IGN recently got to sit down and watch 15 minutes of footage from HBO's upcoming series, A Game of Thrones. You can read all about what they saw and what they thought about it here.
Among the most interesting parts of the article was the writer's thoughts on Eddard Stark's character.
I really got a great "retired gunslinger" feel from Bean's performance as Ned - a man who's tried very hard to leave his past life of warring and violence behind him but gets sucked back in to a world that he's desperately tried to protect his family from.
I never really thought of Ned in those terms, and if that is the way Sean Bean is trying to play it I'll be very interested to see how that comes out on screen.
All of the footage seen seems to have impressed, and the writer has nothing but good things to say about the upcoming series.
As for the rest of us poor shmucks, we'll just have to wait for April 17th.
2 comments:
I got that feeling about Ned from the book, too. He doesn't want to go back and deal with everything that being the Hand will mean.
I think it's a very interesting way to view the character.
I never saw him as running away from the violence that would come with the position. Ned never seems to shy away from war. I'm not saying that he is a war monger, rather that he does his duty as it pertains to battle. He rode with Robert during the rebellion and never is heard to complain about going to war to crush the Greyjoy rebellion.
It seems to me that it is the politics that he hates. The lying, conniving, manipulating politics of the south. He doesn't want anything to do with them. He is more upset with the thought of going south to face that than he is at the beginning of A Game of Thrones when he tells Catelyn that one day soon he will have to ride north to deal with Mance Raider.
I think that had Ned really believed that danger awaited him he certainly would have left all of his children behind. It isn't until he arrives that he understands the kind of danger he has put his children in and tries to send them away.
But as I said, it is very interesting way to approach the character and I can't wait to see how it comes out on screen!
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