Game of Thrones - S5 - Episode 1
Apr. 14th, 2015 10:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatThis was a lot better than I expected, and amongst the few television series I've seen lately that not only held my attention all the way through but I also enjoyed quite a bit.
At this point, if you haven't read the books - I really wouldn't worry about "Book Spoilers", mainly because the series has for all intents and purposes gone off book. They have however kept the bits and pieces that I enjoyed or liked in the books and scraped the bits that drug and frustrated me to no end. (Well for the most part.) I honestly have no idea how much of the book they plan on following from this point forward, although if I had to guess - I'd say that Cersei, Dany, Jon Snow, Stannis and Ayra's arcs will probably stick pretty closely to the books, while Sansa, Tyrion, Jamie, Brienne, Davos, and the Sand Snakes won't. In short they kept the bits that worked and kicked to the curb the ones that drug. (Although a fan favorite was Brienne's arc - it wasn't mine. And it still may go that route, who knows?)
* First, how they veered off book. The only part of Feast of Crows that we saw was in King's Landing, with Jamie and Cersei over their father's grave. But even that veered away from what happened in the story. (I will state that Jamie standing guard over his father's grave was amongst one of my favorite bits in Feast - particularly how he describes his father's stink in his thoughts. Admittedly there's not much in Feast that I'd consider memorable. Martin rambles in that book.)
Other bits? Tyrion and Varys are together in Illyria. They didn't travel together in the book. In fact, Varys sent Tyrion off by himself, where he has various and sundry adventures...eventually ending up as a slave in a traveling circus of sorts, with Dany's former advisor, whose name I can't remember at the moment. I think the writers are wisely tightening that story. It was very frustrating in the books. Tyrion spends a lot of time navel-gazing, and we have this absurd subplot involving the possible heir to Rhegare, Dany's brother, and some former Kingsguard who helped him escape and is trying to get him back to Westeros to take over the Kingdom. They may still go that route, but I doubt it - it really didn't work in the books and I admittedly lost track of it after a bit.
The other subplot they appear to have dropped is Davoos trying to drum up support for Stannis, while Stannis is at the Wall. Davvos goes to Highgarden and various other places, getting into all sorts of trouble along the way. It's slow as molasses to read, and I sort of lost track of it - but it also makes up a good portion of Feast.
And Brienne's story is completely off book. She never finds Sansa or Ayra in the books.
Instead she stumbles upon a bunch of crazy people and barely survives. Actually, that's still up in the air. Here, not only did she stumble across Ayra, who does not want her help, but she appears to be close to stumbling upon Sansa. (I'm wondering if the creators of the television series were as annoyed as I was by Brienne's arc which mainly involved long endless passages of Brienne wandering from village to village with Podrick worrying if she was really cut out to be a knight and would ever redeem herself and ever find Sansa or Ayra (who at this point, she believed was dead because the Lannister's believed she was dead). Here, she's sort of doing the same thing - but it's shorter (only one scene not over 100 pages) and she does sort of achieve her goal, even if it doesn't go as expected.
So too is Sansa's story - in the book they spend a lot of time wondering around the woods on foot. With Robin. Who is incredibly grating. And finally finally get together with a bunch of people. This too seems to be tighter.
Jon Snow's story is just like the books, so far. In the book's he shoots Mance Ryder with an arrow, just as he does here. Dany's is also quite similar (and I like the actor they hired to play her lover - much better choice than the other guy, and he makes the character far more likable.) And Cersei's is almost exactly the same - I loved the flashback with the fortune teller.
* Second, this episode worked. It jumped stories just when I was about to get tired of the one they were telling. Each jump flowed seamlessly. And I was able to follow it without any problems. (I tried to watch Wolf Hall recently, and couldn't stick with it at all -- although that may be the subject matter. I don't find Henry the VIII interesting or anyone around him for that matter. It's still on the DVR and I taped the second episode...so I may watch it all yet. But I don't know.)
* Third, the actors are just getting better with time. I may have started out with Jamie as a favorite character, but right now my favorites are : Tyrion, Dany, and Ayra.
Peter Dinklage nails every scene he's in.
So far so good. Also curious to see where they go with it, since it's clearly off book now. In some respects, I like it better than the books.
As an aside, we had a lot of male back or butt nudity. But why no frontal? Usually HBO doesn't shy away from this sort of thing. Considering we had female frontal nudity, it only seems fair.
At this point, if you haven't read the books - I really wouldn't worry about "Book Spoilers", mainly because the series has for all intents and purposes gone off book. They have however kept the bits and pieces that I enjoyed or liked in the books and scraped the bits that drug and frustrated me to no end. (Well for the most part.) I honestly have no idea how much of the book they plan on following from this point forward, although if I had to guess - I'd say that Cersei, Dany, Jon Snow, Stannis and Ayra's arcs will probably stick pretty closely to the books, while Sansa, Tyrion, Jamie, Brienne, Davos, and the Sand Snakes won't. In short they kept the bits that worked and kicked to the curb the ones that drug. (Although a fan favorite was Brienne's arc - it wasn't mine. And it still may go that route, who knows?)
* First, how they veered off book. The only part of Feast of Crows that we saw was in King's Landing, with Jamie and Cersei over their father's grave. But even that veered away from what happened in the story. (I will state that Jamie standing guard over his father's grave was amongst one of my favorite bits in Feast - particularly how he describes his father's stink in his thoughts. Admittedly there's not much in Feast that I'd consider memorable. Martin rambles in that book.)
Other bits? Tyrion and Varys are together in Illyria. They didn't travel together in the book. In fact, Varys sent Tyrion off by himself, where he has various and sundry adventures...eventually ending up as a slave in a traveling circus of sorts, with Dany's former advisor, whose name I can't remember at the moment. I think the writers are wisely tightening that story. It was very frustrating in the books. Tyrion spends a lot of time navel-gazing, and we have this absurd subplot involving the possible heir to Rhegare, Dany's brother, and some former Kingsguard who helped him escape and is trying to get him back to Westeros to take over the Kingdom. They may still go that route, but I doubt it - it really didn't work in the books and I admittedly lost track of it after a bit.
The other subplot they appear to have dropped is Davoos trying to drum up support for Stannis, while Stannis is at the Wall. Davvos goes to Highgarden and various other places, getting into all sorts of trouble along the way. It's slow as molasses to read, and I sort of lost track of it - but it also makes up a good portion of Feast.
And Brienne's story is completely off book. She never finds Sansa or Ayra in the books.
Instead she stumbles upon a bunch of crazy people and barely survives. Actually, that's still up in the air. Here, not only did she stumble across Ayra, who does not want her help, but she appears to be close to stumbling upon Sansa. (I'm wondering if the creators of the television series were as annoyed as I was by Brienne's arc which mainly involved long endless passages of Brienne wandering from village to village with Podrick worrying if she was really cut out to be a knight and would ever redeem herself and ever find Sansa or Ayra (who at this point, she believed was dead because the Lannister's believed she was dead). Here, she's sort of doing the same thing - but it's shorter (only one scene not over 100 pages) and she does sort of achieve her goal, even if it doesn't go as expected.
So too is Sansa's story - in the book they spend a lot of time wondering around the woods on foot. With Robin. Who is incredibly grating. And finally finally get together with a bunch of people. This too seems to be tighter.
Jon Snow's story is just like the books, so far. In the book's he shoots Mance Ryder with an arrow, just as he does here. Dany's is also quite similar (and I like the actor they hired to play her lover - much better choice than the other guy, and he makes the character far more likable.) And Cersei's is almost exactly the same - I loved the flashback with the fortune teller.
* Second, this episode worked. It jumped stories just when I was about to get tired of the one they were telling. Each jump flowed seamlessly. And I was able to follow it without any problems. (I tried to watch Wolf Hall recently, and couldn't stick with it at all -- although that may be the subject matter. I don't find Henry the VIII interesting or anyone around him for that matter. It's still on the DVR and I taped the second episode...so I may watch it all yet. But I don't know.)
* Third, the actors are just getting better with time. I may have started out with Jamie as a favorite character, but right now my favorites are : Tyrion, Dany, and Ayra.
Peter Dinklage nails every scene he's in.
So far so good. Also curious to see where they go with it, since it's clearly off book now. In some respects, I like it better than the books.
As an aside, we had a lot of male back or butt nudity. But why no frontal? Usually HBO doesn't shy away from this sort of thing. Considering we had female frontal nudity, it only seems fair.
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no subject
Date: 2015-04-15 10:15 pm (UTC)Did get into an almost fan kerfuffle over whether "hate speech" is absolutely protected by the First Amendment on GRRM's blog. (I don't think it is. Nothing is absolutely protected. Luckily GRRM had 0 patience for off-topic kerfuffles and put a stop to it.)
He has a crazy fandom.
no subject
Date: 2015-04-15 10:21 pm (UTC)As for "hate speech", as I understand the law, it is protected EXCEPT in cases where a hate crime can be shown, in which case the speech can be used to show the "hate" and thereby increase the sentence. But I haven't looked into this for years now.