You don't have the men, you don't have the horses,
and you don't have Winterfell.
Why lead those poor souls into slaughter?
There's no need for a battle.
Game of Thrones was always a TV show whose deepest conflict
came from its characters.
The quick verbal jabs and betrayals
were what elevated the show from the depths of beloved genre
to cultural phenomenon.
Hold the door!
But in one perfect episode, Game of Thrones
married technical mastery and story
to create one of the greatest battles in TV history.
Before we get too far into the mud,
we'd like to take a moment to thank you for watching.
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Released as the ninth episode of season six,
the "Battle of the Bastards" was the culmination
of several story threads.
Sansa Stark's tortuous relationship
with Ramsay Bolton, control of Winterfell,
and Rickon Stark's fate.
For the entire season--
multiple seasons, really-- everything
felt like it was building to this one specific moment,
by simply changing what we thought
a television episode could be.
"Battle of the Bastards" was directed by Miguel Sapochnik,
a former storyboard artist turned director who had already
directed two episodes of Game of Thrones, episodes seven
and eight of season five.
The episode told the story of John Snow and his small army
of wildlings facing off against fellow bastard Ramsay Bolton.
For writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss,
it was the first time they would put a proper pitched battle
in the series.
While they had shown raids and massacres before,
they had yet to have a full military conflict.
They would draw inspiration from real battles
from Ancient Rome to the Civil War,
and it's clear how much joy they took in crafting the sequence.
And Sapochnik's background in visual storytelling
pays off in spades.
He's able to translate the script's historical research
into something truly remarkable to watch.
When making a scene that engages us, the audience,
we have to understand the geography.
And if there's all of a sudden a hill,
our brains start to wonder where it came from.
But in the establishing shot before the battle begins
proper, Sapochnik shows us everything.
We know where the castle is in relation to Jon's army,
we understand the almost arena-like field
the armies stand in, and to give us an even more ground level
view, Sapochnik places us over the shoulder
of Jon in a now famous minute long oner.
It's a shot that works especially well
for a generation of folks that grew up
with third person action games.
Our POV is with Jon.
We feel the frantic energy as moment
after moment pops into frame only to be ripped away.
Like Jon, our gaze is locked in but unable to focus.
It is not only visually mesmerizing
but also riddled with moments of character exposition
and technical precision.
From the elaborate wire work, clever editing,
and special effects, we really watch
the show take a giant step forward in its filmmaking.
Part of the feeling we get is the sheer amount of effort
the crew put forth every frame.
The battle alone took 25 days to shoot,
600 extras, 500 crew members--
and while the exact number seems to vary-- somewhere
between 80 and 100 horses.
Up until this point, Camilla Naprous,
the horse master on the series, had
complained of having too little to do,
simply instructing actors to trot
here and there while scheming or giving exposition.
She wanted something more ambitious.
In an interview with Esquire, it said
she read the script of battle of the bastards
and thought "maybe not this ambitious."
But Naprous delivers on all fronts.
Working with any animal is hard and unpredictable.
There are rules in place to protect the animals that
for too long were treated as a commodity within film
and television.
During the episode, many horses were
trained to take real falls onto stunt mats,
but the well being of the animals
was always a top concern with no horse being allowed to fall
more than three times in a day.
There's often a romanticizing of days past
and disregarding safety for getting the shot,
but there's a reason laws like these exist.
The entire crew sets the gold standard
for problem solving and pivoting while still maintaining
the vision of the script.
Working on any TV series means being constrained
by an episodic budget, but Sapochnik squeezes every moment
he can while still being able to make the corners,
they cut a part of the mythos.
When they realized that some of the backgrounds
would need to be blurred in order
to make the sense feel bigger, Sapochnik first
thought to use smoke.
He then justified the smoke with huge monuments
of the Boltons' sigil, the flayed man, set aflame.
It's haunting and perfectly adds a terrifying weight
to the battle.
That field was also slightly concave,
declining down from all sides to form what is essentially
a giant bowl of Earth.
And this being Northern Ireland meant a lot of rain.
While trampling through the mud makes
for a more dramatic battle, if the ground becomes
too loose and unwieldy, it's also incredibly unsafe.
So dozens of crew members worked at night
carting wheelbarrows of fresh soil and rocks
to literally reestablish the top ground.
And after long shoots, retakes, and more rain,
they would do it all over again every day.
The rain also contributed to one of the most memorable scenes
in an episode filled to the brim with unforgettable moments.
Jon Snow emerging from a pile of bodies while gasping for air.
When the written scene was scrapped
due to the location being flooded, budget, and time,
Sapochnik came up with the idea of Jon
being trampled by both the Bolton army
and his own wildling soldiers.
It is a visual personification of how Jon
has felt the entire series--
the weight of the world squeezing him so tightly,
there's nothing left.
In what is essentially a second rebirth,
Jon pushes and fights his way to the top and gasps for air.
The moment feels triumphant.
You can't help but feel relieved,
maybe even more so than his first rebirth
after being stabbed by Thorne and other members
of the Night's Watch.
That revival was without a choice.
It was a moment that happened to him.
But in "Battle of the Bastards," we see John fight for air.
He claws and pulls, his breaths getting
more shallow and desperate.
When Jon finally makes it to the top,
Sapochnik does a masterful bit of visual storytelling
and directly ties the moment to Daenerys.
The framing and overhead POV mirrors
Daenerys' being held up by the Yunkai slaves
in the third season finale.
It is the director telling us these two are on the same path.
And there are so many wonderful bits of character
battles the show has built its audience on.
The script from Weiss and Benioff
highlights that Jon may be someone people want to follow,
but they shout from the rooftops that he is not
the best tactician.
That aforementioned rebirth?
It takes place during the loss of the battle.
Jon and the wildling army have been surrounded
by shield and spear soldiers forming a pincer maneuver--
also a deviation from the script due to budget
concerns and horse safety.
As Jon is reborn, he's forced to look over
the men he's led here, all with no escape.
Or it would be if Sansa had not sent a raven to Littlefinger
and the Vale to ask for help.
Despite Jon ignoring her repeated warnings about Bolton,
Sansa had the forethought to seek aid
when it meant the best for Winterfell and the Starks
in the long run.
These are the decisions a leader makes--
sacrificing a little for so much more.
But Sansa is personally familiar with Bolton's greatest weapon--
his antagonization.
Since his introduction, we've seen Bolton battle
with everyone, pushing folk into losing control when
he remained calm and steadfast.
And in "Battle of the Bastards," we
watch him revel in the chaos he's created.
It's another bit of wonderful character
to see one of the worst villains of the entire series fall
for the same reasons that made us hate him.
When Bolton finally meets his end,
we also see another side of Jon.
In a scene that by itself took 10 hours to shoot,
we see Jon on top of Bolton, punching him in the face again
and again and again.
As an audience, we can't help but cheer at first.
If you were watching the show as it was released,
you had spent years of your life watching
Bolton commit heinous acts with nothing but a smile.
There's an understandable primal sense of justice
as he lies bleeding in the mud.
Then it just doesn't stop.
We watch Jon keep hitting him again and again and again.
Kit Harrington, who played Jon Snow, said of the scene,
"it's a horrible moment when you see
your hero go a bit too far."
And he does only when he realizes
that this moment isn't his.
It's Sansa's.
She won the battle.
She has suffered the most under Bolton.
Seeing Sansa regain control of her life
was something really special.
Benioff said of the scene that she walks away,
a small smirk on her face as Bolton
screams in the background, was at
that point, his favorite moment of Sophie Turner's acting.
That more than any moment is one worth cheering.
"Battle of the Bastards" succeeded where many episodes
before and after failed and made us believe in the story
through battle.
And that is due to the overwhelming thought
and work put in from beginning to end, from the writing,
to the production, to the acting, everything just syncs.
Because we see the heart put into every single frame.
Every bit of resholved snow or mud and blood
thrown off camera, it reminds us that for 59 minutes,
we were part of the battle.
So what do you think?
What are some of the greatest battles you've seen on screen?
Maybe Fury Road's iconic valley chase
or the Battle of Helm's Deep?