George R.R. Martin Trashes House of the Dragon Showrunner and Criticizes Changes from the Books

What Happened? what's up guys Carmine here back again once again for another house of the dragon video this time for the long- awaited George R Martin review or should I say it's less review and more of an open disagreement with showrunner Ryan Condell on some of his choices but not on the ones you'd think or expected as of right now this is making waves in the fandom specifically because George has never outright disagreed with at least on this level with Dave and Dan here as much as he has with Ryan Condell in this blog post and he even goes as far as to throw in some snark that condle might have not have planned any of this out which I think speaks volumes on George's involvement and their relationship I think the biggest thing here that's going to get him on HBO's list is that he outright spoils the death of a certain character for season 3 and don't worry if you're a non-book reader I'll be sure to include a warning and a Tim stamp so you don't get spoiled so you're fine there but I did not expect that as someone who read the book I knew that was coming but I did not expect him to spoil that for everybody involved but at the same time usually the people reading George's blog post or book fans anyway so it's whatever I'm sure he knows that but yeah no we're going to be talking about all that and more in today's video and of course we'll be covering this on the podcast as well because this warrants its very own episode of The Game of Thrones podcast so stay tuned for that but as always before we begin please be sure to leave a like and a comment it helps out a lot and be sure to subscribe for more videos like this but for now let's get into it so of Blog Post course let's read what George wrote we got to go through this line by line and I will be skipping some things here and there because he does repeat himself a couple of times but let's get into it back in July I promised you some further thoughts about blood and cheese and mure the missing after my commentary in the first two episodes of House of the Dragon season 2 a son for a son and reineer the cruel those were terrific episodes well written well directed powerfully acted a great way to kick off the new seasons fans and critics alike seemed to agree there was one aspect of the episodes that Drew significant criticism the handling of blood and cheese and the death of young prince Jaris from the commentary I saw online opinions were split there the readers of Fire and Blood found the sequence underwhelming a disappointment watered down from what they were expecting viewers who have not read the books had no such problems most of them found the sequence of real gut Punch Tragic horrifying nightmarish Etc some reported being reduced to tears I found myself agreeing with both sides so pretty much George is exactly where I expected him to be at least on the first half of the Season as I said before you have people trying hard to push their own weird hatred of this season onto him but it seems he liked the first half he praised the first two episodes and even episode four in another blog post and it's quite clear what limitations HBO and the writer strike had on the pacing issues of the season but it clearly didn't affect much of the first half as badly as it did the second a quick recap HBO basically told the writers to cut down from 10 episodes to eight shortly after they finish writing the whole season and they couldn't do much rewrites because of the strikes as for blood and cheese like I said in my own videos a majority of the viewer base are casual fans who don't really care to read the books and were overall f fine with how that sequence played out or as fine as you can be with something that gruesome basically it did its job but George Goes On to explain the differences in my book Aon and Helena have three children not two the twins Jaris and Jara are 6 years old they have a younger brother meor who is to when blood and cheese break in on Helena and the kids they tell her they are debt collectors come to exact revenge for the death of Prince lueras a son for a son as Helena has two sons however they demand that she choose which one should die she resists and offer her own life instead but the killers insist it has to be a son if she does not name one they will kill all three of the children to save the life of the twins Helena names malor but blood kills the older boy Jaris instead while cheese tells little malor that his mother wanted him dead George Goes On to highlight the differences between book and show and then concluding I still believe the scene in the book is stronger the readers have the right of that the two killers are crer in the book I thought the actors who played the killers in the show were excellent but the characters are crer harder and more frightening in Fire and Blood in the show blood is a gold cloak in the books he is a former gold cloak stripped of his office for beating a woman to death book blood is the sort of man who might think making a woman choose which of her sons should die is amusing especially when they double down on the want in cruelty by murdering the boy she tries to save book cheese is worse too he does not kick a dog true but he does not have a dog and he's the one that tells malor that his mother wants him dead I would also suggest that Helena shows more courage more strength in the the book by offering her own life to save her son offering a piece of jewelry is just not the same as I saw it the Sophie's Choice aspect was the strongest part of the sequence the darkest the most viseral I hated to lose that and judging from the comments online most of the fans seem to agree so there's two things to unpack here the first is George reads online comments very nice the second thing is that I know someone is going to try and bring this up so I want to address it here instead of replying to individual comments but during earlier parts of the season I said how this changed from mord to Jaris was fine because it still resulted in the same thing the Civil War beginning and the brutality shown on either side being front and center however I said this because Ryan Condell assured us in an interview that malor was still part of the show and apparently he assured George of that as well when Ryan Condell first told me what he meant to do ages ago back in 2022 I argued against it for all those reasons I did not argue long or with much heat however the change weakened the sequence I felt but only a little bit and Ryan had what seemed to be a practical reasons for it they did not want to deal with casting another child especially a 2-year-old toddler kids that young will inevitably slow down production and there would be budget implications by the way all of that true something Ryan did highlight budget already was an issue in House of the Dragon it made sense to save money wherever we could moreover Ryan assured me that we would not be losing Prince malor simply postponing him Queen Helena could still give birth to him in season 3 presumably after getting with child late in season 2 that made sense to me me so I withdrew my objections and acquest to the change I still love the episode in the blood and cheese sequence overall losing the helenus choice beat did weaken the scene but not to any great degree only the book readers would even notice its absence viewers who had never read Fire and Blood would still find the scene heart-rending there's another aspect to removal of the young princeling however sometime between the initial decision to remove malor a big change was made the prince's birth was no longer just going to be pushed back to season 3 he was never going to be born at all the younger son of aegon and Helena would never appear again George is basically saying what I've been saying casual viewers are a majority of the fan base for House of the dragon and I doubt they would care too much over one character not appearing for the sake of being killed off in a brutal way later on but the main issue here is that Ryan outright lied to George to calm him down or spoke too soon in regards to budget yes this is something Ryan has discussed before in an interview something we've covered on this channel and while I understand his issue with the budget and the technical aspects of having a child actor on set it's clear that George was starting to realize that the adaptation changes that he hates is coming to the show now for those of you who don't remember or don't know George has had a whole blog post a while ago called the adaptation Tango where he criticizes the hell out of showrunners who try to adapt things to make it their own in my opinion the perfect example of this would be the Witcher on Netflix but I'm sure you guys can find others as well let's continue most of you know about the butterfly effect I assume yes there was a movie with that title a few years back by the the way great film Ashton Kutcher was awesome in it it's a familiar Concept in Chaos Theory as well but most science fiction fans were first exposed to the idea in Ray bradberry's classic time travel story A Sound of Thunder wherein a time traveler from the present panics and crushes a butterfly while hunting a T-Rex when he returns to his own time he discovers that the world has changed in huge and frightening ways one dead butterfly has Rewritten history the lesson being that change begets change and even a small and seemingly insignificant alterations to a timeline or a story can have a profound effect on all that follows malor is a 2-year-old toddler in Fire and Blood but like our butterfly he has an impact on the story all out of proportion to his size the readers among you may recall that when it appears that rineer and her blacks are about to capture King's Landing Queen Allison becomes concerned for the safety of Helena's remaining children and takes steps to save them by smuggling them out of the city the task is given to two knights of the King's Guard sir Willis Fel is commanded to deliver Prince Jara to the barathan the storm's end while malor is given over to Sir Ricker Thorne to be escorted across the Mander to the protection of the high tower Army on its way to King's Landing Willis Fel delivers Jara safely to the barans at Storm's end but sir Rickard fares less well he and mayor get as far as bitter bridge where he is revealed as a King's Guard in a Tavern called the Hogs head once discovered sir Rickard fights bravely to protect his young charge and bring him to safety but he does not even make it across the bridge before some crossbow brings him down Prince meor is torn from his arms and then sadly ripped to pieces by the mob fighting over the boy and the huge reward that rira has offered for his captured and return so real quick because I wanted to keep going into this but I I get that some casual fans are listening to this right now and are probably saying that they don't want to see another child have a gruesome death and I do agree with that when it comes to animal cruelty and even child endangerment that stuff has always made me very uncomfortable even reading about it but I want to quickly highlight something here that George may not realize he's bringing up and that's reira in the show is vastly different than she is in the books to the point where I doubt she'd even put a reward on aegon's children to have them brought to her the writers have bent over backwards to make rira the super special awesome good guy protagonist who's really against war and has no major flaws which is so different than her book counterpart you could say that Fire and Blood is a history book written by someone who has a bias against reira sure and that falls in line with Preston's maester conspiracy okay but some of the changes made to the show to keep r's clean is a little much well clean of any Noble blood she was cool with having the dragon seeds all killed by dragons in episode 7 but they don't count anyways George continues will any of this appear on the show maybe but I don't see how the butterflies would seem to prohibit it you could perhaps make sir Rickards word be Jara instead of malor but Jara can't be killed she has a huge role to play as aegon's next Air could maybe make meor a newborn instead of a 2-year-old but that would scramble up the timeline which is a bit much of a mess already I have no idea what Ryan has planned if he indeed has planned anything but given mayor's absence from episode 2 the simplest way to proceed would be just to drop him entirely lose the bit where Allison tries to send the kids to safety drop Rickard Thorne which by the way Rickard Thorne can't be dropped he is in the show or send him with Willis fell so Jaris has two guards from what I know that seems to be what Ryan is doing here it's simplest yes it may make sense in terms of budgets and shooting schedules but simpler is not better the bitter Bridge scene had attention suspense action Bloodshed a bit of heroism and a lot of tragedy Rickard Thorne is a tertiary character at best most viewers as opposed to readers will never know he is gone since they never knew him at all but I rather like giving him his brief moment of heroism a taste of the courage and loyalty of the King's Guard regardless of whether they're black or green so real quick Ricker Thorn is in the show he started taking his helmet off right around the second half of season 2 when Allison started going out of King's Landing and doing her own thing but he's played by Vincent Regan if you've watched the one piece live action he played GARP in that show but I do expect him to be brutally killed off since they have named him and he's not some faceless Kings guard anymore like Willis fell but I'm assuming it's to protect aegon's daughter Jara we'll have to see before I continue however I will say to those who do not want spoilers to skip to the time stamp on screen now or use the ones in the description below for season 3 spoilers and yes George apparently has an outline of how season 3 and four are going to go down with all the major changes that they're doing and he casually wrote in some spoilers for certain character so if you don't want to be spoiled by that skip ahead to the time Scamp on screen now or use the ones in the description but to continue on to what George was saying the butterflies are not done with this yet however in the book when word of Prince mayor's death and the grizzly manner of his passing reaches the red keep that proves to be the thing that drives Queen Helena to Suicide she could barely stand to look at meor knowing that she chose him to die in the Sophie's Choice scene and now he is dead in truth her words have come true the grief and guilt are too much for for her to bear in Ryan's outline for season 3 Helena still kills herself for no particular reason there's no fresh horror no triggering event to overwhelm The Fragile young queen and the final butterfly and soon follows thereafter I got to say I'm a little disappointed George didn't take this opportunity to criticize Helena's character Direction with this specifically since they were able to change her character enough in a subtle way initially to give her Dragon dreams where she can tell what's going to happen to fullon giving her powers where she can project herself into someone's Vision as we saw with the Damon stuff and yes that's exactly what she did because she's literally wearing the same clothes in the vision and on the balcony at the same time I know George here is criticizing them leaving out malor and the impact on Helena but it also relies on that character being faithful to the source material and now she's a completely different person who could see all events coming to the point where she's emotionally indifferent like brand was so it's a different character and I I really wish he would have honed in on this but whatever let's continue Queen Helena a sweet and gentle soul is much beloved by the small folk of King's Landing riro was not so when rumors began to arise that Helena did not kill herself but rather was murdered at reira's command the common folk were quick to believe them that night of King's Landing Rose in bloody Riot I wrote on page 506 a fire in blood it is the beginning of the end for rira's rule over the city ultimately leading to the storming of the Dragon Pit and the rise of the shepherd's mob that drives rira to flee the city and return to Dragon Stone and her death malor by himself No Spoilers means little he's a small child does not have a line of dialogue does nothing of consequence but die but where and when and how that does matter losing meor weakened the end of the blood and- cheese sequence but it also cost us the bitter Bridge scene with all of its horror and heroism it undercuts a certain someone's suicide and that in turn sent thousands into the streets and alleys screaming for justice for their murdered Queen none of that is essential I suppose but all of it does serve a purpose it all helps tie the story together so one thing Falls another in a logical and convincing manner so I'm not trying to run defense for Ryan Condell here but I will say that a lot of this can still happen in a sense Thorne could still take Jara the remaining child to the reach they get discovered and he dies trying to get her to safety maybe another King's Guard brings Jara to someplace safe but with no news of her safety it could still cause these events to play out and the eventual riots that could still go down but I I get where George is coming from and his frustration here how it's a needless change done due to budget and casting issues but I have to wonder if he ever tried to work out some of these later story details with Ryan to make it fit a bit better and closer to the source material to make do with what they have but he ends the blog post by saying what will we offer the fans instead once we've killed these butterflies I have no idea I do not recall that Ryan and I ever discussed this back when he first told me they were pushing back on aegon's Second Son meor himself is not essential but if losing him means we also lose bitter bridge that person's suicide the riots and well that's a considerable loss George closes out with the most damning part of the blog by saying and there are larger more toxic butterflies to come if House of the Dragon goes ahead with some of the changes being contemplated for season 3 and 4 so I think I speak for a lot of people when I say I was expecting more of an episode by episode analysis on what he liked and what he didn't like and what we got here was something I know some people who didn't like season 2 are going to try to claim some weird type of victory over this and be very hateful and all that and honestly I don't think anybody wins here I hate that have to keep reminding people of this even though George said it in this very same blog post that I just read and others but he clearly didn't hate season 2 the problem he's having is that there are needless and unnecessary changes made throughout the show that just don't make sense for the characters or the story going forward I get that and I get why he focused on the mord Chain so much even the dragon behavior in a previous blog post but I wish he was a bit more straightforward about other changes instead of contradicting himself here because he did did for example Helena he mentions here how the change with mayo removes some of the stuff that happens with her regarding blood and cheese and even later on but when the first episode came out he praised the way they changed the character Helena in the books is massively different than she is in the show but he was okay with that but in order for Helena to react the way he wanted her to and for that outcome to come about in the same way they would have had to make her book accurate which they didn't and he said he was fine with it so which is it and to be fair I know some people are going to say didn't you pay attention he hated all the changes well no he doesn't because of most of what happens in episode 2 is completely original and changes quite a lot of things and he loved that so yeah also and let's be honest for a minute here the stuff with melor and Helena are the last things I would list as problems with season 2 him not mentioning them butchering Allison the unnecessary reera meetings Damon's Visions Alice being a completely different person entirely uh the inclusion of Blood Ravens the green men amongst other random ass things they threw in there there was so much change here in season 2 and to focus on the one thing that seems I don't know like so little in comparison to all this other stuff again before someone says well it's clear that he's not cool no as I just said he's fine with some of the changes and not fine with others so I would have liked for him to spent more time telling us what he didn't like specifically instead of telling us the stuff we already know because most of us know what removing maor means if anything the blog post seemed like an excuse to trash Ryan condle and the writers as garbage ideas they had for some of the characters again I'm fine with that but I wanted more detail that being said I am mixed on this blog post on one hand I love that George is being honest and real with us and telling us how he feels but on the other if he was going to go scorched Earth and I'd rather that blog post be longer and more damning go nuclear as of recording this the blog post and the website itself has been taken down possibly HBO or condle contacted him and they exchanged some words so we'll have to see what goes down but for now I'd love to know what you guys thought of this and I'll pass the question on to you was George in the right for putting this out and criticizing the showrunners or was this just unprofessional of him leave your thoughts down below because I will feature them in the next video because I do want to follow up on what the fandom thinks about all this because I checked on social media subreddits forums all this other stuff and you guys have mixed opinions about this and I really like that because the conversation is just there and I've always enjoyed that so as always thank you so much for watching be sure to like subscribe all that good stuff I'll see you next time have a good one [Music]