With Season 6, HBO’s fantasy saga Game of Thrones will move past the storyline of A Song of Ice and Fire, the uncompleted series of George R.R. Martin novels that it is based on.
For those of you who haven’t read the books, good news: Those of us who have will finally have to shut our smug pie holes. No more can we tease, “Wait until you see what happens!” as we did before the deadly Red Wedding or the deadly Purple Wedding. Any future murderous nuptials, and their colour schemes, will surprise us, too.
Will the Boltons be driven from Winterfell? You tell us. Will Daenerys and her dragons retake the Iron Throne for the Targaryens? (Shrugs.) Is Jon Snow dead, or at least permanently dead? We don’t think so, either, but we can’t
prove it.
Among readers, the Great Catch-Up has caused angst. It’s highly unusual for an adaptation to begin behind its literary source only to overtake it. Will we be spoiled? Will it be the same to read Martin’s next books — when and if he ever finishes them — with images from TV already squatting in our imaginations?
Fear not. For readers, this is an opportunity to learn that a great novel is more than its plot. For viewers, this means that Game of Thrones — always an awe-inspiring spectacle but sometimes plodding and frustrating — can become its own thing.
To some readers, the ideal screen adaptation is essentially a video illustration of the book: the thing that was in our heads, projected for us on a screen. Think of how some Harry Potter fans practically watched the movies with a checklist, praising them for how much of the source material they retained.
But book-based series succeed best when they choose to — or have to — declare independence. HBO’s The Leftovers became one of TV’s best shows in Season 2, when it exhausted the Tom Perrotta book. Syfy’s The Magicians took a scissors to the narrative of Lev Grossman’s fantasy novels, becoming nimble and funny in a screen-friendly way. Starz’s Outlander took liberties with Diana Gabaldon’s narrative but kept its spirit.
It has become common to compare complex serials like HBO’s The Wire to novels — the implication/insult is that TV should be flattered — but the analogy goes only so far. TV is visual, telegraphic and more linear. Above all, it’s unforgivingly fast. Martin has written five novels in two decades. A showrunner who promised HBO that pace would quickly be shown the Moon Door.
Game of Thrones may have taken awhile to find its identity in part because the novels seemed so perfect for TV — for HBO in particular, even though its first volume appeared three years before The Sopranos.
Like the western Deadwood, it took a popular genre, dirtied it up and added politics and psychology. Its ideas about power — for instance, that leaders can be doomed by rigid purity — muddied the moral dichotomies of Tolkienesque fantasy. Whacking its seeming protagonist, the principled Ned Stark, was a mission statement made for pay cable.
But the early episodes of Thrones were burdened with the books’ stature and vast story. The changes that were made, like Daenerys’s wedding-night rape (a warning sign that the series would use sexual violence clumsily and too much) seemed to exist mainly for shock.
Thrones found its voice in The Wolf and the Lion, the fifth episode of that first season. The soon-to-be-late king, Robert Baratheon, sits with his wife, Cersei Lannister, to share red wine — their only common interest — and assess the sorry state of their realm. Westeros is troubled by schemers and threatened by invasion, and the only thing holding it together is their hateful marriage of convenience. “Don’t you get tired?” he asks her, ruefully. “Every day,” she says.
It’s a masterly exchange. In a few minutes, it lays bare their bitter relationship. It gives depth to the queen, who might otherwise come across a simple fairy-tale villain. It establishes the series’s perspective on the personal toll of political gamesmanship. And it appears nowhere in the novels.
For all its stunning set pieces — the battles of the Blackwater and Hardhome, the duel between Oberyn Martell and Gregor (the Mountain) Clegane — Thrones at heart is a series of conversations. Varys and Littlefinger. Jaime and Brienne. Tywin and Arya. Cersei and Lady Olenna. Tyrion and… well, anyone. In the Season 5 finale, the swordsman Daario, assessing Tyrion’s suitability for a search party, sums up his abilities: “So mainly you talk.” It’s true — and it’s why Tyrion, a disinherited dwarf, is the series’s most dangerous character.
Martin’s anvil-size books are more expansive. They include vast downloads of Westeros history and religion, outlines of genealogy and toothsome descriptions of banquets, which are vivid on the page — and should stay there. Thrones has lost some of the books’ majesty, but it has given them a much-needed edit, a Valyrian sword hacking through the expository clutter.
It’s been a good marriage, but it’s past time for a separation. Thrones slowed to a jog in Season 5, and storylines like Jaime and Bronn’s road trip to Dorne were advertisements for the fast-forward button. Even if the rest of the series follows Martin’s plans (the showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have worked in consultation with him), it may be better off for being TV first, without the anxiety of a bestseller’s influence.
Which version will be authentic? Each will be authentically itself. Sometimes a story doesn’t have a single, definitive narrative. Artworks evolve, be they the variants of Shakespeare’s plays, Kanye West’s revisions to The Life of Pablo or
George Lucas’s edits to Star Wars. We grasp at canonicity — Han shot first! — to deal with uncertainty. But while we can argue which version is better, no one, not even Martin, can end the argument. A Song of Ice and Fire is not the novelisation of Thrones, and now Thrones can be more than the serialisation of the novels.
I’ll read Martin’s final books whenever they come. It doesn’t matter which gets there first, because there is no single “there.” They share the same world, but they’re two different continents, separated by a narrow sea.
James Poniewozik
(The New York Times)
T2 PICKS 10 MAJOR POINTS WHERE THE SHOW SHIFTS FROM THE BOOKS
Age changes: The protagonists are far younger at the start of the books than in the show. Daenerys Targaryen is just 13 when she is married to Khal Drogo and has sex with him. In the show, she is 16. Jon Snow is just 14 when he dedicates his life to the Night’s Watch but it seems like he’s in his late teens in the show. Arya is 9 instead of 11 as shown in the show. Finally, Joffrey’s evil spews forth at age 12 in the books; in the show he is 16.
The Red Wedding: The most devastating of weddings plays out almost similarly, except for one major difference. Robb’s wife in the book is Jeyne Westerling and not Talisa Maegyr, and she stays back in Riverrun to avoid the tensions at the Tully-Frey wedding. Jeyne and Robb try for a child without any success, unlike in the show where Talisa is shown to be pregnant. In fact, after the Red Wedding, Jeyne is pardoned by the Iron Throne and guarded by soldiers for two years to make sure she hasn’t given the Starks an heir.
Lady Stoneheart: In the book, after Catelyn Stark dies, she is brought back to life by Beric Dondarrion, a disciple of R’hllor or the Lord of Light. She comes back as a zombie called Lady Stoneheart after Beric trades his life for her. She is badly mutilated and can’t talk but is driven by revenge against all the people who betrayed her and Robb.
The two forced sex scenes: In a bizarre move, the show changed two consensual sexual scenes into forced sex. In the book, Khal Drogo actually waits till Dany is okay with it and is gentle when they consummate their marriage-alliance, whereas in the show we see Dany sobbing while Khal bends her over. The second is the one where Jaime and Cersei have sex next to son Joffrey’s body. In the book, she almost immediately responds, but in the show she clearly resists and Jaime forces himself on her.
Jaime Lannister’s trip to Dorne: In the book, Jaime is sent to break the siege at Riverrun after the Red Wedding and never even goes to Dorne. He practises sparring single-handedly with Ilyn Payne in the books who has been replaced with Bronn in the show.
The Sansa/Ramsay Bolton relationship: In the book, Sansa doesn’t even come close to Winterfell. She is in The Vale living as Alayne. Instead, Sansa’s childhood friend Jeyne Poole is forcibly dressed up as Arya Stark and sent to Ramsay by the Lannisters. It is Jeyne that Ramsay tortures and keeps imprisoned.
Ser Loras’s imprisonment: In the show, Cersei had Loras Tyrell captured by the Sparrows for his homosexuality. In the book, when Loras is seen as a threat by Cersei, she sends him to capture the Dragonstone hoping that he would die in the process. In the book, it seems like that might just come true as from what we last hear about him it seemed like he was fatally wounded.
Tyrion’s travels: Tyrion is helped by Varys to escape from King’s Landing but does not travel with him. And while he does recuperate at Illyrio Mopatis’s mansion, Tyrion sails for Meereen with two companions called Griff and Young Griff, and not Varys. Young Griff is revealed to be Rhaeghar Targeryan’s son and Daenerys’s nephew Aegon, who could be an heir to the Iron Throne.
Brienne of Tarth doesn’t go to Winterfell: Unlike in the show where Brienne and Podrick follow Sansa and Petyr Baelish to Winterfell, Brienne in the book is on a wild goose chase across Westeros looking for Arya and Sansa. She never meets the Hound, though she does look for him once and fails.
The death of Mance Rayder: The leader of the Wildlings in the books hatches a plan with Melisandre and disguises another Wildling as Mance who is burnt at the stake. Mance actually goes on a mission to save Jeyne Poole who he thinks is Arya.
Chandreyee Chatterjee
The books or the show — which do you like better? Tell t2@abp.in
