Forum Overview :: Peter Molyneux's The Movies :: Finally slogged through season 1

[quote name="fabio"]Taking everyone's word for it that the books are full of intriguing backstabbing deal making epic dynasty forging, I'm going to assume that the story covered in season 1 is only a fraction of a single book. As if an executive flipped through a synopsis and decided to set the season 1 finale at "Sean Bean dies", sending the writers scrambling to include every redundant scene in order to pad out an entire season. Events stretched over 10 episode could have been covered in 3 or 4, tops. Imagine if a Dune mini-series spent 10 episodes leading up to Leto's death, and with less than half of the events. An entire episode would be devoted to the water merchant's slutty daughter. Can we agree the bar for sci-fi/fantasy politicking was set by Dune? I'd like to take a snapshot of one chapter to compare how this should be approached. <u>Dune</u> Setting: A representative from the Emperor attends the Baron's nephew's gladiatorial games. Under the surface: The representative is actually there to discuss the Baron's handling of Arakis, a planet the Emperor seceded to a rival he feared knowing that he would be forced to accept it and thus lured into a trap. Through many subtle threats, the Emperor tells the Baron he needs to get his shit under control and no one can find out the Emperor's troops were involved lest all the houses unite against him. The Baron has plans of his own to consolidate his position and set up his nephew in line for the imperial throne. Meanwhile, the Baron's nephew has ambitions to replace his uncle sooner than expected, and comes up with a PR plan to boost his image by showboating in the arena. <i>Meanwhile</i>, Leto's captured adviser accepts a position as the Baron's servant in order to set in motion a long term plan for revenge. He plants the PR plan into the nephew's head, then sets up a win-win situation where a former servant of Leto is put in the position of having a shot at killing the nephew, either that or distrust is sewed between him and the Baron. MEANWHILE, the Bene Gesserit order the representative's wife to bear the nephew's love child in an attempt to salvage their work. All of this takes place in less than 30 pages. <i>Game of Thrones</i> Setting: The entire first season Under the surface: The queen and her incestuous brother murdered the king's adviser because he was reading an old genealogy book. After 8 episodes, Sean Bean discovers the book's secret: that 3 generation's of the king's male ancestors all had black hair. Somehow this is instant irrefutable proof that the queen's son is from her brother and not the king, not to mention that a secret book was needed to unearth this and not, say, the king's living memory of his father and grandfather's hair color. Sean Bean gives the queen one day to clear out. In that day, the king is mortally wounded in a freak hunting accident and wills Sean Bean to run the kingdom until his son is old enough to rule. Nobles warn Sean Bean that the queen will try something and that he should arrest her now. He refuses. A noble with dubious loyalty tells him he can get the city guard on his side to confront the queen tomorrow. The next day, the queen declares her son king. Sean Bean says nuh uh, he had to wait a couple years here's the will. The queen tears up the will and says too bad. Sean Bean reveals his non-proof that the prince is the queen's incestuous love child and not the king's rightful son. Nobody cares. The noble and city guard tell Sean Bean that they sided with the queen instead, sorry. So the guy who couldn't really be trusted couldn't really be trusted, a far cry from Dune's Yueh. So that, the entire political plot from an entire 10 hour season, can be summed up as searching for non-proof of incest that nobody cares about so the main character can die over upholding a technicality that nobody cares about after being unsurprisingly and anticlimactically betrayed by a man who openly told him not to trust him, none of which would have come to anything if the king hadn't happened to be gored by a wild boar that day. MEANWHILE some chick drank a lot of horse blood and now fire can't hurt her.[/quote]