy novels.

Oh god no, I want the worldbuilding to be rich and detailed, but subservient to the plot. May as well read an RPG sourcebook otherwise.

oh don't get me wrong, i wouldn't go as far as subservient but yeah there's a balance to be strived for.

loads of the world-building stuff in the TV show make less and less sense to me as the series go on - I dunno if I need a ton of exposition, but agree that time spent rehashing characters' storylines would be better spent actually explaining some shit

Jon Snow's sudden "we have to go back to get the crasters mutineers NOW!" thing seems like it should have happened ages ago, we last saw them last season - wouldn't Mance Rayder have got to those dudes weeks ago? Whole bit feels a little tacked on.
but whatevs - good villains and finally Brann and crew are doing something other than hiding in the bushes

and tripping out

i think that's a given, they're not going to just ignore popular characters for 8 episodes

You liar, Theon was never popular!

There's no sympathetic core because GRRM killed off the Starks

Arya???

I'm still honestly not even sure what the Stark girl and hound are doing or where they are going and why. Same with Bran.

Really? Of all the plotlines where motivations keep getting repeated for the benefit of the audience, Arya and the Hound, traveling to the Eyrie so he can ransom her to her aunt Lysa Arryn, is probably one of the most repeated IIRC? However, you're right about Bran, the Reeds (curly haired girl and epileptic boy) didn't mention why they're going North more than a handful of times, also, boring.

xps: interspersing relevant flashbacks would have been a nice touch, like maybe start the episode with a cold-open flashback to the mountain killing elia martell in the same episode that oberyn recounts it to tyrion. parcel out the history much like good fantasy novels tend to do. big blocks of exposition just don't work for tv.

Also, I was hoping that Kit Harrington had taken some acting classes judging from the first episode, but then he tried to stare down Alliser Thorne and it was facepalming time again.

why exactly are the hippy kids going North again? or have they really explained, other than visions say to go north to look for 3-eyed bird/self?

their is an expectation of a fantasy audience that when someone dreams of a three eyed bird and then decides they have to travel somewhere you have to roll with it.

IIRC it's his destiny, otherwise they're being cagey about it. xp

xps taling to myself still: even like animated shorts telling us about the children of the forest and the first men, or whatever. like para-texts.

bran is stuck on the frodo "get from point A to point B" plotline.

bran is the one

the hippie kids' father will, i suspect, play a role in a future plot development.

yeah, I'm rolling with it, just wondering if I'd missed some stated motivation beyond the 3-eyed bird carlos castaneda visionquest

XXP OK, Morpheus.

i guess reading the books a lot of your understanding of their journey is contextual, coloured by the mythology that the show can only go so deep into. even so, without hitting the giant red spoiler button i think i can say that there is no real need for the total vagueness for the show's purposes. they could drop some more substantial hints about the general if not specific nature of what they will encounter without ruining anything.

xps: interspersing relevant flashbacks would have been a nice touch, like maybe start the episode with a cold-open flashback to the mountain killing elia martell in the same episode that oberyn recounts it to tyrion. parcel out the history much like good fantasy novels tend to do. big blocks of exposition just don't work for tv.

― ryan, Tuesday, April 29, 2014 12:32 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no way man. one of the great things about the books is the way the not-so-distant past is really... present... with all the characters and informs everything that happens, but you never actually "see" it, you just have to glean it from what the characters say and think. its actually some of the most skilled writing GRRM does. rhaegar targayen is the best character in the series and you barely know anything about him besides occasional asides and skimpy details. flashbacks would wreck that.

xpost damn it! now i'm so tempted to go read the wikipedia entry

Isn't there an intra-Kingsguard fight scene flashback somewhere in the books? I forget how it was set up...maybe a dream or vision.