Game of Thrones Should Have Never Outpaced The Books
Because pacing matters
There are battles you can’t win. Some battles are like taking a hobbling Cleveland Cavaliers against the juggernaut that is the Golden State Warriors after the Golden State Warriors added an ice dragon (SPOILER). Or a logical discussion about race relations with a Trump supporter (read: racist). Or any kind of argument with any fan base of any television or movie series that can be considered “cult classic” or “cultural phenomenon.” Sometimes it’s best to leave it alone.
Here is an example. At first, Game of Thrones followers, devotees and Throners (do we even have a fan base name?) complained that the show takes a path too drawn out to get to it’s major key points, including too many characters in transit, which in many ways served to set up the vast expanses of land we had to travel across the Seven Kingdoms. Now that the show is in overdrive, the complaint is that the travel times are unrealistic and there should be prolonged montages of people on boats or horseback going places having drawn out conversations about nothing. Basically a Seven Kingdoms version of Sienfield.
The show’s transition from drawn out exposition of travel to instant ‘flying car’ method is reflective of a larger problem. Pacing. The previous six seasons of Game of Thrones had to lean on source material, draw heavy from the hefty tomes of George R.R. Martin, packed with so much information they rivaled the records Sam had to keep at the Citadel. They had to unpack the complex stories and motivations of dozens of characters so carefully crafted and not to get ahead of themselves or the book. Hoping, presumably like the rest of us, that GRRM would at least try to finish the books before the show came to a close. There was a very distinct pace to each season’s ten episodes.\
The TV show tried to stay as true to the source as possible. Sure, they cut out a lot, and I mean A LOT (all caps) from the source material, but if you read the Song of Ice and Fire you can tell that adopting it truthfully would take a three-year 24-hour live-stream. The show paced itself, cutting the right moments and emphasizing the key developments with a touch deft enough to ensure that it was still GRRM’s story told through a different medium. It wasn’t all painless, as I’m sure certain fan favorite moments got lost in the shuffle, but it remained cohesive, helped by episodes that focused solely on the exposition that we miss so much in the latest installment.
Perhaps because HBO doesn’t like money or they finally gave up Martin ever finishing the books (just like the rest of us), the final season will stretch over two condensed half-seasons of 7 and 6 episodes respectively. This may seem as a good way to draw out the story in theory, but in practice the show’s creators put on their Gendry IIs and started sprinting for the finish line Usain Bolt style, presumably in anticipation of making their suspiciously racist sounding follow up Confederate.
As the show left GRRM and the books behind, it struggled to reconcile the complex character motivations on the very real, but very drawn out consequences of what we see on screen. Seas were crossed in matter of minutes, plot advances that would tame 3–5 episodes were done in 15 minute spans. Grand reveals that change the entire course of the plot have been given as little as 15 seconds of screen time. As Game of Thrones lumbers to the finish line it’s starting to leave some of the small details that made it great behind. Remember the scene in Fate of the Furious where Dom Torreto races in what can only be described as a bathtub with wheels attached? As he crosses the finishing line the entire tub falls apart and blows up in one final moment as Don escapes just at the last minute? Game of Thrones is that tub, racing to the finish line, but losing some of it’s luster in the process.
What made Game of Thrones great wasn’t the epic battles (although they were), the zombie conflict or the promise of dragon on dragon violence (HYPE!). The show thrived because of these small details. The show’s apotheosis was in those small, seemingly irrelevant conversations that revealed intricate details and motivations about our characters, what drives them, what gets them where they are. It is in those small moments we found that we cared for these characters on a deep level, which lent even more emotional gravitas to the monumental set-pieces that were sure to kill of between one and infinity of your favorite personages.
Game of Thrones, both the books and the show, define themselves by the complexity of their characters. These are real people going through real character building arcs. In the latest seasons the characters are taking giant logical leaps that come out of the left field, with the show going for RETCON MODE on some of their previous experiences to get them where they need to be. Perhaps there are underlying reasons for such drastic turns, but without taking the time to highlight these moments, the show loses narrative logic at places, such Arya for some reason going full Hannibal Lecter on Sansa despite being a master manipulator and lie detector.
I’m not saying the show is bad, there is still a lot to love about Game of Thrones (we really don’t deserve Tormund Giantsbane who is too pure for this world when he first discovers the word “dick”), but this rapid fire progression robs Thrones of it’s most distinct characteristic. It’s still beautiful, emotional, drawn out and wonderfully shot, but without those small moments of emotional and intellectual reprise where we find out the characters for who they are, it runs the risk of becoming just another show on TV and losing all of the emotional capital it took six seasons to so meticulously built.
In the end however, THEY GOT AN ICE DRAGON, THE FINALE IS GOING TO BE SOMETHING ELSE!
