Game of Thrones

I first started reading fantasy fiction nearly 30 years ago when my elder brother picked up the first book of the Dragonlance Chronicles. There’s been a lot of such epic fantasy book series – some spanning as many as dozens of volumes – and I must have read or at least sampled-read at least one title from most of the major series published then over the 15 years I was a fan of this genre.

Now that I’m older and rounder on the tummy, there still remain just two series out of the entire lot which I enjoyed more than the rest. It’s Dragonlance Legends, a trilogy of books that followed Chronicles, and Raymond E. Fiest’s Riftwar Saga. Interestingly, while both trilogies are very different in writing style, tone and themes, they were also both published in the 80’s. The fantasy worlds that these two series are set in have spawned off numerous other books; sometimes written by the same author, and other times either in collaboration or by entirely different writing teams.

Until recently, these novels were typically too hard to film. There were the obvious concerns of trying to show on screen complex fantasy worlds (think Orcs, Dragons etc.), and also how do you cram typically 600 page monsters into a 2 hour film. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings changed all that of course, demonstrating that with the right production team and studio support, you can turn what are normally unfilmable books into films, albeit running for almost 12 hours – each of the three special edition movies averaged 4 hours in length!

So, there’s been a somewhat resurgence of films based off popular fantasy fiction. LOTR sticks in most people’s minds as the most critically and financially successfully series, though there’s been also a couple of real turkeys (e.g. the decidedly ‘D’ grade Eragon film from 2006). A more recent production is HBO’s TV series adaption of George Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice, a set of seven novels that started in 1991. The TV series is titled Game of Thrones and each of its first two seasons have been based on the first two books of the series.

I picked up the first Season a fortnight ago, and after spending about 20 hours in all watching each of its ten episodes twice, have got mixed feelings. The series has been critically acclaimed for its adherence to the literary source, quality cast which excepting three or four recognizable names are mostly unknowns, costumes, and general production quality. The first season of the series does indeed follow the book quite closely, and each scene in the series having a strong traceable source from the book, though in many cases, long dialog and conversations that you can afford in print are heavily summarized or truncated for TV consumption. Credits go to the casting too. Though several actors are younger than the characters they play – e.g. the older children from the first book’s protagonist, Eddard Stark, are played by older actors, they nonetheless perform their roles well, with a special nod going to 15 year old Maisie Williams, who plays the tomboyish daughter Arya.

The older actors are mostly all good, especially the always recognizable Sean Bean (Boromir from LOTR), who plays the perpetually brooding Eddard Stark, an honorable nobleman stuck between his temperamental king and his master’s scheming wife, Peter Dinklage who plays Tyrion, a dwarf who easily compensates with his wit, intelligence but soft heart for all who are equally as disadvantaged, and Aidan Gillen who plays Baelish, the kingdom’s accountant and who seems to be playing both sides. The cast all look reasonably distinct, so it’s easy to tell characters apart, especially important since the cast is huge.

On the flip side. While the series is shot in some amazingly gorgeous backdrops in Ireland and Malta, there’s no escaping the sense occasionally that the series doesn’t quite enjoy Peter Jackson’s LOTR budget. There’s the odd violent and scene where medieval weapons are broken out and people get killed, but the first season has gone past without any large battle scene that we’ve come to associate medieval or fantasy productions with. You do get to see the aftermath of a battle fought between two rival houses, but that’s it. While the wide-shots of the key cities – Winterfell, the Wall, King’s Landing and the Eyrie – are gorgeously and seamlessly rendered using computer wizardry, the ground footage of its inhabitants milling about with what should be their daily routines gives away that this is a very much a made-for-TV production. And for persons who enjoy stories that move along briskly, Game of Thrones’ almost ponderous story progression at times won’t sit well for them.

Still, one is short on alternatives since there just isn’t many quality epic fantasy TV series out there. It’s still a good series to watch and one that I recommend.