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*UNMARKED SPOILERS ALL BOOKS* Game of Thrones |OT| - Season 5 - Sundays on HBO

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Ratrat

Member
I think ratings will drop further as book readers leave en masse next season, unless WoW releases before then.
Which is too bad, I fully expect the last 3 episodes to be amazing stuff this season. We will see where the budget went at least.
 

Brakke

Banned
The tWoW consideration is especially bonkers since I expect it'll finish so close to the season that they won't be able to incorporate much if any of it? Anyone know if D&D are getting galleys? (Or if there are even manuscript pages to give...)
 

Madness

Member
He doesn't even have a clue.

How'd y'all read that LF / Queen of Thorns bit? Did LF orchestrate Lancel coming forward? Or did Howland already know? Since Lancel was the very first Sparrow we saw, I figured he'd already told Howland. But I guess it's possible he kept it to himself?

I'm assuming he did. Lancel may have been the first we saw, but for all we know, Lancel is just one of thousands of new faith militant in Kings Landing. No one outside Cersei, Littlefinger, Lancel and Tyrion knew Lancel fed Robert the wine or fucked Cersei.

Even if he did confess his sins he probably did them near Lannisport before coming to Kings Landing. The High Sparrow probably never knew until Lancel told him. Or maybe he knew from the start. That's probably why he came to Kings Landing. Hearing talk of beheadings outside the Sept, heads on spikes, betrayal, incest, brothels, poisonings and a 7 kingdoms ravaged by the follies of high lords etc.
 

Kyougar

Member
You know, how do they even cast a role like Tyene? Is there just a note that says "Saggy tits and A-cups need not apply" at the bottom of the casting call? Is there a second round of auditions where they just tell all the candidates to take their tops off?

I dont want to admit, but I also thought about the process there. Tyene's actress JUST made it to 18 right? So the casting would have been when she was 17. How do they determine if she got a "great" body to show on the Show? Do they take the word of her mother, a Doctor?
I cant wrap my head around a casting call where they inspect boobs of not-legal girls....
 
I think ratings will drop further as book readers leave en masse next season, unless WoW releases before then.
Which is too bad, I fully expect the last 3 episodes to be amazing stuff this season. We will see where the budget went at least.

I doubt book readers are a large enough portion of the viewership for them to cause such a drop. I also doubt there are really that many book readers that will boycott the show because TWOW isn't released.
 

Ratrat

Member
I doubt book readers are a large enough portion of the viewership for them to cause such a drop. I also doubt there are really that many book readers that will boycott the show because TWOW isn't released.
The books have sold 60 million, thats quite a lot. It depends. The reactions so far to the season seem to skew towards the negative. But if rumors are true, and the ending encites a big enough reaction, that is hopefully positive, that could change. As long as people don't leave thinking it's the worst season of the series.
 

duckroll

Member
The books have sold 60 million, thats quite a lot. It depends. The reactions so far to the season seem to skew towards the negative. But if rumors are true, and the ending encites a big enough reaction, that is hopefully positive, that could change. As long as people don't leave thinking it's the worst season of the series.

Realistically, the only people who will "boycott" the show because they don't want the story "spoiled" will be limited to the most super hardcore book fans who actually actively dislike the show. I think this is a really small number. These people are the ones most likely to be buying the newest book on the first day.

http://books.usatoday.com/bookbuzz/...orge-rr-martins-a-dance-with-dragons/176909/1

George R.R. Martin's A Dance With Dragons, book five in his epic "A Song of Ice and Fire' series, had the highest single and first-day sales of any new fiction title published this year: 298,000 copies in print, digital, and audio formats, publisher Random House announced today.

On Tuesday, sales of 170,000 hardcovers (26% of the 650,000 pre-publication printings); 110,000 e-books; and 18,000 audio books were reported sold.

They're a drop in the bucket. Let's not forget that a number of those people who bought Dance with Dragons on the first day would also be super hyped show fans who just finished the first season and needed more.
 

Brakke

Banned
I dont want to admit, but I also thought about the process there. Tyene's actress JUST made it to 18 right? So the casting would have been when she was 17. How do they determine if she got a "great" body to show on the Show? Do they take the word of her mother, a Doctor?
I cant wrap my head around a casting call where they inspect boobs of not-legal girls....

She's 19 now so yeah probably 18 during shooting? I really liked that scene even setting the lechery aside. But yeah let's not goof around here: weird, uncomfortable politics play out at casting calls and on set when you make a scene like this.

I worked on a real small nobody-ever-saw-it movie once. There was a sex scene with a youngish actress and it definitely got weird. Because even if the director is laser-focused on The Art of the scene, you are at the end of the day standing in a room where an older dude is explaining to a younger babe how to be sexiest and you're not sure if he's saying how to be sexy generically or how to be sexy *for him*.
 

Moff

Member
I dont want to admit, but I also thought about the process there. Tyene's actress JUST made it to 18 right? So the casting would have been when she was 17. How do they determine if she got a "great" body to show on the Show? Do they take the word of her mother, a Doctor?
I cant wrap my head around a casting call where they inspect boobs of not-legal girls....

honestly i thought about that too in the past, and I think it's just luck, and not only with young girls. maybe I am hopelessly naive but I just cant imagine that they demand to see them nude on the castings.
 

Ratrat

Member
Realistically, the only people who will "boycott" the show because they don't want the story "spoiled" will be limited to the most super hardcore book fans who actually actively dislike the show. I think this is a really small number. These people are the ones most likely to be buying the newest book on the first day.

http://books.usatoday.com/bookbuzz/...orge-rr-martins-a-dance-with-dragons/176909/1



They're a drop in the bucket. Let's not forget that a number of those people who bought Dance with Dragons on the first day would also be super hyped show fans who just finished the first season and needed more.
Boycott is a pretty strong word. I guess I mean home media/piracy on the rise and initial viewer ratings down. Where it's less important to watch immediately. But yeah, this seasons overall reception is probably more important overall.
honestly i thought about that too in the past, and I think it's just luck, and not only with young girls. maybe I am hopelessly naive but I just cant imagine that they demand to see them nude on the castings.
While it's still bit creepy, I imagine they can see her in a bathing suit for auditions.
 
The ratings discussion is a little silly. Without HBO Go figures, repeat figures or piracy figures, it's impossible to tell how much each episode is being watched. We don't have enough data.
 

Madness

Member
I dont want to admit, but I also thought about the process there. Tyene's actress JUST made it to 18 right? So the casting would have been when she was 17. How do they determine if she got a "great" body to show on the Show? Do they take the word of her mother, a Doctor?
I cant wrap my head around a casting call where they inspect boobs of not-legal girls....

She's 19 now. Was 18 when she was announced as a cast member. I think they told her early on, there would be nudity for Tyene but she made them limit it to topless nudity only. She's born in the US but is some rising Italian actress, I bet for them, going topless is really not an issue. I agree, the age is a bit young for my tastes for the role she did. Emilia was 24 doing the part of Dany in the first season.
 

Ikael

Member
I wouldn't want to draw conclussions from the ratings until the season has finished, but it does seem that the weaker parts of the saga has been predictably translated into weaker audience numbers. Which is a pity, because I am confident that the last episodes will make for some great payoffs, but I can't shake the sensation that this have been a massively wasted opportunity.

I mean, screw the "book VS series" memes, there was massive room for improvement over the original book source, and many of the trimming decisions that the showrunners made were sound. Let be honest with ourselves, "give us Penny and Damphair back!" is something that noone ever said. And people claiming for the return of cool book moments like the Meeren battle or Jaime wandering inti the riverlands entirely misses the point: That what works good on the book doesn't necessarily translate good into TV, specially if you depend of intensive self-reflection and inner monologue to convey it, like Jaime's Riverland's sheanigans, which were far more about an inner, personal transformation than plot advancement per se.

Like someone else has pointed in this tread, the problem lies within the execution of said ideas, not their concept. Jaime going to Dorne is a good idea, showing Valyria instead of the Rhoyne is a good idea, skipping the Ironboring plot is a good idea, making Sansa go to Winterfell and marry Ramsay is a good idea, Tyrion skipping straight into Daenerys is a good idea.

The problem with the execution of said ideas steam from how show runners don't understand shit about the characters and their psyche, plain and simply. Show characters react in incoherent, out-of character, stereotypical fashion when faced with these new scenarios, and consequently, few people buys it and react badly to them. Think Jaime raping Cersei, Brienne trying to make a stealthy, discreet mission, Ramsay being an omniscient being, Sansa falling back into their original naive state, the infamous "Needle represents vengeance" quote and much more. Characters in the show works thanks to the incredible casting and actors, which are able to work wonderfully despite the utterly cliched dialogues and stereotypical arcs that they have to employ.

Consequently, viewers feel bored, because not only the plot moves slowly as it does in the books (which is already a huge handicap into itself) but the character's arcs move slowly as well, their personality forever frozen into the initial bidimensional impression that D&D had of them the first time that they readed the books. As a result of that, this season's pace feels suffocating, with the only refreshing exception of the Wall plot, which, unsurprisingly, stages the only two characters in the show that have made something remotely resembling character growth during this season (Stannis and Jon).
 

SteveWD40

Member
She's 19 now so yeah probably 18 during shooting? I really liked that scene even setting the lechery aside. But yeah let's not goof around here: weird, uncomfortable politics play out at casting calls and on set when you make a scene like this.

I worked on a real small nobody-ever-saw-it movie once. There was a sex scene with a youngish actress and it definitely got weird. Because even if the director is laser-focused on The Art of the scene, you are at the end of the day standing in a room where an older dude is explaining to a younger babe how to be sexiest and you're not sure if he's saying how to be sexy generically or how to be sexy *for him*.

They may have auditioned her in the UK / Ireland where 17 is the legal age.
 

Forkball

Member
CGFyxleUgAA1tvk.jpg
 

hoos30

Member
honestly i thought about that too in the past, and I think it's just luck, and not only with young girls. maybe I am hopelessly naive but I just cant imagine that they demand to see them nude on the castings.
Hopelessly naive. History tells us, not only do Hollywood types "inspect" the boobs of minor actresses, some of them actively partake of all of the goodies, sometimes as a condition of getting a role.
 

Arkeband

Banned
She's 19 now. Was 18 when she was announced as a cast member. I think they told her early on, there would be nudity for Tyene but she made them limit it to topless nudity only. She's born in the US but is some rising Italian actress, I bet for them, going topless is really not an issue. I agree, the age is a bit young for my tastes for the role she did. Emilia was 24 doing the part of Dany in the first season.

Not to be sexist, but an actor's body is one of their assets. And she's got a rockin' bod.

I'm sure she's okay with it.
 

hoos30

Member
gotratingsy5byr.jpg


Says everything you need to know, really. People have come up with excuses since E02. First the leaks, then mother's day, then hbo go, then piracy again.

Memorial day weekend makes ratings drop, that's fact, but the effect is usually the same across the board, yet it was the first time in a long while where GOT wasn't the most-viewed show of the night.

It was a 13% drop from episode 6, but 32% since the premiere and ~21% compared to episodes 2 and 4.
Not to mention episode 6 was the first time an episode had lower ratings than all episodes in the previous season. Now it's the first time an episode had lower ratings since two seasons before it.

Most fan sites, forums and social media ratings (the nielsen ones) have seen less activity as well. It's weird to me how people can still argue that interest in the show has not decreased.

In the end I believe people will blame AFFC/ADWD for not being interesting enough (even though they're only adapting ~40-50% of chapters in each book, which is easy to verify), and if the same thing happens next season they'll blame GRRM for not having a book they can adapt.

D&D simply can't lose, and if you criticize their decisions/work you're suddenly just as bad as Linda.
That chart would mirror the critical reception to the books pretty well.

ASOS: OH SHIT! THAT WAS AWESOME!!!
AFFC/ADWD: MOAR ASOIAF!! Wait, what is this? Who is this? Hizdar-zo-who? I'm out!
 

bengraven

Member
Practically this entire thread is a shit on D&D party 7 days a week.

Im-doing-my-part.jpg.jpeg


I'm doing my part...

Funny how I don't remember Mereeen in ADWD being even one tenth as exciting as that picture pretends it is.

Honestly? I was hoping the show would make Mereen make some sense. Three books later and I'm still confused who's doing battle with whom, which sellswords are serving which side, who's backed out, and who the hell has those three catapults that are apparently uber powerful.

Why would Oberyn's daughters be held in a cell anywhere near a westorosi sell sword accused of attempted kidnapping?

Under what circumstances would the Sand Snakes believe that sell-sword would be released anytime soon to be of any help to them?

Finally, why would they have anything but contempt for the man who was assisting in stealing their vengeance from them?

I'm not comparing Dorne to the books, I'm wondering why everything about it in the show has been crap.

In the books - luxury sweets with locked wooden doors.
In the show - worse accommodations than Jaime Lannister

Yeah we'll see, I think when the season's completed, it'll end up being an arc much like the one in Feast, mostly a setup as Doran and Dorne as a major player in the future.
  • I assume Jaime and Doran will meet and come to some kind of agreement, not really sure what the nature of this would be though. Perhaps Jaime agrees to leave Myrcella there and through what Doran says, he pieces together that Dorne sent no threat about her, but it was Cersei's doing.
  • Most importantly, Doran has a meeting with Ellaria, in which he reveals his actual plan, which I assume in basic terms is prop up the Trystane-Mrycella engagement as long as possible to keep the peace with the Lannisters, but intend to cast her aside and marry Trystane to Dany. Maybe he has a mission for Ellaria as well? Sets up Doran as a major player.
  • Sand Snakes...no idea, maybe they use Bronn while the above is happening to pull of something stupid that threatens to fuck up Doran's plan...?

- guaranteed
- guaranteed
- prooooobably.
 

Ratrat

Member
That chart would mirror the critical reception to the books pretty well.

ASOS: OH SHIT! THAT WAS AWESOME!!!
AFFC/ADWD: MOAR ASOIAF!! Wait, what is this? Who is this? Hizdar-zo-who? I'm out!
But isn't season 5 basically A Ball of Beasts with the fat trimmed out? That speaks very badly for the writers imo. You can shit on the books all you like, but these guys stretched SoS into two seasons. There is no reason the best parts of Feast and Dance combined couldn't be as great a season as the others. Though I'd argue its not actually much worse than seasons 2&3 atm.
 
ASOS: OH SHIT! THAT WAS AWESOME!!!
AFFC/ADWD: MOAR ASOIAF!! Wait, what is this? Who is this? Hizdar-zo-who? I'm out!

Exactly. It isn't D&D's fault that the books are convoluted, partly boring and focus on the wrong characters.

It's ok to criticize the showrunners for some strange decisions, but the later books are far from perfect either. One medium gets to little, the other to much praise.
 

hoos30

Member
But isn't season 5 basically A Ball of Beasts with the fat trimmed out? That speaks very badly for the writers imo. You can shit on the books all you like, but these guys stretched SoS into two seasons. There is no reason the best parts of Feast and Dance combined couldn't be as great a season as the others. Though I'd argue its not actually much worse than seasons 2&3 atm.

If Eps 8-10 don't deliver then I will be happy to join in the flaying of D&D. As it is, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, particularly since I'm not TeamSansa and her suffering a bit more to advance the plot doesn't bother me. Dorne is likely to be a fuck up any way you slice it, but everyone can take a mulligan once in a while.
 

Iksenpets

Banned
Probably. I doubt there's much open to change in WoW. Hopefully at least.
They probably got to read what's done too.

They've gotten outlines of where he's planning on taking everything, and I'm 90% sure they've gotten to read any manuscripts that were available at the time they started writing season 6. That's how we end up with stuff like them adapting dialogue out of Mercy back in season 4
 
Honestly? I was hoping the show would make Mereen make some sense. Three books later and I'm still confused who's doing battle with whom, which sellswords are serving which side, who's backed out, and who the hell has those three catapults that are apparently uber powerful.

I should probably read ADWD again, I started mentally checking out during Dany's chapters. Too many uninteresting characters with weird ass names.
 
But isn't season 5 basically A Ball of Beasts with the fat trimmed out? That speaks very badly for the writers imo. You can shit on the books all you like, but these guys stretched SoS into two seasons. There is no reason the best parts of Feast and Dance combined couldn't be as great a season as the others. Though I'd argue its not actually much worse than seasons 2&3 atm.

Dance has best parts? The best part of that book was when I finished it and could read something else.
 

munchie64

Member
They've gotten outlines of where he's planning on taking everything, and I'm 90% sure they've gotten to read any manuscripts that were available at the time they started writing season 6. That's how we end up with stuff like them adapting dialogue out of Mercy back in season 4
Really? That's pretty cool. Imagine if WoW isn't out next year and we get some lifted dialogue in the show before the book. That could strange as hell.
 
Really? That's pretty cool. Imagine if WoW isn't out next year and we get some lifted dialogue in the show before the book. That could strange as hell.

It will probably happen, though a lot of that depends on how much material GRRM had to send to them when they were writing the scripts earlier this year.
 

Sean C

Member
In the books - luxury sweets with locked wooden doors.
In the show - worse accommodations than Jaime Lannister
Not to get in the habit of defending the show, but in the books they were pre-emptively detained to keep them out of trouble; in the show they actively tried to assassinate Myrcella.
 
I think a decline in viewers was inevitable given how difficult these two books are to adapt. However the interesting and amusing thing about this is that a few years ago I remember quite a few people arguing D&D wouldn't have much trouble creating something more interesting than AFFC/ADWD. Now even AFFC/ADWD haters have quietly admitted D&D somehow managed to make things worse lol. Good lord I pray TWOW comes out next year, preferably before April....

It really doesn't seem like there's one story most people are really invested in now. In S1 it was Ned, in S2 it was Tyrion as Hand. In S3 it was a variety of things, perhaps mainly Arya and Dany but people also liked Robb/Catelyn enough to get crushed by the Red Wedding. In S4 it was Tyrion and Oberyn. This year? I get the impression people aren't really into Arya's story so far, and the show has made some rather weird changes that sucked momentum out of it. Sansa being a prisoner again is turning people off moreso than making them invest in her struggle. Lots of hate for Dany. Not much interest in Jon Snow. Dany and Tyrion being together should get people excited at least, but it took 7 episodes (and they won't be together for long).

My parents still really enjoy the show though. My mom...likes Ramsay. Previously she was a big Joffrey fan...

Judging by the non-super-fan podcasts I listen to and my non bookreader friends, I feel like a lot of people are throwing in with the Mannis this year. People are ready for him to curbstomp the Boltons.
 
Honestly? I was hoping the show would make Mereen make some sense. Three books later and I'm still confused who's doing battle with whom, which sellswords are serving which side, who's backed out, and who the hell has those three catapults that are apparently uber powerful.
I think the issue with AFFC/ADWD isn't necessarily the plotting so much as it's a bunch of new themes that GRRM really wanted to drive home:
-many characters having a sort of mantra they'd repeat to themselves obsessively a few times per chapter (especially the three Lannister kids and Daenarys)
-many characters losing/regaining/changing their identity as represented in the chapter titles (especially Sansa/Arya/Theon)
-lots of actually pretty interesting events being told from the perspective of people who only half-comprehended what was going on (many Dorne chapters) or who were too distracted to pay attention (many Daenarys chapters, arguably many Cersei chapters)

I think the show's necessary lack of the POV device 'solves' most of these somewhat intentionally obfuscating issues, but they've flubbed a bunch of the plotting and character work.

Still, ADWD's climax being chopped off the end of it was always a fucking terrible decision, and hopefully this season we'll actually get a resolution to Jon Snow's business and the battle of Winterfell in addition to having Tyrion meet Dany. Those would all be improvements, IMO, even if it'd decisively mean an end to the era of bookreaders getting to watch nonreaders get surprised by big twists (if you're invested in being able to do that you're a dick anyway).
 

WaffleTaco

Wants to outlaw technological innovation.
In all honesty I think Danaerys chapters in Dance are great, but it's impossible to do them on a show as massive as game of thrones in ten episodes. If the episodes were longer and they had a bigger budget, it could be done.
 

Iksenpets

Banned
I should probably read ADWD again, I started mentally checking out during Dany's chapters. Too many uninteresting characters with weird ass names.

I've bought in to the idea that the lots-of-names-to-keep-straight phenomenon was intentional, to show how little Dany understood this foreign place. They all come off as faceless nobodies because Dany thinks of them as faceless nobodies. It gets linked every few months in here, but https://meereeneseblot.wordpress.co...reenese-knot-part-i-who-poisoned-the-locusts/ has a pretty good summary of what's going on there.
 

-griffy-

Banned
A Storm of Swords was a perfect book to split into two and adapt as a TV show. It had a bunch of setup and payoff, jam packed with forward momentum and content, and it had one perfect climax in the middle of the story and then multiple climaxes at the end. It lent itself to a TV format almost perfectly.

A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons are nightmare material for a TV show. The format first of all fucks everything up, with half the characters more or less only appearing in one book or the other. They introduce many new characters and new locations that "take" screentime away from the audience's favorite known characters. They are two full books that cover more or less the same time period that more or less build to climaxes that more or less don't actually happen in the book(s).

A "perfect" translation of the source material would make for bad TV. An adaptation necessitates drastic changes. You can't just adapt one of the books for one season and then adapt the second book for the next season. That format would be insane for a TV show. You can't smash the two books together and then just tell half the story one season and the last half next season. It would be one season of introducing a bunch of new characters and locations without any climax or resolution. You might placate book fans by being more faithful to the source material, but it would alienate a lot of people too. You can't sideline all the known and liked stars of your popular show to give time to these new characters and plotlines who are already divisive to the book audience.

In order to get some semblance of a decent TV season, you need to accelerate the story and cut out a bunch of stuff so you can actually get to some kind of climax and resolution for storylines in a single season. And then you cut stuff that fans like, you change things that make fans unhappy, and you introduce storylines you can't fully develop because you can't devote enough time and money in them if you want the other storylines to get any kind of resolution in the season.

The show pretty well faced a no-win scenario this year, and I'd say overall they've done a pretty good job. Dorne certainly isn't enough to make the show overall bad. Almost every other plotline has at least been good to great in my opinion. There are low points for sure, but the show is by no means outright bad.
 

Lothar

Banned
In all honesty I think Danaerys chapters in Dance are great, but it's impossible to do them on a show as massive as game of thrones in ten episodes. If the episodes were longer and they had a bigger budget, it could be done.

Eh, nothing would really need to be shown other than the battle. It could be the same way it is now with advisors just telling her how crazy it's getting out there. That's the way it is in the books, isn't it? She doesn't go outside much in ADWD.
 
Definitely the most bullshit thing about the last book. Monumentally dumb to have a book long worth build up with multiple character being involved and then just..stopping.
The books would honestly be better if all of the AFFC-character chapters in the latter half of ADWD were given to AFFC (at least all of the King's Landing and Jaime stuff) and if ADWD got to keep its Winterfell/Meereen climaxes, but of course you can't go back and do that retroactively.

My guess is that the editors basically balked at the book being 1400 pages long.

Anyhow, don't wanna get bogged down in book chat. I'm just saying that there's no reason for the show not to charge straight ahead into those climaxes wherever possible. As far as I'm concerned, the final version of ABOB should include a bunch of the TWOW opening chapters.
 
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