Why We Love - A Game Of Thrones
Heralded as an American Tolkien, Martin created a world which from the first page is begging to be captured on camera.
With the first series complete and the second kicking off again at the start of April, Game of Thrones has proven itself to be well loved both in the UK and in the US.
Based on the series of books A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin, the on screen action has been kept mercifully close to the books. Heralded as an American Tolkien, Martin created a world which from the first page is begging to be captured on camera. Each episode looks like a film onto itself; there has clearly been a huge amount of thought gone into each of the sets, into every costume and individual casting. It is hard to imagine how many people must be involved in the making of such a series and thinking about it, it must have been nearly impossible for any other project to find extras while they were filming.
Fans of the series who have also read the books will agree with me here when I say that turning A Song of Ice and Fire into a series of films rather than a televised series must have been a tempting prospect for the creators. Compressing a book down into a couple of hours must be difficult at the best of times, but these are not your average books. These are 'move over Yellow Pages, move over step ladders, we have A Game of Thrones to stand on now' kind of books. They are large.
There are also an unusually large number of main characters, and the narrative flits between them as they adventure around Westeros and the outlying lands. The series somehow manages to give just enough detail to avoid missing anything crucial without completely losing the audience who are new to the stories.
Described as fantasy for people who 'don’t do fantasy' A Game of Thrones hasn’t in its first series been overly ‘mystical’. There are dragons, yes, but aside from that the action has been reminiscent of other big budget historical action series. In fact apart from The Wall, a giant ice structure, it does look deceptively like a historical drama. Not everyone’s cup of tea, historical drama, and in focusing in on how good the show looks I may be deviating from the real reason I love the show - the cast and the characterisation.
A moment must be taken to appreciate the genius of the casting people. Young Maisie Williams who plays Arya, the strong willed daughter of Ned Stark (Sean Bean, who true to form manages to get himself killed off) is such an impressive actor and hats off to her. She is said to have learned to handle a sword left handed, despite being right handed, purely in the name of staying true to the source novels.
Then we have Peter Dinklage aka Tyrion. Dinklage has been awarded an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his performance and rightly so. Tyrion despite being one of the more misunderstood characters within the story is for me, one of the easiest to relate to. He’s far from good but he’s not bad either, plus he’s got the best rants and one liners. The rest of the cast are impressive too, the characters are so diverse, complicated and in some cases utterly contemptible that even if you aren’t a fan of the fantasy genre itself this series will pull you in and make a convert out of you.
There is plenty of sex and violence too which can only be expected of HBO drama, A Game of Thrones may be fantasy but it is far from a fairytale.
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