I know most of the time when changes are made from a book it ends up being bad. For the most part this is true of Game of Thrones. But for fun let us discuss changes that you have felt were improvements or things you preferred. Obviously this only applies only up to the where the books are at now.
Here are some of mine:
- Jon Snow has a lot more fighting action scenes and gets to have a few pretty epic moments; like with the Thane, Karl Tanner and all of Hardhome. Hardhome I think is the number 1 best improvement the show has made and it ended up being one of the best episodes. It also makes Jon a much more epic character having actually faced truely epic moments. As good as the book is, it lakes these epic moments for jon
- Ned/Jaime fight. I know it is kind of stupid because Ned is surrounded it does not make sense to try to duel Jaime. Also Ned knows Jaime is a much better fighter; Ned is stupid but they make him even dumber in the show. However the scene itself added a memorable moment and worked well for a screen adaptation.
-Dany being fully fire proof. It seemed out of nowhere and inconsistent in the books in which Dany has 1 miraculous moment in which she did not burn. The show set it up from the first Dany scene she has a unique tolerance to fire/heat. This made for a better set up and makes more sense with her being able to ride a dragon.
- Mance Raider actually dieing and Tormund getting a majority of his plot. It seemed like silly nonsense the trick that Melisandry does switching Mance and burning someone else. Mance was pretty underwhelming in the show too so getting rid of him I thought was better. Also Tormund is just hella fun in comparison.
That is all I can think off at the moment.
I think doing away with the Jeyne Poole character and having Littlefinger manipulating Sansa into a wedding with Ramsey streamlined the plot (rather than JP passing herself off as Ayra) and did away with a lot of unnecessary confusion..
Arya taking over much of the Lady Stoneheart plot and motivation was a good idea to me..
.....as was including Robb Stark's pregnant wife at the Red Wedding making it more poignant and tragic.
I know I have others...they will come to me.
including Robb Stark's pregnant wife at the Red Wedding making it more poignant and tragic.
I do not know if I like or dislike the Jeyne Poole to Sansa switch. It seemed like back peddling to make Sansa a helpless victim again and I really did not like the payoff in Season 6 in which she saves Jon from stupidity by withholding information from him. All during the battle plan she did nothing mention the Vale support and yet nagged Jon about all his plans. That was kind of ridiculous.
However I do agree that is steamlined/simplified the plot in a good way I just wish they would have executed it a little better. I think it was a good concept executed poorly.
I also agree with the removal of lady stoneheart. I prefer the Brotherhood story line without her, I like Beric better. But I dislike what the change meant for Jaime and Breinne. Both their storylines became boring and repetitive without the character. So again the concept was good but the execution was poor.
I don't agree with Robb's pregnant wife though. That was done purely for shock value and if you think about it at all it was incredibly stupid to bring her. I mean Robb like Ned was extra dumbed down in the show but this was retard level that actually made the red wedding kind of silly. I mean what kind of idiot brings the very person that he broke his word for to make his apology for breaking said word. Also what kind of idiot puts his pregnant wife in harms way bringing them to a person he knowingly wronged and had a bad reputation. Just stupid.
Agreed
I loved the books but DAMN were they too overloaded
The show took really great material and snipped out the overly long parts
Idk, long is not automatically bad. In some ways by greately reducing some of the plots and characterization the show really simplified some of the story in a boring or bad way and turned some characters into carton cutouts.
For example Dorne storyline was significantly reduced for the show but that was not in a good way at all. Same with Euron and Tyrion. I have mixed feelings about some of this stuff.
Fair enough MX/long can be fine;)
I just really disliked Dorne in the books and the crap we got on screen (except for the great Oberyn) kind of solidified my opinion
I also liked the cutting of the boring rhoyne (sp?) sailing trip, Jeynne poole and dumb Mance commando raid...the show really does the best version of this material...just my opinion tho
To each their own. i mostly agree i suppose with the exception of dorne. it is vastly better in the books and it was more interesting and matched what we knew about the characters. the show version was awful
shareJon Snow has a lot more fighting action scenes and gets to have a few pretty epic moments; like with the Thane, Karl Tanner and all of Hardhome.
That shit was great
And my hero Jon nearly got his ass kicked!!!
Exciting stuff
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that; I did mention Karl Tanner but yes the whole battle with the mutineers was an addition that was really good. Good catch.
shareI only remembered it because you mention Jon's fight with him, so you still get full credit.
This is a good topic. It's too easy to remember the bad changes and forget the good.
Thanks. I have a tendency to focus on the negative too much as well. So it is interesting to consider the good changes sometimes. Somethings need to be changed so they look better on screen or would not work on screen.
For example, not trying to pretend Berristan Selmy was someone else when meeting Dany the first time. On screen it would not work because we know and would recognize the actor so the mystery would be pointless. So changing it to have Jorah recognize him makes perfect sense and works. It is stuff like this I think we should appreciate rather than always focusing on things like the horror that was the Sand Snakes and Dorne.
Yes, that's another good example. And while I hated seeing Barristan the Bold getting killed, they gave him a pretty badass sendoff. He took out 14 guys single-handedly, some of them after he had been grievously wounded.
It's funny, everybody hated the Dorne stuff but I didn't mind so much. I think it would have been better if they fleshed it out over two seasons. That strikes me as the showrunners biggest mistake so far -- condensing the two largest books into a single season.
Well I think getting rid of Barristan was to make room for Tyrion and Jorah's return. I think a lot of the stuff Tyrion did in Dany's absence Barristan will do; making the situation bad because he is a warrior not a strategies. I think Tyrion in the book will negotiate with the armies besieging Mereen and prove his worth to Dany and that is why he will become hand of the queen. but that is a guess.
Well if i talk about Dorne it will be all negative. The Sand snakes in season 5 were cartoon caricatures. Their introduction scene was by far the worst scene of the series. their whole plan to kidnap Myrcella right in the middle of Sunspeare was so poorly conceived it was comical. Actually killing Myrcella was a betrayal to the words of Oberyn whom they were taking revenge for, so it didn't make sense. And it was even worse for making Jaime's storyline worse than the books too. Season 6 got even more comically bad. Their plan to avenge Oberyn was to wipe out his entire family and name? And Dorne just goes along with watching their ruling house get wiped out and allow a mistress and Oberyn's bastard children to take over instead of another cousin or noble house? Doran Martell was a nobody push over with no plan other than rolling over to the lanisters because war is bad or something?
At least season 7 had the pay off of watching them all die horribly. It was very satisfying, I don't even like Euron in the show but I loved him after watching him butcher 2 of the sand snakes. And Cersei's revenge scene was brilliant. So at least something good came of my hate of the characters.
- Sansa taking over for the False Arya. In the books Sansa was last seen sitting around the Vale doing nothing, while a superfluous character was abused and Mance Rayder was resurrected for no reason, while on the TV show she's risen like a phoenix from the ashes.
- Reducing 1200 pages of Iron Island Kingsmoot to a ten-minute TV scene. And sending Yara/Asha right off to Mereen, where she could flirt with Dany and get the invasion moving, instead of leaving her in the snowbound forests of the North.
- Arya taking over for Lady Stoneheart, and again, reducing hundreds of pages of tedium to a few minutes of beautifully tight filmed suspense.
- Having Tyrion and Danerys meet and do so very quickly, in the books they haven't met yet and Tyrion is part of the mercenary army besieging Mereen. Much better to have him inside running the defense, watching him desperately tap-dance is entertaining, Danerys's return was a blast, and it established that he's the one guy she can trust not to sieze power while she's away.
- Cutting out Young Griff/Perkin Warbeck. I've explained elsewhere why his story has to reach a dead end, and that if he were alive Jon and Dany couldn't possibly come away from him looking good.
I've said for a long time that the books needed a really ruthless editing, and the TV show writers have done what GRRM's publishers should have done.
I'd actually say that the TV show changes have proven that the Lady Stoneheart storyline would've been more interesting just in the sense of the direction of other characters. Specifically Brienne, Jaime, Thoros and Beric. I mean Jaime has just been treading water doing the same shit with Cersei until the end of this past season. Brienne has basically done almost nothing and the same goes for Beric and Thoros. Episode 6 wasn't very good logic wise and character wise, it was just a device to see characters interact who've never interacted before. It didn't need Beric and Thoros.
shareI politely and respectfully disagree, on two grounds.
1) I do agree that Beric's trip to the Wall wasn't a 100% success, but that doesn't mean that keeping him with Lady Stoneheart would have been better. If filmed, those scenes might well have been worse.
2) Lady Stoneheart would have come along just as the surviving Stark children are all coming into their own, growing up into three extremely formidable young adults (at least by the standards of Westeros). Keeping their mother around in any form would make them seem less adult and autonomous.
Okay, there's a third reason, Arya's visit to the Frey's party was AWESOME, a small masterpiece of filmmaking in brief form. A Lady Stoneheart story would be uulikely to produce anything that good.
- While I agree that it helped streamline the plot, the reason Sansa is sitting at the Vale doing nothing in the book's right now is because the show is ahead of the books. we don't know what her and littlefinger's next step is. The last time we see sansa in the books was right after Littlefinger kills Lysa. I also did not like the 'new' Sansa her big 'rise' like a phoenix was just withoulding information from Jon and than using that withheld information to make herself look better. I mean she is nagging him about his battle plan; he asks for her advice and she says nothing. But we are suppose to think she was the smart one. Anyone can point out problems but a reasonable person offers some solutions.
-The king's mount was bad in the show, they made Euron a complete caricature of his book counter part. and it rushed the scene which in the books was a lot more interesting. So this one I fully disagree with, it simplified it too much. I am okay with them combining Euron and Victorian but this was poorly done.
- I agree with the removale of Lady stoneheart but it came at the expense of Jaime's and Breinne's stories being repetitive and far more boring. So I have mixed feelings on this one. I like removing her and giving her story to Ayra but not at the cost of ruining the other 2 characters.
-I don't know about his one either. Tyrion was significantly dumbed down after meeting Dany and did not really offer anything useful or interesting. In fact almost all his advice has backfired and there is no reason for Dany to have any confidence in him. So I like they moved things a little faster because Tyrion in the book is a little boring with all the 'where do whores go?" nonsense, but I have a feeling it is going to pay off a lot more interesting then what happened in the show.
- I agree with removing of Young Griff as well, unless something really interesting happens with his story it will be just a waste of time.
The last 2 books were pretty bloated.
The thing is, there are several instances where changes from the book aren't 100% perfect, but which IMHO are stlll better than the books. In that category I place Tyrion's going right to Dany, Sansa taking over for the False Arya, Beric & co. heading for the Wall instead of hanging with Lady Stoneheart (hur hur), etc.
For Sansa to take over for the False Arya, Littlefinger had to do some uncharacteristically stupid things, but better that than introducing or resurrecting more characters who can't contribute much. Even if Tyrion hasn't had a Blackwater-level stroke of genius while working for Dany, his presence made the Mereen scenes much more tolerable, and it's still more entertaining than his relationship with the idiotic Penny. If they brought in Lady Stoneheart, it'd diminish the impact of the surviving Stark kids growing into formidable young adults, so they had to find something else to do with her sidekicks.
So really, it's necessary to start combining and streamlining storylines, and even if a lot of that is clumsy or lets you see the writer's wheels turning, that doesn't mean that the storylines shouldn't be streamlined and combined. I just with they'd done the same things with a little more attention to detail.
PS: We shall agree to disagree on the Kingsmoot. IMHO every word was unbearable tedium. If you liked some of it, great! I'd hate to think that GRRM spent all that time in writing it and nobody liked any of it.
yes i can agree to most of this. or agree to disagree. i too think the storylines needed to be combined or streamlined for TV. i have stated some that i thought were good or improvements. some of the things you see as improvements i thought were too clumsy or too poorly executed to be considered improvements but again agree to disagree.
cheers! :)
I do like a person who can politely agree to disagree!
But yeah, we can definitely agree that some of the post-book stuff could have been done better, even though everyone agrees that the end goal of bring the characters and diverse storylines together is necessary. Personally I think Houndie's vision sending the whole BWOB to the Wall wins the prize for clumsy writing, but everyone probably has their own anti-favorite.
Personally, I think grumbling from fans is inevitable with the streamlining/wrapping-up process, no matter what they do, someone is going to think that the finished result is out of character or clumsy or just not as cool as they'd hoped it would be. That's the thing about unfinished books*, in the minds of the readers and serious fans, the possibilities for the characters are still infinite. We expect Brienne to meet up with the Stark girls some day, but are we satisfied with what ended up on the screen? Personally, I'm satisfied enough to still love the show and desperately wonder what comes next**, even if I have some grumbles.
* I don't expect the books to ever finish.
** If you have heard any spoilers, please don't tell me.
Yup it is better than biting each others heads off over simple preferences.
I am surprised that you found the Hounds vision clumsy; there was something I like about it. It was too fast I think but I really like the idea of the hound having some kind of acute sense for visions in the fire given his experience it would be an interesting contrast. He is afraid of fire because of what happened but because of what happened he is gifted. it creates a interesting dilemma for the character. I can see it was rushed though so that might make it feel clumsy. Also the Hound is my favorite character and i found his return to face the dead father and daughter was moving so i might be biased on my take of that whole scene.
This season I think the streamlining worked better overall than season 5 and 6. I thought almost everything they rushed or combined in those seasons was bad. Season 7 I liked the way they brought most of the characters together. Jon and Dany especially worked for me. It was kind of 'cheesy' I know but in this case I kind of liked 'cheesy'. I also liked a majority of the small one on one exchanges that happened with characters meeting for the first time or meeting again after long time apart.
*I don't know. I think The winds of winter will finish but I doubt the next will ever be complete; at least not by Martin.
** Don't worry I don't have any book spoilers. I have not read the few released chapters of Winds yet.