In retrospect, Game of Thrones was an incredibly divisive show. The first seasons led to the drama series becoming one of the most lucrative and popular in HBO history. But Game of Thrones Season 8, especially the final episodes, left many fans and critics disappointed. This tainted their overall feelings about the series.
Game of Thrones is the brainchild of author George R.R. Martin. The show is based on Martin’s epic fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire. These novels are so long and involved that the HBO series ended before Martin completed the books.
However, the author who dreamed up the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros was always involved in production. There’s just one scene he despised in Game of Thrones Season 1.
George R.R. Martin thought ‘Game of Thrones’ might be a short story
Martin started writing fiction while he was still in school, “selling monster stories to other children for pennies,” The Guardian reported. He continued writing fantastical tales inspired by one of his favorite authors: J.R.R. Tolkien. “Yeah, [Tolkien] blew my mind,” Martin recalled. After seeing so many authors imitate the popular fantasy author, Martin vowed he could do better.
The idea for Game of Thrones was quite random. The 72-year-old author said it came “out of nowhere” in 1991.
“When I began, I didn’t know what the hell I had. I thought it might be a short story; it was just this chapter, where they find these direwolf pups. Then I started exploring these families and the world started coming alive,” Martin told The Guardian.
“It was all there in my head, I couldn’t not write it.”
He didn’t love 1 scene in ‘Game of Thrones’
After the series became popular, Martin was pleased to partner with HBO to bring it to the small screen.
This happened after he turned down scriptwriters who wanted to turn the saga into movies like Lord of the Rings. Game of Thrones co-creator David Benioff agreed with the author’s assessment that the story was too large in scope to condense into a trilogy.
But filming for TV had its own challenges. Martin expressed his frustration with one scene in season 1, which he says should have been totally different. The author hated how showrunners depicted Robert Baratheon’s hunting expedition during episode 6, “A Golden Crown.”
Martin thinks Robert Baratheon’s hunting party wasn’t realistic
The revelation comes courtesy of the behind-the-scenes book Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon by James Hibberd, Den of Geek reported. Martin discussed the problem, saying:
Where we really fell down in terms of budget was my least favorite scene in the entire show, in all eight seasons: King Robert goes hunting. Four guys walking on foot through the woods carrying spears and Robert is giving Renly sh*t. In the books, Robert goes off hunting, we get word that he was gored by a boar, and they bring him back and he dies. So I never did [a hunting scene]. But I knew what a royal hunting party was like. There would have been a hundred guys. There would have been pavilions. There would have been huntsmen. There would have been dogs. There would have been horns blowing – that’s how a king goes hunting! He wouldn’t have just been walking through the woods with three of his friends holding spears hoping to meet a boar. But at that point, we couldn’t afford horses or dogs or pavilions.”
It wasn’t the most egregious problem in Game of Thrones. Still, Martin’s complaints make total sense for someone so close to the storyline.
