The father of Game of Thrones has little taste for adaptations of literary works for cinema or series, describing them in a post published on his blog as very often inferior to the original material. “She never makes them better,” he says.
George RR Martin has a vague soul. And take up the pen to let it be known. Or rather the keyboard. In a post published on his blog and entitled The Tango Adaptationpublished this May 24, the creator of the Game of Thrones saga criticizes the adaptations of novels into films and television series, believing that they “never make them better”. And not just a little. For him, they do not do justice to the original material in 99.9% of cases. Big.
For the creator of Game of Thrones, it’s the best series ending of all time!
Recalling a meeting during a panel that he had in 2022 with Neil Gaiman, creator of the Sandman comic strip, season 2 of which is due to arrive soon on Netflix, he writes that “Very little has changed” since the end of season 1 of this series.
Citing famous authors like Charles Dickens, Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl, JRR Tolkien, Mark Twain, Raymond Chandler and Jane Austen, the creator of Game of Thrones unfolds his argument:
“No matter how great a writer, no matter how good the book, there always seems to be someone who thinks they can do better, willing to take the story and make it better.”The Book is the book, the film is the film” they will tell you, as if they are saying something profound. Then they make the story their own.
A little nuance for the road
He still tempers his judgment a little further. “Every once in a while, though, we get a really good adaptation of a really good book, and when that happens, it deserves applause.” And to cite the indeed formidable and recent series Shogun, adapted from the work of James Clavell. An adaptation which “was a landmark” for George RR Martin.
“I must admit that I was skeptical when I first heard that they were preparing another version of Clavell’s novel” he writes; “but I’m glad they did it. The new Shogun looks great. Better than Chamberlain’s version? I don’t know. I haven’t watched the 1980 miniseries since, well, 1980. She was excellent too.
I think the author would have been happy [de cette nouvelle adaptation]. Screenwriters, old and new, have done justice to the original material, and given us terrific adaptations, resisting the urge to appropriate it.
This is at least a beautiful declaration of love in any case. Not without a certain irony, he doesn’t say a word in his post about the adaptation of his own saga, orchestrated on screen by the duo David Benioff and DB Weiss.