The Unofficial Guide to Game of Thrones - Softcover

Renfro, Kim

 
9781982116408: The Unofficial Guide to Game of Thrones
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1982116404 ISBN 13: 9781982116408
Verlag: Atria, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

The everything-you-missed, wanted-to-know-more-about, and can’t-get-enough guide to the Game of Thrones television series—from the first episode to the epic finale. Valar morghulis!

Spanning every episode across all eight seasons, INSIDER’s entertainment correspondent Kim Renfro goes deep into how the show was made, why it became such a phenomenon and explores every detail you want to know. It’s the perfect book to look back at all you may have missed or to jump-start you on a second viewing of the whole series.

As an entertainment correspondent, Renfro has covered the show’s premieres, broken down key details in scenes, explored characters’ histories, and interviewed the cast, directors, and crew. In this book, she sheds new light on the themes, storylines, character development, the meaning of the finale, and what you can expect next.

Some of the questions answered here include: What was the Night King’s ultimate purpose? How did the show effect George R.R. Martin’s ability to finish the book series? Why were the final seasons shorter? Why did the direwolves get shortchanged? How were the fates of Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen foretold from the start? Was that really a bittersweet ending?

Winter may have come and gone, but there is still plenty to discover and obsess over in this behind-the-scenes fan guide to the Game of Thrones HBO series.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kim Renfro is an entertainment correspondent and Game of Thrones expert for INSIDER. She has also moderated panels for the annual Con of Thrones fan convention and been a guest on many GoT-themed podcasts. She lives in Los Angeles. The Unofficial Guide to Game of Thrones is her first book.

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Chapter One: The Great Divide CHAPTER ONE Image The GREAT DIVIDE
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On the night of June 2, 2013, a chasm of pain and misery materialized in front of an unsuspecting television audience. Millions of Game of Thrones fans had spent more than two years obsessing over the grim politics of Westeros and falling in love with knights and lords and ladies and outcasts alike. They hadn’t noticed HBO was barreling them toward a cliff’s edge the whole time, like lambs to the slaughter. But the rest of us knew, and sat back, popcorn in hand and camera phones out, to watch the blood spill and the tears flow.

“Red Wedding” is such an innocuous phrase. It means nothing. But now it means everything to Game of Thrones fans. Ever since that fated night, this pair of words has taken on a cultural weight almost no other television show in history can lift. Author George R. R. Martin had changed fantasy storytelling long before he turned his story over to David Benioff and D. B. Weiss so they could change television. But on that June night, the entire world was finally fully clued-in on the mastery that is Game of Thrones. The invisible rift that had sat between the book-readers and show-watchers was stitched back together.

From then on, we entered a new phase of pop culture. There was everything before the Red Wedding, and then everything after. There was a past when Game of Thrones might have been lost in the shuffle of prestige television’s heyday, and the future where HBO’s big risk on a fantasy series would be remembered as one of the greatest decisions ever made in Hollywood.

The novels in Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (ASOIAF) series were already topping bestseller charts before Game of Thrones came along. But tens of millions more people would not have known the stories of Daenerys Targaryen, the Unburnt and Mother of Dragons, or of Jon Snow, the secret Targaryen prince kept hidden in plain sight, if it weren’t for David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. Those fans wouldn’t have shed tears over the execution of Lord Eddard Stark, nor sat, mouths agape, as they realized his son and wife, Robb and Catelyn, were doomed as well.

When HBO announced the episode titles for the third Game of Thrones season, Martin’s longtime readers knew at once what was coming. The ninth episode was called “The Rains of Castamere,” the name of the infamously ominous Lannister song. The lyrics of “The Rains of Castamere” tell the story of Lord Tywin crushing a lesser house beneath his heel when they dared challenge the Lannisters of Casterly Rock. In both the books and the show’s version of events, Catelyn Stark only realizes the festivities of her brother’s wedding are about to take a perilous turn when the Freys’ hired musicians begin playing “The Rains of Castamere,” signaling Tywin’s machinations even though he was nowhere near the castle.

Knowing what was coming for the show-only fans, ASOIAF readers banded together, both online and in the real world. They were determined to let the show’s audience experience the horror of the Red Wedding in the same way they had in the books: shocked, angry, heartbroken, and going from heartily invested in the young King in the North to freshly grieving for Robb and Catelyn and what felt like the entire House Stark cause.

Book-readers went through this gauntlet of grief with Martin’s third novel, A Storm of Swords, when it was first published in 2000. Ask anyone about the experience of reading Catelyn Stark’s point-of-view chapter, starting with the drums pounding, pounding, pounding, and they’ll feel a sick churning in their stomachs. They’ll tell you about throwing the book across the room in anger, or gasping so loud they startled their sleeping cat.

Only the most astute of readers would have seen the Red Wedding coming. No other book series had begun its run with the surprise execution of its presumed protagonist, only to carry forward with a new hero, that former protagonist’s son, and then give him the axe, too. What kind of sadism was this? What twisted sense of justice? What self-sabotaging writer would do such a thing?

This is Martin’s genius. Many of his characters are gray, and their prospects are bleak. Heroic characters die not in glory but in cold blood at a dinner table and all because of very human missteps. The heart and truth and valor lurking within them is captivating. Losing Ned Stark hurt. Losing Robb and Catelyn hurt more, because they represented our best hope for vengeance. Martin knew the moment he planned out Ned’s death that his son would have to follow, but the story was carefully built to lull us into a sense of security before he pulled the rug out.

The signs were all there with Robb’s series of mistakes and misfortunes, but audiences and readers alike were duped by the tropes of fantasy we thought the story would follow. Martin’s devoted book-readers had taken extra care over the previous three years not to spoil the coming shock. “Red Wedding” wasn’t even typed out in full on fan discussion forums like Westeros.org and Reddit; it was shortened to “RW.” Some news outlets picked up on the fact that something bad was about to happen, but it was anybody’s guess as to what new devastation was on its way.

Benioff and Weiss had been purposefully building toward this moment in the series from the start. Like the rest of us, they were hooked on Martin’s writing from the moment Jaime Lannister pushed little Bran Stark out a window. But they knew if they could sell Game of Thrones, and convince HBO to renew the series for at least three seasons, they would make it to the Red Wedding and everything would change. If they could get there, they knew they’d have the world convinced that A Song of Ice and Fire was the greatest story ever told.

“When we read the books, we knew we just wanted to get to this scene and do this holy-shit moment justice, that throw-the-book-across-the-room moment,” Weiss said at a 2016 San Diego Comic-Con panel.

With a few loaded crossbows, a few more daggers, and a twist to the heart, “The Rains of Castamere” brought together two factions of the fandom. Book-readers prepared for the aftermath of millions of people around the world finding out Robb, Catelyn, Grey Wind, and the entirety of the Stark army was obliterated. The people in the know were ready to be a shoulder to cry on, but first they would have a bit of fun with their show-only comrades.

Within hours of the silent credits rolling on the episode, videos began circulating online showing people, in real time, watching the Red Wedding unfold. Some crafty readers, simmering with anticipation of the shared grief and horror, took out their cell phones and recorded the trauma washing over their loved ones like so many shocks of cold water. In one such video, a shirtless man lays on a beige carpet. He rolls over onto his back and looks into the camera, his expression both accusatory and impressed.

“You guys knew about this?” he says, his voice cracking with what could be either high-pitched emotion or the sound of a person’s reality collapsing in on itself.

This clip was shown during an episode of Conan on June 5, when Conan O’Brien welcomed guest of honor George R. R. Martin....

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Verlag
Atria
Erscheinungsdatum
2019
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1982116404
ISBN 13 
9781982116408
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
384
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
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