I may expand on some of the ideas further here, but the general thrust of the argument is that I think the show needs to start hitting some AFFC/ADWD storylines by the end of Season 4 if they are going to fit all seven books into just seven or eight seasons, whilst Elio takes the view they can be a bit more relaxed and use most of the season to address the remaining Storm of Swords material. I guess we'll find out in March 2014.
One of the best changes so far is that because of Jaime's early arrival to KL, we'll probably get Jaime and Tyrion scenes. In the books they had only 2 scenes together right?
ReplyDeleteI agree that to keep it within 7-8 seasons they will need to start on the AFFC & ADWD material in season 4, but the problem with this is that there is no obvious climax to the season that I can see if they do this.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't have to be a climax after every season. Do a montage ala the wire perhaps. That works.
ReplyDeleteElio definitely has the better approach, and the one D&D will take. ASOS closes with a natural season endpoint for almost every character. Why rush some of the most beloved material in the series and end the season awkwardly because of hypothetical future seasons that would cover hypothetical future books?
ReplyDeleteIf I were them I'd start being a little less faithful to the books in order to speed stuff up. Cut some of the plots that pop up in books 4-5. I know a lot of people who watch that haven't read and many of them (especially the women) are clamoring for Dany to come back to Westeros. If she's still kicking around in the far east 2-3 seasons from now, it's going to turn off a lot of viewers.
ReplyDeleteThe TV series needs to respect chronology more than the books have to. Many early chapters of AFFC/ADWD take place during ASOS, so they will have to show them in S4 anyway.
ReplyDeleteAlso the timelines can be different from the books, so they can keep the strong end of ASOS for some storylines (Wall, Eyrie...), and advance with AFFC/ADWD material with others (Arya, Bran, Dany, maybe Tyrion).
If they keep Aegon, they'd better introduce him as soon as possible (end S4/early S5).
I think it is easier to cut a lot from AFFC and ADWD later than to try and cram things into the fourth season, thus breaking a lot of the climaxes. Also, TWOW is not even out, so it might be better for them to go a bit slower.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious which characters are merged and their roles are given to an existing character. Plus fun seeing characters I totally thought would be dropped (Fat Walda's marriage) actually show up.
ReplyDeleteAlso your Wikia.com kind of sucks (way too much about the book canon (there's a wiki for that) and the folks you let run it are just rude.
A Wiki has to be about giving out information, which means that we do have to contrast to the same materials from the books. This is resolutely done in a non-spoiler fashion (no information at all from future books is allowed, and no information from previous books which has not come out in the TV show).
ReplyDeleteAs for the 'rudeness' issue, we have had literally thousands of attempts to spam the wiki, ruin major spoilers for fans (we had to lock no less than a dozen pages to stop people spoiling the Red Wedding), post creepy and disturbing messages about actresses in the show and do a lot of other objectionable things. That means we have to have a very strict moderating policy. If that comes across as rudeness, then that I apologise for that, but the moderating policy has to remain in place.
My two cents: if Benioff and Weiss really inteded to put a lot of AFFC and ADWD into S4, they would have closed S3 with the PW (which is a much more natural stopping point for many characters).
ReplyDeleteI think that at most we'll get a little bit of advanced material for Arya and Bran. For the others, S4 will end with their last ASOS chapter.