Calling somebody stupid for not reading the books is uncalled for, particularly considering this is A Song of Ice and Fire we're talking about, a series that's hardly a classic and that consists of mostly extremely overwritten, poorly edited books that run over the 1000 page count just because. If George Martin had a proper editor no tome in his series, except for perhaps the first one, would pass the 500 page mark. It's just not needed, his books are filled to the brim with padding and it's not all too uncommon to read 200 pages in any of the books, bar the first one, where nothing of interest happens. He isn't all that good an author, he just managed to put out something violent, sexual and crude enough to pander to the lowest common denominator.

Source: I have read the books, skipped on the series. Well, read the books might be an overstatement since I couldn't move past the first half of the third book because they have way too much filler and little actual content. Call me up when an abridged version of that is released, I might give it another chance then.

Book readers and authors tend to be snobby against any adaption. I understand in the early days of adaptation, but complaining about it now is pointless. I never once heard of a 100% faithful adaption, every single detail written in a litirature appeared in cinematic form.

This. Just this. I'm kind of wondering what is this fantasy world people live in where bad guys usually get what they deserve. In fact, if we're mostly talking about powerful people, I'd say there's a fundamental principle: good is almost never involved in power.

Hint: the rich and powerful don't care about you. They never did, and if somehow they let your situation get better, it's because they are benefiting from it more than you are. The "game of thrones" just involves less deaths nowadays.

And even if we're talking about violence, it's much easier to see this from a 3rd world country, I suppose. A poor country today would be an approximation of what every developed country was up to 100~200 years ago. And if you don't read news very often, I can tell you: it's brutal. I could never watch Game of Thrones and think it's too brutal. It's not that bad around here, but I can easily see a world like that not too far away.

I believe it comes mostly from wishful thinking. It' very hard to accept that in our world, you can get away with anything if you are sneaky enough. Basically, you only get punished if you are caught. This goes against our desire for justice, makes us feel very unsafe and for some of us, makes us jealous. And unfortunately, it seems evil people are getting smarter and smarter. They learn from the mistakes, evil people in the past made... On the bright side, our world is still better than Westeros because our world has a percentage of people, who care about justice, morals and the safety and happiness of other people. And you are right, there are some parts of our world that make Westeros look like Disney Land. :(