40 replies to this topic

[Autopath]

I think the fact that they're splitting book 3 into two seasons will make the book fans feel a little better.

[boojam]

I always view each episode three times, the second time to catch details.
* Neat detail , as in the book, young Drogon spouting steam before flame, that in the book! Plus the VFX people are doing a fabulous job with the dragons , look even better than the creates in Avatar (well just a scooch better).
*Anyone Can Be Killed - It's not the dialog, now everyone knows the presences Dance has , but Maisie Williams is a prodigy. It's all the non verbal stuff ... Dance and Williams hit each facial expression right in the bulls-eye. No wonder Dance was impressed.

Watch a third time to let the narrative flow over me.
First no! I don't find David Petrarca's direction mediocre , he is not be Martin Scorsese , but I find his work here very good.

The Rendly killing scene. Just my opinion, but I don't think George does any better job at it than D&D. To be sure abbreviated and concatenated with other parts of that scene. But seeing the way D&D have had to pound 40 pounds of scenario into a 20 pound drama bag, it works.

All in all , all 5 episodes watched a 2nd or 3rd time look better. Cast and production values are smoothing a lot of problems.
About 40 chapters in now, whew! wish D&D had of asked HBO for two seasons to do CoK, didn't seem in the cards.
All in all after having an excellent first season, this looks like a 'best effort' season, and all five episodes taken together are really better than i thought at first.

[BlackTalon]

Let´s be honest, even in the book there is quite a bit of apparently aimless rambling about done by many characters. I secretly dread Arya´s wandering chapters whenever I do a reread (though I always feel like skipping them would be cheating).

It may not be wholly the fault of the TV show that this season has not quite the feeling the first one had, with Ned´s character arc.

[Raja]

I see what people mean when it comes to it feeling like extended trailers and all that. However I do feel the show is buckling under the pressure of seeing so many different story arcs in about 50 minutes of TV. Something which still nags at me though , everytime I watch the series is that Asha/Yaara is so badly cast. She's just so wrong , I can't imagine her doing the kinda stuff she does in the books in ADWD and the ones before. She just seems timid to me , my minds eye saw someone taller , stronger and more robust. Not sure if I'm the only one who thinks this way though.

I think Ned's gap is filled by Tryion in this one , and the second season in my opinion will probably be judged on how non book fans react to his fate at the blackwater and the whole Theon/Ramsey/Roose arc. I think those two are the major plot points which Weiss and Benioff will try to pay off towards the end

[Ran]

boojam,

Quote

I don't find David Petrarca's direction mediocre

That's referring specifically to the killing scene. Elsewise he's perfectly good.

It's very poor. And now we know why: he shot something completely different, namely a scene almost exactly like what George described, but it didn't work or they didn't like or or something, and so they edited the hell out of what he did to work in the more CGI-fied killing.

So, not mediocre direction, simply good direction butchered in editing because they had no other choice if they wanted to change what happens.

[boojam]

Ran, on 05 May 2012 - 05:57 PM, said:

boojam,



That's referring specifically to the killing scene. Elsewise he's perfectly good.

It's very poor. And now we know why: he shot something completely different, namely a scene almost exactly like what George described, but it didn't work or they didn't like or or something, and so they edited the hell out of what he did to work in the more CGI-fied killing.

So, not mediocre direction, simply good direction butchered in editing because they had no other choice if they wanted to change what happens.

I think it's the dramatic information overload problem they are having this season. Yes from the books I can see a lot that can be cut, and visuals cover a lot , still George has so much narrative dramatic structure that the scene has to shift fast.
I saw that average 2.5 min. per scene per episode, well D&D should be able to relax things next season, I just have this hunch there will indeed be a season 4.

By the by I have now watched that scene 4 times now and I don't find it THAT poor.

Edited by boojam, 05 May 2012 - 07:50 PM.

[Ran]

Mileage varies. I've watched it more times than that and  my opinion has not improved. Medium-close shot Cat, medium-close shot Brienne, Renly dying... no es bueno. And it's such a shame because, other than the fact that the original shadow Petrarca tried to shoot may have been hokey (we don't know if that's why they changed it), he noted he had done the whole killing scene in a single shot. That would have been terrific, but the failure or perceived failure on some part of it led to the editorial chopping up of it.

[Arkash]

It was initially planned to be a sequence shot ? oO

Damn, we so lost to change...

[Ran]

Yep. It's something that HBO.com put up on HBO Go as part of the interactive features -- mistakingly, as it seems, because what we see and what's described is radically different from what went up on screen. Notice how prominent Renly's shadow is up against the wall of the tent, for example -- that's because the original sequence, as shot, was almost word-for-word from the book. Catelyn sees Renly's shadow, and then the shadow starts drawing a sword and she realizes it's not Renly's shadow, and so on. They actully had a stand-in wearing Stannis's armor and one of those Baratheon guard helms with a sword, and they were lighting him so that his shadow was cast up on the wall as well, etc.

So. Yeah. Completely changed, and that's why the final product is, in my opinion, a bit of a mess -- they had to cut up a single sequence to pieces to get it to work with the revised killing.

I'm not saying that wasn't the right choice, BTW -- it's entirely possible that Petrarca's original attempt just didn't work at all for anyone, and what we have on the screen is the best possible way to salvage it. Don't know, probably never will know.

Edited by Ran, 06 May 2012 - 06:46 AM.

[boojam]

Ran, on 06 May 2012 - 06:45 AM, said:

I'm not saying that wasn't the right choice, BTW -- it's entirely possible that Petrarca's original attempt just didn't work at all for anyone, and what we have on the screen is the best possible way to salvage it. Don't know, probably never will know.

D&D appear with a lot of comments about the story and characters.... and they are interviewed sometimes... but I can't remember a single interview in print or video (I maybe wrong) where someone really familiar with the story asks them in depth questions about about the structure of episodes and a season.
George seems to have had more to say about this than them.
I get the impression they are willing to talk , considering the commentary on the DVDs.

(By the by, I have seen interviews with George since season 2 began, but they seem generalities about the adaptation. Have not seen him give many comments about this season even on his blog.)

[BlackTalon]

boojam, on 06 May 2012 - 09:34 AM, said:

Have not seen him give many comments about this season even on his blog.)

I suspect if he was beside himself with joy at how fantastic it was he WOULD have mentioned it ...

I doubt he likes it, I remember one quite prickly answer of his in his blog to a poster who said that his books contained a lot of filler material (travelogues, food descriptions) so he DOES care. How many times has the show changed important points for no bloody reason at all? and for the worse? It must feel a bit like a slap in the face for GRRM.

He will never diss the show openly while it is still running though, nothing good could ever come of that, for no one involved. He is too much of an old fox for that.

Edited by BlackTalon, 07 May 2012 - 07:42 AM.

[boojam]

BlackTalon, on 07 May 2012 - 07:41 AM, said:

I suspect if he was beside himself with joy at how fantastic it was he WOULD have mentioned it ...

I doubt he likes it, I remember one quite prickly answer of his in his blog to a poster who said that his books contained a lot of filler material (travelogues, food descriptions) so he DOES care. How many times has the show changed important points for no bloody reason at all? and for the worse? It must feel a bit like a slap in the face for GRRM.

He will never diss the show openly while it is still running though, nothing good could ever come of that, for no one involved. He is too much of an old fox for that.

I don't think George is super displeased , but Not a Blog has only mentioned Season 3 and the episode he is writing.
But he didn't speak in detail about the show last year either.
However in live interviews this year George has not offered many comments , can't say the interviewers have been asking questions about it.

Don't even know if he visited the set for Season 2?
Lord he seemed to be everywhere else....
I know before season 2 production started he did have input into casting.... and he is still listed as a producer but wonder how much he has been consulted on the teleplays (except for E9).

[Ran]

George didn't have time to visit the set during filming, due to work and earlier commitments.

I don't think you're going to get George to ever bash any aspect of the show, even those aspects that he isn't fond of. That siad, there are things that he has indicated that he wouldn't have done if he was running it... but he's not, that's the deal, and he trusts David and Dan to do their best by it. Which is only fair enough. George gives people who adapt his work a lot of creative license to get the job done in the way they envision it. That includes D&D, whom without with the show would not have made it on to the air.

[Jory]

They had said, once, that they wanted to tell George's story, not their interpretation of his story. Well, that's not really what they're doing, is it? Last I checked, the Littlefinger in the books wasn't an idiot, Catelyn wasn't a homebody, Loras wasn't sitting around planning when Renly died, Renly wasn't "the perfect king ever (because we said he'd be. We say he'd be the perfect king ever, which means he must be. This is how stories work)", Tywin was... different, Cersei wasn't cold and ruthless, Jeyne wasn't Florence Nightingale, Stannis wasn't... well, I don't even want to get into Stannis since he's my favorite character and they are totally throwing under the bus all the sympathetic aspects of his character because they personally don't like him, as Dan Weiss himself has said.

How the hell do you reconcile this abomination of a second season? Why are people trying to defend it? They're changing things that don't need to be changed. Period. You don't need to change the fundamentals of a character to make them fit inside an adaptation. This is what I don't understand. Why are they changing this stuff? I've read fan-fiction (which I hate) that's better than some of this stuff.

Edited by Jory, 10 May 2012 - 11:53 AM.

[boojam]

Jory, on 10 May 2012 - 11:52 AM, said:

How the hell do you reconcile this abomination of a second season? Why are people trying to defend it?

Have you tried brooding about it?

[Francis Buck]

Jory, on 10 May 2012 - 11:52 AM, said:

They had said, once, that they wanted to tell George's story, not their interpretation of his story.

I think they said the exact opposite of that. They basically said they're adapting A Song of Ice and Fire, not each individual book down to the slightest of details. If you think GRRM's is the best there is and ever can be, and that everything little thing should be perfectly translated onto the screen as it's written in the books, then that's fine...but you're NOT going to get that with the TV show. Period. And it's not going to change either.

Oh, and people are defending it because, believe it or not, a lot of people actually do accept that it's an adaption and so enjoy it for what it is. Personally, I love when they add or change things, since it means I'm getting brand new material and I don't know what to expect. A perfect translation of the books would be fucking boring.

[Jory]

Why is it so hard for some people to get that virtually nobody sane is asking for every little thing to get translated onto the screen? There is a pretty big difference between Syrio not being bald (a little thing) and Littlefinger going from being a mastermind manipulator to a guy we only think is a good manipulator because the show tells us he is (a big thing). Nobody, and I mean virtually nobody, is complaining about how they aren't transcribing "each individual book down to the slightest of details". If you think completely changing the dynamics of a character (Cat, Littlefinger, Margarey) is a very slight change, then I don't honestly know what to tell you when the books really are all about the characters.

Edited by Jory, 10 May 2012 - 07:49 PM.

[Francis Buck]

Jory, on 10 May 2012 - 07:48 PM, said:

Why is it so hard for some people to get that virtually nobody sane is asking for every little thing to get translated onto the screen? There is a pretty big difference between Syrio not being bald (a little thing) and Littlefinger going from being a mastermind manipulator to a guy we only think is a good manipulator because the show tells us he is (a big thing). Nobody, and I mean virtually nobody, is complaining about how they aren't transcribing "each individual book down to the slightest of details". If you think completely changing the dynamics of a character (Cat, Littlefinger, Margarey) is a very slight change, then I don't honestly know what to tell you when the books really are all about the characters.

The thing is, to me, those are largely insignificant changes in the grand scheme of things. In my opinion, a truly radical change is Joffrey becoming kind and thoughtful, or Arya becoming feminine and romantic, or Ned becoming morally ambiguous and cunning. The thing with a lot of these changes is that they're necessary for people who don't read the books, because there's no way to see inside the character's heads. So things that seem obvious or overstated to a reader are necessary information to a viewer. And Littlefinger being caught off-guard once in the entire series does not instantly make him an idiot. Catelyn saying openly that she wants to go home and see her children hardly makes her a "homebody". If she was a homebody she'd go home. A homebody doesn't take a politically sensitive letter from Winterfell to King's Landing, or arrest an important noble, or go with her son on a military campaign, or go treat with Stannis and Renly. It's not like Catelyn is never thinking about her children in the book; she's doing it all the time, the difference here is that we can't see what the characters are thinking, and so the writers need to think of ways to get this across to the audience. You don't think viewers would find it weird and unsympathetic if Catelyn just never mentioned the fact that she has two sons waiting at home without parents, one a cripple and the other a toddler?

As for your other comments...I just can't even get into it. Cersei wasn't cold and ruthless in the books? Really? Really? Have we read the same  series? And I can't imagine what problems you have with Margaery, considering how little she's been in the series and how little insight we have into her thoughts in the books. But the real point here is that, from my perspective (and apparently the majority of the fanbase, judging by the reactions on this forum), these changes simply do not "completely change the dynamics of a character" in the grand scope of things. They're small potatoes. If something happens that you don't like, oh well, move on. Be happy you're actually getting a high-budget, HBO television series with a phenomenal cast and art direction, and that's actually becoming incredibly successful both critically and commercially (we won't even mention the fact that the fucking author of the books himself fully approves of the show and its writers).

Have there been noticeable changes to certain details? Of course. But saying something like "the second season is an abomination" is just a hilariously gross exaggeration, and comes off as being spoiled and nitpicky. Let alone a comment like "Why are people trying to defend it?", which serves only to makes you seem ignorant and totally incapable of realizing that your opinion isn't the only valid one, and that everyone else should hate the show as much as you do.

Anyway, I'm done.

Edited by Francis Buck, 10 May 2012 - 10:40 PM.

[Kaldaur]

They have 500 minutes to tell a 900-page story. Forgive me if I don't flip out when Ser Minor of House Unimportant doesn't get a twenty-minute introspection.

Game of Thrones was designed with one over-arching storyline to it, and that made it easy for a television adaptation.

Clash of Kings was a wandering book, a meandering book, and it was great at that. We had time to wander around the world and meet Davos, watch Tyrion maneuver and scheme, understand Catelyn's motivations, see Robb's deviousness in military strategy, and wonder at Dany's lethargy.

The TV show does not have time for that. Yes, there have been silly scenes like Joffrey in the bedroom with a crossbow and two whores. But they've given me Tyrion in the throne room, the Hound saving Sansa, Brienne the Beauty, Arya and her shattered identity, and dear god, the Blackwater is approaching. All in all, I'll take a slightly disoriented season 2 over anything else on TV. If I want to see Arya become Mouse, I'll read the book. If I want to see the story unfold visually, I'll watch the (wonderful) show.

It's apples and orangutans, guys.

[Namvet4]

Before the Internet; before type written books and manuscripts and before scribes labored by candle light, man told stories. And with each telling the teller imparted his imprint on the tale. The tale told a thousand times was different from the tale told once.  Thank you HBO and all who make this video presentation possible. Another version of the tale....