Originally published at: House of the Dragon hopes to make Game of Thrones great again | Boing Boing
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They’re going to have to do a good job convincing me to come back after that dud of an ending for GoT.
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i didn’t realize matt smith was playing the mad king. i’m in.
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Same. It certainly looks pretty, but I was beyond disappointed by the way GoT ended.
This time, I’m going to look for spoilers first before investing any eyeball-time on a show that might likewise just leave me angry.
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On the one hand, the GoT final season was fine. It was OK! That is an unpopular opinion, but I was never all that invested in too many of the characters.
On the other hand, I’m ready for something new. Stop living in the past! GoT was so 2010’s. It’s a new decade now.
/s / not /s
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Based on comments like yours I’ve never watched the final season. Am I better off leaving it unfinished than ruined?
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Yes, that’s consistently been my advice to anyone who hasn’t seen the final season.
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He’s not. The mad king was Aeyrs II Targaryan and Smith is playing Daemon Targaryan, who was a prominent figure in the civil war that was well prior to the reign of Aeyrs II…
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boo. but still, i’m in.
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The whole Dance of Dragons events should be interesting, as it explores the role of gender in the monarchy… also, it will be much more full of dragons than GOT ever was!
Also, me too. Despite the disappointing ending to the original series (which I’m hoping Martin’s book ending will be much better), I think this will be good fun.
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Between the laziness of the “writing” of that last season and the sheer carelessness of production (like leaving coffee cups and water bottles visible in the frame) the GoT franchise has permanently lost me as a viewer.
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OT, but isn’t the phrase “make X great again” forever tarnished?
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Honestly… I can’t say I blame you. At least this show has different show runners and they won’t run out of material, as the whole arc has already been written by GRRM.
Meanwhile…
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I’m far from confident that Martin will finish the series at all, but even if he does it feels destined to be a let-down. Anything he writes will inevitably be viewed through the lens of “did he handle this better or worse than the TV show?”
Also, to give credit where it is due: some elements of the show were much more enjoyable than the book counterparts. For example, everyone loves Peter Dinklage’s Tyrion but the book version of his character is a rapey little goblin.
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Well, to be fair, he starts out that way in the show too (though it’s not as bad as the books). He does improve in both the books and the show, I’d argue.
Also, the show has far more pointless sex scenes, too.
I’d say that Cersei comes off better in the show, too, than in the books. She’s still a back-stabbing social climber in both, but she’s a bit more clever in the shows. In the books, she’s as dumb as a bag of hammers.
Oh, god, and in the show, that scene with Cersei and Jaime is far more rapey than in the book (at Joffery’s funeral)…
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One clever show of her power and influence in the show was how she recovered from the “walk of shame.” Not only did she clearly mark every face who humiliated her during the walk for later payback, she even turned the forced head-shaving into a power statement—within a few months other women at court are sporting pixie cuts to match her own.
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Indeed. Book Cersei just fumbled everything while thinking she was the smartest person in the room. The dynamic of her being bitter because of the forced gender role she has to play is the same, but she was much better at exploiting it in the show (even if the outcome was the same for her in the long run).
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I think the characterization was almost universally better on the TV show, at least through about S5.
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They dialed the incest waaaay back in the show as well (for understandable reasons). The show mostly occasionally hinted at it, but the books were graphic and often about it.
Martin has some sex issues he’s working out, methinks. There’s really a lot of rape and incest in those books.
Absolutely. Martin is not good at writing female characters (shocking, I know) but luckily the show writers mostly fixed all that. Also Lena Headey is amazing in everything she does. Imagine Me & You is a must watch for any fans of hers.
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