Matt Zoller Seitz of Vulture gave Game of Thrones the highly appropriate label “Lord of the Rings with gonads.” This may be the most perfect description to anyone unfamiliar with the show, being both literally and figuratively applicable (although the show could use more balls to balance out the boobs if they’re interested in equality). The LOTR comparison is useful because it provides the template on which this show rests to an extent. You have fantastic elements, mythological creatures, individual characters with special powers, varying degrees of light and darkness. The acting style is similar—mostly British accents so you know it’s old and serious stuff, somewhat stagey at times, lots of speechifying and rallying of troops.
The contrasts are fascinating, though. Game of Thrones has a couple of great moments that illustrate this difference perfectly, just an episode apart from each other. Last season we saw Theon give a stirring speech to his Ironborn men, only to be knocked out by the back of his head with the perpetrator concluding “let’s go home.” Then, before the Battle on the Blackwater, Tyrion gives a rousing speech of his own to his men, punctuating its lofty eloquence with basic candor: “Those are brave men outside our door… Let’s go kill them.”
It’s a show that takes these medieval sensibilities and fantastic elements that often turn stories into these sweeping epic tales of valor and nobility and makes them relatively realistic and complicated. Lord of the Rings is not a tremendously ambiguous tale. Game of Thrones is this style of story in a post-Sopranos moral landscape, where black and white morality is treated as absurd and the good don’t always prevail, while the corrupt seem to enjoy the greatest success. This is much more reminiscent of the world we live in, in a surreal way.
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