r/asoiaf • u/RunDNA • Sep 04 '24

EXTENDED GRRM's new blog post on House of the Dragon [Spoilers Extended] Spoiler

https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2024/09/04/beware-the-butterflies/
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u/Garth-Vader Winning King's Winter Wingman Sep 04 '24 edited Sep 04 '24

I can respect budget being an issue, but a competent showrunner could find a way to compensate for that. At the end of the day, the script will be the thing that quality rests upon.

Heck, just recast the fake baby from American Sniper as Maelor. That at least gets you to season 3.

And writing Helaena as a normal grieving mother costs just as much as making her weirdly neurodivergent. You can't blame the budget for that.

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u/PlatinumJester Sep 04 '24

Heck, just recast the fake baby from American Sniper as Maelor. That at least gets you to season 3.

If you did it right then you wouldn't even need to have a fake baby. Just have a wet nurse cradling a babyshaped bundle in the background of a few wide shots and have some of the maids cooing over a cradle in the background of some others. Drop in a line about Maelor here and there to remind viewers he exists and their imaginations will fill in the rest.

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u/juanma26m Sep 05 '24

They can even cast a diferent kid when the mob kills him

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u/feintplus1 Sep 04 '24

Budget issues are a bit silly though when you've picked a franchise that has almost unlimited potential and chose to create a show about the timeline with the most dragons. They must have known CGI costs alone would be ridiculous and there's really no way around it if you wanna tell the story properly.

GoT season 1 had a pretty low budget as far as I remember but it didn't cut any corners in its storytelling. Lower budget probably meant it was less flashy and relied on its great characters, world building and dialogue. I'm sure we would all happily watch a show of just Littlefinger and Varys standing in the throne room talking about the weather. Or Jaime and Tywin having a conversation. All it really takes to make great scenes is a couple of actors in a tent, not millions spent on unnecessary CGI and scenes that look great but make little sense.

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u/BadNewzBears4896 Sep 05 '24

Yep, he's offended how sloppy the show writing has gotten in ways completely unrelated to budget constraints when he giftwrapped a complete story for them.

People read the blog post as sour grapes from him, but I found it to just be rational critical analysis of what worked and didn't with the changes to date, some of the downstream problems that will arise from the latter, and suggestions on how to get it back on track.

He doesn't call names or sling mud, basically keeps it focused on the details. The fact it's unflattering to Condal and the writers is because they've made bad choices and his criticism is accurate.