Why Is George R. R. Martin Criticizing ‘House of the Dragon’?

hey folks David Chen here from decoding TV recently George RR Martin made a blog post in which he criticized some of the decisions that were made in adapting his book Fire and Blood to the TV show House of the Dragon in the following video that you're about to watch Patrick kic and I discuss why he might have made this blog post what was going through his mind what he's trying to accomplish uh and we speculate on what exactly is going on here but in the time since we recorded this conversation new developments have occurred specifically George RR Mar has removed the blog post and furthermore uh there has been a statement that has been issued to variety from HBO according to variety an HBO spokesperson responded to Martin's complaints saying there are few greater fans of George R Martin and his book Fire and Blood than the creative team on House of the Dragon both in production and at HBO commonly when adapting a book for the screen with its own format and limitations the showrunner ultimately is required to make difficult choices about the characters and stories the audience will follow we believe that Ryan Condell and his team have done extraordinary job and the millions of fans the series has amassed over the first two seasons will continue to enjoy it so that stuff has happened since we recorded the conversation you're about to watch and who knows by the time you're watching this maybe other stuff will have happened but I just wanted to let you know what's been going on anyway here is the chat as we initially recorded it I think it's still relevant and still worth considering enjoy few days ago a bunch of news sites wrote up this uh blog post from George RR Martin the creator of Game of Thrones and uh House of the Dragon I mean the the book on which house of the Dragon is based we should say and he uh here's a headline from Hollywood Reporter George R Martin says he'll reveal everything that's gone wrong with House of the Dragon here's the article George R Martin is suggesting he's about to go draus on House of the Dragon Boy he posted an eyebrow raising message on his blog Friday saying he's going to reluctantly describe what went wrong with the innocuously snuggled into the bottom of a blog post about a Santa Fe Festival Martin added I do not look forward to other posts I need to write about everything that's gone wrong with House of the Dragon but I need to do that too and I will not today though Martin added on a more personal level I have had a pretty wretched year as well one full of stress anger conflict and defeat I need to talk about some of that and I will uh I will I was away from my computer traveling from July 15th to August 15th so a lot of things that needed saying did not get set so this set a lot of Game of Thrones fans their tongues clucking because a lot of people were like what is going on with what it is that George R Martin is talking about here right like what what what he is theoretically gonna light [ __ ] up about House of the Dragon he's angry he's unhappy with how House of the Dragon has gone what is he going to talk about and initially this segment that we're recording right now was going to be us speculating about what that is or or kind of reflecting on the fact that he even feels need to say this I I go to check George R Martin's blog before we start recording and literally within minutes before we started recording he actually posted the what I assume is the first of multiple missives on this topic so uh he posted an article at his blog georgr martin.com uh where he wrote a blog post called beware the butterflies that's the title of the blog post I'm not going to read the whole thing because it's very long um and I will I will say I'm not going to spoil anything from future seasons of House of the Dragon but I am G to spoil something that happens in the first couple episodes of season two of House of the Dragon to talk about this right so like uh if you if you don't want to be spoiled in the first couple episodes of House of Dragon season 2 uh skip forward to the next segment well it's like he you know had previously as the season was airing and the event that you're about to get into like had mentioned he was like really well shot very tense have some issues like there was groundwork being laid about this specific scene that seems to then lead into criticisms uh from himself about the season or the series uh as a whole yeah yeah so in season two of House of dragon what happens is Damon Targaryen you know he is team black he's against Team Green and he sends in these two assassins named blood and cheese into King's Landing uh to kill one of the sons uh and blood and cheese find Helena who is the queen and they find her two sons now now here's the thing in the book there's actually three children there's Jaris Jara and malor and Jaris and Jara are uh Twins and malor uh is younger than them he's two years old the other twins are six years old and in the book Blood and cheese Force Helena to choose which one of her sons to be killed or else all of them will be killed right and there's some there's some differences in like how Helena approaches the situation um she offers to sacrifice herself uh in the book apparently that doesn't happen in the show uh and so there's all these little differences in the interaction but uh eventually she uh to save the life of the twins Helena names uh malor the youngest child to die right she's like hey I want you to kill this youngest child uh in and then what happens is uh blood kills the older child instead like directly against what she asks him to do it's like a very cruel upsetting scene in the book one of like red wedding level upsetting of like you know you force a mom to name one of her children to die and then they kill the other one that did not happen in the show at all in the show uh she doesn't even have a younger child mayor right so and they ask they ask her to choose a child to like identify a child and then she uh she does if I recall correctly right um there is no maor in House of the Dragon I'm reading here from the blog post blood can't seem to tell the twins apart so Helena has to reveal which one is the boy uh instead of offering her life to save the kids Helena offers them a necklace uh blood and cheese are not tempted blood sauce Prince J Harris's head off we are spared the sight of that a sound effect suffices uh it is a bloody brutal scene no doubt uh then he continues I still believe the scene in the book is is stronger end quote uh and he he talks about why he thinks you know the book is better the way that The Killers act and so on so forth okay so that's like that was a big change from the book this season and we talked about it in the cast of Kings uh and all that stuff um and kind of the the implications behind it George R Martin in this blog post then go goes on to explain that not having malor as a presence on the show has all these Ripple effects that I'm not going to get into because they're spoilery of the future books right like future stuff of the books that basically by removing this character of meor and therefore like it you know that changes this entire blood and- cheese scene it also changes a bunch of other stuff uh that we haven't even seen in the shows yet uh and not only that but he as he writes it in the blog post he doesn't understand how any of the stuff that meor impacts is going to have the same impact without meor having existed again the youngest of Helena's children so that's that's the that's the summation of like this this blog post as far as as best as I can do it and then he says at the end of the blog post there are larger and more toxic butterflies to come if House of the Dragon goes ahead with some of the changes being contemplated for seasons 3 and four so what he's saying is removing mord that wow that created all these Ripple effects and then they're going to make other changes that gonna have all these other Ripple effects and I can stay silent no longer Patrick kpic what's your reaction to all this you know congratulations George R Martin youve entered your Stephen King uh era uh of being an old uh cranky author like you found your shining it's this it's House of the Dragon the thing that you're going to bang your drum about I mean look HBO by choosing to remain extremely cozy and with George R Martin like with the creator of this world of this franchise all its spin-offs all its Associated characters you invite the fact that they can be like more authoritatively critical of the work as opposed to an adaptation it's where well at an auction house like we bought the rights like goodbye to the author like we're going to go you know we paid you a bunch of money now we're going to go do what you want with the work and so I think that's part of what makes this feel a little bit different than just understandably an author taking issue with an adaptation um is the fact that there's been a lot made about like HBO really championing and like wanting Martin to write scripts and be creatively involved with like how do we expand this world like what parts of the world should we expand and so for him to step in you know in the midst of two seasons right like season three is supposed to go into production sometime early next year probably come out summer 2026 based on the way you speculated about how the production would laid out it seems well I don't know if I can't tell if it's calculated or not that would be my question to you does this feel like an author had a bad year emotional feels very close to this particular change and its implications I think he puts in the blog post which I didn't read in in totality because Martin was at least nice enough to say spoiler alert yeah he did he did put a little spoiler about like if you're only a unlike unlike Game of Thrones um and I do Wonder uh we get into this whether there's a different calculation on his part where how can I criticize what the show owners are doing when I myself have not finished the work whereas Fire and Blood which is what house the dragons is adapting is a completed work that has a beginning a middle and an end and thus Martin then feels a little more authority to come forward with right uh changes that that he disagrees with um seems like a lot of fireworks that ultimately I'm not sure is going to I can't tell if this is going to result in Martin cutting ties with HBO and HBO just pressing forward with a world that is financially very important to them or this is sort of look Martin's kind of a weird dude like he just is like let him have his release valve like he gets out here write his blog right and like he's probably still gonna be blogging about the house of the Dragon season three for good or ill um I mean the last thing I'd say before I turn over to you is uh this happens with works that become bigger than the author House of the Dragon Game of Thrones Martin made it he he crafted this world it has escaped him which is all art but like it's just a piece of Pop Culture that is beyond just what his disagreement is with a particular storytelling choice anyway yeah I I don't know that we fully understand exactly what is going on here it could be a combination of things so here are some things we we know right is that as you indicate uh he has not finished the final books of The Game of Thrones series will not finish I think is what you meant to say wow I'm I'm I'm a reporter I work with evidence um show me show me the pages ouch ouch uh one of my favorite reactions to this whole series of George R Martin's post was somebody posted uh the scene from Logan lucky uh where did you ever see that movie Logan lucky this a scene that gets funnier with time I would I personally as someone that likes you know broadly liked the show ending aside um did not read the books but feel bad for like the book fans that have not been able to see it completed in the form they fell in love with it but if we're looking for a joke to get funnier with time and do we need Game of Thrones to be Song of Ice and Fire to be finished or the scene from Logan lucky to get funnier with time I'm just not sure how to weigh these two but you should explain the scene in question yeah so Logan lucky is a movie that came out seven years ago and so the it must have been shot eight years ago essentially Masterpiece of a film love that movie great movie and during the movie there is a prison riot and uh the the prisoners have demands and one of the demands is uh that they want all the books from George R Martin's uh Game of Thrones to be like added to the prison library and you know and there's a there's a very protracted sequence where they're negotiating the demands and then the the prison Warden says hey yeah we got all the demands like all that stuff is fine but FY I there's no Winds of Winter like that book doesn't exist yet The Winds of Winter and dream of spring have yet to be published so those aren't available and one of the prisoners says that's impossible because like I heard people talking about stuff that happens in that book and he's like well apparently that's from the game of th like that's Game of Thrones TV show uh and you know this whole dialogue happens in the movie itself of like that's from The Game of Thrones TV show that's how they know all the plot details and you know the prisoner is like don't believe George RR Martin was supposed to deliver the wins a winner to his publisher over two years ago game of seven years ago Game of Thrones is at some of the height of its popularity right like like before the critical downfall like like like it's the kind of joke that if they made Logan lucky now like they wouldn't put it in there it's it's a pop culture joke that that works but part of as a function of the time that Logan lucky was made they did not know how Timeless that joke would be oh my God they did not understand right but yeah I I saw people posting this in re ction to George R Martin's uh ketching about uh how House of the Dragon Chang things here are some some stuff we know right I my understanding is George R Martin was not super deeply involved with the making of those final seasons of Game of Thrones he did provide a sort of outline or uh story guidance to Ben off and Weiss about like where that story was going to end um and as far as we know they followed most of it right like that the broad uh Strokes of of what George R Martin is going to do with Game of Thrones as far as we know like that's what Game of Thrones ended up being the execution is probably extremely different than what George R Martin would do in the books if they were to exist uh but but like kind of the broad out lines of who ends up on the on the iron throne and where all the characters end up my guess is uh that it's if the books ever come out it's going to be somewhat close to what we saw in Game of Thrones George R Martin much more involved with how of a dragon as far as we can tell like he is an felt like a response from HBO to some of the critical backlash to the end of Game of Thrones um like hey I we'll really involve the author this time and you know like we'll be hand inand with how we build this thing right and um and part of it is also like House of the Dragon is one of the biggest shows in TV right now but when it was gonna come out people didn't assume that that would happen right people didn't assume that that would be the case uh and so I think that uh there's there's one of potentially many things going on here one is that when you get closer to the work you feel more passionate about it like he is more close to the work now House of dragon he's more deeply involved and therefore he sees how people are altering his work and uh and because he disagrees with the decisions that are made uh he takes it more personally now than than with Game of Thrones he wasn't perhaps was not quite as involved intimately and there and you know therefore didn't feel like he and you know also you pointed out Patrick like the books weren't done and so there's only so much those people could do to to honor his work here it's like I've laid out a template for you guys and also I'm working on the show how dare you not follow what I'm doing right like that's there there's probably some of that I think there's also um potentially I'm just this is just wild speculation on my part that when creative people get older uh they start to reflect on kind of what their contributions are to the culture in a little bit more concrete terms I think the the one that I think about a lot is Charlie Kaufman um Charlie Kaufman once spoke out about how he had I don't know if he expressed regret but he was very sorrowful about the idea that other filmmakers had directed his movies right like Charlie Koffman has like as of late you may have noticed like he directs all his stuff now right like but earlier on in his career uh Spike Jones would direct his movies and uh Michelle gandre would direct this movies and so on and as time has gone on he said like uh hey I I I really regret this because because he's like I am best equipped to manifest my Creative Vision right like that's kind of what his attitude was as far as I could tell and I think for writers you know that that that is potentially something that I could see happening is as you get on in years and you see people take your work and make it into something that to you is unrecognizable or bastard itis is it and as that happens more and more often as you get older you're like hey I I I only have a limited amount of time left to like have my Visions realized in the world yes it's going to be bastardized but the least I can do is speak out about it you know the least I can do is speak out against it again 100% speculation there's no evidence for anything I've just said but if I'm to like what you're seeing right Patrick I think you'd agree is somebody who is Raging Against the Machine like this is not someone who is happy with how his work has been treated uh because otherwise why would you speak out against it publicly like it just it's um borderline unprofessional right and so yeah I would say like actually isession it actually is unprofessional it can be calculate right like that's and that why I went back to like it can still be calculated where like has he earned the right to be unpr you know like has he earned the right to to you know to step out and say this like and be un like I think he knows what he's doing like he toally he totally has earned the right I mean he has contributed enormously to our culture uh so he can say whatever the hell he wants I'm not saying he shouldn't do it I'm uh I'm saying if I was working with him as a collaborator I would not appreciate this blog post um and also I I think you've hinted at this Patrick is he could be doing this to influence the course of future seasons of House of the Dragon he he sees where House of the dragon's going and he's like hey I don't like where this is going and I have the ability to change it I have the ability to uh to to if I raise a big enough stink maybe these people will be shamed into doing it the way I want to do it now I actually don't know how that's going to happen given that with this specific instance uh they wrote meor the young child out of the show and so like I don't even know how they're going to do it uh which is I it's it's an adaptation right like I think you I don't know how much you picked up on this in in covering this with a a cast of Kings but like when I watched Game of Thrones like obviously a common joke was like I can't remember what the names of all these characters are um that's so much worse in the house of the Dragon like it is just so difficult to keep track of name you many of have the same names like there's just it's it's a difficult show it's a show I've enjoyed quite a bit obviously it's popular but part of adaptation in sprawling novels is to condense characters to try and accom similar ARs abely and the thing we don't know and maybe can we can't know until the show is done and you can compare the work side by side is were was HBO you know Ryan cougler and and Company able to accomplish to the best you can in an adaptation which is always going to be an imperfect translation because you are doing an adaptation you not doing a translation and there's a little bit here of well what Martin wants is a translation work to screen that's not how adaptations work um and there are good ways to do it there are bad ways to do it I'm not necessarily arguing that uh cougler HBO are chose the best path like they could make the wrong creative choices they could make ones that were weaker for isn't it Ryan cougler or not um it's Ryan um cond cond cond sorry my bad I knew it was Ryan C the black you know the Black Panther director like secretly came in in season two I knew was Ryan C my bad thank you for for catching me there um uh con and Company um they may they may make not necessarily the quote correct decision there aren't really correct there are better and worse decisions in an adaptation but we won't know that till we see I think um again because I stopped reading the blog post to avoid spoilers like I believe Martin calls them toxic butterflies yes toxic butterflies yeah and uh it's I think the implication there is that because this one character in this one scene seems innocuous like that will have ramifications for how so many story lines would play out and that may be right what just may also be true is that it's still a good story that manages to achieve the same themes and emotional outcomes of the original work and part of what bothers me about the unprofessionalism of the blog is again not that he's not that you can't be specific you're being intentionally vague like either like buddy you're going to walk up to the line like step over what do you think he's being vague about Patrick what are the toxic butterflies oh I see expl like expl like the book's out like he doesn't want to step over like I maybe it's because of NDA it's very possible those are that's coming Patrick it's very possible future blog post is coming where he talks about that sure and and uh win may be coming in a blog post like you know in future uh from from Martin but it just seems like either do the whole thing explain your like actual critique of what the show's story choices this feels a little bit like ending with like toxic butterflies is a little bit of like well you also wrote half of your series and then just stop it's like come on like well I I actually don't have a problem with that because I think you're right that uh it would be even more of a dick move to spoil stuff that's going to happen in the show and there's probably legal action that HBO would take as a result of that so there there are probably reasons but that's what makes this such a like awkward crowbar by himself to into the proc I have no issue with that but I I think you made a great point about uh the the idea that you can adapt something and it can actually excise like tons of characters and still capture the spirit of what the thing was trying to do I mean just look at Game of Thrones seasons one through four four 135 for that yeah right and that's why I had all my speculation and wild tangent about like what's going on with George AR Martin's mind because he has been around long enough to know that all the stuff you said Patrick is true right like he has been around long enough to know that hey this is how adaptation works and why does he suddenly have a problem with it now it's weird yes it's weird that he suddenly has problem with so I'm like I'm trying to I'm trying to like come up with reasons why that might be the case and maybe yeah he he had a rough year he's getting on in years and he's trying to think through like what is my legacy is it going to be to leave these bastardized versions of my my excellent Immaculate work around and and the ones that will have like a bigger pop culture imprint right like like the adaptations of his work which like obviously they were popular novels like they had a huge audience but like fun it's the reason people are excited when things get adapted like we live in a maybe this will change in the culture and generations to come but like TV film adaptations probably not um the live on his Tik toks instead um but like the adaptations end up imprinting as like the interpretation of the work for for better and like mostly for worse but like that is just sort of how we remember these things and so I can imagine a a scenario and I am sympathetic to this um that if he foresees a Game of Thrones 2.0 which is like look I my bad did not thought I'd finish these books by the time that like the show was over didn't and so I can't really be too upset over the imperfections in the storytelling because all I gave you was a template or like a bit of a road map as opposed to something concrete here I have given you this and if the audience backlash to my work is because the backlash to Game of Thrones as a television product then reflects back on game like uh like the fan like the the books themselves even if that's not uh actually true those you know like it it's Game of Thrones it's his world and like that series ended poorly is like seen as one of like the most disastrous television like conclusions of all time like that has got to hurt in stin and so if at least he has a sense of culpability and how that came out and I think that is true by not finishing those books he was culpable in the the storytelling uh or lack thereof in those final Seasons uh here I can imagine like look like I gave I'm not letting that happen again right like or at least I'm going I'm going to make my feelings known ahead of time so that if people look at Seasons three and four and go huh they'll know that I had at least laid the groundwork for I raised my hand like maybe they still end up being good and popular but if like fans of the book especially like look at it and go like this really isn't resonant with what Martin was trying to accomplish he'll have put a kind of stake in in in the ground and maybe just walked up to the line where it's probably still beneficial to HBO to work with him and build these worlds out together but allows him to sort of like say I gave it to you I disagree with where you went with it but like don't let it be known that I said something when I didn't before because I didn't really have any ground to stand on because the books weren't finished right right yeah uh while we're kind of wildly speculating about what the hell George is doing here I I'll bring up one final Theory right uh if you saw the movie Dune there this uh there's this sort of race of superpowered priestesses called the Ben aerate and one of the most famous lines they say that's been Meed online is our plans are measured in C Ries right uh you can imagine a world where Game of Thrones is adapted again at some point in the future uh I I I don't actually think Geor just thinking about this but like you can imagine in like 30 years from now people like probably not in his lifetime though right right he's like but hey let's take another crack at this Game of Thrones thing and it's like oh I remember the creator of that thing had like a real issue with how this particular you know like um but I mean we just saw Shogun adapted there that was already that had already been adapted into TV miniseries and it was adapted again recently for Hulu and and to Great critical claim you can imagine like 40 years from now people saying hey let's try to make another Game of Thrones and um if that's true then uh you could imagine that George R Martin is kind of creating a template like a a guide book to follow for future generations of creators I don't actually think he's thinking that far ahead like this honest he seems CR he seems cranky and this feels extremely shortsighted it has the like yes like it feels very much just like a cranky old man who's going through something and this was a way of kind of working through some of those feelings because I have to I have to be honest like when I didn't obviously didn't read the second you were not Patrick has not been happy with George R Martin's behavior in this situation I would just kind of roll my eyes because um like I guess yeah what what is with your distaste cuz is it cuz like you don't like it to amount to very little I was like you just you just seem like you woke up on the wrong side of the bed and decided to write a blog post like when like the amount of hype like I'm goingon to I'm gonna let people know like what's wrong with the show they killed the wrong kid like it again I didn't read the books like I don't know where it all goes I can't I can't sit here and speculate over like the storytelling ramifications but it just seems like I was ready for a Whopper like give me something juicy and it's like I don't know he kind of farted out a blog post wow wow uh not little lit literacy indigestion uh happening uh that's interesting I I thought you'd have more issue with the kind of like unprofessionalism of it of like I I just don't think in general it's a good idea to attack your collaborators I agree but if you're gonna make it juicy like I I want it a little more in the bone here it just feels like uh it's not personal enough like so uh that's fair that's fair and and but I think part of that is what has me falling back on the theory that like the crankiness like like again like it's why I made the comparison to to to Stephen King where like and it's interesting because Stephen King um famously does not take like John Carpenter takes the check um largely like it's like it's cool that someone wanted to adapt my work right and otherwise doesn't have strong opinions on whether he he in fact he's actually a good PR guy like says something nice about even like he said something nice about the Dark Tower movie and that's like one of the most abysmal adaptations of his work or any work that I have ever borne witness it's a little personal me because that's my my favorite alltime favorite series but um like The Shining for example he has always took a [ __ ] on Kubrick's adaptation he thinks he like deeply misinterpret of the work The Shining book is you know him working through his family issues and alcoholism and and a lot of other stuff but I that's why I made the comparison to sort of the the king and kubri moment because I wonder is there yeah what is it about this moment now where it's like you've seemed to been pretty okay with just taking checks and like overseeing the adaptations but not feeling as though it defines you and you're and so that's where like your point about getting older and what is it saying like like I wonder if it's Dawning upon him that like the Games of Throne like Game of Thrones averse or however you want to call it and HBO's continued adaptations which are not going to end like is turning into the Legacy of Martin more so than the books and and he's struggling with what that means when they're not translations they're adaptations the Stephen King example is a really good one for The Shining because The Shining obviously generally regarded as one of the greatest films of all time right but not an adaptation Stephen King favors because he changed a bunch of stuff he changed a bunch of stuff it's a very different movie then he removes all Sympathy for the main like again like if from King's perspective I You Know Jack Torrance is me like an abusive like uh alcoholic father struggling yeah with substance abuse issues and then the movie is like look at that piece of [ __ ] like he sucks and so I you know again it's it's it's more you know that's kind of singular in how King responded to an adaptation because 99% of the time King is super let just let's it just like he's not as crass as like Carpenter who like will just do interviews that says like I love getting paid for people to make bad at ation of my work um so there's different levels of sort of like the cranky Elder Statesman sort of creative and I'm just I wonder where we are on on that Arc and um well this is a particularly pointed this is a particularly pointed uh I don't know if mean spirited is the right word but like it it feels very angry to me you know it feels very upset to me right it mean maybe mean spirited is uh the wrong word but relative to a guy who sort of portrays his Public Image as like the J like kind of a santa like Jolly fig like yes I write all these dark and Twisted Fantasy worlds but like he generally comes across as in his Public Image I have no idea of his personal life like a fun happy like loves that people love his like he's this is just this is an unusual turn tonally for how he has presented himself since he has stepped on to the public stage as a result of Game of Thrones becoming as big a deal as it was on HP yeah hey everyone David Chen here thank you so much for watching that video from decoding TV if you want to get an audio version of the show all you got to do is go to podcast. decoding tv.com and if you want to support what we do get adree episodes of the podcast and also bonus episodes of the podcast go to decoding tv.com and become a paid member of course you can also like And subscribe for more we appreciate it thanks see you later