rusty_halo ([personal profile] rusty_halo) wrote2006-10-05 12:04 pm

Sean Bean would make the perfect Jaime Lannister

* South Park is awesome.

* Veronica Mars is boring.

* [livejournal.com profile] queenofthorns was right; young Sean Bean would make the perfect Jaime Lannister.

I say this because I just watched the latest from Netflix, Inspector Morse 24: Absolute Conviction. This is an episode of an English detective series from 1992, guest-starring Sean Bean.

He's only in it for about 10 minutes, but between this and Sharpe, I'm thoroughly convinced that he's the ideal Jaime Lannister. His character in this is a semi-bad guy: cold, arrogant, and mocking, but with a simmering anger underneath, and apparently some genuine love for his wife. You could *so* totally see him as Jaime in all those classic moments: coldly ordering Ned's men killed, flashing his cruel smirk, while underneath he is terribly worried about Tyrion and bitter towards Ned; telling Cat that he tossed her kid off a tower, indifference and mockery masking his self-loathing; threatening to send Edmure's newborn baby back to him with a trebuchet.

And, of course, with Sharpe we see Sean Bean playing a character who is a warrior, whose first reaction to any problem is to solve it with violence, and who has an idealistic/romantic core. So he could also play the impetuous warrior side of Jaime and the decent side of Jaime, disillusioned idealist that he is.

Oh yeah, and he's stunningly beautiful, with golden hair, green eyes, and high cheekbones.

See, it didn't quite work for me before, probably because I was thinking of older Sean Bean, who is too rugged to fit that "mirror image of his twin, the beautiful queen," thing that Jaime has going. But younger Sean Bean? Perfect.

Speaking of Jaime, there's a nice discussion of his character development here on the ASOIAF forum.

* I also watched Lady Chatterly (thanks to Sean Bean I've watched more British television in the past two months than I've ever seen in my life). It reminded me that I despise love stories. On the plus side, Sean Bean is very beautiful and occasionally naked in it. And I did like the end; the characters actually had the guts to do what I would've done, which was to say "fuck you" to society and to run away (to Canada!) together. On a metaphorical level, it was more about the irrelevance of the class system, so that was cool.

[identity profile] rusty_halo.livejournal.com 2006-10-05 08:13 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, true.

Didn't Brienne say something like "He looked half a corpse, half a god"?

I think I love every version of Jaime. Every stage of his development makes perfect sense to me.

I suppose my favorite Jaime is SoS Jaime, on the way back to King's Landing. He finally sees how awful he's become, and after a brief bit of wallowing in despair, he makes the decision to change and follows through on it. And rescues Brienne from the bear pit. And never loses his sense of humor; "Good, I only rescue maidens." ;)

[identity profile] queenofthorns.livejournal.com 2006-10-05 08:18 pm (UTC)(link)
I too love Jaime in (almost) all of his incarnations (I find it hard to love him when he's throwing Bran out the window, even though I'm still ashamed that I kind of find the twincest hot there... ahem!)

I just love him the MOST with Brienne, and both the bathtub scene (SWOON!) and the bearpit probably rank as my two favorite scenes in the entire series.

[identity profile] rusty_halo.livejournal.com 2006-10-05 08:28 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh yeah, the bathtub scene is AWESOME. *sigh*

Yeah, I don't even mind him throwing Bran out the window. It's fiction; it's not like a real kid is getting crippled. It's a fascinating moment for Jaime; he clearly doesn't enjoy it, since he speaks to Cersei with loathing. It's also quite logical: the life of some kid he doesn't know for the lives of himself, his lover, and their three children. Makes sense in a cruel way.

Did I ever tell you my mom's reaction when she read the books? She had no problem whatsoever with Jaime, and when I said (playing devil's advocate) "Yes, but he threw a seven year old kid out a window," her answer was "So? That wasn't so bad." But then she had a huge problem with him telling Tyrion the truth about Tysha. Which I guess doesn't really show much, except that my mom is weird. (She also refers to the dragons as "dinosaurs"; I don't think she's ever read fantasy before I gave her this!)