Game of Thrones [SPOILERS]

[schpain]

Re Strong Belwas and friend:

[pants]

I find Jons talk with Mance was an interesting change from the book. In the book I am pretty sure he gave his reasons was he just let out a lot of pent up repressed anger at how he was treated at winterfel being a bastard and never really part of the family. His reasoning in the show was more noble but did not seem like an argument that would hold a ton of weight with Mance.

Yeah, I was kinda disappointed with that change.  I was looking forward to the 'They sat me on the bastard's table' speech - delivered well that would have been really impressive, and shown Jon to be human and not just all high-and-mighty.

[Threash]

Only if people don't read the credits, and for this show you bet your ass they do.  You can't hide an actor, it just doesn't work.

[Viin]

Plus he was shown in the "what happened last time" clips, so he was easily recognized. If they had cut that out I donno that I'd remember who he was for some time.

[Phred]

Maybe I'm wrong but I was expecting that opening scene to turn into where the Slayer got his nickname. Would have fit better than the way it played out imo.

Also with the Mance Raider scenes. I think they've going to have a hard time with book 5 stuff now they seem to have made Mance not a bard anymore.

[schpain]

Plus he was shown in the "what happened last time" clips, so he was easily recognized. If they had cut that out I donno that I'd remember who he was for some time.

also re what threash said.  I didn't say it'd be easy, but yeh, if they highlight him in the "last time in GoT" clips they might as well make him rock up in his white cloak...  Pity though, i really the manticore sequence and it played a bit part in why Dany came to trust him so quickly (also then the mormont v barristan deception piece later on).

[Lucas]

The Tyrion vs Tywin scene was a masterpiece: great acting. Regarding Margaery Tyrell, I hope that the "expanded" TV role will work, but I liked that tidbit with the children. What I liked the most was the hilarious (and straight from the book) exchange between Dany, Kraznys and (the gorgeous  ) Missandei 

[Chimpy]

... they seem to have made Mance not a bard anymore.

I am pretty sure that they panned for a couple seconds to Mance tuning an instrument in the background when Jon was talking to Giantsbane.

[Merusk]

No, revealing Barristan is a writing fail and a disappointing one to hear about it.   Just because the viewers recognize someone doesn't mean the characters living across the sea instantly do.  If anything it makes the viewer more interested because they're in on the deception and trying to figure out the angle the character is taking.  "Wait, why's he calling himself Whitebeard...?"

[Khaldun]

OCD viewers and people who've read the books carefully could probably find that interesting, but I suspect most people watching can barely remember who Dany, Tyrion and Jon are, let alone the zillions of minor characters who aren't quite interchangeable. My wife was struggling to remember Davos and Bronn and she's been paying fairly close attention to the show.

This is the season where they really need to take over the narrative and wrench it away from any semblance of literalist faithfulness to the books. They've done a good job of adapting so far, but now it gets more challenging. Both because this is the last good book in the series, so any seasons that go past Storm will have to disregard much of what's been written, and even because Storm, good as it is, would be fairly shit if it were just directly translated onto the screen. They have to start just ignoring bunches of minor characters, they have to keep established characters going even when Martin sends them off for a whole book (Theon), and maybe even consider writing a few majors out before their time or give them new arcs. They have to ignore overly convoluted minor narrative bits of the kind that Martin is so fond of--he's trying to do both a picaresque (of a grim kind) and an epic and those structures really don't play well together.

[MrHat]

OCD viewers and people who've read the books carefully could probably find that interesting, but I suspect most people watching can barely remember who Dany, Tyrion and Jon are, let alone the zillions of minor characters who aren't quite interchangeable. My wife was struggling to remember Davos and Bronn and she's been paying fairly close attention to the show.

This is the season where they really need to take over the narrative and wrench it away from any semblance of literalist faithfulness to the books. They've done a good job of adapting so far, but now it gets more challenging. Both because this is the last good book in the series, so any seasons that go past Storm will have to disregard much of what's been written, and even because Storm, good as it is, would be fairly shit if it were just directly translated onto the screen. They have to start just ignoring bunches of minor characters, they have to keep established characters going even when Martin sends them off for a whole book (Theon), and maybe even consider writing a few majors out before their time or give them new arcs. They have to ignore overly convoluted minor narrative bits of the kind that Martin is so fond of--he's trying to do both a picaresque (of a grim kind) and an epic and those structures really don't play well together.

Fully agree with you on a lot of that.  The showrunners even stated that they have to start cutting things because they could do a whole show on any of those arcs.

[kaid]

Given how they changed Jons speech to mance and his positive reaction to it kinda makes me curious if the role of the wildlings is going to change. Mance was not so much fighting for the living as he was realizing what was coming and trying to get his people as far south as he could behind the wall. He was not running to fight the others he was running away.

[HaemishM]

[Threash]

Given how they changed Jons speech to mance and his positive reaction to it kinda makes me curious if the role of the wildlings is going to change. Mance was not so much fighting for the living as he was realizing what was coming and trying to get his people as far south as he could behind the wall. He was not running to fight the others he was running away.

Trying to save the wildings = fighting for the living.

[WayAbvPar]

I think you mean moment. Hate everything about it.

[HaemishM]

Not having read what comes after it, I can't be too hard on it. It was an OH SHIT moment for me. I take it book 4 took it into facepalm territory?

[WayAbvPar]

Not especially. I just never liked the character and thought I was done. Apparently not.

[Ironwood]

It was pretty silly.

[grebo]

Not least because that whole line is a dumping ground for

[eldaec]

First episode seemed a bit rushed to me. As for the changes, didn't care about Selmy, liked that they seem to be playing up Littlefinger much earlier, thought both the book and TV version of Jon meeting Mance were equally clichéd and terrible. Liked what they did with Robb and Roose Bolton at Harrenhal, and really liked Margery and Loras in Kings Landing.

In particular bringing the church into the game sooner may help set up the feast of crows material a little better. Both the Kings Landing and Dorne storylines from feast need smoother intros than they had in the books. My guess is they'll play with the timelines so they can get a head start on Feast and save a good portion of Storm for later.

[Threash]

On second watch that was fucking Qyburn that survived harrenhal.

[pants]

On second watch that was fucking Qyburn that survived harrenhal.

I guess that's how he gets in with Bolton etc, and is further confirmation that the Brave Companions won't be in the TV series. 

[Rasix]

Awwww.. no "Kingsssthlayer".   I wanted to see how they pulled off Hoat.  Guess I won't.

[Teleku]

Would have been fun, but they struggle to juggle so many characters with so few episodes to cover things as it is.  The Brave Companions were kind of random and didn't add much to the over all story other than flavor anyways (and the flavor was yet another band of ultra evil psycho murderers in a book filled with ultra evil psycho murderers).  

[Cyrrex]

One of the biggest problems with the books is that they invest so much time into characters who end up being totally useless, or just suddenly die.  Like a whole lot.  Only some of it is really important to the narrative.  It is not surprising that they will cut out an absolute ton of shit in the conversion to television.  I daresay this is one of the rare IPs that actually ends up better on television, because it really needs to be tightened up.

[eldaec]

hmm, maybe.

Also the best thing for a book is not the best thing for TV.

Making it tighter means less room for themes, history, and way more narrative causality. I'm not saying the TV series is doing the wrong thing for the TV series, but it is making decisions on the basis of plot >> all.

[Khaldun]

Actually I think the series has so far been more thematically coherent than the books. In some ways, the books show that their initial theme was: let's find a different template for fantasy than Beowulf/Norse-Germanic epic/LOTR. China Mieville and Philip Pullman have had similar projects, similarly motivated: Mieville turned to something loosely Marxist; Pullman to a trippy combo of atheism and Milton. Martin turned to the War of the Roses and the Hundred Years' War and their trademark admixture of murder, plague, religious war, squalid pointlessness and high chivalric romance. But once he'd gotten beyond, "find a new template" he's sort of meandered around looking for interesting themes to prop the whole thing up. Sometimes he's succeeded, sometimes not so much (in Feast and Dances). The series doesn't have that luxury for all sorts of reasons, but also it's a second take on the original and therefore is a chance to tighten and heighten, which I think they've seized admirably.

Stuff I would expect or hope they'd do in the next two seasons (don't read if you haven't read the books):

[Ruvaldt]

I don't disagree with a lot of that, but remember that Storm of Swords is this season and next season.  Most Feast and Dances material won't start until the season after next.

[Khaldun]

See, I'm thinking that they should start shifting some Feast and Dances material into next season.

[Ruvaldt]

They'll get some of it in at the end of next season, but you're talking about stuff that happened at the very end of Storms happening this season.  That's not going to happen.  I think they're going to stretch it out because they're kind of running out of material.

[Teleku]

I was reading somewhere that the guys running the show feel they are adapting the whole series for TV, rather than each season being a specific book (even though that's how its worked so far).  And so they feel that they can move scenes around chronologically from the way they happened in the books to better tell the story for TV.  While I expect all of this season to be material from Storm, I wouldn't be surprised if they start throwing stuff from Feast into next season.  The season after that they're going to have to intertwine Feast and Dance together from the get go.

[WayAbvPar]

Season 3 Ep 1 Facebook recap

Some funny stuff there.

[Yegolev]

Some funny stuff there.

[Der Helm]

Well, thanks a lot for that. I guess I can't click any spoilers in this thread.

[Rasix]

I highly recommend against clicking any.  Probably 75-90% of the people here watching the show have read the books.