George Martin Can't Stop Praising the 'New Game of Thrones' After Watching It
You know you’ve succeeded at succeeding the greatest medieval fantasy when George Martin himself sings you praise.
Game of Thrones was the biggest TV show ever back when it was running, and it still holds up really well today. Throughout the years since its premiere, many showrunners have attempted to make a “new Game of Thrones,” but no one succeeded… Except for the latest claimant that’s not only unanimously dubbed that but also just received a spreadsheet’s worth of compliments from GRRM himself.
George Martin Hates Book-to-Screen Adaptations
In his recent Not A Blog post, the author of A Song of Ice and Fire bashed the movie industry for its entitled approach to adapting books.
The celebrated writer got candid on how screenwriters and producers always try to make the stories they have to adapt “their own” and only end up butchering them in the vast majority of cases.
“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. Then they make the story their own. They never make it better, though. 999 times out of 1000, they make it worse,” he wrote.
However, George Martin admits that there are rare cases when great books get equally great adaptations, and “when that happens, it deserves applause.”
George Martin Can’t Get Enough of Shogun
FX and Hulu ’s Shogun, the recent TV show set in Medieval Japan, didn’t claim to be the “new Game of Thrones” and yet, it was dubbed as such by viewers and critics alike. GRRM admits he was dubious about the upcoming adaptation at first, but as soon as he saw the series for the first time, he was in love.
“The new Shogun is superb. Better than [Richard Chamberlain’s 1980] version, you ask? Hmmm, I don’t know. <...> They are both faithful to the Clavell novel in their own way. 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,’” GRRM added.
According to George Martin, Shogun is among the unique cases of screenwriters paying proper respect to the source material, and he can’t praise the show enough.
Source: George Martin via Not A Blog