Just a few more hours for the 4th season of Game of Thrones to air. It’s been a long wait. It felt almost as long as it’s taking Daenerys to reach the Iron Throne. It’s been harrowing ever since season 3 ended. I have rewatched the entire series thrice, read the book twice and almost died of frustration once. I am not going to pretend here, I am not a die hard fan of the books. I started reading them between seasons 2 and 3 and like always- the books are so much better.
Having said that, you can’t really challenge the fact that the show is the best thing to have happened to TV (Cable TV actually) ever. The reason this show is so good and so highly rated is because it builds upon the already brilliantly imagined universe of the books. Now, you must be thinking, what makes Game of Thrones any different from the Lord of The Rings or any other goddamn fantasy series which has made it to the screen. In case of other fantasy series, the screen counterparts don’t take the narrative forward all that much. Game Of Thrones takes it to the next level. No, I’m not telling you that any visual medium can beat your imagination. (Unless they up come with telekinetic 3D printing. ) But Game of Thrones comes pretty close.
Notice anyone familiar?
And the reason the show is so honest to it’s source material is because of the crew . No, not the cast – the crew. The guys behind the scenes. They made the throne at the Vale of Arryn look so realistic. Did you even notice it was tree shaped? Of course you didn’t. It’s because you were too busy feeling sorry for Tyrion.
The show is shot across two continents in multiple countries and for those who are interested here’s the breakdown of all the filming locations with correspondence to the GOT universe.
Kings Landing – Croatia + Malta
Beyond the wall – Iceland
Winterfell/Castle Black/Iron Islands – Northern Ireland + Scotland
Vaes Dothrak / Some exteriors for King’s Landing – Morocco + Malta
Oh, and Brienne’s scene with the Bear, that’s shot in a studio in LA.
Due to budget cuts, the new scenes showing the Dornish Marches will be shot in Dharavi
The effort to make the costumes seen on the show is pretty elaborate; they are not washed for weeks to give an authentic look and feel. Lingusit David J Peterson was commissioned to invent two new languages for the show – Valyrian & Dothrakhi. And here’s an interesting fact – One of the ‘melted swords’ in the Iron Throne is actually Gandalf’s Glamdring.
I could go on for years talking about how awesomely meticulous this show is.
Sometimes you wish this weren’t fiction.
Game of Thrones was always destined to be a great show because George R R Martin is a 21st century fantasy fiction author (in a recent documentary, he mentioned he loves comic books). Martin has a slight edge over the most of his contemporaries; he had a stint as a screenwriter for TV. But now that the TV show is catching up to the book series (season 4 of the show will be corresponding with the events happening in the third book A Storm of Swords), it’s time for both the creators of the show and the author of the books to up their ante. And, it’s safe to say that the future books ( Martin has confirmed that there will be two more books , The Winds of Winter & A Dream of Spring) will most probably be influenced, if not overtly, by the television series.
Stuff like this doesn’t happen overnight. So the 11 month long wait is worth it. Just for those few weeks of gory ecstasy and boobs.
And, to fellow readers who are not lucky enough to have HBO GO, PLZ SEED PLZ.
