Yeah, it gets much more mundane in the later books, especially when the giant ethereal jade giant gifts its imaginary hands to the tattoed guy and his mate frees the giant hound from the cart full of dragons and demons inside the sword AND SO ON.
Just be glad it’s not A Wheel of Time that’s being considered… Imagine all the braid tugging, forehead knuckling and skirt smoothing that would be accomplished along with all the fun of “weaves” and trollocs…
…or Terry Goodkind.
— Alan
And not even all of it! I follow Erik’s rule here, if you’re going to be rude enough to make crappy parts you need to have the common courtesy to put them after the good parts, not before. Because now I’ll never finish it. For all I know books 8-present of Wheel of Time are good, too.
Terry Goodkind is too much of an Ayn Rand adherent for anyone to want to do his books as films or otherwise, there’s too much propaganda in them … and yes, they are suffering the same fate as Robert Jordan. I had such high hopes for them, and I really enjoyed them for a while, but now they’re just dragging on way too much.
Spoilers(ish) ahoy…
So I’ve been trying to think about which parts of this I’m most excited to see on screen.
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The Wall. I hope it looks as cool as it does in my imaginnation.
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The Battle of Blackwater (I think that’s what it’s called) Hundreds of ships burning in living green flame.
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The Red Wedding. That’s going to be tough to watch, but it should be memorable.
What else?
The main difference in Jordan and Goodkind is that Goodkind was bad right from the start. Jordan had an okay Tolkien-ish rip-off start, developed decently, than took a nosedive into Ponderville with Book 7. Previously I thought, as it turned out, the first six were decent and things were happening.
— Alan
I think Jordan has more quality fantasy written in his first six books than the sum total of all writing Goodkind has published.
People bash on Jordan because of the downhill slide from book 7 on. I like to remember how good the first six books were. The man is not a bad author by any means. I dislike St. Anger, and am meh about Load and Reload, but I still think Metallica is one of the greatest bands ever because of what they did in the 80s.
Goodkind took a nosedive after Wizard’s First Rule, which was at best good, but not great. How many times can you rehash the same plot with the same characters within the same series? If I wanted that I’d read Salvatore - at least his books are entertaining and not pretentious.
If HBO is going to front the cost to make something like this, the least you guys could do is NOT pirate it off bittorrent. If they make it, and it’s good, pay for the damn thing. It’s a wonder companies bother putting together shows like this if the audience expects it all for free.
It’s not all free?
— Alan
Gonna be terse to keep spoilers to a minimum:
Renly and Stannis parleying.
The bear pit.
The end of the Astapor and Yunkai sequences.
But you did a pretty good job yourself. :D
Does it count if it’s (A) not available where we are, and (B) we buy the DVDs when they come out?
I think HBO as a service I would rarely use due to my tv habits is overpriced, but the dvd seasons in the sense of being 12 hours of high quality filmmaking that are best watched in a few sittings are reasonable at 40-80$. FX is giving HBO a run for its money with a few series, but it is nevertheless a good value for many of us. Then again, I also don’t mind the Criterion editions of movies I only watch a few times at most, since I guess it is as much a collector thing as a movie fan thing for anyone without bottomless leisure time.
I used to be a lot more critical of them, but that was when my experience consisted exclusively of Oz and the Sopranos, with the Wire as the catalyst to my conversion. This year I have devoured Rome, Carnivale, Deadwood, Curb, and probably a few others as well that I forget at the moment, and they’ve all been pretty rewarding. ASOIAF on HBO is the only way I could envision this at all, as the only other people willing to take risks with series either would have nothing to do with the fantasy setting (eg FX), could not pull it off with their cheez lite approach (SciFi), or simply don’t have the budget or interest (BBC, as a random last thought).
I know this isnt going to come to fruition for some time but this will probably get me to subscribe to HBO. Will need to clear out a lot of episodes of Metalocalypse from the DVR though to make room :/
Its official: the Northern Ireland government has announced that Game of Thrones starts filming this October in Northern Ireland. It’s a pretty huge production, including a massive set in Paint Hall, which is a ginormous movie facility.
GRRM says there’s more big news that’s still secret, but he’s going to let HBO and the producers make those. Probably casting announcements and a director announcement.
Maybe the secret big news is the fact that the next book’s been delayed so he can hang around the set.
I’m just glad to hear this is still going. I plan to subscribe to HBO whenever they finally start showing episodes.
Can it ever come close to equalling my expectations? Surely not. Will I watch every second regardless of the final product? Absolutely.
Without re-reading the whole thread, does this mean HBO is doing a full mini-series or is this like the pilot deal where it has yet to be determined…
My understanding is that they’re filming each season to correspond with each book of the series. HBO seasons are 12 episodes.
lets just hope it doesn’t get “too expensive” and shut down like Rome did
Wow, the BBC sure knows how to write them headlines about this. Not.
“Sopranos Crew in Titanic Project.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/8010601.stm
Reading that, you’d think that Gandolfini and company were going to do a series about HMS Titanic.
That is an absolutely terrible headline. I’m very interested in this. I’m actually completely unspoilered on the series, so I might pick up the books given that this is unlikely to land for ages.