We've learned the wrong lessons from our favorite stories 

Still love that he's "George" now. You're one of us.

Agreed, This is also why people hated the ending of Game of thrones TV show. After running out of source material it became painfully obvious that the showrunners in fact didn't understand why it was so popular in the first place. They fell into all the same traps as copycat shows. Character development was ignored and things just happend too fast. A lot of flashy battles and very out of character things that happened just to resolve the plot. If George ever finishes the books and It ends with exact same results I believe he could make the story inbetween much better and believable just by writing character decisions and motivation in a way that makes sense.

I think a great example of failure to understand the material, in a same medium example, are the shows West World and Altered Carbon. Season one of both had shocking elements, but the character writing was a notch above. Season 2 for both jumped the shark and showed the new writers had no idea what they were doing.

What's missing is originality. There's a line in the Silmarillion about how Melkor couldn't create anything original, "save in imitation of others" and it made him resentful, to put it mildly. Imitation of course is part of the process, always, but if that's all there is, then it's all empty and meaningless. You have to bring something fresh to it, something with a heart of its own. But those who make content just to capitalize on someone else's success never care about that. So it's not so much about creation as duplication, and that never works.

Often learn the wrong lessons? Often????? Dark Night -> Everything has to be gritty. GoT-> All fantasy has to be blood, politics and boobs. MCU -> ALL has to be interconnected universes. Star Wars (back in the day) -> Ships, lasers and droids is all you need. The Force Awakens Success -> Soft Reboot is the way to go always all the time. Hannibal Lecter -> All serial killers are geniuses. Tony Soprano + House + Walter White -> All leads need to be *ssholes. And on, and on, and on…

This video hits so hard after the Avatar the Last Airbender live action... Everyone predicted it would be a garbage fire, by the producers interviews, and it was a garbage fire 🤡 "Hey, let's copy all the famous iconography of the show, without understanding why they were famous in the first place, but we'll change everything that's the core of the story to show BLOOOOOOOD and MUUUUURDER, because that story needs to be AAAAAAAADULT"

Another great video!!!! Thank you!!!!

Martin's character work is definitely a strength that the Game of Thrones show was able to capture. When I read the series, in high school, I remember being truly moved by the soft quiet character moments like Katlin at prayer. Its because of that quiet time, that made her fate tragic. So many copy cats just cut the quiet stuff, the valleys, and jump from shocking peak to peak. Which (ironically) levels out the story and as you said misses the point.

A great part of the "appeal" of the Red wedding is actually that with all the foreshadowing it is like watching a train wreck in slow motion, particularly on reread. You need that narrative justification!

This reminds me of a flip side example of when Neil Gaiman was trying to get his Sandman series made into a movie. He went to the pitch meeting at Warner Bros, and before he could tell them any of his ideas really, they asked him a question. They had looked at other successful fantasy series, mainly Harry Potter and LOTR, and decided the reason those were successful was because they had clear, main villains. Does Sandman have a clear main villain? Well, no, but.. And they dismissed his pitch.

If anyone learned the wrong lessons from ASOIAF it's David Benioff and D.B. Weiss 🤣

The first Katniss point is spot on. Stories are (in my opinion) meant to marry the character and their arcs with the world and plot. You can't just grab Katniss and put her in, I don't know, Westeros, and expect it to work.

I will die on the hill that this is what took the Pirates franchise from one the most fun and well crafted movies of it's time into a parody of itself trying to capture the same magic - The first movie was incredibly well made and thoughtful and a compelling storyline contrasting valor vs propriety and class expectations - and it happened to have a very fun goofy side character in Jack Sparrow and fun ghosty pirate vibes The powers that be saw that people loved Jack Sparrow and decided that the rest of the series would just be "More Jack! Most Ghosty Pirates" without understanding that part of what made his character great was that he was a great foil for Will's growth - that he was a static character that never really wants to nor (in my opinion) should fundamentally grow or change in any way In the fourth and fifth movies they tried to recapture the magic of the first thinking that all was required was attractive young leads and a forbidden love storyline - but that wasn't satisfying either - they even tried brining Orlando Bloom and Kiera Knightly back but it still wasn't a replacement for a thought provoking and fun story

My favorite example of this done poorly was when Pirates of the Caribbean came out and then they started releasing movies based on all the Disney rides, as if that was what people loved about it. The when Transformers made a billion, they released Battleship, as if people just wanted movies based on Hasbro toys. It’s sad that modern Pirate movies don’t really get made anymore and even the main POTC series is an imitation of what it once was. I’m mostly saying that because I’m reading the Liveship Traders trilogy from Robin Hobb and I’m freaking obsessed with pirates right now and want a movie so bad

Andor is a great example of getting the point of a work. It puts a dark twist on a lot of themes in Star Wars, while not eviscerating them. It also lacks a lot of the visually "Star Wars" elements like the Force and lightsabers, so its strength as a piece of art is its use of character work and themes. Also, it uses real locales for sets instead of just relying on the Volume.

This is all just a corollary to the rule William Goldman set forth in his book, Adventures in the Screen Trade: Nobody knows anything. The book describes, in hilarious and sometimes cringeworthy detail, examples of that working within Hollywood, and examples of incredible catastrophic failures that stem from the hubris of Hollywood types thinking that they know something. Goldman himself may be an exception to the rule. After all, his adaptation of his own The Princess Bride is one of the best adaptations ever done, and its framing story veers wildly from the original, softening but also somehow preserving its spirit. My favorite species of these are the ones where you can actually see the pitch for the movie in the trailer: It's Die Hard on a boat. It's Die Hard on a bus. It's Die Hard on a plane ad nauseam...

100% House of the Dragon (got prequel based on Fire and Blood) understands what made S1-4 of the show great: the characters. ALL the characters in the show are actually fleshed out, unlike in the history book (bc it's a history book) where much of the info was left out of the picture, or purposefully unreliable bc of THE MAESTERS bias. If there was a version of the show where all the icky stuff was cut out, I couldn't recommend it enough.

In Patrick H Willems video about R-rated superhero movies he calls Hollywood a reactive entity. What he means by that is that they don't really plan they just try to copy what most recently made money. And that feels spot on to what you are talking about here. But a lot of industries seems to work like that. Sanderson has talked about how a lot of publishers (around the time he started trying to get published) wanted books like ASoIaF because that was popular at the time.

Even before the show, I feel like so many fantasy series started doing "major character deaths" because ASOIAF was getting so popular and none of them quite grasped what made the deaths in Martin's series so shocking. When characters die in ASOIAF it drastically changes the story. You go from thinking "this is a book about the north rising up" to "...I don't know how they get out of this." Other series will kill off a well loved character but it typically doesn't have a narrative impact other than motivating one of the protagonists.

I think the concept of " _We must subvert people's expectations to keep them interested_ " has a lot to answer for. It seems to be an excuse to have characters acting completely out of character, and blowing away plot lines that may have been unfolding over many previous episodes or even seasons - all just to shock their audience. Basically, it removes storyline payoffs for the stupidest reasons. Often this seems to be done in response to online fan chatter, with them wanting to make something none of the show's fans thought of - without thinking maybe those fans didn't think those things because those things were just stupid, or that they were things they really didn't want to see.

How is it that RU-vidrs and the people who watch them, know this but the so-called "professionals" (who are supposed to know and understand show-running) don't? Remember when we used to preface our criticisms with, "I'm not saying I could have done it better but..."? Now we know we could all have done a better job. The pretense is gone. We've just been let down too much.

10:40 I think you just perfectly described the last few seasons of Game of Thrones when the showrunners ran out book material to work with.

You hit this so spot on. What I don't get is *how* can these creatives can attract so much money, get so many people involved (e.g. producers, showrunners, actors, set designers, financials, etc.) when they are clearly missing so many points that you've listed. Its amazing that literally hundreds of people all have to say 'Yes' for something to get to either the movie screen or TV screen and then when you watch its like 'Huh, that was a lot pretty stupid choices'. Also, I think a *very* good example of this is The Witcher (from Sapkowski's book) - I mean talk about missing the point of the books!

i think some understand the heart of what makes a story beloved. Poldark is one i like to reference because while the show follows the plot more or less, the tone is shifted to appeal to a modern audience's understanding and perspective. There were things in the original work that we today probably wouldn't connect with -- chief among how they matured Demelza in the show so that she's more fierce rather than subservient to her circumstances, but without compromising her femininity. She doesn't go from doormat to warrior, but they gave her a level of strength that allows her to stand up for herself rather than wallow in self-pity, and she's one of my favorite characters for it. Shogun is the other that comes to mind. The previous adaptation the showrunners had this idea of not translating so that the audience would be as confused as John Blackthorn and only know what he knows. Which was a bold and creative move, but it meant that the audience couldn't connect as well with the story. The newer adaptation translates, but the tone (as well as what is said) is controlled by those who translate, so we can see the pieces shifting across the board and feel more invested in every character. And, it makes every character appear to have more agency. The show is less about being any kind of historically accurate, and more of a political intrigue with strong character motivation. In this case: they learned the right lesson from previous mistakes. I think in these examples, with their less successful previous adaptations, the showrunners understood that what made the books a sensation was in the characters, and so doubled down on that. For quite some time, something pounded into the minds of anyone in creative writing or filmography is that things need to advance the plot, plot is king, get from point A to point B efficiently. And it doesn't work. So we have screen writers and directors who take plot-above-all-else and neglect character. Couple that with producers whose entire job it is, is to invest in something that they can later profit from, and yeah... Weird as it sounds, maybe these mistakes need to happen. The same way the above had flops in their former adaptation and came back stronger in their second attempt, maybe it's a cycle so that the rest of us can assess and understand how to try for the better next time.

Great points! It's important to remember that we as readers/viewers can also often take the wrong lessons from our favorite stories because we get so drawn in by particular characters or events that we can easily overlook some of the substance of the story. With Game of Thrones, I've met people who genuinely idolize Tywin Lannister despite his several war crimes, or who believed Jon was best fit to be king solely because he didn't want the throne (without considering all his other admirable traits). We're just as susceptible to drawing bad conclusions, and today's readers become tomorrow's showrunners and publishers.

Have you started reading ADWD? Super excited for your review!

The reason any story is popular is that it draws on unconscious material. When people try to consciously recreate that, it feels empty.

Point of Order on the Red Wedding: Robb’s entire army was massacred. It was not just the people in the banquet hall. There were tents holding all of the soldiers who were also partaking in celebration. The tents were collapsed and set on fire with all of the people still inside. It was _thousands_ of men killed.

I definitely agree that oftentimes the wrong lessons are learned. I think there is a mode of artistic production, often profit- centred, that I would characterize as hollow mimicry, distinct from genuine influence. A couple other examples are Tarantino ripoffs in the 90s and Mark Manson self-help replicas more recently.

I don't know that it is people learn the wrong lessons so much as the quality bar for things that seem similar to successes goes down as the successful thing creates a mini-fashion trend. So if something is a C-minus show/book about some topic that isn't in fashion it doesn't get made or doesn't get much marketing. But when something is in vogue due to a popular property, then the C-minus show/books that are similar get more of a push on the theory that people that want to see something similar to the popular property might give it a try. So I think in some way it is survivorship bias. Like the success of the books Hunger Games meant more marketing and more success for the whole genre of Divergent/Maze Runner/Delirium/Legend/Matched/Uglies/The Selection/etc. I don't think the authors were generally trying to copy things so much as the marketing push meant all of these books got more coverage/more reach than normal because there was a fasionable trend for YA dystopians like Hunger Games. But I don't think the authors were thinking they were creating the next Hunger Games, and I don't think the book marketing departments would think that anything less than Hunger Games success level would be a failure.

I feel like Bookborn is talking about the Aes Sedai TV show as well. I didn't really like the books myself, but I understand why they worked for many people. I'm not convinced that the showrunners do.

What's funny (or depressing, depends on how you look at it) is that the bigger copycat of Game of Thrones... is Game of Thrones. The later seasons kinda seemed like the show runners either forgot, didn't care anymore or never really understood in the first place why the books and their own adaptation worked. *SPOILER* Things like Arya killing the Night King were shocking just to be shocking and to "subvert people's expectations" without any deeper reason behind it... or I guess the reason was girl power or something like that... I don't know...

Yeah I think movies and shows also often struggle to create the next thing. The culture and favorite movies and shows of the next 10 years will not look like the ones that were successful in the last 10 years. Some will to be sure, but the longer you keep using a formula the less it will work. Especially if you're trying to capture the trivial elements without trying to capture the heart of them and really create something. I want the next great book. If I wanted a bland remake I'd just reread the book I already loved.

I've been thinking this for a while as well. The problem is that the "copycats" fundamentally don't understand why the original was successful, so they lose it all when they try to copy. My husband's greatest frustration with the red wedding in the show was that in the books it was caused by Robb valuing honor to not abandon the woman he had gotten pregnant and in the show they tried to convince us he screwed over his entire country and broke his word because he fell in love. So, the show-runners didn't understand that Robb's honor was so intrinsic to what made him compelling that taking that away and giving another explanation destroyed a lot of point (for people who loved the books). Similarly, the knock-offs of Hunger Games didn't realize that Katniss was, fundamentally, being USED by the rebellion, not an active, enthusiastic participant, and that struggle of hers was a major portion of why she was compelling. I'll throw in a fourth example just from TV sequels. Compare the original TV series Leverage to the "reboot" Leverage: Redemption. Leverage was engaging because it was about a collective of loner thieves with their own personal struggles learning to trust each other and discovering that, at their core, they really do care about more than what they've been living for. Sure, they conned a bunch of evil corporations and helped the underpriviledged in the process, but it was about them coming together as a found family and building something for themselves. The reboot is a training program for a couple of new characters, one of which was just a jerk and the other of which was a vague relative of a previous main character that we mysteriously never heard about in 8 seasons with that previous main character. The reboot was ALL about the cons and how the new characters needed to learn better, and the show-runners missed that the heart and success of the original show came from the character moments, not the "look, it's cool to rip off evil corporations" window dressing.

At 9:00 you mention foreshadowing in the GOT series. An example you left out that heavily supports your point is the very first chapter where King Robert comes in. Every character he physically touched, died.

Will you read the dunk and egg novellas and fire and blood by grrm after finishing a dance with dragons? I'm relatively new to your channel so I'm not sure if you do TV/movie related videos as well. Anyways could you imagine watching game of thrones (at least the first few seasons that weren't horseshit) or house of the dragon and make videos about them, maybe in comparison to the books?

I think anytime you try to reverse engineer success, you're setting yourself up for failure, missing the forest for the trees and losing the heart and soul of a project. It's obvious GRRM is steeped in other fantasy, sci-fi, historical fiction, pulp, tv, and yes marketing. Things he loved that informed on how he imagines in an organic way. His stories are grown, bottom up. Even if there are derivative components.

I think aSoIaF does an incredible job of connecting disparate stories At First. The prologue has three characters, we see what happens to two of them, then CH1 starts off with what happens to the third one, and how that affects our main characters. Almost all POVs for the first book start out in Winterfell, together, part of the same story, then branch out - even Daenerys is almost immediately introduced in the context of the ‘bad guys’ discussed in the previous chapter. Contrast this with Rings of Power, or really a lot of attempts to ape Martin’s style, and you’ll see three, four, five very loosely-related stories that never really give us time to connect to any character.

Anytime I see shows say they made the story more "Game of Thrones" like I just think oh great another show I won't be able to see even with the brightness turned to max.

Popular works are created by artists with vision and skill, whereas the flops, like Rings of Power, are commissioned by commitee. The Hobbit was the same. Greed and the desire to create capital will always influence media negatively. It's why the Dune's and Lord of the Rings's of the world are few and far between. Expect some diabolical adjacent-media related to Dune to spawn soon.

Yeah the later seasons of GOT just started randomly killing characters without resolving their storylines. There was even a case of an actor who criticized the direction the show was moving in, and was subsequently killed off despite them still having a LOT of book material left to cover for the character. The showrunners had gotten the idea that character death was so vital to the show that it could now become *all the show is*

So you're telling us that Tolkien wouldn't have held high esteem for a culture whose motivating principle was, "THE SEA IS ALWAYS RIGHT"? Hmm, I'm gonna hit the books to make sure.

Ironically Galadriel in ROP was also blindly following the Katniss archetype, without understanding the archetype or its context and without understanding Galadriel.

If a woman isn’t particularly feminine, that isn’t a sign that she’s “rejecting feminity”, it’s possible that her personality is just not that feminine, and that it has nothing to do with anyone, or anything else. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Wait... context, nuance, depth... these are things?? 🤔 👋🤓💡⬆

Great video! My favorite adaptation is probably Hannibal the tv show. All the themes in there are intact and Will Graham and Hannibal and their relationship with each other is explored in even more depth compared to the novel but feels inherently true to the original work. That's also probably why the surrealist, darkly romantic, at times operatic, dreamlike tone and the elaborate artful death stagings work so well. It's a little bit like we're watching through the lense of Hannibal, a conaisseur of art and all things beautiful - yes, also morbidly beautiful - and Will's perspective is that of horror, alienation, empathy and deep-rooted anxiety. And a last point, contrary to the Disney approach (in the voice of South Park: put a chick in it and make it lame and gay) Bryan Fuller introduced an underlying romantic tension between the characters that fits organically. Will and Hannibal have such a profound psychological connection and understanding for each other that it could be interpreted as love even though it is only mental and never consumed or overtly portrayed.

George RR Martin: Revenge is a never ending cycle that deeply affects everyone involved. When seeking revenge dig two graves and no one wins at war. David and Dan: But what if battle biiiiiiiiiiig?

Somewhat disagree on the GoT show - the first four seasons were a really really good tv adaptation to the books. In particular the red wedding and everything that lead to it was really really good. The show took very much time to show us who the characters are, many scenes prioritized this characterization, vibes, mannerisms and such over driving the plot forward as fast as possible. They sprinkled in little hints you wouldn't see before big plotpoints and you only recognize during a rewatch - like George does (some of the ones he wrote, some were unique to the show). Sure - some plotlines were abandoned, some characters mold into one, some things changed - but in 90% of the time that was neccesary and totally justified when doing a tv show. Also the portrail of violence and sex wasn't just for the shock value or something like that, but for good reason. Because you don't see the word through your pov characters, you have to show some things to make them clear instead of hearing the thoughts of a character all the time. Even the few sexploitation scenes (can honestly remember only one) were a smart move. The adaptation in the first four seasons was far better than most adaptations of books we see usually - thats the hill I'll die on. But you are right in you main claim - they learned the wrong lessons and misunderstood why people loved the show in the first place.

This certainly isn't a new thing. The original Star Wars was responsible for a lot of sci-fi copycats from people trying to make a quick buck. They they usually cheaped out on special effects, whereas George Lucas and ILM pushed the envelope, and were cheap looking films that went nowhere as a result. There's also the debate over whether George Lucas ripped off Dune after he was unable to secure the film rights. Edgar Rice Burrough's character of John Carter is another interesting case because filmmakers like George Lucas and James Cameron have admitted that those stories influenced them, yet by the time a John Carter (of Mars) film appeared in 2012 it was seen as a copycat of other films due to similar scenes. The most obvious example is the arena fight scene in Episode II that seems to have been heavily influenced by the one in the first John Carter book.

These things often touch on this one thing (it might be a tiny bit irrelevant, but oh well): Too many stories try to copy elements of other stories and make their own. Like Hunger Games. People tried to put Katniss into thteir own story. In Game of Thrones, people tried to make things extra gory and sexual because "Oh well Game of Thrones did it and was successful so...". (I can't say much for LOTR because I haven't read it or watched it. SORRY). But they don't really realize that the reason why Hunger Games and Game of Thrones wasn't because of that one element. They were succesful because they were early in using that element, and creating a great story using that element. So as they became popular, suddenly people began discovering these elements and began using it for themselves instead of trying to raise a hidden element themselves, which is exactly why Hunger Games and Game of Thrones was so successful. Well ... at least that's my take.

100% agree with your points. I’m waiting for the Dune copy cats to come and missing the themes from the books and the movies.

It's partly to do with the misreading of narrative, character, and mythic archetypes in the originals. To bring complex, and rich, fiction to screen - both faithfully, successfully, and with a bit of X factor - takes real talent. It takes a mastery of the narrative and fictive medium, and how a visual story works. Peter Jackson has it, so does Denis Villeneuve. David Goyer (Foundation), and Benioff and Weiss, do not. Nolan and Joy (Westworld, The Peripheral, Fallout) almost do. Rafe Judkins (WoT) should be banished from any and all filmsets. RoP is a disgrace and an insult. Rewatchable: The Expanse, Into the Badlands, Shannara Chronicles (no, really!), BSG/Caprica, etc Mystifying: what on earth happened with His Dark Materials?

How do we copy LOTR in an intresting way,so that it feels like a subversion of generic epic fantasy while still using parts from LOTR? Here's things that other stories almost never do but LOTR: have the Dark Lord never come out for a boss battle. Have the wizard and warrior-of special-lineage-with-awesome-sword be sidelined while the real heros are short everybodies, the normal hero never gains powers. Have the hero fail and need outside interference."Throw it in!" "No,the Ring is mine!"

The Hunger Games is a good example of a property that knew how to copycat a stablished IP. Taking from Battle Royal the 1999 novel by Koushun Takami all the important components both of relationships stablished in the original work as well as the important emotional tensions built in the source material. It replays the important parts of the source material while bringing a whole revolution arc into the material that was not there in the original plotline.

I like this video and agree with the general premise, but I couldn't help but notice the irony of holding up The Hunger Games as an example of an "original" story that's been copied when it is in fact one of the biggest and most successful "copycats" in the history of popular media. I know Suzanne Collins has denied it, but the Hunger Games(2008) is a pretty obvious takeoff of the Japanese novel Battle Royale (1999) by Koushun Takami and or the 2000 movie based on his novel, where in the Japanese government institutes an annual death match between a group of teenagers selected by randomized lottery, in order to quail rising civil unrest and and assert their power over the general population.

Isn't the same thing also true off too many adaptions? Turning Watchmen into a film about actual heroes. Turning Jane Austen novels into mere romance movies. Turning Hercules Poirot into a frigging action hero. And sometimes long running series forget what they were saying before. The Battlestar Galactica reboot from the 00s were started as a direct antithesis to what Star Trek was doing at the time. Events had consequences, if you ran out of fuel one episode, you were still out of fuel the next one. And then the writing went off script, with mysterious forces guiding events through dreams, visions and completely unexplained plot twists. You could say the same about the MCU. Early on, the makers learned that they could center a movie on a tree and a talking racoon and people would gobble it up. They learned that every new character was met with jubilation. What they didn't learn was how much of their success rode on likeable characters, good writing and the connective tissue. The audiences loved the characters and got invested in the characters and knew they'd see these characters again every few years. Then the MCU blew up, we got bad movies, boring stories, after credit scenes that teased dozens of new characters nobody cared about while years went by without our favorite characters having a single memorable appearance. I guess I could go on, but I'm not sure I have to. I think far too many people working in the entertainment sector completely miss the point, all the time. But it's big business, a lot of money is involved, so the industry keeps churning out content, whether it works or not. Because like all of us, most of them are just people with bills to pay. People that see J.J. Abraham selling movie tickets, so they give him the licenses to butcher Star Trek and Star Wars in turn. The way I see it these days, I try to enjoy the rare diamonds and ignore the trash clogging up the channels. And these are still out there, if you know where to look. Sometimes it's anime, like Frieren, sometimes obscure gems from 60 years ago, like the British TV show Sandbaggers and the black and white comic book For Queen and Country it inspired. Sometimes it's a hommage novel capturing the spirit of the original, like Jane Fairfax. And sometimes it's just a once off college theater production that really stays with us for years. Not sure where I'm going with this, but I think I feel that you're right, but you're just scratching the surface.

I really enjoy fantasy, but I can’t handle any kind of SA (with details), it sends me spiraling and gives me nightmares. I absolutely hate it, I feel like so much fantasy has been spoiled by trying to copycat SOIAF (which I’ve never read because I know what to expect), I will be happily reading a book and get shockingly and unexpectedly slapped in the face with an SA scene that ruins the rest of my week. I’ve started googling stories now before I read to avoid this. But really, not all of us want second hand trauma. You can passingly mention that someone has a history of SA without being graphic about it.

You can tell D&D didn't understand the books because of who they cut out. The fell in love with actors and the characters. Dialogue was totally missing. Consequences disappeared. The thing that kills me about book fans supporting bad knockoffs is that we are going to stop getting any sci fi/fantasy. We need to hold them to being good so that it draws in an audience instead of acting like TWOT or ROP are done as good as possible and the material just doesn't have mass appeal... It has appeal they just missed the good parts. LOL.

I agree with you completely here! The "lessons learned" from the shows that work are so often completely butchered. Additionally, when you start talking about adaptations, etc. (Rings of Power, Games of Thrones, Wheel of Time, etc.) they have the issues of fandoms and pre-existing mental pictures of the properties. I will say, Game of Thrones did a better job (until the final seasons) then the others I have listed because they didn't shy away from shocking... or even try to re-tool the social constructs of the original pieces. They also spent a lot more time developing characters rather than trying to flash to big special effects and battles. Saw one person discuss the Wheel of Time series as having scenes in mind and then just ignoring how the characters move between them... and it is very accurate.

I felt the same about the red wedding! I started watching the tv show late, so after hearing about it for some reason I imagined a horrible wedding where EVERYONE dies 😂 In my head I was expecting demons and dragons to kill everyone so when it happened it was a little bit underwhelming (but I still cried lmao)

10:52 The only reason the deaths hurt so much in ASOIAF is because we love the characters so much.

Just putting out there to get everyone’s hopes raised for no reason: my own personal conspiracy theory, based solely on the fact Joe Abercrombie knows GRRM and nothing else, is that George is prepping Joe to take over ASOIAF for him either after he passes or to allow him to retire, a la Sanderson/Jordan with Wheel of Time but before it’s too late to pass the torch personally. Wishes on the wind, most likely.

Being grim does not automatically make a story good and more realistic. Yes, shitty things happens in real life but it's more realistic when people try to make things less shitty instead of just brooding about it. Tone is an important tool to a story that should be used to elevate other parts of the story instead of being the main focus. 1984 wasn't a good story because it was grim, it was a good story commentating on fascism and it's dark tone helped it's commentary on the corruption of fascism. BoJack Horseman wasn't good because it was grim, BoJack Horseman was a good deconstruction on sitcoms and it's grim moments were effective because it was deconstructing the flaws of sitcoms and commentating on toxicity of Hollywood. A Song of Ice and Fire and Watchmen have horrible influences because of people thinking it was only good for being grim.

You always need that person looking at your work asking how you're going to earn that big moment you want to include. This topic could easily have been a 3 hour video of citing examples of where someone clearly said "I want *this* big moment!" but didn't put any thought into how they were going to earn that moment in their storytelling. It's a real shame. (For the record, you clearly put thought into your videos. 😜)

For George he explores the human condition "The human heart in conflict with itself", he dissects morality and tries to present this experience in a nihilistic and cynical but also hopeful and realistic way. He presents these deep themes like love, knighthood, redemption, honor, loyalty, birth right, loss of identity or revenge but he presents it in such a way you question it; What is honor if the honorable thing to do kills people? What is knighthood if all the knights are cruel and violent? Why is a grotesque throne made of melted swords important when there's an existential threat towards everyone regardless of their class, gender, religion? Can someone through their actions and new found purpose redeem themselves or will they be tarnished for the rest of their lives? The show failed in all of this and sadly most people that only watched the show also are unable to see these complexities mainly due to how the show was presented but reading (and re-reading) the books you can see all the nuance behind every word and every action. Without spoiling too much but even the current House of the Dragon show (HotD) is making people turn into factionalism when George message is about the horrors of hereditary monarchy and how said institution encourages violence towards their own kin. ASOIAF Is so complex, so beautifully written in prose and not forgetting that this is a POV story that forces us to empathize with these characters to see them as humans with reasonable goals (from their life experience) that makes George my favorite living writer.

9:55 wait wait wait how do you mean barely 30 people died? They massacred Robb's soldiers that were outside of the castle

In general, I agree -- they are learning the wrong lessons, but it's worse than that. They are trying to glom on to successful IPs and coopt them to push their own political views. They're less about telling good stories and more about pushing narratives and ideologies.

My favorite example of this is Puella Magi Madoka Magica. It's a famously dark take on magical girl animes like Sailor Moon, and it spawned a whole bunch of "tragical girl" copycats that never reached Madoka's level of critical acclaim. When Madoka first came out, the marketing was intentionally misleading, leaning hard into the cutesy reputation magical girl shows had at the time. It seems that the lesson a lot of these copycats took from Madoka was contrast and shock value--take a super girly, fluffy looking story and pile on the trauma. But Madoka was very intentionally crafted, and every moment, light or dark, contributes to its characters and themes. It holds up today because it doesn't rely solely on the original twist of "magical girls, but dark" (which stops being a twist after the tenth tragical girl anime anyway).

Your Eras Tour sweatshirt in the ad read just makes me excited for the day when your ASOIAF journey eventually leads to an "Every Game of Thrones Reference in Taylor Swift Lyrics" video.

When people ask me with the kind of music that I like, I always respond that I don't have a preferred genre. In my opinion, every genre has quality and has some terrible works of art as well. I feel like literature, cinema, television, comic books, comedy and every form of art has it's good and it's bad and some that people are going to debate whether it's good or bad. But at the end of the day no genre can be described as good or bad.

To tell the truth I like the last two seasons of GOT even if thoae seasons were a massive step down compared to the early seasons. And for me the books are so amazingly awesome that I think I might never re-watch. However, overall "game of thrones" is an excellent t series. But fans only like to remember the bad. It's very unfortunate.

The Expanse adaptation work so well because they had the authors in the writing room, while not leading the room, and those authors had enough humility to know they didn't know everything. The showrunner had to work around actors not being available multiple times, being cancelled, and a scandal near the end of their run and yet most people would call it the top sci-fiction show of the century if not of all-time.

The only recent example I can think of is Picard season 3. After a poor season 1 and a truly awful season 2 they passed it to a different show runner who actually liked Star Trek and it was a great conclusion. It is sad how many shows I can think of that have been ruined in recent years.

The writers are sometimes not allowed to do what they want, i'm thinking there are checklists they have to fulfill (at least this is how it feels) ... also writers don't want their work to be altered ... it's not that writers and other types of people can't work together, but the contrast is jarring sometimes between what the writer does and what they have to add. The writer that does the show/movie is 99% of the time not the one that wrote the book (and sometimes they don't collaborate properly).

For LOTR you could also have done the Hobbit movies

Idk if someone else has pointed this out or not but in the red wedding episode, about 3,500 people die so in the show it is actually a massacre which is why it was so shocking and devastating.

Watching this video reminds me of the Ned Stark “bad decisions” meme, but you see all the work Martín put in place to make Ned Stark a relatable character. Similar with the Hobbits in LoTR; they have themes of friendship, courage, supporting each other, of idilic innocence that makes you relate to them. I don’t mean to be rude towards people producing TV/Movies today, but I see easy outs, a desire to be shocking for the sake of being shocking and doing what is convenient.

What studios haven't learned is they have to be very careful and have the right showrunners for their adaptations. You have a glut of shows trying to get in on the successful book gravy train, and some are better than others.

Katniss also doesn’t want to be feminine because that = getting a man, which means having kids, and she doesn’t want her kids to be in the hunger games. It’s based in fear, too.

I think (the first season at least) House of the dragon is succeeding in an adaptation. Its based on a historical book so the show is able to add the character into these historical figures that GRRM is so well known for

It's funny to see Hunger Games used as a work being copied when you've seen Battle Royale. Because Hunger Game is really mimicking Battle Royale (down to the motivation for the games and the ending), but set in a fantasy world and with most of the social commentary removed. But I'll acknowledge one thing : Hunger games works as a stand-alone story. It's heavily inspired, but the author managed to do it in a smart way. Hence why it worked (with some problems, especially in the later books).

It still amazes me that they out Hobbits in the show when they just popped up in the Third Age

Dragon riding sister-wives is appealing to both men and women it appears.

on RoP even a horse is a main character for while.

I think you're right on here. To boil it down, I suspect that there are a lot of people who don't understand the difference between "substance" and "style." Like... they go their entire lives, and the "deepest" level they understand anything on is just that surface level style. Conservatively, 2,000% of marketers are like this. So executives throw a bunch of money at a project and say, "Make it make money." And then, for some reason, marketers and middle-managers are left to make a bunch of important decisions. And they just do not work on a wavelength where they understand the significance of... basically anything. Add that to the "cost vs. benefit" exchange, where the first two or three knockoff projects are bound to make money despite being terrible, and the incentive is to "produce something with as little effort as possible." Most of these people just don't care. Because they kind of can't. Because they don't "get it." GRR Mart fucking gets it. You get it. Lots of people get it. But we're still the minority. And I really wish that some CEOs out there would start to get it too, so that they'd back things that are actually good. I don't know if you've ever read the books in the Expanse series, but it's amazing. The show was amazing. When Jeff "Amazon Bux" Bezos saved the show and produced the last three seasons, I was like, "Cool. This guy gets it." And those final three seasons were excellent! Then... Amazon started churning out things like the Rings of Power and Citadel. I don't think Jeff gets it. I think he just ported over all the talent for the Expanse from its original production staff. PS: If you haven't already, you should REALLY read the Expanse when you're done with ASOIAF. It's written by two dudes, one of which used to personally work with GRRM. The Expanse is like Game of Thrones, but in space, and instead of the smothering hopelessness of ASOIAF, replace that with boundless hope and optimism.

I was just joking about this the other day. Said we need to be very vocal about what we want and don't want b/c studio executives are too dumb to figure it out for themselves, and writers too unskilled and arrogant to just translate it from one medium to another.

around 3500 people died at the "red wedding."

Great video and I very much agree. There is definitely a dialogue among authors and true filmmakers that leads to more and more stories. But there are also those who are just trying to chase a quick buck and write whatever they can get away with. It's just a good reminder as an author to have my own vision and reaction to these properties, and as a consumer to not chase something similar just because it's similar.

The Red Wedding in the TV show is more brutal than the books because Robb is a much more major character in the show. Instead of only seeing Robb when Cat is present or reports of his actions in King's Landing, you get to see him the entire time. There is also the most violent death I have ever seen on television that isnt in the books.

I have really been enjoying your more in-depth looks at different topics like this. Great job!

It’s definitely true that some shows learn the wrong lessons, but I also think it can be legitimately difficult to learn the right ones and we shouldn’t really expect it to be simple. If that’s the case we shouldn’t expect every writer or every team of writers to succeed. Also, if one type of story is compelling and unique, a few years later when everyone is trying to copy it, the same tropes in a slightly worse packaging also won’t be that unique anymore. The meta has shifted and maybe it’s time to mix things up and try new concepts. And also to get those things right of course. That’s the tricky part.

I think the plague of bad copycats has been around for decades really, it's just more noticeable to some people watching TV shows. I'm old enough to remember all the check knockoff imitations of the LoTRs books that came out in the 70s (looking at you Terry Brooks)

Nice. Clever arguments.

HOTD writers think we only loved game of thrones for the dragons, sex ans violence. But completely miss the point of writing morally grey empathetic characters placed in an alive world with more than 2 locations

Great video....I will say another example of an IP that borrowed from another and did it well is Wheel of Time. Obviously most modern fantasy has borrowed from LOTR, but WOT put a really good spin. Robert Jordan had said in an interview that if he was a village boy and a wizard came to take him on an an adventure he would most likely run away from the whole thing. WOT's reluctant hero, a savior whose return is dreaded by the whole world is brilliant.

Absolutely agree. It's honestly strange that something as fundemental as character contrast and foil could be SO overlooked. We're also seeing the same problem in cinema as well. Comparing remakes to their original works has often been disapointing, but Disney seems to have completely missed what made the Marvel movies and the Star Wars films work in the first place. But I suppose they are corperations that prioritize money over storytelling.

If there's a discussion about works being adapted from other media, One Piece should be part of the conversation.

I've had similar thoughts about this for a while, this video really sums it up well. Like Rings of Power was definitely not the worst show I've seen, but it felt like easily the most hollow. Tons of well-shot scenes that seem like LOTR, but without any of the heart that made the original so good. Same thing with Wheel of Time, another Amazon show where it felt like some exec said "hmm, idk if a straight adaptation will be popular, just slap a Game of Thrones paint job on it" and it messed up the core of the story. If you want to make a good story then it needs a good heart first (with the aesthetic coming from that) not just copy the aesthetic of a good show and think it'll just get a good heart through osmosis.

Mayhaps…

Interesting video, but I think it would benefit from delving more into exactly where, say, the heroine of the Divergent series falls short. I've never seen those films (though I remember the trailers being ubiquitous back in the day), but how does the heroine bring "Katniss-like" traits to a story, or story-world, not suited to them? How does the love interest of that story fall short? Also, you should read the Dark Tower saga by Stephen King.