3. Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones


  • My roommate and I finally went and rented the whole first season back during the spring. Sat down and marathoned the show and absolutely loved it. Since then I have watched the entire second season as well. I bought and read books 1-5 this summer. I am a bit depressed now looking at Martin's track record for writing and releasing previous novels. I've been trying to find anything to occupy my time book wise since I finished Dance with Dragons.

    I think they did a fantastic job translating the books to a tv series. I don't think I've ever seen it done so well, right down to the dialogue! Granted there are some scenes that change things a bit, and it kind of irks me, but it isn't bad. Watching the second season, I kept leaning over and telling one of my roommates, who hasn't read the books, "it doesn't happen like that in the book." Hahah.

    Arandor, I completely agree on Jamie Lannister! I thought the character was a total ass and hated him. Then I got to reading his POV and have come to a complete change of heart. He is also one of my favorites now. I've found that happens a lot. I get to liking a character, then suddenly I get a new point of view. I always dread starting to read the new characters POV, completely uninterested…then I get to reading more and more and before I know it I'm hooked on another POV/plotline. All with the exception of Cersei...getting her point of view did nothing to change my mind, in fact, it made it worse. Hate that b****.


  • I was a bit bummed out to see some of the Narf NPC's names came from the novels once I started reading them.

    Especially the Onion Knight–one of my favorite GT characters and one of my least favorite Narf NPC's (atm). 🙂


  • I have enjoyed the TV series and jsut finished A Dance of Dragons.

    Winds of Winter cannot come soon enough in my opinion.

    The TV series has been very good, yet it missed alot of details and cut a few stories short (Arya notably).

    Yet the one thing that i really hated about the TV series was WHY THE HELL DID THE DRAGONS GET STOLEN!! And why did they kill the thirteen! WHY?! There was no need for it!

  • M
    Legion

    Spoiler Alert: (sort of)

    I look forward to seeing how hard my wife throws the remote through the TV during the Red Wedding. :twisted:

  • ?

    Season 2 was good aswell. I love The Hound. "If anyone dies with a clean blade, I'll whip his corpse!"
    That scene in the tavern with The Hound and Bronn was one of my favorites. Seeing this show and the characters is very inspiring, I wish Narfell could be as mature as this show.
    "Killings the sweetest thing there is.."


  • Dinklage is stealing the show, though all the Lannisters are well cast. And I think this has been some of Sean Bean's best work.

    Having read the books, I fear the pace of the series will rob fans of the depth of the characters involved, and the agony the reader goes through watching as their favorites are torn down (or apart, as the case may be). But… the same can be said of every great literary fiction brought to the small or big screen.

    For those that haven't read the books, they are very good, though the author's reluctance at continuing the story is frustrating. However, for those of you that are fans of the concept of "gray areas" in character alignment will love how he takes every established character and turns them on their heads so you never really know who you should be rooting for.


  • I like Mord too. 🙂


  • I've read all the books and think they've done a great job so far. I like the actors in it, they represent the characters good. I've actually begun to like more characters I never did in the books while watching the show.

    As for Joffrey, yeah, maybe not as tall but that kid, I want to punch him in the face much like the books. Also, the Mountain is a great cast when he loses the jousting and gets off his horse, gets his sword and cuts it head off. I just sort of blinked and then laughed, seemed so Mountain like.

  • ICC

    you see Rickon briefly in the first episode (he is the little sitting on a fence or something like that, laughing at Bran when Bran misses hiss hot while practicing the bow, and again when the Starks are all lined up to recieve King Robert)
    Rob mentions Rickon by name in the 2nd episode when he is talking to Caetlyn about how she needs to rest and how Rickon needs her( "Rickon needs you. he's only six, he doesnt know whats happening, he clutches my leg all the time crying") right before he runs off to fight the fire and Summer rips out the throat of the assassin.
    You are right though they don't mention Shaggydog at all (or even see him) until that final episode


  • I swear that they never showed nor spoke of the youngest Stark kid, Rickon, until the last episode in the crypt. Nor did "shaggy dog" (my favorite name of them all) get any mention until then. Did I miss him in earlier scenes?

    I'm halfway through the first book, so I am reading this carefully.

    cant put it down!


  • SPOILER WARNING!!!!1!

    I like how the TV show lets us all make the same assumptions of Jamie Lannister, the Kingslayer, as characters in the show do. Unforgivable, his acts may seem, but by the time I got to hear his side of things in the third book, I started to have a change of heart. He's one of my favorites now.

    I hope the viewers get to experience that as well.

    My only complaint so far is the noticeable lack of any epic battle scenes. Many of the major characters are caught up in a war that we don't even get to see. I get the reasoning, Battle Scenes are expensive and this show would be expensive enough given the filming locations. I'll bet the loss of Sean Bean doesn't hurt the budget, though.

    I just hope that in season two, since they should be able to reuse a lot of costumes and set pieces, and not pay Sean Bean, that we'll get to see some time and money put into a couple battle sequences.


  • @8c5d34e3b4:

    1. The casting for Joffery…while the kid does a good job of pulling off the total ass joffery is, he jsut seems too young almost and too short compared to the other kids he is around (he is supposed to be a tall kid in the books). From what i understand, the origional casting for joffery was supposed to be the kid playing King Arthur in the Camelot series, but he left GoT because he got offered the lead in Camelot.

    Are you sure about that? I read that the King Arthur dude was actually cast in the Pilot episode as Ser Waymar Royce, the lordling dude that gets slain in the prologue. However, a lot of the roles were recast for the Pilot HBO aired, including his role. Either way, I don't like that guy.

    Love the books and the TV show, though. Fail decision on his part to leave GoT for Camelot, if true. I lost interest in that as soon as GoT started.


  • So good. I plan on buying all the books and absorbing them all, all I say! Sadly since I have not yet read them I cannot compare between the series and the books. But I feel that it was an awesome show, I never felt lost and I never got that "wtf were they thinking?" feeling.

  • L

    I'm a big fan of the show so far.

  • ICC

    For Robert the height thing was more a personal preference issue…it would have been a bigger deal had they actually shown any flashback scenes of the battle at the Trident or any other point during his rebellion (though they could of gotte na different actor then to play the "younger " Robert). As fer Joffery's it just looks odd (to me anyway) to see him being shorter than Sansa

    However, Mark Addy does a great job as Robert, and i am loving the job Peter Dinklage is doing as Tyrion (one of the book's most fascinating characters)


  • Regarding actors' height: there's not much that can be done about that. Sometimes you find the perfect actor for the role, and… they're just not the height you want. So you make do. Unless their height is critical to their character, at which point you adjust the camera angle of every scene they're in to make them appear taller, or you downplay or write out that aspect of the character.

  • A

    HBO did a great job moving the book to the screen. There were a few minor changes, but they did not detract from the overall experience. I hope they are planning on covering the whole series of books.

    …and for those that do not know...

    "A Dance with Dragons" is scheduled for release on July12th.


  • Some of the scenes they added for TV worked, I thought. I liked the Robert/Cersei conversation mid-season, and I saw the point for including at least one of the Littlefinger/Varys scenes in the throne room (the second just rehashed the first). I'm of two minds about the Renly/Loras scene, since it has thematically more to do with the second book. Theon's scenes were probably the most unnecessary, since they both had nothing at all to do with his arc this season and had him mostly acting opposite a character who wasn't being developed either.

    I agree on the weirdness with Joffrey's height, but the casting was mostly spot on. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau brought a depth to Jaime Lannister that I don't think came across in the first book, but it's been a while since I read it. Same with Lena Headey as Cersei.

    The thing that bothered me the most early on was how poorly the time and scope of the world were conveyed. This hurt the Dothraki a lot, but also given how quickly Catelyn could run up and down the King's Road on the show, it seems silly that Robb would have any trouble marching to King's Landing.

    I'm happy that the last three or four episodes actually started to feel like real episodes complete with themes and arcs rather than "here's as much stuff as we can fit into an hour" editing of the first few episodes.