Now, with this existential threat eliminated three episodes before the finale, it seems as though that foolish game might become the series’ endgame, as if the Iron Throne, and not life, were the real prize all along. To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. The shadows on display in the “Thrones” Season 8 premiere speaks to a recent trend of TV dramas … The Night King has raised the dead from the battle (corpses are a renewable resource). Thanks to the fire magic of Melisandre (Carice van Houten), their curved swords are ignited and they ride off, a surging wave of orange seen from overhead in the dark. "Game of Thrones" on Sunday night was dark and full of terrors. Ad Choices. Sapochnik is fairly quick to give us close-ups of our favorites after each crowd scene to make sure we know they’re still alive, until they aren’t. (The final lesson of “Game of Thrones,” apparently, is to hang on to your old plasma TVs with their sharply defined blacks. Speaking to ThisIsInsider in 2017, Game of Thrones cinematographer Robert McLachlan explained that the show has gotten so much darker because there are fewer ways to "justify" the … Natural-lit night scenes and gloomy filters have rendered expensive widescreens into charcoal rubbings of semi-perceptible movement. The second scene comes at the end of the battle — actually, it ends the battle in one swift stroke. This seems part of Wagner’s effort to “make things smaller” and create an emotional story for each character “that we can follow.”. Why did Melisandre return to Westeros? But there were also images that absolutely sang. Lord of the Rings star Sean Astin once asked Lesnie “where is the light coming from?” when they were shooting in what should have been a darkened tower. . Yes and No. The army arrived under cloak of darkness, and the hour-plus combat that ensued unfolded with all the chromatic variety of a goth teenager’s wardrobe. A little dark of night and convenient cloud … The Dothraki were established in the first episode as the most fearsome warriors on Earth; we saw them plow through the Lannister army as if it were a field of buttercups. For years, “Game of Thrones” has been a story of the folly of seeking power. Of the challenging conditions he had to work under, Wagner said: “[It was] physically exhausting. But it reminded us, in the most memorable moment of the Battle of Winterfell, that it does its best work when it slips in the blade like an assassin. Beric inspires Sandor and Melisandre inspires many—but most specifically Arya who is shown to be in total darkness in the Winterfell hallways when she’s at her lowest. Arya — our Arya, who begged to learn sword fighting, who attended her father’s execution, who befriended a pie baker and outargued lords, who wandered a war-blasted country, who studied face-changing and murder, who gained deadly power but seemed to lose her soul — got this done. A blue-ish tinge is all Lesnie needed to connote “night,” but Wagner had to deal with something much trickier. (We have a full accounting here.) Was ‘Game of Thrones’ Too Dark on Sunday? Yes, The Lord of the Rings takes place in a fantasy world, but Helm’s Deep is a battle between humans, elves, orcs, and one wizard. But when comparing Sapochnik and Wagner to Jackson and Lesnie, it’s only fair to keep a few other considerations in mind. Ramin Djawadi’s score (the show’s M.V.P., crystalline even in the muddiest of moments) shifts from martial to plaintive. Credit... HBO This was something we have seen, or rather not seen, before. In a series devoted to spectacle, it harnesses the power of what we can’t see. Over the years, the cinematographers have relied on sunlight, moonlight, candlelight, and fire light. ), To be fair, immersing the viewer in the confusion of war is a choice, and it can be devastating. “Saving Private Ryan” exposed a mass audience to war as a disorienting assault, where you can never get your bearings or know where the next bullet is coming from. So dark, in fact, that there’s a … That is, if you can even see it. Facing — whatever is out there — this indomitable army gutters out like birthday candles. The first scene began the battle, as the Dothraki cavalry charged the yet-unseen army of the dead. The light is used effectively throughout the episode, such as this showstopper boy band moment for the White Walker boys. As a pretentious TV producer exclaimed on the most recent season of “BoJack Horseman,” “The darkness is a metaphor for darkness!”, In “The Long Night,” murk piled on top of mayhem, shadows tumbled across the screen by torchlight. He told the outlet, " ('Game of Thrones') has always been very dark and a very cinematic show," recommending that viewers watch in a very … It was a fitting showcase for a series that, in its later years, has stood out more as a collection of indelible individual scenes than seamless episodes. Wagner in his interview with Vanity Fair stressed that despite its zombies and dragons, Game of Thrones is a very naturalistically and “classically” shot show. At worst, it’s a frustrating cliché, hostile to narrative and eyeballs, that substitutes fog for feeling. In the aptly titled “The Long Night” episode of “Game of Thrones,” the Night King brought his teeming army of the undead to assault the defenders of the living at Winterfell. Why to light this episode of Game of Thrones for us of course! And in a battle whose length and phantasmagoria befit a prog-rock double album, it reduced a climax eight years in the making to an inky, ill-defined scrum of beards and bones. The defenders of Winterfell, it seems, are losing in a rout. Even if you couldn’t see every second of it. Which dragon bit which? Both Beric and Melisandre, servants of the Lord of Light, bring hope with them in this episode. At best, the device can establish mood. And those were scenes that used the darkness to a purpose — not as a shroud, but as a physical presence. But here, the squint-to-see-them images were chaotic even when we were clearly meant to take in information: Who just died? The blue and gray tones dull the shot and don’t make the characters stand out in the frame. The consuming battle to rule Westeros — the “game” cynically named as such by the villainous Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) — is precisely what kept the continent from uniting to face this threat. This episode of Game of Thrones was called “The Long Night,” which is primarily an allusion to the fabled battle of old that rocked Westeros and may play a part in the prequel series currently in the works at HBO. “Game of Thrones” is a series that speaks visually as much as it does through dialogue. The score fades to stillness. The episode’s director of photography, Fabian Wagner, spoke with Vanity Fair’s “Still Watching” podcast about some of the challenges of shooting this nocturnal skirmish. [Read our ultimate guide to “Game of Thrones.”]. But lack of light also plays a pivotal role in this opening sequence which sees an entire Dothraki horde swallowed by the darkness of the army of the dead. And Sapochnik did not throw away that shot, channeling the force of eight years of story into a jagged last stab. Too often, what it had to say was mumblemurmurmumble. It’s too bad we couldn’t see more of what transpired in between. But mostly just dark. They form a line on the horizon. The battle began with life vanishing into the pitiless dark; it ended with life desperately leaping out of it. Game of Thrones has to contend with a digitally enhanced mouldering army of the dead, one giant (and we mean giant) wight, and three dragons. And then, over his shoulder, out of the blue-black mist, leaps Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) with a scream and the dagger that will find the Smaug-like gap in the Night King’s armor. “I wanted to evolve the lighting,” he said and worked to make the “storytelling of the lighting evolve with the storytelling of the characters.” Wagner gave this interview before the episode aired so he didn’t get specific, but knowing that we can look a little more closer at the episode’s use of fire not just from a pragmatic lighting standpoint, but from a character point of view as well. Then slowly, quietly, the fires die out. Will be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy. This post contains frank discussion of several plot points from Season 8, Episode 3 of Game of Thrones. But as the first taste of the horrors to come, it is astonishing. 'Game of Thrones' has gotten darker partially because of the change in seasons on the show An unedited screenshot of season eight, episode one, "Winterfell." The Dothraki charge in Sunday’s “Game of Thrones” was an inventive use of darkness and light, but much of the episode was simply too murky to track. (I am not the first to note the similarity to the “Operation Human Shield” story line in the 1999 “South Park” movie, in which a general ordered his black soldiers to sacrifice themselves on the front line.).
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