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

just wait until you get to season 5 and the army of the dead shows up led by Ned Stark riding Dany's dead dragon

Dude save that for the spoiler thread.

Finally finished season 5. Stannis burning his daughter was really painful, and it's a testament to how cruel the show is to its characters that very soon after everything went to complete shit for and he got what was coming to him. Brienne was able to finally keep her oath, but she's kind of a sad case imo, she's obviously super capable but has the extreme misfortune to often be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Either that or the person she is trying to save doesn't want to be saved at that moment. Missing the candle in the window by seconds was gtfo

Dany's story has gotten more and more interesting, I think it took a while to get into the whole leading-sure-is-hard part where she's at, and for a while she was just going from city to city conquering w this super simplistic and reductive way of going about it. Now she's out hanging w her dragon, which I kind of wonder is a first time thing for her, I'm assuming her actually flying on the dragon in the ep was for the first time.

This show keeps getting more and more grim. It is hard for me to watch any scene w Arya because it may erupt in extreme gore. A silly complaint given the show but I tend to watch out the corner of my eye when things get really brutal. Wouldn't have it any other way, all the violence, all the horrible things that are shown in this show, are all things that happened during the dark ages, not the squeaky clean medieval fantasy that I kind of grew up w in pop culture.

On that note the walk of shame was pretty crazy, and I guess something that really happened. I'm still kind of fuzzy on the whole arrangement, how the fanatics were given power that usurps the king and queen, as manipulative and calculating as Cersei is it seems like she would've foreseen that, but maybe not. Was the entire purpose of granting them power to get rid of her new inlaws? I am guessing in the next season she will just have Franken-Mountain chop all fanatics in half.

Jon Snow bleeding out in the snow, was there really any other end to this guy? Like Stannis he was fixated on the big picture and it allowed his growing enemies to sneak up behind him and stab him in the back (or the front, repeatedly). Not gonna hold out for Franken-Jon-Snow but who knows...

Dany's story has gotten more and more interesting

Haha, this really is the reverse of commonly held opinion. I still like her stuff more than most do though.

http://deadline.com/2015/08/ian-mcshane-max-von-sydow-cast-game-of-thrones-season-6-1201491099/

Not gonna hold out for Franken-Jon-Snow but who knows...

yeah, don't think you can run for Veep if not from Earth

Well I really liked her first season arc but once she became a ruler sitting on her throne for most of it, it was kind of dull. Post-Joffrey and post-Tywin the Lannisters are really floundering in King's Landing. Doing what they do best, killing and disgracing other people not named Lannister, but those tactics are starting to wear thin. Now that the small council is gone (and more or less under Dany's wing now) I think it's a less interesting story than it used to be w those two characters. Not that Jonathan Pryce didn't bring a heck of a lot of great acting to that storyline, but w Dany's story you get the feeling she is at least evolving and learning from her mistakes. Stannis, Jon Snow, even Cersei are all victims of their own obsessions while Dany doesn't exactly know what she wants. Plus she has survived 5 seasons relatively unscathed, so she's really in the best position right now than all of them.

I thought Dany's story was looking up when Tyrion showed up. Would have liked to see the two them plotting world domination, but then Dany gets whisked away to hang out with barbarians again. Seems like stalling, but maybe she'll find a magic amulet or something that will be super important.

can't wait for danys to storm kings landing with her dragons and army of dothraki and eunuchs and jorah "clobberin time" mormon and tyrion.

Basically where Tyrion goes I go.

Jorah Mormont more like Borah Moron aren't I correct?

was wondering how Lovejoy hadn't been in this yet

I think Dany's story has improved too. In most of the earlier seasons her scenes were usually my least favourite but that could partly be to do with my loving the greener and colder settings more than the sandy places (that certainly holds true for Mario videogames).

i'm on s01e03. this is really pretty bad. how is everyone so into this.

it gets a lot better, then worse.

great!

Its p consistently empty/pointless imo

It has boobs and dragons, to answer yr question goole

fun stuff happens eventually

season 1 coheres once you see its finale. it sets things up slowly.

I read it as S03e01 and still agree that it gets better then worse

Season 4 is still my favourite season of any show.

this continues to be bad. i'm sticking with it out of... well i don't really know why

dinklage is a bad actor. nobody is really that great, but he's particularly bad. a lot of these people seem lost in their accents.

it has a teenage dork's idea of debauchery and high politics. scenes where people are subtly threatening each other are excruciating. the sense of a world driven by adult desire is signified by men talking about fucking whores all the time. like, that's your gritty addition to the milieu of howard, moorcock, tolkein, and lieber is... giggly shit about prostitution?

What episode are you at? If you're not remotely interested in any characters by the end of the first season then it's unlikely you'll want to stick with it.

like, that's your gritty addition to the milieu of howard, moorcock, tolkein, and lieber is... giggly shit about prostitution?

p much

also rapes

i've got like 2 left in s1.

may as well get to the "surprise" in the finale

well i already know about that. poor sean.

the politics don't make much sense either, no idea why this realm or throne even exists (just to have a venue for scheming i guess).

GoT is one of those shows that definitely gets better even while it sort of doesn't. It's a frustrating paradox. (Unlike something like Walking Dead, which definitely gets much, much better past the first couple of seasons, but still pretty much stays bad.) So yeah, it never makes a lot of sense, and motivations remain pretty shallow and confused, but I'd say, sure, stick with it. As least the production value stays high, and the show does a good job getting you invested in the political machinations. Until it compulsively undercuts them. Or, er, overcuts them.

season 1 is good but i think it's not as good as S2&3. 4 is good, 5 had some parts i didn't gel w/ but then again there was that massive white walkers episode, which was great.

After reading the books this past summer, I appreciate how well the show captured the good parts as well as how bad the bad parts are.

like, that's your gritty addition to the milieu of howard, moorcock, tolkein, and lieber is... giggly shit about prostitution?

The show shows the subjugation of women and other groups, and even glorifies it at times. But the larger themes of the story are about rising up and taking the mantle of power imo.

the tv show doesn't engage any consistent themes beyond the power struggles that serve as the main drivers of the plot. which are also about as banal as anything in Dallas or Falcon Crest

agree to disagree

xpost Yeah, I agree. It's pretty soapy, but laced with portent and teeming with dragons and giants and magic and zombies.

it's all about power, but it's power divorced from any reality or context. why anyone wants to be king/queen is mostly rooted in revenge fantasies and/or because they simply take it for granted that they *should* be. there's one glaring exception to this, and her plotline gets p ridiculous p quick (and still involves a bunch of birthright nonsense). the show has no moral center or point of view, and when it *does* try to go there (via Danaerys freeing slaves, for ex.) it is very clumsy.

why anyone wants to be king/queen is mostly rooted in revenge fantasies and/or because they simply take it for granted that they *should* be.

The show is very clearly a critique of this!

also this ignores both Bran and Arya's plot lines which have nothing to do with power in the ruling sense, though Arya is definitely out for revenge

also falcon crest and dallas were cool imo

I generally want to defend this show but there's a trend I dislike that's been popular probably since the 90s that's in GoT and Boardwalk Empire (which I've been loving recently): characters going into monologues that are either supposed to be cool or disquieting/sobering or moving. It often feels quite mechanical, forced and a bit cringey.
You often get it in films/tv with criminals who start with "y'see it's like this..." and proceed to confidently rationalise their crimes as if they're justified or just an inescapable part of nature. Similar to Hannibal Lectures.

Glad I haven't read many new mainstream comics in a long time because they tend to be the absolute most excruciating for hip and "profound" dialogue.

The show is very clearly a critique of this!

it's not a critique, it's just plot mechanics. there's no pattern to which people are punished for their ambitions vs which people are rewarded for them. people and their misplaced ambitions are age-old dramatic devices that drive action, and that's what they do on the show.

but the show is not about how, for example, power corrupts (Tolkien), or a contest between order and chaos (Moorcock) etc. It just sets a bunch of windup toys in motion and lets them go, there is no lesson to be drawn from it, no moral, no worldview explored. It's just a parade of boobs murder and the occasional dragon, in endless succession. It's empty.

xp

and before anyone jumps on me accusing me for asking to have my hand held through a story with a lesson at the end that's not what I'm getting at. Ambiguity is fine, contradictions are fine, nuances are fine - but the show isn't interested in underlying themes of the nature of power or evil or good or human institutions or gender or race or economics or anything at all really, it's just a series of titillating setpieces

It just sets a bunch of windup toys in motion and lets them go, there is no lesson to be drawn from it, no moral, no worldview explored. It's just a parade of boobs murder and the occasional dragon, in endless succession. It's empty.

That's kind of the point I think. Nothing really matters since we're all gonna die anyway, either killed by ice zombies or some other way.

Yeah, I think having no moral is this show's worldview. A lot of fucked up shit happens in real life for no reason.

It will still probably have some kind of happy ending though.

I think the show is extremely moral. Goodness *is* good, even if good people often suffer.

I don't think GRRM is interested AT ALL in exploring the worn-out "good vs. evil" tropes of most fantasy stuff. He is definitely interested in human institutions, gender, race, economics, etc. How well he explores those themes is questionable, but they are there.

How well he explores those themes is questionable, but they are there.

yes

imo the books are better at this than the show for what that's worth

seconded

agree that the second and third seasons are the best, if only relatively. the show over all has settled into a rhythm of turgid exposition for 8 or so episodes, leavened with bits of casual violence and nudity, and then 2 episodes of genuine dramatic development. outside of tyrion all the characters have little complexity, just some bare-bones notion of "conflict" which mechanically propels them forward in the narrative. it sucks.