The latter two novellas do tie into the main story in a couple ways, but only one is theoretically important..
Latest trailer. I’m very excited - the source material for this one is MUCH better than for the House of the Dragon.
The two GoT showrunners, David Benioff and Dan Weiss, had a plan back in 2017 or so to develop an alternate history show where the South won the Civil War. HBO was initially enthusiastic about the project, until people pointed out that having two white guys write a show where slavery is still a thing in the modern day was really not such a good idea.
That’s ridiculous, it would only be a problem if they portrayed it as a good thing. The Man In The Highscastle never had a problem.
There was a 2004 movie called C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America. It was a mockumentary that imagined a world in which the CSA had won the Civil War.
From what I’ve read, producers were extremely thoughtful with that show. They went so far as to carefully destroy every prop or other item with a swastika after filming. They didn’t want to be responsible for permanently creating anything physical that bore that iconography, that could then be misused.
I think that show is an example of how you can take subject matter like that, and handle it properly. Maybe HBO couldn’t figure it out, or they didn’t want to go through the effort, or they were afraid of political backlash after already going through this Game of Thrones incident:
The trailers for KSK look really good - I’m looking forward to this. I have to admit I’ve more or less given up on House of the Dragon; just never grabbed me the way GOT did. Maybe someday I’ll go back and finish it.
I have more hope for this given the source material. The way the stories are structured is perfect for the new “a season every couple years” system they have going. HOTD had way too many pointless changes from the source material to end up in a good spot.
S1 of HoTD was fantastic, probably my #4 season of things set in Westeros (GoT 4, 3, 1, HotD 1). S2 is one of the worst paced seasons of anything I’ve seen. I haven’t read the source material, but it’s not a narrative, correct? I get that makes it harder to adapt, but man you need to try.
The Hedge Knight would have been super easy to adapt. Unless the casting fucked up, I can’t see it being a miss.
It’s an in world history book written as a collection of interviews with EXTREMELY biased survivors. The biggest issue is that its not supposed to be a “girlboss takes on usurpers who stole her throne” story, it’s very much a “two groups of assholes ruin their entire dynasty fighting each other”. The story they are telling cannot go the way the source material is written, and that was way more obvious after season 2.
The first episode of this show will air on HBO today, and be available on HBO MAX soon after (at the same time? tomorrow?). I have not read the source material but will watch it, hoping it’s better than House of the Dragon, which, frankly, dragged. I’ve heard that the episodes in this first season are only about half an hour each, which seems short. And also, I’m wondering about the young actor who plays Egg, the squire in the story. I heard he was nine at the time of filming. I wonder how they’ll handle his growth between seasons. What if he shoots up to six feet?
I’m pretty sure I’ve read The Hedge Knight but I can’t remember anything from it.
First episode is out. I thought it was fantastic. Wonderful introduction to the characters. I was sad when it ended. Nothing terribly significant happened but it was still great fun just hanging out with these characters in this world.
The original is IMHO one of the best bits of Game Of Thrones due to not banging on about boiled leather and honeyed ham so much, but my concern is that there isn’t enough material for 2.5-3 hours per novella. Three of them were published with pictures in a small book. GRRM left out about 10 times that amount from the end of Dance of Dragons (Sansa shocker, Battle of Mereen and Battle of Ice).
Just FYI there are spoilers for this show in the main GoT books, but I don’t remember if there were any on the show like for House of the Dragon.
With good writing, I think there’s easily enough material here for a season per book – just look at the first episode… basically the plot movement was “Dunk meets Egg, Dunk goes to the tournament, Dunk meets assorted high lords and knights…” and that was it. And yet they wrung a very solid and watchable 40 minutes, because the character and dialogue work was very strong.
There definitely wasn’t a lot of plot development in the first episode. However, I do agree that what we got was very enjoyable. Having characters with some redeeming features is a nice change from the main cast of House of the Dragons.
one complaint:
Did we really need to see him taking a shit next to the tree?
Agreed, it’s like they took the Dunk and Egg I pictured in my head reading the stories and put them on screen. The laughing storm was also absolutely perfectly cast. Not sure we needed a diarrhea scene, but other than that it was a great start.
Yeah, well, they can only do “dunk meets egg” once though. The fact that its 40 minute episodes rather than the full hour to sometimes hour 15 might make the difference, and it being a 5-6 episode season, compared to the 10 hours a usual GOT season is.
The master of the lists hacking up phlegm multiple times was worse.