Game of Thrones is perilously close to turning the Targaryens into the Sith |
As Warner Bros. relentlessly expands the Game of Thrones franchise into new territories, from an epic-scale stage play to as many as three animated series, the recent news stories about a finished GoT film script shouldn’t be a surprise. Previous efforts to bring Game of Thrones to cinemas have failed — showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss famously wanted to wrap the show’s story with a pair of movies before HBO shot down that idea. But given the franchise’s ongoing popularity, an eventual theatrical movie seems inevitable.
One sticking point: The script is in producers’ hands at Warner Bros., which is in the middle of a contentious, complicated buyout by Paramount Skydance, so anything being developed there will likely get backburnered for an unknown length of time as the dust settles. But that isn’t the issue that bothers me about the untitled Game of Thrones movie. I’m more concerned that it’s reportedly yet another war-driven prequel about the Targaryen family, this time focused on Aegon's Conquest, and the Targaryens’ original rise to rulership in Westeros. The Targaryens are rapidly becoming the Sith of the Game of Thrones universe, and the increasing focus on them should concern fans who don’t want to see this franchise stuck in the same morass as the Star Wars movies.
In George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire novels, the source material for the first Game of Thrones show, the Targaryens are just a small part of a vast, sprawling story. Their cruel, hedonistic, madness-tinged rule of Westeros hangs heavily over the country at the beginning of the series, and so does their comparatively recent fall from power, and the instability and weakness of the regime that ousted them. The lack of a single entrenched, powerful villain is what gives Martin’s novels their rich complexity: A generation after the Targaryens are pushed from rule, Westeros’ power blocs all see opportunities in the question of who will take the Iron Throne.
In Song of Ice and Fire, there are only a few royal Targaryens left behind to become major characters. Daenerys Targaryen plays a huge role in the story, but she’s just one point of view character among all the Starks, Lannisters, and other........