After many months, fan outrage, avoiding San Diego Comic-Con, and taking a lot of heat on social media, ‘Game of Thrones’ creators/showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have recently made an appearance at the Austin Film Festival and spoke about the series and their thoughts on how everything went down.
The conversation seems to have unsettled a good number of fans, especially when they heard statements from the duo saying things like adaptions always ending up being a kind of “divorce” from the source material and claiming theirs was “amicable” because they got ahead of George R.R. Martin and his books. Also infuriating to a lot of fans was the information that Weiss and Benioff actively worked to remove “fantasy elements” from ‘Game of Thrones’ to make it easier for average viewers and fans to enjoy the show, further explaining some of the changes made from the books.
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On the production side, the duo also made a few people uneasy by revealing that they used an actual infant during the scene early in the show run where one of Craster’s babies is abandoned on an ice-block and taken by the White Walkers, meaning they literally put a baby on a block of ice. They also revealed that there was no writer’s room for the series and they did the majority of the writing for the series themselves, only hiring writers if they agreed to become a part of the production team.
There is not much reported about their thoughts on the finale itself, aside from people’s reactions, which they never really paid much attention to before then, even claiming that during the run of ‘Game of Thrones,’ they did not see the value in thinking too much about how other people reacted to the episodes. What seemed to surprise the guys the most, (and is perhaps most telling of what they really thought of the final season), was the 32 Emmy Award nominations they received this year, with Weiss saying:
“It was kind of surprising. I did not know that we expected that. At least in my mind, I thought that the last season would have been the peak and that we would’ve ended up with maybe a couple less, at best. I felt very happy for all of our team of people, all of the actors and all of the crew who got recognized because each made us feel really proud of them and happy for them, because we know first-hand how hard they worked. We saw it every day for many years.”
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To me, they seem a bit arrogant, but they do have a right to be that confident, having been in charge of one of the most successful shows in history (even if the end was not universally acclaimed). And to be fair, they have been mired in criticism since the finale aired months ago, and they are most likely tired of hiding behind niceties and are ready to tell people exactly how they made the show their own way, and are proud of what they’ve done. Or not. I don’t know. But it is fascinating to see this insight into the production of the series.
What are your thoughts on Weiss and Benioff knowing this new information? Do you see them, and the finale in a different light now? Or does this fit in with the opinion you already had of them? Feel free to share in the comments below!
Source: Comic Book
