Rewriting Game of Thrones Season 5 (Part 1)
I've had this post sitting on my hard drive for a while. Time to set it free...
I’m a fan of both the A Song of Ice and Fire books and A Game of Thrones TV show. I’m not a book purist, and I think a lot of the choices made in the adaptation from page to the small screen have ranged from acceptable/necessary to perhaps even improvements on the original material.
That said, Season 5 let me down in some places. In some ways, that didn’t surprise me. The material being covered, Books 4 and 5, are the weakest of the series, and stray farthest from the main storylines that the show has stuck pretty close to, even when the books on which they were based veered off into other territory. Still, Season 5 could have been better than it was, and I’ve spent a lot of boring car rides and standing-in-line-waiting time thinking about how to improve it.
This post and the related posts to follow are me playing imaginary show-runner, describing how I would re-write Season 5 of Game of Thrones.
Even though Game of Thrones has a big budget for a TV show, there are still limits to what it can do. Maybe you could write a perfect Game of Thrones TV show with an unlimited VFX budget, runtime, and number of cast members, but that’s not reality. To be fair, I’ve tried to make changes to the season that would stay within the parameters of the real production:
(1) No casting additional characters;
(2) No blow-the-budget VFX, unless I’m willing to edit existing VFX shots out of the script elsewhere;
(3) Keep the runtime within the approximately 10 hours the showrunners have to work with.
Looking things over, I think I did pretty well with all of these except Rule 3, and that one is solely because of Dorne. (Dorne needed a lot of work no matter what, but I don’t think there is any good way to fix Dorne that doesn’t involve devoting more time to it.)
Anyway, I’m beginning with the storylines I felt needed the least work. The second post will cover my changes to Sansa’s story at Winterfell, and the third will deal with Dorne.
So, shall we begin?
The True North and the Wall (Night’s Watch, Wildlings and Baratheons)
I’d mostly leave the Wall and the Baratheon storylines alone. As brutal as they were, they flowed well and showed us the things we needed to see. I thought the change of sending Jon to Hardhome to actually witness the White Walker massacre was brilliant, and managed to get around some of the boring stretches in the books. (Book 4/5 felt a lot like I was watching Jon rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic-lots of activity, without much purpose or hope.)
The one thing I would change is the attempted rape of Gilly. I understand why it was added. Sam needed an impetus not only to leave for the Citadel but to take Gilly with him, and the threat of rape in the Night’s Watch-an organization comprised in large part of criminals-is logical.
The problem is, though the threat of rape is logical, it’s also cliché, and overused on Game of Thrones in general and this season in particular. For reasons I’ll go into later, I think Ramsay’s rape of Sansa is the one that the story this season needs to hang together, as hard as it is to watch. Meryn Trant’s abuse of little girls in Braavos is not as necessary, but I think more justifiable story-wise because of the contrast in the weapons that sisters Sansa and Arya have learned to wield/their places in society have allowed them to learn. (I’d play this theme up more in my revised Dorne storyline as well-more on that later.)
The threat of sexual abuse against Gilly is solely there to give Sam a Big Damn Hero moment. I love Sam, but I didn’t feel this was a good way to get him to where he needed to be. Rape or the threat of rape is all too often the default tension-creator when writers don’t have any better ideas, and that’s really disturbing and not okay.
On top of that, if you’re going to go there with Gilly, it’s a disservice to the character not to really go there. Gilly and every woman she knew-mother and sisters-were raped by her father. How does that affect her reaction to her attackers, and to Sam? What goes into her decision to have sex with Sam after he stands up for her?
So, we need a different moment of heroism for Sam that also involves a threat to Gilly such that Sam realizes she can’t stay at Castle Black. I thought about a lot of convoluted threats, but ultimately came to the conclusion that there’s a simple, straightforward threat that could be just as effective: she’s a Wildling, with no real place in Castle Black.
Once Maester Aemon is dead, Gilly’s position in Castle Black is in jeopardy. I think there needs to be a couple sentences of dialogue between Gilly and Sam confirming that Gilly’s main job was taking care of Maester Aemon.
I also think it would make sense that the other Wildlings don’t accept Gilly because she’s one of Craster’s daughters. Craster may have lived North of the Wall, but he didn’t have much in common with the other Wildlings. I think another sentence or two could be worked into the dialogue illustrating that Gilly is not welcome among the Wildlings from Mance Rayder’s army captured/re-settled south of the Wall.
Instead of having drunk Night’s Watchmen threaten to rape Gilly, a handful of (probably still drunk) angry Night’s Watchmen see Gilly and little Sam and decide they have no right to be in Castle Black. They’re Wildlings, and their place is on the other side of the Wall. They grab Gilly and drag her to the gate, ready to shove her to the other side to probably die of exposure. Sam witnesses this and makes his stand. The fistfight goes down the same as it did in the show, and Ghost bails him out as happened in the show as well. This way, Sam’s conflict ties into the Wildlings versus Night’s Watch, will-they-or-won’t-they-let-the-Wildlings-through arc of the rest of the stories in the North.
The end of the Baratheons was fitting, and I wouldn’t change this storyline at all. Stannis had been skirting the line of ends justifying the means throughout the story, of doing really bad things in service of the supposed “greater good” of him taking his place as the rightful king. Stannis learned too late that there comes a point at which, when given the choice between losing, or winning but becoming a monster in the process, maybe you should just lose. What’s the good of being the “rightful” king if you have to slaughter your own daughter to get there? Who really wants a god on your side if the god expects you to do something that horrible?
Stannis and Melisandre sacrificing Shireen was, to me, the most horrific thing the show has ever done. It had been foreshadowed a long time in bits of Melisandre’s dialogue, but still, wow. I liked how Davos leaving was written and played, that he knew something was wrong but didn’t know what, so he followed Stannis’s orders. I also loved Melisandre’s reaction to being so horribly wrong about everything. She was clearly shaken to her core, but she also pulled a pretty cowardly cut and run and didn’t admit her mistakes.
Braavos (Arya)
Also, I wouldn’t touch the Arya storyline. Yes, it felt disconnected from the rest of the stories, but I think that’s inevitable. They at least managed to tie it back in at the end with Meryn Trant, and by mirroring Arya’s revenge on Trant with her sister’s struggles against Ramsey. Mostly, though, Arya’s Braavos storyline was one of my favorite parts of the books, and it’s just too cool to pass up.
King’s Landing (Tyrells, Cersei, Tommen and the High Sparrow)
I would only make a very, very minor tweak to the King’s Landing storyline. For the most part, this, too, was as good as or better than the books. I like that because we don’t have the POV limits of the books, we get to see the Queen of Thorns and, to a lesser extent, Margaery wield some impressive political power.
My one tweak to this storyline would be with Loras. I was glad when the show actually let Loras have a sex life to go along with his love for Renly (again thanks to the power of more POVs), but it seems like as the seasons go on, Loras has been reduced to “the gay guy.” In a lot of ways, I prefer the book version of Loras, who is so deeply affected by Renly’s death that he joins the Kingsguard and takes a vow of celibacy.
Loras is reckless and arrogant in the books, but his recklessness with Olyvar comes off as petulance with a side of thinking with his dick. I’m cool with the Loras/Olyvar development itself replacing the Kingsgaurd/celibacy route. Because Margaery is a more significant character in the show than in the books, it works to weave Loras into her storyline rather than into Jaime’s, and the changes to Jaime’s storyline mean Loras wouldn’t have been included there anyway.
However, I think if you’re not going to have Loras double down on the whole chivalry and honor schtick in response to Renly’s death, you should send him completely in the opposite direction. This wouldn’t require changing what Loras does on the show, just what he says. When Margaery walks in on Loras in bed with Olyvar and chastises him for not being more careful, Loras’s response should be bitter and jaded, that he thinks all the airs and propriety everyone puts on are a big joke. Maybe he could even throw a barb at Margaery for her marriage to tween Tommen. In general, I think this was a wasted opportunity to show that back when Loras was fighting for Renly, he was a true believer, but after seeing all the machinations it’s taken to get Margaery installed as queen, he’s totally disillusioned. Now he recognizes, as Catelyn said, he was a foolish knight of summer, and winter is here.
I have one other very minor tweak. There were several missed, organic opportunities for more male nudity. I don’t exactly want to see the actors’ penises, but the fact that they were so carefully cutting away from dicks was distracting. (And I’m not talking only about Loras and Olyvar-the most distracting one was how they shot the old, fat guy’s Sparrow-led walk of shame out of the brothel.)
Journey Through Essos and Meereen (Dany & Co., Tyrion and Jorah)
Similarly, I think Dany’s storyline and the storyline of getting Tyrion and Jorah to Meereen are solid overall and just need some minor tweaks. I know most people aren’t fans of Dany’s time stuck in Meereen in the books. It’s not my favorite part, either, but I think it’s an important beat in Dany’s development as a leader. She needs to try to govern, to run into major culture clashes, to stick around long enough to see what happens in the wake of her trail of fire and blood, and to fail a little, too.
As much as I like Ser Barristan, I approve of the decision to kill him off early. Dany really needed to be forced to make decisions without experienced advisors, and as long as Barristan was alive, that wasn’t going to happen. I also like the addition of the tentative Greyworm/Missandei relationship. I’m curious to see how that gets explored next season.
As for Tyrion, thank you, showrunners, for getting him to Meereen so much faster than in the books. I do not miss Jon Connington and Young Griff at all, and I thought giving the big parts of Tyrion’s journey to Varys and Jorah-greyscale and all-was a brilliant way to prune characters and storylines. I love it whenever Varys and Tyrion get to snark at each other, and I was surprised at how much I liked Tyrion and Jorah’s scene chemistry. The way that they recited that poem together as they made their way through the ruins of Valyria made me realize that they both have an odd mix of jadedness and romanticism.
For the changes: first, though plot-wise, the Unsullied need to get their butts kicked in the streets of Meereen, the way the fights were staged made them look kind of incompetent. I get that the Unsullied are trained for the battlefield and not for street fighting, but still. There were a few times where we saw that the Sons of the Harpy beat the Unsullied because they played dirty (the early scene with the prostitute, a scene where three Unsullied are lured to a dead end and surrounded, etc.).
I think there should have been more of those scenes of them playing dirty, perhaps dumping hot oil from windows when the Unsullied got trapped in the alleyway. Ser Barristan and Greyworm should still have gone down swinging, but it would have worked better overall if the unnamed Unsullied ranks around them were thinned out other than by hand-to-hand combat.
Second-and this one annoys me more than the rest-when enslaved Jorah goes out into the arena to see Dany for the first time, leaving Tyrion behind, what the hell was up with the big dude who magically appeared to cleave Tyrion’s chains? It was so random, and so obviously inserted to get Tyrion into the arena at the appropriate time.
I understand the need for an unwieldy plot device to let Jorah into the arena but keep Tyrion out until the fight is over, but it could have been done in a much subtler form than a random dude with an ax. Though still not very elegant, I think it would have been much better if Tyrion was manacled but not chained in place, and the reason he can’t get out right away is he’s not tall enough to reach the lever to open the arena gate. All it would take would be a ten-second shot of Tyrion running after Jorah, getting to the gate and realizing he’s screwed, and then a couple three-second cuts during Jorah’s fight to Tyrion using his brains and trying to throw a chain over the lever to get it to open.
Third, I like the way the show depicted all hell breaking loose in the main arena with the Sons of the Harpy. (And here I was sure Hizdahr was behind it all.) I like that Dany’s true friends gathered around her, and I like that they all recognized they were totally screwed, until Drogon arrived. The one thing I didn’t like was that when Dany jumped on Drogon’s back, the scene was staged such that it looked like she was leaving her friends behind-like “Yeah, thanks for risking your lives for me, but I’ve gotta peace out with my dragon-baby. Good luck with the rest of the murdering hordes!”
I think the way to fix this is to take a page from the book. In the book, Dany jumps into the arena and onto Drogon to save Drogon from being killed. I think the scene would have played so much better if Drogon had cleared a path for Dany and Company to escape, leaving himself in severe peril. There were hints of that in the scene as-is-Drogon was taking a lot of hits from the spear-throwers, and he was definitely in pain.
I would stage the scene so that Drogon clears a path to an exit, everybody else starts to run for it, and Dany turns to see Drogon still fighting off the spear throwers. Daario yells the cliché, “We have to go now!” hand outstretched. Dany turns back and forth between Daario and Drogon, and finally decides, Screw it. I’m gonna save my baby by getting him to fly out of here..
None of these changes should really tax the “budget” rules I set out at the beginning of the post. The tweaks don’t add new characters or FX, except changing the Unsullied fight, which would swap fight choreography budget for some FX shots of pouring hot oil on the Unsullied. Most of the changes swap existing scenes for new scenes of about the same length, or add in an extra couple of lines of dialogue-I’d say these changes altogether would add less than a minute of screen time.
Part 2: Sansa at Winterfell-Coming Soon….
I’m a fan of both the A Song of Ice and Fire books and A Game of Thrones TV show. I’m not a book purist, and I think a lot of the choices made in the adaptation from page to the small screen have ranged from acceptable/necessary to perhaps even improvements on the original material.
That said, Season 5 let me down in some places. In some ways, that didn’t surprise me. The material being covered, Books 4 and 5, are the weakest of the series, and stray farthest from the main storylines that the show has stuck pretty close to, even when the books on which they were based veered off into other territory. Still, Season 5 could have been better than it was, and I’ve spent a lot of boring car rides and standing-in-line-waiting time thinking about how to improve it.
This post and the related posts to follow are me playing imaginary show-runner, describing how I would re-write Season 5 of Game of Thrones.
Even though Game of Thrones has a big budget for a TV show, there are still limits to what it can do. Maybe you could write a perfect Game of Thrones TV show with an unlimited VFX budget, runtime, and number of cast members, but that’s not reality. To be fair, I’ve tried to make changes to the season that would stay within the parameters of the real production:
(1) No casting additional characters;
(2) No blow-the-budget VFX, unless I’m willing to edit existing VFX shots out of the script elsewhere;
(3) Keep the runtime within the approximately 10 hours the showrunners have to work with.
Looking things over, I think I did pretty well with all of these except Rule 3, and that one is solely because of Dorne. (Dorne needed a lot of work no matter what, but I don’t think there is any good way to fix Dorne that doesn’t involve devoting more time to it.)
Anyway, I’m beginning with the storylines I felt needed the least work. The second post will cover my changes to Sansa’s story at Winterfell, and the third will deal with Dorne.
So, shall we begin?
The True North and the Wall (Night’s Watch, Wildlings and Baratheons)
I’d mostly leave the Wall and the Baratheon storylines alone. As brutal as they were, they flowed well and showed us the things we needed to see. I thought the change of sending Jon to Hardhome to actually witness the White Walker massacre was brilliant, and managed to get around some of the boring stretches in the books. (Book 4/5 felt a lot like I was watching Jon rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic-lots of activity, without much purpose or hope.)
The one thing I would change is the attempted rape of Gilly. I understand why it was added. Sam needed an impetus not only to leave for the Citadel but to take Gilly with him, and the threat of rape in the Night’s Watch-an organization comprised in large part of criminals-is logical.
The problem is, though the threat of rape is logical, it’s also cliché, and overused on Game of Thrones in general and this season in particular. For reasons I’ll go into later, I think Ramsay’s rape of Sansa is the one that the story this season needs to hang together, as hard as it is to watch. Meryn Trant’s abuse of little girls in Braavos is not as necessary, but I think more justifiable story-wise because of the contrast in the weapons that sisters Sansa and Arya have learned to wield/their places in society have allowed them to learn. (I’d play this theme up more in my revised Dorne storyline as well-more on that later.)
The threat of sexual abuse against Gilly is solely there to give Sam a Big Damn Hero moment. I love Sam, but I didn’t feel this was a good way to get him to where he needed to be. Rape or the threat of rape is all too often the default tension-creator when writers don’t have any better ideas, and that’s really disturbing and not okay.
On top of that, if you’re going to go there with Gilly, it’s a disservice to the character not to really go there. Gilly and every woman she knew-mother and sisters-were raped by her father. How does that affect her reaction to her attackers, and to Sam? What goes into her decision to have sex with Sam after he stands up for her?
So, we need a different moment of heroism for Sam that also involves a threat to Gilly such that Sam realizes she can’t stay at Castle Black. I thought about a lot of convoluted threats, but ultimately came to the conclusion that there’s a simple, straightforward threat that could be just as effective: she’s a Wildling, with no real place in Castle Black.
Once Maester Aemon is dead, Gilly’s position in Castle Black is in jeopardy. I think there needs to be a couple sentences of dialogue between Gilly and Sam confirming that Gilly’s main job was taking care of Maester Aemon.
I also think it would make sense that the other Wildlings don’t accept Gilly because she’s one of Craster’s daughters. Craster may have lived North of the Wall, but he didn’t have much in common with the other Wildlings. I think another sentence or two could be worked into the dialogue illustrating that Gilly is not welcome among the Wildlings from Mance Rayder’s army captured/re-settled south of the Wall.
Instead of having drunk Night’s Watchmen threaten to rape Gilly, a handful of (probably still drunk) angry Night’s Watchmen see Gilly and little Sam and decide they have no right to be in Castle Black. They’re Wildlings, and their place is on the other side of the Wall. They grab Gilly and drag her to the gate, ready to shove her to the other side to probably die of exposure. Sam witnesses this and makes his stand. The fistfight goes down the same as it did in the show, and Ghost bails him out as happened in the show as well. This way, Sam’s conflict ties into the Wildlings versus Night’s Watch, will-they-or-won’t-they-let-the-Wildlings-through arc of the rest of the stories in the North.
The end of the Baratheons was fitting, and I wouldn’t change this storyline at all. Stannis had been skirting the line of ends justifying the means throughout the story, of doing really bad things in service of the supposed “greater good” of him taking his place as the rightful king. Stannis learned too late that there comes a point at which, when given the choice between losing, or winning but becoming a monster in the process, maybe you should just lose. What’s the good of being the “rightful” king if you have to slaughter your own daughter to get there? Who really wants a god on your side if the god expects you to do something that horrible?
Stannis and Melisandre sacrificing Shireen was, to me, the most horrific thing the show has ever done. It had been foreshadowed a long time in bits of Melisandre’s dialogue, but still, wow. I liked how Davos leaving was written and played, that he knew something was wrong but didn’t know what, so he followed Stannis’s orders. I also loved Melisandre’s reaction to being so horribly wrong about everything. She was clearly shaken to her core, but she also pulled a pretty cowardly cut and run and didn’t admit her mistakes.
Braavos (Arya)
Also, I wouldn’t touch the Arya storyline. Yes, it felt disconnected from the rest of the stories, but I think that’s inevitable. They at least managed to tie it back in at the end with Meryn Trant, and by mirroring Arya’s revenge on Trant with her sister’s struggles against Ramsey. Mostly, though, Arya’s Braavos storyline was one of my favorite parts of the books, and it’s just too cool to pass up.
King’s Landing (Tyrells, Cersei, Tommen and the High Sparrow)
I would only make a very, very minor tweak to the King’s Landing storyline. For the most part, this, too, was as good as or better than the books. I like that because we don’t have the POV limits of the books, we get to see the Queen of Thorns and, to a lesser extent, Margaery wield some impressive political power.
My one tweak to this storyline would be with Loras. I was glad when the show actually let Loras have a sex life to go along with his love for Renly (again thanks to the power of more POVs), but it seems like as the seasons go on, Loras has been reduced to “the gay guy.” In a lot of ways, I prefer the book version of Loras, who is so deeply affected by Renly’s death that he joins the Kingsguard and takes a vow of celibacy.
Loras is reckless and arrogant in the books, but his recklessness with Olyvar comes off as petulance with a side of thinking with his dick. I’m cool with the Loras/Olyvar development itself replacing the Kingsgaurd/celibacy route. Because Margaery is a more significant character in the show than in the books, it works to weave Loras into her storyline rather than into Jaime’s, and the changes to Jaime’s storyline mean Loras wouldn’t have been included there anyway.
However, I think if you’re not going to have Loras double down on the whole chivalry and honor schtick in response to Renly’s death, you should send him completely in the opposite direction. This wouldn’t require changing what Loras does on the show, just what he says. When Margaery walks in on Loras in bed with Olyvar and chastises him for not being more careful, Loras’s response should be bitter and jaded, that he thinks all the airs and propriety everyone puts on are a big joke. Maybe he could even throw a barb at Margaery for her marriage to tween Tommen. In general, I think this was a wasted opportunity to show that back when Loras was fighting for Renly, he was a true believer, but after seeing all the machinations it’s taken to get Margaery installed as queen, he’s totally disillusioned. Now he recognizes, as Catelyn said, he was a foolish knight of summer, and winter is here.
I have one other very minor tweak. There were several missed, organic opportunities for more male nudity. I don’t exactly want to see the actors’ penises, but the fact that they were so carefully cutting away from dicks was distracting. (And I’m not talking only about Loras and Olyvar-the most distracting one was how they shot the old, fat guy’s Sparrow-led walk of shame out of the brothel.)
Journey Through Essos and Meereen (Dany & Co., Tyrion and Jorah)
Similarly, I think Dany’s storyline and the storyline of getting Tyrion and Jorah to Meereen are solid overall and just need some minor tweaks. I know most people aren’t fans of Dany’s time stuck in Meereen in the books. It’s not my favorite part, either, but I think it’s an important beat in Dany’s development as a leader. She needs to try to govern, to run into major culture clashes, to stick around long enough to see what happens in the wake of her trail of fire and blood, and to fail a little, too.
As much as I like Ser Barristan, I approve of the decision to kill him off early. Dany really needed to be forced to make decisions without experienced advisors, and as long as Barristan was alive, that wasn’t going to happen. I also like the addition of the tentative Greyworm/Missandei relationship. I’m curious to see how that gets explored next season.
As for Tyrion, thank you, showrunners, for getting him to Meereen so much faster than in the books. I do not miss Jon Connington and Young Griff at all, and I thought giving the big parts of Tyrion’s journey to Varys and Jorah-greyscale and all-was a brilliant way to prune characters and storylines. I love it whenever Varys and Tyrion get to snark at each other, and I was surprised at how much I liked Tyrion and Jorah’s scene chemistry. The way that they recited that poem together as they made their way through the ruins of Valyria made me realize that they both have an odd mix of jadedness and romanticism.
For the changes: first, though plot-wise, the Unsullied need to get their butts kicked in the streets of Meereen, the way the fights were staged made them look kind of incompetent. I get that the Unsullied are trained for the battlefield and not for street fighting, but still. There were a few times where we saw that the Sons of the Harpy beat the Unsullied because they played dirty (the early scene with the prostitute, a scene where three Unsullied are lured to a dead end and surrounded, etc.).
I think there should have been more of those scenes of them playing dirty, perhaps dumping hot oil from windows when the Unsullied got trapped in the alleyway. Ser Barristan and Greyworm should still have gone down swinging, but it would have worked better overall if the unnamed Unsullied ranks around them were thinned out other than by hand-to-hand combat.
Second-and this one annoys me more than the rest-when enslaved Jorah goes out into the arena to see Dany for the first time, leaving Tyrion behind, what the hell was up with the big dude who magically appeared to cleave Tyrion’s chains? It was so random, and so obviously inserted to get Tyrion into the arena at the appropriate time.
I understand the need for an unwieldy plot device to let Jorah into the arena but keep Tyrion out until the fight is over, but it could have been done in a much subtler form than a random dude with an ax. Though still not very elegant, I think it would have been much better if Tyrion was manacled but not chained in place, and the reason he can’t get out right away is he’s not tall enough to reach the lever to open the arena gate. All it would take would be a ten-second shot of Tyrion running after Jorah, getting to the gate and realizing he’s screwed, and then a couple three-second cuts during Jorah’s fight to Tyrion using his brains and trying to throw a chain over the lever to get it to open.
Third, I like the way the show depicted all hell breaking loose in the main arena with the Sons of the Harpy. (And here I was sure Hizdahr was behind it all.) I like that Dany’s true friends gathered around her, and I like that they all recognized they were totally screwed, until Drogon arrived. The one thing I didn’t like was that when Dany jumped on Drogon’s back, the scene was staged such that it looked like she was leaving her friends behind-like “Yeah, thanks for risking your lives for me, but I’ve gotta peace out with my dragon-baby. Good luck with the rest of the murdering hordes!”
I think the way to fix this is to take a page from the book. In the book, Dany jumps into the arena and onto Drogon to save Drogon from being killed. I think the scene would have played so much better if Drogon had cleared a path for Dany and Company to escape, leaving himself in severe peril. There were hints of that in the scene as-is-Drogon was taking a lot of hits from the spear-throwers, and he was definitely in pain.
I would stage the scene so that Drogon clears a path to an exit, everybody else starts to run for it, and Dany turns to see Drogon still fighting off the spear throwers. Daario yells the cliché, “We have to go now!” hand outstretched. Dany turns back and forth between Daario and Drogon, and finally decides, Screw it. I’m gonna save my baby by getting him to fly out of here..
None of these changes should really tax the “budget” rules I set out at the beginning of the post. The tweaks don’t add new characters or FX, except changing the Unsullied fight, which would swap fight choreography budget for some FX shots of pouring hot oil on the Unsullied. Most of the changes swap existing scenes for new scenes of about the same length, or add in an extra couple of lines of dialogue-I’d say these changes altogether would add less than a minute of screen time.
Part 2: Sansa at Winterfell-Coming Soon….