George R.R. Martin feels “things have gotten worse” with TV and film adaptations

[pogopossum]

To be honest I think The Godfather is one of the few books where the film was better.

Quite odd. Never read The Silence of the Lambs. But otherwise II would have reversed it, with The Godfather being the only book that was better than the movie.

However, to state the obvious, (Never stopped me previously) Movies and written works are significantly different. Visuals, great acting or even characterisation (I am thinking of Bogart in MF) can bring life to something where the original work must be judged by significantly different criteria. Judge the movie by its own merits. Regret it when it's poor and the original was great.. But a humdrum book used as a basis for quality cinema happens.. To have a great book and a great movie based on the same story is not just rare, but almost impossible.
I prefer written Tolkien to the movies. But Jackson was making splashy epics (with great actors btw) not just translating JRRT verbatim.
I do agree with Martin in that "adaptations" seemed to be better in the past. But we all remember great movies and forget the thousands of shlocky films produced at the same time.
Martin's other gripe, that scripts or even adaptations get mangled in the interest of money is probably true. Crit him as much as you want, but he is a professional does know what end products do to original scripts.

 

[paeng]

Which is exactly their idea of doing better. What else do they care about?

The writer thinks that those who adapt his novels make changes because they think is work needs improvement. What's more likely is that they make changes because they think those will lead to more viewers.

 

[paeng]

Of screen writers - does "for a modern audience" ring a bell? Look at their profit success.

That's what I mean. As for profit success, there are many factors involved, including doing things like getting A-listers, changing an ending due to negative reaction from focus groups, or more marketing needed.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Money, profit, more people buying tickets (movies), attracting advertisers (television)— it's all the same thing. The screenwriter might cherish hopes of writing an award-winning screenplay and of receiving other accolades, but all the time they are aware of the collaborative nature of television and cinema, and that the words they write are going to have to receive approval from many different people before the script is ever filmed, and that many (if not all) of those people are going to be thinking of profits, and that none of the screenwriter's own ambitions will be fulfilled if the project dies in pre-production. They have to please the money people before they even get the chance to please audiences and critics.

Martin has worked in television, so he knows this very well. I doubt he thinks anyone is trying to improve on his work, except for its marketability.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I really don't understand why they changed the ending in the Watchmen film, after so carefully keeping to the graphic novel, even to the point of directly copying the visual direction of individual scenes.

And I really don't understand how James Herbert's The Fog - a story about a chemical leak from a military installation that drifts across the UK and makes people who breathe it go murderously crazy - is credited as the adapted work in the film of the same name - which is about a group of vengeful pirate coasts who murder people in a US east coast village.

 

[Pyan]

And then there's I, Robot...

 

[Swank]

I really don't understand why they changed the ending in the Watchmen film, after so carefully keeping to the graphic novel, even to the point of directly copying the visual direction of individual scenes.

I think the movie version tightened up the story from a fake alien threat that needed Manhattan to go along with it to Manhattan being the threat. It accomplishes the same things without having this big side story about missing artists and scientists.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I think the movie version tightened up the story from a fake alien threat that needed Manhattan to go along with it to Manhattan being the threat. It accomplishes the same things without having this big side story about missing artists and scientists.

That makes some kind of sense. I'm hoping to re-watch it soon so I'll bear that in mind.

Another film I thought better than the book, though not SFF, was Less Than Zero. I loved the film and so ordered the book, but it wasn't just very different, I also remember it feeling very unstructured. Btw, @JunkMonkey - I know some people remember James Spader as the fresh-faced lead in the Stargate movie, but for me he'll always be Rip, the greasy-haired crack dealer who pushes Robert Downney Jr into prostitution.

 

[Swank]

Another film I thought better than the book, though not SFF, was Less Than Zero. I loved the film and so ordered the book, but it wasn't just very different, I also remember it feeling very unstructured. Btw, @JunkMonkey - I know some people remember James Spader as the fresh-faced lead in the Stargate movie, but for me he'll always be Rip, the greasy-haired crack dealer who pushes Robert Downney Jr into prostitution.

You're both nuts. He's the dude in Sex, Lies and Videotape.

(And Supernova, since we are on a SFF forum.)

 

[Judderman]

I don't think George is complaining about the Game of Thrones adaption as he seemed to be happy with it while it was following his books. After that point it is not an adaption of his books anyway. I think he is complaining about many other examples!
Though for sure there are some superior versions on film.
For one Moby Dick removes a lot of digression and factual whale info.

 

[paeng]

I didn't know about the credit to Herbert. According to the wiki, The Fog was inspired by travels to Stonehenge and the movie Trollenberg Terror.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I didn't know about the credit to Herbert. According to the wiki, The Fog was inspired by travels to Stonehenge and the movie Trollenberg Terror.

I remember it stated in the opening credits: Based on the novel by James Herbert. Unless I remembered wrong?

 

[Pyan]

I remember it stated in the opening credits: Based on the novel by James Herbert. Unless I remembered wrong?

Sorry, Brian.

Although many assume the film to be an adaptation of the 1975 James Herbert novel of the same name, the film is an original work written by American filmmakers Debra Hill and John Carpenter. However, a novelization of the film (written by Dennis Etchison) was also published in 1980. According to Carpenter, the inspiration came from two places: (1) a film called The Trollenberg Terror (1958), a story about alien creatures that live in a cloud at the base of Trollenberg Mountain in Switzerland, and (2) an eerie fog Carpenter and Hill saw during a visit to Stonehenge. The story of the shipwreck and its subsequent plundering was based on the SS Brother Jonathan, an actual shipwreck that took place in 1865 near Goleta, California. A remake, also titled The Fog (2005), was released.

The Fog (1980) - FAQ - IMDb

 

[Brian G Turner]

I get that the story itself is inspired by other things - I'm just pretty sure the opening credits specifically said "Based on the novel by James Herbert", which I thought I'd remembered when I first saw it because I was big in reading Herbert at the time - but I've no way to check.

 

[paranoid marvin]

I don't think George is complaining about the Game of Thrones adaption as he seemed to be happy with it while it was following his books. After that point it is not an adaption of his books anyway. I think he is complaining about many other examples!
Though for sure there are some superior versions on film.
For one Moby Dick removes a lot of digression and factual whale info.

Moby Dick the movie is much more accessible than the book. It's also impossible to vusualise Ahab without seeing Peck's magnificent performance.

But there are quite a number of movies that 'out perform' the books upon which they are based. Blade Runner, 2001, Arnie's Total Recall and The Shining are a few good examples.

 

[Swank]

But there are quite a number of movies that 'out perform' the books upon which they are based. Blade Runner, 2001, Arnie's Total Recall and The Shining are a few good examples.

2001 wasnt a book when filmed.

 

[paeng]

Related: Martin on Furiosa

Max the Fifth | Not a Blog

I would be far more interested in seeing what is happening elsewhere in Australia. How is the Gyro Captain doing as the leader of the Great Northern Tribe (on the ocean somewhere, presumably, maybe up by Darwin or Townsville). How long did he rule? Did he build more gyros? When did Feral Kid succeed him (presumably after he learned to talk), and what happened then? And the Lost Tribe from BEYOND THUNDERDOME, they wind up in a ruined Melbourne at the end, lighting the lights to bring the wanderers home, and telling the tell the tell to the next generation so they remember who they are and where they came from (a beautiful speech). There are stories there that I would love to hear one day, stories richer and deeper and more moving than anything going on in the wastes.

The problem is, Max can’t be part of those stories. The epilogues made it clear; neither the Lost Tribe nor the Great Northern Tribe ever saw the road warrior again…

 

[Cthulhu.Science]

William Goldman wrote The Princess Bride, the novel, or cheekily called the abridged "good parts version" of the original by S. Morgenstern in 1973.
I understand Goldman was very happy with the screenplay for The Princess Bride, the movie (1987). Of course he was involved in that.

Thinking back on the novel it is quite an accomplishment in 1973. This is very early in the genre. And very, very good.

Goldman retrospective in Observer
about the novel in Sparknotes

From the sparknotes article:
Goldman wrote the novel (The Princess Bride) in 1973, and sets his companionable narrative introduction in the same modern time. Prior to writing The Princess Bride, he had been writing books and screenplays for years, including "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "The Stepford Wives," and "Misery." When he created The Princess Bride and set it back before Europe but after blue- jeans, he came after an already towering canon of science fiction and fantasy novels. At the time, Tolkien was the leader of the genre, and J.K. Rowling had not even left her teens, let alone begun to jot down ideas for Harry Potter. Goldman surveyed what had come before him, and then he wrote an entirely novel. The book possesses all of the traditional elements of fantasy, but he introduces them in a way, with a humor and personal touch, that is entirely his own.

 

[Cthulhu.Science]

So does Dune, Annihilation, The Expanse, Stardust, Arrival, Sandman or Three Body Problem count?

How many fantasy books are being adapted in a given decade?

Are you saying that the source material for Stardust and Sandman were WORSE than the adaptations???? OH my!

 

[Cthulhu.Science]

Which is exactly their idea of doing better. What else do they care about?

One of my favorite reviewers of fantasy media (books, movies, TV, games) is a historian that likes to do the analysis of how the depiction of things relate (or not) with how pre-modern life (and combat) actually worked. He's very engaging and honestly quite forgiving often explaining why the filmmaker may have made certain changes even as he comments on other changes that were completely unnecessary.
A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry

He does a six part detailed review of the depiction of the Siege of Gondor both from the books and the film. It is a wonder to behold. He includes a compare/contrast analysis of the changes made by Peter Jackson for the film including an explanation of why film as a medium requires certain types of decisions to be made. A simple example is the description of the Pelennor Fields between Minas Tirith and the Anduin. In the books these are filled with field and vine. Farmstead and fences. Here the farmers fed the city. And the denizens of the city watched in dismay as the Orcs destroyed these beautiful farms. In the movie none of that was there. It was an undifferentiated flat plain. ACOUP goes into some detail why this is a practical choice for filmmaking.
Siege of Gondor

The point being - There often are narrative reasons to change elements of books for films.