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

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http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080724135908/watchmen/images/9/96/The_Comedian_Barbequing.jpg

Yeah, come on guys, so many good characters remain: RICKON STARK!

it's pretty clear that the Starks are the good guys, right?

not necessarily. this is really a show/book problem as the show, much like with Tyrion, hasn't really done much with the greyer sides of their characters yet. basically if you have a favourite in this, accept that they've either done or will do evil at some point (hello Arya fans I am talking to you and your glorification of a character the author refers to as a child soldier).

martin's attempt to break free from the bonds of formulaic fantasy drama has effectively become formulaic itself. almost every season we get some horrific denouement whereby a character who was the target of significant development is abruptly rent from the story and, in the case of both ned stark and the red wedding, it happened in the same episode of the respective season (which leaves ample opportunity for yet more destruction next sunday). the case of oberyn resonates because he starts out as this tangential character, comes on the scene and receives a fair amount of attention, and then is ejected rather abruptly. this leaves me wondering what the point of his development was in the first place (maybe this will be further illuminated in later episodes) and why i should care about the development of any other character series wide.

It's been going for four seasons now and you're still watching it so there's your answer?

oberyn is the epitome of a minor character arc. starts tangential, does his tap dance, leaves. this isnt really revolutionary.

yeah, if the only "point" of his development is that he has an enjoyable story at the end of which he dies in an exciting scene why is that deficient for a character in a tv show?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosencrantz_and_Guildenstern

still haven't seen the episode but the moaning here and the lack of general 'wow that was awesome' would seem to indicate they didnt' pull off what is imo the most thrilling part of the books. i'd thought all season they hadn't really done a great job of establishing the viper but the fallout here i think is due more to the show just having completely failed to establish the mountain over the past few years, he isn't necessarily a deeper character in the books but does loom larger and play a more visible role in the action. the show also has always gone for the cheap and sensational be it w/ sex or gore or torture or rape (kinda robs some of the horror of the mountain having raped an old queen when you have a supposedly sympathetic knight rape the next one). not that alot of this stuff isn't in the books just that the show really seems to think they're what's most interesting or necessary to keep the viewer's interest. anyhow yes the red viper is a minor character but he was interesting as this impulsive angry face of this previously unseen major power in the story, he was interesting precisely cuz of this duel and what led up to it and the politics in play, he wasn't interesting cuz he was a charismatic bisexual who hung out in whorehouses and found a kindred spirit in tyrion.

this thread is way too big, is it too weird to start a new one now with just a few episodes left?

there's probably a lot of finale talk on the way and this thread already konks out my computer

Use a bookmark

yeah fair enough

still haven't seen the episode but the moaning here and the lack of general 'wow that was awesome' would seem to indicate they didnt' pull off what is imo the most thrilling part of the books. i'd thought all season they hadn't really done a great job of establishing the viper but the fallout here i think is due more to the show just having completely failed to establish the mountain over the past few years, he isn't necessarily a deeper character in the books but does loom larger and play a more visible role in the action. the show also has always gone for the cheap and sensational be it w/ sex or gore or torture or rape (kinda robs some of the horror of the mountain having raped an old queen when you have a supposedly sympathetic knight rape the next one). not that alot of this stuff isn't in the books just that the show really seems to think they're what's most interesting or necessary to keep the viewer's interest. anyhow yes the red viper is a minor character but he was interesting as this impulsive angry face of this previously unseen major power in the story, he was interesting precisely cuz of this duel and what led up to it and the politics in play, he wasn't interesting cuz he was a charismatic bisexual who hung out in whorehouses and found a kindred spirit in tyrion.

― balls, Monday, June 2, 2014 12:38 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i def agree that the mountain, haha "looms larger" in the books. and i think the guy that they mysteriously recast him with is a bit of a dud. he should be terrifying, not just physically, but as this presence that haunts westeros

yeah i havent caught up w/ this ep yet but to me this scene was absolutely the most brutal and well-executed scene in the books and its consequences are pretty big, so i was hoping they would do it justice like they did (imo) for ned's execution

i mean in the books the mountain is this character that has been looming as this malignant ridiculously powerful (or not powerful, the tyrell's are powerful, strong rather) creature, this useful tool of the lannisters whose death you hope for and wait for nearly as much as joffrey's and the red viper is this character that comes in on a diplomatic mission but is very undiplomatic w/ the lannisters who cannot respond in kind, hungry for justice and amends and set up to put the screws to the lannisters only his impulsiveness and rage and weird sense of pride and honor make him unable to pass up the opportunity to extract revenge on the mountain himself and in the book what's amazing is he nearly does it, in really thrilling fashion, and what slips him up and costs him his life is the same impulse that led him to fight in the first place.

curious what the consequences will be.

it was a heartbreaking scene especially since oberyn was really sympathetic. it's just a shame to lose a charismatic character/actor! the show has a dearth of these outside the lannisters.

there's a certain poetic quality to oberyn's death though. he gets his revenge, essentially. humiliates tywin (momentarily). gets the mountain to confess. but as soon as his revenge is achieved he's metaphorically extinguished by it.

does the fight play out essentially the same in the book?

Pretty much. They may have excluded the pointed fingering of Tywin.

So to speak; you never know with this series.

i think w/the series they've sort of intentionally backgrounded the possible political implications, making the viewer focus on the personal quest for revenge, making us (and tywin!) forget the possible fallout & the fact that oberyn came to the wedding as a consolation prize bc his (iirc?) feared brother didn't bother to show up.

i'm not sure focusing on oberyn's story in this way was a narrative flaw, i mean.

http://i.imgur.com/IObzMd1.png

Sheesh for me the always-looming prospect of a sudden and unexpected death is one of this show's saving graces.

I can't even begin to imagine being bummed out abt the rest of the series cuz the that dude's head got crushed in...I couldn't even remember his name. But that was fun and kind of hilarious. How would you guys feel if that had been Arya Stark? Or Jamie Lanninster or even Samwell?

Not to mention it thins the herd a little. I can't think of a series in recent years that wld benefit more from binge viewing...having to wait a week to get just four or five minutes of one of the main threads at the expense of so many secondary business is a drag.

xpost Oberyn!

Uhm... someone with more recollection of the earlier scenes, how has the show talked about Doran Martell, Oberyn's brother?

yeah i really enjoyed the actor who played the viper's performance, it just didn't really match up w/ my vision of the viper and kinda robbed a great scene of some potential impact. this could just be my impression but in the book he really is this figure the lannisters cannot make a deal w/ despite trying, this pit of coiled rage, and so the duel is this moment where he just loses it and become uncoiled and it nearly wills him over the mountain but it also proves his undoing. alot of times they've made small understandable changes in how characters behave or relate to each other and it's been understandable but it's ended up robbing what should be huge moments down the line of some of their impact. the relationship between tyrion and the whore is the big one of these (though that might just be unavoidable problem of having the book told from various character's perspectives vs omniscient observer w/ a tv show). just watched the fight scene and it's pretty much how it went down in the book but there are wrong notes struck there that hurt it. a diplomat and prince from a region you're desperately trying to build a better relationship w/ dying at the hands of the criminal who raped and murdered a queen from the same region isn't a fantastic turn of events for the lanisters. they did ned's execution well and the red wedding had all the sudden, shocking but foreshadowed brutality of the book but the battle of blackwater was underwhelming and this scene was befitting the kinda comical say whaaaat look tyrion had on his face at the end (like he'd never seen a pizza that large or something). anyhow i'll shut up about the books now. as long as ppl stop pretending grrm is setting up central likeable characters just to brutally knock them off at the end since the viper wasn't remotely a central character and doesn't even show til towards the end of that book anyway. will also add pedro pascal should've been cast as daario.

for me this was the first really good action scene in the show. not sure the mountain looked like much of a fighter but perhaps that's a testament to how fluid pascal was. it was a convincing fight, and nicely showed how small his margin for error was.

feel like the 'this isn't a corny good guys v bad guys thing, this is some proper quasi realistic cloak & dagger shit, anyone can die' does not sit well w/ the show's love of gore-as-spectacle. grrm's made statements lamenting the falseness of using orcs&dark lords to embody evil, insisting that real evil is INSIDE OURSELVES. idk if it comes from his sense of history or what history he knows - there's the noted wars of the roses thing, he says he only reads pop history - but he clearly has some idea that the past was/world is ~brutal~. a courtly high medieval setting is ripe for wheels within wheels plotting, circumstances forcing ppl into actions, & you would think this might lead to some sort sense of proper tragedy, or idea that the evil&brutality is in the game itself, & there are hints at this (daenerys plot might be going this way, tyrion, ygritte & even jaimie seem to extent like good ppl trapped on the bad side, pretty much all the varys scenes are boss) but there's also this reliance on personified evil, ridiculous 2d characters like the boltons & the mountain.

grrm's world is like medieval europe except no one ever dies of sickness or through mundane yet tragic circumstance, but instead every cpl of months there's some highly theatrical & often obscenely violent death as some psychopath utters some supervillain-cold shit as they bump off another hapless - & often extremely high profile - character. there's already a long list of very inventive horrors committed by the 30-40 main characters, & it feels increasingly like those moments are defining the show. as I watched the exciting scene where a member of the nobility gets their brains smushed all over the floor while their killer boasts about raping their sister to death all I could think was "so glad I'm not watching an orc right now, this is a much more profound take on the nature of evil, really rings true"

Doran mentioned only obliquely, just that he was busy, couldn't make it.

as I watched the exciting scene where a member of the nobility gets their brains smushed all over the floor while their killer boasts about raping their sister to death all I could think was "so glad I'm not watching an orc right now, this is a much more profound take on the nature of evil, really rings true"

lol otm

someone should photoshop bruce lee and kareem abdul jabar into that scene.

You guys are gonna LOVE the new HBO series in the works, in which inhabitants of a vaguely medieval world die slowly from untreated gout, improperly sanitized food, and general sense of ennui.

Those moments DO DEFINE the show!

Just not sure how "avoiding some of the fantastical stuff that generally predominates in these movies/books" = claim to natural realism.

ahem, this is the no spoilers thread

Sorry

There's never a down that isn't followed by an up that isn't followed by a down etc.

I want the Hound to be the one who kills the Mountain anyway. Maybe with Arya's help? It would have been nice to see the Viper avenge his family, but I didn't see the crimes he meant to avenge, so it would have less narrative power imo. Killing the scariest monster south of the wall with a new character fighting for old motivations would have been kinda dull I think.

I thought the mountain was dead? actually assumed some legal questions were immanent, haha.

Hound killing the Mountain, followed by Arya killing the Hound would be pretty satisfying altho I will likely have checked out of this show by then cuz I am getting p tired of the introduce character/murder character dynamic while the rest of the plot kinda doesn't move anywhere

I had totally forgotten that the Mountain existed until this season, there are too many minor characters knocking around in this for the show to establish them properly. They didn't even bother with Tommen up until this year.

they didnt... even... bother... with... tommen!!!!

Hound killing the Mountain, followed by Arya killing the Hound

I think this is called a Mexican Braavosi Standoff,

Feel like things are pretty grim for the Lannisters. Tywin was making overtures to Oberyn because he needs support from Dorne for impending (lol) Dany Dragon invasion, though there are probably money/support issues as well which ties into Stannis talking to the Iron Bank (more of this, please?) as well as whatever is happening in the Vale. There is potential fallout all over the place from the head-crushing, but I liked the way the show foregrounded the horror of his woman then the "oh shit how do I get out of this now" from Tyrion but there are a lot of balls in play in the background.

Don't know what in the hell this show is going to do with Jorah, but he can't be *gone*.

Hope I'm not reading too much into it but Neil Marshall directed next week's episode and I'm gonna be kind of bummed if the entire episode is at the Wall a la Blackwater. Too many other things happening.

seemed pretty clear that the mountain is def badly wounded but at least his head isn't squashed. pretty clear winner there

xxpost to MattDC - Yeah as Balls noted earlier, the Mountain doesn't quite translate to the tv show properly - it's not just that he's this crazy super-sized monster who you wouldn't like to fight, but more that he's an utterly malevolent human equivalent of a natural disaster and for a certain part of the country his very existence is a constant source of danger and terror, like the threat of a nuclear incident or something.

The arrival of him and his crew in your part of town is pretty much the worst thing that could happen. This is of course much easier to achieve in the books when his name and his actions are continually being invoked across multiple different POVs precisely to engender this sense of uncontrolled and uncontrollable menace only ever a short way away and to make sure that you don't forget about him at any point.

I mean Tommen isn't an interesting character at all but as the kid who would be king it wouldn't have hurt for the show to have reminded us that he existed every now and again. It doesn't help that every time one of these minor characters reappears they're played by a different actor.

xpost to Windsor - ah, that doesn't come across AT ALL in the show, which is a shame because they could have worked some good setpieces out of it.

Actually I'm pretty interested in Tommen. Also, after a week of wondering what would happen to Robin, it's cool that Littlefinger sees him as a protege and potential king.

It's not so much that the show is underdeveloping these characters so much as that they're letting you to wonder about them, if you care to. Much like you might wonder about faraway places like Dorne or Highgarden or Braavos or whatever. Like ... hmm, I wonder what kind of man Rickon will grow to become? Tommen's development into this perfect Tywin puppet is a very enjoyable development I think.

so much so much

Hoping jora goes to the night's watch. I'm guessing he doesn't know his dad is dead?

how many eps are this season? is the next one last? 9 seems like a weird number