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“I don’t mind being part of a team, but there’s something in me that wants to be the captain of the team,” Martin said. “When you’re writing short stories and novels, yes you may have editors and all that, but essentially the writer is king. The writer decides how everything is going to be; people can give suggestions, and you can say yes or no to them. Now, when you get involved in television and film, um… you’re working with a large team.”
“It’s hard enough to come up with a good story and good characters and things like that, but in television and film not only does the writer have to come up with that, but then he has to fight for it politically,” Martin said. “In some cases there’s butting heads and clashing egos and there’s debates.”
“It can also be traumatic because sometimes their creative vision and your creative vision don’t match, and you get the famous creative differences thing — that leads to a lot of conflict,” Martin said of his relationship with developing his books into TV shows.
“You get totally extraneous things like the studio or the network weighing in, and they have some particular thing that has nothing to do with story, but relates to, ‘Well this character has a very high Q Rating so let’s give him a lot more stuff to do even though he’s a rather unimportant character,'” Martin explained.
I think there's an element of network fuckery going on in the decision making. The show is so popular that it doesn't really matter if they piss off swathes of hardcore fans as long as the majority are happy. It seems incredibly short sighted though, do you want to create something with an enduring legacy like the Wire or Breaking Bad, or do you want to make another Lost?
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frankenbike-
I think there's an element of network fuckery going on in the decision making. The show is so popular that it doesn't really matter if they piss off swathes of hardcore fans as long as the majority are happy. It seems incredibly short sighted though, do you want to create something with an enduring legacy like the Wire or Breaking Bad, or do you want to make another Lost?
I don't get why they're wrapping it up at 7 seasons though. It was so popular they could have carried on for a while. Unless the actors were getting fed up and planning on quitting then they could have spent a few more years doing the story properly rather than madly rushing everyone into place in season 6, then binning the undead storyline in one episode, most the support armies and a dragon in 5mins in the next, Daenerys from strong but a bit rash to Mad Queen in a couple of conversations and Brienne from Hound level badassery to blubbering girlfriend after a bunk up
duncs
I do not understand why the writers spend half the episode as basically a joke fest - like some sort of Game of Thrones blooper reel, where each character is a caricature of themselves. And then! They rush through these HUGE plot lines. Eg - Varys and Tyrion sitting in the throne room. How many seasons of Daenerys proving her worth as queen, through countless challenging situations did we just watch? And in a five min chat, after barely saying a line all season, Varys has changed his mind.
I don’t think I’ve ever been so disappointed with a TV series. The mad queen narrative has come out of nowhere and stripped Daenerys of all her intelligence and Bran seems to have been replaced by an almost mute cyborg. It feels like writing by checkbox. My favourite part of GOT has always been the considered pace and time they spent on developing multi faceted characters. Season 7 wasn’t great but this one dimensional shitshow is something else.
Also, if you had the only two dragons left in existence and had already lost one through being careless and also happen to be travelling toward your enemy, with your now tiny army - wouldn’t you be a little fucking careful?! It stinks of D&D rushing through those checkboxes in an attempt to level the playing field for a final battle.
And breathe.