Game of Thrones Season 4 thread (starts Sunday, April 13 2014)

Well, here we are...can't wait!

 

Has everyone watched this?

 

Yeah the 15 min promo on HBO was pretty sweet. Can't wait!

 

I'm concerned about the season or two after this but this upcoming season should be a peak for the show.

 

I'm most concerned with them catching up to the books before GRRM finishes the next book.

 

It's becoming almost a mathematical certainty. At best, Winds of Winter could come out right around the time the show reaches the end of the material from the existing novels (I strongly suspect season 5 will wrap up the AFFC & ADWD content, leaving season 6 a very open question). It'll be very interesting to see how the producers deal with that issue when they come to it, but I fear none of the available options will be entirely satisfactory.

 

I don't think they will get through all of books 4 and 5 in one season. If they can get two seasons out of book three they can get at least two out of those two books, despite all the fat they would have to trim from them. I do think there is definitely a chance he will publish book 6 before they run out of material. But there is no chance he will write book 7 in time.

I'm sure back in 2011 when they were on book 1 of a 5 book series it seemed inconceivable this would be a problem...

 

Based on some of the casting announcements for S4, it clear at least some of the storylines are going to advance significantly into books 4 & 5 (I'm being vague to avoid spoilers for folks who don't read the books). As such, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine wrapping the existing novels up by the end of S5, especially if the show is as aggressive about streamlining the events of the novels as I suspect they will.

 

Anyone know specifically why the part of Daario Naharis was re-cast? I didn't really care about the character, but I like the new guy playing him (Michiel Huisman) from Treme and Nashville.

 

Interesting question. I don't know yet.

He was a rare example of a casting decision on the show that didn't immediately match up very well with my conception of the character from the books. But it wasn't so egregiously bad that it struck me as clearly worth the suspension of disbelief that a recasting necessarily requires.

Other characters have been re-cast on the show in the past (Beric Dondarrion, Gregor Clegane) but none quite so conspicuously. It'll be interesting to see if the distraction caused by the recast is made up for with a dramatically better performance.

 

They're on their *third* The Mountain this season. I don't know how less obsessed viewers are even supposed to remember him.

They've also recast Tommen, Joffrey's brother, with an older actor.

 

Oh, he's older? I had assumed they recast him with a younger actor to better reflect his book counterpart, because otherwise I think the actor playing Tommen was very well matched to his role. Obviously other characters (mostly Stark kids) have aged far faster than the characters they are portraying, but they are too prominent to casually re-cast (not to mention they're pretty much perfect for the roles, particularly Maise Williams).

 

The first "Mountain" was great. He looked great, anyway. Wish they could have got him back if they were going to re-cast again. The guy who played him in S2 and S3 (if he appeared there) was so different looking that I didn't know it was the same character at first. He lacked the overwhelming physical presense of the guy we saw preactically decapitate a horse and square off with "The Hound" back in S1. The new guy was just tall. Not sure why the first guy was ever replaced. Near as I could tell, he left for an 1 episode role in the Starz "Spartacus" series.

 

He has a larger role this season and I think they wanted a more mature kid who could handle it -- the other boy was basically just a background player and probably not much of an actor.

 

I wonder who they're going to cast as Ser Pounce?

 

As one who has read and, with a fair degree of exasperation, loved the books, I'm going to predict that the show will follow a fairly predictable downward curve starting very soon. Martin loves his characters, but has gotten totally befuddled by his plot. If books one through three moved the main plot lines from A to M, the progress since then has been to maybe P (and that's being generous after a couple thousand pages.) The next volume is nowhere in sight and there's no guarantee that it won't introduce fifty new characters and leave the old ones inching forward as though they were slowly being petrified.

Stephen King has been vilified for speedwriting the last volumes of The Dark Tower, but at least he ended it. (I loved the ending.) If you've become invested in the TV series, you might want to consider leveraging your investment, maybe branching out into Vampire Diaries or, well, almost anything that stands a better chance of reaching a satisfactory conclusion. Let the viewer beware. (If there had been TV series in Ancient Rome there would be an appropriate Caveat ...)

 

I hated the ending of Dark Tower but agreed he did finish it..

Emilia Clarke has said no nude scenes so were out of luck there....

Looking forward to this season.....

 

I'm sure he has some sort of outline prepared for further books/seasons just on case.

 

George isn't getting any younger....

 

I'm currently rushing to get through seasons 2 and 3 so I'm ready for the new season next month. Can't wait to actually talk about the show in real time.

 

He has already given the Game of Thrones producers an outline of how he intends to end the books.

 

So in the likely case that they catch up to the books, will the series go ahead and portray event yet to come in the books?

 

Well, that's the question on every fan's lips. Because it's going to happen.

George and the GOT producers seem to be on totally different pages about how fast the series is going to proceed. Benioff and Weiss told Vanity Fair that they want to have the entire series wrapped up in seven seasons, or eight at the most (despite the fact that the last two books have yet to be published, and that in season 4 they are still finishing book 3), while George is hoping that they will spend the next three seasons just adapting books four and five (which as anyone who has read them could tell you would not be a good idea).

 

The series has taken on a life of its own and for practical business reasons can't be as closely tied to Martin or the books as he might want. Martin could keel over or be hit by a car any time. Since the producers have an outline from him, they can go ahead and finish the TV series up without the book faithful being able to crab that George would never have done it that way if he's not around, because George already told them that he would.

 

Dexter is still alive in the books...

TV show can go it's own way w/o George....

George seems to be talking about a movie deal also....