Martin's problem all along is a plethora of open story lines, many of which lead nowhere related to the plot. It's OK when you are reading and you can go back and re-read something that you may have misunderstood earlier. You can't do that in a video narrative. It is of necessity an abridgment and they must trim the superfluous subplots and backstories. Episode 2 is out, what is it that you object to in it? I didn't see much different except the return of Bronn, Brienne actually finding both Stark daughters and being rejected by them, and the reappearance of Jaqen H'ghar.
Why send Jamie to Dorne? He should be going to the Riverlands and trying to take Riverrun from the Blackfish. Lots of Freys get killed, most by Stoneheart who I guess has been cut as well. where is this going sending Jamie to Dorne. Why? It's completely made up. Also if you're a book reader you now know that Connington and Aegon have been cut. So does that mean anything involving them in future books is just pointless? I get the feeling and really got this feeling after the Red Wedding, Robb's wife Jeyne Westerling escapes with Blackfish, and a big fan theory is that she was carrying Robb's heir. Well in the show she was stabbed in the gut, and that pretty much killed that theory. Ultimately it's supposed to come down to Dragons vs White Walkers right? Is that what you suspect the endgame is? There should be 3 Dragon riders. Well it's pretty pointless to think Aegon will be one, because the show just cut him out. Stoneheart too, and Manderlay, nothing can come from those subplots anymore can they?
Oh and if we are saying things have to get cut and cleaned up because of time, being there are only 10 one hour shows, why are the show writers creating brand new storylines and their own subplots? It just doesn't make sense to me.
Twin is dead, why would Jamie give a shit about Riverrun. He is going to end up fighting his uncle and Cersei for Casterly Rock and Tywins fortune and power. I really don't care if either of these characters return. Tyrion is still in Pentos, so the river trip may not have happened yet. Or it may have been cut, it was kind of an out-of-the-way trip and had nothing to do with the main storyline. It is curious that Varys is now accompanying Tyrion. That is new. I suspect it will never be what we are being led to believe. I suspect all of the dragons do not survive, either. Way too early to be worrying about the end game. Why do you care so much about the future? Wait and see. I can pretty much guarantee that half of the remaining characters will die and there will be dramatic plot direction changes as in the Red Wedding. Good. I do not miss them. There are enough subplots already. It is futile to expect a film to mirror a novel. There were so many parallel story lines that Martin had to make novels 3 and 4 happen simultaneously or nobody could keep up. Book one had 7 point-of-view characters. Book five had 37 of them. The film is being smart enough to simplify it like Martin should have. He talks too damn much about trivial things and unimportant characters.
I had a long retort but the quotes got all f'd up. I'm not retyping all that shit. I don't like the changes. The ones you will see next week have grown on me if what i think is gonna happen will happen. Oh and do you not find it fun to speculate about future events in a book series you enjoy?
Also, where the fuck are the Greyjoys? The Kingsmoot? Euron "Crows Eye" and Victorian. They sure spent enough time on Asha to just eliminate that whole storyline.
Not really. I never want a book to be predictable and Martin's are surely not. I read a lot of books . . . some good, some bad, and some a mixture. Martin's are good in many ways. Very unusual and interesting characters and a well-thought out geography. But his writing is tedious and clearly never intended to be a screenplay. Too many subplots, too many dangling ends, too many similar names, too many named characters that never re-enter the story or re-enter is so far down the road that it is hard to make the connection. Screenplays always have to clean up this stuff. It was the same in LOTR which would have been 52 hours long if they had not edited it down. Martin is the executive producer of the series and he has a long resume as a screenwriter himself. This novel cycle was to be his LOTR type literary achievement. But the series is another animal and I'm sure Martin approves of the changes because it makes for a better film. Some of the minor threads just have to go. I don't mind the changes. I have the books and the series is like an alternate look at the same material. It works for me. Most people don't read anymore so the series cannot cater to readers, it must cater to watchers. Which is a bit of a problem because the book all fall into a fairly short time interval of about two years. But the young film actors are maturing rapidly over the five years of filming. Bran, who is supposed to be 7 years old, is now about 6-foot 2 and his voice changed. Arya is supposed to be 10, but now she has great big hooters and won't be passing as a boy anymore in the film, even if she does in the books. The series is caught up to the end of book 4. So there is an entire published book to be filmed and two more upcoming books, so the series will have at least two more years, possibly three. So some of these story lines may get returned to. There are just too many threads to cover in each episode.
The treatment of these books reminds me of the Harry Potter novels... They started out very loyal to the books because the books were short. As the book got significantly longer certain storylines had to be cut or books had to be split into multiple films. The same is happening with GoT... Books four and five could actually be two seasons each, if not more, but there are contracts and aging to deal with...
To me the subplots are what make the series. And I understand why things are edited. I get that. The Red Wedding in my opinion was better in the show. The trial by combat between Oberyn and Clegane was perfect, the addition of the Brienne and Hound fight was awesome. So I understand why people have to be deleted. Hell I'll even give them the deletion of White Harbor from a cost standpoint. I'm just not a fan of the changes and complete rewrites done this season, and due to the some of the edits I think it could have been a lot cleaner had they edited a lot of season 2. Why focus on Beric Dondarrion and Thoros if you aren't going to bring back Zombie Catelyn? Why have the Greyjoys all in season 2 if you are just going to clip their entire storyline out of it?
There are too many story lines to service them all in a 50-minute episode. Caitlin and the Greyjoys are not finished. The whole idea of an epic tale is to be grand in scope. It's going to take a long time to tell it, you know. There are 30 or 40 episodes left. There is a major character or two to be killed soon. Good guys become bad guys, villains become heroes. Many of these dangling subplots are there specifically to confuse the viewer about where the story is going.
