It leaked Friday afternoon, but the official trailer for Game of Thrones‘ fifth season was properly released on their Facebook page just a few hours later
In case you’ve forgotten in the long months since the season four finale, the heroes and villains of Westeros have never been spread further apart across the continents than they are at this point in the story, and the trailer makes that undoubtedly clear. New regions of the Westerosi landscape are on display and with that comes a new color palette, new characters and brand new sets. Most important of all, however, may be that the Sand Snakes (Prince Oberyn’s infamous daughters) make their debut in short, but badass teases. One way or another, they’re going to play a big part in the show this year.
It looks like Grizzly Bomb’s more handsome staffers, Brian Kronner and I, have successfully predicted that season five is taking some enormous liberties with the source material going forward, omitting at least one pretty large subplot entirely from what I can tell. As Kronner and I have mentioned a few times, this isn’t necessarily bad news – Not only does this trim the fat and make plots develop more directly (something far more important in television as opposed to a book series), it keeps readers on their toes just as much as the show-watchers, and Game of Thrones is considerably more enjoyable when you’re not scrutinizing a checklist while the episodes unfold.
This section of the storyline, however is one where book readers I’ve spoken to frequently check out, so it’ll be interesting to see if the show takes a similar dip. Game of Thrones has enjoyed an absurd amount of popularity for four years in a row, and while the optimist in me wants to see that continue to grow, the realist in me knows how fickle a fanbase can be. In any event, the last two books were perfectly enjoyable to me and the largest complaint about them (“nothing is even happening! They just sit around and think about things”) just can’t be included in a visual medium. There will have to be some new events included or the show will have to start encroaching on the yet-unpublished Winds of Winter novel that, by the way, is apparently not coming before the end of 2015. Oh, I just made myself sad.
Images: HBO
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