‘Game Of Thrones’ Creator George R.R. Martin Once Again Slams Hollywood’s Habit Of Disrespecting Source Materials: “They Never Make It Better”
In taking time away from not writing The Winds of Winter to offer his thoughts on the current entertainment landscape, Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin has once again voiced his frustration with Hollywood’s habit of running rough shod over any original work they choose to adapt for the small or big screens.
RELATED: George R.R. Martin And Neil Gaiman Claim They “Hate” Hollywood’s Tendency To Alter Source Material
Recalling his previous criticism of Hollywood’s disrespectful attitude in a May 24th post made to his personal blog, Martin lamented, “very little has changed since then. If anything, things have gotten worse.”
“Everywhere you look, there are more screenwriters and producers eager to take great stories and ‘make them their own,'” opined the Elden Ring writer. “It does not seem to matter whether the source material was written by Stan Lee, Charles Dickens, Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl, Ursula K. Le Guin, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Raymond Chandler, Jane Austen, or… well, anyone. No matter how major a writer it is, no matter how great the book, there always seems to be someone on hand who thinks he can do better, eager to take the story and ‘improve’ on it.
“‘The book is the book, the film is the film,’ they will tell you, as if they were saying something profound,” Martin further criticized. “Then they make the story their own. They never make it better, though. Nine hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand, they make it worse.”
Speaking to his last point, Martin then noted that, “Once in a while, though, we do get a really good adaptation of a really good book, and when that happens , it deserves applause.”
Moving to reveal the apparent reason for his blog post, the author then asserted, “I can came across one of those instances recently, when I binged the new FX version of SHOGUN.”
“The fascinating thing is that while the old and new versions have some significant differences — the subtitles that make the Japanese dialogue intelligible to English speaking viewers being the biggest — they are both faithful to the Clavell novel in their own way,” Martin opined of the series. “I think the author would have been pleased. Both old and new screenwriters did honor to the source material, and gave us terrific adaptations, resisting the impulse to ‘make it their own.'”
As noted above, this is not the first time the slow-working author has taken issue with Hollywood’s self-aggrandizing approach to adapting other creators’ stories.
Speaking to the topic during a 2022 speaking engagement held in promotion of his then-upcoming The Rise of the Dragon: An Illustrated History of the Targaryen Dynasty, Volume One reference book, Martin asserted, “How faithful do you have to be? Some people don’t feel that they have to be faithful at all.”
“There’s this phrase that goes around: ‘I’m going to make it my own,'” he continued. “I hate that phrase. And I think Neil [Gaiman] probably hates that phrase, too.”
Adding his thoughts to the conversation, the event’s host, Sandman creator Neil Gaiman, asserted in reply, “I do.”
“I spent 30 years watching people make Sandman their own,” he recalled. “And some of those people hadn’t even read Sandman to make it their own, they’d just flipped through a few comics or something.”
However, recognizing that certain changes are sometimes necessary to help translate a story to a completely different medium, Martin did offer the clarification that, sometimes, “there are changes that you have to make — or that you’re called upon to make — that I think are legitimate.” And there are other ones that are not legitimate.”
As of writing, The Winds of Winter has yet to receive an official release date.
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