Book vs. Show: Game of Thrones Season 8, Ep. 3.
29 April 2019 [link youtube]
The old "book to show" comparison, primarily discussing the overly simplistic "evil for the sake of evil" of the White Walkers, and the even less coherent significance of "The Red God" (as the show now stands).
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A.S.O.I.A.F. = "A Song of Ice and Fire", i.e., the books of George R.R. Martin (G.R.R.M.), also known under the title "Game of Thrones", used by the T.V. adaptation to refer to the series as a whole.
Youtube Automatic Transcription
in the old days on YouTube there was a
type of video called book versus show or books to show comparison and those videos have obviously he disappeared because at one point the TV show the TV adaptation Game of Thrones they ran out of books to work with and the TV show kept going but in this case in the context of discussing the conclusion of the grand overarching plot of the relationship between the White Walkers a humanity on the continent of Westeros I think it is worthwhile to take a moment and go back and consider what the book set out for us what it is we're supposed to have known and understood about who the White Walkers were and why they invaded the realms of men as it's put in the show george RR martin has said many times and interviews and it's obvious from his work he is not interested in creating an evil Dark Lord a villain who is evil for the sake of being evil now it's interesting to point out mmm he doesn't perfectly live up to his own standards in the books you can actually pick out examples of individual people and even individual cultures out in Essos there are a few that seemed to be evil for the sake of being evil he doesn't always live up to his own standards but it's very clear in the book that quite a lot of time was taken so that we could sympathize the motivations even of the great others even of the White Walkers coming from beyond the wall now if you've only watched the TV show and haven't read the books you will remember that in the first three years quite a lot of time and effort was put into showing you there is a man called Craster Craster lives at a special place called Craster's keep north of the wall and the most shocking thing about Craster is not that he gives his infant children to the others is not that he gives his infant sons his newborn boys to this you know miraculous and magical different species with blue skin what's amazing about it is that the leader of the light Nights Watch knows and permits it and doesn't regard it a bad thing so the Nights Watch has known about this and has always known and then sort of dot-dot-dot the rest is left up to us to fill in the blanks we are told that many many centuries ago so many centuries ago that nobody knows how many years it was perhaps thousands of years um there was a peace treaty between the others and human beings and they put up this wall now in the books it only gives credit to the human side for creating the ice wall but of the two parties who created this treaty you tell me which side is more likely to have the means to create an enormous barrier made out of ice it seems very likely the two sides cooperated or even that the bulk of the construction is creating the huge mass of ice was actually done by the others and then maybe human beings put the staircases and castles and other fixings and details into the ice wall but some at the end of the long night the war between humans and the others there was a pact there was a treaty now this again implicitly confirmed something were explicitly shown where at the beginning of the books which is that the others have language they speak the reason they're not they're not mindless zombies themselves right not in the books they have motivations and the the pact the peace treaty created obviously wasn't just to separate the two civilizations separate the others from humanity the others remain dependent on humanity because humanity had to provide them with a certain number of babies per year right and the Nights Watch is always known about this and it's always participated in it and so on and so forth right so one of the first moments of direct conflict between the others in the Nights Watch is when zombie rises up within Castle black to kill jail or Marmont the leader of the Nights Watch and Jon Snow White's the zombie on fire and the zombie bursts into flames by the way in tonight's episode inexplicably the zombie seemed a lot less flammable than they were in earlier seasons we don't have any explanation for that they seem to become stronger faster less less susceptible to fire with each passing season so they're really an unstoppable superhuman force at this point as opposed to being shambling and perhaps somewhat weak somewhat enfeebled by death but anyway this is a mirror detail so um why what's what's happened well you know the Nights Watch and the realms of men it seems they have not been living up to their side of the bargain with the exception of Craster handing his sons over to the great others it seems that you know the old traditions of the Nights Watch have been forgotten or neglected or failed them it seems that the others are in a position of having to come south because humans haven't been keeping up their side of the treaty now the real plot twist for readers of the books what was the plot twist that was revealed in the show and has not been revealed in the books yet was who or what created this bizarre situation in the first place why was there a kind of asymmetrical symbiosis between humans and the great others well it turns out that there's yet another species of you know bipeds but who are not quite human living on the continent the original indigenous people the continent are the children of the forest and the children of the forest were being pushed to extinction by the incoming colonization of the continent going from east to west by human beings now all of this of course is not so different from the history of New Mexico which is where george RR martin lives there's a you know obvious question to what extent many of these contexts many of these concepts including the Great Wall and the persecution of indigenous people to extinction and so on and so forth to what extent some of these things the conflict being the first man and the later settlers and then the the children of forests being the real indigenous people you wonder to what extent that reflects political and ethical concerns that surround george RR martin in his own society and the history of the preceding centuries in his own society but with that aside the plot twist we face in the show that hasn't been revealed in the books yet is that the reason why the great others exist is that they were created like a sort of biological weapon to wipe out humanity or push back humanity so that the children the forest could continue to survive right but that's not what happened right at the end of the great the long night at the end of the last war instead what happened was a treaty whereby the children of the forest and the others together both would only live north of the ice wall human beings would live south as I say the others continued to depend on human beings so look people who are saying this episode is a masterpiece well if what you signed up for was meaningless spectacle for the sake of meaningless spectacle if what you signed up for was a battle between good and evil life and death where the side representing evil is just evil for the sake of being evil they just want death for the sake of death they just want to but that's not what I signed up for I signed up for something that's really politically sophisticated meaningful has some kind of philosophical content to it as well I signed up to be it you know one of those rare junctions in history where pop culture and great literature and you know politics and philosophy all happened to come together at the same point the same time in the same story that's what the books have offered us or at least that's the books have promised us the books are not yet finished but it's impossible to believe that this is the direction the books are going in if this really was the conclusion the books were working towards and again simply ask yourself why did all that stuff happen with Craster at Craster's keep why did it matter so much to reveal to us that you know the others require human babies to continue their culture and what sense would it make for the others to try to kill all of humanity they themselves are human and they rely on humans to give birth to and raise children and give them offer them in a religious ceremony to the others so the others then raise those human babies as members their own culture their own civilization and then of course is the question of what was the agenda of the children of the forest in the TV show the children forest just disappeared conveniently at a certain point but presumably the children the forest want their land back or at least 10% of their land back or they'd like to survive - and none of that's ever dealt with another kind of large-scale overarching question here who is the red God or what is the red God it's just ridiculous the position we're left in here partly because the way Stannis is storyline ended but um apparently we're supposed to just believe the red God is literally a God no nothing else is revealed there and yet this God who's capable of kind of coordinating information across the whole globe and moving people into position and doing all these things this God sent one person sent one magician however you want to put it to help out it is about not ten not five so this red God controls enormous temples in Essos as has been revealed even on the TV show and we know this in the books too of course if it's God this God that there's nothing else or there's no plot twist this God isn't someone like bran you know telepathically make lighting people this this God isn't someone like Marwyn the mage Marwan the major is a person only in the books this isn't this case where I'm like The Wizard of Oz in the end somebody has revealed being behind the curtain or it's all revealed to have been a you know religious enthusiasm that wasn't based on no no no no apparently we sort of know this the supernatural gods are real and exist and manipulate history and circumstances in a phobia position and yet are so weak and powerless that the best they could do that the most impact this religion of the red God could have was having one person in the right place at the right time not two not five not an army no and apparently also the God now the red God has no interest in all the things that Stannis Baratheon was fighting for he has no interest in burning down the idols of the seven is no interest in spreading his own religion in Westeros all of those agendas all of those teams that again were set up in the first three season the show quite seriously we get the sense right at the beginning of the TV show hey guess what a major site in this war is a side that's trying to convert this continent to a new religion that wants to burn the statues if the old religion that wants to burn all the people who believe in the old illusion nope all that's forgotten just brotherhood among men and this huge enormous convoluted plot including Stannis's army and the complete destruction of standards arm completely disappeared that'll happen to put one person at Winterfell in the rightful its third that not five not ten I don't think george RR martin is capable of a lapse in the quality of his writing that bad and I do not think george RR martin is capable of preventing us a story that consists of life and hope triumphing over death and evil and characters and motivations who are evil simply for the sake of being evil so look guys in some ways you may regard this episode as a masterpiece as a triumph of special effects and action film photography that's how you feel about it fine on another level this episode cements or is the final disappointment if the final letdown in that the TV show has simply lost all interest in completing any of the storylines any of the plots any of the thematic philosophical questions that were first asked in seasons 1 2 & 3
type of video called book versus show or books to show comparison and those videos have obviously he disappeared because at one point the TV show the TV adaptation Game of Thrones they ran out of books to work with and the TV show kept going but in this case in the context of discussing the conclusion of the grand overarching plot of the relationship between the White Walkers a humanity on the continent of Westeros I think it is worthwhile to take a moment and go back and consider what the book set out for us what it is we're supposed to have known and understood about who the White Walkers were and why they invaded the realms of men as it's put in the show george RR martin has said many times and interviews and it's obvious from his work he is not interested in creating an evil Dark Lord a villain who is evil for the sake of being evil now it's interesting to point out mmm he doesn't perfectly live up to his own standards in the books you can actually pick out examples of individual people and even individual cultures out in Essos there are a few that seemed to be evil for the sake of being evil he doesn't always live up to his own standards but it's very clear in the book that quite a lot of time was taken so that we could sympathize the motivations even of the great others even of the White Walkers coming from beyond the wall now if you've only watched the TV show and haven't read the books you will remember that in the first three years quite a lot of time and effort was put into showing you there is a man called Craster Craster lives at a special place called Craster's keep north of the wall and the most shocking thing about Craster is not that he gives his infant children to the others is not that he gives his infant sons his newborn boys to this you know miraculous and magical different species with blue skin what's amazing about it is that the leader of the light Nights Watch knows and permits it and doesn't regard it a bad thing so the Nights Watch has known about this and has always known and then sort of dot-dot-dot the rest is left up to us to fill in the blanks we are told that many many centuries ago so many centuries ago that nobody knows how many years it was perhaps thousands of years um there was a peace treaty between the others and human beings and they put up this wall now in the books it only gives credit to the human side for creating the ice wall but of the two parties who created this treaty you tell me which side is more likely to have the means to create an enormous barrier made out of ice it seems very likely the two sides cooperated or even that the bulk of the construction is creating the huge mass of ice was actually done by the others and then maybe human beings put the staircases and castles and other fixings and details into the ice wall but some at the end of the long night the war between humans and the others there was a pact there was a treaty now this again implicitly confirmed something were explicitly shown where at the beginning of the books which is that the others have language they speak the reason they're not they're not mindless zombies themselves right not in the books they have motivations and the the pact the peace treaty created obviously wasn't just to separate the two civilizations separate the others from humanity the others remain dependent on humanity because humanity had to provide them with a certain number of babies per year right and the Nights Watch is always known about this and it's always participated in it and so on and so forth right so one of the first moments of direct conflict between the others in the Nights Watch is when zombie rises up within Castle black to kill jail or Marmont the leader of the Nights Watch and Jon Snow White's the zombie on fire and the zombie bursts into flames by the way in tonight's episode inexplicably the zombie seemed a lot less flammable than they were in earlier seasons we don't have any explanation for that they seem to become stronger faster less less susceptible to fire with each passing season so they're really an unstoppable superhuman force at this point as opposed to being shambling and perhaps somewhat weak somewhat enfeebled by death but anyway this is a mirror detail so um why what's what's happened well you know the Nights Watch and the realms of men it seems they have not been living up to their side of the bargain with the exception of Craster handing his sons over to the great others it seems that you know the old traditions of the Nights Watch have been forgotten or neglected or failed them it seems that the others are in a position of having to come south because humans haven't been keeping up their side of the treaty now the real plot twist for readers of the books what was the plot twist that was revealed in the show and has not been revealed in the books yet was who or what created this bizarre situation in the first place why was there a kind of asymmetrical symbiosis between humans and the great others well it turns out that there's yet another species of you know bipeds but who are not quite human living on the continent the original indigenous people the continent are the children of the forest and the children of the forest were being pushed to extinction by the incoming colonization of the continent going from east to west by human beings now all of this of course is not so different from the history of New Mexico which is where george RR martin lives there's a you know obvious question to what extent many of these contexts many of these concepts including the Great Wall and the persecution of indigenous people to extinction and so on and so forth to what extent some of these things the conflict being the first man and the later settlers and then the the children of forests being the real indigenous people you wonder to what extent that reflects political and ethical concerns that surround george RR martin in his own society and the history of the preceding centuries in his own society but with that aside the plot twist we face in the show that hasn't been revealed in the books yet is that the reason why the great others exist is that they were created like a sort of biological weapon to wipe out humanity or push back humanity so that the children the forest could continue to survive right but that's not what happened right at the end of the great the long night at the end of the last war instead what happened was a treaty whereby the children of the forest and the others together both would only live north of the ice wall human beings would live south as I say the others continued to depend on human beings so look people who are saying this episode is a masterpiece well if what you signed up for was meaningless spectacle for the sake of meaningless spectacle if what you signed up for was a battle between good and evil life and death where the side representing evil is just evil for the sake of being evil they just want death for the sake of death they just want to but that's not what I signed up for I signed up for something that's really politically sophisticated meaningful has some kind of philosophical content to it as well I signed up to be it you know one of those rare junctions in history where pop culture and great literature and you know politics and philosophy all happened to come together at the same point the same time in the same story that's what the books have offered us or at least that's the books have promised us the books are not yet finished but it's impossible to believe that this is the direction the books are going in if this really was the conclusion the books were working towards and again simply ask yourself why did all that stuff happen with Craster at Craster's keep why did it matter so much to reveal to us that you know the others require human babies to continue their culture and what sense would it make for the others to try to kill all of humanity they themselves are human and they rely on humans to give birth to and raise children and give them offer them in a religious ceremony to the others so the others then raise those human babies as members their own culture their own civilization and then of course is the question of what was the agenda of the children of the forest in the TV show the children forest just disappeared conveniently at a certain point but presumably the children the forest want their land back or at least 10% of their land back or they'd like to survive - and none of that's ever dealt with another kind of large-scale overarching question here who is the red God or what is the red God it's just ridiculous the position we're left in here partly because the way Stannis is storyline ended but um apparently we're supposed to just believe the red God is literally a God no nothing else is revealed there and yet this God who's capable of kind of coordinating information across the whole globe and moving people into position and doing all these things this God sent one person sent one magician however you want to put it to help out it is about not ten not five so this red God controls enormous temples in Essos as has been revealed even on the TV show and we know this in the books too of course if it's God this God that there's nothing else or there's no plot twist this God isn't someone like bran you know telepathically make lighting people this this God isn't someone like Marwyn the mage Marwan the major is a person only in the books this isn't this case where I'm like The Wizard of Oz in the end somebody has revealed being behind the curtain or it's all revealed to have been a you know religious enthusiasm that wasn't based on no no no no apparently we sort of know this the supernatural gods are real and exist and manipulate history and circumstances in a phobia position and yet are so weak and powerless that the best they could do that the most impact this religion of the red God could have was having one person in the right place at the right time not two not five not an army no and apparently also the God now the red God has no interest in all the things that Stannis Baratheon was fighting for he has no interest in burning down the idols of the seven is no interest in spreading his own religion in Westeros all of those agendas all of those teams that again were set up in the first three season the show quite seriously we get the sense right at the beginning of the TV show hey guess what a major site in this war is a side that's trying to convert this continent to a new religion that wants to burn the statues if the old religion that wants to burn all the people who believe in the old illusion nope all that's forgotten just brotherhood among men and this huge enormous convoluted plot including Stannis's army and the complete destruction of standards arm completely disappeared that'll happen to put one person at Winterfell in the rightful its third that not five not ten I don't think george RR martin is capable of a lapse in the quality of his writing that bad and I do not think george RR martin is capable of preventing us a story that consists of life and hope triumphing over death and evil and characters and motivations who are evil simply for the sake of being evil so look guys in some ways you may regard this episode as a masterpiece as a triumph of special effects and action film photography that's how you feel about it fine on another level this episode cements or is the final disappointment if the final letdown in that the TV show has simply lost all interest in completing any of the storylines any of the plots any of the thematic philosophical questions that were first asked in seasons 1 2 & 3