George R.R. Martin has been one of the most vocal advocates of keeping film and television adaptations of books and other written works as faithful as possible, as the famous author has previously come after Hollywood executives who feel the need to change elements and plots to adapt to your project. Martin has returned to work and continues to campaign for honorable adaptations.
In his latest blog post, Martin states: “Everywhere you look, there are more and more writers and producers eager to take great stories and “make them their own.” It doesn’t seem to matter if the source material was written by Stan Lee, Charles Dickens, Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl, Ursula K. Le Guin, JRR Tolkien, Mark Twain, Raymond Chandler, Jane Austen or… well, whoever, no matter how important a writer is, no matter how great the book, there always seems to be someone on hand who thinks of it. to be able to do better, eager to take the story and “improve” it. “The book is the book, the movie is the movie,” they will tell you, as if they are saying something profound. Then they make the story their own.
“They never make it better, though. Nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, they make it worse.”
Martin then goes on to point to FX’s Shogun as a prime example of an honorable, well-made adaptation, saying: “The new SHOGUN is superb. Better than the Chamberlain version, you ask? Hmmm, I don’t know. I haven’t watched the 1980 miniseries since, well, 1980. That was great, too. What’s fascinating is that while the old and the new version have some significant differences – the subtitles that make the Japanese dialogue intelligible to English-speaking viewers are the biggest – they are both faithful to Clavell’s novel in their own way. I think the author would have been pleased the new writers have honored the source material and given us terrific adaptations, resisting the urge to “make it their own.”
Do you agree with Martin’s stance on adaptations?
