A Game of Thrones (HBO)

[Nicklab]

Yeah, this thread it chocked full of spoilers.  So tread carefully.

Some great resource to check out are actually in the DVD and Blu Ray extras.  Those are the Complete Histories & Lore of Westeros.  They cover a lot of the history that's referenced throughout the show, and it helps to fill in a lot of the blanks.  If you don't want to watch them on the DVD one by one, a number of YouTube users have compiled all of those clips into full hour plus long presentations.  And those are pretty good for getting a grasp of the broader world of Westeros.  You can check out the first one HERE.  A lot of what it touches on revolves around Robert's Rebellion, the Targaryen dynasty and the histories of the great Houses of Westeros.

[McMetal]

HBO also has some bonus content On-Demand that covers a lot of that backstory type stuff too, not sure if it is the same as the DVD's but definitely helpful. I just started watching recently too and am about halfway through Season 1...good stuff.

[JediJman]

Fourth one is about to wrap up on HBO now, three that are out on DVD and Blu-ray.

Might be best for you to avoid this thread if you care about spoilers...

Thanks and Thanks! 

[evenflow]

Pumped for tonights episode, should be a good battle.

[Nicklab]

Jon Snow really seized the opportunity to shine as a leader. He's been on a long path towards this, and I think his Uncle Benjen's words to him ring very true: "A man gets what he earns, when he earns it". He has clearly earned the respect of the men of the Night's Watch.

 I was really surprised to see how much of a badass Ser Alliser Thorn was in the defense of Castle Black. He went toe to toe with the best of the Wildlings until he was severely injured by Tormund Giantsbane. And the Thenns were just madmen! There were absolutely some spectacular and surprising deaths. I'll keep from mentioning those for the time being.

But the giants? And the mammoth? WHOA! The giants were awesome, and so well done. The archer giant was amazing.  And when they tried to take the gates? Damn!

[BillCable]

I'd be curious in a count of how many Night's Watch were killed in the episode.  As there were only 102 remaining, seems like at least half of them are dead.

[BrentS]

I was surprised to see the entire episode focused entirely on just the one locale.  Did the showrunners handle the Battle of the Blackwater the same way?  I can't seem to recall that.

I thought the fight scenes were well done - I thought this was handled better than the previous examples of "large scale" battles.  The giant archer was my favorite part.

I was surprised where the episode left off, without getting to spoilerish.  I'm looking forward to seeing the wrap up of this season and then the long wait begins again...

[BillCable]

Same as Blackwater.  Same director, in fact.

[McMetal]

Although I promised myself I wouldn't watch anymore of Season 4 til I caught up, I flipped past and literally could not look away. So freaking awesome.

"Dropping the scythe" was the best moment for me...they keep finding incredibly awesome ways to kill people.

[Dave]

Good episode.

Although every time I watch a "medieval sword battle" I always ask myself the same question - did people really fight this way?  Sort of one on one random skirmishes before you move on to the next random opponent? 

Is this just a function of how Hollywood wants to script sequences to make them more interesting, or easier to shoot?

I would have imagined a well trained fighting force would try and fight in a more coordinated manner - like the Spartans in 300.  Or maybe a couple of guys would always fight together and double team opponents, etc.

Anyhow, I digress.

Good episode, but I missed not having some Hound / Arya, and Tyrion scenes.  I think those have been my favorite story lines of the season.

[Jesse James]

In an open field combat would be coordinated and relatively organized for the most part...  In Castle Black and really most any siege in a moment where a wall is breached, what you saw isn't totally unrealistic...  Check out Kingdom of Heaven for something similar with a bigger budget.  Or even the walls of minis Tirith in Return of the King.

With Castle Black I think the organized defense went out the window when the losers were left to defend the castle and got overwhelmed fast.  I'd say the swordplay for many is inaccurate and more obviously choreographed.  Large weapons like broadswords and things would not have been ideal in or on the wall either.  But Jon Snow is badass soooooo.... 

If you wanna see open field combat realistically reenacted look up the SCA Pensick War on YouTube...  It takes place near where I live...  Armies maneuvering and battling in a field medieval style is different.  It attempts to be organized but it can get chaotic to say the least.  Oddly enough Braveheart attempts to show some fairly accurate stuff but it zeroes in on the main guys obviously.

[Nicklab]

Actually, there's some backstory to Castle Black and it's construction.  Way, way, way back in the history of the Night's Watch there was a rebellion by a guy called the Night's King.  It took considerable effort by the Starks and the forces of the North to defeat him.  And as a result the walls around the castles along the Wall were left relatively open to the south, should any such rebellion take place again.  It was that situation that left Castle Black very much vulnerable to the Wildlings who had climbed over the Wall, as Jon Snow, Ygritte and Tormund Giantsbane had done.

I would also venture a guess that many of the Night's Watch men who were defending Castle Black against Tormund's Wildlings and the Thenns were mostly from the orders of the Builders or Stewards.  Many of the Rangers, who are the heart of the Watch's fighting force were killed north of the Wall.  Either at the Fist of the First Men, fighting the White Walkers.  Or by the mutineers at Craster's Keep.

As for the Wildling army?  They're a disorganized rabble.  Mance Rayder is lucky to have been able to unite them in a coalition.  Mance may have been a man of the Night's Watch and a soldier at one point, but the Wildlings are not.  They're tribespeople, and not soldiers.  Hence the disorganized attack on the Wall's north face.

[Jesse James]

Yeah it's tough to really gauge how even a "battle" would take place against the wall like that...  The Giants seemed like their best hope to breach it.  Guys climbing up the face on ropes seems...  hopeless to me, but it's fiction so who knows.  I liked what they had for those guys.  Wow.

Giants, Mammoths, and all that stuff add a variable to the whole thing though that was kind of unpredictable.

I didn't know that about the Castle Black walls (never read the books obviously), so that explains how the walls are pretty much easily breached without even a ladder.

Ygritte said about the guys on the wall being "leftovers" (I think that's what she called them), so yeah the guys there seemed like the guys too worthless to have above.

I imagine fights within a castle's walls would've opened up into chaos...  That's seemingly the case what I've read of them.  You either stop the invaders at the wall, even at a wall's breach, or usually you're screwed and organized defense just goes out the window.  Of course that's traditional sieges...  Which usually have a massive army outside waiting to get in, too.

Troop movements don't mean much in those situations...  Castles usually had layered defenses, and as things wore down the troops just moved to the next layer back.  Towers in castles were designed to be islands of opposition even when the walls around the towers would fall.  So there's some tactics there, but like Nick said it seems Castle Black wasn't given much defensibility facing south, so it just goes to **** more or less.

Though it makes for a lot more fun thing to watch than potentially months upon months of siege warfare. 

It seems like the truly more traditional medieval battles like Rob Stark's campaigns were glossed over, possibly because they'd really not be as visually stunning as things like Blackwater, or The Wall...  Guys marching around in formations jabbing at one another with super long spears, always trying to just wheel around and outflank/maneuver the other 1000 guys while big groups are standing around in reserves and other groups are just launching hails of arrows and stuff.

[BillCable]

It seems like the truly more traditional medieval battles like Rob Stark's campaigns were glossed over, possibly because they'd really not be as visually stunning as things like Blackwater, or The Wall.

Chalk that up to budgets.  Season 1 and 2 were far more budget constrained than the show is now.  We never saw any traditional battles as they would have cost as much to film as an entire season.  Now that GoT is HBO's biggest hit series, they get enough money to splurge on big battles.

Even last year I read how the showrunners had to figure out how to cut the budgets on other episodes to be able to afford to film Blackwater.

[Nicklab]

Robb Stark's battles were actually glossed over by George RR Martin in the books, by and large.  He's always had a thing with POV characters, and he only wants to tell the story from their perspective.  Robb was never actually a POV character, and neither were any of his bannermen.  When Robb and his army took Jaime Lannister captive, Jaime wasn't even a POV character.  He didn't become a POV character until the third book.

The set piece battles have been somewhat limited, truth be told.  Both in the series AND the books.  Most of the major battles of the war between the Starks and the Lannisters have been mentioned by the POV characters and those surrounding them in passing.  The battle of the Blackwater, clearly, was one of the biggest battles that we saw first hand.  And now we've seen the first part of the battle for the Wall.  The Wildlings aren't done yet, as we saw in the coming attractions.  I have to wonder what else Mance Rayder has up his sleeve.

The news that GoT is now the most popular series in HBO's history is astounding.  When it premiered I didn't know what to make of it.  Especially since the word "fantasy" was attached to the series.  And that seemed to fly in the face of The Sopranos and the tone that show had set for HBO's original series.  But seeing how GoT is driven just as much by personal relationships, power struggles and intrigue like we had seen in The Sopranos, it's proven to be very strong from a story standpoint.  I hope that means that HBO is prepared to invest more in the production of the series.  Because it's going to be EXPENSIVE to really bring the dragons into the series.