George R.R. Martin bashed Hollywood screenwriters and producers for believing they can “improve” on the source material of stand-out authors such as Ian Fleming, Stan Lee, J.R.R. Tolkien, and others when they attempt to adapt their stories to film or television.
George R.R. Martin via Game of Thrones YouTube
In a recent blog post, Martin decried, “Everywhere you look, there are more screenwriters and producers eager to take great stories and ‘make them their own.’ 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.”
He continued, “‘The book is the book, the film is the film,’ they will tell you, as if they were saying something profound. 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.”
Ismael Cruz Córdova as Arondir in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2024), Amazon MGM Studios
READ: ‘A Throne Of Bones’ Novelist Explains Where George R.R. Martin Went Wrong With ‘Game Of Thrones’
However, he did note that sometimes they do indeed get it right as he praised FX’s recent Shogun adaptation, “Once in a while, though, we do get a really good adaptation of a really good book, and when that happens , it deserves applause. I can (sp?) came across one of those instances recently, when I binged the new FX version of SHOGUN.”
He later praised, “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.’”
Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones (2019), HBO
This is not the first time Martin has made such comments. Back in 2022, Martin alongside novelist Neil Gaiman spoke on the subject during an appearance at the New York City’s Symphony Space.
As reported by Variety, Martin rhetorically asked, “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.’ I hate that phrase. And I think Neil probably hates that phrase, too.”
Gaiman responded, “I do. I spent 30 years watching people make ‘Sandman’ their own. 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.”
A scene from Game of Thrones (2019), HBO
Martin then detailed, “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.”
Variety’s Ethan Shanfeld then details Martin recalled Roger Zelazny adapting The Last Defender of Camelot for The Twilight Zone and that “due to budget constraints, being forced to choose between having horses or an elaborate Stonehenge-esque set for a battle scene.” Martin did not want to make the decision so he left it up to Zelazny who chose to cut the horses.
Martin explained, “That, to my mind, is the kind of stuff you are called upon to do in Hollywood that is legitimate.” He even noted this is why the Iron Throne is not depicted in the show as it is written in the books, “Why is the Iron Throne in Game of Thrones not the Iron Throne as described in the books? Why is it not 15 feet high and made of 10,000 swords? Because the ceiling in our soundstage was not 15 feet high! We couldn’t fit in in there, and they weren’t willing to give us St. Paul’s Cathedral or Westminster Abbey to shoot our little show in.”
Pilou Asbæk as Euron Greyjoy and Lena Headey as Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones (2019), HBO
It’s unclear how sincere Martin actually is on this topic given he only started speaking out on it following intense dislike of HBO’s Game of Thrones ending. In fact, Martin has changed his tune on how closely he worked with HBO on adapting the final seasons of the show.
In 2019, Martin told The Guardian that the ending he has in his head for the books and what was delivered on the show are “not the same thing, although they are very closely related to each other.”
Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones (2019), HBO
However, Martin has since attempted to distance himself from the show’s ending. In August 2022, he informed The New York Times, “By Season 5 and 6, and certainly 7 and 8, I was pretty much out of the loop.”
As for why he was seemingly out of the loop, he said, “I don’t know — you have to ask Dan and David.”
He also informed the outlet that “my ending will be very different.”
David Benioff and D. B. Weiss speaking at the 2016 San Diego Comic Con International, for “Game of Thrones”, at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California. Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
What do you make of Martin’s comments?
