Anna Daniels
The final season of Game of Thrones is so tainted in former fans’ minds that David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the showrunners, are negative points of conversation. For viewers, it wasn’t that the show ended, and it couldn’t satisfy everyone’s different ideas of how it should have gone. Instead, there were big plot holes, questions, and significant prophecies left unanswered and rushed character arcs. Because of that, the two creators of the show have a bad rep now, which was only worsened by their admittance that they had no idea what they were doing when they started making Game of Thrones.
Now, they’re in charge of the adaptation of a graphic novel covering the life of author H.P. Lovecraft. There’s criticism surrounding this on a couple of fronts.
The showrunners for ‘Game of Thrones’ are tackling a movie about H.P. Lovecraft
On Dec. 12, Variety reported that David Benioff and D.B. Weiss signed on to produce an adaptation of “Lovecraft” for Warner Bros. As stated above, this novel is a telling of author H.P. Lovecraft’s life. He wrote The Call of Cthulhu and At the Mountains of Madness; he’s known for his horror genre.
According to a tweet by Variety, they’re still looking for a director for the film. Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi are writing the script, and Karyn Kusama is an executive producer.
People don’t think Benioff and Weiss are the best ones to tell Lovecraft’s — or any — story
People were not happy to hear the showrunners for Game of Thrones are behind a big, upcoming Warner Bros. picture. Especially when it comes to the story, like what user @thesnowleopard wrote. “[George R.R. Martin] may not be perfect, but he can plot a story. Lovecraft…didn’t do plots,” they wrote. “He did mood, atmosphere, worldbuilding, things we know for a fact D&D will screw up. Plus, their total inability to handle iffy material non-problematically. ‘Cause [H.P. Lovecraft] is real problematic.”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCmxWWneegc?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]
A prominent critique that the two creatives faced, surrounding GoT, is that their writing and storytelling went downhill after they ran out of source material. So if Lovecraft’s stories are a bit more obscure than A Song of Fire and Ice, that could be a problem for them.
While it is important to note that they won’t be the ones writing this time around, but as producers, they still have a say in how the movie is made, of course. Plus, they’ve proven that they don’t really know how to tackle race before, in Game of Thrones, and the creation of potential projects like Confederate. Which brings us to the next concern people had.
Lovecraft is considered a white supremacist
Lovecraft’s ideologies and racism bled through into his work. Even though it wasn’t as explicit as he was in his own life, Lovecraft is a white supremacist with xenophobic views against many races.
As The Atlantic explained in 2015, “Lovecraft’s ascendance has also brought an uncomfortable truth into the spotlight: He was a virulent racist. The xenophobia and white supremacy that burble beneath his fiction (which may have gone unnoticed, had he remained anonymous) are startlingly explicit in his letters.”
Considering Benioff and Weiss’ less-than-sufficient comprehension of how to write or work race into their work well, people’s concern about that aspect of Lovecraft is warranted. Not to mention: this isn’t an adaptation of a work of his, but rather his personal life where his racist views were more prominent.
Whether you want to give the former Game of Thrones showrunners, the benefit of the doubt is a personal choice. In the meantime, you can get excited about House of the Dragon.
Written by: Cheat
