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How is this going to work long term?


Aegnor

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Bran and Arya are the ones who will get affected the most. A recast after season 3 is inevitable, maybe even after season 2. Sad, but that's the way it is.

I'm not really sure what causes you to believe this will actually happen.

Especially because Martin has said repeatedly how difficult it is to find appropriate child actors, and how lucky they were. Throw in to the mix that producers and networks hate recasting characters, because they know viewers hate it as well, so they try to avoid it if they can.

Their age is not important, barring Arya's for the beginning of S2. After that, it's just fan nitpicking.

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Well I can't see anyone believing the dragons will be riding size within 1 or 2 years, a 5-year old dragon is more instinctively plausible for invading. So if the series runs over 5 or 6 years it's entirely plausible for characters to age 5 or 6 years.

It's the whole timing of the Seasons thing that screws things up. The story is taking place in the Westerosi autumn. I imagine a long summer means a reasonably long Autumn. If you've got to be stockpiling your harvest for a many years long winter you need a pretty long Autumn in which to both feed yourself and put away enough food to last the winter. So I suppose a 3-year Autumn is reasonable. Leaving only 2 years of story time to be had in the actual winter.

TV show viewers are already thinking things appear to happen quicker than they should, so passage of time sequences to show that the kids are not aging faster than time is passing would help the show in general.

Just as well Maise doesn't have to pretend to be a boy for long. Probably only 2, maybe 3 episodes into next season.

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If one of the kids get a growth spurt it may be a problem. Seeing a 5'9 Maisie towering over Gendry would kind of ruin things. But they may opt to do some "hobbotizing" by using makeup to make them look younger and making them smaller than they are on camera.

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  • 5 months later...

Maisie Williams is currently 14 years old. Arya is nine at the start of the series and is probably ten by the end of ADWD. If this was just a few Hollywood films, this wouldn't be a problem; but this isn't a movie trilogy, it's a seven season series. (At one point I do believe there were plans to adapt the books into a film trilogy). What happens when Williams goes through puberty and no longer looks like a ten-year-old? I understand HBO has partially solved this problem by filming seasons two and three back-to-back, but this only helps in the short term. Assuming there's seven seasons for the seven books, they might be able to get away with doing another double filming period again next time around before the actress's physical changes become too noticeable. This is all of course, assuming Williams hits puberty in the next couple of years. But what happens when we reach the last two books/seasons? Unless the passage of time dramatically picks up in the last two books/seasons, we might have to accept seeing a not-so young looking Arya towards the end. Does any feel that this will sour their experience of watching the show?

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I can't believe certain people here makes such a big freaking deal out of this.

They'll cheat a little with the passage of time - problem fucking solved. Period.

If Maisie has a growth spurt, she has a growth spurt in the show too. No prob. Does she HAVE to remain so very young? No. Theres no important reason whatsoever. Why do you assume they'll care about sticking to the story and keep them that young? They'll just age as much as they age IRL. She's still a teenage girl lost in a big scary world. Bran will be dragged along somehow. If they feel they have to rewrite a bit to make their choices and lines a bit more believable - they'll do just that.

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Maisie Williams is currently 14 years old.

This is all of course, assuming Williams hits puberty in the next couple of years.

Uh.. You think theres any reasonable possibility that she won't hit puberty before she's 16...?

I'm pretty darn sure she has hit puberty, btw. It's pretty noticable already.

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I can't believe certain people here makes such a big freaking deal out of this.

They'll cheat a little with the passage of time - problem fucking solved. Period.

If Maisie has a growth spurt, she has a growth spurt in the show too. No prob. Does she HAVE to remain so very young? No. Theres no important reason whatsoever. Why do you assume they'll care about sticking to the story and keep them that young? They'll just age as much as they age IRL. She's still a teenage girl lost in a big scary world. Bran will be dragged along somehow. If they feel they have to rewrite a bit to make their choices and lines a bit more believable - they'll do just that.

Agree with this completely. I'd much rather have them age up the characters to keep the same actors than recast younger ones just so that they're closer to the age of the kids in the novels. I don't really see how Arya being two to three years older really makes that big of a difference where something as drastic as a recast is required. With new kids, it wouldn't feel like the same character and the premise just seems hokey to me. Hell, the kids in Harry Potter were in their twenties by the end, I don't think anyone cared.

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The main problem I see, for the show, is the pacing of the plot. In the first 3 books the pace is brisk, the plot zips a long and there are huge shocks, developments and the like. It slows down hugely in the last two books and I don't know how this will play with the TV audience (the majority that have not read the books after season 1). In addition the Daneryars plot, even in books 2 and 3, is turgid and in my opinion not that interesting. How are her adventures going to sit with the TV audience after the climax of season 1?

Perhaps books 4 and 5 will be combined. But I can see frustration growing after books 3 especially with Daneryars progression.

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In addition the Daneryars plot, even in books 2 and 3, is turgid and in my opinion not that interesting. How are her adventures going to sit with the TV audience after the climax of season 1?

In book 2 Dany doesn't really have a whole lot, and it's easier to have some slow sections when there are exciting developments in the other parts of the show. I don't agree that Dany's book 3 plot is boring: that was the only book where I wasn't a little leery when one of her chapters came up (at least out of the first three books).
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Arya is nine at the start of the series and is probably ten by the end of ADWD.

She's probably 12 by the end of ADWD. AGoT starts in 298 AL and it is likely that ADWD finishes some way into 301 AL. Roughly three years have passed in the first five books, and there's easily a lot of wriggle room in that. Arya spends eight months in Harrenhal rather than four (or whatever she did). She spends a year wandering the Riverlands rather than a few months. It's all pretty flexible.

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As has been said, Martin was trying to get everybody settled in for a timeskip. Bran with the children, Arya with the Faceless Men, Dany stuck in Mereen, Sansa at the Eeyrie. But he couldn't give everyone a reason to sit still for three-four years (and Tyrion and Jorah to Meereen in time).

With the show, where most of the endless world building characters of Feast and Dance will probably be cut out, they might not have that problem and Cersei will be allowed to destroy the kingdom in peace for a few years.

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Perhaps books 4 and 5 will be combined.

Into 1 season? Hardly. There is way too much going on for that. They will be combined though. 2 full seasons is a different question though since they might have to cut some storylines just to keep things from spralling too much.

So we might end up with material from aSoS or tWoW. OTOH, lets hope we get that far!

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I can't really see why the ages matter all that much. Dany, Robb, Sansa, and Jon are all quite young in the books, and the actors that play them are obviously older. But it's done well. The actors are great, all of them. To assume they would just push them aside to adhere to some arbitrary number is just silly.

I see no reason why it would be a problem for every actor (even small ones like Rickon) to age up 6-7 years over the course of the show. IMO, swapping the actors every 2 years would be a much worse decision.

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I can't believe certain people here makes such a big freaking deal out of this.

They'll cheat a little with the passage of time - problem fucking solved. Period.

If Maisie has a growth spurt, she has a growth spurt in the show too. No prob. Does she HAVE to remain so very young? No. Theres no important reason whatsoever. Why do you assume they'll care about sticking to the story and keep them that young? They'll just age as much as they age IRL. She's still a teenage girl lost in a big scary world. Bran will be dragged along somehow. If they feel they have to rewrite a bit to make their choices and lines a bit more believable - they'll do just that.

Yes but most of arya's dialogue is directed toward a child of 9 not a 15-16 year old which would be an adult.

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Yes but most of arya's dialogue is directed toward a child of 9 not a 15-16 year old which would be an adult.

I never got the feeling that Martin was particularly familiar with children. I would usually imagine the child characters as being older than they were listed when I read the books, because Martin generally seemed to write them as more adult. GRRM has often said in interviews that children weren't treated the same in the middle ages, that they were expected to grow up quickly, so maybe that was part of it. Anyway, I doubt Arya's dialogue requires much changing.
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Agree with this completely. I'd much rather have them age up the characters to keep the same actors than recast younger ones just so that they're closer to the age of the kids in the novels. I don't really see how Arya being two to three years older really makes that big of a difference where something as drastic as a recast is required. With new kids, it wouldn't feel like the same character and the premise just seems hokey to me. Hell, the kids in Harry Potter were in their twenties by the end, I don't think anyone cared.

Same. Additionally they have already aged all the characters by about three years so there is already a disconnect between the books and the show. Started rereading GOT over Xmas and happened to catch a rerun of GOT episode 1 over the weekend. On the show Bran starts at 10, in the books he is 7, on the show Robert's Rebellion was 17 years and some change ago where as in the books it was about 15 years earlier. This does however push Arya from 9 to 12ish so her growing up on screen really won't be that unexepected since the books have thus far covered about 3.5 years (give or take). Her blossoming into a woman on the show would make sense for a girl going from 12 to 15.

Additionally I don't think her dialogue is age centered at all, more situaiton centered. She's already speaking "age inappropriate" dialogue because she's never 9 on the show since she starts off older. If it didn't bother people this season I don't see why it would become an issue down the road. Especially because even in the books at this point she closer to 11 than 9.

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The main problem I see, for the show, is the pacing of the plot. In the first 3 books the pace is brisk, the plot zips a long and there are huge shocks, developments and the like. It slows down hugely in the last two books and I don't know how this will play with the TV audience (the majority that have not read the books after season 1). In addition the Daneryars plot, even in books 2 and 3, is turgid and in my opinion not that interesting. How are her adventures going to sit with the TV audience after the climax of season 1?

Perhaps books 4 and 5 will be combined. But I can see frustration growing after books 3 especially with Daneryars progression.

I think this is the bigger problem; bigger than the age thing at least. While most posters think the pacing only gets to be a problem in season 4, I myself see a big pacing problem in the next (second) season. AGOT was tightly paced and kept you invested in the many characters it introduced. I did not feel the same about the new characters in ACOK, and the stories of the already existing characters didn't really do anything for me. For casual viewers, this will make it hard to get them hooked like with AGOT. When I talked to people who watch the show but did not read the books, I notice how they find it hard to keep track with all the characters but they're intrigued by them nonetheless. In terms of the amount of character introduction, ACOK is like AGOT but in terms of building rounded off, individual arcs, it really isn't.I don't know, to me ACOK felt more like a big prelude to the shit-hitting-fan events of ASOS.

Some specifics: The bulk of ACOK is about Tyrion vs Cersei and their scheming in KL --- this does not translate well to screen. Not enough for a season I mean. The rest of the schemery/development is scattered all over the place, unlike GoT, in which all decisions led to the climax with Ned. Bran starts his journey north.... that's it basically. Jon has some loyalty issues that only get resolved in the next book, Jaime is in prison, not much to tell there. Mel, Stannis and Davos are important additions but what do they do in ACOK really? Dany and the House of Undying are interesting but I feel it's not enough to make her season-story interesting enough. They would have to include the stealing of the Unsullied IMHO.

Positives: Arya has adventure suited for TV. The only problem with Arya's story is that it includes a list of side characters that need some serous trimming if they want viewers to keep track. Renly has a nice little moment of center stage but it's cut short, quite early in the season.The shadowbabies and the Battle of the Blackwater are suited for the pacing of TV, I'll grant that as well.

All in all, I have a bad feeling about next season and, as a result of that, I seriously doubt if they'll make it to season 3. It's a shame as I believe that that book really deserves an adaptation.

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