Page vs Screen: Game of Thrones

Last year around this time I wrote a "Book Report" post on the first four books in the series Song of Ice and Fire by George Martin (I just noticed I never wrote the book report for book 5 Dance With Dragnos last summer, darn!), with some video clips from the soon to be aired HBO TV show embedded. It was pretty obvious I was excited about the new TV series... and it definitely lived up to any expectations I had for it! So much so that I ordered the first season on BluRay as soon as it was available, and then had a nice little Game of Thrones marathon two weeks ago! Since then I've been rushing to finish re-reading the first book so I could write this post before season 2 premi�res! (I read it in 2 days the first time around, but now am busier plus I no longer have the drive to keep reading into night to find out "what happens next") :p

To be more precise this post should be titled "A Game of Thrones vs Game of Thrones s1", but, same difference! I took a lot of notes while re-watching the first season, plus added elements as I continued through the book, and it hasn't been easy bringing a semblance of order to the chaos of my thoughts, so I hope things are understandable! Here goes nothing... (Warning! Spoilers for s1 of Game of Thrones)

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Page vs Screen: The Dark is Rising vs. The Seeker

The things I do for this Blog... like watching a movie I swore to myself I would never see again! I couldn't remember the details of why, but I did remember that I definitely did NOT like the movie version of one of my favourite young adult books: The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper. Well. I guess writing this post will help me remember in the future why I disliked it so much... (other than the fact that it was just, well, a bad movie!).

Thing is, I've been wanting to write another Page vs Screen post for a while, plus I wanted something in a Christmas vein, and a family member mentioned on Facebook that she was about to embark on one of her yearly traditions, reading The Dark Is Rising at Christmas. It made me realise I haven't read it in years, and it does seem the perfect time of year to read it since the story takes place between the Winter Solstice and 12th Night (night before the Epiphany or Three Kings Day). So I pulled the book off its shelf and got hold of The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising (which by the way makes no mention of the significance of the dates Midwinter, Twelfth Night etc.). And here we are!

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Page vs Screen: True Blood S4 vs Dead To The World

Well, the fourth season of True Blood has just finished, giving me the perfect occasion to inaugurate my Page vs Screen series! (am trying to forget I had planned to inaugurate it with Game of Thrones, and then Harry Potter and then... oops!)

True Blood is based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels by Charlaine Harris. I'm not going to go into details concerning the previous seasons/novels, but in general each season is more or less loosely based on one novel (there are 11 books so far, will the series go 11 seasons?). The first season is the one that was closest to its respective novel - Dead Until Dark -, whereas the second season started to veer away from the novel (Living Dead In Dallas) and develop its own storyline parallel to the main action (i.e. Maryanne in Bon Temps) and then the third season just... woah! Major changes (deaths!!! some that should have taken place in later novels) and surprises to the principal plot from the novel (Club Dead)!!! Warning: some spoilers (for books and series) to be expected.

In general, all the main characters are pretty much the same as in the novels (Sookie, Bill, Eric, Jason, Sam, Pam, Alcide...). Where things really changed in the TV series (other than the variations on the plots) was in the development of the secondary characters (Tara, Lafayette, Terry, Arlene, Hoyt, Holly, Tommy...) and introduction of new ones (Jessica!!! Jesus). I think this is in great part due to the nature of the beast: screen vs page. The books are all narrated by Sookie, so all in the 1st person and the story is seen almost exclusively from her point of view. So the secondary characters don't get much development unless they interact with her directly. That wouldn't work as well on TV. Quite frankly it's one of the aspects I disliked the most from the books and the single major change that I think makes the TV series so much better than the books: the rich world of Bon Temps brought to life by all the secondary (and some major) characters (inhabited by some fabulous actors)! I can't imagine that place without Lafayette or Tara, and the first gets killed at the start of the second novel and the second just zips in and out of the action in several of the books.

On to Season Four of True Blood!

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