Several "Game of Thrones"

A problem has arisen in Game of Thrones, the HBO series that somehow has reached cult status against the current of previous such fantastic stories. Generally it has survived the transition from book to screen; the characters and drama remain complex and true to the book but the subtlety of the written word is beginning to show.

Many of the characters in the book exhibit that unlikely thought process of thinking in the moment, without any hint of previous events or responsibilities, future plans or aspirations. So schemers do explain themselves in the present but never indict themselves in the past or for the future. That time isolation can give a very good insight into character without revealing plot too much. So we know what characters are doing but are never sure why, never sure of their loyalties or their ambitions.

This is difficult in cinema without soliloquies. The series has chosen to add some scenes to demonstrate personality that otherwise would have been revealed in written interior dialogue. So Littlefinger's opaque character becomes more transparent in a truly ugly brothel scene. Greyjoy's fragile adolescent character gradually comes apart in a newly created mistaken identity scene with his sister that explodes with his father. Cersei has a visual moment of maternal terror when Joffry threatens her after being slapped.

The danger in the rewrite is in trying to keep up with the book's considerable drama. The audience could understand the Littlefinger scene, perhaps even sympathize with the motives of its creation but... it was too much. The Greyjoy horseback scene was worse because it was unnecessary; the two do fine in the chance encounter in the book where the sister reveals herself to be a confident, cynical, dangerous woman. I must admit the Cersei scene was spot on.

But one gets the feeling that the screenwriters are not just gilding the lily, they are repeating it. If the incest of the Lannisters works, duplicate it in the Greyjoys. If egocentric, cold, dispassionate sex is the norm--the only young people in love are Daenerys and her savage--then do it in spades with Littlefinger. What's been added on looks like a hybrid of what has worked before and this story is so good it doesn't need it. Worse, it looks like an effort to stick to a formula.

As everyone learns in chess, it's hard to play another's game.