Game of Thrones [2]

Bluebottle wrote:This actually, surprisingly, looks rather interesting.



http://www.internetremembers.com/

I think that what's been going on is the same thing that happened with Lord of the Rings and especially The Hobbit.  There are people who care passionately about the books and are purists about them, and those who aren't.  The purists are upset.

I myself don't see a reason to be a purist about GRRM's exact storylines because he obviously felt he could take any storyline any number of ways.  Tolkien on the other hand felt that through many rewrites and roadblocks, etc, he was getting closer to a platonic ideal of what his story should be.  For this reason I'm protective of Tolkien's story and characters, not at all protective of GRRM's storyline but somewhat protective of the interesting characters.

D&D (by which I mean their writer's room as well) have done well by the main story lines and characters, but messed some things up like the sand snakes, and not allowing Jaime show what a brilliant political tactician he is in the Riverlands, etc.  But I don't care a fig for example that Tyrion and Varys both show up together in Maureen, because that story was so boring in the books it needed something.  Just like I wasn't upset when Gollum had the split personality dialogue in LotR before they met Faramir, because nothing was really happening there in the books up to that point, and it was in the proper spirit and done well.

So go ahead and criticize the things that are not done well, but the blanket declarations that it's all trash is rather annoying.  As the show goes on of course it will diverge more from the books (like most of season 5) and the purists will howl, but so be it.

Obviously I can't agree with that, as that would mean me accepting D&D "have done well by the main story lines and characters", while getting minor things wrong, which to me is about as far away from my view of this show as you probably can get. For the last season, and the current one, D&D has to my mind gotten just about everything wrong. From telling the story George wanted to tell, to telling that story well. So, as I'm sure you understand I do not agree with you on the way Georges' story is told being completely arbritrary to the quality of the product.

Now, I agree some of my statements might have been blanket in nature. And while I've already pointed out those statements weren't meant alltogether seriously, it does reflect my view of the show. Because to my mind it has issues all across the board when it comes to writing and storytelling. And to my mind it's not about whether or not someone might call you a purist. Because this show certainly has enough issues being judged on its own merits for that to actually play a decisive role. True, I will never accept the way the show tells Georges story, because every time I see it I will see the best fantasy story of modern times generally mangled and distorted, with little care, and at times directly butchered. But if I didn't have this relationship with the books, I still wouldn't enjoy this show. It would at best be a guilty pleasure. Because it really is poor.

I'd also like to remind you that I was this shows' biggest fan on this forum up until season 5. (And I read the books after season 3.)

18 months ago I was cheerleading for the show to basically rewrite most of AFFC/ADWD and was talking about how I thought the show had a chance to end up being decidedly better than its source material. My dislike of S5 and S6 are not because they are different from the book. Sometimes the book provides an obvious example of how things could have been done better, but there are a lot of points on which I'm not satisfied with either the recent books or the recent seasons of the show. There are some redeeming elements in both, but to my surprise I find myself appreciating AFFC/ADWD more now than I did before.

Adaptations from books are, of course, as old as moving pictures. But HBO’s blockbuster TV adaptation, Game of Thrones, is possibly something the world has never quite seen before. Created by David Benioff and Dan Weiss, Game of Thrones is presented as an adaptation of the bestselling A Song of Ice and Fire book series by American writer George R. R. Martin. One might therefore expect that the show’s actors would have some familiarity with the original source material. However, when asked if they had read Martin’s novels, many gave the surprising answer: “No, because I don’t want to know about my character too much ahead.”

I don't get how one could be surprised by this unless you've never paid attention to a screen adaptation before, or unless they took all the "oh, we love the books so much" propaganda that typically surrounds adaptations before they begin at face value. The idea that this is "possibly something the world has never quite seen before" is absurd.

Well, technically, it is literally something the world has never seen before.

Speaking of the show, do you think there will be a list of characters that simply fall by the wayside, never to be seen again and with their eventual fates unexplained forever? 

People like:

Benjen Stark, Arya's wolf Summer, Blacksmith boy what's-his-face, etc.

Yeah, they've dropped some interesting characters, and killed some they shouldn't have.

The characters they've done well with are holdovers from the beginning: Cersei, Tywin was great, Tyrion, Varys, etc. But they have definitely begun to wander off base in season 5. I myself just don't feel it's so horrible as some people feel.

Eldorion wrote:18 months ago I was cheerleading for the show to basically rewrite most of AFFC/ADWD and was talking about how I thought the show had a chance to end up being decidedly better than its source material. My dislike of S5 and S6 are not because they are different from the book. Sometimes the book provides an obvious example of how things could have been done better, but there are a lot of points on which I'm not satisfied with either the recent books or the recent seasons of the show. There are some redeeming elements in both, but to my surprise I find myself appreciating AFFC/ADWD more now than I did before.

Oh, obviously. I'm certainly not criticizing changes in themselves, rather their quality, which for the most part comes down to critisizing the quality of the writing, only in the relief of having the story of the books in the background.

As for quality I don't think there is much of a comparison to be made. There are probably ways to improve on aFfCs and aDwDs, but I'm stymied to find a single one in season 5.

Who or what has been stymying you?

D&D's writing, mostly.

Fair enough!

More the approval of sub-par scripts. They aren't writing as much anymore. Wish they had kept Dorne on track, much more interesting in the books, where all the characters had depth. How could they have done so well with Oberyn and not pass on his style to the rest of Dorne? If anything Oberyn on screen was better than in the books...

Well, they were the (Emmy awarded) writing team behind..

halfwise wrote:More the approval of sub-par scripts.  They aren't writing as much anymore.

Was there something about this in the behind-the-scenes stuff? The number of episodes they've written per season has remained pretty stable. I'm sure the other people in the writers room have input into the overall story including stuff in the D&D-scripted episodes, and I'm sure D&D themselves take an active hand in editing the episodes by other people, but I don't detect a trend of change.

S1: 8 episodes
S2: 6 episodes
S3: 7 episodes
S4: 7 episodes
S5: 7 episodes
S6: 4/5 that we know about so far

Source

I was just going off what I had noticed incidentally and the typical trend for shows like this for the first season to be written mainly by the creators who step back as time goes on. Apparently I was wrong.

Apparently the next episode is a few minutes longer then the others, so that can only mean something good happens.

umm.....ah....

Not quite what the title makes it sound.

http://nypost.com/2016/05/13/even-game-of-thrones-writers-cant-take-the-show-seriously-anymore/

As long as Dianna Rigg is in play the show will always have its delights. I especially like the Dothraki bit.

The Kit Harrington one: