George R.R. Martin har varit en av de mest högljudda förespråkarna för att film- och TV-filmatiseringar av böcker och andra skrivna verk ska vara så trogna förlagorna som möjligt. Den berömda författaren har tidigare kritiserat Hollywood-chefer som anser sig behöva ändra inslag och historier för att passa deras egna idéer. Nu är Martin på bollen igen och fortsätter sin kampanj för rättvisa filmatiseringar.
I sitt senaste blogginlägg skriver Martin:
"Everywhere you look, there are more screenwriters and producers eager to take great stories and "make them their own." It does not seem to matter whether the source material was written by Stan Lee, Charles Dickens, Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl, Ursula K. Le Guin, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Raymond Chandler, Jane Austen, or... well, anyone. No matter how major a writer it is, no matter how great the book, there always seems to be someone on hand who thinks he can do better, eager to take the story and "improve" on it. "The book is the book, the film is the film," they will tell you, as if they were saying something profound. Then they make the story their own.
"They never make it better, though. Nine hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand, they make it worse."
Martin fortsätter sedan med att peka på FX-serien Shogun som ett utmärkt exempel på en hedervärd och väl genomförd bearbetning, och han skriver:
"The new Shogun is superb. Better than Chamberlain's version, you ask? Hmmm, I don't know. I have not watched the 1980 miniseries since, well, 1980. That one was great too. The fascinating thing is that while the old and new versions have some significant differences — the subtitles that make the Japanese dialogue intelligible to English speaking viewers being the biggest — they are both faithful to the Clavell novel in their own way. I think the author would have been pleased. Both old and new screenwriters did honor to the source material, and gave us terrific adaptations, resisting the impulse to "make it their own.""
Håller du med Martin om hans inställning till filmatiseringar och att Hollywood petar för mycket i materialet av olika anledningar?
