The DVD launch parties have the cast out in force promoting Game of Thrones and so there are interviews galore these days. Here’s a roundup of the week’s highlights in Game of Thrones interviews:
- Isaac Hempstead Wright talked to HuffPostTV about taking the year off, and confirmed he’ll be returning in season 6. Isaac says that it’s been “bizarre” to not be filming this summer for the time in several years, and spending a full term at school. Isaac chats with HuffPost about the creation of Bran’s major scenes in “The Children,” and the actor also shares that if he could warg into any creature, it would be an eagle. So it looks like Hempstead Wright wants to fly, as well.
- In yesterday’s edition of the Independent, Indira Varma discusses her time on Game of Thrones, and says bluntly, “[Y]ou meet some of her clan and shit happens! I’ve got three hot, hot daughters.” In the show, Tyene Sand is Ellaria and Oberyn’s daughter, and it appears that Obara and Nymeria, the oldest two Sand Snakes, are viewed as step-daughters, Ellaria having spent many years by their father’s side.
Indira touches upon the show’s known penchant for nudity, and admits, “There is a place for beauty, and youth, and sexiness, and nudity – of course there is. And there’s an audience, definitely! But, personally, if there’s no real necessity for it… why show it? We reduce women to just being looked at and admired.” She elaborates, “”I’ve done it. I’ve done it so much! [But] at my age… nobody wants me to get my body out! Then I think – why don’t we see women with floppy breasts and saggy arses? If we’re going to see the young beautiful ones, why can’t we just see them all? I don’t draw the line – if I thought it was something that had a point [I would do it].”
- Kit Harington had a few kind words for fans this week, in Digital Spy. The actors says that GoT fans aren’t “as crazy or mad as [people] think they are”. He says that, “In real life, they’re very enthusiastic and they love the show and they just want to tell you that.” When it comes to actors who wear disguises to avoid being recognized, Harington has…not-so-kind words. “I always find it a little bit pretentious when actors do. It’s like… who do you think you are?”
- The fiery Sand Snakes are enthusiastically talked about by George R.R. Martin himself, in an interview with Access Hollywood, describing them as “kickass.” “The Sand Snakes will be big this year,” says the author who also reveals that he’s just recently met with D.B. Weiss and David Benioff to discuss what will be included in season 6, though they haven’t begun writing next season yet.
- Also in the Independent this week is Jacob Anderson, additionally known these days under his music-recording name, Raleigh Ritchie. He’s passionate about both his careers but Anderson isn’t likely to combine the two. “I’m excited about writing more conceptually, writing about something […] But song writing is something super personal, so it’s weird. It would be quite weird to suddenly write a song about Grey Worm or whatever.” Anderson is unable to confirm whether or not he’ll be in season 6, but he says of season 5, “It’s the best series so far, in my opinion, as a fan of the show, completely unbiased, it’s the best series.”
- IGN asks members of the cast which killed-off characters they miss the most, in a new article. Nathalie Emmanuel misses Oberyn, the “sexy prince,” while Liam Cunningham and Alfie Allen choose Tywin Lannister. Head on over to IGN to see the full list.
Just a reminder, everyone, you’ve got one more day to enter to win a set of Game of Thrones Seasons 1-4 DVDs! Check out this post for details.
Premiere March 18 in London 😀
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/ustv/s151/game-of-thrones/news/a629973/game-of-thrones-season-5-world-premiere-booked-for-tower-of-london.html#~p4KfJlqz7jLwiF
lol I knew the first response to this post would be an off-topic posting of a link.
Yeah that’s not an interview. It’ll get posted later. We’re aware. 🙂
Sue the Fury,
Sorry… 😀
No one misses poor Ned.
I hope Bran returns in an epic way. I like the character.
Cool
There’s a small typo; to correct Replace Cunngingham with Cunningham.
Really glad to see a lot of the GoT cast doing interviews.
Love when these articles/interviews start showing up. It is a reminder that S5 is not far off.
Hoping that poor Isaac gets a new wig next season.
I miss him, too.
Sophie Turner says she would have anything to have Catelyn back…
Alas Oberyn. And Indira is amazing she is honestly going to be the new queen of the show. Not literally, but like irl.
Liam Cunningham and Alfie Allen are smart. The presence of Charles Dance will be hard to replace.
It does seem like Stannis started getting more awesome lines in the book after Tywin died, maybe that’s not entirely a coincidence.
Interesting to know D&D haven’t started writing Season 6 yet-they probably want to get as much material from TWOW to work with as they can, (not just for events but certain scenes and dialogue too.)
Right move not to have Bran this year and let his mystical training happen off screen. Also it hopes with the aging issue because if he looks a lot different by Season 6 well that can be attributed in part to his transformation.
I give credit to D & D for putting Bran on the bench this year, if only they had the courage to do that with Theon.
I like Indira’s words. I really disliked her character in Luther, so my initial reaction to her being in GoT was… lukewarm. But I liked her as Ellaria and I think I’m going to like her even better this season.
I’m going to miss Charles Dance, too. His imposing bearing, his voice…hum, like a jaguar’s purr……..
What’s the current straw poll as to whether Grey Worm is alive or dead in the trailer shot of Missandei leaning in to kiss him? 60-40? Either way, I don’t think he’s making it to season 6.
I don’t know about that. For Bran it’ll work but for Theon it was sorta important to show what happened, for multiple reasons. It shows just why exactly Theon got as broken as he did, but also served to nauseate the viewers who were rooting for something like that to happen to Theon.
I find it highly, highly unlikely that the show would spoil a major or minor character death in a trailer. They’ve never done it before and I don’t see why they’d start now. It’s almost certainly a misdirect.
It’s entirely possible that Greyworm dies this season but the shot you see in the trailer would not be of that.
Winnie,
Someone should ask Weiss and Benioff if they haven’t started working on season six yet. Not everyone has the same work ethic as Mr. Martin.
QuestioningHodor,
Less is more. There’s a reason George left the majority of Theon’s torture up to the imagination. D & D unfortunately don’t have subtle in their repertoire.
Plus if they had just dialled back on the Theon scenes we wouldn’t have gotten that god awful prison breakout attempt by Yara.
King Tommen,
I agree that they wouldn’t actively spoil a death in the trailer, but wouldn’t the actual misdirect be that everyone who sees the trailer would assume that Missandei and Grey Worm are about to get it on?
It’s only because he’s motionless and his eyes are fixed that has prompted speculation that he may be dead. So if anything, that would be the real misdirection: disguising the death as a love scene. Ah well. We’ll have to wait for Mid-June to know for sure.
I don’t think they’d show a character lying dead in a trailer, thereby spoiling the occurrence on the show.
The fact that a million posts went up after the trailer was released with “OMG, IS GREYWORM DEAD?” subjects is proof enough that this is what the vast majority of fans took from that shot.
It’s much, much more likely that Greyworm is unconscious/hurt and Missandei is comforting him at his bedside as opposed to him being DEAD.
Al Swearengen,
I don’t know why torture should be used “subtly” instead of bluntly, the scenes did a great job showing how Theon became Reek. Of course you can always argue about how many scenes should have been dedicated to it but just disappearing Theon for a year wouldn’t have worked too well.
Agreed about Yara rescue mission, though apparently there was more footage to it that just didn’t make the final cut. I’d be interested in seeing if that material makes the scene better.
Theons torture scenes were as much about showing viewers how sadistic Ramsey is AND about showing the downward spiral of Theon.
And who would really be devastated if Grey Worm died? Imo he is a lame character and they try to make him interesting by giving him an even more lame love story with Missandei. It doesnt work for me. Good riddance Grey Work. More screen time for the Dothraki!
Million posts? About Grey Worm? Really?
#stoplyingnoonecaresaboutsomesidekickcharacterwjoseonlypurposeiswellhehasnoactualpurposesothatswhynoonecares
Al Swearengen,
Subtlety or lack thereof aside, when it comes to Iwan Rheon screentime, more is more, therefore I’m good w/ the Theon Season 3 arc. I agree Yara raids the Dreadfort was mostly a bust, but it led to that classic Theon-Ramsay bath scene, so it wasn’t a total loss.
The books allowed him to reintroduce Theon and have a massive info dump to bring folk up to speed. The TV series can’t do that because of the medium.
There was probably one scene too many of Theon stuck on that cross, though.
Valaquen,
As you explained, Theon in Season 3 was very necessary. We had to see what he went through in order to understand what he became. It’s not just that “he was tortured” (that’d be easy to portray in a visual medium); it’s the psychological manipulation inflicted by Ramsey that turns him into an obedient servant. People wouldn’t have accepted that with absolutely no transition between old cocky Theon and Reek. The book has the advantage of in-narrative flashbacks; the show has to decide whether to omit these memories or place them in their correct timeline, which is rarely an opportunity, since most of these sorts of flashbacks are about a time before the story proper started in aGoT/Season (and the show doesn’t do proper flashbacks —and no, the Maggy scene, which will happen in the context of a dream, doesn’t reall count.) In this case, however, Reek I and Reek II explained in well enough detail what happened to him between aCok/Season 2 and aDwD/Season 4-5. They simply had to include it —and hey, it was well acted.
That said, Theon really didn’t need to be in six episodes that season. At all. He appeared in only three episodes next season, even though his storyline was much elaborate. While season four managed to be more unconventional about this sort of thing, previously they’d felt a need to have every character in most episodes, even when their storyline didn’t demand it (Dany in Season 2, Bran and Theon in Season 3, off the top of my head), which resulted in their story being spread thin: we spent only a few minutes with them each episode, making it difficult to invest ourselves emotionally. In what I hope is a continuing trend, season four broke with that unfortunate structure: Bran had only four appearances; and they didn’t feel a need to have Sansa & Littlefinger and Theon & The Boltons in the season finale —they had their climax in the eighth episode, “The Mountain and the Viper.”
Notice Martin says “we” haven’t started writing Season 6 yet. Guess he’ll be back on board with writing the show, or atleast still in cohorts with D&D&Cog
Also on Theon, the fact is that season 3 worked off 2/3rds of a book. They pretty much got as much out of King’s Landing intrigue and Jon and the wildlings as they could. They needed Theon still in there. With Bran, they’re sidelining him right as the show expands into Dorne, right when they’re taking on two (filler-y) books at the same time.
Spoilers/Speculation:
Season 5 will walk right up to the point where Bran and the trees start interfering in the Battle of Ice. Bran reenters in Season 6 in a big way at that battle if not elsewhere. We cannot know just what more GRRM has in mind for Bran, but it could be huge. Who will his antagonist be? Melisndre/Rhllor? The general chaos of war and winter? The white walkers?
Stannis the Mannis,
your spoiler stuff doesn’t work.
They kinda spoiled Pyp getting an arrow in the neck with a commercial last year so it’s not entirely unprecedented…
Stannis the Mannis,
put spoiler in square brackets at the start too (without the / for the first one) Also spoiler needs to be singular too not plural.
Syrio Fo-real,
Well I would be pretty upset by his death. Count me as one who doesn’t feel like his character or love story is in anyway lame. That said I am pro your more Dothraki suggestion. What happened to those guys on the show?!?
A little less Theon would have great (just lose maybe one of the scenes). Maybe they learnt their lesson. Or they’re paving the way to recast Bran.
That’s unfortunate. I agree with Indira Varma here and was looking forward to seeing her do nude scenes (which seemed largely appropriate for a Dornish character at the time).
Then again, I was looking forward to seeing Michelle Fairley in the same situaton.
Looks like I’m in a minority here. But hey: More nudity overall! All sexes, all ages!
EDIT: Remember the ship captain’s daughter in season 2 with Theon? I believe she wasn’t considered universally pretty, still, great to have her there.
King Tommen,
YES, they absolutely would, like when they DID, with your ‘brother’ Joffrey. Go back And watch the trailer for season 4. They showed Cersei holding Joffrey’s dead body!
THAT was one of the biggest deaths in the show, so yeah, it’s highly, highly likely that they would.
Re: Greyworm – Dead or alive
There’s a lot of you saying “they wouldn’t show a character death in the trailer”, but this is completely incorrect. If you go back and watch the trailer for season4, they showed JOFFREY dead in his mother’ arms! JOFFREY! So yeah, not a valid argument..
The Joffrey and Pyp things are like a split second frame that if you pause it for a milisecond, you can make out who it is based on book events. If you pore over the footage that closely, like a nerd, then sometimes that stuff does occasionally slip through.
It’s not a fully lit scene of an easily identified dead body lying there while someone kisses them goodbye. That’s apples and oranges. I don’t know why we have these arguments sometimes, they aren’t going to egregiously reveal a major or minor character death in a freaking trailer. Full stop.
actor playing Bran is looking wayyy to old to pass as a child.
Hoyti Von Totiy,
True, but I dont see how that matters. People get older. Direwolves get older. Even that ancient Walder freaking Frey keep getting older and older. Except for high school girls, they stay the same age. Alright, alright.
Hoyti Von Totiy,
This is old news.
*crickets*
To whoever said they’ve never spoiled a major death in a trailer – actually they did. Joffery’s death was shown in one of the trailers for Season 4.
Matt S,
A very long french promo, if I remember correctly. The HBO trailer for the episode was, as it always is, very short on time and spoilers.
Tonius Maximus,
Let’s be fair: you could at most glimpse she may have been holding someone while crying. You could not see Joffrey. Book readers considered it a spoiler, and obsessive show watchers who analyze trailers shot by shot speculated on it, some of them accurately. But it did not “spoil” it, it did not truly show Cersei holding Joffrey.
Hoyti Von Totiy,
Isaac looks older than he is.
Along with every other character, the kids are older in the show to begin with, and if one bothers to piece together the clues to build up a timeline, one would notice that considerably more time passes on the show as compared to the books. At the beginning of the books, he’s seven years old. Seven. In the show he was ten in the first season, and by the time he comes back he’ll be about 15, which is the actor’s age now. When he comes back to film the sixth season late this year, he will be 16, only a year older than his character.
This is patently untrue. People took a shot of a quick freeze frame of Cersei looking distraught with perhaps a blurry body lying off-screen and extrapolated on their knowledge of the books to correctly deduce that it was Joffrey’s death. It was not a spoiler of his death for anyone who wasn’t making these deductions based on book knowledge.
King Tommen,
In fact, Joffrey was below Cersei on the shot. Because of the way Cersei was positioned, it did look like she was holding somebody. But you could not see Joffrey at all, not even blurry or in the background or anything. He was 100% out of shot. To be fair, more like 99%; I think you could see a few whisks of hair. Again, if you freeze-framed it… which most people don’t.
Luka Nieto,
No, it’s not technically a spoiler since its not explained who that is, I’m just saying they’ve shown a major death in a trailer. Which is true:
They did:
Just sayin. No it’s not technically a spoiler since its not explained who that is, I’m just saying they’ve shown a major death in a trailer. Which is true. Truce?
They did: http://m.aceshowbiz.com/news/view/00069466.html
Just sayin. No, it’s not technically a spoiler since it’s not explained who that is, I’m just saying they’ve shown a major death in a trailer. Which is true. Truce?
King Tommen,
In fact, Joffrey was below Cersei on the shot. Because of the way Cersei was positioned, it did look like she was holding somebody. But you could not see Joffrey at all, not even blurry or in the background or anything. He was 100% out of shot. To be fair, more like 99%; I think you could see a few whisks of hair. Again, if you freeze-framed it… which most people don’t.
They did: http://m.aceshowbiz.com/news/view/00069466.html
Just sayin. No, it’s not technically a spoiler since it’s not explained who that is, I’m just saying they’ve shown a major death in a trailer. Which is true. Truce?
King Tommen,
Strictly speaking, Lurker is correct in one way: they did show part of Joffery’s death scene. However, he is equally incorrect that they “spoiled” it because you can only tell what was happening if you already know: and for non-readers, that meant that it became clear what they had seen only after they had seen the episode. As it was, there were dozens of possible interpretations for the scene.
“We” gets used pretty loosely! He didn’t write an episode for Season 5, but he almost certainly considers himself part of the “we” for writing the season. After all, B&W probably discussed with him alternate ideas for streamlining the plots and characters.
That written, a hopeless optimist could take this as a sign that GRRM will be largely done writing WoW soon, and that he will therefore have time to pen an episode. (Such people probably are betting lots of money on the Chicago Cubs going all the way, too: after all, they are a much improved team this year!!! 😀 )
Luka Nieto,
On that, we noticed during our annual binge that they definitely are putting longer periods of time into the show. Jaime explicitly states in the beginning of Season 3 a that he was held hostage for a year a couple of times, and at one point notes that he’d been wearing the same pair of boots for over one year at that point. So, they were assuming about one year passing from the end of Season 1 to the beginning of Season 3.
The kids aging almost certainly has something to do with it: not even television (famed for 30 year old “teenagers”) cannot pretend that any of the Stark kids are only a couple of years older than they were in Season 1 right now!
Wimsey,
The GoT wiki has a surprisingly comprehensive timeline somewhere.
I imagine most people think that much less time passes than it actually does. For example, people freak out about Yara circumnavigating Westeros from Pyke to the Dreadfort. It wasn’t remotely impossible. Not even improbable. Between the season three finale and the season four premiere there is explicitly a gap of a whole month (“I’ve been here a month” —Jaime.) In that very episode, the Royal Wedding is said to take place in a few weeks. Then, unless I’m forgetting something, the timeline gets less specific, but in “Oathkeeper” Cersei does point out that Jaime has been back for “months”, so at least a couple more weeks have passed since the wedding a few episodes back, though probably more. Yara doesn’t arrive at the Dreadfort until two episodes later, in “The Laws of Gods and Men”, at the very least two or three months after she departed the Iron Islands. I mean, even without noticing these clues —she was gone for half a season! If that isn’t enough for people to feel that she had enough time for the voyage, the show would never be over.
I insist: I don’t blame them for not noticing these clues, of course, but still, I do hate it when they say it’s impossible for Yara (or Littlefinger, or whoever) to make a certain trip, when it is in fact perfectly possible.
“[But] at my age… nobody wants me to get my body out…”
Indira you are wrong about that. You’re Niobe for Christ’s sake…
Luka Nieto,
I remember Tolkien fans complaining that everything was “instant” in those films, too. It’s like everything happened in only three hours!!!! How dare Peter Jackson not make us sit for several weeks while the Fellowship walked from Rivendell to Moria?!?!?
(I mean, it would take, what, only a couple of hours to walk from some place with soaring mountains in the background to a place without them, right? Or so I always imagined while reading the same book over and over again in my mother’s basement….)
Seriously, you are correct: it’s a circular criticism. In part, the time necessary to do things is what TV and film will use to convey the passage of time; yet unless they have a little “page per day” calendar with pages whizzing off of it in a fast sequence, some people will still insist that it happened instantly.
Wimsey,
Luka Nieto,
Regardless of the debatable logistics (I’m sure a single ironborn ship would pass easily through the stepstones and the narrow sea, docking, resupplying, etc. and not be noticed/questioned), it’s easier to suspend your disbelief when the subject matter is convincing. I would have forgiven the adaptors if we had a hint of the ordeal that Yara went through to endure the trip, and maybe the ramifications of her failure.
For me, it’s about the journey and how it matters, and its toll on the adventurers. One only cares about disproportional lengths traveled when one is not convinced about the aesthetics.
All it took for us to cheer for Stannis was a few well-done planning scenes in Braavos and a revealing scene between Mel, Stannis & Davos about the very real northern threat…and voila!…we have Stannis saving the day at the wall. We didn’t care about the massive logistics of getting 5000 sellswords and their horses and supplies from Braavos to Eastwatch to CB.
But with Yara we got a dick in the box and an adhoc, show-only rebellious decision to gather/sacrifice many men to save Theon. Actually, I initially thought highly of the deviation at the end of S3, but for it to be a one-scene wonder in S4? I loved the inspired reading of the letter as they rowed toward the Dreadfort (although I did not really like it juxtaposed with Ramsay screwing Myranda), but the rest disappointed. If only we could have had some insight into Yara’s ordeal, before and after her hopeless and thankless adventure, and an obvious, convincing, demoralizing, bloody escape (or capture) with real ramifications for Yara and her crew. She could be such an interesting character and the showrunners disrespected her. We’ll see how they treat her in S5 as a result of her failure.
Hodor’s Bastard,
The juxtaposition of Yara reading the letter and Ramsay fucking is literally the worst editing decision of the whole season. I’m perplexed by it. The scene already feels rushed; why cut to Ramsay, relegating Yara to doing only voiceover? Presumably she acted the whole letter out (or could have, anyway.) That whole scene was ridiculously edited. Not only at the beginning. The hard cut directly from Yara watching Ramsay unleash the dogs to Yara running to the boat was textbook comedy editing. The cut seemed to be designed to get a laugh out of you, which is obviously not remotely what they intended. So tonnaly wrong. Both editing decisons disrespect the character of Yara so much that it almost offended me (and I don’t even care that much for her.)
Believe me, I get budget cuts (a whole fight at the courtyard was cut), but even with the existing footage they could’ve made something much, much more satisfiying and coherent. Others may disagree with me on this, since some people didn’t even like the concept of the scene (let alone the execution), but I myself am sure I’d have literally NO problem with Cogman’s original script version. I’d be very curious to get my hands on it.
Luka Nieto,
At least we have our imaginations to make that scene work better… 🙂
(As you mentioned, I also would LOVE to see the various script treatments planned for that scene…maybe Alik, BC & D&D will unlock the vault someday…)
Hodor’s Bastard,
Yes. Hopefully we’ll see it some day. But, as I said, what actually bothers me the most is that, just with the limited footage they could get, the scene could’ve been arranged so much better. It was all spliced together and it felt even more rushed than it naturally would have because of the budget limitations. Instead of trying to alleviate the issue they made it worse.
Also, ignoring the budget and other concerns for a minute, it’d have been nice to see her in her travels, at least once, maybe in episode two along with his brother and the Boltons. Just to reestablish the mission within the season, if nothing else. The structure of that whole subplot was sloppy, not just the execution of the scene itself.
I liked the deviation in concept, mind you, and it worked well enough for Theon’s character, both to establish just how devoted he is to Ramsay due to the conditioning/torture the bastard put him through (even if it’s his sister saving him, he assumes it’s a test of his allegiance by Ramsay), and to make it clear that he’s lost his identity completely, not even daring to regain it when his own sister comes to save him. That works. Everything else doesn’t.
I enjoyed that aspect as well. Maybe the showrunners might use that brief sister-brother interaction (for a few seconds, the scene was actually touching) as a seed for certain S5 turn of events…? Shall we give them the benefit of the doubt…?
Hodor’s Bastard,
Cogman said Yara’s decision to flee would come back to bite her in Season 6, so even that part will have consequences.
What ordeal? For Yara, making that trip would have been as easy as walking.
At any rate, Luka Nieto and you have it right about the point of the scene. It’s about Theon/Reek, not Yara: and that scene showed us that Theon’s not there anymore but Reek is. That, in turn, was important for the story of love/hate relationships that the season was telling: the persona that hated Ramsay was gone whereas the persona that bore Ramsay a twisted love was present: and that persona no longer recognized his own sister. Yara is just a foil for that, and her travels/activities outside of that scene were not relevant.
Now, if they want to build on in Season 5, then they can. Season 5 should be telling a very different story: and just as some other characters are in “picking up pieces” mode, Yara could also be. Alternatively, they might be able to build on this in Season 6. We don’t know for certain what the story will be (although you know my prediction): and as Luka Nieto notes, we’ve been told that it will be relevant later. Obviously, they will have to flashback to it to remind the audience what happened: but, hey, that’s what those pre-episode sequences do so well!
However, this is definitely a case where less was more: any extra Yara stuff would have detracted from the story that the season was trying to tell.
heh, anybody who thinks that the two “contradictory” descriptions of Jeyne Westerling’s hips in the books is either a clue or a continuity error should heed this! I, for one, agree. Or, perhaps it would be better to state that I find her, Lena Headey and some of the other “older women” much more attractive than the younger ones. However, when I was in my 20’s, I probably would have considered these women (who all have widened hips and sagging breasts relative to the young women) to be unattractive: I was dating stick-figure women with hips so narrow that their left leg was to the right of their right leg. (That’s hyperbole, btw.) Now I wonder: what the hell was I doing? And yet women I knew then would happily point out whether they (or particularly their friends) had good birthing hips.
Tastes and perceptions change as you get older: and as your idea of feminine beauty ages, the idea of seeing Ellaria or Cersei in revealing poses actually is more appealing than seeing (say) Sansa or even Margaery in such poses. What I once called “fat,” I now call “normal.”
Luka Nieto,
I think the scene couldve been much better if it all happened through theons eyes. Have a couple minutes of just theon in his cell and kind of show how he sleeps and how hes used to it to the point where hes a dog. Then just have him hear a horn go off and people fighting. Then just have him be terrified of who it could be and then Yara walks down the stairs. She begins to walk to the cage when ramsay arrives and ramsay opens theons cage and tells theon he can go with her if he wants but instead theon crawls to ramsay and hugs his leg, then have ramsay vs yara where ramsay does something cheap to get the upper hand maybe head butts yara and knocks her down then have the remaining ironborn convince her they cannot win when more men arrive and ramsay tells them to run like cowards then end scene. Have the next scene with yara be her back on the boat recovering from injuries or something not speed walking back to the boats.
A couple of minutes? A few seconds tops might have worked, but that’s about it. Scenes need to be short and too the point: audiences get peeved if they perceive wasted time. (They don’t get to waste people’s time: why should someone else get to waste theirs?)
Wimsey,
Yeah, a couple minutes is overkill, but I do think that the raid would have worked much better if it was all from Theon’s perspective and not Yara’s.
Wimsey,
It was certainly all about Theon. But then the way the scene was designed was just wrong. It seemed to be about Yara, except that part felt rushed, and only the consequences of the attack were seen from Theon’s POV. The scene should’ve either started with Theon or, if Yara was supposed to be more than a plot point for Theon’s development, her part should’ve been more prominent and less rushed. How? They didn’t even need more footage: simply don’t relegate Yara’s angry letter reading and epic speech by superimposing Ramsay having sex (weirdest editing choice ever!), so that we get used to Yara being back, and then show everything in sequence.
Sure, Wimsey, whatever you say. Even Vic proclaims that he loses about 50% of his ships when traveling that route…not a cakewalk…and the ironborn are not well respected in the area. My point is that if they are going to deviate from canon, make it convincing. Yes…the trip was a big deal.
Of course, but that is not what we were discussing. At the end of S3, the showrunners made a BIG DEAL of Yara’s defiance of Balon to get a small armada together to go save her mutilated brother. Those dedicated minutes, which were interesting in their own right, were ABOUT YARA, not Theon. From where they left it in S3, it seemed like there was going to be a significant Yara perspective in S4. Her journey and concern mattered. But it didn’t happen, which was frustrating, and to make things worse, the execution of that one scene wonder was awful.
All I am suggesting is a bit more from Yara’s perspective (and NOT juxtaposed against a stupid sex scene) and a more brutal escape, with very real ramifications would have made the scene and her “ordeal” more effective. It wasn’t just about Theon…Yara has been established as more than a simple “foil.” As LN surmised, it was probably more about budgets than storytelling sense.
Of the Night,
I meant more like 30 seconds or so of Theon laying in the cage maybe rhyming to himself reek reek it rhymes with weak or something. Then have the rest happen. They should have never had that scene with Yara in season 3 that she decides to go save him it was too much of a “next time on Game of Thrones” type scene. They made it seem like a big deal when she ends up in a super short scene in season 4. The scene shouldve ended when Balon said I have made my decision and then just have Yara say and I have made mine. Then next time you see her its through theons eyes at dreadfort.
I can sort of see that. The thing is that they needed to reintroduce Yara to the audience: after all, she had not been on in a year. Moreover, I think that doing it from Yara’s point of view worked similar to the occasional non-protagonist POV chapter that we get in the books. For a most character development, it helps to have that character be the PoV in a scene/chapter. However, in some cases, it helps to have another character be the PoV: that develops how the real protagonist is perceived. This was one of those cases. After all, Reek/Theon can be only dimly aware of his situation. Moreover, the TV cannot easily communicate that he doesn’t know his sister because the audience would recognize her as someone who has been on the show (even if they don’t recall exactly who she is). By doing it from Yara’s POV, it shows that Theon had fallen so far that his own sister is now conceding that he’s effectively dead.
On the written end, the Melisandre chapter in Dragons is a great example of how this can work. That chapter provides development of Jon Snow in that chapter in a way that Jon Snow chapters cannot provide, and in which Sam chapters now have a tough time doing.
But when is that ever on the show? (I won’t dispute that it might have been in the books, although if Vic said it, then it went into “delete now” folder in my brain!) At any rate, It’s a trivial (and obviously forgettable!) detail that is not germane to the story. If it becomes germane to a future story, then they will have to work it into that somehow. After all, the audience would have forgotten it by now, never mind by next season.
(One thing that my annual binge-watch reminds me is how many of the trivial details I forget from one year to the next: and as I am much better at remembering those things than most people, that does not bode well for what Joe and Jane HBO Subscriber will remember!)
At any rate, I don’t think it had anything to do with budget. I think that it was just focusing on what was pertinent to the story that they were trying to tell. As that was not going to be pertinent, they probably did not consider it.
I can sort of see that. However, I think that the show took the happy medium between something so short and something as detailed as what Hodor’s Bastard suggested.
Wimsey,
Watchin better call saul recently or any breaking bad episode or even true detective i realized how much game of thrones simplifies everything and explains it to everyone. I liked the fact that watchin those other shows everything isnt spoon fed to you. Like with sauls brother being sick. They never explain why hes sick or what the disease is or any of his backstory. They slowly reveal it as the show goes on I was watchin and thinking if this was game of thrones someone would stumble on a book that describes the entire disease and then read it out loud to guide the audience. Take the scene with Lysa and Littlefinger. You told me to poison Jon Arryns wine my husbands wine and then send the letter to Cat to make it seem like it was the lannisters etc etc. The entire scene made me cringe from how much exposition it had. Why not just say poision Jons wine and send the letter to Cat. Then have LF say only Cat later. If the audience doesnt know whats going on and they care enough they will figure it out somehow.
I’m watching the commentary for “The Laws of Gods and Men”, and Cogman makes very interesting comments about Yara. He had previously said that there would be consequences to her leaving Theon and accepting him as dead, but he clarified it even further:
“She can either die on that kennel and end her line or take her place as heir of the Iron Islands, and she chooses the latter. And of course that will have repercussions for her going forward”.
If that is true, then it is high praise for the producers. However, Thrones is no better or worse than those other shows. Indeed, the complaints about Thrones by book fans tend to be along the lines of your praises concerning Saul’s brother: book fans would argue that these details (which would have be in a book) are important and need to be in the show, even when it’s not relevant to the story or the plot.
Thus, things like “only Cat” simply are in the “explain the disease” camp, not in the “make the audience work camp.” That is, an unimportant detail that does more to obfuscate the plot and/or story points than eludicate them. The important thing was: Sansa heard “only Sansa’s mother.” The audience needed to hear that.
(At any rate, they definitely should NOT have shown LF telling Lysa to poison Jon Arryn in season 1! That is a huge reveal that needed to be saved for much later.)
Luka Nieto,
It is quite possible that B&W are pushing something along those lines. Personally, I suspect that
Moreover, if Winter’s story is one about choosing sides (as I suspect!), then this would feed into that very well. They could early make Yara parallel Daeny, Tyrion and (I suspect) Arya.
Wimsey,
I’m pretty sure Euron has a line or two, come on. I mean, he’s still a background character, though an important one in the Iron Islands storyline, but still… he does say some stuff. I think…?