Game of Thrones - Noteable differences between the book and the show so far (chock full of spoilers)

Cafe Society
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As it seems the the show series threads have requested NO BOOK discussions, however slight, and the book series has it’s own thread, I wanted to have a small thread dedicated to commenting on some of the differences between the show (so far) and the book, and if you think these differences are working creatively.

I’m not disagreeing with any of the creative decisions. I think the series have, overall, done quite well in moving the story along while keeping it comprehensible, which requires a great deal of compression and editing.

A few that struck me.

There’s a LOT less emphasis on the gods and background mythology of the world of GOT in the series than in the books. A lot of characters motivations in the book are illuminated via their relationship to the particular faith they follow.

Ned’s wife, Catelyn Stark, is much more ordinary, almost borderline haggard looking, than the character I had in my mind’s eye when reading the book. She does get the forcefulness down though.

The gay relationship between Renly and Lorus is put right up front and center. It was only obliquely hinted at in the book.

For an actor who’s (purportedly) close to 7 feet tall IRL, “The Mountain That Rides” did not seem all that imposing for some reason. Maybe it’s just the camera angle. The knight that plays his brother The Hound is pretty big too, so that might not give real picture of how imposing he is.

They interplay between Robert and Cersi is much more realistic in the show than in the book. In the book she’s (IMO) a borderline psychopathic cartoon villain. In the show her dialog with him is almost wistful in some scenes.

IIRC the child of Lysa, Catelyn’s sister in the Aerie is supposedly a smallish and very sickly child physically who is always having fits and is drugged up to his gills. He’s obnoxious, but there’s nothing at all sickly or drugged (to me) about that child, he also looks older than I expected. I though he was 6 or so in the books., that kid looks like he’s almost 8 or 9. It was amusing to see him take his lips off an almost perfectly hemispherical 20 year old Playboy bunny breast attached to his haggard mid-to late thirty something mother. If she’d been nursing him all that time I think it’d be more like a flapjack by now.
What differences do you note that were of interest?

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Catelyn telling Ned not to go to king’s landing rather than the other way around as it was in the book seemed pretty significant. She is supposed to blame herself for the deaths of basically everyone in her family.

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Direwolves are almost nonexistent in the TV version.

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Since this is presently discussed: Dany is not supposed to resist the effects of fire in general. Her resilience during the time when the dragons were born was a “miracle” - whatever that means.

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I’m not crazy about the addition of Ros the whore on the show. She doesn’t add anything and just eats up screentime that could go to other characters. If they wanted to give Theon some additional scenes, I would prefer them to be of him interacting with Robb and other established characters.

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He’s also been renamed simply “The Mountain”.

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Since it is also under discussion, the trial by combat fight for Tyrion’s life is also very different on screen than in the book. In the book it’s all about Bronn using strategy to tired out the Knight (who’s name currently escapes me). There is a whole scene where the other knights looking on are making comments about how the sell sword is acting cowardly and running away, until the knight finally tires out enough that the sell sword is able to start really bleeding him (he stabs the knight several times seriously), until the knight tries one last all out attack and nearly succeeds only to fail at the end.

The fight on screen was much more prosaic and many people who apparently are watching the series but haven’t read the books were under the impression that the knight in question is a piker, out of shape and not very good. This guy was in charge of Jon Arryn’s personal body guard when he was hand. He’s older than Bronn (which also was a factor in the story but not as much in the series), and Bronn was larger and faster in the books, but this guy was no schluffy…he was considered one of the better knights in the realm. The key factor in the story was that this guy was dressed in full plate while Bronn was wearing very light weight armor, and that Bronn deliberately got the knight to tire himself out over a fairly long time by swinging and missing repeatedly.

-XT

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Both Catelyn and Lyssa are far uglier than they should be. Cat is supposed to be a great beauty, and Lyssa is supposed to be plump and pretty, but gone overweight at this point. Both of them look like dried up sticks :frowning:

Sansa is way too sullen and outspokenly bratty.

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I don’t believe it was ever said that Cat was a great beauty.

Conan Stevens is a legit 7’ tall. Rory McCann, who plays the hound, is 6’6", so that makes it harder to judge.

Most of the children are aged up ~3 years.

Dany’s wedding consummation wasn’t at all rape in the book.

I don’t think the current spoiler thread is supposed to be just the books at all, btw. Most of this has been discussed there and I think it would be welcomed just fine.

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Re size I wonder who they will cast as Briene of Tarth. She needs to be well over 6 feet and pretty homely.

Here are some guesses and a pic!

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The most noticable to me is that visually the series is sometimes much less epic in size than the books (except the wall which wider than I imagined it but that actually makes sense now I think about it).
For example the khalasar (I see maybe 50 people instead of 40k), the tourney (no melee with Thoros of Myr and his flaming sword :frowning: ), the Royal hunting party of four.
Understandable with the effort involved but I would appreciate some more crowd shots and sounds (was there any cheering at the tourney?) when the big battles start to happen (I don’t think there is a big one in the first book though).

Currently I’m imagining Dany rallying just three Unsullied instead of three thousand and Mance Rayder showing up at the Wall with one Giant, his mammoth and some assorted Wildlings in tow. Those are all a bit away though so time enough to improve :).

The Eyrie was in my mind just some towers against a mountain side, not so round and free standing.

The Maester chains I didn’t imagine as really that large (reaching to the feet).

And to really nitpick, the cat Ayra was chasing was just a cute kitten instead of the evil, fat, one-eyed, black monster I remembered from the book :cool:
(and the secret exit from castle wasn’t that hidden with the townsfolks sitting right outside).

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The Eyrie, in the book, took a long time to get to. You had to ride donkeys and traverse single-track trails open to strong winds and (if you were cowardly) ride in a very scary basket up to the very top. They didn’t so much get that wrong in the show as they glossed over it altogether. One minute we’re looking at the Eyrie in the distance, the next minute we’re there.

The moon door is a door in the wall, not the floor.

The Hand’s special jewelry is a necklace of interlocking hands, not a pin.

None of these are a big deal IMO, though I would like to have seen the approach to the Eyrie. I hate heights, and those scenes always were really scary in the books to me, so I’d’ve liked to see 'em on screen.

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Correct me if I’m wrong here: The wall is in Martin’s books around 700 ft high, but I think I have read that it’s “only” 400 ft high on tv - which means that it is also far less epic than in the books.

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Size is the big part - she can’t just be over 6 feet tall, she has to be 6 feet tall and muscly. Ugliness can be done with makeup, if they so choose (remember Charlize Theron in Monster?). I really, really hope they choose to go with real ugly, not Hollywood ugly. It’s such a big part of her personality. Going without her being really ugly would be as bad as casting a slightly overweight (Hollywood overweight?) guy as Samwell.

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I dunno, I looked at some buildings and it seems 700 ft (200m) but just isn’t that tall (or I just have poor judgement of heights).

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Where are you going to find a 20 something 6 foot tall, homely, rangy, woman who can act? It’s a challenge. Per the books she’s also got to have a very blond “lush garden”, she can’t be a shaver!

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There was another piece that I hate they removed, because it demonstrates so much both about Lyssa and about why Bronn won: in the book, when the knight showed up for the fight, Lyssa unexpectedly gifted him with Jon Arrys’s sword, smirkingly saying how fitting it would be for Jon’s murderer to be slain by Jon’s own sword. The knight is appalled that he’ll be forced to fight to the death using an unfamiliar (and highly ornamented) blade; Tyrion, by contrast, is quite pleased.

It really demonstrates how little connected Lyssa is to reality. Without this purely symbolic, wholly impractical declaration, Bronn (and therefore Tyrion) might not have survived.

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What honked me off the most was Renly and Loras. We get it, they’re gay. In the books they’re still warriors, even if they are well dressed :slight_smile: This is supposed to be Game of Thrones not Twilight.

Jory Cassel got a much less heroic death than in the novels.
Something I’m hoping to see but I doubt they’ll show is Ned and Howland Reed et al vs Ser Arthur Dayne and the Kingsguard. Seven against three and only two walk away.

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Another discrepancy that I’ve seen so far (I’m listening to the unabridged audio of the first book along with the series so I can keep the story fresh in my mind…I’m trying not to cheat and listen ahead of what’s going on in the series) is the fight scene when Jamie confronts Ned after he finds out that his brother has been captured. In the book the fight is a lot less epic…Jamie basically tells his men to leave Ned alive but kill all his men then rides away. Ned only gets into the fight to save his men, and then he pretty much doesn’t accomplish much (I think he kills or wounds one guy) before another horse hits his, knocks it over and it falls on him, breaking his leg and causing him to pass out. It’s one of the scenes from the series that’s MUCH better than what happens in the book, IMHO.

Contrast the fight scene where Robb is fighting the bandits (in the book it’s deserters from the Nights Watch) to save Bran. In the book Robb is pretty freaking heroic, defeating several of the bandits himself single-handedly, even though he’s only 15. On the show, while he did well you just don’t get the same feel of his total ferocity and skill…at least I didn’t. Nor his complete fury at Theon for taking the shot with the longbow…though in that case most of the fury was internal musings, which probably would have been hard to translate to the screen.

All that said, I’m finding the book and the series a lot closer than I thought it was before I started to listen to it on my Zune. It’s probably the best book to series I’ve ever seen about capturing the spirit AND a lot of the dialogue (at least the really important dialogue). A lot of the dialogue is taken nearly verbatim from the book so far…and a lot of the scenes are just like what’s in the book IMHO.

-XT

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I agree that Brienne needs to be both tall and muscular - sort of like this (current Olympic shot-put champion Valerie Adams).