[Book & Show Spoilers] Season 4 is unsatisfying for me so far

[sj4iy]

He also wrote Baelor, The Rains of Castamere and And Now His Watch Is Ended. Every writer makes some mistakes, and that was when he just started out. Pretty rude of you to have such a negative opinion on him from a work of years past, when he's obviously much better now.

I doubt there's a single writer who doesn't have one piece of work that isn't up to the same standards as the rest. Even Martin has AFFC, and I know there are some fans of it (just like Wolverine), but most agree that it wasn't his best effort. It happens, but no one would judge Martin on his clunkers...they would judge him on his successes.

[Queen of Whores]

I doubt there's a single writer who doesn't have one piece of work that isn't up to the same standards as the rest. Even Martin has AFFC, and I know there are some fans of it (just like Wolverine), but most agree that it wasn't his best effort. It happens, but no one would judge Martin on his clunkers...they would judge him on his successes.

A Feast for Crows was easily Martin's best written and most complex book in the series though, regardless of the slow pace and new characters. X-men Origins: Wolverine just sucks all 'round.

[Le Cygne]

A Feast for Crows is a well-written book, agreed. A Storm of Swords is arguably his best, but that was a good one, too. You can't "judge" an author by what a certain group of people on a fan site say.

[Frey Pies]

A Feast for Crows was easily Martin's best written and most complex book in the series though, regardless of the slow pace and new characters. X-men Origins: Wolverine just sucks all 'round.

Good writing is only good if it is used effectively (which it wasn't). Anyone can write beautiful paragraphs, but they have to be relevant and essential to make it "good writing" (which wasn't the case in AFFC). If I hadn't been heavily invested into the series already, I would have stopped reading it, or, at the very least, not bothered with the next one. I had the same problem with ADWD.

However, I'm not judging him solely by those works. I acknowledge that he is awesome, due to his marvellous work in AGoT, ACoK, ASoS, Fevre Dream, Blackwater, The Lion and the Rose, and The Pointy End. This is why I thought the comment about X-Men was pretty offensive. Benioff has written some great episodes, and there's no denying it.

[Red Tiger]

AFFC had more filler than a saga of dragon ball z, ADWD was not much better.

[eliamo]

A Feast for Crows was easily Martin's best written and most complex book in the series

Complexity didn't work in the AFFC's favour though. There were too many characters and too many subplots, which resulted in the whole book feeling very messy.

[SerArthurHeath]

AFFC had more filler than a saga of dragon ball z, ADWD was not much better.

You say filler, I say world-building and interesting plots leading to something

[eliamo]

You say filler, I say world-building and interesting plots leading to something

And lead they do, on and on and on...

[Red Tiger]

You say filler, I say world-building and interesting plots leading to something

Wrong, I felt Clash of Kings was strong in this regard, but AFFC could have been much shorter yet have the same impact.

[sj4iy]

You say filler, I say world-building and interesting plots leading to something

I say filler with lots of cliffhangers.

Same for ADWD, but a bit better than the previous.

ASOS was brilliant, though.

[Rhaegar Jaime Tyrell]

You're right: I'm probably letting the negatives overshadow the positives. There have been some great scenes this season. Although, some of the ones you mentioned I'm not sure were altogether successful - especially the Tyrion and Pod scene, which I thought was really melodramatic and cringeworthy. I guess my main gripe with the writing is that is it was so consistent in season 1, but the following seasons have just failed to emulate that same steady quality.

I think you are expecting too much, nothing on screen will match the images in your mind.

It is a great show but close to perfect. However it would need to be 20 episodes a season and have a $10million an episode budget to match our book expectations and portray the subtleties in the book

I'm just glad they did a show and its so good. Otherwise I would never have heard of the books, the rich world GRRM has created or this site.

[Angmar]

Interesting - I thought The Laws of Gods and Men was one of the stronger episodes of the season. What didn't you like about it?

The Asha scenes really ruined it for me. The Drogon scene was a tease. TBH the trial was the only good thing out of that episode.

[robdavies1775]

Lysa's revelation of poisoning Jon Arryn felt way too expositiony but then it did in the books as well...

Still they could have tightened it up a bit.

[sj4iy]

The Asha scenes really ruined it for me. The Drogon scene was a tease. TBH the trial was the only good thing out of that episode.

...but Drogon didn't kill a kid outright in the books. He killed a bunch of goats first. It would ruin the surprise of the kid's bones by having him kill a kid immediately.

[Ignorant Bog Woman]

The Asha scenes really ruined it for me. The Drogon scene was a tease. TBH the trial was the only good thing out of that episode.

Odd how a 5-minute scene turns a 50-minute episode into a stinker.

[Lord_Dustin]

The story has changed considerably since season one though. The number of storylines and characters to follow has increased exponentially as the series has progressed.

The story has to be told much more economically than it did in S1. There just isn't as much time for those wonderful character moments that flavoured the first season.

S4 has, in my opinion, been the best season since the first season for giving us a glimpse into character motivation and backstory. By making one KL character centric to the episode's plot, then it gives the writers a greater opportunity to develop each character.

Ep 4.01 - 'Oberyn-Centric'

Ep 4.02 - 'Lannister-Centric'

Ep 4.03 - 'Tywin-Centric'

Ep 4.04 - 'Jaime-Centric' (though it could also be argued to be Margaery-Centric)

Ep 4.05 - 'Cersei-Centric'

Ep 4.06 - 'Tyrion-Centric'

If you compare that to the previous season, it makes the King's Landing storyline which more cohesive. When KL is cohesive then the rest of the show follows suit.

[sj4iy]

Eh, don't agree at all with the OP, but to each his own.

Everyone can nitpick anything to death if they are so inclined, show and books alike. Instead of comparing them to each other, they should be taken on their own merits, as there is no way one can 'compete' with the other.

The books have inner-thoughts, lots of detail and an infinite amount of time and space. It lacks visuals and audio.

The show has astounding visuals, great CGI (for a tv show), wonderful locations and amazing actors. It lacks time.

Trying to compare the dialogue and writing in the books to the show is like trying to compare the music and costumes in the show to the books. You can't possibly say which is better because they are completely different animals.

I know many people who love the show and have either never read the books or tried to read the books and lost interest. The only people I know who have read the books in their entirety and watch the show are myself and my husband. That's 2 of us compared to about 15 others. But we don't lord over them saying 'ha ha, we've read the books' because we love the show just as much if not more than they do. And really, I sort of envy them because they get to watch it with all of the surprises intact...the only time I've felt like that so far was when we saw the White Walker take the baby and when Jon took the men to Craster's Keep. Some hated it because they felt it took something away (like Coldhands), but for me, all of that added something- surprise and anticipation. I was finally like everyone else watching the show, and it was fun. I think a lot of book readers have forgotten to have fun with the show.

[Born Sinner]

For those who say Benioff did the script for X-Men he also wrote the script for kite runner a throughly amazing film for which he was nominated for a bafta award for best adapted screenplay but hey that wouldn't fit to the impressions on the forum that D&D are bad writers.

[sj4iy]

For those who say Benioff did the script for X-Men he also wrote the script for kite runner a throughly amazing film for which he was nominated for a bafta award for best adapted screenplay but hey that wouldn't fit to the impressions on the forum that D&D are bad writers.

Forum fans of Doctor Who think Stephen Moffat is the worst show runner and worst writer the show has ever had (despite his Baftas, Hugos and Peabody awards, as well as his Emmy nominations).

Forum fans of LotR think that Peter Jackson butchered Lord of the Rings (despite all of the Oscars it racked up, including "Best Picture").

Forum fans of Star Trek think that JJ Abrams ruined the original series (despite how utterly awful many of the past Star Trek movies have been).

Forum fans of Star Wars are worried that JJ Abrams will ruin the next trilogy (even though there's absolutely nothing he could do to ruin it that George Lucas didn't already do).

...basically, forum fans aren't exactly the best judge of this kind of thing.

[Ran]

I'll also add that word is that Benioff got a script credit for writing the original draft of the Wolverine film, but that most of what was on screen was the work of Skip Woods.

Don't know what Benioff's original script was like, but I wouldn't hold the film against him, given that history.

I don't think much of his work on Troy or The Kite Runner, to be honest (go ahead, check the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, I'm not alone), but the man wrote The 25th Hour and adapted it into a script for one of the finest films out of Hollywood this century, so I can't say I'd consider him a bad writer. But that doesn't mean everything he writes is good.