You can't have a discussion about the myriad changes in GoT from book to screen without some wag horning in and announcing that television is a visual medium and that some changes are necessary, as if that wasn't perfectly evident to anyone with 10 working brain cells. As annoying as things like 15 guys attacking King's Landing in the penultimate battle of Season 2 is, or a Dothraki horde of 30, it would be churlish to complain. Martin's works are primarily renowned for their dense world building and massive cast of characters, and there was no way they would ever have made the translation to screen completely intact. Before the HBO series was announced I always declared the series was basically unfilmable, and while I'm still not entirely convinced by the results I think they've done a decent job with extremely difficult material.
That said, the OP is 100% correct. There are a lot of deviations are are just confusing, if not straight up irritating. Jeyne Westerling into Talissa being a major example of this. This is where we get into changing things just to change them, and quite frankly almost without exception the changes have been abysmal. With the exception of a few strong scenes, the off-book material has been cringe-inducing with its awfulness, the nadir being Dany's atrocious season 2 arc. The Qarth chapters were never strong to begin with so you can forgive them for trying, but they took something weak and made it comically bad. This is a problem with deviating from acclaimed works of fiction. You're seldom going to one-up the original author.
That said, the OP is 100% correct. There are a lot of deviations are are just confusing, if not straight up irritating. Jeyne Westerling into Talissa being a major example of this. This is where we get into changing things just to change them, and quite frankly almost without exception the changes have been abysmal. With the exception of a few strong scenes, the off-book material has been cringe-inducing with its awfulness, the nadir being Dany's atrocious season 2 arc. The Qarth chapters were never strong to begin with so you can forgive them for trying, but they took something weak and made it comically bad. This is a problem with deviating from acclaimed works of fiction. You're seldom going to one-up the original author.
That's not saying much. If you paid attention to his blog leading up to the release of the series, you'd have noticed that Martin had a major case of the fanboys going on. He seems absolutely tickled pink to see his material up on the screen, and I suspect he's not too arsed one way or the other about changes. That's fine if he approves the changes...they're his books and ultimately it's his show as well...but that doesn't make them good changes.El Danny said:All you guys complaining about the changes in the TV series do realise George RR Martin plays a major role in the shows plot development? Most changes are ran though George before they're written in, or are his ideas to begin with.
The sharpest complaints about Jackson's changes to LOTR have always been about the characters. Like Far-From-The-Book-amir. I've never heard anyone carping about the length of Gandalf's staff, although...heh...that sounds kind of bad. Go go double entendre.Nouw said:W-wh-what? People complain about that kind of detail? I imagine they'd also complain about the omission of Tom Bombadil *shudders.*
I don't know where you are in the books, but there's been more than one sign that Daenerys has a touch of the old Targaryen madness. I'm not entirely sold on her ability to lead a nation.Innocent Flower said:I can understand daenerys being 20 or so rather than 13. But at the same time there's scenes were she's pretty much a female viserys. She's supposed to be the prince that was promised and an amazing mother to her people. We're supposed to think that she'd make a better leader than joff//rob/balon/renly/stanis/drogo/tommen/tommen's cats yet she's fucking not. I think most people agree with me on quarth.