1st HBO Preview, 12 Sept 2010

[trio]

Woah - LF looks like he has a Tom Selleck 'tache. Not at all what I pictured. But we'll have to see a better picture to be sure.

At least I totally called it that Tyrion's hair wouldn't actually be particularly golden. I knew it!

I'm also one who's a bit taken aback by the Dany/Viserys wigs. I guess I just pictured it completely differently. They kinda look like they're wearing white wool on their heads.

And actually, I realised I pictured Cersei's hair completely differently too - she has this waist length wavy thing going on here. I actually didn't realise it was her until I read the caption over at WiC. And Robert's beard! LOL, he looks like a young Santa Claus!

I guess I didn't expect everything to look so.....wiggy. If you know what I mean.

BUT - I think I was naive. There's no Hair Department in the whole world of TV who would go "less" rather than "more". And on reflection, why would they give Dany the straggly silver strands of my imagination? That's not hot!! ;)

Anyhoo - we'll get used to it. It's a trivial thing. I think the sets and the costuming look wonderful - quite subdued and lived in. And you can see the level of detail that's been thought of - I think that's really impressive.

[invertebrae]

I wanted to make one point many might be missing.

I think much of this footage was taken from a few days of documentary crews following the shooting of the PILOT EPISODE around. GRRM went for the shooting of the pilot, if I remember correctly.

Wasn't it confirmed that most all of the pilot has been reshot? If that's the case, then I suppose much of the final character looks (ie. Tyrion's look, Dany's and Cersei's dark eyebrows, whitecloak absence, etc.) may have changed as well.

Let's not be too quick to judge. There's also post-production, where eye color can be changed (ie. Dany's violet eyes, Tyrion's mismatched eyes), and so forth.

I would have to say this is all looking very promising. The only character who seemed out of place costume-wise was King Robert. Anyone else feel his beard was about to fall off, and his tunic out of place?

I'm not complaining though, the show is going to be great, I can feel it in my soul.

...ryan

[Jack Sparrow]

I wanted to make one point many might be missing.

I think much of this footage was taken from a few days of documentary crews following the shooting of the PILOT EPISODE around. GRRM went for the shooting of the pilot, if I remember correctly.

Wasn't it confirmed that most all of the pilot has been reshot? If that's the case, then I suppose much of the final character looks (ie. Tyrion's look, Dany's and Cersei's dark eyebrows, whitecloak absence, etc.) may have changed as well.

I dunno about that. Some of the footage may have come from the pilot shoot; the interviews with GRRM and the producers seemed to. There's no way that Dany and her dark eyebrows were from the pilot shoot, cause the actress seen in the new footage hadn't been cast at that time, and there are many other post-pilot actors that also clearly place footage as being from the current summer shoot. The footage of Robert and Cersei doesn't seem to be from the pilot, either: them seated together looked like it was from the Tourney of the Hand (it looked like there was a bit of footage from that shoot).

[JungianQueen]

On Dany's eyebrows, this still shows her with lighter eyebrows. They seem to have been dyed.

[fitheach]

The eyebrows dont bother me at all, its usual to have eyebrows darker than hair anyway. If her hair is silver, her eyebrows can be a darker silver- it'll make her eyes pop out more. As for the eyecolor thing, honestly that was the least favorite part of the novels for me (way too fantasy-ish) with the Lannister green (for money?), the Stark gray, Tulley blue... It all seemed a bit much to me and I really didn't care.

[Juba]

Honestly, disappointed in much of the art direction--those 'kingsguard' helms are goofy as fuck. Assuming that they are KG, why no white cloaks? When in doubt, follow the novels, arbitrary changes always suck.

Hope this first impression changes, but too me, the production is too fantasy flavored, not historical enough, which is one of the main strengths of the setting, and as others have mentioned 'wiggy' as well . . .

Edit--also on the art direction--in the 'making of' video, we get a quick shot of armor being donned--looks Asian and out of place--maybe the HBO executive who wanted the Lannisters to wield samurai swords had a bone throne his way--hope not. . .

[Renasko]

Haven't read a complaint about her eyebrows and I thought I'd read all of the posts in this thread yesterday. I love 'em. Her hair, on the other hand...

But like trio said, I guess it's naivete. It's a tv production. 'Wiggyness' is to be expected.

[Bronn Stone]

1. What the hell is Sean Bean talking about?

Perhaps he is simply method acting. Eddard Stark really didn't have a clue as to what was going on in A Game of Thrones either.

[Ran]

Jack,

Rimshot (a member of this forum) who was an extra for both the pilot and the current shooting, says that that was indeed the Kingsguard armor. A gold cloak can be glimpsed behind the two guys donning red-and-black armor (Lannister guardsmen, apparently) in the behind-the-scenes video, however.

[Songlian]

Perhaps he is simply method acting.  Eddard Stark really didn't have a clue as to what was going on in A Game of Thrones either.

This is the funniest thing I've heard all day! LOL.

And color me a bit disappointed about that (confirmed) Kingsguard armor. So not how I imagined it would look.  

[Brude]

The problem with making eyebrows too light, I've heard, is that they can get lost on the face which makes it seem less expressive. Actors use their eyebrows to help emote. If you can't see the eyebrows - or they are even just less visible - it can affect how the performance is perceived. That was apparently an issue for Jason Isaacs in the Potter movies - after the first one, they stopped dying his eyebrows so he could get the most out of his performance.

[Starkess]

Luckily this came on a few minutes after the game, so I was able to see both. My husband said it looked pretty cool, and I'm hoping that if I can get him to watch a few episodes he'll want to read the books too. It looks like something right up his alley!

Pretty happy with the way most of the characters looked, and just really really excited to see this!

[MirriMaz]

I thought it looked pretty cool, a bit dull on the coloring but as mentioned earlier the colors will be modified later in production.

The Samurai armor could be either a flashback from the previous war or they are part of the Drothaki storyline.

[moirne]

Wow, it looks amazing! The costumes, sets, the characters appearances... I am very impressed :) I'm glad that Dany's hair isn't silver because that would have looked ridiculous. I think she looks great. I'm really excited, I wish the show was premiering earlier!

[Calibandar]

It looks really fantastic. Stunning. You know if you do any adaptation it would probably be better to have a series than films for story purposes, but budget would normally be the downside. Yet HBO is the solution for that, they do a big budget series and tend to have genuinely intelligent craftsmen make their series, which again seems to be the case here.

But the look of it all overwhelmingly good. Better than I had hoped for. Sean Bean is in fact even better suited to playing Ned Stark than I thought, and he was the first actor that crossed my mind anyway. The actress playing Dany looks every bit the part as well btw.

[Xanrn]

Wow... Colour me unimpressed...

WTF is that Kingsguard armour, is it ment to make would be kingslayers laugh themselves to death? It looks like slightly better made Xena fantasy type armour...

Also wtf was up with thoose 2 dudes in Red and Black Samuarai/Chinese love child armour... With what looked like western style swords...

The Gregor armour looks way to much like the Black Knight from Holy Grail, especially with that -ing stupid great helm. Which looks like a waste paper bin.

Don't tell me some idiot decide to give each off the 7 kingdoms a distinct armour style.

Still don't like Mark Addy for Robert, if he looked like he did in a Knight's Tale he would look alot better. He doesn't look like a sword gone to rust, more like a soup spoon.

The Hand's Tourney set is just appalling, especially the seating where Sansa and Littlefinger are.

Why is Viserys pissing about with a sword in what looks like a fighter scene.

[adamsputnik]

Some of you are reading a hell of lot out of essentially one and a half minutes worth of footage, really. Why not wait and see how it actually looks when the show premieres than critiquing the fuck out of some rather rough and ready footage that hasn't even been post-processed?

[Bronn Stone]

If I had a dollar for everything Xanrn complained about over the years, I could retire.

If I had a dollar for everything Xanrn liked over the past ten years, I could get a cup of coffee.

[Ran]

The "samurai armor" are Lannister guards. They may just be from the pilot; it's not impossible that when they retooled to reshoot the pilot, that has been changed. A little bird did whisper that at first, the Lannister troops were going to be even more explicitly accoutred in Asian-inspired paraphernalia, but they were pulled back from the brink.

[Blaine]

I thought it looked awesome. I could really, really care less if Dany's eyebrows never live up to some closely-gripped mental vision of one reader.

All in all, it looks great. They're going to have to change all sort of little things to get this to work visually and dramatically. It's nothing to get worked up over.