Game of Thrones: “Uprooting the Rose”

Whenever Game of Thrones stages a sequence the production is particularly proud of, it does an extra behind-the-scenes breakdown with the folks who made it happen. From discussing the costumes and props at Joffrey and Margaery’s wedding in Season 4, to diving deep into the VFX that went into the creation of such violent battles as the Massacre at Hardhome and the attack on Daznak’s Pit, these “Anatomy of a Scene” videos are often times as fascinating to watch as the episode itself.

And usually when you have a major scene like King’s Landing in the finale, it is exactly the stuff that “Anatomy of a Scenes,” are made of. But this week’s climactic wildfire explosion wasn’t just a stand alone exercise in how can we stretch what is normally done on a television budget to something beyond what we’ve seen on screen before. It was a take down of an entire phalanx of characters, including the entire Tyrell house. (Olenna may have survived, but she is technically considered House Redwyne, since her Tyrell husband has been dead these many years.) Instead, it gets it’s own completely separate featurette, entitled “Uprooting the Rose.”

Everyone is rounded up for this piece, including producers Benioff and Weiss and their choice to go back to the wildfire which was first introduced in Season 2, and director Miguel Sapochnik, who staged the nearly 30 minute scene. Many of the actors who were part of it also talk about their reaction to this scene, from Lena Headey, who plays Cersei, to Eugene Simon, whose character Lancel gets led down to the catacombs and tries to stop the blast, and of course, Jonathan Pryce, the High Sparrow and Natalie Dormer, who has my favorite line that it’s the first time we’ve had a major scene in the Sept and no one is getting married.

Note that when the visual effects artists talk about blowing up the Sept, they don’t just consider it from the 30 minute scene either–we get shots of how the smoking aftermath was also generated for Jaime’s return. We also roll into the final scene in King’s Landing and Cersei taking the throne.

And it was also interesting to me that Bryan Cogman ses Tommen’s suicide as not actually part of Cersei’s plan. Personally, when I watched it, I saw Tommen being locked in his room watching this unfold as Cersei both punishing him for siding with those people against her, as well as a display of her power to him. Not that I think she wanted him to commit suicide, but there was an angle here where she had to know she was hurting him, and that’s why when he kills himself, she doesn’t mourning. She just keeps moving.

Sadly, the clip that goes with it is not the full 20 odd minutes, it’s just the final three in the Sept, from Margaery realizing that they all need to leave, now, to the Sept exploding while Cersei takes a sip of wine.

And for those, like me, who can’t get enough of that track that played under it, entitled “The Light of the Seven,” it is available on Spotify, as of yesterday.

Via http://winteriscoming.net/2016/06/28/game-of-thrones-uprooting-the-rose/