While we’ve seen a few tantalizing teaser trailers (say that fast three times in Dothraki) and behind-the-scenes footage, up until now we haven’t gotten a true sense of how Game of Thrones, HBO’s new fantasy series based on the A Song of Ice and Fire series of novels of George R.R. Martin, will look and feel.
Until now, that is.
For fans of the books (and I count myself a card carrying one – I’ve been slowly plowing through the series on my Kindle and am close to completing the excellent A Clash of Kings, the second novel), the following trailer reveals quite a bit about what lies in store (premiere is scheduled for sometime in 2011).
For one, we can see right away that Eddard “Ned” Stark (played by the always great Sean Bean) will play a central role. No big surprise there as both the casting and Stark’s role in the book point to major screen time for the noble-to-a-fault lord from Winterfell. But we also get a strong indication that the producers (in collaboration with Martin himself) are not going to jerk with the story in a significant way. The trailer reveals, for example, Ned beheading a prisoner himself to instruct his sons how punishment is justly delivered in the North, and Tyrion’s (one of my favorite characters in the series, who will be played by Peter Dinklage) capture at the hands of Catelyn (Michelle Farley). And we see Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy) famously warning Ned that “winter is coming.”
For newcomers to the series, there’s a lot to absorb from the jump as well. First, well, the show looks freaking cool, for lack of a better word. The production value is phenomenal, with every frame reeking of epic fantasy. Also noteworthy is that the scenes that take place in the north have a distinctive look to them as compared to those that take place in other parts of Westeros.
A major challenge for the television series will be to capture a sense of what the books deliver so well – intricate back story, culture, and traditions; political machinations amongst various factions and realms with individual characters plotting their own ends, and so on – without bogging down or having casual fantasy fans glaze over. Everything I’ve seen thus far though gives me great confidence that this will be yet another groundbreaking HBO series, and in any event I’m very much looking forward to being able to dig into much more than a one-minute adventure.
I cannot wait for Game of Thrones! The trailer looks awesome. Hopefully I'll have time to get into the books before then.