Category: Cinema 31
Anybody in to Game of Thrones? I've watched all the seasons with audio
description through BlindMiceMart. New season premiered tonight on HBO and it
was amazing!!
I watched it, but I read all the books first, so nothing was really a surprise for me.
Is this different from the Hunger Games trilogy? I read those. Interesting books.
Yes, Leo.
The Hunger Games is a young-adult distopian trilogy.
Game of Thrones is based on George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire series. It's I think six books long now. High fantasy. Political intrigue, soome magic, apparently a lot of messy violence in places and characters getting killed off. Generally well-regarded.
I think this is one of the few times in my life I'd be more interested in watching a show rather than reading a book, but I could be wrong. I did finish the first book, but while I really enjoy a good long read in multiple genres, I found this one was just far too much for me. I'm not exactly sure what turned me off; not the sex or violence; not even the characters who I was pretty happy with. It was just ... something.
still need to get through the books before I watch the series. I'm one of those people who has to read the books if there's a TV series based off of them first, or I'll get lost.
The problem is that G.R.R Martin tends to go off on wild tangents, talking about things which have no impact on the events whatsoever. While some might argue that it's good and adds more character to the players of the series, and more description to his world making it more real, to me it is just an annoying thing which fills up hundreds of pages with useless information. He's not the first author to do this, nor will he be the last. While I am normally one of those people who prefers reading the books over watching the series, I actually have to admit that I kind of liked the HBO series more than the books in this instance because it removed a lot of Martin's usual clutter. Of course, as an unintended consequence, other good things went away too, but well, beggers can't be choosers.
I gave up on the show after last series. things happened that just never happened in the books and half the plot is all screwed up now.
The thing is, with Martin's continual delays in publishing the books because he'd rather do other stuff rather than work on the book series that is earning him millions of dollars, I would wager that in the upcoming years, the series is going to divert even more from the books. HBO said that they are no longer concerned with his time table. Since he revealed the ending to them, as far as they're concerned, they don't have to wait for him to release the final two books. They'll just end the series the way he said he would want it to end, but use their own ways to get there, I guess.
Damn, last post six months ago! This isn't a very active board is it? I guess I can't really promise to change that as most of the stuff I like is probably considered weird by most and wouldn't get too many responses if I made posts about it, but maybe I'll take a shot anyway.
So i do like this series. And I agree with Maddog above me that the books are a bit long-winded and I'm not even convinced they'll ever be finished at this rate. I do consider literature to be a superior medium but I don't think longer/more words/pages necessarily means better and it's not always true that books supercede televisual media. The series will definitely be finished before the books now and the result is an interesting cross-media experiment, where the books start out influencing the show and then ultimately we have the reverse situation. if you look at the show's wiki for example you will see Martin talking about how the performance of certain cast members on the show influences the way he will write these characters in the future.
I actually stopped watching the show partway through season 2 for...complicated reasons. lately I've been thinking I should get back into it. I heard that Diana Rigg is on the show now and even won some awards for her performance. Wow, so cool that she's still acting. her era of The Avengers (the 1960s one of course) was the best!