Game of Thrones [Potential Book Spoilers]

Then why the hell call him Ned when his name is Eddard? It brings about confusion...

Edit: Or perhaps not... It's probably a nickname and as I suspect, I missed it...

edited 18th Apr '11 1:52:34 PM by Swish

It's a nickname. Though how they got Ned from Eddard, I have no idea. Kinda like how Dick came from Richard.

edited 18th Apr '11 1:52:45 PM by ZeroPotential

It reminded me of The West Wing how the presidents name is Josiah but it gets shortened to Jed

I like the fact that he gets called Ned, in other Fantasy settings he'd be called Eddard all the time but he gets a simple nickname of Ned which contrasts nicely against the more ornate Taegarians(Sp) so it tells you the sort of man he is

edited 18th Apr '11 2:10:09 PM by faradayangel

Ned is a common contraction of Edward. So it makes sense.

In the book, yes, she did want her husband to stay. But she also knew it'd risk creating a disagreement between him and Robert, to refuse the honor. I wouldn't call it ambition so much as prudence.

And the direwolf scene was a bit ominous as well, with at least one person mentioning the symbolism of a wolf being killed by a stag. Sure, the boys were laughing at first, but it did make folks uneasy.

Dear God those credits....wow just wow. Also going to say it again, I have a massive amount of PSL for Daernys now.

I thought the sex scene wasn't too rapey (though I haven't read the books). It felt like something was lost in translation. To her, any kind of sex is going to seem a violation. The Dothraki on the other hand seem fairly agressive as a society; there's enough ambiguity in the scene for his intentions to have actually been tender.

The problem is that we don't know a thing about the guy.

I also loved the actor who did most of the exposition/placating of crazy!blonde!sniverly man. He was hilarious.

edited 18th Apr '11 4:23:14 PM by Nicknacks

In the book Danny sort of excepts her role with Drago. He keeps repeating No, feels her up abit, and then she says a soft and in my personal opinion willing/loving/accepting yes.

Also Sansa is a frigid bitch, I freaking love it.

edited 18th Apr '11 4:23:47 PM by syvaris

Sansa's a largly annoying and unsympathetic character through "A Game of Thrones." It's not until "A Clash of Kings" that Martin goes all Break the Cutie on her and you start to really like her.

Pain and Suffering=likability.

Re-watching the first episode, it's like every other line is ironic foreshadowing.

Not just every line, every shot as well, Arya and the Hound anyone?

The only thing I really didn't like was the scene between Jon and Tyrion, it just didn't feel as....touching, as it did in the book.

Cuz there was no Ghost in it.

Also no acrobatics. LOL.

Also the exposition guy was Magister Illyrios. He could have been a little fatter, but I guess they didn't want to put an actor through that.

Actually, they originally cast Ian Mc Niece as Magister Illyrio, who is a very fat man but he was replaced. I don't know if it was for health reasons (Mc Niece is no kid) or not. Mc Niece, you might remember played the crier in both seasons of HBO's "Rome."

Oh now he would have been able to carry it off.

Sources say scheduling conflicts, which could be true or false.

Possibly Mc Neice wanted to play Churchill in Doctor Who rather more than Magister Illyrio in a pilot for Game of Thrones. In UK terms, Churchill in Doctor Who is definitely the higher profile part.

edited 19th Apr '11 12:26:55 AM by Bluesqueak

McNiece would've been good, he's great in everything he does

scheduling conflicts with Doc Martin is more likely

edited 19th Apr '11 12:40:22 AM by faradayangel

There was also Jonathan Creek. He's a busy bloke

edited 19th Apr '11 12:55:45 AM by Bluesqueak

And in case any of us were worrying, there will be a second series.

Watched the pilot last night. Some impressions:

- It really wanted to be a two-hour pilot. The script seems rushed; we go through a lot of the major scenes from the book, but on film it seems like everyone gets one or two Establishing Character Moments and then it's on to the next character. The actors do their best with it — and the acting is really quite good — but there's only so much they can compensate. There's some Mood Whiplash problems too, probably for the same reason.

- Casting is exceptional throughout, though. Everyone works as their characters, even if only half the cast looks like my headcanon — Benjen looks like my image of Eddard, for example, and no one looks like my image of Jaime. I like it that they haven't felt the need to make everyone pretty, especially in the older cast.

- Some of the costuming looks weirdly modern. Whoever was designing the costumes for the Pentosi side of the cast did a good job, though, particularly on Viserys. Most of the armor looks practical, too, which is fairly unusual for fantasy.

- Some interesting differences in characterization. Cersei's a lot more sympathetic here, and Jaime seems more like his Clash of Kings characterization than his Game of Thrones. On the other hand, Viserys comes off as even more of a slimeball than he does in the book, if that's possible; the book's version was pretty obviously broken, which contributed a little sympathy, but this one's just abusive and narcissistic.

- They may have overdone the fanservice a little.

edited 19th Apr '11 12:21:51 PM by Nornagest

I'm not sure about them overdoing the fanservice... Sure, Dany's bathing scene was a little gratuitous, but I feel most of the other scenes were true to the book, and they even cut some out. Though I'm with people the people who are curious about why they essentially had to turn Dany and Drogo's sex scene into rape, perhaps because we didn't get to Viserys abusing her enough and her character arc has to start with her really low?

Because they couldn't get the tone of the scene in the books across, but wanted it to be true to it?

I do agree it felt rushed and off-pace, and that caused them to miss a lot. I also find the scenery to be a bit off. The road into Winterfell? Real paths get worn and beaten into the ground even without trying.

Dany and Drogo's sex scene is actually pretty close to the book's version; it's just that they only filmed the first half of it. That's kind of unfortunate, since the way Dany eventually deals with it is really where her character development starts, but I suppose I can see the reasons.

The first episode of any HBO show is loaded with Fanservice. It gets people who haven't read the series three times to keep watching the show. For people who don't know the characters and who didn't get to know them in this episode, there was the action sequence in the beginning, all of the naked people, and the beautiful scenery porn. That gets them watching episode two and three and then they're hooked on the series.

Fixed...

The only true Fanservice sequences in the episode seemed to be the introduction of the Imp(the nickname is what I recall more than his actual name), the Dany/Viserys sequence, and the wedding... But, based on other HBO series I've seen, three seems to be on the low side for a pilot episode...

Well, considering they invented that scene with Tyrion for the pilot....