[BOOK SPOILERS] Night's Watch Oath Abridged?!

[Bronn Stone]

Keeping the lines would have not have used more time (5 seconds top) and would have kept the fanboys happy. Plus the lines are cool and well written, so it's not like they removed it because it sounded stupid. So why did they?

You weren't there. What if they filmed it both ways and it was unanimous that the longer bit worked less well? If they tried it and saw it didn't work, I'd give them that leeway. Sounds like you wouldn't.

[Abaddon]

You weren't there. What if they filmed it both ways and it was unanimous that the longer bit worked less well? If they tried it and saw it didn't work, I'd give them that leeway. Sounds like you wouldn't.

Exactly. What works well on the written page doesn't always work well when spoken aloud. The scene is already pretty long, I think it probably dragged with the extra lines. I doubt they trimmed it to save time for something else, it was probably just a matter of feeling an abridged version worked better.

[The Knight of Grasses]

Maybe I'm the only one, but I actually liked the fact that Sam and Jon weren't completely in unison while they were saying the oath. Jon seemed like he was in perfect cadence - rhythmic and flawless in his delivery, while Sam had a couple of clumsy moments, stumbling with the words and falling a bit behind. I think it reflected their characters very well.

I suppose it could have had a more epic feel, but I thought it was a well done scene. The embraces between brothers at the end were nice to see.

As for shortening the speech...meh. I don't care. I didn't even realize they'd shortened it until I saw this thread. They might just have wanted to keep it a bit shorter to avoid droning on for another ten seconds. People generally have short attention spans for that kind of thing on television. I didn't think it was a big loss.

Also, if you look really close, you can see Ros peeking out of the mouth of the weirwood tree.

[aimlessgun]

Dismissing those people's opinions as that they are just trying to be cool is every bit as bad as someone that says that people that don't like things are unenlightened, or saying that criticism is just an attempt to be cool. No fruitful thing will ever come out of that.

As for obsessing, that's actually a pretty well suited word for choosing to take part in discussions about some words being missing from a long vow. I can't know what experiences other people have with adaptations from books and I've only seen a fraction of what's been done but this is one of the most faithful adaptations I've ever seen, all things considered, and most adaptations take far more liberties with the source material. If some people expected the show to be able to match the books then I'm inclined to think they had extremely unrealistic expectations. So in my opinion we've pretty much for the first time gotten people willing to put in a lot of money and effort into creating a high quality fantasy series and trying to stay pretty faithful to the books, and we still have plenty of fans spending the majority of their posting on discussing what's bad about it.

People are free to have whatever opinions they like and people will honestly think differently about things. I think the people focusing mainly on the positives will generate more enjoyment for themselves than the ones focusing on the negatives so I'm trying to do the former.

Well, I can't speak for everyone, but for me, saying "I think they should not have abridged the oath" means simply that, and nothing more. It says nothing about how I view the show as a whole, it says nothing about how appreciative I am about it, and it says nothing about my overall stance on adaptations.

So I hope people remember not to extract more meaning from words than exist. Thinking they made a mistake with the oath does not impede me from thinking that the series as a whole is fantastic and being grateful it exists.

I think maybe people who jump on 'whiners' in a very negative way amalgate all the complaints they see and create in their head this 'whiners' group which just whines about everything. But it is a totally fictional creation. Some people dislike certain things, other people dislike other, specific things, but nobody spends all their time whining about everything in the show. I understand that on forums there's no way to remember "hey aimlessgun mostly says positive things about the show and said in that one thread that overall he thinks it is amazing", but if you see someone complain I think it's better to assume they love the show as a whole and are just voicing a personal dislike of a certain small part :)

Sorry for the rant, that got long.

[gogorath]

I think it could have had more impact if it were both a) darker and B) interspersed with the rest of the cadets saying in back in the yard at Castle Black. Possibly other images -- they used the Heart Tree, but also the Wall, Ghost, the woods, anything applicable to the words and moment.

Just two voices had the opposite effect (though not necessarily bad) of what I expected/experienced it when I read it in the book. It's one of my favorite moments in the book.

[Vestrit]

Also, if you look really close, you can see Ros peeking out of the mouth of the weirwood tree.

:lol:

Nice work

[MattTaz]

I think a lot of the english actors would have pissed themselves laughing if they had to say, i am the

horn that wakes the sleepers :D