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Sell me on a Game of Thrones TV Show

Started by Skynet, May 16, 2013, 08:38:47 PM

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Skynet

Out of curiosity and seeing it constantly mentioned in all my social circles, I want to get into this show.  Unfortunately, it appears that it's the kind of show one needs to watch from the beginning to 'get.'

I can't find free online episodes on official sites, and I will not resort to torrents and the like.  I have not read the book series, although I've heard that it's not a prerequisite for enjoying the show.

From what I've gathered from 2-3 episodes:

1. There's this group of kids who are traveling somewhere to find someone, but got captured by knights and held with a bunch of prisoners.

2. A teenage, blond-haired king with sadistic tendencies is in charge of a country, and family and advisers are worried about his conduct.

3. This woman with white hair and from a foreign land infiltrated this abandoned tower to find some baby dragons.  She plans on using them in war.

4. An undead army in a frozen wasteland is advancing upon civilization, and will appear in the next season.

Fill in the blanks.  "If you like _______, then you'd like A Game of Thrones."  Tell me what appeals to you about the show and why it's good.

Remiel

Skynet, I'm not going to try to "sell" you on GoT.  As is clearly evidenced in the Homestuck thread on this sub-forum, every individual has unique interests and tastes.   However, for me, it is an excellent, excellent storytelling endeavor.  Probably the highest compliment I can give it is that at the end of the hour, when the credits roll, it leaves me desperately craving more, so much so that it is a disappointment to know that I will have to wait another week until the next installment.   That's an assertion I can make about very, very few television programs.

But yes, if you haven't read the books, and you haven't seen season one, you'll most definitely be completely lost.    I recommend waiting until it comes out on boxed set and then renting / buying on DVD.

Cyrano Johnson

Kudos to you for not resorting to Torrents!

I will say that, as someone who hasn't seen all the episodes from the beginning (nor read all, or in fact any, of the books) I think it's a damned fine series and worth watching at whatever point you jump in. If you like historical drama -- things like Rome, or Deadwood -- you will like Game of Thrones. Martin's innovation in his approach to fantasy material is, FWICT, that he approaches it largely like historical drama, with lots of different, well fleshed-out actors on the stage, each their own admixture of good and evil and indifferent, each with their own priorities and foibles and agendas, fighting for the soul of society while certain disaster for all looms on the horizon. [Not too much unlike the world of late Republican Rome in many ways... or our present world, arguably. :( ]

That at any rate is how the series plays on screen. And may I say, it's also a boon beyond imagining to see Peter Dinklage get to sink his teeth into an epic, nigh-Shakespearean role worthy of his talents*. Tyrion Lannister is, thanks to that show, one of my favourite characters of all time. So much so that I'm tempted to break my long drought of fantasy reading and go out and buy the books, in which he's surely fleshed out far more.

(*Oh yeah. If you like Shakespeare, especially the history plays or the tragedies, you'll like Game of Thrones. For much the same reasons as I give above. Although the series is more ambiguous about good- and bad-guy-ness than the Bard typically is.)
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Skynet

#3
You have me intrigued, Cyrano Johnson!

I remember hearing people speak of it fondly for daring to take the risky direction of having a fantasy realm with dragons and the like, but no 'magic.'

There is one concern I have: the sex.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no prude.  But I've heard in Season 2 that the sex starts getting put into the show in unnecessary ways, and it kind of turns me off when it's obvious shows/movies/books are going for cheap titillation.  And there was one scene I saw with the king and two prostitutes which made me feel really uncomfortable, and I worried that this wouldn't be the only incident in the show.

Cyrano Johnson

I completely see where you're coming from in re: the sexual content. If there's a flaw to the show, it's that the producers are maybe a bit too invested sometimes in signalling that this ain't your grandfather's airy-fairy fantasy bullshit, the proof of which is often apparently supposed to be "Look: whores! You won't see that in LOTR!" But for me it's been a relatively minor annoyance which is offset by the many good things on offer.
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Chris Brady

Actually, one thing you need to know about G.R.R. Martin's writing is that he looks at 'the big picture'.  He doesn't care about the individual characters like a lot authors, he's more about how they affect the world around them.  The politics, the deaths, the sheer turmoil and how it shapes Westeros.

I'm more of a character person, so I dislike that style of writing, but if you're OK with all of that, I recommend looking into it.
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Shjade

Quote from: Skynet on May 16, 2013, 10:34:40 PM
There is one concern I have: the sex.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no prude.  But I've heard in Season 2 that the sex starts getting put into the show in unnecessary ways, and it kind of turns me off when it's obvious shows/movies/books are going for cheap titillation.  And there was one scene I saw with the kind and two prostitutes which made me feel really uncomfortable, and I worried that this wouldn't be the only incident in the show.

To be honest, I think it was being pushed into the show in unnecessary ways even in the first season.

I call it the HBO effect.
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Polymorph

Quote from: Skynet on May 16, 2013, 10:34:40 PM

I remember hearing people speak of it fondly for daring to take the risky direction of having a fantasy realm with dragons and the like, but no 'magic.'



There is magic in the game of thrones world, but it is extremely rare and only a very small handful of people can wield it and this they do sparingly. Having read the books before I watched the series it is a mixed blessing. I love the way the world and characters have been brought to life, but knowing the fate of some characters beforehand is downside.

Shjade

Yeah, magic pops up here and there (maybe 1 or 2 instances in an entire book), and it's pretty good that it's so rare since it's usually plot-breakingly overpowered when it does appear. Things would quickly spiral out of control if the magic-users just threw their weight around all the time. Hell, the series could've ended in just two books if what's her face, the fire seductress lady, just said, "Fuck it," and table-flipped the whole country.
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Beorning

Heh. Skynet, I won't try to sell you on that show, either... Personally, I think it's good, but it doesn't do the books justice.  ;D

Still, if you want to watch, you really need to start at the beginning - starting with season 2 or 3 is really like starting to watch Lord of The Rings in the middle. Maybe you could invest in DVDs? Both season 1 and 2 have already been published in this format...

Aiden

The books have a lot of sex in them, if anything, the show does not have as much as the books

Beorning

Yeah. Let's be frank: you can't really blame HBO for it. G.R.R. Martin himself puts a lot of focus on it - for instance, Asha (AKA Yara) Greyjoy like to sleep around ;)

Shjade

It's not just the quantity, it's the gratuity. The maester dumping exposition on the whore they added to the TV series, for instance. Things like that. It's not that the books were prudish by comparison or anything, I just found myself thinking, "So when are we going to get back to the show?" whenever they got into the sexytimes on the HBO series.
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Cyrano Johnson

Eh, one should perhaps not go overboard. It's not always gratuitous and more than occasionally is legitimately there to serve the plot.
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Formless

I was addicted to the books ever since 2003.

Imagine how happy I was to see how he envisioned their accents was like?

Remiel

Quote from: Aiden on May 19, 2013, 03:53:15 PM
The books have a lot of sex in them, if anything, the show does not have as much as the books

Not entirely.  The relationship between Renly Baratheon and Loras Tyrell, for example, was only hinted at in the books, while the show featured them in bed together for at least two scenes.

Beorning

True, but the show has put a bit more focus on Renly and the Tyrells in general. The current season has scenes with Margaery (not involving sex) that were not in the books...

Aiden

Well I think it is unfair to expect the books to run verbatim, I am going back to rewatch the first 2 seasons. I watched them before reading the books, currently started book 4.

Haven't touched season 3 yet, will get around to it once I finish book 5

Formless

Actually some of the scenes in the first scenes were slightly altered from the first book as well.

I understand alteration. But the addition or deletion of scenes is beyond me.

Cyrano Johnson

Well, scenes would have to be deleted because it wouldn't be feasible to include every single scene in a book on-screen; even an HBO series has time and resource constraints. Addition of scenes in adaptations often happens as an attempt to bring in or summarize scenes or themes in the material that one isn't able to do in full detail; it's not easy to pull off and the results are obviously variable. (Sometimes the scenes are actually attempts to add elements into the work that weren't there, which to my mind is when the additions are least excusable. Most of the worst moments in the LOTR film trilogy, for instance, are things that Peter Jackson added into the story instead of just adapting.)
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Shjade

Quote from: Formless on May 21, 2013, 11:43:15 AM
Actually some of the scenes in the first scenes were slightly altered from the first book as well.

I understand alteration. But the addition or deletion of scenes is beyond me.

And some of their choices for alteration don't make a lot of sense either. Why is Littlefinger the one to tell Sandor's story, for instance? What kind of sense does that make? Doesn't that have relatively large impact on the Sandor/Sansa relationship? Why would they do that?
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meikle

Quote from: formlessI understand alteration. But the addition or deletion of scenes is beyond me.
Never going to understand why people can't accept two works (one inspired by the other) as their own works instead of demanding that they be identical.

A lot of what changes in the transition from book to screen comes from the fact that the books give us insight into the characters that couldn't really be duplicated except by voiceover (and seriously, who could want that?)
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Shjade

You'd be surprised by how much insight can be gained just by observing a character's thought process from the outside followed by their actions, I think, meikle. You just have to trust your audience will put in the effort on their side to glean that information without having it spoon fed to them via exposition.

Unfortunately, trusting their audience isn't something TV/movie producers do anymore, at least not the majority.
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Chris Brady

Quote from: Shjade on May 21, 2013, 01:57:20 PM
You'd be surprised by how much insight can be gained just by observing a character's thought process from the outside followed by their actions, I think, meikle. You just have to trust your audience will put in the effort on their side to glean that information without having it spoon fed to them via exposition.

Unfortunately, trusting their audience isn't something TV/movie producers do anymore, at least not the majority.
From what I've been told, that's a mostly American thing (And probably Canadian as well.)  There's a lot left unsaid in British TV (I'm told) because they assume that the audience will understand the inference.

Not entirely sure I believe it, but...  That's what I've been told by multiple people, at least one of which was at the last Convention I was at, and talking about Primeval.  Make of it as you will.
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Cyrano Johnson

I'd say it's in fact a noticeable difference between American and British television, though HBO is less guilty than most "mainstream" cable content.
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