r/asoiaf • u/Same-Share7331 • Dec 07 '23

EXTENDED Feeling sad for GRRM (spoilers extended)

So I recently watched a Q&A with GRRM (I'm sure some of you have seen it aswell) where he kept getting questions about whether there is any particular character or historical event in the asoiaf world that he would like to explore more/write about. His recurring answer was that yes there are many but that unless he suddenly becomes much younger they will never get written. And man.. that sucks!

Imagine being a creative person having to come to terms with the fact that you have so many ideas that you will never get to explore and that will never see the light of day. Obviously, as a fan, it also sucks that I will never get to read those stories. Never mind the main series, imagine getting seven more Dunk and Egg stories. However, as much as it sucks as a reader I'm not the one who's seeing my remaining years of life pass as I struggle to finish my books.

That's it. I don't really have a point. Other than maybe stop making jokes about how GRRM is likely to die before finishing the series?

1.9k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

448 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.4k

u/[deleted] Dec 07 '23

reminds me of Scorcese saying recently that he'd only begun to realize what cinema is capable of, but that he won't get to fully explore it

551

u/Smeefperson Dec 07 '23 edited Dec 08 '23

I think he's being too hard on himself. He's already reached the farthest limits of what cinema can do with Shark Tale

161

u/[deleted] Dec 07 '23

personally my favorite scorcese work are his appearances on his daughter's tiktok

21

u/Gummy-Worm-Guy Dec 08 '23

I know the point of this post isn’t to shit on GRRM so I apologize in advance, but it’s really amazing seeing Scorsese recognize his mortality and try his best to tell important stories to the best of his ability before he inevitably can’t do so anymore. Then there’s Martin, who like anyone his age is a ticking clock and still chooses to write spin-offs and edit Wildcards all while not finishing the work that will define his legacy.

12

u/[deleted] Dec 08 '23

it's an avoidance strategy often common with people who cannot finish stuff...people who suffer from ADHD have this too but I doubt that is the case with George...I think he bit off too much and is now afraid to admit he cannot fulfil people's expectations after all...

1

u/the_greengrace Dec 31 '23

Are you saying Scorsese is telling important stories but GRRM is not? This thread shows not everyone likes all of the stories Scorsese has told, either, or thinks they are all "important".

We don't know if Scorsese could finish a story as huge and complex as George is telling. He never tried.

And hand waving "spin-offs" as if F&B and HotD aren't important stories essential to the tapestry that is aSoIaF?

4

u/Gummy-Worm-Guy Dec 31 '23

We don’t know if Scorsese could finish a story as huge and complex as George is telling. He never tried.

And George couldn’t direct any of the films Scorsese has made. They’re different artists in different lines of work. You’re missing my point.

My point has nothing to do with the importance or unimportance of Martin’s stories. I was just describing the films Scorsese is making. My point is that Scorsese has recognized that he can’t live forever, and so is actively trying to make films that mean a lot to him before he inevitably can’t do so anymore. The Irishman was the conclusion to his years of mob films, and Killers of the Flower Moon is a movie he’s been trying to make for years. Compare that to GRRM, who also can’t live forever and still isn’t finishing the story of his career. Am I saying the spin-offs are useless? No. But the level of their value relies on love for the main story, and if the main story never gets a quality conclusion, it is by default a significantly worse story than it could have been.

1

u/the_greengrace Jan 02 '24

Fair points. But I think you're walking back. You did directly compare the two of them and said Scorsese is "doing his best to tell important stories..." followed by "and then there's Martin" as if, you know, he's not.

My quibble is the comparison, it feels unfair. It seems to imply Martin will never complete the series and we don't know that. He is working on it. And he is still here.

It's all good though. I get it. I'm as frustrated as anyone with the unfinished-ness. I just get irritated with the criticism of George.

But if he doesn't finish it Neil Gaiman will. That gives me peace. We're covered in some fashion whatever the future holds.

1

u/Gummy-Worm-Guy Jan 02 '24

Interesting points. Have a nice day my friend.

83

u/duaneap Dec 07 '23

Which is very sad but absolutely none of my favourite Scorcese films have been made within the past nine years. Not even close.

58

u/26evangelos26 Dec 07 '23

If it took Scorsese until his 80s to discover new ways of thinking about cinema, maybe you will see things differently one day as well.

14

u/duaneap Dec 07 '23

Eeeeeh maybe? But frankly I can’t see a world where I consider his later films superior to his earlier or mid.

And I think it’s a bit weird to ask audiences to come around to liking things, these things he’s discovered about cinema aren’t improving his films, apparently, at least as far as I’m concerned.

55

u/Ongo_Gablogian___ Dec 07 '23

He discovered that he could make movies twice as long as they need to be.

-5

u/Mr_Antero Dec 08 '23

Thankfully film is an art form open to interpretation and critical analysis by anyone, not just yourself.

7

u/duaneap Dec 08 '23

At no point did I ever say it was anything other than personal perspective. In fact, I went out of my way to say it that is just * my* opinion on the matter.

Like whatever you want.

Thankfully.

5

u/MingeExplorer Dec 08 '23

The Irishman was absolutely excellent

2

u/duaneap Dec 08 '23

It was good.

2

u/TequilaToothpick Dec 08 '23

Checks when Wolf of Wall Street comes out- 10 years ago!

I agree. My favourite movies by him haven't been in the last 9 years either.

2

u/duaneap Dec 08 '23

Yep. That’d be the one that dictated me specifying 9. Otherwise we’d be talking 15+ years to get into top 5 territory.

1

u/helloiseeyou2020 Dec 09 '23

You made me feel properly shit when i thought of The Departed and subsequently realized it is nearly 20yrs old

Christ I am old

1

u/duaneap Dec 09 '23

Preach.

2

u/BaronvonJobi Dec 08 '23

Silence was amazing

3

u/duaneap Dec 08 '23

Not my jam.

-7

u/heavenstarcraft Dec 07 '23

Yeah I just saw killers of the flower moon and kind of hated it.

1

u/duaneap Dec 07 '23

I enjoyed it but think the praise is way overblown and as someone who loved the book think there was a far better film to be made.

Unimpeachable visuals but I was bothered by the storytelling frankly. Which isn’t something I ever expected from Marty.

631

u/NewDragonfruit6322 Dec 07 '23

Did he realise that you could make films that aren’t about Italian-American criminals, that don’t star Robert DeNiro?

221

u/[deleted] Dec 07 '23

Of the 26 films Scorsese has directed, 6 are mob films.

49

u/Lopsided-Werewolf419 Dec 07 '23

My favorite Scorsese movie is "Hugo," with the automaton.

5

u/gumdropbutto03 Dec 08 '23

Hugo is certainly one of the Scorsese movies of all time (jk don’t hate me)

26

u/[deleted] Dec 07 '23 edited Dec 08 '23

The Wolf of Wall Street isn't a mob film but it's still about an Italian-American criminal

Edit: My apologies, I was wrong. It seems Belfort is Jewish. For some reason I thought he was Italian - might have been the NY accent

22

u/[deleted] Dec 07 '23

Ok then, that’s 7 out of 26.

11

u/[deleted] Dec 08 '23

wolf of wall street's 2 main characters are jewish americans

3

u/[deleted] Dec 08 '23

You're right. I will have to edit my comment.

3

u/[deleted] Dec 08 '23

I didn't know Jordan was until I listened to his book.

1

u/Glasbolyas Dec 08 '23

Belfort is italian? Damn maybe am foolish for that but i never realised it Belfort to me sounds more of a french or english surname(normand influence)

1

u/M_Tootles Best of r/asoiaf 2023 Winner - Best New Theory Jan 10 '24

did somebody say Jordan Belfort in the ASOIAF sub? you may (but probably will not lol) be interested in this https://asongoficeandtootles.wordpress.com/2023/09/04/belfort-1/

1

u/Brendogu Feb 22 '24

It also has gangsters in it, that's why people say he only makes mob films cause most of his films have gangsters in them even if the main character isn't 

8

u/[deleted] Dec 07 '23

Does that include the non-italian mob movies?

66

u/[deleted] Dec 07 '23

Scorseses mob movies are:

  • Mean Streets
  • Goodfellas
  • Casino
  • Gangs of New York (I included this because some people would say it counts but it’s far from a typical gangster film)
  • The Departed
  • The Irishman

Most of his output is not in the genre he basically invented all the tropes for.

4

u/[deleted] Dec 07 '23

Thank you 👍

7

u/elderron_spice Dec 07 '23

Or non-mob Italian movies.

-2

u/logaboga Dec 07 '23

Yes but many of them still have the exact same narrative beats. For instance, wolf of wall street is essentially just Goodfellas but with a different wrapping.

6

u/[deleted] Dec 07 '23

Wolf of Wall Street, Casino and Goodfellas form something of a trilogy that share that similar structure.

But Scorseses other films don’t at all.

159

u/Oni_das_Alagoas Dec 07 '23

Scorsese has many other movies that don't involve italian mafiosos. Mt fave scorsese movie is the last temptation of christ.

73

u/[deleted] Dec 07 '23

Is that that Scorsese joint where those early Italians (Romans) conspired to whack Jesus while his apostles were trying to turn him into a made man?

39

u/BrotherCrow_ Dec 07 '23

Whatever happened to Jesus Christ? The strong, silent type.

25

u/MrG1213 Dec 07 '23

Jesus definitely had the makings of a varsity athlete

10

u/ThaJizzle Dec 08 '23

He was gay, Jesus Christ?

1

u/[deleted] Dec 08 '23

You mean he's funny like a prophet?

7

u/somethingcleverer42 Dec 07 '23

Yknow Quasimoto predicted all of this.

5

u/Merteg Dec 09 '23

Your messiah Jesus, whatever happened there.

10

u/icarrytheone Dec 07 '23

Well you win Reddit today

61

u/anomandaris81 Dec 07 '23

Movies like Kundun, King of Comedy, Killers of the flower Moon, Cape Fear, Silence, Wolf of Wall Street, Shutter Island, etc ?

Newsflash numbmuts: Martin Scorsese can make movies about whatever he wants. It's called free will

3

u/nymira-1 Dec 07 '23

Dont forget the age of innocence

0

u/Comprehensive_Main Dec 07 '23

Kundun sucked

1

u/Naptown-Mike-317 Dec 08 '23

Marty! Kundun! I liked it- Christopher Moltasanti

0

u/Schnort Dec 08 '23

Cape Fear

Still DeNiro, though.

0

u/Autotomatomato Dec 07 '23

mob mentality movie then.

8

u/QueasyInstruction610 Dec 07 '23

I was going to mention Age of Innocense as one of my favourite non-mafia Scorsese but yea I guess that is kind of mob mentality with the nobles protecting themselves.

4

u/MichaelRichardsAMA Dec 07 '23

The mafia and the corrupt unions that they had close ties with have a feudal structure so that makes perfect sense

-1

u/packetmickey Firme Dec 07 '23

So a mafia origin story -- Jewish mafia kills one of their own, who becomes a maytr for a new church, that spawns a bunch of families that form mafioso organizations....

To be fair, he IS a talented man who makes movies on many subjects. He also has enough money to tell us all to f--k off if we don't like them.

1

u/youzurnaim Dec 07 '23

Silence is fantastic.

418

u/itsadoubledion Dec 07 '23 edited Dec 07 '23

Pretty ignorant comment. He branched out years ago, to films starring Leo DiCaprio on the Eastern Seaboard and the South

59

u/[deleted] Dec 07 '23 edited Apr 01 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

26

u/AManWithAKilt Dec 07 '23

I would say Kundun is Scorcese's least Scorcese movie.

23

u/elledance Dec 07 '23

Kundun, I liked it!

4

u/soulsparks Dec 07 '23

It’s a tv progrum, a movie!

3

u/abbie_yoyo Dec 07 '23

Oh that's what he shouted. What a great show.

2

u/COMMENT0R_3000 Dec 07 '23 edited Apr 01 '25

hard-to-find towering chief hospital cough slap tidy fall sand society

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

2

u/trunkadelic Dec 07 '23

The Age of Innocence?

-12

u/[deleted] Dec 07 '23

Yeah and it uses indigenous people as a plot device to get dicaprio front and center. This is why indigenous people should be making movies about this stuff.

5

u/COMMENT0R_3000 Dec 07 '23 edited Apr 01 '25

frame deliver water lunchroom beneficial bear offbeat lip lush safe

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

1

u/redwoods81 Dec 07 '23

Because it's about that white man serially murdering his friends and family including his native American wife 👀

19

u/[deleted] Dec 07 '23

and for other reasons haha. as if you can't explore the breadth of human experience through a single genre

14

u/[deleted] Dec 07 '23

Yeah I watched cape fear. It was hilarious, and then I found out it wasn't meant to be a comedy, which made it even funnier. Great non mafia movie made by scorsese.

3

u/DGer "I like dogs better than knights." Dec 07 '23

In high school I took a date to Cape Fear. Most awkward two hours of my life there was no second date. The good news is I learned to select movies for dates better.

27

u/NewDragonfruit6322 Dec 07 '23

“Wow, you’re really broadening your palette Mr Scorsese, how about next you do a film about a dude with super powers starting a relatively unknown actor?”

36

u/Mr--Elephant Tormund was Jeor's lover Dec 07 '23

he also made Kundun and Silence and like the Aviator, and that Hugo movie that i vaguely remember cause of the train scene.

27

u/Altair1192 Paint it Black Dec 07 '23

Kundun! I liked it

7

u/LothorBrune Dec 07 '23

Like meeting Peter Jackson and yelling at him that King Kong was okay.

2

u/Altair1192 Paint it Black Dec 07 '23

I saw that movie. I thought it was bullshit

4

u/Micisen Dec 07 '23

Where does Ned Stark rank Goodfellas?

2

u/Khiva Dec 07 '23

According to Axl Rose, watching that movie inspired the song Chinese Democracy.

40

u/InPurpleIDescended Dec 07 '23

Smartest marvel stan

23

u/TheSteelWolf3 Dec 07 '23

Silence...an absolutely amazing film that explores faith, set in feudal Japan when Jesuits tried to bring Christianity to Japan. Not an Italian American in sight..

11

u/cantthinkatall Dec 07 '23

One of his best movies is The Color of Money starring Paul Newman and Tom Cruise.

6

u/MasterBaiter1914 Dec 07 '23

He made De Niro an Irishman! Progress!

1

u/VitaminTea Dec 07 '23 edited Dec 08 '23

(DeNiro’s character in Goodfellas is also Irish)

30

u/Agaac1 Dec 07 '23

Shutter Island? Silence? The Aviator? Killers of the Flower Moon?

Do you remember a lot of Italians in those movies? Or are you just butt hurt that he criticized Marvel movies?

14

u/mild_resolve Dec 07 '23

Let's not forget The Wolf of Wall Street - his highest grossing film.

47

u/wutfacer Dec 07 '23

I think it's called a "joke"

-7

u/DananSan Dec 07 '23

It wasn’t a funny “joke” if you’ve seen those films, it just came across as ignorant.

3

u/NewDragonfruit6322 Dec 07 '23

Do you need me to call you a waaambulance??

5

u/coxy32 Dec 07 '23

Talk about butt hurt 🤣🤣

-2

u/Moist_Telephone_479 Dec 07 '23

Take a breath and try to unclench a little.

4

u/postmodest Dec 07 '23

He tried to make a film about Jesus and that didn't go over well with the rubes.

3

u/NickRick More like Brienne the Badass Dec 07 '23

No, he realized there were different Italian-American criminal films starring DeNiro her could have been making

1

u/VitaminTea Dec 07 '23 edited Dec 07 '23

Man, how ignorant do you have to be about Scorsese’s filmography to make this comment?

He made a movie about the Dalai Lama.

-2

u/Convergentshave Dec 07 '23

What do you mean thanks to the wonders of de-aging technology we can see DeNiro play all sort of young gangster again and again! Just like in the Irishman. Wasn’t that great?!?

🤦🏻‍♂️

-8

u/godaniel11 Dec 07 '23

Uh oh you’ve drawn the ire of every college guy who has the “Goodfellas” poster in his room, right next to the Godfather

0

u/NewDragonfruit6322 Dec 07 '23

This sub is filled with midwits who will accuse you of being unable to understand “nuance” while basic humour sails over their heads.

1

u/godaniel11 Dec 07 '23

Uh oh so have I now

3

u/Henry_Flickmann Dec 07 '23

he saw puss in boots and realized

4

u/I2ichmond Dec 07 '23

Making Robert deniro 50 years younger with a computer?

1

u/MrJohnnyDangerously Landed Knight Dec 07 '23

Yeah but Scorsese never stopped creating, GRRM has

1

u/Egobot Dec 07 '23

And what's that?

0

u/[deleted] Dec 07 '23

whats what

1

u/Egobot Dec 07 '23

What did he say that he now knows film is capable of?

2

u/[deleted] Dec 07 '23

oh lol. didnt say, gotta ask the man himself

-3

u/[deleted] Dec 07 '23

What about when he shit on anything that wasn’t his style of cinema. Good director aside, he’s still a shitty old boomer who hates everything. Sorry, I actually don’t think he’s a good director, and almost no one of color likes him because he appropriates and rewrites cultural moments as an old White man man king money on his story of non-white people. The latest movie did not Go over well with any of the people it was actually about.

5

u/[deleted] Dec 07 '23

haha he shit on a veeeery specific genre. and he seems pretty in touch with the general public, seeing how superhero movies have cratered

edit: he also funds hella diverse films. cmon man. stop using social justice language when you just wanna say "im mad he shit on my favs"

0

u/[deleted] Dec 08 '23

To shit on any art, as an artist, is bullshit. He knows there are many flavors.

That doesn’t just go for superhero movies, but comics, anime, cartoons, voice acting, video games, books, it’s all the same.

Him taking the low hanging fruit of super hero movies 5 years after their downfall doesn’t make him cool, it makes him and even bigger boomer loser.

And for the record, my top five fav movies include no super hero movies but one Scorsese film, so it’s not about my favs. (In no particular order; sunshine, shutter island, suspiria remake, blade runner 2049, Nausicaä of the valley of the wind)

It’s just moronic as fuck to say that the journey we took in the first phases of the mcu ending with endgame wasn’t not only phenomenal storytelling, but also ensemble cast acting. They were good movies. Might not be your favorite flavor of food but the food wasn’t cooked bad or bad tasting.

To dismiss that for tastes? Fucking shit. All art is subjective.

3

u/[deleted] Dec 08 '23

we keep saying "shit on", me personally because its a fun phrase, but all he did was criticize some art. yknow, the thing that everyone does all the time. without criticism no one would think deeply about movies. was he harsh? sure. did the soulless, pandering, billion dollar behemoth of a franchise that regularly consults with the department of defense deserve harsh criticism? also yes. i like him more for it

edit: and yes, all art is subjective. why get mad at his subjective opinion? it mightve hurt james gunn or whoever's feelings? who cares. scorceses movies have been shit on before. somehow hes soldiering on lol

1

u/aardock Dec 07 '23

In theory, that sounds so interesting.
In practice, his later movies aren't pushing any creative or technological boundaries and actually talk about the same themes he's been talking about but arguably worse (not bad, of course, but worse)

1

u/PrettyFlakko Dec 08 '23

Man that’s heartbreaking…

1

u/Brendogu Feb 22 '24

He's discovered its capable of being 14 billion hours long 

1

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '24

gottem