HBO's Game of Thrones - Page 6

The problem with Headley is she might be too competent to play Cersi. My only exposure to her has been 300 and Sarah Connor, but in both she came across very competent and in control. Cersi is astonishingly inept and oblivious to her ineptness. I'm kind of curious how that will translate.

If you're talking about Jaime and Cersei, they're substantially older. Jaime killed Aerys Targaryen as a member of his Kingsguard 15 years before the story starts, so he's presumably in his mid-30s at least.

I don't like most post-Tolkien fantasy novels either, and I liked these books. They're admirably earthy and character-oriented rather than wasting pages on world-building and characters traveling from point a to point b. Despite the length of the books, Martin uses that space to build an elaborate and tightly constructed developing plot (though many feel the latest book is an exception to this). The characters are fairly detailed for a fantasy novel, with even many of the villains being made sympathetic and their arcs taking a few surprising turns. You're sort of rooting for everyone, even though they're at cross purposes, and there are dozens of conflicts that have nothing to do with the Rise of Ultimate Evil That Will Destroy The World, which is a boring cliche at this point. Also, Martin leaves most of the actual fantasy at the borders of the story, making it tantalizing and mysterious and even plausible.

The books have their flaws (one of which is clunky prose, which won't be an issue for the TV series) but it's uniquely suited to an HBO series. It really is "The Sopranos in Middle Earth" as the show's producers have been calling it.

Ummm...her ineptness is mostly an inability to see the big picture, which will clearly drag down everyone with her. She's perfectly competent at scheming and planning.

Her ineptness is an inability to see the big picture, the medium picture, the small picture, and pretty much every picture. She schemes and plans and thinks she's brilliant, but I can't think of a single thing scheme or plan that went off successfully.

I literally finished my re-read of the second book about an hour ago, and at this point every single notion or idea she's had has been 100% incorrect. The closest she comes to not failing is grabbing Tyrion's whore, and even then it's the wrong whore but he's such a softie it kind of works. She only survives Ned because Sansa is an idiot. She has zero idea how to run a city or fight a war, and she single-handedly almost hands the attack on King's Landing to Stannis by calling her son off the wall when he's in zero danger, causing the remaining defenders to panic and flee.

Seriously, at the point I'm at every single idea she's had has been wrong, and at least in my memory it only gets worse from here on out.

What I mean is, she's quite competent at getting power, just not exerting it effectively--partly because she doesn't give a crap.

At any rate, she can't come off as hapless. She's the main villain. She's got to at least look like she knows what she's doing.

I don't disagree. But I think it would be wrong to portray her as bumbling. Before the events of the third and fourth book, really only Tyrion realized she was so incompetent. I think choosing a competent seeming actress could work fine (though I'm not familiar with the actress in question, I'm trusting your assessment).

Huh, I seem to remember Cersei decrying the appearance of crow's feet despite her not being thirty.

Re: Cersei's competence

I think the key here is when you re-read she seems very incompetent. I was pretty much afraid of her throughout the first three books. Well, afraid for the other characters.

I think--and Lord knows I've been proved wrong in this thread before--the key for Cersei is that she's perfectly capable of scheming and manipulating, but she's far too overconfident in her abilities to do so. She prides herself on being the true descendent of Tywin, not realizing that her very inability to put aside her whims and capriciousness make that belief an impossibility. Moreover, she's incapable of envisioning long range goals, thus she often plans, schemes and manipulates towards a short-term goal that will ultimately be useless or, worse, damaging.

...which is all to say that I think Headley is going to be excellent in the role.

Same here. He was the 1st cast announced for am obvious reason.

As for Cersei, sure, she's making bad calls left and right, but I saw her like Bush or Cheney: incompetent and self-serving, but believing to be righteous and being dangerous as fuck because of it.

Like Mattioli said, Headey is great casting. I'm really looking forward to the series.

You should probably spoiler that shit, Martin.

Yeah. Given who post in this thread, I didn't think of it, but it will most likely garner attention from people who never read the books eventually.

And I really hope they keep the 1st scene of the book as the intro to the series. What the fuck are the Others gonna look like on TV, I have no clue.

Yeah, I think it's pretty important to introduce that immediately, so that viewers always have it in the back of their heads that some weird shit is going on outside the "grounded" political intrigue that dominates the entire first book/season.

When it starts I believe they're in their late twenties, almost 30. Spoiler: Jaime joins the Kingsguard at 15, kills the king at 17, and fathers Joffrey, who is 12 at the start of the series.End spoiler.

As for Cersei, I always saw her as intelligent and clever, yet ill-suited for her ambitious plans. She's temperamental, impatient, and like many of you stated doesn't see/get the big picture. Spoiler:She covets power, but doesn't want to bother with the minutiae a ruler must deal with.End spoiler. She's not inept, in my opinion, just a poor fit for what she desires. Maybe she's just too ambitious. She never seems content with what she has. And her character flaws just keep getting in the way of her schemes.

I've seen Headey in a few things and from what I've seen of her, I have confidence that she can pull off regal, conniving, tyrannical, and all the other sides of Cersei and still show her vulnerability when it comes to her relationships. Who do you all think would be a good Tywin?

I was checking out Martin's blog yesterday and he mentioned that they have yet to cast the characters from the prologue, so it sounds like they're keeping the first chapter. I'm curious as to whether the Others will play a larger role in the first season or disappear for a while while the intrigue happens down south as in the books.

I would play it exactly as it occurs in the novels. Make them a mystery until the Nightswatch goes north of the Wall and, even then, have folks in the South doubting that they exist.

I kind of imagine the Others to look like the Nazgûl once Frodo puts on the Ring. You know, tall, blue and ghostly lords/knights.

You guys I have a problem, I want this show to be on TV right now.

Yep.

I have a problem too, I agree. It seems they're taking this project seriously, and the concept/script has convinced some pretty talented folks to come aboard. I'm already looking forward to when Stannis and Melisandre hit the scene.

And since it's HBO, and considering what I've seen on Hung last Sunday, I expect to see some heavy midget-on-whore action and some Renly/Loras homosexual adventures.

Don't dissapoint me HBO!

My mental image of Tywin was always of McGoohan in Braveheart, even though the descriptions really don't match up.

That's funny. I always thought of McGoohan from Braveheart whenever I pictured Balon Greyjoy.

Let's fag up the fancasting BROSEPHS

McNulty as Littlefinger
Swearengen as Stannis

Oh, those wacky Wikipedia contributors! Check out the last line of the "literature" section of the following entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfinished_work

Holy Shit, great find. Ok, I never do this but that deserves a LOL! I don't know what's funnier, that Dance is on that list or that there is even a page on Wikipedia about Unfinished Works. Maybe I should put half my college essays on that list. They could have been great, I tell you.

Raise your hands if you (like me) kind of want the show to be succesful and overtake the books, with Benioff and Weiss just making it up independently of Martin.

I not only want it, but I kinda expect it by now. Maybe Martin will guide them, but at this rate they will finish the TV series before the books.

Sounds like the only real option, at least with subsequent seasons. They'll probably stay close to "Thrones", though, I would imagine.

They can remain pretty faithful right up until Storm, but I expect the TV version of Feast (again, if they get that far) to include the storylines that are left for Dance.

I hope they deviate a bit through the first few seasons. There's so much depth within the world he created that there's no reason they couldn't branch off. It wouldn't require them to trash the main plot threads. If they get to the point that they catch up to the books, several things could happen: they could say, Fuck it, we're charging ahead with our own thing, they could stall for a season showcasing side characters, or even do a Dunk and Egg limited run, they could stop production all together, or Martin can hear their footsteps gaining on him and pick up his pace, resulting in renewed inspiration or crappy work. Whatever the case may be, this would most certainly be the nuclear option that HBO and Martin hope to avoid at all cost.

There is no way we are going to get 5+ seasons of this so they will have to go their own way, condense shit, or end it abruptly.

5+ seasons does seem extremely unlikely. The longest running hour-long scripted shows HBO's aired the past 15 years are OZ, The Sopranos, The Wire, and Six Feet Under, and I believe the longest running of those was six seasons, 86 eps for the Sopranos, next longest being 5 seasons 63 eps for Six Feet Under. I can't imagine the budget for Game of Thrones will be any lower than any of those shows unless HBO has developed a new budget/production model to save loads of cash. Fantasy series generally don't get the critical acclaim needed to become media darlings, which in some cases persuades HBO to hang on for a season or more before cancellation (granted most genre shows aren't taken as seriously as Thrones seems to be).

Looking at The Tudors on Showtime (hard to find accurate numbers for Showtime but it seems they're in half as many homes as HBO) for comparison, it debuted to 1.3M (including a repeat airing that same night) and did decent online and On Demand viewership which added about another million views. It seems to have held steady throughout the first three seasons and I haven't heard anything regarding a possible cancellation. On HBO, True Blood (which is the closest I can get to a comparison based on their current lineup) debuted to about 1.4M (much lower than recent debuts on the network), but quickly climbed to 6M+ with online and On Demand factored in. The second season is apparently attracting about 11M+ total views.

It's possible that with the steady ratings of The Tudors and the unanticipated success of a quirky fantasy-laced show like True Blood that AGoT could find an audience, but there will be several competitors including a new Spartacus series, a Camelot series, and HBO's current offerings which will be adding Boardwalk Empire in the near future (plus TB is benefitting from the recent Vamp craze). I don't foresee the mature nature of the show preventing many teenage fans of the series from watching though. And who knows what effect oversees ratings will have. It's anyone's guess as to whether this show will have legs, but from what I'm hearing out of Martin and HBO, it won't be from a lack of trying.

I think the single biggest factor in keeping this show alive is the degree to which the people who are footing the bills get to profit from DVD and other ancilliary sales. Popular shows can be canceled because the network isn't getting a big enough cut of the revenue, and middling successes can hang around because they're fully owned by the network (hello, Dollhouse).

As mentioned, I kinda doubt they'll make it to five seasons. There's room for some compression, though--I haven't finished A Feast For Crows, but yes, it seems like there's a lot of stuff that could be trimmed there. I almost feel like the second and third books could be compressed into one season, too--maybe slightly longer than average for HBO? Of course Dany and Jon's plotlines for these seasons would be incredibly epic, but in terms of pacing I think it could be done.

On the flip side, there are a few plot threads that happen offstage in the books but which could be fleshed out more in the show--for instance, Jaime's mostly missing from book 2, but all kinds of stuff is *happening* to him that we don't see. It would be a good excuse to keep Coster-Waldau on screen for that season.

Also, compressing the 2nd and 3rd books deals with something I've been wondering about: while a certain amount of time passes over the course of the first three books, it doesn't seem like quite as long as the several years that will pass during the making of the show, years in which the child actors will grow up. If they really did 1 season to 1 book, Bran in particular would end up in his teens before we get to the big time jump that's supposed to arrive in...the next book? Or after? If they blaze through the first 3 books in 2 seasons, the kids' ages will be a little more in sync with the story. Maybe there are other ways to deal with this, though.

Is this going to be a Rome or Deadwood scale production? Massive sets, extras, and FX budget?

Uh, well, yeah. I'm guessing they're not going the Bertold Brecht route with it.

Though it has to be said: it sounds like a lot of Deadwood's high budget came from its constantly-expanding cast of recognizable character actors. "Thrones" is obviously going to have a big cast, but if they steer clear of hiring too many B- or C-listers the budget could conceivably stay at a reasonable level for HBO. Which, um, is still fairly expensive.

My choice for Tywin is Terence Stamp.

Fuck, that's awesome.

Hopefully it's gonna exactly like Dinklage. Cause yeah, that's an awesome choice.

Nice.

I wonder if RR himself will make a cameo appearance in the pilot, or further on in the season. I bet he'd get a kick out of that.

One thing I've been thinking about lately is how they'll introduce us to the story. Will they jump right in with the original prologue beyond the wall, will they do a LotR-type introductory montage that'll give historical context to Westeros, or will they go in a different direction, like the direwolf scene or something totally new?

He could play The Wall.

There was some talk of the opening sequence being an overview of Westeros as a raven flew over with a message. But beyond that I don't see the need for any elaborate setup. Everyone knows the basic concept of a fantasy story by now, and this is less elaborate than most...it's a made-up world that happens to have almost the exact same customs and culture as late medieval England. As for all the history and backstory...they let it come out naturally in the books rather than giving you appendixes and stuff, so why wouldn't they handle the show the same way?

As for setting up the world/culture, I agree with you. Just knowing that Westeros is derivative of medieval Europe is good enough, and most folks will get that even if they haven't read a single fantasy novel.

As for the story/plot, that's a different issue. The plot is heavy on political intrigue, and not knowing a little backstory from the very beginning has the potential to confuse those who are new to this work. For instance, knowing a little abort Robert's Rebellion, or who Jon Arryn was, or why Westeros is referred to as the Seven Kingdoms, etc. There just won't be enough episodes to give out the info piece by piece, so I don't see any way they can introduce the series without some explication in the pilot, whether through an intro montage, or through dialogue heavy set-up scenes.

http://www.liftingfaces.com/2009/09/...s-cast-so-far/



1 – Sean Bean as Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell
2 – Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister aka Tyrion the Imp
3 – Jennifer Ehle as Catelyn Stark, Lady of Winterfell
4 – Tamzin Merchant as Daenerys Targaryen, aks Daenerys Stormborn
5 – Lena Headey as Cersei Baratheon, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms
6 – Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Ser Jaime Lannister, Kingslayer
7 – Mark Addy as Robert Baratheon, King of the Seven Kingdoms
8 – Kit Harington as Jon Snow, Bastard of Winterfell
9 – Richard Madden as Robb Stark, Heir to Winterfell
10 – Isaac Hempstead-Wright as Bran Stark
11 – Maisie Williams as Arya Stark
12 – Sophie Turner as Sansa Stark
13 – Jack Gleeson as Joffrey Baratheon, Prince of the Seven Kingdoms
14 – Ron Donachie as Ser Rodrik Cassel, Master of Arms at Winterfell
15 – Iain Glen as Ser Jorah Mormont, Exiled Lord of Bear Island
16 – Alfie Allen as Theon Greyjoy, Heir to the Iron Islands
17 – Harry Lloyd as Viserys Targaryen, The Beggar King
18 – Jason Momoa as Khal Drogo, Dothraki Warrior
19 – Rory McCann as Sandor Clegane aka The Hound
20 – Joseph Mawle as Benjen Stark
21 – Ian McNeice as Illyrio Mopatis
22 – Donald Sumpter as Maester Luwin
23 – Jamie Campbell Bower as Ser Waymar Royce
24 – Richard Ridings as Gared
25 – Bronson Webb as Will
26 – Esmé Bianco as Ros the red-headed whore

What the?!? The kid playing Joffrey looks more like the product of Tyrion than [SPOILAGE]Cersei and Jaime[/SPOILAGE]. Other than that, the cast--premised solely upon their resemblance to the characters they play--is uniformly awesome. I would have known who each was (well, maybe not the last couple) without the key.

Yup. Love the cast. McNeice as Illyrio is aces. As for Jeffrey, he's the type of brat you want to face punch every 5 seconds, and judging by the picture, it's gonna be the same on TV.

Also, he's the child of a brother and sister, which would tend to fuck up your genes.

Oh, bloody Hell, I realized my previous post contains spoilers. Gotta fix that. Thanks.

Hmmmmm. We wants the Iron Throne, my Precious, we wants it.

In a series filled with vile, despicable characters, he's one of the worst. Bet that kid has a blast playing this role.

The pilot has apparently wrapped. A couple of articles make a good case for the show getting picked up, possibly before the year is out. From a few comments here and there by Martin and the filmmakers it sounds as though the show isn't nearly as expensive as we were expecting--Martin offhandedly mentioned a historical British show whose budget was a lot larger than theirs, and whose sets they appeared to be reusing. Also, apparently the Dany scenes in Morocco are using the Jerusalem city walls Ridley Scott built for Kingdom of Heaven, among other things.

Here's to hoping it gets picked up, they surpass the books and just make up their own damn ending.

Hope they start pimping this during The Pacific premiere.