Monday 18 April 2011

So, Game of Thrones was on...

As a GRRM skeptic, you'd wonder why I'd bother watching HBO's latest series.  Well, truth is, I don't hate A Song of Ice and Fire - or, at least, A Game of Thrones.  Martin's a good writer, there are some really interesting elements to the series, there are some fantastic chapters, and I even liked some of the characters.  I certainly appreciate the straying from the common threads in recent fantasy being little more than shallow Tolkien clones.  However, I don't think it's the Greatest Piece of Fantasy Fiction Of Our Times either.  I don't think the infusion of profanities, gore, violence, incest, and Machiavellian court conspiracies is anything unique to Martin by a long shot.  I think the world's setting has a lot of fundamental issues which aren't really addressed in favour of the court intrigue.  Even the appropriation of historical events, individuals and cultures isn't some fresh, original idea. Thus, my biggest problem with Martin isn't necessarily with his fiction, but the fact that it's being lauded as some great, paradigm-shifting renaissance that's never been done in the history of fantasy.

So it gets a mite irritating where moronic pundits allege that incestuous royals, morally ambiguous protagonists, grim and gritty settings and frank depictions of violence and sexuality somehow didn't exist in fantasy prior to 1991. Even Tolkien dealt with those themes in The Silmarillion.  Don't even get me started on people who think that making everyone a bastard-with-a-dark-past-sordid-flaws is inherently superior to making everyone clear-cut heroes and villains.

However, let's forget all of that.  Let's forget all the idiots calling Martin the greatest fantasy writer in history, or the morons who think sex in fantasy was trapped between Patronising Escapist Fairy-Tales and Puerile Adolescent Wish Fulfillment until Martin came along, or the people who think adding sex and violence automatically makes your setting very grown up.  On its own merits, away from the hype colossus of its followers and the ill-judged opinions of infinitely uninformed journalists, A Game of Thrones is... a pretty good book.

And, wouldn't you know it, a pretty good book looks like it's going to be made into a pretty good series, if the first episode of HBO's Game of Thrones is anything to go by.



There are already plenty of reviews of at least the first episode of the series, running the gamut from "lol, LotR with boobies and cussing" to "my goodness, this is nothing like that childish LotR nonsense" and everything in between and beyond. Hopefully I'll offer a different perspective on the show from the dyed-in-the-wool GRRM fans and the fantasy virgins.

So, I'll start with a non-spoiler overview.  Game of Thrones is absolutely gorgeous to look at.  It's like a better version of Jackon's Lord of the Rings (which was already beautiful): some scenes have all the colour, composition and depth of paintings.  The wild forest, any establishing shot of the cities, Ned cleaning his sword, Daenerys stepping into her bath, Drogo and Daenerys consumating their marriage - honest-to-God paintings.  You could just sit and gawp at the show with the sound off, and still be enthralled at the imagery.  The depictions of Winterhold, King's Landing, the Wall and Pentos were every bit as spectacular as Minas Tirith, Edoras and Rivendell - and with better colour filters to boot. The acting is fine across the board: Bean, Addy, Dinklage. The child actors were stronger than half the leads.  The costumes, special effects, production design, music, sound effects - all great. Special mention should be made of the beautiful opening titles, which made use of a map of Westeros being made three-dimensional with a sort of pop-up papercraft aesthetic that looked just lovely.

Ironically, my biggest disappointment was the Dothraki.  I imagined them to be the Mongols from Hell: each one should look like they could be the villain of a slasher movie about a Mongol ghost who comes back from the dead to visit vengeance on young teenagers.  The Dothraki here reminded me more of the rabble of crazed post-apocalyptic bikers of Mad Max or Doomsday, and there were certain parts that reminded me a bit too much of the Hercules and Xena series, mostly the really overdone sound effects (whooshes when an arm swings, far-too-loud impact sounds for punches, cartoonishly exaggerated movements). Momo did an excellent job - but again, he's just too damn handsome for my liking, even with the scars and beard.  Drogo always seemed, to me at least, to be this nightmarish figure of savagery and terror: a hulking, monstrous, terrifying being, the distilled myth and legend of the Dark Barbarian used to frighten the civilized when they go to bed.  This Drogo was Conan: I imagined Drogo as Gorm.

Still, that's the beauty of these criticisms: they're personal and subjective.  For all I know, this is exactly what Martin fans expected of the Dothraki and Drogo.  The point is, that most of my criticisms before going into plot points are purely based on this being not what I imagined the characters to look or act like, not that they're inherently wrong.  Would that this be the only sort of criticism I'd have for other adaptations.

Now we get into plot elements...

I'm the sort of guy who thinks the book's always better, with few exceptions.  Well, I don't know if it's because of my problems with the book, or because the screenwriters have picked out the best bits... but I enjoyed this a lot more than I enjoyed the book, or at least the part of the book that comprised the first episode.  I only cared for a few people in the book, and most of them ended up dead.  Somehow - I don't know if it was the actors bringing humanity to the roles, or that the choice of which parts to bring to screen made them more likeable to me - I found myself liking a lot more of the characters, and the characters I despised seemed a lot less repellent to me.  Strange how that worked out.

Now, it wasn't perfect: the opening sequence north of The Wall wasn't as atmospheric or outright terrifying as it was in the book, for me.  This is compounded by the breathtaking stupidity of the Watch commander straight out of a mediocre horror film: so you see one of your men running in terror, talking about a pile of corpses, in a place where you know there are bloodthirsty savages... and you decide to investigate?  With three men?  And you dismiss your mens' caution as nervousness?  I was actively waiting for the Others to come kill him.  Then they brush off the idea of a supernatural race that use the undead as footsoldiers as the "ravings of a madman" despite the fact that this is a supernatural race that uses the undead, and they have historical knowledge of them.  And they're guarding a wall specifically built to hold said supernatural forces at bay.  Then Ned finds a brood of Dire Wolves.  Dire wolves are native to the land north of this hundred-league wall of ice, and don't come south, because of the hundred-league wall of ice.  Does Ned think "Oh man, how did they get here - is there a breach in the wall?  Better check it out" - no, of course not.  Just that cryptic "winter is coming" shibboleth.

(warning, tangent ahead)

This cavalier approach to magic irritated the hell out of me in the book, too.  It's one thing to be dismissive of magic if you don't know if it really exists.  It's quite another when not only do you know magic exists, or at least existed, but it's a fundamental part of your history.  When irrefutable evidence of dragons, ogres, the undead and all manner of monsters can be found in your historical archives, the idea of just assuming that they're all dead or wiped out when there are signs of their return seems less like logical scepticism and more like blind idiocy.  Reports of a race of supernatural creatures which devastated the land in eons past are brushed off as being unrealistic, ignoring the fact that this is a race of supernatural creatures that utilize the freakin' undead - which isn't exactly a finite resource you can run out of?  A species of creature that's only found north of a several hundred league wall of ice constantly guarded by an elite corps of soldiers turns up significantly further south, and they don't bother to investigate the possibility of, oh, I don't know, a freakin' breach in the wall? And this is the people of Winterfell, who should know better!

(tangent disengage)

Of course, if I'm shooting from the hip in regards to this, please feel free to correct me.  Heaven knows it's been a while since I read the books, so I could well be incorrect.  However, I distinctly fail to remember anything about this coming up, and those that do are quickly dismissed as paranoid idiots.  The old X-Files formula: we know Mulder is right, so when Scully's being a skeptic, we just want to smack her upside the head.

There are similar moments of, if not stupidity, then somewhat patronizing narrative convention.  When Jon angrily asks what Tyrion could possibly know of his pain as an outsider rejected and shunned by his family, he seems to forget that he's talking to a dwarf. Tyrion shouldn't even have responded to such an idiotic assertion.  Similarly, the introduction of Robert to Ned was painfully unsubtle.  "Ooh, a frosty reception, the king even called Ned fat, I guess the king and Ned don't get a- OH HO HO HO, they're actually bestest friends forever, what an amusing twist!"  Argh.

However, there are parts of the show that I felt were handled a lot better than in the books.  Tyrion's first meeting with Bran, for instance: in the book, he does a preposterous leaping cartwheel and dismount, like he was some sort of circus dwarf.  Tyrion is supposed to be a nobleman: why the hell is he acting like a sideshow clown?  Annoyed me no end.  Worst introduction for an interesting character I can think of.  So that is removed in favour of a low-key walk-on.  I liked it a lot better.

Similarly, while Jaime still comes across as a scoundrel, you can actually see why he has a bit of a fan following in the performance.  Same with other characters I didn't like: the Stark sons seem like prats, but not entirely loveless prats; Cersei's ambition is tempered a bit with a certain barely-discernible fragility; Caitlyn has a strength and weathered resolve I found lacking in the book. The characters I liked weren't quite what I imagined, but they were watchable, to the point where I - shock - cared about what happened to them, even knowing the eventual fate of most of them. In particular, I love wee Bran: great actor they got for him.

Daenerys and Drogo's consummation was a lot less tender and a lot more painful than I remember.  I seem to recall Daenerys actually got into it, as she recognized the unexpected tenderness of the Khal.  Here, while we did see this, Daenerys wept.  I will say it was handled more artfully and aesthetically than the book, where it read like a bad Harlequin Romance: just a shame that they put off the two's mutual attraction.  Hopefully this'll still come to pass later in the series.  So while I disliked some aspects of this scene, I liked others.

Anyway, I think that's all I have to say on Game of Thrones.  I will continue watching, as I've found it a much more enjoyable experience, all in all, than reading the book.  A rare thing indeed.

11 comments:

  1. You know, Al, we went through the same thing with the Harry Potter movies with uninformed pundits claiming that J. K. Rowling invented urban fantasy. The movies were watchable and in some cases better than some of the books (which became so bloated near the end they had to split the last one into two movies). At least they got kids reading. Maybe this series will get people to take fantasy seriously, even if they do make the moronic claim that GRRM "invented" it, or worse, "rescued" it from innane, talentless hacks like Tolkien.

    Just like Cormac McCarthy "invented" post apocalyptic fiction with THE ROAD, even though all he did was re-hash Mad Max but without the cars (an completely stupid and futile endeavour). or how Margaret Atwood "invented" science fiction (or worse, rescued it from the ghetto by infusing it with post feminist ideals or some other such rot.

    Don't get me started about Cormac McCarthy or Margaret Atwood.

    Point it this: The series will come and go -- I'll be surprised if it goes to s second season -- and fantasy literature will still be there, untouched and pristine.

    And I should point out that I have not yet seen the first episode of GOT, but that matters not one whit. My opinion will likely be the same after I do.

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  2. I can't actually remember the Harry Potter debate (though I have a niggling feeling you've brought it up before...), but you're probably right.

    I do hope the series gets picked up until at least A Dance with Dragons, since I'd quite like to see how everything goes without committing to the next four doorstoppers. I'm a slow reader, after all.

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  3. Hopefully I'll offer a different perspective on the show from the dyed-in-the-wool GRRM fans and the fantasy virgins.
    Thanks!

    By the way, what do you think/are you aware of the new Camelot TV show? Is it airing in the UK?

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  4. When irrefutable evidence of dragons, ogres, the undead and all manner of monsters can be found in your historical archives, the idea of just assuming that they're all dead or wiped out when there are signs of their return seems less like logical scepticism and more like blind idiocy.

    To be fair, there's two counterarguments to this.

    Firstly, using the term "historical archives" when talking about a medieval society is a terrible anachronism. I interpret the society in Song of Ice and Fire to be sort of pseudo-medieval, and to say that they have "historical archives" that are somehow distinct from bards' songs, the proverbial old wives' tales and fairy tales is very questionable. As I understood it, when the story starts most people haven't actually seen any magic or living dead themselves, so it's hardly surprising that they're regarded as fantasy.

    Secondly, even if they do have historical archives, I don't think Ned Flanders, erm, Stark, did his Ph.D. on "The Undead: Myth or Reality". In other words, to assume that nobles in whatever medieval pseudo-England is called in Martin's books have made an exhaustive study of the "historical records" available to them is also more than a bit questionable.

    So on the whole, I think you're overstating this particular case. In our medieval past, most people apparently did quite sincerely believe in magic. They also had legends of dragons, demons, centaurs and all manner of fantastic creatures in their "historical archives". Would you expect a 12th-century nobleman in our world, on seeing a strange furrow in the ground, to shout "DRAGON!" and start assembling the militia? I mean, it's in their archives.

    By the standards you're presenting here, the English court should have held serious discussions on whether the warmer weather in the medieval warm period meant that Surtur and the fire giants were getting ready to invade. They didn't, mainly because none of them had ever seen a fire giant in their lives and probably didn't really believe in them. People tend not to believe what they don't directly experience, and I don't see why the people in Martin's stories should be any different.

    Other than that, I agree with everything you said about the books, and feel very much the same way myself.

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  5. I am writing my own review and... and I'M almost agree in everything, man. Specially in the Daenerys and Drogo's consummation thing.

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  6. @ Micheal, I can say that in the real England,

    They had at least, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Asser's life of Alfred, Geoffry of Monmouths History of the kings and queens of Britain, The Exeter Book. And of course the Bible along with a few others, like The Chronicle, were in multiple copies in Multiple locations. Thats off the top of my head.. chances are they had quite a few more.

    Besides which, It's a Fantasy, whats Anachronistic about them having a vast archive squirreled away at king's landing?

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  7. Thats off the top of my head.. chances are they had quite a few more.

    Yes. Calling them historical archives, and assuming that contemporaries viewed them as something analogous to how we view historical archives, is still a horrible anachronism.

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  8. I don't understand how anything in a Fantasy novel can be an anachronism. You are going to have to explain that one.

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  9. Okay, so I have been proven wrong. A GAME OF THRONES has been renewed for a second season based on the first episodes' numbers.

    Here's my review:

    http://michaeldeanjackson.blogspot.com/2011/04/game-of-thrones.html

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  10. Firstly, using the term "historical archives" when talking about a medieval society is a terrible anachronism. I interpret the society in Song of Ice and Fire to be sort of pseudo-medieval, and to say that they have "historical archives" that are somehow distinct from bards' songs, the proverbial old wives' tales and fairy tales is very questionable. As I understood it, when the story starts most people haven't actually seen any magic or living dead themselves, so it's hardly surprising that they're regarded as fantasy.

    A fair point - however, this is still a Medieval-esque society we're talking about. It's understandable for modern people to be skeptical about a guy screaming "DRAGON!" but for 12th Century people, who were devoutly religious and - if not as superstitious as later myth implies - a bit more accommodating towards the unexplained than nowadays.

    Secondly, even if they do have historical archives, I don't think Ned Flanders, erm, Stark, did his Ph.D. on "The Undead: Myth or Reality". In other words, to assume that nobles in whatever medieval pseudo-England is called in Martin's books have made an exhaustive study of the "historical records" available to them is also more than a bit questionable.

    Good point - however, Ned is a noble in charge of the northernmost country where part of his duties is marching along a 700-foot wall of ice and stone, something that couldn't possibly be replicated by existing technology. You don't think he'd wonder who built it - and what it was keeping out? I know I would. But then, I'm not a quasi-medieval nobleman.

    So on the whole, I think you're overstating this particular case. In our medieval past, most people apparently did quite sincerely believe in magic. They also had legends of dragons, demons, centaurs and all manner of fantastic creatures in their "historical archives". Would you expect a 12th-century nobleman in our world, on seeing a strange furrow in the ground, to shout "DRAGON!" and start assembling the militia? I mean, it's in their archives.

    You know, I probably would, come to think of it! The Vikigs put dragon heads on their ships to scare off water dragons. In 1451, a pond of leeches was taken to Ecclesiastical court in Lausanne and sentenced to banishment. The Historiae Animalium claimed dragons were still alive - and this was published in the 16th Century.

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  11. By the standards you're presenting here, the English court should have held serious discussions on whether the warmer weather in the medieval warm period meant that Surtur and the fire giants were getting ready to invade. They didn't, mainly because none of them had ever seen a fire giant in their lives and probably didn't really believe in them. People tend not to believe what they don't directly experience, and I don't see why the people in Martin's stories should be any different.

    As I've mentioned, people back then have done things just as strange - and Medieval England didn't have a 700-foot wall of ice that went for hundreds of leagues that defies any other explanation than "it was built to keep something seriously dangerous out."

    The skepticism towards such things strikes me as very modern. Even if no living person has encountered magic, why on earth would the vast majority suddenly take such an agnostic approach, and treat them as "little more than myths"? That would be the equivalent of the Greeks a few generations after the Illiad deciding that since they saw no evidence of gods, monsters or the supernatural, it must not have existed. Obviously *some* thought that, but hardly the majority.

    I may be overstating it, true. Perhaps it's more an irritation of dramatic irony: when the audience knows something the characters don't, sometimes you get the impression that the characters are idiots, instead of realising that you know more than the characters do. It's hard for me to judge that, but my impression is that the people of Westeros would be a bit more prepared to entertain the possibility of the supernatural. But that's just me.

    Other than that, I agree with everything you said about the books, and feel very much the same way myself.

    Excellent review! "maxing and relaxing with the lunatic Zoroastrians" made my day. Martin's said Westeros is a continent the size of South America, which explains how the equivalent of Sealand could look like Turkey.

    I am writing my own review and... and I'M almost agree in everything, man. Specially in the Daenerys and Drogo's consummation thing.

    A casual perusal of the Westeros fans says that this is their biggest grievance with the show so far. I'm inclined to agree that it does significantly alter the dynamic between Drogo and Daenerys, but given some screenshots I've seen where Daenerys is cuddling up to Drogo, I suspect they're going into more of a slow burn "grow to love him" approach.

    Okay, so I have been proven wrong. A GAME OF THRONES has been renewed for a second season based on the first episodes' numbers.

    Here's my review:


    I'm so glad I'm not going crazy. Hopefully you're review will come soon, Kike.

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