GAME OF THRONES AND WHY BOOK ADAPTATIONS SUCK
AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE OF SCARCITY AND POST SCARCITY ARTISTIC COMPOSITION
INTRODUCTION: BOOKS AND MOVIES
Since I was a little boy, I always loved to read. I spent much of my childhood alone and apart from other kids (be that because of geography or character, I can’t really say). I loved to be entertained. I loved TV. I still do. But when TV wasn’t available (I moved around a lot as a kid) books were the friend I turned to in my hour of need.
Movies came in later. I was amazed when I first saw Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. I had not seen a story so well thought out (at least 8 years old me hadn’t), so well acted, so incredibly well produced. I fell in love instantly and my love later developed in my teenage years.
The point is: I love movies and books. I love them equally, even if I don’t consume them equally. So I’ve seen my fair share of adaptations in the few years after my first encounter with J.K. Rowling’s books.
That’s why I lose my mind when someone says the classic cliché “the books are better”; because it simply doesn’t make sense. They are. They always will be, but not for the reasons you think they are. I don’t think there’s a phrase more poorly used than this one in the whole English language. There simply isn’t.
I’m going to try and explain why.
THE WAY THINGS WORK
Many people are not strangers to the fact that books and movies are not the same. After all, even though you can read a book on a screen, you can’t read it in two hours. Exposition is discouraged in film whereas, in books, it’s the ship that moves the plot: “ancient Lords used to blablabla and that’s why this blablabla”. If a character does that on a movie, you instantly get the feeling it’s not a good one (and with reason).
Books work building stories and delaying payoff. Movies build stories and deliver bits and pieces of payoff throughout it. Books can show you what a character thinks, what it believes and why it believes that within a single page. Movies have to show you, a boy is it hard.
There’s a great example of what I’m talking about in this scene. We’re presented with payoff without a single word being spoken. SPOILERS AHEAD: Motion Picture Soundtrack it’s in the background in one of the most consequential scenes of the movie when Sofi and Ian start to know and love each other. It then plays again when the movie ends and Ian finds Sofi’s “next life”. The payoff is delivered without dialogue, and it’s beautiful. A redeeming scene for an overall average film.
Yes, a book could setup the same things and deliver the same conclusion, but it won’t be the same feeling. Movies can create an atmosphere with music, sound, and references. If a book reads “that one painting the little girl saw like three chapters ago” you’d be justified to be angry. The writer is not doing a good job.
Books, on the other hand, get you attached to characters and story. Nothing is comparable to a book’s capacity to invoke feelings through stories and characters. It’s not the magic we liked in Harry Potter, we couldn’t see that, it was the story and the characters. It’s not the dragons or “tits” we like in A Song of Ice and Fire, it’s the story.
And on that note, I’m going to move on to the next chapter, where we’ll finally develop the point I’ve been trying to make.
ON SCARCITY AND POST SCARCITY
Now we get in the mud. I think people who complain about adaptations are wrong to judge them harshly. I think they can judge them, but many times they seem to overreact and act like “to adapt” is equal to “copy”. It’s not. It’ll never be.
Books are a post scarcity environment. You can create everything with a word and destroy it the same way. Nothing you can ever imagine is out of reach if it’s worth it. Films don’t have that privilege.
I know this argument is often used to exempt adaptations from getting torn apart for bad writing, but trust me it isn’t. I just want you to comprehend that whereas books don’t face any trade-offs, movies HAVE to.
You can’t have dragons and werewolves and battles and 1000 extras even with a 200 million budget. We’re not in a place where CGI is as cheap to use as MS Paint.
Why do I use Game of Thrones as an example? Because either you’ve heard about it or you’re an avid reader/watcher/both. I know *you* know what I’m talking about.
D&D aren’t the best writers in Hollywood. They could be, but they aren’t. They also aren’t George R.R. Martin. They have a deadline, and they’re good at keeping up with it. You may be angry because many things this season don’t make sense, but you’re not angry because they’re still writing, after seven years, a season of 10 episodes.
It’s incredibly hard to adapt something as massive as Game of Thrones. Even more so when the story isn’t even complete yet. Production usually starts after the scripts are ready, and take about a year to carry out.
GRRM hasn’t finished the Mereenese plot after 7 years of writing (probably). D&D had to do it in two weeks. Battles need to be filmed, actors need to get paid, there are people who want out of the show (think Natalie Dormer) there are book plots that either don’t make sense to cram into the show or don’t make sense at all.
FINAL REMARKS
So this turned into an arduous defense of Dan and Dave, huh. I wasn’t planning on it, but my mind went there when writing this article because it was important for me to use them as an example.
They’re not exempt from an underwhelming season (it’s still pretty good, but it should be better). But they’re exempt from about 90% of what people accuse them of. Martin doesn’t owe us anything, but after seven years, we shouldn’t have to make excuses for him.
NOTES:
- I use GOT as a movie because its production value is equitable to one.
- I’ve read all five books.
- I’m a Jonerys fanboy.
- Make of that what you will.

