[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Elemmakil

While I enjoy the whole GoT series, violent soft porn that it is, I consider it inferior to LoTR, and am somewhat dismayed by folks who consider GRRM to be "The American Tolkien" as such a comparison does JRRT a severe disservice.

I think it is also a sad generalization that you can read on the back of always any fantasy book, since the publishers seem to generally want to appeal on the wide public by equating fantasy with Tolkien, no matter the fact that thematically the fantasy in question can be completely different. I can see that GRRM is perhaps closer to Tolkien than many when it comes to complexity, but certainly not in the spirit.

Tolkien's Middle Earth so compelling and "alive" - literally like a real place that exists or at least existed at one time. Moreso: a place that I would like to live in if I could. I don't really have that vibe for GOT; even if I could go there, I don't know that I would want to

Yes, that basically sums up my opinion as well. There are many lovely fantasy worlds I wouldn't mind to visit, but however interesting and rich GRRM's world is, I would not want to live there, because it is terrible.

Once again that comes back to what I sort of wanted to point at in my previous post - if you take the criteria for "good stories" from Tolkien's On Fairy-stories, that is, it seems to me, what ASOIAF is not. I am not even sure if it has any great eucatastrophe coming (I actually somehow think that even if it did, I would feel it might not really fit, because the tale itself is a portrayal of quite merciless world), even though it has to be said it has its merry moments, but it is more like the Children of Húrin than the Lord of the Rings. Further speaking of criteria for good stories, even just reading GRRM's books sometimes reminded me of Frodo's famous quote "Shut the book now, dad; we don't want to read any more."

I will say that I like the fact that the HBO series actually follows the plot of the books fairly closely - would that PJ could have done the same for his LoTR and Hobbit movies! (not that PJ had to follow the books exactly; I just detest his ad libs where he thinks he's better than JRRT when it comes to storytelling. Turns out he's not...)

Of course, it's easier to follow the books when you can devote approximately 10 hours per season to each, as opposed to a mere 3 hours per LoTR/Hobbit movie. Also helps if one doesn't add one's own bizarre innoventions to the basic plot of the book...

Also absolutely agreed on this. Recently in a debate Nogrod actually said about the same... and that led me to imagine if GoT was filmed by PJ, then probably all the sense of subtlety would have been lost (without further spoilers, imagine various people who later turn out to be turncloaks dressed all the time in huge spiked armors, having really menacing look, horses with glowing red eyes and so on). But yes, having a team such as GoT had for doing LotR or the Hobbit, they could have cut a lot of unnecessary rubbish and kept more faithful to the spirit of the tale.