How similar are the show and books?
So I started to read the books, and I have to say they are amazing. Probably one of the best fantasy works I have ever read, and I'm barely 200 pages in the first book. But I started to wonder how similar the books and show are (I don't watch the show obviously). Are they really similar or is like the Walking Dead comics and show, completely different?
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Far more similar than the Walking Dead show is to the comics. After the second season they began to diverge in increasingly important ways. But still, it keeps the core of the story, and at least 80% of the diologue and storylines are taken straight from the books. Some things are lost in adaptation (HBO only gives them 10 hours per season, compared to their average 12), but unless you're an absolutely rabid purist, you should enjoy it.
Its the same story though honestly there pretty much caught up already.
That said the show tends to "dumb down" a lot of things and simplify plot points. Also the writers seem to have a bias with soem characters which is a little annoying.
It does a good job, everything looks great and they essentially rewrite a lot of dialogue so it works on tv. I dont envy people turning books into shows as so much exposition in books is through characters thoughts.
Regarding the character bias: Yeah, the whole Saint Tyrion thing is a prime example. He isn't the main character of the story, and he isn't a beacon of morality. I believe someone did a breakdown of seasons two and three and found that page-time to screen-time he had considerably more than anyone else, including several very important characters. Their stories suffered to benefit his. I like Peter Dinklage in the role, and he is one of my favourite characters, but come on.
Yes tyrion is the best example and Dany who is albeit getting worse on the show. Some like Robb are done better however without hogging the limelight
Pretty similar, but sometimes pieces of plot are too branched, so the series narrows them, trying to keep it coherently.
As was said before, the show is moving toward the same place as the books and the biggest changes are related to the cutting of characters (which changes parts of the story sometimes) and the oversimplification of certain parts of the plot.
But I believe that some changes, however, will cause major impacts on the next seasons since some relevant plotlines will probably not be addressed.
David Benioff and D.B Weiss do a great job in bringing it to life on TV and do a great job in staying relatively faithful to the source material. That being said, some characters like Robb get great screentime because of how spectacular the actors were. Some people love to dismiss Game of Thrones as "softcore porn" and I'll admit that in early Seasons of the TV show, they sometimes go overboard with the nudity and sex, but it really tells a wonderful story with amazing acting by the cast.
But I should just add about this “softcore porn”, which became a HBO trademark, that there is not more nudity and sex in the TV series than there is in the books. I don’t think they have gone overboard with it.
The show really is good, and worth watching, but in most ways the books are better. The scale is larger, the personalities and motivations of the characters are explored in more detail, the Machiavellian scheming is more clever and convoluted, the battles are more epic, and so forth. The HBO show is limited by budget, by time, by what seems to be a contractual obligation to provide lots of gratuitous sex scenes, and by some occasionally very questionable plot changes by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. For example, aside from the Saint Tyrion problem mentioned above, they really seem to hate Stannis and miss no opportunity to make him more overtly villainous than his book counterpart.
I've heard others say that they prefer the HBO show precisely because it streamlines things rather than meandering all over the place and providing lengthy descriptions of what everyone is eating, so this is just my opinion. Nevertheless, if you enjoy the books as much as you seem to, I'd read them first before you start watching the show. The books just do a better job of drawing you in, in my view.
There is absolutely no shortage of sex and nudity in the books, it's true, but with some exceptions most of it feels a lot more organic to the story. In the show, an awful lot of sex scenes feel really awkward because it's so obvious they're only there to pander to a certain segment of the audience someone at HBO clearly thinks won't watch without it.
The worst thing about it is that it isn't just softcore porn, it's bad softcore porn. I don't recall ever getting so much as an erection out of it. I laughed out loud when I heard the guy who plays Stannis, Stephen Dillane, compare it to bad German porn from the 1970s. Somehow the comparison felt spot on.
Well put. There are things that make the show worth a watch; good actors, more freedom of character perspective, and a strong story to build off of, but there are plenty of unnecessary changes too, and without the development that the books have, a lot of character arcs are simply watered down or dropped altogether. And yet they have plenty of time for the brothel scenes...
Maester Cressen's a pretty good example for me. A one-scene-wonder for the show, but his story always hit me hard in the book.
They're both fantastic for their own reasons and serve as great companion pieces for each other. Book 1 and Season 1 are extremely similar. Starting in season 2, the two canons increasingly diverge. I highly recommend consuming both.
Thanks all for your responses. I don't get HBO on my TV so I decided to read the books and I wanted to see if I could still understand most of the references that will probably occur in the game.
I agree, but I wouldn't go any further into the plot than you've read in the books. There are big events that happen which are more satisfying on the page than they were on the screen. It would be a shame to have the show spoil the books rather than the other way around.
If the writers have any sense, they'll do what they did with TWD: create their own story which takes place in the same world but is far enough removed from the main canon of either the TV show or the comics (books, in this case) to make it plausible it could be taking place in either one. My fervent hope is that all the details in the book will be treated as canon unless they explicitly contradict something seen in the show.
Yeah, I agree 100%. Lets hope the writers have sense.