I personally think that the film (s) improved on the character of Boromir; I think he comes off as much more sympathetic and much more complex in the movies versus the book (i.e. the Fellowship). In the book I felt that he was only really redeemed at the end when he sacrificed himself protecting Merry and Pippin; this plays out very similarly in the movie, but I felt that they built up to that redemption in a more satisfying way, with that beautiful bit of dialogue between he and Aragorn in Lothlorien; the latter is entirely absent in the book (Boromir just comes off as unnecessarily wary and distrustful of Galadriel and Lothlorien in the books, in my opinion).
@@somni2246 His interaction with Aragorn in that scene is my favorite, he went from saying gondor has no king and needs no king to " i would have followed you my brother, my captain, my king.
@@bradenwood1612 he's been working on it for a decade. pretty obvious he would finish it soon if he don't suffer a heart attack or something like that. but also i'm pretty sure spring dream wouldn't come and is so sad, both for him and us. his amazing life's job, ecen probably the most amazing fantasy books of this time and he will dead before finish it just like his one big predecesor, tolkien. so sad. i don't like the idea of reading asoiaf from another writer, reading his characters from another hand. it's weirs. no one would ever know his characters and writing better than him.
Right?? I love how loveable yet fucked up his characters can be. I feel like a trap so many writer including me fall into is having characters that end up as a vessel for my themes or ideology
@@andyzhang7890 And there's nothing wrong with that in principle, but one needs to give them more than just that one property. If you need someone to be racist, or violent, or a religious zealot, or what have you, you need to think about how they got that way. That makes them feel more real.
@@daith_izumi Absolutely. Bad guys also need fully developed motivations. You need to know what Darth Vader would do in a given situation. A villain who ties the heroine to the train tracks just for fun is nowhere near as scary as a villain who needs to know something the heroine doesn't want to tell. The simple line "Find out what she knows" can twist your stomach.
@@MostorAstrakan the main problem with so much fiction today is the writers don't allow greyness they only allow someone to be entirely good or entirely bad. its like they are scared if they write a character whos supposed to be mostly good but with a character flaw like sexism everyone is gonna think they are sexist. its just so weird today how writers refuse to write characters that do stuff or react to stuff in a way the writer wouldn't in real life. a perfect example is brothel scenes in like any media set in the past, good media portrays it as just being as it is, where as bad media goes out of its way to highlight the man as being bad and abusing a power structure. its like writers cant look at any story not through the lens of modern moral standards and applying that to everything even when it makes no sense. its like they don't understand that no one thinks of themselves as evil or the bad guy, even hitler thought he was saving the world from the jews, even serial killers think they did the world a favor. handsome jack in bl2 is a great example of a bad guy thinking hes the good guy, and if we followed jack in the game wed prob agree with him and think hes the good guy.
To hear George R R Martin say he thought he couldn't be as good as Tolkien is inspiring and humbling. Cause frankly I felt the same way after reading A Song of Ice and Fire those books are on a completely different level writing wise than most stories out there. He must have learned a lot since then
I think he took what his viewpoint of why Lotr was great and tried to achieve that, and surpassing lotr in that specific niche aspect. What a lot of great artists do is try to attain what they like about their influences, which is obviously different than what the originals intentions were, so it ends up becoming something new and great
Yup. I also felt the same way when I read Michael Moorcock's _Elric of Melniboné._ The grace with which the world around this brooding, sensitive, and existential emperor was painted in words alone was enough to make me feel like I was practically there with him.
When I watched Game of Thrones I felt like Jon Snow was built up to become that Aragorn archetype. A man who didn't want to rule over people, but who developed the skills to fight, to negotiate, to make peace and to lead, because it's necessary. In the end unites the rival people against the common threat from the north, and become king in the end. It was so saddening to see his character arch being butchered in the last two seasons of the show.
Difference is that Boromir is a good and noble person with inner desires and dreams who gets easily tempted by the ring. GRRMs version of a gray character is a scumbag who kills children and performs incest.
@@Grivian well yeah but he also sacrificed his honor to kill his king and save 500k ppl. He's done some good things. I love the character bc he's so real. The Golden knight but he's horribly imperfect. Born a super rich, attractive, Chad with unreal athletic abilities, of course he's gonna become a bit of a douche. He'd never lost until he became hated for his best deed.
Yeah I just thought of that, they are so similar even the way littlefinger idealized catelyn is very much like gatsby. Although littlefinger is way more evil than gatsby
@Anonymus X i can't speak to gundam wing but AoT was decent at best. the whole overarching plot said fuck all aside from 'maybe the imprisoned are actually the imprisoners, but actually they're the imprisoned'
George is right . I can see this in the big rush for fantasy TV series after the success of GOT . They all got it wrong because fantasy wasnt what made GOT popular, its characters and writing is.
The thing about Boromir that makes him my favourite character (other than that he’s played by Richard Sharpe) is that he’s the most like us. He’s the only one of our main characters in the books who doesn’t have some kind of plot armour: Hobbits and Ring-resistance; Gandalf, Strider, Galadriel, et al. and being wise enough not to take the risk; Faramir and just not giving a shit for no reason; Tom Bombadil and probably being one of the Valar or legit Eru Iluvatar. Boromir falls in the presence of the One Ring. We too would fall.
That's nice, I can see how Boromir is more relatable. I think Faramir did have reasons - first he was wise, or at least had more wisdom than Boromir or their father Denethor. I think he knew that something that would overcome Boromir, which Gandalf would not carry himself, was too much mojo for him to want to possess himself. As for the hobbits, I think Tolkien was trying to hint at how simple goodness itself is powerful. A humble sort of strength that can be found in the most surprising places. That sort of thing. Perhaps you might have found it within you to resist, especially if you had lived all of your life in simple pursuits and were grounded by growing up in the humble sort of paradise that the shire was. Cheers! JW
George continues to amaze me. Some fans are very mean and crude to the ideas of George and him as an individual. I believe he deserves more respect and admiration, it’s sad that today so many fans treat writers and creators of their loved series, movies & books with such a level of disrespect and foulness. It’s tragic, they don’t realize how much toxicity they bring to the fandoms and communities, but overall the Author.
Ned Stark was a brilliant character .. if integrity was a person , it would be him and it shows by how he was remembered in the following seasons of GoT .. and it just hit me that Ned was acted by Sean Bean , who was Boromir in LOTR
What a smart guy. I think his experience and education in journalism really did give him an edge over his contemporaries. Journalists are taught to "find the story" in a new incident. "Find the emotion", and that's exactly what GRRM does with his books, rather than getting wrapped up in the "detail" of his worlds.
The Great Gatsby is secretly one of the most complex books ever written. The story is certainly the case of a narrator who doesn't know everything or is biased. The symbolism, historical context, the whole nine yards. If you didn't do research, you'd might just think it's only a depiction of the hedonism of the elites, but it's much more than that. For one thing, Gatsby was likely jewish and involved with the chicago jewish mob. That wasn't obvious in the story. It details racism and religious biases and how the US actually did have a class system, as your background meant more than your wealth. It's just so good.
Regarding his last point, I don't know how often I told people that there is no serious difference between genres and that genre is (mostly at least) just the background setting that the story and characters take place in. You can of course have preferences but there is no reason to dislike a genre as long as you like compelling stories and characters because that is what the best of any genre always have to offer.
Exactly, and not just genres, but different mediums. Books, movies, and animes have made cry, but some people can’t seem to take animation seriously and don’t get attached in anime, books, or comics.
It might reveal some stuff yet to be unraveled in the two remaining books notice how he kind of avoided answering the question about his favorite dead characters or the one he missis the most in ASOIAF.
His point about sci-fi nuts and stuff is a great one, especially when you think about things like Star Wars. Star Wars is practically more fantasy than sci-fi if you go by the definitions of thise genres that a lot of people try to push
@@albedo5455 that's not even a real thing. Star Wars is just fantasy, simply put in space. If anything you could call it something like space-fantasy in the same fashion as urban-fantasy
If you want to make like them but diferent, you must read anything else for make a diference. Yah, tolkien clones are a quite popular genre. Or they were. According to my experience Tolkien clones stopped being common after the premiere of the LotR movies, after that, now veryone would identfy the plagiarism. Well, for example, Wheel of Time is one, for be more original ,Rob Jordan read too about eastern mythology and cultures. George MArtin is too another Tolkien imitator, he read about true world history. Joan Rowling is another Tolkien imitator. What did she read for inspiration, apart of the LotR, Earthsea wizard and the movie the pyramid secret?
@@adamnesico things like the mythologies of South American and African cultures are severely underrepresented in western fantasy publications. That’s the easiest way to find stories that people in American and Europe haven’t heard before
Makes no sense cause aragorn is strider and aragorn makes strider more interesting cause he is culmination of strider's development. George rr martin is basically saying that strider shouldn't have had any character arc.
@@lampad4549 No he just stated he enjoyed his character in the being of the arc, not the end you can like what someone was and not what they turned into also he's talking about what characters he likes not how to write a good character
Oberin Martell,Pyp,Grenn,Dany,Ned,Robb,Caitlyn,Jon's first death-especislly by people he trusted:These were the ones I was sorry to see go.Loved them from beginning to end. And yes,Cerce and Jaime,but they were never characters you were supposed to love.
Game of Thrones Clash of Kings A Storm of Swords Some of the best weird stuff I’ve ever had the pleasure to read. True lessons about the real world in those pages. Mainly: people will happily submit to slavery when the world is a burnt, cruel, murderous hellscape. Perfectly explains why workaholism is the only addiction with a positive connotation in US culture.
???? being a workaholic generally considered pretty negative and unhealthy. also lol at implying the u.s. is a murderous, burnt cruel hellscape how delusional
I have been recently watching your videos, I quite enjoy them. I do have to say the audio is much quieter from other youtube videos I would imagine increasing the overall volume before rendering the video would help with that.
im convinced george r.r. martin is an alien.i dont see how its possible for him to write the way he does. all these interconnected characters - and some events in his books, after reading, makes you wonder if he had it planned out all along. i can't figure out how he does it without having a huge wall in his house where he has all these events and characters linked up like a bulletin board in a police office.
@@pablito4762 to be fair Aragorn has an extended lifespan which gave him the ability to learn history, politics, languages, participate in many wars, learn how to survive in the wilderness, and lead people.
1:14 Strider vs Aragorn description definitely cements for me, ELDEN RING SPOILERS How much Loux vs Godfrey is GRRM's brainchild. A badass bloodthirsty barbarian chieftain that is 'civilized' into becoming the Perfect King. 6:01 6:46 also interesting too how Elden Ring is a mixmash of fantasy, scifi, and horror as well. 0:46 So obviously, Diallos looks like Jon Snow. But his character arc is very much Boromir. A man that wants to do the right thing but is easily influenced, and you could say hes a coward, but eventually does something heroic in the end.
I love his characters so much. Even the people who others despise I love the way they’re written because like boromir as he stated, there’s so much more to a character than good or bad. They’re grey. Most people view someone like Cersei Lannister as completely evil and bad, but she’s written in a way where you can get into her head and understand why she does the things she does and understand her actions within the context of their world. Yes we all love Ned stark but his actions threatened Cersei’s life and family. And you see many points where she was backed into a corner and her only choice was death or action. She will always choose self preservation. And the points where she comes for revenge are against people who actually killed her children or harmed her family. You put her alongside someone like Ramsay Bolton or the mad king and you realize she really isn’t the worst of them. But she’s written so well that you love to hate her, but you have to realize she’s evil, and so is the world she lives in. It gives the villains so much more depth to give them this humanity but also makes their downfall bittersweet. For me my favorite character is littlefinger. An absolute scumbag to the highest level, but so powerful because of his dishonesty and his ability to turn chaos into his advantage at every turn. He makes things happen. He’s the greatest player in the game of thrones. Yet I Also hate him as a person, it’s like George RR Martin took the grey character idea and took it up 10 notches. They aren’t grey, they’re evil, but they have reasons.
I was in the frame of mind, old movies/books are boring AF, then I read The Great Gatsby after the movie came out and it's writing style is next level. George has a very different writing style but next level too.
Tyrion is his favorite. He must have been steaming mad watching what dumb and dumber did with the character in the last few seasons. I guess like we all were
Truly....Tyrion is the heart of ASOIAF! You can't ignore him the way they did in later seasons. I think, they simply had no idea what to do with Tyrion after source material ran out. Tyrion is one such character that can only be handled by GRRM....
@@manishkumardivekar4836 Yea it was so stupid watching what they did with tyrion. His entire characters essence is how he spent his entire life using his mind because he was never going to be physically imposing. He needed to prove tywin and everyone else wrong to discount him. Yet the moment the book material ran out he went from a genius to a complete idiot being outwitted by cersei and everyone else at every turn.
@@lampad4549 He isn't saying Strider is objectively a better character than when he is revealed as Aragorn. He's saying he personally liked Aragorn better when he was just known as Strider the Ranger because he prefers grey characters.
ah! belgariad and Mallorean were wonderful books too. wish they'd get movies but then you run into wheel of time issues with modern garbage changes and issues... :(
Tolkien was a catholic and be believed that the main forces in the world are good and evil his mythology reflects that grr Martin is very much unlike that he write his character not necessarily be good or evil. He writes them to have motivations that are common for most people. They don’t do things out of nobility or pure malice for all that is good but out of selfishness, fear and grief. I think that is ultimately why the lord of the rings can have a satisfactory ending that makes you feel fulfilled and a song of ice and fire can’t. Because Lotr was based of classic myths where there good people and bad people that you root for and want to see finally be happy at the end. There is a beginning there is a conflict against evil and a end where ultimately good unmistakably triumphs. Got is based on real life where there are no noble hero’s that defeat dark lords where one second people are hailed as hero the next vilified and there is no clear cut good and evil everything is muddled and confused. The characters can have no happy ending because even after the main conflict of there character arc is resolved they are still irreparably miserable people living miserable lives. Just like most people in real life. Why the hell did I write all this. If you read through this unadulterated rambling your a true madman and I hope to never meet you in a dark alleyway. Get a hobby or something geez
Borromir may be my favorite LotR character, he has a great struggle and his ' wrong doings' come from a place of good.. My favorite ASOIAF character is probably Victarion Greyjoy, he's just so badass in a world where intelligence and cunning gets you alot further. Even if he is a big, lumbering bullock.
I must say he really speaks well, I rarely hear today people that manage to word their ideas without repeating ideas and words and inserting a lot of "uhmm"s and "uhhh"s and stuff like that.
Georgy can you please for the love of god take my man Kings advice, stop caring about what the assholes have figured out about where you were going with some of your story threads and just finish your book? I listen to you speak and am reminded of how GREAT of a writer you are and how much I miss you being in those characters heads.
