HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones - will this be just for nerds? (NO SPOILERS PLEASE)

Pretty good! The only thing for me was all the boobage...I mean, it fit with the story and all but it also felt like they were meeting some kind of HBO quota

Love Dinklage as Tyrion, and <3 Sean Bean as Ned Stark, casting is top notch. Danerys and Drago are so spot on it's kind of scary.

One other small thing is that I wished they'd shown Danerys riding the horse Drago gives her, how much she loves it the way they describe in the book... seemed like a missed opportunity to me?

Sean Bean is great in the role. It's unfortunate that in this and lotr he plays such tragic characters.

He's so good at it though....think that face was pretty much made for it.

It's funny though, every time I see him I sigh a little and say "Oh brave Boromir" lol

It is a very solemn face. To a degree Boromir and Ed Stark are similar characters... both trying to save the kingdom.

sigh swoon noble hero

ok just caught up w/ this, really enjoyed it. it seems as if they're gonna write Theon out of the story completely, which makes sense since iirc he doesn't actually do much until the 3rd or 4th book and even then isn't a crucial character. everything else seemed like it was plotted straight from the book, i didn't catch whatever difference you folks were talking about at the end but i haven't read the books in 6 years so maybe my memory's off.

bran overhears queen and bro talking about their conspiracy, so it's not just that he sees them doing the nasty that gets him pushed out the window, it was that he had knowledge of their plot also

i doubt they're writing Theon out, he just doesn't have much to do in book 1 besides smirk a lot.

re: the ending of the episode, in the book when Bran stumbles onto jaime & cersei he listens in on them for a while and hears about a bunch of ~intrigues~ before watching them bone - i can understand why they cut it out, but i missed it all the same

xp

allmypulp's last two posts seem a little spoilery to me, maybe a mod should edit them? not to be all thread police-y but

I won't argue if they are. But you may want to edit some of the reviews that are listed, since they contain spoilers also.

allmypulp: just understand that there's several people on here watching this who haven't read the books, and this series has a lot of huge out-of-nowhere plot twists so it's particularly prone to spoiler-ruination

That's a good warning! xp

Okay, that's fair. Well I would've liked to more of Theon also. But it is just the first episode which I enjoyed, and am still anticipating the rest.

yeah i don't remember theon doing anything interesting at least until book 2.

(sadface.)

Peter Dinklage is the best.

actually my mistake, it looks like Theon is cast, he just didn't get pointed out yet. wouldn't be surprised if they play down his story anyway though, at least for the first season

Who is Theon I have read book 1 and don't even know who he is

He's Ed Starks ward from an island that rebelled against the king, so he's held as hostage by the Ed Stark under the pretense of being a "ward".

I really wasn't taken with the sex/nudity aspects of the pilot, but there's definitely some promise here. (I'm not familiar with the books at all.)

"it seems as if they're gonna write Theon out of the story completely" -- if they do this i will credit them with a certain amount of nous, i guess? there's like two or three things that you can see would be obvious candidates for streamlining the narrative, and that seems like one of them

likewise glad that it's less clear what bran sees -- that said, i kind of think that even knowing who pushes him out of the window is cack-handed plotting: i mean, it makes the whole arc of the book fairly transparent once you learn (isolated datum which will probably be somewhere in the first six episodes)

re: the slate review - http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/04/16/game_of_thrones_review_of_reviewers - someone on tumblr posted a screengrab of that where every single ad on slate was for this show. er

i kind of want to watch the first episode or so of this, i feel like the combination of it being about elves and shit + apparent shitheap of gratuitous nudity = it will be a hard sell for the other half, i think

also i only want to watch it so i can complain about it on the internet? so i shouldn't bother, probably

I really wasn't taken with the sex/nudity aspects

phrases you rarely see

from that salon article "Patterson is one of the sharpest, funniest TV reviewers out there"

oh plz.

Hating Danaerys as she is cast. That part needs a true Scandanavian ice queen with wisp-fine white-blonde hair and hauteur she can wrap around herself like a cloak to shut out her inside from the outside. Not a cheap bottle job with brown eyebrows and too much blusher.

Everything else otm^10.

wife and i thought the pilot was great btw and we're totally onboard for the time being. so is this supposed to only be six episodes as the opening season (like walking dead) or is it just that reviewers have only seen the first six episode and we're going to have a more 13 episode season. bc it seems that with the cast of characters they've got, and the amount of written content Martin has produced, they could easily write episode after episode of compelling material.

wikipedia says 10 eps

I believe the first season is going to be ten episodes.

Ian! We'll review the first ep next week -- maybe we need to ALWAYS re-watch the prev ep before the new one is on? Makes a nice evening with good company even a bit longer.

Plus I want to AWWWWW at the WOLF PUPPIES again.

haven't watched this yet, hope to tonight

did ppl dig it?

Loved. Loved.

i kind of want to watch the first episode or so of this, i feel like the combination of it being about elves and shit + apparent shitheap of gratuitous nudity = it will be a hard sell for the other half, i think

I watched this while my wife futzed around with her phone, her comments were something along the line of "every time I look up there are boobs wtf"

thought the eps was disappointing overall. the opening sequence was *really* well done, pretty much the main reason I tuned in after seeing the preview. set design + cinematography + acting were top notch but I don't get all the hurrahs for the script. characters were weakly written. and the danerys + drago sequences came off like some harlequin skinemax weaksauce.

haven't read the books but it seemed like this would only appeal to someone who loved them?

It's not about elves and shit.

wolves and shit

laurel i've read them, i'm just saying that the look they've gone for with this pretty broadly telegraphs ELVES AND SHIT. 'dragons and shit' would have accomplished the same admittedly

And had the advantage of being accurate.

Waiting for Carcetti to arrive

haven't read the books but it seemed like this would only appeal to someone who loved them?

i hated what i read. the show has the advantage of not being written in terrible fantasy trope language. (gritty fantasy or not.)

and some of the cgi is so impressive that it's more like LOTR where you don't care that it's a theme you've seen a dozen times. like the guard riding out past that huge wall was OMG impressive.

not being written in terrible fantasy trope language.

Man, if you think GRRM is "terrible fantasy trope language", you better just stay away from the genre completely, because, imho, he's one of the least worrisome offenders for this type of thing.

I agree with Mordy.

I like fantasy more on screen than on the page, generally.

this show seems ok

I have never read the books and haven't read much fantasy, but I enjoyed this. Some problems that I'll write off as pilot-issues but I'm looking forward to the rest. We'll know in the next 3 or 4 episodes just how much being a fan of the book matters.

also theon never does anything interesting

martin's not a great stylist, but i stopped noticing/caring about 1/3 of the way into GoT - that's not really why you read this stuff anyway

i had a hard time getting into Book 1 but was looking forward to this. It's great so far but have to agree with this:

"and the danerys + drago sequences came off like some harlequin skinemax weaksauce"

also, drago wedding fight scene was some Star Trek : TOS lolz but with tits and rape.

the title/credits sequence with the little clockwork gameboard showing all the locales is v. awesome imo. and supposedly it changes from episode to episode depending on where stuff's happening

really? thats a nice touch!

not sure if thats true, i just remember reading it somewhere

i hope it's true...we'll have to check the next set of credits to see