Game of Thrones creator shades "live-action" Disney remakes

For decades, Disney was famous for making beautiful, family-friendly animated movies, starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 through the films of the Disney Renaissance in the 1990s (The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Mulan, etc...) up to more recent films like Frozen. In the past several years, it's also been mining its back catalog of animated classics and remaking them as live-action features. From Cinderella to Aladdin to last year's remake of The Little Mermaid, they've been coming at a fast clip, with no end in sight. Love 'em or hate 'em, they're here.

Put A Song of Ice and Fire author and Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin in the "hate 'em" category. Or at least, he doesn't seem to think the remakes stand up to the originals. Enthusing about the animated Netflix show Blue Eye Samurai on his blog, Martin stresses that he's writing from the perspective of someone who grew up on the classic Disney animated films, "my favorites being PINOCCHIO and DUMBO, but really, I loved them all — the originals, please, not these 'live action' rehashes."

I like that Martin puts "live action" in quotes. Is he saying they're not really live-action? I guess that's debatable in the case of a movie like The Lion King remake, which is full of computer-generated animals. Maybe these movies movies aren't so much "live-action" remakes as they are "photo-realistic" ones.

So far, Disney's live-action remakes have been very profitable for the company. Sure, there have been bombs like the remake of Pinocchio, which I forgot existed until I wrote this, but the remakes of Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid and others have raked in the cash. A remake of Snow White is due out in 2025.

Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin loves Blue Eye Samurai on Netflix

So Martin is ambivalent at best about live-action Disney remakes, but he's rhapsodic about Blue Eye Samurai, a stylish action drama set in Japan during the Edo period.

"BLUE EYE SAMURAI has the most gorgeous art that I have ever seen. The story is terrific as well," Martin wrote. "[I]t is violent, visceral, sexy (and more than a little kinky in spots), with amazing action sequences and a cast of well-developed characters, colorful and complex and real. Flawed heroes, villains who are more than cartoons (though they are cartoons, being drawn, after all)."

"It reminded me of some books I read… what was the title of that series, now?   Something about a song…"

If Martin has his way, HBO might even produce a couple of animated Game of Thrones spinoff shows:

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