Westeros

Last month, we posted our impressions from the world premiere, with a follow-up video regarding a particular aspect of that episode. Since then, we’ve received screeners of the first four episodes of the season, and as with previous seasons, we thought we’d offer early impressions based on those first four episodes. Regarding our remarks on the first episode, they remain largely unchanged: it’s a typical first episode, heavily packed with a lot of short scenes, and it doesn’t get much narrative momentum as it has the difficult job of catching up viewers to the current status quo.

Surprisingly, in many ways the second episode feels very similar, suggesting that the the growth of the story means that it now takes the better part of two episodes before significant advancement can take place. This may be a problem for the remaining seasons of the show, unless they become quite ruthless with some of their storylines.

Three particular areas of season 5 seem worth talking about in this discussion, and the first of these is the one that dominated our video: changes. This is a season with a host of changes, many minor, but a handful being among the most substantial deviations from the novels that the series has ever tried. In some cases, changes are presented as a means to simply close down one particular avenue of the story: we discuss one of those at some length in the video involving the death of a certain character in the first episode, and another change of this kind presents itself in the third episode as readers of the novels come to realize that a significant section of story for one popular character (a section that has implications for other, equally significant storylines, to boot) has been excised in its entirety to speed on a character’s journey.

This puts me in mind of one of the analogies George R.R. Martin has lately brought forward when asked about the different stories of the novels and the TV show. After asking how many children Scarlett O’Hara has in Gone with the Wind, GRRM notes that while she has 3 in the original novel, she only has 3 in the movie. This, George notes, is a significant storytelling difference in the case of Gone with the Wind, and yet the film (noted for a number other such differences) is considered a faithful adaptation of the novel, and one that is the highest grossing film in history once adjusted for inflation.

After our return from the London premiere, we managed to film this video discussing a particular aspect of the first episode: some significant deviations from the novels. Unfortunately, shortly after filming it we both became rather violently ill, so it’s taken awhile to actually get it edited together.  This video goes along with our early impressions of the episode, though for reasons we explain there, neither of these items are proper reviews.

A whirlwind visit to London—we spent less than 24 hours there, and got very little sleep indeed—saw Linda and I at the world premiere of season 5 of Game of Thrones at the historic Tower of London. As Dan Weiss would say in a specially prepared video (neither he nor David Benioff was in attendance, claiming too much work finishing up season 5), the Tower was the “throniest” place they could think of at which to have a premiere. Thanks to the good offices of Sky, it was a spectacular occasion, filled with projected displays, costumed caterers, a Dornish-themed party, an enormous group of actors (35 actors from the show, past and present, were in attendance according to HBO CEO Richard Plepler; we’re fairly sure that this was the largest public gathering of the show’s cast to date), and of course the first episode of season 5, “The Wars to Come”.

As it happens, this is not really a review. Various U.K. newspapers were very quick to scrape out reviews and commentary, some more spoiler-filled than others, and you can go look at them if you really want someone’s measured opinion (for the most part, it seems the press was enthusiastic). Because of the circumstances of our trip—very early flight, little time to get ready, little time to rest—for my part I think I was a bit too tired to really be fully attentive to the episode. My habit of checking my watch was at first an effort to just track the pace of the episode and try and help fix in memory sequences of eventsâ`¦ but eventually it was simply the distraction of a wandering attention. Linda, on the other hand, was more well-rested, and she felt her attention wandering as well. Perhaps it was the experience of watching it in a packed theatre? That might be it, as it’d be a new experience and the novelty of it may have been distracting, but we’ve another thought.