George R. R. Martin excoriates the Hellmouth’s mediocrities who inevitably make the works of others “their own” by ruining them.
Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin doubled down when Hollywood does an adaptation it should be a “faithful adaptation.” In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Martin stated, “Maybe I’m one of the few people in Hollywood who still thinks that when you adapt a work of art, a novel, a short story, you should do a faithful adaptation. It annoys me too much because they change things and I don’t think they generally improve them.”
“Everywhere you look, there are more screenwriters and producers eager to take great stories and ‘make them their own.’ It does not seem to matter whether the source material was written by Stan Lee, Charles Dickens, Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl, Ursula K. Le Guin, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Raymond Chandler, Jane Austen, or… well, anyone. No matter how major a writer it is, no matter how great the book, there always seems to be someone on hand who thinks he can do better, eager to take the story and ‘improve’ on it.”
He continued, “’The book is the book, the film is the film,’ they will tell you, as if they were saying something profound. Then they make the story their own. They never make it better, though. Nine hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand, they make it worse.”
The truth is that subverting and ruining truth and beauty is one of the purposes of Hollywood. They’re greedy, to be sure, but their greed is less of a priority for them than their obligation to render what is true false and what is beautiful ugly. They are not only the enemies of God, they are the enemies of the good, the beautiful, and the true.