George R R Martin Calls Out House of the Dragon’s Changes to Fire & Blood In Now-Deleted Blog Post

Opening Comments what is going on everybody James Hancock here I'm back to discuss the Brewing tension or controversy between George R Martin and House of the Dragon recently he warned that he was going to write a blog post basically detailing all of his frustrations with the season 1 and season two and his predictions for where the show might go wrong with season 3 and season 4 and my impression was that he was very involved in season 1 less so in season two and I should say that this story is evolving because since he posted the advertised blog post earlier today he has pulled it down I don't know if he's pulling it down because he wants to revise it I don't know if he pulled it down because HBO is like what the like we have a lot more George R Martin shows coming like a night of the Seven Kingdoms and obviously season three and four of House of the dragon and possibly an egg on the Conqueror show which is all um based on the the earlier part of Fire and Blood so there's a lot of there's a lot of money writing on this uh controversy and I don't know why George R Martin would not be more intimately involved in season 2 and why showrunner Ryan Condell would push back on so many of his notes but in that George R Martin was the guy who cooked up all these stories and cooked up all these characters upon which all these expensive shows are based you would think that when he speaks people would be inclined to listen because what you don't want is for the uh I guess the George R Martin fan base to turn against these shows when there's so much money on the line obviously HBO is trying to build a little kind of mini Empire within an Empire with all these uh with all these shows based upon his books and that very much could be in Jeopardy like look at a show like The Lord of the Rings the rings of power which is more or less lost like like the hordes of J.R tolken fans out there that obviously works to the show's detriment and obviously if HBO can avoid a similar fate I would advise them to do so but what we're going to do we're going to head over to an article in variety by Jordan Moro and Jennifer Moss called George R Martin calls out House of the Dragon changes and warns there are more toxic tweaks to come based on what's being contemplated for seasons 3 and four the article doesn't include everything from his blog post but luckily there were a few screen grabs that I found on uh Twitter one of which is very spoiler specific so I'll save that for the end and I'll give you a big fat juicy warning before discussing that but let's just Dive Right In as promised in his August 30 blog post Game of Thrones Creator and Author George R Martin has gone into detail about what he thought went wrong with HBO's House of the Dragon season 2 calling out specific changes from his original work Fire and Blood and what the Game of Thrones prequel showrunner Ryan Condell has adapted for the screen as well as upcoming plans for the final two season of the show and let me pause for my first Interruption I also share a few uh complaints about about season two my number one complaint is that the show is changing the characters of rira and Allison on a pretty fundamental level by basically trying to depict them as the two only sane individuals that are trying to keep the realm from descending into chaos and in the book pretty much everybody is like one of those characters on succession where they're they're power mad and they have ambition and they're greedy and they're Petty and vindictive and bloodthirsty and everybody's out just to get what's best for them or their children or their grand grandchildren it's just a big nasty bloody war for succession and by the time the dust is all settled the kingdom is in Ruins but this Show's trying to have some good guys and if you read Fire and Blood I'm sorry that portion of the story dealing with the dance of the Dragons there are no good guys there are characters that are cool and characters that are badass and characters that you root for people like the sea snake and the you know there there are a lot of cool characters in that war who do great things I won't say they always do good things but they do great things but I can tell that the show is choosing to go in a different direction but getting back to the article Martin's biggest critique laid out in a since deleted Wednesday blog post titled beware the butterflies was around the difference between the blood and cheese plot line in the house of Dragon season 2 premiere which features the death of a child character and the story as it's told in Fire and Blood House of the Dragon has eliminated one character aegon and Helena taran's youngest son Prince malor entirely from the story which Martin who is co-creator and executive producer on the show insists as larger repercussions for the future of the series moving into seasons 3 and four and let me pause to interrupt again I concur the scene with blood and cheese in the uh the season 2 premiere was soft it was weak it was just yet another example that with each and every opportunity that the show has to kind of soften or defang or declaw the overall narrative they are choosing to do so and I'm sorry like when you read Fire and Blood you want all the grizzly details like we don't read Fire and Blood because there are a lot of nice people doing nice things we want all the you know horrific atrocities that are committed by those characters and all the full detail and as written by George R Martin that scene was much more gruesome and much more intense but getting back to the article when Ryan condle first told me what he meant to do ages ago back in 2022 might be I argued against it for all these reasons Martin wrote I did not argue long or with much heat however the change weakened the sequence of felt but only a bit and Ryan had what seemed to be practical reasons for it they did not want to deal with casting another child especially a 2-year-old toddler kids that young will inevitably slow down production and there would be budget implications budget was already an issue in House of the Dragon it made sense to save money wherever we could moreover Ryan assured me that we were not losing Prince meor simply postponing him Queen Helena could still give birth to him in season 3 presumably after getting with child late in season two that made sense to me so I withdrew my objections and acquest to the change I still love the episode and the blood and- cheese sequence overall losing the Helena Choice bit did weaken the scene but not to any great degree only the book readers would even notice its absence viewers who had never read Fire and Blood would still find the scenes heart-rending mord did not actually do anything in the scene after all how could he he was only 2 years old there is another aspect to the removal of the young prining however and if you didn't read the book and you don't know about the Helena's Choice moment she's basically asked to choose between two children which one's going to die she picks one they kill the other and she starts going Stark raving nuts justifiably so Martin went on to outline in detail how the elimination of meor could ultimately affect plans for the final two seasons of HBO's House of the Dragon which condle recently confirmed will end with season 4 by revealing future spoiler plots from Fire and Blood all right so big fat juicy spoiler Potential Spoilers warning for anybody who's not read the books but this is what the article goes into so I have no choice but to follow suit meor by himself means little Martin wrote he is a small child does not have a line of dialogue does nothing of consequence but die but where and when and how that does matter losing meor weakened the end of the blood and cheese sequence but it also cost us the bitter Bridge scene with all of its horror and heroism it undercut the motivation for Helena suicide and that in turn sends thousands into the streets and alleys screaming for justice for their murdered Queen none of that is essential I suppose but all of it does serve a purpose it all helps to tie the story lines together so one thing follows another in a logical and convincing Manner and I know we're in spoiler light territory but let me just say the bitter Bridge sequence is one of the darkest chapters of the uh the dance of the dragons and you could argue oh well it's not 100% essential to the plot but all these horri atrocities that are committed over the course of the dance of the Dragons they all help um basically they all help create atmosphere and if you start pulling them out within the atmosphere is diminished and it's less horrific and it's less depressing and when you have a big giant Saga that unfolds over many many books with an incredibly elaborate sophisticated timeline George R Martin is absolutely right if you start tugging at it or removing things or dropping stones into that pool there's a ripple effect or butterfly effect and initially those little effects might seem small but they have like a chain reaction over many seasons like mistakes made in early seasons of Game of Thrones had consequences in later seasons and that's what George R Martin is trying to avoid here because he understands that stories don't just happen there's an it's like looking at a building there's a foundation and is a blueprint and you construct it and everything is kind of working together for a more cohesive hole and so if this show ends up bailing on the bit bitter Bridge sequence and also ends up bailing on all the reasons that Drive Helena into Madness and suicide well then I'll be pissed because at that point you're effectively diminishing the overall power and potency of the story The Song of Ice and Fire series author ended his blog post which he deleted later Wednesday by hinting at more issues for House of the Dragon moving forward adding and there are larger and more toxic butterflies to come if House of the Dragon goes ahead with some of the changes being contemplated for Seasons three and four representatives for HBO and condle did not immediately respond to variety's request for comment Wednesday oh and I didn't see this at first but down at the very bottom of the article he has one last grievance later on however he posted a negative reaction to the show using the incorrect four-legged Dragon sigil for House Targaryen the correct sigil from as Wester World uses a two-legged Dragon they went with the bad sigil rather than the good one Martin wrote at the time that sound you heard was me screaming no no no those damned extra legs have even wormed their way onto the covers of my books over my strenuous objections yeah that is absolutely bewildering here he is making everybody all this money with his shows and his books if he's complaining about the sigil or the cover or the design once again people should listen so let me close with this just to offer an opposing point of view I'm not strictly opposed to any null changes to the book as I've said before in some of my reviews of season two of House of the Dragon one of the best parts of season one of House of the Dragon were the changes to the character of reras reras was kind of a chubby drunken kind of affable fool in many ways in the book but they found a way to like basically to imbue vieras with so much no ility and like when I talk to people who like season one at least of House of the Dragon one of the things they always point to is the character reras you know limping his way in to you know seat sit the Iron Throne one final time it's incredibly emotionally powerful stuff very stirring just gives you chills Goosebumps the whole deal so obviously it's possible for a show to deviate from the book and then have it work out however in that Game of Thrones ended so disastrously and turned so many people off from the franchise and there are a lot of people who refuse to watch House of the the dragon to the present day because of their hatred for how the how Game of Thrones ultimately worked its way worked it worked itself out you would think that the showrunners behind the house of the Dragon would say let's not play it safe but let's also not steer too far from the road map because unlike Game of Thrones where they was missing the final two books so I have some sympathy for their inability to provide a satisfactory conclusion but with h Fire and Blood we know how the dance of the Dragon ends the story is intact in its entirety all they got to do is kind of Flesh it out a little bit and so I would strongly recommend that anyone and everyone involved with the show stick to the blueprint stick to the road map and if you need to uh flesh out a few characters along the way fine but stick to the original tone the original Vibe the overall atmosphere because if uh season 3 and season 4 are horrible well then you're basically dooming HBO's ability to make future George R Martin shows and you're also going to turn all the DI hard Fanatics who were like were worshiping the show early on into the show's most bitter foes like love and hate are basically like two sides of like the same coin indifference is what you're worried about but like when people love something and then it starts to suck they can turn on it in ferocious fashion so we shall have to wait and see what happens between now and season 3 and speaking of season 3 for my part I'll say my anticipation for season 3 is probably half of what it was for season 2 primarily because of that terrible final episode of season two where you had this ridiculous scene between riro and Allison basically making like one last basically have Allison teleporting to rera in an inexplicable way in order to try to discuss a a possible piece it's like no let those pull out knives and kill each other or at least try to like there should be guards holding them off one another they should just be at each other's throats and then we didn't even have an ending or a climax of any kind we got to see some long slow shots of ship sailing and armies on the March and that sort of thing but no climax of any kind I was very frustrated with the season 2 finale and if we get more of that in season 3 well then I will turn from this Show's most vocal Advocate that possible to one of its you know bitterest critics so on that note I'm going to wrap up this video hope you found it interesting and uh yeah the story is developing and ongoing who knows what the next day or two might bring when it comes to George R Martin and his feelings on the show but if you enjoyed this video please consider liking the video subscribing to the channel hitting the notification Bell and I'll be back at youall later on tonight with my review for Beetle Juice Beetle Juice but more important as always onwards and upwards