New trailer and stuff

[Ser_not_appearing_yet]

Sorry Smiling Knight, but your comments on Jon and Robert are fairly dumb.

Ran (I think it was him) summed it up perfectly for me with the portrait of Henry VIII, whom Addy scarily resembles. Thats basically how I picture Robert at this stage in his life. Not saying Addy's perfect, but nothing to complain about really.

And Jon a 'crybaby'? How exactly do you come to that conclusion after about 3 stills and zero dialogue? Lol.

[The SmilingKnight]

"The Smiling Knight" is an apt handle for you.

Imagine that?

So you're pissed about how Robert looks

Not pissed at all. Merely expressing my opinion.

Why are you so pissed about that so much that you have to use cheap ad hominems?

Stop taking it out on posters.

How about you stop with insults and figments of imagination instead?

/

Those quotes above merely describe he got fat and that he had a red face.

He didnt physically change and become a smaller man, quite the contrary.

Regardless of all that, i never saw him as Addy who just looks like a generic indistinguishable fat old king cliche.

At least based on these few very short shots.

[Spanky]

I think Jon's look is spot on. He appears young, intelligent, and brooding, which is basically how he's portrayed in the book.

And I like the stache! It makes him look kinda like Captain Jack Sparrow. :3

[The SmilingKnight]

He doesnt look brooding! He looks like hes begging and on verge of tears every time we see him.

The actor just has that kind of face with eyebrows twisted like that permanently. And hes chubby! Where is that lean, haunted and indeed brooding vibe Jon should have?

Oh god dont mention the stache! He looks more like he could be Petyr Baelish s... hey, wait a minute! :stunned:

[Padraig]

Those quotes above merely describe he got fat and that he had a red face.

He didnt physically change and become a smaller man, quite the contrary.

Ok. So now the only issue is that he isn't as tall as he is in the books? Glad you have given up saying he is very dangerous anyhow.

Addy who just looks like a generic indistinguishable fat old king cliche.

But didn't you just admit before that is what Robert is?

Sure, he isn't tall but i'm not sure are any of the tall characters as tall as they are in the books. Sandor, Gregor, Robert, Jaime...GRRM definitely went for the fantasy element with their considerable size. The main thing about Robert is his fatness and that they didn't change.

He doesnt look brooding! He looks like hes begging and on verge of tears every time we see him.

The actor just has that kind of face with eyebrows twisted like that permanently. And hes chubby!

I've seen the guy playing Jon in real life. He is far from chubby. :lol: You might be seeing his heavy clothes, although i'm still very puzzled how you got "chubby" out of them?

And clearly there is a fine line between crybaby and haunted/brooding. Most see one, you see the other.

[lacuna]

He doesnt look brooding! He looks like hes begging and on verge of tears every time we see him.

The actor just has that kind of face with eyebrows twisted like that permanently. And hes chubby! Where is that lean, haunted and indeed brooding vibe Jon should have?

Oh god dont mention the stache! He looks more like he could be Petyr Baelish s... hey, wait a minute! :stunned:

A quick search in my AGOT ebook shows that Jon cries in both of his first two chapters. Proves nothing, I suppose, but you can see how the thought might arise. ;)

And chubby? Really? Well, opinions are like assholes, I suppose... :)

I kinda agree on the beard, though, but there are several good reasons not to shave in a cold environment, so the logic is sound. I myself grew a (rather pathetic) beard when I was in the military in the north of Norway.

ETA: Sorry, didn't mean to pile on here...

[Lord Varys]

On Robert:

I don't care that he is not as tall as described in the books, but I'd be pretty pissed off if Robert is changed from being the twisted picture of an over-masculine warrior to a sad and timid old man, being afraid of the coming war. Robert Baratheon was a very manly man in his youth - everyone loved him, everyone adored him, and pretty much everyone would have died for him in a war. But he never wanted to be a King. He never really cared about politics, he was never even a politician - he would have been as bad as Lord of Storm's End as he was as King if he would not have had capable men around him (Stannis, Cressen) managing things.

Robert's tragic is that he is now a fat, aged, twisted version of himself, totally unable to take on the responsibility he has as King. People who knew and adored him earlier, can now only pity him.

The trailer indicated that Robert could be aware of his impotency, of the fact that his court plots behind his back, and his wife is planning to kill him. Instead, Robert's only 'political' interest are the surviving Targaryens. And although they are not really no danger, they are by far not the enemies who threaten Robert's life, family, and kingship.

Robert as I see him pictured in the books really doesn't care about schemes and plots. He is not afraid. He just laughs or ignores them until they go away or he dies. And I really would like to see the series to retain that picture of Robert.

[Scion of Valyria]

Robert's talk of a war coming could be referring Viserys and Danaerys, rather than a civil war.

I maintain Sean Bean is the best actor they could have cast for Ned. And I'm glad regional accents are being put into play.

As to the complaints of Jon looking like a chubby crybaby...well, even Ned looks fat with all that leather mail and fur on. And Jon WAS a crybaby, at least until some time at the Wall hardened him up a bit. As to his facial hair, shit, he's supposed to be seventeen now, right? So on the verge of manhood, wanting to be taken seriously as a man, beards are manly...it makes sense for him to have one, even if it is kind of...sad.

New trailer was awesome. Can't wait for the behind-the-scenes next week.

[True Blue Mug]

I thought the trailer was pretty cool. My excitement level remains high. I've just come to expect that adaptations of fantasy novels won't match my mind's eye. Jon looked OK to me, but then I'm reserving judgment on all the actors until I see them in an actual episode.

I will say that the guy playing Gared threw me... I just pictured him much older and haggard.

[smegma]

I thought the trailer was pretty cool. My excitement level remains high. I've just come to expect that adaptations of fantasy novels won't match my mind's eye. Jon looked OK to me, but then I'm reserving judgment on all the actors until I see them in an actual episode.

I will say that the guy playing Gared threw me... I just pictured him much older and haggard.

That's not Gared, that's the guy playing Will. They changed the guy they execute to him. I actually like this change.

[adamsputnik]

After another couple of looks I am just plain excited. This doesn't look like some rough around the edges dab at doing an epic fantasy story. It looks fantastic.

Can't wait to see what comes out next week.

[Padraig]

Robert's tragic is that he is now a fat, aged, twisted version of himself, totally unable to take on the responsibility he has as King. People who knew and adored him earlier, can now only pity him.

I like that description. I think what Robert says will be in private to Ned. He was quite honest in those converstations with Ned. Partly because Ned wouldn't accept dishonesty.

While he does laugh at stuff, he mainly is a very frustrated man, running away from things or letting his wife browbeat him into submission (e.g. the death of Lady). It should be a very good role for Addy.

[mormont]

I might be mistaken but i thought Robert is about the same height and overbearing presence as the Hound, only more massive. With added years and a big belly.

The key word in that sentence would be 'is'. That implies there's only one true version of the character, the one you got from reading the books. But inherent in the idea of an adaptation is the fact that there are differences. This is another version of the story. In this version, Robert is not so physically tall or imposing as in the version in the books: just as in this version, Will is executed instead of Gared (at a different place, too), Dany has green eyes rather than violet ones, and Jon Arryn's son is called Robin.

People are certainly entitled to say that they don't like these changes. But it's also fair to say that to complain about them simply because they are changes is a bit daft. You need to recognise that a TV adaptation is going to be a slightly different version, for a whole host of reasons. Different format, practical issues, the creative input and interpretation of many different people. Better to accept that as an inevitable fact than to oppose it on principle and complain about it endlessly, and pointlessly.

[AquariumDrinker]

I've seen the guy playing Jon in real life. He is far from chubby. :lol: You might be seeing his heavy clothes, although i'm still very puzzled how you got "chubby" out of them?

And clearly there is a fine line between crybaby and haunted/brooding. Most see one, you see the other.

He is being contrary, just ignore him.

[Lord Varys]

Mormont,

well, the chances you refer to - wrong eyecolors, switching characters, changing names - are annoying, because this is no real issue. No one needs for that to change, so just keep things as they are supposed to be.

Other scenes, changing the story a bit, omitting 'unimportant' stuff, these are the things to be expected for practical reasons in an adaptation.

The Will-Gared-thing really confuses me. They had to reshoot the Prologue scene and recast both Will and Waymar due to the fact that the former actors were not available at the time of the reshoot. And as they have reshot also the beheading sequence, they could very easily also have recast Gared for that scene and the reshot Prologue, if the old Gared guy was also not available at the time of the reshoot. So I sincerely doubt that this whole change was done due to practical issues. But I really don't see the sense in changing something like that.

[Jack Sparrow]

Mormont,

well, the chances you refer to - wrong eyecolors, switching characters, changing names - are annoying, because this is no real issue. No one needs for that to change, so just keep things as they are supposed to be.

The types of things always annoy me in discussing books or adaptations: words like "needs" or "has to" or "supposed to be." Nothing needs to be any particular way other than what the creators want them to be, and there is no "supposed to be" regarding the book to show translation. The books aren't an instruction guide for making a TV show, they are an instruction guide for a reader to imagine a story. Everything in the books is supposed to be the story for the reader to imagine, not for a TV producer and crew to film. Purists always say something is supposed to be one way, or has to be to be a credible version of the story, and fans of the adaptation will say that things had to change for the process, and none of these is true. Nothing has to be any way in fiction, though producers of motion pictures are under greater constraints because they have to actually produce a visual of something.

Scripts rarely make it through to film without any changes, and why would they? Directors, actors, production designers, they're all creative people, or they wouldn't be in this line of work. If they're filming something and they don't like the way it's working, it would be silly not to change it; a script isn't holy writ. But there will always be some fans who think that with a book nothing can be changed, even though probably any writer will tell you a lot of the details they put into a story are just gut instinct, and could have easily gone another way, and the writer might not have been wholly satisfied with everything they wrote anyway, and might like a change (George has even commented on wanting to change at least one name in the books). In fact, almost any writer reading back over a book he or she wrote would probably want to change things left and right (some writers have produced multiple editions of their books throughout their lives, I believe; I think Mary Shelley kept re-writing 'Frankenstein' up until she died, but maybe I'm remembering that wrong).

[True Blue Mug]

The Will-Gared-thing really confuses me. They had to reshoot the Prologue scene and recast both Will and Waymar due to the fact that the former actors were not available at the time of the reshoot. And as they have reshot also the beheading sequence, they could very easily also have recast Gared for that scene and the reshot Prologue, if the old Gared guy was also not available at the time of the reshoot. So I sincerely doubt that this whole change was done due to practical issues. But I really don't see the sense in changing something like that.

Hmmm... I tend to agree. I wonder if they thought the beheading would be more compelling if it was a younger more "innocent" character. I dunno, but I feel that Gared was a better choice. I mean a witless kid could be easily scared. The fact that it was Gared, a seasoned man of the Night's Watch, gave the threat of the Others more credence.

[mormont]

Mormont,

well, the chances you refer to - wrong eyecolors, switching characters, changing names - are annoying, because this is no real issue. No one needs for that to change, so just keep things as they are supposed to be.

But at the same time, no-one needs for that to stay the same, either. So they may be changed for relatively minor reasons. Take the eye colour issue as an example - making the actors wear coloured contacts for long stretches is uncomfortable and inconvenient. If it's not a real issue, why bother?

[Padraig]

well, the chances you refer to - wrong eyecolors, switching characters, changing names - are annoying, because this is no real issue. No one needs for that to change, so just keep things as they are supposed to be.

That's one way to look at it. The other way to look at it is that they have the selected actors to play Dany, Tyrion etc and they have to change them to look more like the book characters. And now you are looking at plenty of work and time. Clearly they have gone a long way to change Emilia Clarke, Peter Dinklage etc. But they haven't decided to be precise. They could have but i'm hardly surprised that they didn't want to be slavish to the text. They know its a different medium. They know some things wouldn't work visiually. (We've already been told that KG's white armour didn't work well on camera. GRRM has previously said that some of the arms on Ran's site didn't work as well as he expected). And they also have to explore their creative sides. You have all these talented people involved. You might as well use them. Otherwise, the whole enterprise will lack heart.

Does eye colour matter that much? They certainly could have tried the colour but ruled it out because it didn't work on camera. (People suggest that changing eye-colour is a trivial thing. If that is true then you can't rule out them trying this trivial thing).

Or maybe they thought purple eyes would be too weird for the kind of audience they are going for. Really, there are a lot of reasons they could decide agains them. If they only reason for purple eyes is because GRRM said, well...he accepts there will be changes, so we may as well do also. It really is a small thing.

Jaime and Cersei have blondish hair. That's all that is important too. If they had the same hair colour as Robert then we'd have issues.

Harder to discuss the Will-Gared thing since i'm not 100% sure they still have a Gared. Amalgamating roles is fine IMO. They will do that all the time. But we seem to still have a Gared. So perhaps they just prefered Will appearance wise? If he seems to work better than Gared then surely that's ok? (Somebody has pointed out that we might sympathise more with Will since he is young. Although, far from a child). Or maybe they ran into an issue getting Gared back for the execution scene? So just went with Will?

I'd be concerned with anything that changed the story. The Blackfish change is significant for instance but I can see why HBO would do that too. So I have adjusted to it. But things that just change minor enough details...I fail to work up any real worry.

[Giant of Lannister]

As I see it - there is only 1 person who has a genuine, valid, vested interest in how this turns out, and as GRRM seems more than happy with how his baby is being 'brought to life' for our enjoyment, then I for one am happy enough to trust his judgement.

If it's good enough for the Author - it's good enough for me.