George R.R. Martin ei pidä Hollywood-pomoista, jotka eivät kunnioita lähdemateriaalia

George R.R. Martin on ollut äänekkäästi sitä mieltä, että kun elokuvia ja TV-sarjoja tehdään lähdemateriaalista, pysyteltäisiin mahdollisimman uskollisena sille lähdemateriaalille sitten. Martin on harmissaan siitä, että aina on se Hollywood-pomo, joka luulee tietävänsä paremmin, ja valjastaa lähdemateriaalin omiin tarkoituksiinsa.

Omassa blogissaan Martin teki kantansa selväksi.

"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. "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."

Martin jatkaa käyttämällä Disney+ -sarjaa Shogunia esimerkkinä siitä, miten sarja tehdään oikealla tavalla lähdemateriaalia kunnioittaen. Siitä hän ei kuitenkaan ole varma, onko uusi Shogun parempi kuin se vuoden 1980 minisarja (jonka Gamereactorin arvion voi lukea täältä).

"The new SHOGUN is superb. Better than Chamberlain's version, you ask? Hmmm, I don't know. I have not watched the 1980 miniseries since, well, 1980. That one was great too. The fascinating thing is that while the old and new versions have some significant differences — the subtitles that make the Japanese dialogue intelligible to English speaking viewers being the biggest — they are both faithful to the Clavell novel in their own way. I think the author would have been pleased. Both old and new screenwriters did honor to the source material, and gave us terrific adaptations, resisting the impulse to "make it their own.""