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

Those pics are awesome. I am pretty excited about this show.

ya first one is king's landing, second is winterfell

the casting is looking pretty good too

yeah

Need to re-read but books completely boxed up and unreachable in storage!! ;_;

very excited about hearing my first name spoken repeatedly on tv.

Viserys?

those pictures look pretty rad. i usually like this kind of stuff better when there are actors and, like, vistas, so that's another reason i'm looking forward to the adaptation, although the books were def A Cut Above.

"robert"

nah theon.

I've mostly gotten off the endless/knotted/OTT/hyperinvolved fantasy saga train by now for a variety of reasons -- changed foci of interest in life, etc. -- but I think I'll be good with this to watch as it stands. If anything I think I'm glad that it's been adapted rather than trying to imagine dealing with the whole series; if it delivers as good drama that's all I need, really. I have absolutely no doubt that if I was twenty years younger I would long since have memorized all the books backwards and forwards -- but I grew up when I did and I got, well, Dragonlance.

(My dream extended adaptation wouldn't actually be a fantasy series but would be a hell of a blast -- Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond/Niccolo cycles, set in Renaissance/16th century Europe; if you want hyperinvolved plotting across decades and shades of grey characterization, you want to read these ASAP. And she completed it all before she passed so no regrets a la Jordan.)

yeah i'd say Martin is 90% likely to pull a Jordan at this point given his age/health and how slowly he's written the 5th book of supposedly 7 or 8

I'm less convinced than everyone else that GRRM's gonna die before finishing. There's only 2 more books and he's only 62. Does he have any known health issues aside from the obesity?

Not sure people are totally convinced he's gonna pop his clogs, it's more of a fatalist thing after what happened with RJ

xpost -- I suspect the only reason everyone's all thinking it might happen now is that people joked about it in re: Jordan for years and then he actually DID die and now people are all "MARTIN WE ARE PARANOID ABOUT YOU AND YOUR HEALTH ARGH"

(Or what Number None just said.)

Don't thing i could stomach another writer finishing these ala WOT though

A Song of Ice and Fire's epic conclusion, by Nicholas Sparks.

;_;

i think he can definitely write 2 more books if he sticks to his guns, i'm more worried about him stretching the story out into more than 7 books. he's already done this once, it was originally gonna be 6 books and then A Feast for Crows was sandwiched in later, and it seems like each time he gives a new character a voice, even if they were in the storyline already, it just increases the scope of the whole thing.

i think i'll feel better about it if some of the separated characters' plotlines start to merge again in the next book, there was just so much fracturing of the plot by the end of book 3 and none of that's been resolved yet iirc

Must be kind of cool to have hundreds of thousands of people actively willing you to remain alive though. Maybe that's why he doesn't want to finish?

where was this filmed? i want to guess the winterfell area is scotland but i have no basis for that

maybe i'm just mentally linking The Wall with Hadrian's Wall or something

ireland, scotland and malta iirc

I thought some was in Morocco too but I might be wrong.

I wish I had HBO now. That ice wall looks nice. I cannot even remember half of what I read tho. ;_

part of the reason im pysched for the series is that it makes rereading at least one of the books unnecessary

Every time I read about 'Sansa' my brain automatically starts chanting 'Sansabelt! Sansabelt! Sansabelt!'

I started re-reading this, and I have to say I am worried that the show will sort of overwrite my own visualization of the various locations, kind of like Lord of the Rings did, despite my best efforts to resist it. May skip the show.

LOTR overwrote the visualisations from the Bakshi film for me, so an improvement.

really dig the king's landing/winterfell contrast in those first two pictures. one of my favorite things in these books is (extremely minor spoiler) how homesick sansa gets for winterfell, and how defensive she is about the way it looks--low and grey and, um, stark, in a way she didn't know she loved when she was there, and didn't know was so much like her, cuz she thought she was all king's-landing-glam.

yeah my own visualization of winterfell wasn't quite as cloud-city-ish but i really love how it looks there anyway

i like how both castles have architectural styles that aren't just plucked straight from the medieval europe cliche of a castle

On first impressions, I don't thing it's stark enough? The interiors could win me over but in a general way, isn't constructing round buildings a lot more work and finesse-y than square ones? Doesn't seem in keeping, all the extra labor and attention just to result in some inconveniently round rooms.

I agree with that. I definitely didn't picture it to be some kind of architectural marvel. it's supposed to be ancient.

it's been awhile since i've read these i'm pretty sure bran the builder (i swear i had to look him up!) was famous for his building.

There's nothing particularly fancy about a rounded castle tower, and when they're built that way it's for a reason - they protect against siege weapons differently than a square building would. It's not exactly how I pictured Winterfell either, but it's a valid design decision that doesn't contradict anything we know about the Starks (and yeah, Brandon the Builder gets mentioned a lot... there's supposed to be a great architectural tradition in the North, eg. the Wall)

u r the biggest shithead

also can I just:

"NERRRRRRRD"

tbh this series is probably third only to LOTR and harry potter for fans geeking out over minute details

(eep shithead comment on wrong thread btw)

That's a relief!

lol lol

tamtam i find it ridiculous that you have read these for some reason

that is some ugly composited architecture, the wall one has two horizons ffs

My "nerd" comment 100% meant for tamtam...I kid bc I love

haha thom, as i was composing that post i imagined you coming along and registering disgust with me

First 15 mins
http://www.hbo.com/#/game-of-thrones/about/video/exclusive-preview.html/eNrjcmbO0CzLTEnNd8xLzKksyUx2zs8rSa0oUc-PSYEJBSSmp-ol5qYy5zMXsjGyMXIyMrJJJ5aW5BfkJFbalhSVpgIAXbkXOA==

that is some ugly composited architecture, the wall one has two horizons ffs

Okay, I keep looking but I'm not seeing these two horizons at all.

Already watched much of those 15 minutes through teasers, but still nice to see. Especially inside Winterfell. Was hoping to get the show's title sequence, though.

looked great...looking fwd to the start of this.