When Fantasy TV Shows Are Designed By Committee

There seems to be this idea that if you have a problem with the quality of the current state of fantasy shows on TV—and by “fantasy shows,” I mean shows adapted or spun off from fantasy novels—it must be because you hate fun and want everyone to suffer. But what if the reason is that you love fantasy, and want to see it adapted for the screen in a way that is actually good?

Corporate giants have drawn their own conclusions about what makes the fantasy genre appealing. They watched the success of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies, and decided it was because of British people waving swords around in battle. Or elves with elaborate gold braids jumping around, again in battle. There are solemn allusions to evil, power, and more evil, because why not? And no need to define those terms—the bad guys are never subtle.

That, as far as corporations are concerned, is one school of fantasy—a preoccupation with power and evil and flashing lights coming out of people’s fingers or staves or whatever. And a lot of earnest strutting with swords. If anyone ever laughs or makes a joke, blink and you’ll miss it.

The other school of fantasy is inspired by HBO’s Game of Thrones. The suits took one look at it and decided that what people liked was the cynicism and violence in fantasy garb. It’s so edgy. The way everyone is covered with blood and dirt is so daring. Plus there’s the onscreen castration, which we’ve been waiting for our whole lives, right?

As to the first school, I can’t really blame the suits, since Peter Jackson himself seems to think all we ever wanted from Tolkien was very serious British people marching into battle. After a making a beautiful start with The Fellowship of the Ring, Jackson left Tolkien’s enchantments behind to devote himself, almost exclusively, to the mechanics of siege warfare. He famously took The Hobbit, a charming, magical, and wonderfully weird book, and made it into a heavily solemn and interminable battle of Britain. A lot of what we’re experiencing now is probably his fault.

“So all you can do is criticize?” Actually, no. I have a suggestion. And that is that the people making fantasy shows should have some understanding of what made their source material as beloved as it is. Of course, they would have to actually read the books they are adapting, because no two fantasy series (at least, no good ones) are alike.

Take, for example, George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones—an interesting example because the first season of the TV show got it mostly right. Readers hadn’t been following that series for thirty years for the torture and mud. Or even the “tits and dragons.” (Okay, maybe the dragons.) A Game of Thrones, the book, expertly draws the reader into a world of compelling contrasts—between the ascetic Starks in the cold North, and the decadent Lannisters in their magnificent court. When these wildly different, inimical worlds collide, it unleashes the drama that drives the rest of the series. Sure, the books are cynical and violent—Martin clearly had a bone to pick with idealistic fantasy—but cynicism is not what catapulted these books to bestseller status long before the TV show. As long as the story centered on the Starks and Lannisters—as well as, to some extent, the Targaryens—readers were fascinated with the characters, to the point of naming babies after them and cosplaying them at Worldcon. You kept reading, even when it got tedious in book 4, to find out what happened to Tyrion. (And readers will understand why that turned out to be ironic, but I digress.)

Now take, for example, Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time. You’d think a fantasy series that literally hit the top of the New York Times bestseller list would inspire showrunners to contemplate the question: Why did readers love these books? Instead, they seem to have decided in advance that the appeal of the Wheel of Time lies—as with Tolkien—in very serious intonations about power and evil, and have forced the series into this unimaginative, humorless mold. Which is a shame, because such a large part of what makes the books fun is the joy with which Jordan introduces his world to the reader. Through the eyes of the characters—village kids for whom an actual city is unimaginable, let alone magic—everything about the world is entrancingly colorful and new. The earlier novels of the Wheel of Time mirror how we experience the world in childhood, with the thrill and wonder that entails. Jordan understood how to convey the wonder at the heart of epic fantasy.

Sure, Amazon/Netflix want to make money. I believe they will make more money when they respect their audience. HBO’s Game of Thrones seems like the obvious case in point. The series died a horrible death when the showrunners stopped caring.

Viewers aren’t stupid. They can tell when a show is a product chugging along on a conveyor belt, infused with bucketloads of cash, and when it comes from the heart.