Discussion UPDATED: Game of Thrones Creators NOT to Write/Produce a New Series of Star Wars Films

Oh dear.

I was questioning the apparent confusion about why people regard him as such a toxic person. It seems pretty apparent why he is regarded as such, and I'm not surprised that some of his videos would be banned from here.

I'm not sure where you're going with the free speech thing...

 

No but I've heard what was said and. Yikes.

 

I think the primary source for their comments at the convention was a known B&W hater who seems to have spun everything negatively on Twitter. Have you seen any other reports corroborating those tweets?

 

^Those tweets were corroborated by a Syfy Wire writer and a fact-checking site that obtained a recording of the event.

It really looks like they came across as two privileged white guys who live in their own bubble and don’t realize how bad some of the stuff they said sounds.

 

I read that. And there’s objectively nothing, at all, that even comes close to justifying your description of them. What exactly is really bad in any of it? They were being humble and self-deprecating about their learning curve, and honest about their desire to appeal beyond fantasy fans (which they did, wildly successfully). Not to mention that the books are also not heavy on fantasy, but rather, focused on politics and war. Is call out culture now demolishing people for being humble, self-deprecating, and honest? There’s gotta be a limit to this nonsense.

And all the Twitter comments about them being completely unqualified are hilariously divorced from reality. If they were really completely unqualified, how did they end up creating the biggest and most popular TV show of all time?

Does character assassination not even have to be based on a kernel of reality anymore?

 

Are the comments that everyone is angry about them admitting they intended to strip out the fantasy elements.

 

Looks like that’s most of it (as well as them being open and humble about how they had a learning curve on set about stuff like understanding how to talk to costume designers - basic self-criticism which they...are being criticized for). And they didn’t say all the fantasy elements. They said they wanted to downplay the fantasy elements in favor of the “politics and battles,” which is essentially exactly what the books are. And in order to appeal to a much wider audience. And that approach was...massively successful. So I don’t quite understand why they’re being portrayed as total incompetents who were given this show based on their privilege alone. No, they pitched and made a show that was insanely successful from the 1st season. Some might even say the 1st episode. It was meritocratic all the way. But the assassins are out. There’s nothing even to “call out.” It’s literally a bunch of people who didn’t like how the show ended trying to completely ruin their reputations.

ETA: The second thing is that people were “outraged” that they didn’t have a writers room. This is as bizarre as it gets. As artists, they decided they wanted to steer the show themselves, and so didn’t set up a writers room. And the reaction is...outrage? There is plenty to be outraged about. This convention isn’t it. I’m afraid that fandoms, in general, are threatening to ruin any kind of honest approach to art. The stream of unsubstantiated outrage is without end.

 

I’m tired today. Allow me to simply link you to Mary Sue and The Root and provide just a brief explanation on the description. In sum, they thought it would be funny/interesting to tell everyone how despite having no TV experience, no idea what they were doing, and doing an awful pilot to boot, HBO was still willing to give them all the chances in the world. This is the stuff you never hear from non white male directors and creators, who need to prove themselves to be competent first before they can even dream of directing a mere Marvel movie. Remember KK’s comment about having not hired women yet to direct SW?

It’s not their fault that Hollywood is like this. But the fact that they felt that they could joke about how they failed upwards until they succeeded does show how they are quite disconnected from contemporary discussions on white male privilege, and live in their own bubble.

(I was honestly so baffled at what they said I had to search if one of them had a rich dad with connections. Turns out Benioff has! Not surprised.)

As for the removing elements of fantasy part, that is actually the number one reason why I personally felt they shouldn't be given SW movies to do. But they walked away, so there is no reason to angst about it.

 

Only that’s an entirely false narrative. They weren’t given “all the chances in the world” after the bad pilot. They took the initiative to redo the pilot, and what became episode 1 was so incredibly good that it got a greenlight, and hooked audiences like no other TV show before it. So they literally got one chance to redo a pilot, not “all the chances in the world.”

After that, they were greenlit purely on the clear merits of the first episode. People can try all they want to turn this story into a simplistic failing upwards privilege narrative, but that doesn’t make it true.

And is it necessary to top it off with delegitimizing their success because one of them had a rich parent? This is populism gone horribly wrong. Both my immigrant parents grew up so poor that they were yanked out of school in the equivalent of 7th and 8th grade to help sustain their family’s livelihoods. But that doesn’t lead me to tear people down simply because their accidents of birth gave them one wealthy parent. These guys clearly didn’t have GoT land in their laps. They had PhDs in literature, they had an idea after reading ASOIAF, they got GRRM on board though a compelling pitch, and then proved they had the chops with the final pilot. And a first season that’s one of the best in TV. That’s what actually happened. Not some fake “born on third base and thinks he hit a triple” story.

As for angsting about it, it’s not because these movies aren’t happening. It’s because artists are having their character’s assassinated on entirely dubious grounds. It’s despicable and dishonest, and I feel compelled to correct the record.

 

GoT was a pretty amazing series.
I'll agree they rushed the last season. It could have done with a few more episodes. But it also gave some episodes that were jaw dropping.

So I was fine with them making a few movies. Completely fine.

 

So two film makers appear to have no idea of what they are doing creatively speaking and therefore they are called "priviledged white guys". I would rather call them incompetents or unprofessionals. And this assuming it is all true. Which I don't know (and don't care too much about).

Have to say I am glad I don't live where this kind of easy and false rethoric is being use to disqualify anyone doing something wrong.

 

This is what Benioff and Weiss really said at that panel.

Though they were experienced writers before the show, David and Dan had to learn to communicate their ideas as first-time producers, as Weiss describes it: “We knew about story, we knew about character, and we knew tone, and how we wanted it all to feel, but all the rest of it we had to learn; and translate what we felt into words that would, say, lead a production designer in the direction that would produce the result we wanted.”

“With the fantasy genre on television, tonally it’s very easy [go too] campy. Every scene, you change these two lines and it’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” Weiss jokes. “Also, in terms of fantasy exposition, with proper nouns, it’s almost like a game of Jenga, where you’re trying to plow as many of them as possible without the whole thing falling over. In the first pilot, we had one too many and the whole thing fell over. Going forward, we tried to keep that stuff to a minimum, because we didn’t just want to appeal to a fantasy fanbase. We wanted them to love it, and we wanted our parents to love it, and people who play professional football to love it. We wanted to reach a wider audience, and to do that keeping the tone [under control] was very important.”

“There’s this famous Russian poet who read his poem and someone in the audience said, ‘You mind explaining the poem?’, and so he re-read the poem, and that was his response. That’s it,” Benioff said. “[A Song of Ice and Fire] is such a complex story that I don’t think we ever tried to [boil it down.] You kind of have to have a prepared answer –‘It’s about power, and family,’ and that’s all true; it is about power, it is about family. But I think it’s also true that two shows can have the same themes and be wildly different, and one’s good and one’s bad, and honestly it’s about the complexities they try to depict, it’s the characters. To try to cram it into a single aphorism isn’t helpful for me. There are other writers I know and respect who feel very differently, and operate differently, but for both of us, it’s not the way we work.”




http://watchersonthewall.com/benioff-weiss-reflect-decade-game-thrones-austin-film-festival/

 

Interesting that you said that, because HBO asked Jane Goldman to redo pilot for GoT spin off Bloodmoon, and once she did that, they didin't like it still. So she also got second chance and she failed.

 

1000x this.

I have been both kinds of fans (the appreciative open one and a negative one. Not toxic negative, just cranky), I have enough going on in darth real life not to want to engage in conflict with my fannish things.

Granted, I dislike the "story group" immensely and disagree with their idea of what stories can be, but Star Wars is a very big universe and many good stories, fun characters and cool ideas can emerge.

So I am in a holding pattern with the movies (Will not see Rian's trilogy if it is made), and will hope for the best with the D+ shows.

 

I think people overestimate what the Story Group does (the name may be misleading). They aren't the ones choosing what stories get told or who gets to tell them.

 

There had to be some level of a mutual understanding reached because Disney would have certainly had them under contract (and their agents would have insisted on them having one) which was either suspended or they were allowed out of. Either simply walking out of that or orchestrating a termination of contract for cause would seriously damage their reputations.

 

^Where is the problem with all this?

 

I would say spamming people with Star Wars criticism in non Star Wars arenas is also toxic. If RJ makes a tweet about his dinner and someone responds by saying that Holdo was a terrible character, that is toxic.

 

Do we know if there's anything to back up Variety's claim that they were working on a story about the origins of the Jedi? Seemed out of left field in the article to mention that like it was a throwaway line. Personally, it seems to come off like the writer's unchallenged opinion on the direction; I saw no quoted or sourced knowledge to back that opinion up. It seems very much like something someone who's not a hard core fan of SW would put together after doing a quick search on the speculation about this trilogy's content.

I still very much feel like whatever this series is, it will still be done. If there's been any decent amount of planning behind closed doors, they can hand it off to someone to continue. At least I hope so. And if not, why not? I don't yield to the criticism that Disney's approach has ruined Star Wars and what not, but they really do need more planning in on these trilogies. No one should get a trilogy after a successful pitch. A successful pitch should get a producer some (decent) money to follow up their idea, and access to the story group to hash it out fully; the main story beats should be put together. Then, if all this lines up, then a producer is given a trilogy and it's announced. I very much get the feeling that Disney Lucasfilm is outsourcing all of this to individuals who present only the initial idea, and who then, either by choice or design, do all of this apart from the Lucasfilm structure on their own. Then when they come back with what they've done, its attacked. While I think things should be edited for quality, it should be an ongoing process at small time intervals; these idea people shouldn't get too far down a road before KK or the story group has a chance to course correct to the overarching vision. Oh, and they need to have that overarching vision written down. Maybe only where they can see it, but written down nonetheless.

 

So i heard of this jedi origin story, and i'm kinda glad that they won't be doing this. the story is getting made one way or another to a trilogy or a new saga that KK wants for the next 10 years. Also Filoni has to be apart of the team making theese movies as he is the closest to Lucas we are gonna get when dealing with jedi and the sith and the force. And Origin of the jedi then you have introduce the mortis gods to live action and get the general audiences behind it,. And no better then Dave Filoni and someone who can understand theese thing and make it a reality.

 

You're being gracious. His dad was a Goldman Sachs guy, also an advisor in the second Bush administration, and chairman of the NY Fed. That's more than being rich, that's "Don't **** with this guy, his dad's important" status.

To all those out there downplaying their comments about stripping the series of its fantasy elements, if you haven't read the books then I suggest you just listen, because there's a lot you won't understand regarding the criticism. The most intriguing and meditative elements of the story were indeed removed in order to give the show a more serialized structure. There is plenty of legitimate criticism to be leveled at them for how they adapted the material, and their use of gratuitous nudity and sexposition paint over lackluster writing is part of that. Not saying the show was bad, I'm a fan myself, and as a fan I can see that most of the criticism leveled against it is legit.

Also, I find it *very* interesting and telling that people are decrying toxicity with one breath, and then supporting the idea that calling out their privilege is going too far. Really says a lot about priorities.

 

There is no problem. It’s a character-assassination by a longtime hater of the show. And the person who tweeted their seriously biased spin on the panel is bragging on Twitter about being picked up by various popular online outlets. The assassination was wildly successful. And yet if people bothered to wait to know what exactly was said, they’d realize that there was nothing there but showrunners being honest and humble about their experience, and talking about that difficulty of making a fantasy show that will appeal to non-fantasy fans. Leaping to judgment in order to confirm one’s pre-existing beliefs has been a part of human nature since the inception. But it’s being scarily magnified by social media. It’s almost Ring-like in its power to aggrandize our worst qualities.

@Glitterstimm

I have read the entirety of ASOIAF. I really enjoyed them. Though the last two became bloated messes, in my view. And though there are certainly more fantasy elements in the books than in the show, there is no question that the books emphasize politics and warfare over those elements, as B&W mentioned in the discussion.

Secondly, there is absolutely nothing to suggest that one of them having a wealthy father who was a past senior government official had anything to do with GoT being successful. Zero evidence whatsoever. What actually happened was they had serious literary chops, experience as writers, an idea for a show after they read the books, a pitch that sold GRRM and then HBO, a pilot that didn’t work precisely because of an overload of exposition and fantasy elements, and a second shot at the pilot which blew HBO away, and became an instant classic with audiences. And as we just saw with Bloodmoon (and as is often the case with TV pilots that don’t work, but where studios want the proposed show), the Bloodmoon showrunner, Jane Goldman, was given a second chance to create a second pilot. And she did. But unfortunately, it didn’t convince HBO to order a season.

This is a story of meritocracy, and it’s being twisted into a false story of overwhelming privilege and the rewarding of white male mediocrity. That’s simply not what happened. B&W fought hard and created an insanely good pilot. And then they created season after season of the most popular TV show in history. A final season that didn’t land with a lot of fans doesn’t change that fact, and doesn’t rewrite history. They were perfectly competent. People just didn’t like what they did at the conclusion, and are using that as ground to argue that they were complete and utter novices and fools from the start, who should’ve have even been given the show by HBO. You know it’s a character assassination because you’re a perfectly capable critical thinker. And yet you’re perpetuating populist nonsense without a grounding in reality because you just don’t like the guys and what they did to your books. I’m a longtime hardcore Tolkien fan, and I really dislike what Jackson did with both LOTR and the Hobbit. But despite him being new to big blockbuster filmmaking at the outset, I didn’t decide to assassinate his character by calling him a privileged incompetent. I just disagreed with his stylistic approach which I found at adds with the meditative and naturalistic tone of the books, just as you had a related problem with B&W’s less meditative approach. Why not leave it at that, instead of launching into unsubstantiated personal attacks?

 

yeah that rumor never made any sense to me since they extended her contract for 3 years AFTER Solo came out. Disney isnt' shy about firing people and they wouldn't have extended her contract if they where unhappy with her performance.

true but the issue here is that a lot of those people use the same talking points as the toxic alt righters so it can be hard to figure out who is who.

they do have their own weird quirks though. Geeks+ Gamers is famous for doing 100 videos prior to Captain Marvel saying it would be a huge failure becuase it's "woke"

The Quartering got banned from all Magic the Gathering torunaments because he was harrasing a cosplayer and he famously did a video about the Netflix She Ra where he said the underage She Ra isnt' sexy enough

Ethan Van Sciver is famous for harassing the wife of a artist with his followers.

But yeah they are all pretty much awful people.

 

Alright, I'm going to go ahead and lock the thread. Benioff & Weiss have left, if whatever story they were developing continues under the creative direction of some other person(s) a separate thread will be warranted anyways, and you've all been using this to almost exclusively debate toxicity in fandom for the past few pages.