sj4iy Posted January 4, 2015 Share Posted January 4, 2015 Sansa's narrative throughline in season 2 is totally excised, and the awful way her season 3 story was written completely negatived any scraps of character development she had in season 2; especially bizarre given how they take her story next season. If the writers wanted to fast-track the character's development, they needed to increase her character growth in King's Landing, not cut pretty much all of it.Her development during those books is almost all internal and almost impossible to show onscreen. The best character moment for Sansa came from Blackwater in the way that she interacts with Cersei. She's much like Jon Snow- too quiet because of her situation to really impress on the viewer what's going on in her head. I think fast-tracking her storyline beyond that can really help her character with the show audience. But I still don't think that much of her material has been excised- certainly not to make more room for the Lannisters, anyway. As for Arya's material with the Hound, it's debatable how expanded it really is. It lasts longer relative to everything else in the series than the chapters did, but most of the events have some basis in those chapters. A more condensed telling would have cut more stuff.They did have basis, but were expanded upon to provide more back-and-forth with the Hound...same with Tywin.I don't necessarily think they are absolutely beholden to the Lannisters, though. They put Tyrion's fate on hold for 4:09 for an entire episode devoted to the Wall, which did piss some show watchers off. But it needed to be done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack Bauer 24 Posted January 4, 2015 Share Posted January 4, 2015 So Season 5 is going to be the worst according to the book purists? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colonel Green Posted January 4, 2015 Share Posted January 4, 2015 Her development during those books is almost all internal and almost impossible to show onscreen. If that were the problem, why were the most notable excisions things like her escape involvement and the meat of her interactions with Dontos and the Hound, the most active and cinematic activities she did in King's Landing? For that matter, things like portraying her as the village idiot throughout season 3 have nothing to do with her story being "internal". The result of this is that Sansa lagged well behind her book counterpart from the end of season 1 through to the midpoint of season 4, when she suddenly and without any meaningful leadup jumped way ahead of where she is in the books. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sj4iy Posted January 4, 2015 Share Posted January 4, 2015 If that were the problem, why were the most notable excisions things like her escape involvement, the most active and cinematic things she did in King's Landing? For that matter, things like portraying her as the village idiot throughout season 3 have nothing to do with her story being "internal".I think we may fundamentally disagree on Sansa's character- I don't think she's ever been painted as the "village idiot"...she's just been going from "naive young girl" to "politically wise woman". I think they took out her inclusion in the escape attempt to make Joffrey's death more of a surprise. I really didn't see the problem with it, since they had plenty of great story for her afterwards.I don't dislike book Sansa, but she's not one of my favorites, either. I don't think they have portrayed her much differently in the show, really. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sj4iy Posted January 4, 2015 Share Posted January 4, 2015 So Season 5 is going to be the worst according to the book purists?Yes. It will combine the last two books and cut and change a lot of extraneous material. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack Bauer 24 Posted January 4, 2015 Share Posted January 4, 2015 Yes. It will combine the last two books and cut and change a lot of extraneous material.If it's extraneous material being cut why is that bad? Was that sarcasm lol or do you agree? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colonel Green Posted January 4, 2015 Share Posted January 4, 2015 I think we may fundamentally disagree on Sansa's character- I don't think she's ever been painted as the "village idiot"...she's just been going from "naive young girl" to "politically wise woman". I think they took out her inclusion in the escape attempt to make Joffrey's death more of a surprise. I really didn't see the problem with it, since they had plenty of great story for her afterwards. Saying that she expects her family to come to her wedding is not "naive young girl", it's "complete moron"; that's just one of several scenes that season where the punchline is that Sansa is dumb. The actress herself was compelled to retcon these scenes as Sansa playing dumb, but that's clearly not the intent behind how they're written or directed. And it doesn't matter why they removed her inclusion, it matters that they did, and as a consequence Sansa has basically no meaningful character development in King's Landing past season 1. Those things were how she demonstrated her burgeoning capabilities, whereas Sansa in the show accomplishes nothing whatsoever, and then leaps way ahead of the book version with no foundation. I'm glad she's finally allowed to have a story, and I don't doubt it will make things more compelling going forward, but there show did nothing to earn Sansa's apparent transformation, so it's a botch as a character arc. Anyway, this is all OT, so that's the last I'll say on this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sj4iy Posted January 4, 2015 Share Posted January 4, 2015 If it's extraneous material being cut why is that bad? Was that sarcasm lol or do you agree?Not sarcasm. They include a lot of extraneous material that can be excised or changed with little or no impact on the overall story. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oierem Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 If it's extraneous material being cut why is that bad? Was that sarcasm lol or do you agree? He means that ACCORDING TO PURISTS, this is going to be the worst season, obviously. That doesn't mean it's actually going to be the worst! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ummester Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 Not sarcasm. They include a lot of extraneous material that can be excised or changed with little or no impact on the overall story. So removing this stuff is potentially a good thing? Squeezing books 4 & 5 (which are generally regarded as having more filler then the 1st 3 books) is probably the wisest choice for the show to keep the narrative pace up? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sj4iy Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 So removing this stuff is potentially a good thing? Squeezing books 4 & 5 (which are generally regarded as having more filler then the 1st 3 books) is probably the wisest choice for the show to keep the narrative pace up?Yes, it has the potential to be a very good thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sj4iy Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 He means that ACCORDING TO PURISTS, this is going to be the worst season, obviously. That doesn't mean it's actually going to be the worst!Yeah, the book purists will probably hate it, but that doesn't mean it's not for the best. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hiram McDrogon Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 So Season 5 is going to be the worst according to the book purists? For some book purists, Season 1 Episode 1 began terribly because Robert wasn't tall enough, and things have just gotten worse and worse with every episode since then. So yes, for many (rather straw-mannish) book purists, every season is worse solely because it differs from the books more and more with each season. How good the TV show is in and of itself doesn't matter - what matters is its fidelity to the book. At the moment it looks like Season 5 is cutting out a lot of what's in books 4 and 5; it's hard to say how much those cuts are going to matter to the overall book story, because we don't have the later books yet to tell how important those excised story lines are going to turn out to be. But TV shows and movies and books are different things. The Lord of the Rings films changed far more of the story and the characters than The Hobbit trilogy did (they added and "enhanced" many things for The Hobbit trilogy, but didn't actually change much), yet The Lord of the Rings is a far better trilogy than The Hobbit. Fidelity isn't necessarily a good thing, and I think a loyal adaptation of Books 4 and 5 would have made for terrible television. (I'm still not even sure if Books 4 and 5 are good; I'm reserving judgement on that for Books 6, 7, and possibly 8, 9, and 10.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
titanx5 Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 For some book purists, Season 1 Episode 1 began terribly because Robert wasn't tall enough, and things have just gotten worse and worse with every episode since then. So yes, for many (rather straw-mannish) book purists, every season is worse solely because it differs from the books more and more with each season. How good the TV show is in and of itself doesn't matter - what matters is its fidelity to the book. At the moment it looks like Season 5 is cutting out a lot of what's in books 4 and 5; it's hard to say how much those cuts are going to matter to the overall book story, because we don't have the later books yet to tell how important those excised story lines are going to turn out to be. But TV shows and movies and books are different things. The Lord of the Rings films changed far more of the story and the characters than The Hobbit trilogy did (they added and "enhanced" many things for The Hobbit trilogy, but didn't actually change much), yet The Lord of the Rings is a far better trilogy than The Hobbit. Fidelity isn't necessarily a good thing, and I think a loyal adaptation of Books 4 and 5 would have made for terrible television. (I'm still not even sure if Books 4 and 5 are good; I'm reserving judgement on that for Books 6, 7, and possibly 8, 9, and 10.) I know a person who was like that complaining about Robert fr the start, which I found a little ridiculous, you never going to get a exact person to play a character in a adaptation. We have no clue of what the happens in WOW and DOS, but D&D do. Yes, I get little frustrated that Tyrion always gets most of the screen time and talking about beetles. But s5 could be the best season for all we know, it definitely will have some of the best last few episodes. So lets please reserve judgement after the s5 is finished I loved the LOTR book and trilogy, and loved the changes, especially the elves at Helms Deep. Some purists cmplained that there was no Tom Bombadil, but could understand why they left him out. As to The Hobbit Trilogy I enjoyed it a lot less, I cant comment on the changes cause its been like 15 yrs since I read the books so forgotten quite a bit. Also people need to look at The Bourne Trilogy basically they only share Robert Ludlums books in name and The Bourne Identity being the closest to the book while the others go far away from the books, did anyone enjoy them any less? I doubt it. You will always get people complaining, but I guess if they keep true to the books as best as they can and get the overall tone of the books and include all the main and most of the secondary characters I'll be happy. Thats why people need to treat the show and the books as to separate entities one is the show and one is the book, just like what GRRM said at ComicCon. Do people think Peter Jackson will ever do The Silmarillion? I hope so Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ummester Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 Do people think Peter Jackson will ever do The Silmarillion? I hope so No, not at all. The Lord of the Rings films were brilliant, fantasy cinema masterpieces the likes of which had not been seen since Star Wars. Then Jackson went and fucked it all with The Hobbit (cough) trilogy. Time to leave well enough alone. So far, Game of Thrones is capturing the majority of the ASoIaF books whilst being fairly excellent television (apart from the silly Bran scene in 410), so hopefully it can keep it up, finish on a strong note in 7 seasons and then leave well enough alone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
protar Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 If it's extraneous material being cut why is that bad? Was that sarcasm lol or do you agree? The "extraneous" material he is talking about are Aegon, Arianne, and the Iron Islands (As well as a load of smaller subplots no doubt). Sj4iy, I think that the fact that you refrain from actually leaving Jack Bauer to make his own decision on whether that material is extraneous or not shows just how disingenuous and biased your arguments are. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hiram McDrogon Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 The Lord of the Rings films were brilliant, fantasy cinema masterpieces the likes of which had not been seen since Star Wars. Then Jackson went and fucked it all with The Hobbit (cough) trilogy. Time to leave well enough alone. Ugh ... I just had a nightmare vision of Fingolfin fighting Morgoth, Legolas-style hop hop hop jump spinorama! Yup, that'd destroy the grandeur of The Silmarillion pretty darn well. Actually I don't think The Hobbit trilogy was that bad, although it was certainly disappointing. Maybe in a dozen years or twenty The Silmarillion can be done as a TV series - at the moment I'm pretty sure the rights are still in Christopher Tolkien's hands, and they're certainly not going to be given up in his lifetime. I hope it's never done as a film, because its narrative style and constantly changing cast simply wouldn't work at all for a movie. It covers thousands of years. To give some idea of scale, the whole story of Lord of the Rings takes a couple of paragraphs in a book that's a couple hundred pages long. Oh yeah, Game of Thrones. Um, yup. I'm looking forward to seeing new stuff soon! As it so happens, I'll see it on TV before I see it on the page, but oh well. That happens. Or I guess it doesn't happen very often, but it's going to this time. I just hope the books come out soon enough that I'll still care or even remember who the characters are. And for that matter I also hope that I like the ending, and however the saga ends won't retroactively tarnish all the time I spent on the series (Hello Lost!). Heck, the TV show's presence in my life is probably the main reason I'm still interested in the series; if it weren't for D&D, I'd probably have given up on the books, like I sort of gave up on The Wheel of Time. (After book 5 or 6, reading each book as it came out, I decided to wait until the series was done and only come back if reports were good - and they weren't; if I'd read Feast for Crows back when it first came out, rather than as part of a massive blitz through the books in the middle of the first season, I'd probably have taken the same "screw it and wait till it's all done" approach during the long wait for Dance with Dragons.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
protar Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 Which ones? And why did he complain about them? There are many reasons to complain about an adaptation that has absolutely nothing to do with how well it follows its source material. I remember him complaining about the Thor films, specifically on the basis that it didn't follow the source material.Yes- because he was approached by people who wanted to make a movie series out of his story and cut one or several 1500 page books beyond recognition to fit it into a 2-3 hour timeframe. The show gets upwards of 70 hours compared to 10-20 for movies- that's a huge difference. To me this is exactly what they're doing here. AFFC, ADWD and TWOW all seem set for being completely carved up in order to fit into two seasons. The question is, would Martin have accepted D+D's proposal if he knew from the start that Arianne, Aegon, the Iron Isles and a myriad of other subplots would be cut?No. It's really not. I've read and watched enough to know that this is one of the most faithful adaptations I've ever seen- sometimes to its own detriment. But faithfulness doesn't equate to quality. It could be cut to hell and still be an awesome show- it just wouldn't be a faithful adaptation...and I've seen plenty of unfaithful adaptations that equaled or even exceeded their douce material. GoT is one of the few that I've seen that toes the line well. No, faithfulness does not equal quality. I agree with that. I am simply judging the show on two levels - it's faithfulness, and its quality as a show. So far as I'm concerned even an awesome film/show can be rightfully criticised for it's failure to follow the source material. And then a third intermediate layer is bought in here - because I find D+D to be such poor writers, I believe that the writing is almost always better when they have someone else's material to guide them.Your argument that you think you know what he likes and doesn't is absolutely NOT arguable. You don't- nor can you "guess". You are not him not are you close to him enough to know what he thinks. It's presumptuous to even try.Firstly, please stop thinking that you are the arbiter of what is and isn't acceptable discussion here. I shall continue to speculate on what Martin's thoughts on the show may be, I find it to be an interesting a perfectly reasonable line of discussion. If you don't, move along, go talk to someone else. And secondly, in attempting to refute my arguments by offering evidence against Martin being a purist, you too are speculating on what Martin is thinking, though no doubt you'll deny it. Once again you are being hypocritical. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Drunkard Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 Do people think Peter Jackson will ever do The Silmarillion? I hope so Every film he's made in Tolkien's universe has been worse than the one that came before. No thank you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guard of the Rainking Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 Every film he's made in Tolkien's universe has been worse than the one that came before. No thank you. You thought that the Desolation of Smaug was worse than the Unexpected Journey? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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