tolthar Posted June 6, 2015 Share Posted June 6, 2015 Please tag as book spoilers, I don't know how... Ok so I am a book reader. Finished Feast way before the show came out and Dance was written. I've always felt the show is poorly adapted in some places and excellently adapted in others, and I also noticed that the show tends do a good job of sewing plot deviations together and back to a more recognizable point from the book so we can always be asured that this is the same story. So why do I post this here? Because of the amazing battle sequence we have all raved so much about. And this is certainly not meant to be a thread purely associated with that scene as we already have plenty of them, but more of a thread to discuss this idea that the show adapts the books usually in an exaggerated and unchronologically faithful way. What do I mean? The WW/Others attack... This to me is an adaptation of the Game of Thrones book prologue chapter. Yes I am aware we already had one of those, where it belonged at the beginning of the series. This however is vital to my theory, as leading up to the Hardhome battle I personally felt a strange uneasy sort of excitement I hadn't felt since the first premiere of the shows pilot. To clarify, I think in the Television medium that two different scenes have been used to adapt one chapter from the book. In The Game of Thrones prologue chapted Ser Weymar Royce and company are ranging, come across Others and are defeated revealing two pieces of information to the reader: The Others can destroy our puny weapons with ease and can raise the bloody dead. This is not established in such detail by the show. All the show serves to explain with Royce and his group is that blue eyed demons = bad, and somehow there is zombies? Nice and ambiguous. The Hardhome massacre ends up being a "hollywood" action packed special effects extraveganza that reveals more about GRRM's opening prologue chapter than the show initially did with its counterpart. To list a few: -The White Walkers/Others are ice beings that are always accompanied by wintery weather and can use their abilities to raise dead creatures to serve them-Their weapons are magical and can obliterate most man made weapons.-They're freaky as F**k(the first ever scene was weak IMO)-They're the kings and queens, the zombies are the pawns.-We don't have a clue what they are minus a few old wives tales and folk stories-That Winter is coming So with that in mind does anyone else agree? Did anyone else feel the same kind of unease watching the Hardhome climax as they did reading Wills POV prologue chapter?(especially in comparison to the series opening sequence) To continue my idea I give other examples I believe to follow the same sort of logic when considering how to adapt the books. First there is Arya's season 2 storyline. She meanders aimlessely has a few characters become condensed versions of others, meets Jaquen has 3 guys killed and then leaves finding out about the faceless men. Her story continues to dart around faithful and faithless throughout season 3 even culminating in a meeting with Brienne! but nonetheless she ends up leaving the Hound to die as she does and taking a ship to Braavos to continue her voyage forward as planned. There are countless examples of this throughout the series so far and I think they generally get us back to where we should be. It is only now that it starts to get close to fan fiction territory because to be fair, the show creators have no choice GRRM will not be rushed.(and good!) however i think as this season progresses and the next season goes into production we will see more examples of this plot meandering I have discussed, and who knows? we could see plot threads and ideas or even just winks and nods from books 1 and 2 showing themsleves through the next 12 episodes. Nonetheless this is why I find it so easy to separate book from show. Because I feel I am starting to understand how D&D are adapting the source material, and that they do want to be as faithful as possible. However, lets not forget that sometimes the adapted stories are complete garbage! Anyone see any wisdom in my ramblings? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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