The return of Game of Thrones, back in season four of sword fighting, bed jumping, and mud tossing reminds us once again of the wise gamble that HBO took to put this mass production on our TV screens and laptops. Yes, George RR Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice novels on which the series is based were bestsellers. But audience size for epic fantasy fiction is a fraction of what it takes to make a profit on television. Martin’s family trees, thickly wooded in the woods, knights in battered armour, maidens in torn tops, and a nest of imported dragons from fairy tales, were not easy to sell. According to legend, the writer and producer Vince Gilligan sold Breaking Bad to the AMC television station with the succinct phrase: “Mr Chips will be Scarface.” You imagine people selling Game of Thrones to HBO and calling it “The Sopranos with Swords”.
Building the series around a mythical world, like a broken reflection of medieval Europe, was a risk, but executive producers David Benioff and DB Weiss had a clear vision. They were smart enough to add suspense fiction rhythm and exploitative film nudity to the mix. This kind of graphical mischief caught the attention of a large audience, and by the end of its third season, Game of Thrones was drawing 5 million viewers a week. But blood and breasts alone don’t explain why the show became a social media phenomenon. This is because, despite its severity and brutality, Game of Thrones represents a return to old-fashioned escapism. Game of Thrones invites you to join a world where you can solve your sword and mount problems.
Break the old ground
Appealing to audiences’ need to escape, Game of Thrones revived a genre that few knew needed to be revived: the saga of the sword and sandals, a once tough subspecies of films that also gave us serious epics like Ben- Hur brought. how primitively animated Ray Harryhausen monster films. The sword and sandal genre and its cousin, the medieval epic of sword and chain mail, often flirted with kitsch and lager. Television producer Robert Tapert took advantage of this in the 1990s with Xena: The Warrior Princess and played it for a giggle. Game of Thrones also incorporates some dazzling flair from 1938 classic The Adventures of Robin Hood — Errol Flynn jokes and puns fly as fast as the series’ many severed heads. In this particular tone, the television series benefits from the fact that Martin is not a literary author; He is a wool spinner who unfolds a skilfully sewn tapestry from interconnected subwefts.
In contrast to Game of Thrones’ escapism style, the typical drama is based on and limited by historical facts. The facts can be irritating mosquitos circling the heads of viewers, annoyed at having to remember things they slept in at school. It’s a protracted trust in history that slowed and sometimes stalled TV shows of clashes and duels like Roma and Spartacus. Game of Thrones is like a fantasy to fly unrestrained and free to spit dramatic fire like the dragons of Emilia Clarke’s Princess Daenerys.
It helps, of course, that Game of Thrones has so many good actors who make its characters so relatable. The boss among them is Peter Dinklage, whose Tyrion Lannister is a silver-tongued demon with an amazing ability for wine, women and revenge scenarios. He absorbs any ridiculousness of his tiny stature not by getting angry but by taking it out, a fantasy for anyone who has been bullied. Dinklage plays him as filthy Harry who keeps his hands clean, he’s so smart at convincing others to do his will. Lesser-known actors like Maisie Williams as the spunky tomboy Arya Stark and Lena Headey as the impostor Cersei Lannister also quickly established themselves as fan favourites. And the presence of well-respected actors like Charles Dance from The Jewel in the Crown and Diana Rigg from The Avengers shows just how keen Game of Thrones producers are in rooting their series in show business history and on the show. as with customization. The imaginative and thoughtful story of Martin on the small screen.
Deep down there is an overriding attraction to this material. Author George RR Martin’s web of characters and bloodlines may be confusing, but Game of Thrones has a moral simplicity that appealed to audiences in a way that another HBO show, Laura Dern’s Contemporary Manners, cancelled the tragic comedy Enlightened, but not. Indeed, if your main concern is to keep your head or not to be eaten, as in The Walking Dead, another show with the equally compelling premise of getting back to basics, then all of your other problems and concerns seem minor indeed. At a time when people are scared of pissing off the boss so they don’t end up in a terribly small job market or save on the monthly mortgage payment, it’s the escape of a program that cuts bosses down to size with a precise cut ability of a sword exerts an attraction at the level of the viscera. This particular fantasy of vengeance and triumph is very real and we can relate to it. Even if you know you will never command the dragons to make your bids.