Who’s Driving the Dragon towards the series finale?
Many people commenting on yesterday’s post stated unequivocally that if Bran Stark turns out to be the Night King, that it would be George R.R. Martin (not showrunners Benioff and Weiss) fault (these are just a few of the many tweets I got on this subject since yesterday, thanks to everyone who commented).
Why Bran Stark Is not the Night King
Unless Benioff and Weiss Really Don’t Care About Logic
medium.com
I suspect much of this comes from way back when Benioff & Weiss (B & W) explained how their relationship with Mr. Martin (GRRM) worked in a few interviews. In one, they said:
“We know what the end is, and we’re barreling toward it.”
And in another interview in 2015 Benioff said:
“Last year we went out to Santa Fe for a week to sit down with him [Martin] and just talk through where things are going, because we don’t know if we are going to catch up and where exactly that would be. If you know the ending, then you can lay the groundwork for it. And so we want to know how everything ends. We want to be able to set things up. So we just sat down with him and literally went through every character.”
Martin also chimed in (somewhat more ominously) in that the same interview, saying:
“I can give them the broad strokes of what I intend to write, but the details aren’t there yet. I’m hopeful that I can not let them catch up with me.”
Guess, we can’t win them all?
And the previous article also contained a few cautionary notes, one from Benioff, who said:
“We’ve had a lot of conversations with George, and he makes a lot of stuff up as he’s writing it. Even while we talk to him about the ending, it doesn’t mean that that ending that he has currently conceived is going to be the ending when he eventually writes it.”
And Weiss added:
“It’s like looking at a landscape and saying, OK, there’s a mountain over there, and I know that I’m getting to that mountain. There’s an event that’s going to happen, and I know that I’m moving in the general direction of that event, but what’s between where I’m standing now and that thing off on the horizon, I’m not totally sure. I’ll know when I get there, and then I’ll see what the terrain looks like around me and I’ll choose my path once I get closer to it. He figures a lot of this stuff as he goes. He always says he’s a gardener, not an architect.”
So, is it GRRM’s “fault?”
Is Game of Thrones a Mild Procedure or Radical Surgery on ASOIAF?
Most telling was, perhaps, this comment from David Benioff:
“One of the most common questions we’ll get asked is, ‘Why did you change this from the books?’ The answer is always the same, really. It’s just because we thought it would be better for the series.”
And that is where I think the trouble really started, and there has been trouble, just yesterday we saw the director of the “Beyond the Wall” episode admitting to time-line problems (which is an understatement).
I have been writing about the massive leaps in logic and empty plot holes for over two years now (In my Season 6 recaps I would award a Jar Jar Binks award every week to the most absurd B & W moment of each episode and I even wrote a 10 part series about the things that annoyed me the most).
GRRM wrote books that were meticulously plotted. Whenever a surprise happened, if I went back and re-read the books, I was rewarded with the many carefully placed details that led to each twist. It never felt random and at no point did I say to myself, “that makes no damn sense.”
And here is the kicker, I don’t think GRRM likes the show or agrees with the choices that they are making either. How do I know this?
Well he has hinted (passive aggressively) at a feud for years (since about the time B & W went off book) but yesterday he said it pretty explicitly:
“The book series and TV adaptation go their separate ways. On the screen characters are killed right and left. About twenty of them have died already, which are quite alive to me and will appear in a new book.”
He also provides pointed context to the “gardener” comment of B & W in 2015:
Martin divides writers into two types: architects who create their worlds, thinking about the smallest details before starting to write; and gardeners, who advocate for improvisation. He attributes himself to the second type. “This approach, of course, has its side effects,” Martin stated. “Several times the plot has led me to a dead end, from where there is no way out. I had to go back and rewrite everything again.”
Which seems to be a fairly pointed attack on where Benioff and Weiss are headed when you combine it with Martins admission, in the interview, that he no longer watches Game of Thrones. Even funnier was the reason he gave, he said he was too busy (want proof of the feud, compare that statement to one of GRRM’s most recent tweets, he looks really busy).
Even if you believe there was a time when GRRM and B & W were playing nice together and had carefully plotted out an end state, it sure sounds like those halcyon days are long gone.
Look, I could 100% be wrong. But it is my contention, somewhat borne out by interviews and events, that GRRM and B & W are at extreme odds about what has happened on the television show. None of us will probably ever know the truth, but there is some decent additional anecdotal evidence:
- The books never leave gigantic holes, the show leaves holes so wide you could drive a truck through them on a regular basis.
- How many interviews have you seen with GRRM being complementary of the show since 2015? I haven’t seen any (and I have seen many stories that suggest that the parties are feuding).
- Benioff and Weiss rarely refer to GRRM or the source material in the “Inside the Episode” segments (usually they just talk about the historical events that they want to incorporate).
*Update* The day after GRRM said that he did not watch Game of Thrones, he suggested that something was lost in translation during the interview and that he was just behind on watching Season 7. Sounds like an attempt to smooth the waters with HBO to me (non-denial denial?).
Letting Go of Book Envy (Does It All Really Matter?)
Trust me, I understand, lots of people are angry with George R.R. Martin for taking so long to finish ‘The Winds of Winter’ (and, at times, I have been one of those angry people myself). You, the person reading this right now, might even be furious with GRRM, and to some extent that is understandable.
It even might be natural to start identifying more closely with the people who continue to deliver highly entertaining Game of Thrones content than with the creator of Game of Thrones (who can at times can seem distant and prickly).
And obviously, many people love what Benioff and Weiss do (although, after Seasons 6 and 7, I attribute this devotion more directly to Stockholm Syndrome than to true fanaticism).
In fairness to the Benioff and Weiss fans, the showrunners do an amazing job of presenting the ASOIAF universe visually and have done a better job of compressing thousands of pages of dense and complex text into “must see television” than anyone else could have.
It is also possible that I could have aged out of understanding what makes television entertaining for younger viewers (I can’t fathom how anyone could watch a Fast and Furious movie in its entirety, for instance, yet millions of people do).
Look, I am old school, I want things to follow logically. I like when there are surprises but I want the surprises to follow the internal logic of the plot and character arcs. I don’t mind suspending disbelief, but I want to be surprised by how smart a twist is as opposed to how it was entirely unpredictable. The Kaiser Sose was cool because Kevin Spacey gave you hints throughout his performance of Verbal Kint that a careful watcher could put together.
Regardless of the reasons, I do still enjoy the show (despite being constantly outraged by the choices that B & W make). I also long for the next book, and hope it will “set everything straight” and make sense of the ASOIAF universe again. There is, however, a part of me that GRRM has just had enough of the whole thing and will never finish ‘The Winds of Winter.’
I suspect writing 1000 page books is much easier when you are hungry for success and don’t have to answer to the expectations of millions of fans on every choice you make (and I am sure this is frustrating for Benioff and Weiss too, mea culpa).
Whatever happens, I will keep writing what I write, but I will try very hard to make seem less personal.
I can’t stop thinking that many of the choices Benioff and Weiss have made are totally insane (they are) but I can certainly be more congratulatory of the many things that they do well (they do great with Cersei and with CGI dragons for instance).
I guess I will try to stop worrying and learn to love the spectacle. In a perfect world, I will get to enjoy some major ‘ event television’ and later enjoy the books that eventually set everything straight (keeping my fingers crossed).
Also, serious gratitude for all the thousands of reads and tweets!
If you missed my recap last week, here it is:
And here is a piece on Tyrion that I wrote earlier this week:
Josh is a 100% reader-funded blogger and freelance writer. Please consider following him on Twitter, throwing a tip into his hat on Patreon, or adding his blog OnPirateSatellite to your feeds. Also apparently, Medium might start paying writers based on “claps,” so feel free to clap liberally (this is actually true?).
