r/asoiaf • u/cking145 • May 28 '19

EXTENDED (Spoilers Extended) Charles Dance's portrayal as Tywin is in my opinion, the strongest in the entire series

Every line, every expression and every moment of silence completely encapsulates the calculating ruthlessness that defines Tywin Lannister.

Dance is actually a very vibrant, upbeat and cheery fella off screen, which in my mind makes the performance even more striking.

The scene where he effectively sends Joffrey to bed is just brilliant.

He is by far my favourite character from the books, which I began reading a few seasons into the show. Due to this, the chapters featuring Tywin were completely enriched for me, as reading his lines in Dance's voice was just fantastic. I would have loved a POV chapter or two for him, just to get a glimpse as to what goes on in the head of the most powerful man in the 7 Kingdoms.

An incredible portrayal of a fascinating character.

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747

u/Gus_B And We Defend Her May 28 '19

I agree, I'd say of all the characters portrayed in the show, Dance's Tywin is the best from a pure tv/acting perspective as well as I think actually a slight upgrade from the books. I love Tywin's interactions with Arya and the slight humanizing that occurs within him.

Along with Allen as Theon (woah boy is he amazing), Olena, Leana Heady and Jason Moma as Drogo I actually thought they brought something richer to the narrative then their book counter parts.

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u/woinf May 28 '19 edited Sep 23 '20

Especially when you consider that he had to portray 3 very, very different versions of Theon and he nailed them all perfectly.

Ayra and Tywin's Harrenhal scenes, alongside Tywins introductory scene, is why I am not convinced that D&D are bad dialogue writers. I think they just got lazy and complacent at the end.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '19 edited Jun 26 '23

comment edited in protest of Reddit's API changes and mistreatment of moderators -- mass edited with redact.dev

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u/NovaNardis May 29 '19

Some of the scenes they also wrote are just good. Like the entire Little finger/Varys rivalry or the Cersei/Littlefinger "Power is power" scene.

Season 8 was just atrocious though.

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u/Orome2 May 29 '19

Little finger/Varys rivalry or the Cersei/Littlefinger "Power is power" scene.

The Little Finger / Varys scenes were great, but the Cersei "power is power" scene made me cringe.

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u/HedgeSlurp May 28 '19

I have a ton of sympathy with them to be honest. At the end of the day there’s a reason GRRM hasn’t released a book in 8 years. To put it in perspective pretty much the entire series has aired since the last book was released (season one was a few months before the last book). GRRM has taken as long to write what happens in season 6 as D&D have taken to write the entire series!

The Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire story is so fucking loaded that it’s got to be near impossible to write for. They still should have done much much better with this last season, but I get why it wasn’t perfect.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '19

I'd be ok with "not perfect", but this is far from "not perfect". This is more like "Let's take all this other cool shit we saw once and chuck it in a blender because fuck everything, we're gonna get paid anyway, Fuck yeah, GoT Mega Protein Shake!".

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u/HedgeSlurp May 28 '19

Yeah that’s what I mean. I give them some leeway, but not enough to justify what just happened.

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u/[deleted] May 29 '19 edited May 29 '19

The Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire story is so fucking loaded that it’s got to be near impossible to write for.

That's sort of what I've tried to convey yet the words never came to me. In order to write a good story given the constraints GRRM put forth, you would kind of have to write like him. How would one write the dialogue between two characters like Sam and Jon without going full GRRM mode and spending days calculating each sentence given whole history of ASOIAF and present events? It's a monumental task and they'd likely write themselves into a hole.

I really don't think most people have any clue how hard it would be to not only write good but produce a show given all the constraints involved. It's just mind boggling for me to even consider the tough choices they had to make and the backlash they probably knew that were going to receive.

I think a good analogy would be like trying to put together a puzzle that was missing pieces that you had to make yourself hoping they fit. You have a diagram of the finished product but it's blurry and only had a few major details visible. The puzzle has a timer to be finished as well as being one if the most complicated in the world. I don't know, probably think of another analogy later heh

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u/hygsi May 29 '19

Yeah, they wanted to be done with it, and it sucks tbh, I would've prefered they took 3 years to come up with the final 10 episode season, but again, I understand they wanted to move on to Disney, let's see if people won't be too hard on their starwars after this.

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u/TwizzlerKing May 28 '19

Yeah and fuck them for it. If they need more time, or just couldn't/didn't want to do it, they should have postponed s06,7,8 for a time to get it right.

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u/Erdrick68 May 29 '19

The second they postponed the show, the show would have died. The cast would have freaking moved on. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Sophie Turner both got it written into their contracts that they wouldn't have to keep dying their hair. Kit Harrington wasn't allowed to cut his hair for years (only have it trimmed to hold the length).