Papageno
4262
I’m really looking forward to the third season but I hope they don’t change things up so much compared to the books this time.
Its funny how Martin has no problem with the changes made but readers constantly complain about it…
Pogo
4264
It’s funny how someone like myself who hasn’t read the books is able to just enjoy whatever is put in front of me instead of complaining about diversions from the books.
To be fair, he has said numerous times in interviews (loads of them on youtube) that he’s broadly happy with the way the writers are handling it. He also takes their side against fans quite often, on the principle that he’s been in the same position and understands the exigencies of trying to compress material like that, especially when the books use p.o.v. characters and the tv show necessarily takes an omniscient narrator viewpoint. His own script for one of the episodes in Season 2 took just as many liberties with the book as the writers have done (which is to say some).
The tv series is its own thing, solidly based on the books, but not simply copying them. I love both to bits.
Of course he’s naturally supportive of the show. . .it’s driving millions of additional copies sold of his series. Going to a book signing for book 4 was a fairly small affair, book 5 was probably 20-25x the crowd size.
But that’s a far cry from saying he “has no problem with the changes made.” Some of the changes are downright inexplicable and I can’t imagine a writer like GRRM who plots so meticulously has “no problem” with them. He likely does, but isn’t going to publicly criticize the show and thus sour his relationship with the producers, their writing team, and HBO in general.
olaf
4268
So who has the S2 blu-rays? I got mine on release day but I had been holding off on doing anything with them because I wanted to watch S1 again first. Today I dug into the S2 extras. The History and Lore extras in S2 are fantastic. There was a similar feature in the S1 blu rays but this is better IMO. I think the S1 stuff was all narrated by Bran. The S2 stuff is narrated by different characters from the series with illustrated story boards in the background.
Lots of writers mentally divorce from adaptations of their work, often for their own sanity. I’d imagine that someone who has written and worked with television as much as he has in the past is expecting there to be deviations from his books. He’s given control of his world over to people who have their own visions, that’s just going to happen. Otherwise you end up like Stephen King, who may never get over his grudge with Stanley Kubrick.
I burned through the commentaries in a day. The ones with actors were uneven as hell (Theon and his sister were just talking about anything, but I did like Dinklage and Headey). The better ones were Dan & David or Cogman and the director. And GRRM’s commentary for Blackwater is hilarious when he starts talking about helmets.
The Season 2 set is fantastic.
And GRRM isn’t most writers who get their stuff adapted, mainly because he’s been on the other side. He’s been very vocal that the show and the books are two totally different beasts and that he knows better than anyone that changes have to be made, and he knows what he was getting into when he signed the deal with Dan & David. And he’s about as open with his fanbase as any major author can be, what with his blog and his many conventions and appearances, and he’s given absolutely no indication whatsoever that he’s unhappy about anything except not being to get to the set in Seasons 2 or 3.
Its called interviews…go to youtube and search.
TOTALLY NEED IT! …. I wanna go out and buy that thing! :D
You misunderstand. He has said there are places where he might have made a different decision, but it’s really clear from the interviews that he’s happy with it overall. He has said he let those guys specifically do it, and let HBO do the series, after thinking about it a lot, and realizing (after meeting them, amongst several options) that this team and company would do the least damage to the story in the books. Of course he wants to make money out of a visual version of his books, but he specifically avoided film and the main networks because he wanted a format that would preserve as much of the integrity of the story as possible, given the constraints and differences of tv vs. books.
And it’s true: all the writers have done is add a few characters and incidents that aren’t in the books, and excise some non-essential things, to keep the tv version manageable and understandable to people who haven’t read the books (given that the tv watcher doesn’t have the access to the inner thoughts of characters in the way the reader of the books does). None of the main story has been changed. It’s still GRRM’s story and not the writers’.
Now when I say “non-essential” above, everyone has a different idea of that in terms of “I looooved that bit in the story”. For instance, I myself would have loved to have seen the incident known as “weasel soup”. But I understand why the tv guys had to miss that out and compress that bit of the story.
I don’t disagree with the above. I’ve heard Martin point out things he thinks the show’s gotten wrong, usually pretty minor stuff, and on things that a good bit of the fan base really didn’t like in season 2–such as the changes with Theon at the end, when Bran/Rickon emerged to a burned Winterfell–he tends to go quiet (the TV show pretty much waters that entire subplot down to nothing). This really isn’t worth continued discussion, my point was that Becker’s claim of no problem at all probably isn’t particularly accurate. I’m sure he’s thrilled at seeing his world come alive with good TV production quality, and the producers haven’t yet shown Dany birthing an army of Others with Tyrion, but that doesn’t mean it’s also without issue in his eyes. Just not very likely IMO.
Does he have some issues? I’m sure but they have been minor. My point is about the people who constantly rag on the show. They need to freakin get over it. Its a different story telling medium, accept it or stop watching the show.
Who’s ragging, man? I’m there with bells on for the third season, despite my (slight) annoyance with some of the changes (although I acknowledge that a couple of them were pretty good ideas).
Stories change in the telling, that’s a given. You alter them to suit your audience, to the medium. Hell, they reflect how your feeling on a given day.
olaf
4279
Any news of the dire wolves being featured more prominently in S3? I thought they would get more screen time in S2 than they did.
