John Snow was the other naked character in that episode. It doesn’t make narrative sense for him to be lying bollock naked on the slab. He was killed in his clothes and at some point his loyal compadres decided that the best, most dignified thing to do with his corpse while they waited in the room with it for hours was to strip the clothes off entirely and leave them off. Why?
Because it makes dramatic sense. He’s died and been reborn. He comes into the world naked, a new man, free of all his old encumbrances. It neatly foreshadows his surrender of the Commander’s Cloak. It is entirely fitting with the scene that he be naked.
But we didn’t see his cock and balls, and we only got a fractional glimpse of his arse. It detracts massively from the impact of his nudity and the clear message that he stands anew, untramelled, free of his past. How can we possibly get the full impact of this *critical *scene when we’re distracted by artful shots covering his naked bits?
And yet, somehow, the complaints are deafening in their silence. It’s almost - almost - as if people’s main problem is that they didn’t get to see tits.
I’m not aware that people are complaining about how Cersei’s walk of shame was made less dramatic by using a 27-year old body double instead of an actress over 40, like both Lena Headey and Cersei’s character. The walk would have been even more shameful for Cersei if she had to expose an aging sagging body. Using a younger actress made it more titillating and less degrading.
There was speculation about why Headey chose to use a body double, which undoubtedly raised costs tremendously for extended CGI, and also is distracting due to mismatches between her head and body, since she has done nude scenes before. She’s explained in an interview that she felt she couldn’t control her emotions enough to show Cersei’s stoicism if she had been naked for three days of shooting in the middle of a crowd of extras.
Varys’s “Can we have the room?” remark to the guards was a jarring bit of c. 2016 dialogue. I liked his impromptu creation of a Meereen Witness Protection Program, though.
I have a feeling his “little birds” back in King’s Landing will keep passing info along to him, no matter how much candy Maester Mengele gives them.
The actors playing Bran and Rickon look a lot older these days. That’s what happens when you cast kids for a multi-year project.
And for being, you know, a deserter.
It might also have been another Jaqen not bound by the same linguistic convention, or a test to see if Arya noticed.
Agreed. Remember that the Waif herself told convincing lies about her own family when she met Arya.
Which reminds me: Davos’s line, “Apologies for what you’re about to see” was weird. These are men of the Night’s Watch. They’re no strangers to swords and killing.
Oh, I think she definitely intends to remain on top and rule. A liberator of slaves, yes, but she is a Targaryen, after all. (Varys also, FWIW, made some remarks to Tyrion which suggest he favors a constitutional monarchy of sorts).
He had prefaced that remark by saying he was not much of a fighter. When he said “apologies for what you’re about to see,” he meant how poor a swordsman he is.
His full quote was ‘I’ve never been much of a fighter. Apologies for what you’re about to see.’ I think he was saying that he was probably not about to cover himself with warrior glory. He was definitely willing to do his best, but his best was likely going to be crap.
ETA: Or I suppose someone like madmonk28 could come along and say the same thing more succinctly and sooner.
I don’t know about the others, but I’ve just started rewatching series one on DVD, and we definitely don’t see Ned cutting Lady’s throat—the camera pans away, which I found rather jarring given the fact that we had full-on decapitation by Ned earlier.
This is really making too many assumptions, though. So far, we have no reason to think that she made her decision in bad faith—she just might have thought she’d be fine with it, and later, when she found out she’d become a mainstay in the spank banks of half the internet that keeps rewinding the scenes where she’s very explicitly violated by a large bearded sweaty equestrian, she realized that she wasn’t. In which case, she’s totally fine to renegotiate. Those things happen; there’s no reason to insinuate ill intent.
Well, but earlier, he remarks that he’s “never been much of a swordsman”, or something along those lines—what he’s apologizing for is the ineptness they’re about to witness. (OK, ninja’s twice on that one…)
I could see a constitutional monarchy where she prioritizes the welfare of the commoners, ergo no wheel crushing the common people. But still, she said “I’m not going to stop the wheel, I’m going to break the wheel.” One could take that to mean that she was going to put the Targaryens in charge permanently, perhaps even destroy the other houses, so there’s no more wheel. But it’s also plausible that she intends to break the wheel by eliminating the monarchy altogether. Actually, now that I type it out, it does seem more likely that she means to destroy or at least declaw all the competing houses and rule justly.
Either way, it’s a tall order. Declawing the other houses so they could never again regain power can’t be guaranteed. Neither could ending the monarchy and instituting democracy. Unless she rules from actual power, there’s always going to be someone who wants to declare themselves king.
Per the Wiki, Headey gave birth on July 10, 2015, while the scene was filmed the first week of October, 2014. Headey was either not yet pregnant, or had just become so and would not be showing (and maybe not known it). In any case, the casting for the body double and other preparations would have had to have been done well before she knew.
Maybe the showrunners gave that reason in order to keep Headey’s real reason confidential. (She initially said it was for “various reasons,” and just gave the interview in which she revealed her real reason in April.) I assume she would have had to explain the reason for such a costly decision to the showrunners, especially since it seems that she previously expressed that she was OK with doing the scene herself. Also, they had specifically avoided having any nude scenes with Cersei in previous seasons, despite her having a lot of sex, in order to increase the impact of the nude scene.
I don’t buy the argument that because an actor has done nude scenes previously, they have some moral commitment to continue to do them, even in the same show. She was always going to be an essential part of the cast. It would have been tough to recast her even after the first season. There’s nothing more morally wrong with revising the terms on a new contract about nudity than there is on asking for a raise in pay.
While there are arguments to be made for the use of nudity for dramatic effect, I get the impression that most people complaining about it aren’t doing it because they are drama critics, but because they want to see more of Emilia’s tits. I don’t think that’s a valid reason.
That would make sense if there was no nudity of any sort and people were saying “hey, when Dany was captured by the Dothraki, they ought to have stripped her naked, har har har”. What people are complaining about is a scene where the character is nude, is known to be nude, is seen as nude by the characters, but not by the audience.
And there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. In most shows I wouldn’t blink. But because GoT has been so enthusiastically willing to show nudity earlier, including with this same actress and character, it did for a moment take me out of the show. For a moment I wasn’t enjoying the exploits of the characters, I was thinking about behind the scenes facts involving the performers.
Granted, that’s a super minor concern, and I would never have brought it up myself, but it’s definitely not just that I want to ogle Emilia Clarke’s goodies and am going to express my discontent that I did not get to do so.
Category 1: People who didn’t even notice that an opportunity for nudity had been missed. (I’m in here, and would guess that this may be probably 40-50% of the audience)
Category 2: People who noticed.
Category 2A: People who noticed, but didn’t care.
Category 2B: People who noticed and cared.
Category 2.B (1) People who cared because it was a violation of the compact between the show and the viewers;
Category 2.B (2) People who cared because it was missed opportunity to see Emilia Clarke’s tits.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that 2.B (2) is larger than most will admit.
I accidentally posted this in the book thread, but meant to post it here: I agree with Sterling Archer that the Rickon ‘gift’ is likely a ruse. Notice how the guy giving up Rickon refused to bend the knee or kiss Ramsey’s ring. I think they hope to take back Winterfell and install Rickon as the lord.
Maybe. However, that’s a really really stupid ruse. There’s gotta be a 70% chance that Ramsay just murders Rickon on the spot. Then a 25% chance he tortures Rickon for months and then murders him. It’s like playing Russian Roulette and insisting you take the first 5 turns.
