GAME OF THRONES pilot, quick thoughts

Well, it's sure blue. The effect isn't as consistently bad as I'd feared, in part because the producers ramp it up at moments of tension. The closing part of the pre-credits sequence was so murky it was hard to make out. Most of the scenes in Winterfell weren't terribly obtrusive, though I would have liked the show's aesthetic much better without them. Call me old-fashioned; I like colors,I like being able to see what's going on in the shot, and most of the color correction aesthetic we see today makes me think of action movies I'm not supposed to take very seriously. Except the pilot is slow and building up characters because it wants us to take them very seriously. I'm not feeling it so far, with a few exceptions.

The credits sequence is GREAT in terms of visual interest and information conveyed, but still annoying because the coloring and tilt-shift gets in the way of the awesomeness. (More the coloring than the tilt-shift.) Jon Snow doesn't set me on fire -- I understand the production need to age the kids, particularly Daenerys, up, but aging kids a few years really changes the dynamics in a lot of places, and other than Daenerys (in whose case I'm quite grateful), there's no character whose dynamic is changed by aging them up as much as Jon Snow. Going to the Wall and having your illusions destroyed at seventeen is rough; going to the Wall and having your illusions destroyed at fourteen is *catastrophic.*

I was really happy to see Peter Dinklage as Tyrion, though. I've been a huge fan of Dinklage ever since THE STATION AGENT, and he's every bit as wonderful as I'd expected, and he's *different* from what I expected. It's great.

I'm looking forward to seeing Littlefinger, and finding out what the actor's like. I always cast Littlefinger as the young Claude Rains.

Originally posted on my DW. | people have commented there. | Do so yourself, if you like.