George RR Martin says Hollywood would've ruined Game of Thrones
3:11 AM
Martin has told The South Bank Show that the main reason that he went ahead with a TV series for his books was because Hollywood would've ruined Game of Thrones. During the show he explained the reasons behind making the decisions.
“It took Peter Jackson three movies to make Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and he still had to cut things. It would take three movies for A Storm of Swords alone! And if you figure two movies for A Game of Thrones, and two for A Clash of Kings, you’re already up to seven movies and you’re halfway through. Nobody’s going to commit to that and, of course, they didn’t commit to that.”
He went on further explaining how a movie would've created uncertainties for the series. "The people I met from movies said one of two things. Some said, ‘Oh, we’ll just make the first movie! And after that’s a hit, we’ll make more.’ Well, of course, if you go down that route, then you have Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. Great fantasy, they made the first movie, didn’t do as well as they expected, and you’ll never see a second movie."
He also went on to add that a movie couldn't do justice to the story as they would've been tied down to a particular character for a movie if they wanted to focus on a part. “Alternatively, they said, ‘Well, yes, it’s true it’s too complex; it’s too big the way it is but we have to find the central arc. And we’ve decided the central arc should be Jon Snow.’ So the whole movie would be about Jon Snow or the central arc is Daenerys. The whole movie would be about this exiled princess, and she gives birth to dragons. That might be a good movie, and it might be interesting, but it wouldn’t be my story. My story is a combination of stuff.”
“I didn’t need the money, so I had the power to say the sexiest word in Hollywood – no.”
All we can say is that he sure made the right choice.
Source: Guardian
1 comments
I surely agree with a series instead of a film, and I love the series, there is only one problem from my perspective, a music composer's perspective, which is:
ReplyDeleteThough series are able to create exceptional motifs to so many characters, objects, ideas etc, because they can expand on the world, the music for series are generally lacking money and thus lacking the full extent of an orchestra and classical orchestrations, so music in series become a lot sampled instead of recorded in a studio or hall with real orchestras and instruments - that's a real bumper, because in a scene with great music the impact becomes super heavy and real. The series do make things real already, but take a look to Lord of the Rings and you'll see, the music expands so much in the emotion and realism that make us believe in unbelievable things, make us be there in the center of the action instead of us just watching the events from afar (for example when the riders of Rohan atack the orcs in Minas Tirith or listen to the Elves of Lothlorien). So imagine such intense music (not in the same style as in LotR of course) but realistic orchestral music playing in the series it would give it even more heaviness and impact. Certainly there are some moments with great music, like "Mhysa" or "The Rains of Castamere" or "The Sark theme" or "Chaos is a Ladder", but it looks like the creators just wanted those tracks to be there to make a statement or to be part of the story, instead of creating the emotion. Other tracks are so incipient (though they have the motifs) that they look like filler. The Synth sampled music doesn´t help either, since it's in a medieval fantasy world, it would be probably wiser to use instruments from that Time to compensate for a full orchestra. Sometimes some Cellos appear, but they lack conviction and are very processed, so once more they take away the realism. What is your opinion on this?