By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
To this day, the failure of Game of Thrones feels a little bit surreal. Once upon a time, it was one of the most popular shows in the world, and it was lauded as the best example of how to adapt a popular book series into live-action. By the end, though, everything had gone fully off the rails. The writers started debating from George R.R. Martin’s books before running out of books to adapt. As a result, the writing and characterization suffered, and the final season was so universally hated that many of the show’s biggest fans made a Night’s Watch-style vow to never again watch this acclaimed series.
The critical failure of Game of Thrones came as a huge surprise to most of the fandom, but it really shouldn’t have. You see, this show was created by David Benioff, a man who first achieved mainstream success by writing Troy, a blockbuster adaptation of The Iliad starring Brad Pitt. While that film made a profit, it has a 53 percent on Rotten Tomatoes because it’s a poorly-written piece of trash. Between that and its obscenely poor adaptation of the original source material, writer David Benioff had a destiny that even Maester Aemon could see: to completely and utterly f*ck up Game of Thrones.
A Song Of Ice And Failure
The first film that David Benioff ever wrote was 25th Hour, a Spike Lee film about a man enjoying his last day of freedom before he goes to jail for seven years. It was critically acclaimed, but with a box office of only $23.9 million, clearly overlooked by the general public. Benioff’s next project was Troy, an infinitely more ambitious film. Directed by Wolfgang Petersen and starring big names like Brad Pitt and future Game of Thrones star Sean Bean, this blockbuster earned nearly half a billion dollars at the box office. Less than two years later, Benioff began talks with George R.R. Martin about adapting his famous book series.
Most fans agree that Game of Thrones was good, right until it wasn’t. Why, then, do I think Troy effectively predicted the downfall of this popular HBO series? Simple: Troy might have been Benioff’s breakout film, but it was also a stinker later declared “rotten” over on Rotten Tomatoes. There are many problems with the movie (a movie that both Brad Pitt and his co-star Peter O’Toole later trashed), but most of the biggest problems come from Benioff’s unwillingness to properly adapt the original source material. That means he screwed up a beloved story humans have been studying for literally thousands of years.
Game Of Thrones Choked At The End
The movie’s portrayal of The Iliad is full of major changes from the original text. For example, the gods are removed almost entirely. Some characters die who are meant to survive (like Menalus), and other characters live who were supposed to die (like Paris). Other characters are rewritten for the worst, like war hero Odysseus being simplified to “the smart guy” and captive Briseis being promoted to a Trojan goddess. Finally, the movie condenses a decade-long conflict into a weeks-long skirmish while throwing in plenty of elements (including the Trojan Horse chicanery) that weren’t actually written about in The Iliad.
In short, the writing in Troy was awful, and those of us who love Greek mythology have despised this film for more than 20 years due to its various inaccuracies. A few years later, Benioff’s Game of Thrones showed the same sloppy disregard for the original source material. Major characters like Young Griff (who claims to be Aegon Targaryen, the rightful king of Westeros) are cut out entirely. In another case, the mystically terrifying and downright apocalyptic Euron Greyjoy was reduced to a cartoonish caricature of swashbuckling swagger.
That Face When You Read The Script
Fan-favorite character Tyrion was downright sanitized compared to his portrayal in the books, which was already bad enough. Later, his brother’s long journey towards independence was completely forgotten so he could simp for his sister yet again. The Dorne storyline was turned into an amateur side story (the Sand Snakes were just pure cringe), Lady Stoneheart was cut out, and franchise Big Bad the Night King got one-shotted by a little girl.
These are just a few of the problematic ways that the show disappointed its most dedicated fans (don’t even get me started on Daenerys’ dumb heel turn and Bran’s inexplicable importance to the ending). But it’s important to note that the biggest disappointments came from how Game of Thrones veered away from the original text in many frustrating ways. These were unforced errors overseen by lazy showrunners too concerned with wrapping everything up than making sure this show stuck the landing. One of those showrunners was David Benioff, who explained his sloppy approach to literary adaptations over two decades ago.
Now, Our Watch Is Complete
In a 2004 issue of the journal Creative Screenwriting, Benioff discusses his approach to adapting Homer’s epic poem The Iliad into Troy, a blockbuster feature film. “I always followed the route that I thought was better for the movie; if that meant that I was cheating on Homer, then so be it.” To the writer, it was an easy decision to cut or change things from the book in order to create a better film. But Benioff seemingly didn’t know or care that, to major fans of the original source material, major changes would keep us from actually enjoying the movie.
In short, that’s what happened with Game of Thrones. After relatively faithfully adapting earlier books, the show kept making bigger and bigger changes that angered the fandom. This culminated in a slopfest of a final season that very nearly ruined one of the biggest franchises in television history. All of this happened under the not-so-watchful eye of David Benioff, a man whose entire Hollywood career was built on badly adapting a beloved, swords-and-sorcery literary epic. Seriously, go watch Troy, and then listen to your favorite mythology bro tell you everything that movie got wrong about Homer’s ancient classic. After that, you’ll know why Game of Thrones’ failed fate was sealed long before its first episode ever aired on HBO.
