Potential Problems w/ Adaptation

[Spilt Pea Soup]

So, while I'm really excited about the upcoming series, and confident that HBO is the only network that could even come close to doing this series justice, I'm worried about a few things.

Most specifically: Dany. What are they going to do about her plotline? It's not unheard of to have a parallel plot for a few episodes, maybe even a season, but her plotline hasn't converged and we're 4 books (seasons) into the series. I don't know if that's going to fly. I don't know how they'd move her arrival sooner, without leaving out some of the great stuff, but I also don't see her plot sustaining interest (or relevancy) in a television series. Unlike the books, all the information in the series will be imparted via dialogue, so it will be a challenge, to say the least, to fill in the details that make Dany's character so relevant to the story.

Also, what about AFFC and ADwD? Are they going to make one season out of these two? I sure hope so! Wouldn't be hard to just, uh, gut Brienne's arc completely. (God, if only!) And a lot of the other things can be said and not shown. Apart from Cersei and Arya, most of the meat in this time period will be in ADwD anyway.

What do you people think?

[Seanathin]

I suspect that they well do Dany the same way she is done in the book, only TVised.

And they have stated that Feist and Dance will get combined and then choped into seasons 4 and 5, so that the time lines are running parallel.

[Padraig]

I suspect that they well do Dany the same way she is done in the book, only TVised.

And they have stated that Feist and Dance will get combined and then choped into seasons 4 and 5, so that the time lines are running parallel.

Its very early to know what is going to happen. The success of aGoT will make a difference.

But given they have included Dany in S1, it suggests they want to be faithful enough. Not sure how they could change things so she arrives in Westeros sooner.

[Spilt Pea Soup]

Its very early to know what is going to happen. The success of aGoT will make a difference.

But given they have included Dany in S1, it suggests they want to be faithful enough. Not sure how they could change things so she arrives in Westeros sooner.

Yah, I just hope this doesn't derail/undermine the show's popularity. I can't think of another show that does this for so long...but HBO is awesome, so maybe they can make it work.

One reason I think the series is able to make it work is because Dany is an amazing character who undergoes really amazing transformations. The setting too is so different from Westeros that it's exciting to get glimpses of it from time to time. I think Dany's storyline is one of the most interesting, if not the most interesting, and yet she gets a lot of flack here. I don't really get that.

[Spilt Pea Soup]

Its very early to know what is going to happen. The success of aGoT will make a difference.

But given they have included Dany in S1, it suggests they want to be faithful enough. Not sure how they could change things so she arrives in Westeros sooner.

Yah, I just hope this doesn't derail/undermine the show's popularity. I can't think of another show that does this for so long...but HBO is awesome, so maybe they can make it work.

One reason I think the series is able to make it work is because Dany is an amazing character who undergoes really amazing transformations. The setting too is so different from Westeros that it's exciting to get glimpses of it from time to time. I think Dany's storyline is one of the most interesting, if not the most interesting, and yet she gets a lot of flack here. I don't really get that.

[Lord Varys]

Either they make a series out of the books, or they do not - which would mean that they bring Dany back in the 3rd season or so, as this would no longer be the story of 'A Song of Ice and Fire'.

But the audience will realize that Daenerys is far away and not in Westeros after a few episodes of the first seasons. So there is no reason why they should expect her showing up there, even when she has dragons, but no army.

[daimonion]

Maybe i'm a bit naive, but if the story is good enough (and it certainly is!) then Danys storyline will work.

And it's not like its so much more isolated than Aryas adventure and Jon up on the wall. These storylines have for the absolute most part their own characters and intrigues. Their storys do not have much to do with the real "Game of thrones", and in Jons case its also in a different "world".

[Werthead]

I know one idea discussed here was that Dany's story could be held back until around Seasons 3-5 or so, then her story would be more strongly followed more rapidly building up to her arrival in Westeros. A comparison would be with say Desmond's storyline in Lost, where he is there on the Island with the other characters all along but is seperate and we only get his story in full when he interacts with the established characters through several lengthy flashbacks. Same with Jacob who, although occasionally mentioned, doesn't appear until very late in the series despite being around for the whole time.

We know now they're not doing that, and Dany's story will be as in the books. I think you're right that it is unusual to have a completely separate cast of characters who don't interact with the others for long periods of time (although there are minor crossovers, such as the assassin Robert sends to kill Dany in Book/Season 1 or Barristan Selmy hooking up with Dany in Book/Season 3, and other characters later), although not entirely unprecedented. Lots of characters in The Wire, for example, never met one another or even impacted on one another's storylines. The whole arc of Tommy Carcetti was largely removed and completely separate from everyone else (and was almost spun off into a separate show), and his encounters with the 'main' police characters were little more than easter eggs until the end of the show (although he did interact more with senior figures like Burrell and Daniels).

[spikebrennan]

Some more challenges for the adaptation:

- Jaime's long absence from the story from his capture at the Whispering Wood until Catelyn starts to interact with him in the Riverrun dungeon. Given that N C-W will be one of the "franchise" actors serving as a promotional draw for the show, we will not want him to be off-camera for an extended time.

- Following a bunch of child-centered stories such as Bran without having a portion of the potential audience concluding that this is a show _for_ children.

- The aging of the young actors.

- Enabling the audience to easily tell the characters apart. Much of the time, the audience is going to see a bunch of long-haired, scruffy guys in armor (and to make it worse, sometimes they'll have helmets on)-- members of the audience who aren't already familiar with the story could have a difficult time keeping track of who is who. For example, if Jon, Robb and Theon are all played by dark-haired actors who are about the same age, how easy will it be for the audience to remember that this one is the son and heir, that one is the bastard son, and that one is not a son at all but lives with them for some reason?

In other "cast-of-thousands" shows like The Wire, this problem was reduced as a result of dramatic physical differences between actors (some are white, some are African-American, and so on), and through associating groups of actors with particular sets (the guys in the police station set are usually cops; the guys in the housing project are usually the drug dealers; the guys at the port are usually the longshoremen, etc.) With GoT, pretty much everyone lives in a stone castle or medieval building of some sort, and is the audience really going to be able to distinguish a Riverrun interior from a Red Keep interior? Color-coding the costumes to correspond to the various houses will be of some help (and to some extent is justified by the source material) but I can see this being a big challenge.

- The right level of magic and fantastical elements. The prologue of the pilot starts off with a supernatural horror scene, so some of the audience may immediately conclude that this is a fantasy setting where we will routinely see things like wizards hurling fireballs. But we won't see much more magic in the first season other than the wight attack in Castle Black, Mirri Maz Duur, and (eventually in the season finale) the birth of the dragons. It will be important to establish not only the fact that magic exists but only in limited and rare circumstances, and moreover that most of the characters don't even believe in the existence of those limited and rare circumstances.

- The scenario-specific culture and terminology. The show will need to explain, without undue exposition, concepts such as a "maester", a "septon" and a "godswood" which were invented by GRRM but don't translate directly into a culture that the audience is familiar with.

[Morrigan]

I think the aging of the young actors will be the biggest problem. Children grow up way faster than the pace of the plot of the TV seasons...

[Lord Varys]

About Jaime:

I'm not sure if that's going to be a big problem. Coster-Waldau will be a leading actor in the first season, not in the second, and keeping his off screen should work, I think. The audience will have had to swallow Robert's, Viserys's and Ned's dead as well. Having Jaime being absent for eight or nine episodes should no big deal.

Characters looking alike should not be that big a problem, as Robb likely does not wear a helmet that often (and neither does Jon, for all I remember), and as soon as he becomes King and gets a crown, he will be easily recognized.

Similar interior sets could be distinguished by an outside shot of the particular building the scene takes place, but I'm sure they will design easily recognizable interiors to begin with. Winterfell will have little in common with the Red Keep, I think, and Castle Black looks too ragged to be mistaken for a real castle in the south. Also there are the people within to consider. If you have no realized that Catelyn and Cersei are enemies in season 2, then you should not watch this series (and if you have just started to watch, you should be able to figure this out pretty quick - although why they are enemies would be not so easy to figure out, I admit).

The concept of magic can be excluded mostly for the first season, I think. That there are ice zombies in this series does not meant that there need to be other kinds of magic as well. The huge ice Wall will make people wonder, but there is no answer yet how this thing was built. Dragons will be mentioned, too, but these are just fantastic creatures, not necessarily magical ones, although Dany's story arc eventually will introduce the topic of blood magic.

But the fact that dragons are believed to be extinct, and no schooled man believes in the purpose of the Night's Watch anymore should be enough to establish that Westeros's mystical times lie far in the past - that magic is creeping back slowly will be eventually revealed, but not before the very end of the first season.

About specific terms, well, a maester is some kind of learned man/healer/tutor, a Septon is some kind of priest, and a godswood is some kind of sacred place. End of story. The audience will realize this at once, and the dialogue will do the rest, if this is really required for the story telling.

Certainly, we will get the importance of the faces in the weirwood trees when Jon and Sam finally swear their oath beyond the Wall.

[Andhaira]

I'm concerned about the sex scenes. After watching Spartacus Blood and Sand, every thing else looks tame in comparison. I wonder if HBO can match Sparty in pure sexiness.

[Padraig]

I think the aging of the young actors will be the biggest problem. Children grow up way faster than the pace of the plot of the TV seasons...

One solution to this is for things to take longer in the TV series, compared to the book series. The first 3 books take almost 2 years IIRC. A bit of stretching and we should get 2.5 years, 3 if we are very creative.

For example, Ned and Robert's journey south from Winterfell. That can be easily stretched out given the size of the entourage.

Jon, Robb and Theon look very different, so I don't see people getting too confused.

GRRM helps here also. We have a dwarf, a guy with a burnt face, a big fat king, a couple with silver hair, very blond Lannisters v darker Starks, the KG dressed in white, the NW dressed in black and the various families dressed in their colours also. All very distinctive.

[Spilt Pea Soup]

SpikeBrennan, very good round up of issues. Posters here are a bit dismissive, but shows falter for many reasons, and it'd be naive to expect this show to last 7 seasons solely because GRRM's books are so good.

I hope that Jaime's absence is addressed simply by having him present. We know he's been captured, etc, so add some scenes we weren't privy to in the books to fill out the gaps. Thankfully, the show won't be bound by strict POV of the books, as that would quite a challenge, I think to make things work.

I also think it will be difficult to distinguish characters and I hope not all of the guys have long hair and beards. That's just a preference, but I'm not such a purist that I'd throw a fit if some of them cut their hair. I also find myself unattracted to guys with long hair, so that may be a personal bias. :)

I used to think that magic would turnoff viewers, but after watching True Blood, I think it's not a big deal if handled correctly. In fact, I think ASOIAF's handling of magic is much more conducive to a television audience than say Robert Jordan's. It's mostly in the background, it provides a very big WOW when used, and it doesn't need constant explanation. Any "science of magic" stuff would look too RPG D&D on television and would be hard to render without appearing completely stupid. (Nothing is more geeky than hearing characters in a movie "talk magic" like RJ's characters do. It's VERY hard to pull of, I think.)

I think it's important to remember the difference between people's experience and their expectations of a television series from a novel. It's understood with a book that the author may leave subjects and return to them, even after a long time. You read the book at your own pace, after all, and a few hundred pages may be a day, a few days, or a week, but probably not that much longer. If it is, you have the book and may refer back at your leisure to jog your memory.

A television series, on the other hand, has scenes separated by WEEKS and then eventually YEARS. It is not only difficult, but damn near impossible to refer back. Writers have to give cues and clues and fill the viewer in without having characters make awkward info dumps. "Oh, here's me explaining what should be basic knowledge to another character in my world who presumably should know all this." Having children cast members will actually help with this task. The children can be "informed" of key information for the audience. But it will be a challenge nonetheless. The scope and intricacy of the plot is daunting. It's here that I don't think the comparisons to LOST are very apt. Lost is VERY much written for television. The show builds one episode to the next, a chain of endless MacGuffins, where things are hidden, revealed, and not revealed as the case may be, in a somewhat linear fashion. Extensive flashbacks fill in the rest. The plot devices are cheap, and the story is only intricate in the sense that it was created as it was written without much forethought and design. ASIOAF is intricate because of the complex backstory that affects the present, and the multiple factions, separated by miles and miles, even continents, and the disparity of knowledge between the groups. It's a whole different ballgame.

Finally, I don't think the show will be too much about children. You have an incestuous love scene in the first episode. Hardcore sex soon to follow. And in the first bit, the only children that are present are Sansa and Arya. Bran's in a coma, mostly, which is a perfect place for a child, and I dont' think Jon and Robb will be "children" in the television show. Nor Dany.

Anyway, I hope to God they finish the whole thing. We would appreciate it, so would readers introduced to the series, and it would line GRRM's pockets like nothing else. I for one thinks he deserves that.

[Jack Sparrow]

I think the aging of the young actors will be the biggest problem. Children grow up way faster than the pace of the plot of the TV seasons...

This is, IMO, the weirdest of the common fan complaints. Most viewers just expect the timespan of the events on a show to mirror the length of time it takes to air, and there's nothing really critical about the ages of the children. In addition to that, if you want to insist that the timespan in the show is shorter than the time it takes to air episodes/seasons, this type of things just falls under "suspension of disbelief." It reminds me of an ad I saw in a magazine for a book making fun of movie errors, and one of them was Christopher Reeve's filling being visible at times in the 'Superman' films, and there was a caption joking about dentists on Krypton. I'm like, "You know, he's not REALLY Superman, right?" Complaining about that stuff is sort of like asking, "Where's the music coming from? Who's filming and editing this? Why do actors' and crew members' names appear at the beginning and end, why have I seen this people in other movies, and how is there an industry that sells this story for profit? None of this is real!!" You can't control how fast the actors age, and I think people are generally going to be able to deal with that. More relevant concerns will be things that can/could've actually been done differently, like whatever continuity and story contradictions there are, and special effect and props that don't look convincing (or, in the case of special effects, just a paring down of things, or shooting around them).

[Queenslayer(in the bed)]

As for the aging thing, they've already bumped the ages up anyways so that will help

[daimonion]

As for the aging thing, they've already bumped the ages up anyways so that will help

?? Are you sure you don't mean "it will make matters worse"? The characters ages have been bumped up, but so has the ages of the actors. The children will be children for only so long.

[Commodore]

They pay talented people to resolve these types of concerns.

But I imagine certain compromises will have to be made.

The concerns about Dany being disconnected really applies to every location.

Once the characters are established at The Wall, Winterfell, and Kings Landing early on, they never leave or interact with other characters for the span of the first book. The exception being Cat and Tyrion.

I actually think the pacing will work out quite nicely. You have the adventuring storylines of Dany and Cat/Tyrion on-the-move, the coming-of-age storyline with Jon, and the soap opera Tudors-style palace intrigue at Kings Landing (one huge problem with The Tudors is that Henry hangs out in his castle brooding the entire show).

A talented screenwriter should be able to weave those storylines together nicely. Or it could turn out to be a confusing mess.

[Spilt Pea Soup]

They pay talented people to resolve these types of concerns.

But I imagine certain compromises will have to be made.

The concerns about Dany being disconnected really applies to every location.

Once the characters are established at The Wall, Winterfell, and Kings Landing early on, they never leave or interact with other characters for the span of the first book. The exception being Cat and Tyrion.

I actually think the pacing will work out quite nicely. You have the adventuring storylines of Dany and Cat/Tyrion on-the-move, the coming-of-age storyline with Jon, and the soap opera Tudors-style palace intrigue at Kings Landing (one huge problem with The Tudors is that Henry hangs out in his castle brooding the entire show).

A talented screenwriter should be able to weave those storylines together nicely. Or it could turn out to be a confusing mess.

Yah, I think the children aging will be good for the show. GRRM has admitted he should have created his characters a bit older. Seems like some of them will be too young to do what he wants them to do in the finale, so there won't be a huge problem in the television series with this. No one will be like "yah, right, an 11 year old boy leading an army of warged wights!!" (or whatever Bran's role will be.)

Good point about the disconnect between all the stories. I guess that's true, and I'm just projecting the disconnect with Dany arbitrarily.

[FaZe]

Dany being disconnected with Westeros is irrelevant so long as she has interesting things going on with her. She's really active in the first season so there shouldn't be any lack of entertainment there. Things start to get a bit stagnant in season 2, but they'll overcome those issues.