The only way I can deal with the time that elapses between seasons for “Game Of Thrones” is to forget the show exists completely. While I think many modern television shows have gotten scientifically precise about dropping cliffhangers on audiences from week to week, there is something about “Game Of Thrones” which sinks the hooks in just that little bit deeper, and season three was a fantastic example of that.
HBO took advantage of all the eyes locked on the Golden Globes tonight to roll out the first full trailer for season four of their most exciting series, and it certainly looks like this coming year is going to be full of monumental events.
More than anything at this point, I’m dying to see how David Benioff and D.B. Weiss handle the adaptation moving forward. While I wouldn’t call anything about wrestling “A Song Of Ice and Fire” onto the screen “easy,” I think the first three books offer a fairly solid dramatic spine, and while there were hard choices they had to make for each season, it still seemed like the basic starting place was a good one.
They’re reaching that point, though, where everything gets harder. I know they’ve still got a chunk of book three to grapple with, but it looks like we’ll start seeing threads from book four and book five introduced this season as well. When George R.R. Martin reached this point in writing the novels, he hit the wall hard. It took him a while to figure out how to approach this point in the story, and his first approach didn’t work. The books get incredibly dense here, and the good thing for the showrunners is that they have the next two books to work with at the same time. The tough thing is that both books are massive and packed with incident, while not necessarily moving at the same narrative clip that has distinguished the show so far.
I’m still not sure what happens when they actually catch up to Martin, but there’s a good shot that will happen at some point, even with long gaps between seasons. Still, the choices made by Benioff and Weiss so far have all been for the good of the show, and at this point, the series is doing its own thing so well that even if they do end up lapping Martin, I feel like the story is in good hands.
“Game Of Thrones” season four premieres April 6, 2014, and as first looks go, this one’s got us positively rabid to get things started.