My hopes continued to be very high when the early creative decisions started rolling in this year. While I’m conceptually not sold on Mark Addy as King Robert, the rest of the casting news – in particular Peter Dinklage in the role of a lifetime – all seems spot on. Actor/sometimes director Thomas McCarthy (The Visitor, The Station Agent) was a strange choice to direct the pilot, but I liked what that said about the creative direction of the show. Those who find the books tedious often complain that all the action happens “off screen,” which is largely true. There is a lot of talking in the books. Hiring McCarthy seems to indicate that the show will indeed be focusing heavily on the dialogue and character interplay. Deadwood in the dark ages, if you will.
But my hopes have been ebbing over the past few months as images from the series have slowly been trickling in. The show looked a little cheap and staid. The teasers also did not do a lot to fire up people’s anticipation; awareness of the series (which still doesn’t have an actual release date) is incredibly low outside of the nerd circles.
In the past week or so Game of Thrones has been popping up in more high profile places, like Entertainment Weekly. Now there are some new stills out there, such as these two showing Addy as King Robert, and what I believe is Sophie Turner as Sansa Stark. They look a little more promising.
More stills available here.
There is also a new teaser trailer, which finally attempts to paint a bit of a picture of the series, detailing some of the series’ thematic overtones of honor and accountability. Watching Black Death really got me jazzed to see Sean Bean back in chain mail and swinging a sword, so I’m happy this trailer showcased him heavily. The grim, cold look of the show comes off better here than it did previously, although the shots we see of Daenerys’ storyline (any shot that is sunny, for those unfamiliar with the books) look like something from a direct to syndication adventure series (Jason Momoa’s presence probably doesn’t help).
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This is probably the best modern Fantasy book series going and I can't wait to see whether HBO will pull any punches on the more controversial and brutal aspects of Martin's work (child murder, incest). Bean is promising as Ned, and Dinklage as Tyrion, but it's the casting of the Stark children that will make or break the series.
Is it me or does it look like they cast Sansa WAYYYYY too old? And the books are adult minded and such, but after the first one they're pretty much rubbish.
Yes, Sansa's a little older than she is in the books. It was made clear by Martin early on that some of the kids would be "aged up" a bit, most notably Robb, Jon, Sansa, and Daenerys…though my understanding is that it's only supposed to be by a couple of years, and there's a lot of "18 playing 15-17" going on with the cast.
But yeah…Some older casting to allow the series to maintain its' plot and tone…really unlikely you're going to find a 13 year old whose parents would let her film some of Dany's scenes…and even if they did, the moral crusaders in the US would freak out about it.
GRRM had always intended to age them anyway with a 5-7 year gap taking place between ACOK and ASOS, but ultimately decided against it and had to rewrite most of the book. Having it done this way is probably the way he would have even done it had he known that he wouldn't be writing in the time gap.
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