Current Events > Benioff and Weiss are bad writers

(+) Yeah! (+)

Couldn't they have hired actual competent people for a big thing like GoT?

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no idea how they keep getting work. "themes are for 8th grade book reports" my fucking god

GoT has far more excellent-great episodes than it does bad ones. So they must have done something right.

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They were originally hired to adapt Martin's works, not write new ones, and they didn't do a half bad job of that.
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EnterTheTekken posted...

GoT has far more excellent-great episodes than it does bad ones. So they must have done something right.

Its called grrm source material

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They're kinda doomed no matter what they do now.
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They could've had 20 goddamned seasons to get that show right, HBO would've literally cut them a blank check

But no they wanted to goddamned fuck off to do Star Wars which got fucking canned because Season 8 was so bad.

They don't deserve another chance in the industry

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https://youtu.be/pbrhJwkosKU

Deadpool laser beams? This is dartmouth educated writing?

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They're clearly good at some points when they gave a shit for a lot of the show-only scenes early on, but it's clear that when they got a bigger budget they wanted the more involved directorial stuff with bombastic fights & sets rather than, uh, good writing.

I still defend a lot of season 5/6, too, and I think 5 in particular had the most unnecessary book reader hate outside of the fairly brief Sand Snake plotline.

But yeah they should've handed it off after season 5 or 6, or even 4.

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they spent all their budget on dragons instead of hiring literally any writers
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oh yeah if season 5 introduced euron that was also garbage but i like everything in king's landing/the wall

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I don't think they're bad writers, I just think they got bored and wanted to wrap it up as fast as possible. One of them wrote City of Thieves and that was excellent.

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one of them wrote The 25th Hour, which was great, but besides that, idk.

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InhumaneRaider posted...

I don't think they're bad writers, I just think they got bored and wanted to wrap it up as fast as possible. One of them wrote City of Thieves and that was excellent.

I mostly agree with this, fwiw. I think they're good writers on average but often devolve into shit once they lose interest or if it's a writer-for-hire type deal like with X Men Origins. In the case of GoT, they clearly cared far, far more about the direction & spectacle at the expense of a good conclusion. This is a pretty consistent element in the back half of the show - expending depth for spectacle, and it gets worse every season.

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it's still one of my favorite movies, and in my headcanon, he was just going through a phase of creativity

edit: at post 17

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They're good directors, good at putting pieces into place, good at making a story run through. The changes from the source material they made in early seasons worked out for the best...but it was clear and obvious when they started running out of source material, because the lack of foundation sure did show through the quality and pacing of the show.

I'm one of the rare folks who enjoyed seasons 6, 7, and 8, but I could tell the writing took a nose-dive when they no longer had a bunch of quotes and scenarios from the books to fuel their endeavors. The wit was sapped out, the lengthy character monologues became one-liners and juvenile comebacks.

The effects, the acting, the cinematography, the sets, all that shit was still pristine...but the writing and story did take a significant hit the further they got away from the source. Not to say GRRM is a flawless writer, because there are plenty of stupid things in the books, too, but...he writes dialogue and tense exchanges better than anybody working, as far as I'm concerned. He's like the Tarantino of Fantasy dialogue, but he's much, much better than Tarantino imo.

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Show lost me when Olenna Tyrell bought it. I'm a book and show Tyrell supporter. The casting was on point for them.

InhumaneRaider posted...

One of them wrote City of Thieves and that was excellent.

It was terrible and only reason why anyone liked it was because of got hype

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Zero_Destroyer posted...

He had the single coolest introductory scene of any character in the whole show

then they just squandered whatever else potential he had for the rest of the series

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Did they take 8 years to not write a single book?

But you keep blaming tv writers for not finishing a series perfectly the creator can't finish

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The show started getting bad way before the parts not in the books yet though. And the parts not in the books aren't just bad because they had trouble with the writing, they rushed it on purpose because they wanted to move on. And sorry - they are just a bad fit for the series. They only care about fighting and shock scenes, they don't understand or care about the themes of the story or consistency in the characters, and they dislike the magical elements of the series. They are the same two who made Troy that completely omits all the elements of that story involving the gods, etc.

Nah, the "anime-original" portions were exactly where it took the nosedive in quality

which is to say, some time in Season 5

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SevenTenths posted...

Did they take 8 years to not write a single book?

But you keep blaming tv writers for not finishing a series perfectly the creator can't finish

Grrm is lazy. Benioff is a hack. Unless you think the guy who came up with laser deadpool has talent.

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I think the guy whose job it is to end the series and can't end the series is the person who gets blamed when you get a shitty end.

The show didn't get popular because they're hacks.

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SevenTenths posted...

The show didn't get popular because they're hacks.

The show got popular because the source material was top tier.

https://imgur.com/lJvD2Il

Seriously this is the writer you are defending.

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And who couldn't write top tier material in 8 years?

Oh look, we found the problem.

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SevenTenths posted...

And who couldn't write top tier material in 8 years?

Oh look, we found the problem.

Its easy to accept both were problems in their own ways. Benioff and Weiss are talentless. Grrm is lazy.

Not hard

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If they were talentless, none of the seasons were good.

I blame writer for shitty writing. That makes it grrm fault.

Why on earth would you ask a guy who gave deadpool laser eyes to write 2 books when that isn't his job?

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SevenTenths posted...

If they were talentless, none of the seasons were good.

Bro. The actual good parts of GoT were the parts they adapted from the books lol. I will bet anyone with the proper education in scriptwriting could write an adaption of the books as well as they did.

SevenTenths posted...

Why on earth would you ask a guy who gave deadpool laser eyes to write 2 books when that isn't his job?

Why on earth would you give him a job at all? Showbiz works in mysterious ways.

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MildEnergy posted...

Bro. The actual good parts of GoT were the parts they adapted from the books lol

So whose fault it is they had nothing to adapt?

Also let me know when every good book gets a good adaption because you apparently think it's so easy and takes no talent.

You keep blaming the wrong person because you just parrot whatever reddit tells you to think.

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SevenTenths posted...

So whose fault it is they had nothing to adapt?

Also let me know when every good book gets a good adaption because you apparently think it's so easy and takes no talent.

You keep blaming the wrong person because you just parrot whatever reddit tells you to think.

I'm sorry but are you even a book reader? Shit. Dude. The Asoiaf source material is top tier. You essentially either have to be talentless to write a script of it properly when you have the budget and an entire tv show. This isn't like adapting an 1000 page book into a 2 hour movie and wondering why it doesn't come out right lol

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The next hundred posts of this topic are just going to be the exact same two posts repeated 50 times each.
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If i like toast hasn't even read the books then that makes his defense laughable like dude I have been waiting 10 years lololol.

Hell I had to wait 6 years for Jim Butcher to give us more Dresden thank god he write two at once.

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SevenTenths posted...

So whose fault it is they had nothing to adapt?

How does this translate in your mind into not blaming them for what they wrote?

If you're a writer for a show, your job is to write good material. Stuff that you get to adapt is easy mode. If you run out of material to adapt and then can't write, that's on you.

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marthsheretoo posted...

SevenTenths posted...

So whose fault it is they had nothing to adapt?

How does this translate in your mind into not blaming them for what they wrote?

If you're a writer for a show, your job is to write good material. Stuff that you get to adapt is easy mode. If you run out of material to adapt and then can't write, that's on you.

Besides, they did have more to adapt. They decided to skip over almost all of books 4 and 5 because they didn't like them.
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marthsheretoo posted...

If you're a writer for a show, your job is to write good material

So why didn't GRRM write anything

marthsheretoo posted...

Stuff that you get to adapt is easy mode

Compared to from scratch, absolutely, but easy in general see:
SevenTenths posted...

Also let me know when every good book gets a good adaption because you apparently think it's so easy and takes no talent.

MildEnergy posted...

The Asoiaf source material is top tier

So why are you blaming people who didnt write it for not writing the rest of it.

MildEnergy; I expect a writer who have deadpool laser eyes to match grrm writing and if they can't do that they are shit. They get 0 credit for adapting the already written part because all book adaptations are 10/10 because it is so easy

Toast: so they ran out of source material and you're blaming them why when the author is alive and allegedly working on the next book?

MildEnergy: reeeeee how dare you point out the flaw in my logic. You must not have even read the books that's the only way I can continue ignoring the problem is if I just keep creating a false reality like one where tv show writers are supposed to out write grrm.

Like go watch the awful dark tower movie if you want to see how you can fuck up top tier source material. That's a situation where you can blame the writer's of the movie and probably various executives.

Blaming d&d because they didn't do George's job, that shows a complete failure to understand the problem.

MrNintendo1213 posted...

Besides, they did have more to adapt. They decided to skip over almost all of books 4 and 5 because they didn't like them.

Yeah how dare they not adapt the things that had no ending and geogre had no idea of what he wanted to do with. So you could complain even more about how they aren't grrm but it's not grrm fault he cant find an ending. What we got in the ending were the ending that George did have for them.

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Good books don't get good adaptions yes. How many are made into movies rather than a full series with a massive budget?

AGOT alone got how many hours for a book with 286k words? Look at the lord of the rings dude. 9 hours of screen time for 580k or so words.

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Sure looks like you dodged a whole lot there to continue to avoid going, "yeah it is dumb of me to expect people to do Georges job, that he still hasnt finished because he just wants to do prequels because he has no idea how to tie everything together, but I expected d&d to do it"

They got the budget because they earned it. Ain't no one talking up how great the stand tv adaption going in CBS is.

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SevenTenths posted...

They got the budget because they earned it. Ain't no one talking up how great the stand tv adaption going in CBS is.

Here me out. The Stand sucks and Steven King is overrated.

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Oh, you're just a troll. Sorry for feeding you.

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CBS All Access new adaptation of Stephen Kings 1978 classic is plagued by structural changes and a bungled beginning

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-reviews/stand-stephen-king-cbs-all-access-review-1102209/amp/

Doesn't sound like they followed the book. Its ok though. There is a reason asos was split into 2 seasons. The stand is a 500k book. Asos was 424k words.

Generally speaking I would think a book with 500k words needs at least 15-16 hours of time to make a good adaptation

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And game of thrones is 300k and 1 season. What point did you think you were making? Is there some magic word per season limit? Guess you better pitch your idea to hbo, you could be making millions soon!

And D&d didnt follow the book either. That's where the adaptation comes in, you know their job.

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SevenTenths posted...

And game of thrones is 300k and 1 season. What point did you think you were making?

300k words is short enough that a 10 episode season is enough to get all the important details.

The fact that the stand had to skip large amounts of the book and start in the middle should tell you it needed two seasons for a proper adaptation.

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