Fans like to blame all of their problems with ‘The Walking Dead‘ on ex-showrunner Scott M. Gimple but it sounds like the reason the show has strayed from the comics isn’t his fault. In fact, series creator Robert Kirkman is to blame as to why the material is telling the story in a different light.
The reason the changes were made is straightforward as Gimple explains:
“Being a fan of it to start with, you want to do right by the moments that you’ve seen. But to do right by the moments you’ve seen, sometimes you have to remix them because people like myself who are familiar with the work know what’s coming. So you’re not going to get that surprise. You’re not going to get that emotional twist. You’re not going to get that build. So to do right by the book, to tell the book with absolute fidelity sometimes, you have to change it. That said, you’re sort of like sneakily trying to get into the same exact thing that [‘Walking Dead’ creator] Robert [Kirkman] did, and to do that it takes a little bit of misdirection.”
The idea is to either give viewers the element of surprise by having the same story told with twists or with the story being altered so you can’t always guess as to what is happening next. However, It wasn’t initially Gimple’s idea to go this route, but Kirkman himself, As Gimple puts it:
“Back when we started, Robert and I argued a lot because I wanted to do the book just as the book and he actually wanted to do changes because he had already done it. And, yeah, I wanted to see those moments that I saw in the book. And yet, as I worked more and more on it because I was so familiar with those moments, I knew that making those little twists to give the reader, it’s actually doing right by the people who read the book and know what’s coming. You try to put them in a place where they don’t know what’s coming, which is what reading the book is like.”
Kirkman has long stated that he wanted the show to be different from the books. Not only so it could tell a new tale but so that some of his creative decisions could be undone in a fresh way. While some of the fresh tellings have just been to give new twists to existing work, there is also “the butterfly effect. There are little changes in the book that just ripple bigger, and bigger, and bigger. Daryl’s not from the book.”
While Gimple wouldn’t share what changes he hasn’t liked or doesn’t feel worked, he did share one that he is most proud of:
“The biggest one is Carol, just the character Carol. Taking that backstory that Robert had, but then playing it out, that was a big part of, as far as the transformation… the drift from comic to TV that even when I was just writer/producer was really a big focus of mine.”
Carol is an entirely different character from the books and the changes to her character were a massive plus for viewers. However, many of the differences haven’t resonated with viewers as we’ve seen over the years.
Are you glad that Robert Kirkman and Scott M. Gimple agreed to change some of the focus of ‘The Walking Dead’? What changes from the comics do you feel has been the most effective? Which do you wish they had never done? Share your thoughts below!
Source: Business Insider