Game of Thrones director reveals how brutal character deaths were mapped out

GAME of Thrones was famed for the myriad of ways it killed of some of its most beloved characters. It seemed as though nobody was safe in Westeros, with protagonists dropping left, right and centre as warring Houses made bloody bids for the Iron Throne. Two of the most epic battles from the series: Blackwater […]

GAME of Thrones was famed for the myriad of ways it killed of some of its most beloved characters.

It seemed as though nobody was safe in Westeros, with protagonists dropping left, right and centre as warring Houses made bloody bids for the Iron Throne.

HBO

Two of the most epic battles from the series: Blackwater and The Watchers on the Wall, were directed by acclaimed horror veteran Neil Marshall, who opened up about how he set the stage for slaughter.

Revealing that his initial brainstorming sessions were all about spontaneity, he said: “I think once I read the scripts it was like: ‘Okay I’d love to try this, I’d love to try that.’

“I remember thinking, I want to have the woolly mammoths step on somebody,” he continued.

“I wanted to shoot somebody with a giant bow… things like that.”

HBO

These grisly moments panned out during a siege on The Wall – the colossal ice blockade shutting the undead out.

Marshall recounted how the team would use the likes of crash dummies and prosthetics to get a sense of how gore would translate on screen, referring specifically to the naval siege on King’s Landing.

“On Blackwater I was like… I wanted to drop a rock on somebody’s head,” he continued to Express Online.

“What would that look like? We ended up building it for real – we built a dummy head and dropped a real rock on it, and we were like okay, that’s what that looks like!”

Marshall said that bringing a military mindset to the sequences was key, given Westeros’ long and bloody history with conquest.

“How do they fight them off? How do they deal with giants trying to get through the doors, and smashing doors?” he asked.

Marshall previously admitted to The Sun that he felt the final season of Game of Thrones was rushed, claiming that “things weren’t set up properly”.