YOUR 164�PAGE GUIDE TO THE VERY BEST IN EPIC FANTASY!
THE
ULTIMATE CELEBRATION THE SCIENCE OF FANTASY BY RADIO 4’S
25
HELEN KEEN
T ES T E A G R S ! A GO N D R
MASSIVE SEASON 4 PREVIEW!
Everything you need to know
C A S T E XC L US I V E !
WS IN T E R V I E 10 IN
P L US!
STEPHEN KING
LORD OF THE RINGS
WRITING SANDMAN
ALSO INS INSIDE IDE!! ELFQUEST • JOE ABERCROMBIE • CONAN • NARNIA • LOADS MORE!
FUTURE PUBLISHING LTD
30 Monmouth Street, Bath, BA1 2BW Email:
[email protected] Web: www.sfx.co.uk Twitter: @SFXmagazine EDITORIAL
Editor: Dave Golder
[email protected] Art Editor: Nicky Gotobed
[email protected] Additional design: Kate McDonnell, Andy McGregor,
Katherine Kirkpatrick Production Editor: Andrea Ball SFX Editor-In-Chief: Dave Bradley
[email protected] SFX Art Editor: Jonathan Coates
[email protected] COVER IMAGE
© Gavin Bond/August PHOTOGRAPHY
Philip Sowels EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTORS
Tara Bennett, James Clarke, Bill Edwards, Jordan Farley, Stephen Jewell, Helen Keen, Stephen Kelly, Joseph McCabe, Jayne Nelson, Rob Power, Bridie Roman, Will Salmon SFX would like to thank: Andrea Ball and Nicky Gotobed (who are already credited elsewhere but really went above and beyond for this special) ADVERTISING
Advertising Manager: Adrian Hill 01225 442244,
[email protected] Sales Director: Nick Weatherall,
[email protected] Digital Ad Manager: Andrew Church,
[email protected] MARKETING AND SUBSCRIPTIONS
Group Marketing Manager: Sam Wight
020 7042 4061,
[email protected] Senior Marketing Executive:
Tilly Michell
[email protected] Marketing Executive: Antonella Matia
[email protected] Direct Marketing: Adam Jones,
[email protected] CIRCULATION AND LICENSING
Trade Marketing Manager: Jonathan Beeson,
[email protected] International Export Account Manager:
Michael Peacock +44(0)1225 732316,
[email protected] Trade Marketing Director: Rachael Cock +44(0)1225 822830,
[email protected] International Licensing Director: Tim Hudson +44(0)1225 442244,
[email protected] PRINT AND PRODUCTION
Production Co-ordinator: Keely Miller
[email protected] Paper Controller: Lorraine Rees
[email protected] THE SENIOR PARTNERS
Creative Director: Bob Abbott Editorial Director: Jim Douglas Deputy MD, Film & Games: Clair Porteous SUBSCRIPTIONS
Phone our UK hotline on: 0870 837 4722 Subscribe online at:
www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/film/sfx-specialeditions-magazine-subscription/
ENJOY EPIC FANTASY? Then you’re going to love this SFX Special Edition . To kick off we have over 70 pages of Game Of Thrones articles, including 10 all-new exclusive cast interviews. We’re also very excited to have Radio 4’s Helen Keen ( It Is Rocket Scie nce ) te llin g us all about the science of Westeros, plus an in-depth look at Peter Jackson’s Lord O f The Rings trilogy which we predict will inspire a few marathon rewatches of the films. So what are you waiting for? Begin your ques t thro ugh this maga zine now!
4
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY GUIDE
Magazine printed in the UK by
William Gibbons on behalf of Future Distributed in the UK by Seymour Distribution Ltd, 2 East Poultry Avenue, London EC1A 9PT Tel: 020 7429 4000 Overseas distribution by Future Publishing Ltd, Bath
Tel: +44 (0)1225 442244
Future Publishing Ltd is part of Future plc. Future produces carefully targeted special-interest magazines, websites and events for people who share a passion. We publish more than 170 magazines and websites and 100 international editions of our titles are published across the world. Future plc is a public company quoted on the London Stock Exchange (symbol: FUTR). www.futureplc.com
Non-executiveChairman: Peter Allen Chief Financial Officer: Graham Harding Big Daddy: Mark Wood Tel: +44(0)1225 442244
©FuturePublishingLimited2013.Allrightsreserved.Nopartof thismagazin emaybeusedorreproduced withoutthewrittenpermis sionofthepublisher.FuturePublishingLimited(companynumber2008885)is registere dinEnglandandWales.Theregiste redofficeofFuturePublishingLimitedisatBeaufordCourt,30 MonmouthStreet,Bath,BA12BW.Allinformationcontainedinthismagazineisforinformationonlyandis,as farasweareaware,correctatthetimeofgoingtopress.Futurecannotacceptanyresponsibilityforerrorsor inaccuraciesinsuchinformation.Readersareadvis edtocontactmanufacturersandretailersdirectlywith regardtothepriceofproducts/servicesreferredtointhismagazine.Ifyousubmitunsolic itedmaterialtous, youautomaticallygrantFuturealicencetopublishyoursubmissioninwholeorinpartinalleditionsofthe magazine,includinglicensededitionsworldwideandinanyphysicalordigitalformatthroughouttheworld. Anymaterialyousubmitissentatyourriskand,althougheverycareistaken,neitherFuturenorits employees,agentsorsubcontractorsshallbeliableforlossordamage.
www.sfx.co.uk Wearecommittedtoonlyusingmagazinepaperwhichis deriv edfrom wellmanaged,certified forestryand chlorine-freemanufacture.Future Publishingand itspaper suppliershave beenindependentlycertified in accordancewiththe rulesof theFSC (ForestStewardshipCouncil).
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
CONTENTS
12 Science Of Westeros: 1
102
Dragons
24 Science Of Westeros: 2 Wildfire
INTERVIEWS 14 Nicolaj Coster-Waldau JAMIE LANNISTER
18
32 Science Of Westeros: 3 Bloodlines
Maisie Williams
42 Science Of Westeros: 4
ARYA STARK
22
Resurrection
152
110
44 The Numbers Game
Gwendoline Christie BRIENNE OF TARTH
Figuring out Thrones
86 The Lord Of The Rings In-Depth: The Fellowship Of The Ring A fact-packed, minute-by-minute look back at the first of Peter Jackson’s trilogy.
134 Interview: Joe Abercrombie On his upcoming young adult novel Half A King.
140 Creating The Sandman We join Neil Gaiman in a look back at the comic’s origins.
94 The Lord Of The Rings In-Depth: The Two Towers 144 Stephen King’s Honestly, once you’ve read these The Dark Tower articles you won’t watch the movies in the same way again.
We examine the Master of Horror’s epic fantasy series.
102 The Lord Of The Rings 148 Elfquest In-Depth: The Return Of The fantasy comic that’s been going since the ’70s, and always The King written and drawn by the same The one you thought would never end. How many fades to black did it feel like it had?
husband-and-wife team.
110 Top 25 Dragons
Which fantasy land would be the best holiday destination, or even a place to emigrate to?
From the one skewered by St George to the one that tried to spit-roast some dwarves.
152 Fantasy Lands 158 Legend
120 Conan Comics
Ridley Scott’s elegant fantasy from the ’80s.
Two extracts from Dark Horse’s lavishly illustrated comics featuring the most famous fictional barbarian of them all.
162 The Quest Quiz
www.sfx.co.uk
Will you be a hero?
48 The Culture Show GOT
in popular culture
54 Every Episode Rated As voted for by you!
26 Rory McCann “THE HOUND”
28 Liam Cunningham SER DAVOS
64 Merchandise GOT goodies
a-coming
70 Pop-Up Westeros
30 Carice Van Houten MELISANDRE
34
A 3D map! For real!
72 Book Fan Vs TV Fan
Isaac Hempstead-Wright BRAN STARK
The differing experience
76 The Videogame
36 Sibel Kekilli
Was it really all that bad?
82 Book Extract: Dangerous Women Taken from a new short story by George RR Martin
SHAE
38 Thomas Brodie-Sangster JOJEN REED
40 Aidan Gillen LITTLEFINGER
2 5 T HINGS Y OU NEED T O K NOW ABOUT S EAS ON 4
THINGS YO YOU
TO KNOW
AB ABOUT
WIINTER IS COMING, SO KEEP OUT THE COLD WITH A W CLOAK MADE OF PURE THRONES KNOWLEDGE… KNOWLEDGE…
GAME OF THRONES 25 THINGS ABOUT SEASON 4
IT’S BASICALLY A STO STORM OF SWORDS: part two
“He likes you to tickle his chin just here.”
WHETHER YOU’VE been reading the corresponding books, haven’t read GRRM’s novels yet or simply can’t read, it’s worth knowing that season four is going to be largely based on Swords. the second half of A of A Storm Of Swords. It’s the third book in the A the A Song Of Ice And Fire series of the five published, and the show is rapidly catching up with existing plot… which could prove tricky for future seasons. Expect the seeds for plot divergence to be sown this season – unless George hurries up, which he probably won’t because…
GEORGE IS WRIT WRITIN ING G EPISODE TWO …HE’S BUSY writing scripts for the show (among many other projects). This season he’s penning episode two, which probably means something big is stirring early doors. Why? Well, the episodes that Martin has previously written include “The Pointy End” in season one (where Ned was captured by the Lannisters), and “Blackwater” in season two (you know, the one with the huge battle). We’re willing to bet that his season four episode will be one you don’t want to miss. Not that you would anyway. anyway. You’re You’re no fool.
RECORD BREAKERS ARE ARE GO BEARING IN mind that season three’s opening episode, “Valar Dohaeris”, achieved record ratings when it aired, season four ’s opener will probably follow suit. Well, if you are only going to give people 10 episodes a year, what do you expect? Still, sky-high ratings are important, mainly because they traditionally lead to swift confirmation of another season and another year’s worth of Westerosi wonderment. Which is good news, obviously. On the downside, “Valar “Valar Dohaeris” was also lusted after by the swashbuckling pirates of the internet, becoming one of the biggest illegally downloaded episodes of the year. Boo to you, online thieves.
“First rule, stick them with the pointy end!”
This isn’t going to end well, is it?
THERE WILL WILL BE BLOOD… GAME OF Thrones really Thrones really wouldn’t be the same without the faithful rendering of George RR Martin’s murderous inclinations spilling out all over the place. Season four is sure to be another claret-smothered affair, affair, with ever more spectacular battles, murders and and tortures on the way. way. There’s a reason that the source novel was called A called A Storm Of Swords rather Swords rather than A Pillows , and it’s than A Pile Of Pillows, because things get extremely extremely real all over Westeros Westeros and beyond. Robb might be dead, but Joffrey hasn’t won the war yet. Mayhem is inbound, and soon.
www.sfx.co.uk
ULTIMATE ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
7
AND AND MORE MORE GROWING DRAGONS
Fr om lit littltlee eggs, h u ug g e e dr agons g gro row w.
AH YES. The dragons. dragons. Dany’s little chaps are getting getting bigger and bigger, bigger, to the point where we’re not entirely sure they’d make the cutesy house pets we were so certain we wanted to adopt all the way back when they made their first appearance. The dragons have blossomed into beasts, fiercer and harder to control than ever before. Special effects crews on set reported shooting 15-foot jets of flame into the air to replicate the dragon’s lung-busting power, power, using up 22 canisters and 400 litres of gas for a single dragon effects shot.
AND AND MORE MORE DRAMATIC WED WEDDINGS INGS CAN YOU cope with more nuptials after last season’s literally gutting Red Wedding? We’re guessing not, and rightly so. George RR Martin isn’t the sort of chap to allow love and happiness and food and booze to get in the way of his story, and this season will be no different. Joffrey and Margaery are the happy couple this time and, well, they aren’t going for a quirky, budget BuzzFeed wedding, wedding, that’s for sure. The scenes of their special day included 23 named roles, with 218 extras drafted in and enough catering to feed a small army. Mazel tov!
NEW NAMES AND AND LOTS OF NEW FACES IF YOU’RE already struggling to remember all the names, faces and plotlines, we’ve got bad news for you friend: there are more coming. coming. There’s been a flood of casting announcements, including Roger Ashton-Griffiths as father of Margaery, Margaery, Mace Tyrell, Joseph Gatt and Jane McGrath as Wildlings, Rupert Vansittart as Bronze Yohn Royce, Indira Varma Varma as Ellaria Sand, Sand, Joel Fry as Meereenese Meereenese lord and prominent part of Dany’s story Hizdahr zo Loraq, Paola Dionisotti as Lady Waynwood Waynwood of the Vale Vale and Yuri Kolokolnikov Kolokolnikov as Styr, Styr, the Wildling Magnar of Thenn. Got all that? Good, because we’re not done yet...
MARK GA GATISS WA W ANTS YOUR OUR MONEY
Margaery gets to grips with Joffrey’s weapon.
8
SFX
ULTIMATE ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
HOORAY! HOORAY! MARK Gatiss is appearing in Game Of Thrones! Thrones! Rejoice! Really, this would be excellent news whoever he was playing, but when you add in who he’s been cast as... well, we can already anticipate how much he’s going to enjoy getting his teeth into this delicious role. Gatiss has been cast as Tycho Nestoris, a representative of one of the most powerful institutions in the whole world of Game Of Thrones, Thrones, the Iron Bank of Braavos. He’s He’s come to Westeros to collect debts on behalf of the bank, and could well turn out to be one of the key players in the scrabble for the Iron Throne.
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscr www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions iptions
GAME OF THRONES 25 THINGS ABOUT SEASON 4
SING WHEN YOU’RE WINNING
Y ep , t hat ’s C oldplay dr umme r W ill C hampion.
CARRYING ON the now traditional Game Of Thrones musical cameo – thus far we’ve had members of Coldplay, Snow Patrol and The Hold Steady get involved with the show – season four will see bewitching Icelandic warblers Sigur Ros get in on the act. Details are thin on the ground, but we’ve got our fingers crossed for a musical contribution, because, frankly, they’re ace, and it’s been confirmed that three of them shot cameos in Croatia. Modern spins on Westerosi music work for us every single time – The Hold Steady’s version of “The Bear And The Maiden Fair” still makes us want to quaff ale and fight.
IT’S GOING TO GET WEIRDER
Events take an even weirder turn for Bran.
OKAY, SO we’ve already seen a fair bit of out-there magic (Melisandre’s smoke-baby anyone?), but Bran’s journey north is about to introduce ideas and characters that have been quietly building since the first ever episode. Remember that three-eyed raven? We won’t say anything other than this: not just a freaky bird. Expect to explore the bizarre roots of the religion of the North, including those huge trees with faces in them that the Starks are so fond of – at least, that’s according to Isaac Hempstead-Wright, Bran Stark himself: “Bran is sort of exploring a mystical element to his storyline and trees are quite heavily involved in that.”
TYRION LANNISTER ON TRIAL DID YOU spot Tyrion in chains in the preview trailer? Just what the very heck is going on there, eh? In the name of good spoiler practice, we won’t reveal too much, suffice to say that the Imp is in the hottest water he’s ever been in, and it’s about something much more than sneaking the odd lady of the night i nto the Red Keep.
THE ANGRY TARGARYEN STRIKES BACK WE SAW her massing her impressive army in the last season, and now Daenerys is set to truly make a name for herself across Essos. Expect Dany to put her military might – and her now-massive dragons – to good use, visit new cities and generally act like the kick-ass we all know she is. Throw in a little bit of lovin’, coming this way courtesy of sellsword captain Daario Naharis, and all told Dany has got a pretty busy 10 episodes ahead.
www.sfx.co.uk
THE RED VIPER COMETH YOU MIGHT have caught the odd allusion to a place called Dorne, and this season we’ll see exactly why the as-yet-unseen kingdom is so important to anyone who covets the Iron Throne. Brilliantly, we’ll get to meet Oberyn Martell, also known as the Red Viper and something of a cult character among readers of the novels. Pedro Pascal has been cast as the suave and fiery bisexual prince who wields a deadly spear, and he sounds thoroughly kick-ass. Pascal has said that the Red Viper, “Doesn’t care what people think, he doesn’t give a f **k. He gets around, he’s a lover and a fighter.”
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
9
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION WE CAN’T wait to head back to all the old familiar locales, from King’s Landing itself to the Wall, but we’d bet our bottom dollar that there’s going to be at least a couple of new and returning locations. Casting suggests that we’ll be heading back to the Vale – that’s where Bronze Yohn Royce plies his trade, for example – and word on the Game Of Thrones grapevine is that we’ll be getting at least one entirely new city, if not more. We’d guess at Mereen and Braavos in Essos, and perhaps Dorne in Westeros.
WHAT IS DEAD MAY NEVER DIE THE SUPERNATURAL quotient is sure to rise all round, not just for Bran. The Brotherhood Without Banners and their many-times-dead leader Beric Dondarrion will find themselves a few new recruits, among them a very much alive dead person. That’s all we’re saying on that one.
IT’S A FAMILY AFFAIR
’
AS WE saw in the preview trailer, those lovely Lannister lot are all back together again, albeit not quite in one piece. Things are about to get even worse for the most dysfunctional family in Westeros, with life on the road (and the loss of his hand) changing Jaime, and Cersei becoming ever more distant from the king. Ah yes, Joffrey, the man fandom loves to hate, who has clung on to the Iron Throne through it all. Will season four finally see him get his comeuppance? We sincerely hope so…
OUT WITH THE OLD AS WELL as completely new characters making their debut this season, some familiar faces have been replaced – just in case you weren’t confused enough. The most prominent piece of re-casting is probably Daario Naharis, Dany’s sellsword bit of stuff who was played by Ed Skein in the last season. He’s been replaced by Michael Huisman (lucky boy). Another change is the Mountain or Gregor Clegane as his mother knew him, the Hound’s bigger, nastier brother. It’s the third time that character has been re-cast, and this time round he’ll be played by the suitably huge Thor Bjornsson. Finally, Joffrey’s little brother Tommen Baratheon, previously played by Callum Wharry, looks to have been replaced by Dean-Charles Chapman (who has actually previously appeared on the show as Martyn Lannister, one of the boys murdered by Lord Karstark. Remember that?).
10
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
STARK GIRLS GONE
Kings don t getmuch crueller than this.
EPIC IS THE WORD
THOSE POOR Stark girls: first Ned loses his head, then Robb and Catelyn follow. The sisters have both got significant arcs ahead of them this season, and they couldn’t be further apart. Sansa remains a prisoner of the Lannisters at King’s Landing, while Arya is out in the wild with the Hound. Life isn’t about to get any simpler for the Stark girls, but we’re excited to see what season four holds in store for them. We reckon they’ll both have their travelling cloaks on before long.
SEASON FOUR has been put together over a mammoth 136-day shoot, with more than 600 pages of script produced for the 10 episodes. Two principal film units named “Wolf” and “Dragon” have been traipsing round the globe, shooting in Iceland, Croatia and Northern Ireland, and some new faces have joined the team: The World’s End and Shaun Of The Dead make-up designer Jane Walker and Moulin Rouge production designer Deb Riley.
It’s time for Sansa to show some Stark steel.
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
GAME OF THRONES 25 THINGS ABOUT SEASON 4
SNOW JOKE KIT LIFE AT the wall is tough at the best of times, but Jon Snow is going to have his hands full dealing with the fallout from season three. After the debacle at Craster’s Keep the Night’s Watch is in need of a new Commander, Mance Rayder’s Wildlings are on the move towards Castle Black, Sam and Maester Aemon are awaiting replies from lords across Westeros after sending word that the White Walkers have returned, and Jon’s got some serious explaining to do to his brothers after spending most of last season running around with Wildlings. Good luck, Jon…
WESTEROS FIGHT CLUB Surly Stannis ponders his next move.
WHAT NEXT FOR STANNIS? DEFEATED AT the Blackwater, in thrall to Melisandre and, frankly, a little underused in season three, Stannis has still got a war to fight. So exactly how is the bolshy Baratheon going to play out this season? Quietly, brooding in his castle, or waving his sword about like a maniac and going for Joffrey’s head? Whichever way he goes, he’s a threat that Joffrey would be a fool to underestimate.
THE NORTH REMEMBERS ALAS, THOSE hardy Northerners look like they’re going to be in for a rough ride this season. After all, bastards don’t come much bigger than Roose Bolton and his giggling, torturing maniac of a son, and now that Robb’s out of the way there’s sure to be some pretty serious repercussions for the Stark bannermen left behind. Let’s not forget that Theon is still having bits of him sliced off for fun, which is sure to anger those ever-friendly Greyjoys. The north is in turmoil and there’s no telling how it’s going to turn out. www.sfx.co.uk
YOU MIGHT think that battles couldn’t possibly get much bigger than Tyrion raining green fire down on the Blackwater, but think again: this season we’ll be seeing the biggest scrap yet, with the climax of A Storm Of Swords finally making its way onto our screens. In terms of epic fantasy land battles, we’re fairly sure that this one will blow our tiny minds all over again. We don’t want to say too much, because spoilers burn, but take it from us: Jon Snow is going to have his hands pretty full by the time this season plays out.
CONSIDER THE GAME OF THRONES ANTE UPPED AS WITH the Red Wedding last season, David Benioff and DB Weiss have been looking forward to getting their hands dirty with this season’s key events. David Benioff seems pretty psyched with season four: “I think it’s going to surpass season three; there’s so many scenes we’ve been waiting for so long to do. And it just gets more an d more fun to write for these characters. After three years of doing it, we’re so much more comfortable making everything uncomfortable for them. We’re very excited about it. Season five gives me nightmares, but not season four.”
BRACE YOURSELF, WINTER IS
COMING
THINGS MIGHT have gotten a little bleak last season, but you haven’t seen the half of it. Trust us: things are about to get bloodier and even more berserk for the inhabitants of Westeros – and we can’t wait. See you on 6 April… ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
11
NO
Could creating a fire-breathing creature be a matter of genetically splicing an electric eel with a cow, wonders Helen Keen?
A
h – who doesn’t love a dragon? But could huge fire-breathing lizards with an affinity for platinum blondes soar through the skies of Essex as well as Essos? And have they ever? On the face of it this is an easy one – nope. Dragons are magic, and magic isn’t real (apart from Dynamo, he is definitely real an d magic). But evolution is even more creative than George RR Martin, and just as keen on sex and death… It seems that for every possible dragony trait there are real-world creatures that could happily perch on Daenerys’s unsinged shoulder. For instance we can totally do the big flying lizard stuff, we’re just about 68 million years too late. Fossilised skeletons have been found in North America of Quetzalcoatlus – a huge pterosaur with a 10-metre wingspan – thought to be the largest creature to ever take to the air.
FLAMMABLE FARTS Fire breathing is less easy. It’s not really something that occurs in na ture, but we do have a much smaller equivalent, except that it works... in reverse. The bombardier beetle sprays a mix of hot, noxious chemicals from its abdomen when it’s feeling threatened. It
stores two compounds (hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone) in its body, mixing them together with water and catalytic enzymes in a separate internal chamber to create an unholy hot, gassy, explosive spray. But if tiny creatures farting bleach don’t quite capture the grandeur of ancient Valyria, what are our other options? One might be the, er, power of actual farts. As some readers will know, many animals produce an abundance of flammable flatus. At the risk of over-egging the potential of colonic gas, if you couple it with a spark, perhaps via a pulse of electricity (hat tip, the electric eel) you’re definitely getting warmer in your hunt for dragon breath. Human wind, for example, contains methane, hydrogen sulphide and hydrogen, and can be relied upon to explode enthusiastically with the addition of two friends, three bottles of Merrydown cider and a cigarette lighter. But even with some sophisticated biological rerouting so that it’s coming out of the right end, it’s clear that humans, like most other animals with just the one stomach, can’t manufacture gas in the quantities necessary to burn down the towers of Harrenhal.
This is an area in which the ruminants, with their multiple stomachs full of methanecreating bacteria, have definite advantages. A cow can produce between 250-500 litres of highly flammable methane a day and, as it happens, most of this is belched out. Earlier this year it was reported that a build-up of methane from a particularly afflicted dairy herd, coupled with an accidental spark of static electricity, “nearly blew the roof off their barn” in Rasdorf, Germany – though doubt has subsequently been cast on the ability of even the windiest cow herd to achieve this through gas alone.
HOLY COW! So we’re not exactly talking Balerion the Black Dread here, but it may be that one day, who knows? After a lot of genetic tinkering, an Aegon the Conqueror in our world will be able to ride valiantly into battle against his foes on the back of a fire-breathing heifer. The four-part second series of Helen Keen’s excellent comedy series, It Is Rocket Science , starts airing on Radio 4 on Wednesday 2 April at 11pm
) 3 X ( K C O T S I ©
12
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
GAME OF THRONES
THE SCIENCE OF DRAGONS
Drogon’s the fiercest of Dany’s three dragons.
Careful with the claws!
He looks cute now, but…
Aw, baby’s first proper flame.
www.sfx.co.uk
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
13
BEYOND THE THRONE BORN: 1970 FROM: Rudkøbing, Denmark GREATEST HITS: Black Hawk
Down , Kingdom Of Heaven , Oblivion RANDOM FACT: Coster-Waldeau’s father-in-law, Josef Motzfeldt, is leader of the Inuit Community party in Greenland.
GAME OF THRONES
NIKOLAJ COSTER�WALDAU
JAIME LANNISTER
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau He’s lost a hand but gained a friend, of sorts, in Brienne; so what does season four have in store for the Kingslayer? All
interviews by Stephen Jewell
aime Lannister might have bedded his sister and attempted to kill poor Bran Stark but Nikolaj CosterWaldau’s urbane charm and rugged good looks mean fans can’t get enough of the so-called Kingslayer. Having appeared alongside Tom Cruise in last year’s Oblivion and with the big-budget Gods Of Egypt currently on his plate, the 43-yearold has proved to be one of Game Of Thrones’s breakout stars. Now after Jaime’s arduous journey across the Riverlands, which culminated in him having his hand chopped off while rescuing his erstwhile captor Brienne of Tarth, season four will see him back in the relative safety of King’s Landing.
J
How have you coped with acting one-handed this season “It’s been great! As an actor, you have this character who is so defined by his skills as a swordsman and then you take that one thing away from him. It’s a large obstacle and it’s difficult for him to deal with as a person. As an actor, you like those kinds of things. Physically, it was a bit of a nightmare because to begin with I had to have my arm down my left leg and a stump as well, but it worked out fine.” “Shh. Don’t mention you’re my sister.”
YOU HAVE THIS CHARACTER WHO IS SO DEFINED BY HIS SKILLS AS A SWORDSMAN � THEN YOU TAKE THAT AWAY FROM HIM www.sfx.co.uk
Did Jaime meet his match when he was forced to form an uneasy alliance with Brienne? “He’d never met anyone like her before, and had never been forced to spend that much time with a woman. Clearly, after losing his hand, and after what happens in the scenes just after that, he realises that he’s met someone in Brienne who he can actually trust, and that’s something that he’s only ever had once before with maybe one other person, which was Tyrion. Then, of course, she reminds him of himself and that leads to the scene in the bathtub where he goes back and tells the story about what happened with the mad king for the first time (and how he earned the nickname Kingslayer). The trick with something like that is always to know where you are headed with a character. For even though he goes through a huge change, you still want to put out the seeds of it early on, so that it doesn’t seem like a whole different person – it still has to be the same guy. But that’s the writing, which is brilliant.” After filming in Northern Ireland during the third season, you’ve moved on to Croatia because Jaime is now back in King’s Landing. Have you enjoyed the change of scenery? “I’ve liked all the locations that I’ve been to so f ar. I really enjoyed Northern Ireland because it’s an amazing place. It’s so different as you can go 10 miles one way and find something quite unique and then go 10 miles the other way and it’s completely different again. Of course, there was a lot of rain and it was very wet and cold, so getting to go to Dubrovnik and spending a lot of time there was brilliant. We had a scene at one point under these massive city walls and we were filming in these old dungeons. You really have to pinch yourself. I was thinking, ‘This is amazing, not only that they built this place but also that we are allowed to shoot in it’.” Does that add to your performance? “Everything does that. That’s what’s so much fun about doing a show like Game Of Thrones. It’s a 100 per cent experience because it’s not just the settings, it’s the costumes, the makeup… everything. The attention to detail is quite something.” As it’s based on the second half of A Storm Of Swords, we presume season four is much more fast-paced with considerably more pay-offs… “The structure of this season is somewhat different from previous seasons. Whereas before we’ve had all these
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
15
Jaime was either dodging a sword… Grovelling in the mud. Again.
…or waving one. But no more.
storylines and then one of them will have come to a peak – a climax – there’s now much more of these happening throughout the season.” After last year’s Red Wedding, season four will see the Purple Wedding between King Joffrey and Margaery Tyrell, which we trust will be a much more stately and hopefully less bloody affair! “There is another wedding but I can’t really say anything about it. Will it be as bloody? Now, that would be terrible!” Has the success of Game Of Thrones impacted significantly on your life? “If it has changed, it’s basically because people watch the show so there’s an awareness of you as an actor, which is good. On a personal level, my life is still the same and will hopefully continue to be the same.” Have you had any strange encounters with fans? “Not really; just a lot of happiness! But having said that, you do sometimes have these weird experiences. I was in the shower at the gym once and this guy that I didn’t know, who was also naked, comes up to me and says, ‘You’re Jaimie Lannister! What are you doing here?’ I was like ‘I’ve just been working out and now I’m having a shower.’ But he just kept talking, so we had a talk.”
16
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
BEYOND THE THRONE BORN: 1997 FROM: Somerset GREATEST HITS: The Secret Of
Crickley Hall RANDOM FACT: Williams is right-handed, but plays Arya as left-handed.
GAME OF THRONES
MAISIE WILLIAMS
ARYA STARK
Maisie Williams Teamed with former arch-foe the Hound, Arya is still coming to terms with being one of only four remaining Stark siblings…
A
s gutsy teen runaway Arya Stark, Maisie Williams has won over Game Of Thrones fans everywhere. Raised in Somerset, the 16-year-old – she turns 17 just after season four debuts on our screens – studied performance art at Bath Dance College. Having formed an uneasy alliance with her captor Sandor “The Hound” Clegane, season f our opens with Arya still reeling from the devastating events of the Red Wedding.
Season three culminated with Arya stumbling upon the aftermath of the Red Wedding. How was that for you? “Actually filming the beginning of episode 10 where we see the direwolf’s head on Robb Stark’s body was really crazy, even though we didn’t have anything to react to as it was just like a tennis ball on a stick. But everything else around us was exactly as it should have been and it felt so real. There were these stunt guys who had been there all day and the ground was no longer solid, it was just slushy mud and there were fires everywhere. It was the middle of the night and we’d been doing this for the past week so everyone was Arya’s had to grow up without her dad.
exhausted and completely going at each other. And there was blood everywhere and horses getting spooked, so the tension was high. But that’s what the show is really great at doing, creating a realistic atmosphere that’s as close to what’s in the script as possible.” Arya has been hailed as a feminist icon. Are you pleased that fans have embraced her so enthusiastically? “I’m so thrilled that Arya has been so popular with people around the world. What I love about the character is that she doesn’t need the beautiful dresses, the tight-fitting clothes or the gorgeous make-up for people to like her. You know that it’s solidly about the character a nd that’s why people are such fans of her’s – an d that’s what I really love about her.” What have you learnt from her? “Arya is very up front about what she feels, which I f ind very admirable. A lot of the time we can be very nervous about upsetting people, when actually people are n ever really all that offended by what you say. It’s not that you’re being really rude, it’s that you’ve just got to get to the point sometimes. It’s like when you go to someone’s house and they ask you if you want a drink and you’re like ‘I don’t mind’. If you want a drink, just say so! With Arya, she will simply say what she is feeling and that ’s why she’s such a favourite – she’s always saying what she’s thinking.” Has Arya learnt much from the Hound then? “I feel like they’re learning from each other as they both have assets that the other one needs. If A rya feels like she’s stuck with him for the foreseeable future, she may as well learn something while she’s in that situation. He’s definitely doing something right because the whole of Westeros is petrified of him, so I feel like she’s picking up on just how brutal the Hound is.”
ARYA DOESN’T NEED BEAUTIFUL DRESSES, TIGHT�FITTING CLOTHES OR GORGEOUS MAKE� UP FOR PEOPLE TO LIKE HER
www.sfx.co.uk
Is there any chance of Arya reuniting with the remaining Starks any time soon? “There’s just the four of us left n ow! But I hope so, purely because I’d love to work with Sophie [Turner, who plays Sansa Stark] again on set. It’s been so long since we’ve been able to mess around together. But as far as the story is concerned, I don’t think it’s going to happen any time soon because they’re so far away and I don’t think Arya is even trying to achieve that. That ’s not her direction anymore as she has given up on trying to control her future and is just
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
19
Poor Podrick, we’d almostforgotten…
seeing whatever is going to happen in this world. I don’t think Arya thinks that she is going to see any of them ever again. But for the audience, it would be really great if they did.” So have you been keeping up to date with the other storylines? “I know what’s happening in the scripts and when you meet up with other cast members who are working on different units, you can talk about what you were filming that day. So you roughly know what’s going on but you live and breathe your own storyline and there’s so many other things going on that I can sit down and watch it as a fan as well. It’s great that everything is so separate because then you can have some surprises when you watch it. But at the same time, it would be great to be more involved and to get to watch all the other things that are going on. There’s been some fantastic stuff shot this year that I’d loved to have been there to see. And then there’s all the stuff with the dragons. I’d love to see how that was done but obviously you’re off doing your own thing. A lot o f the time it does feel like you’re on a completely different show to everybody else.” You got to do some filming in Iceland. How was that? “It was fantastic! We were there in the summer and we’d go out in the evening and at midnight we’d watch the sunset. Then we’d go for dinner and the sun would rise again at 2am as we were walking home. It was just the most amazing thing. I remember walking back from the centre of town and thinking, ‘This is so cool’. That’s something that I’d never have done if this show had not come about – I’ve been to places I never thought I’d go to. We get to experience all of that while we’re working and that’s really brilliant. It’s just a pleasure that we get to do what we love as a living.”
No fancy silk frocks for Arya.
An unlikely alliance.
20
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
Has being a part of Game Of Thrones changed your life? “This is going to sound like a sob story but it’s not at all. I was always quite weird at school. I wasn’t messing around but I was very bubbly and people were just a little bit scared of me because I was always a bit hyper all the time. I had a few friends but I was never like the popular one, the pretty girl. That was where I was at and then Game Of Thrones happened. “My mum was like, ‘Be careful that people aren’t like false friends,’ but actually it went completely the opposite way as everyone was like, ‘Now, you’re the weird girl who appears in a TV series!’ I still have some friends that I had back then but I’ve lost a few along the way – but that happens anyway as relationships change all the time. “I feel like I’ve grown up extremely quickly being on this show and I’m now working in an adult world aged 16. I can’t even book into a hotel until I’m 18 but I can fly all the way to Northern Ireland and I don’t have a chaperone on set anymore. So I’m in this weird limbo where half the world is like, ‘You’re a grown-up’ and the other half is, ‘You’re still a child’. But I’ve still got some fantastic friends and if anything, this show has hugely sped up that process of finding out who your real friends are, which sometimes takes a long time to realise.”
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
BEYOND THE THRONE BORN: She claims she
can’t remember… FROM: Sussex GREATEST HITS: The Imaginarium Of Dr Parnassus RANDOM FACT: Christie was a talented dancer as a child, learning ballet, tap and rhythmic gymnastics, but a back injury, aged 11, forced her to quit.
GAME OF THRONES
GWENDOLINE CHRISTIE
BRIENNE OF TARTH
Gwendoline Christie As Brienne of Tarth, Gwendoline Christie shows the men of Westeros that she can swing a sword with the best of them
K
nown for her striking looks a nd for being six-foot three-inches tall, Gwendoline Christie was an inspired choice to take on the role of fearsome warrior woman, Brienne of Tarth – in fact, she’d been proposed for the role on fan websites long before audition s took place. Currently juggling Game Of Thrones with playing extraterrestrial princess Lexi in Wizards Vs Aliens, the South Downs-born actress has become a firm fan favourite since joining the show in season two. Charged by the late Catelyn Stark – in the hope that it will secure the return of her daughters – with escorting Jaime Lannister back to King’s Landing, Brienne finds herself in dangerously unfamiliar territory as season four begins. Has the success of Game Of Thrones had a significant impact upon your career? “It’s been great to be in something that so many people watch and are so enthusiastic about. They have such a strong emotional response, which is such a rare thing and it’s a real privilege to be a part of something like that.”
Pooh sticks with swords?
As a woman who is literally battling in a male-dominated world, Brienne is forced to take on masculine qualities. Was that tough to play? “She’s a really exciting and interesting character and what we see, particularly in season three, is her evolution. Initially she’s this fighting machine, but we start to see the woman in her emerge during her journey with Jaime. As I like to see it, it’s a journey of discovery of what it’s like to not only be a woman in this world, but also a woman who is outside convention, and not having that dictated to you in the realm of Game Of Thrones. She’s not the sort of character tha t comes along very often and we will see more of that character’s development in season four as, yet again, she is put in situations that you wouldn’t expect, with people that you wouldn’t expect. So you can never quite predict the o utcome.” How do you cope with the physical demands of playing a character like Brienne? “I’m now someone who goes to the gym as I had to train for eight hours a day for months on end, doing sword-fighting, learning particular fights and being taught how to box by [stunt performer] CC Smiff. I’m not naturally gifted when it comes to those kinds of things. Unlike Nikolaj CosterWaldau – it literally took two hours over Skype for him to learn how to sword fight!” Game Of Thrones is renowned for its lavish sets and memorable locations. Does that help to enhance your performance? “The attention to detail is absolutely wonderful – and it’s not just sumptuous aesthetically, it really does feed your imagination as an actor. It means that you don’t have to pretend because it’s all there already. You’re immersed in mud, or in the countryside, and it’s all very real to you. When we’re in Croatia, it really is King ’s Landing.”
INITIALLY SHE’S THIS FIGHTING MACHINE, BUT WE START TO SEE THE WOMAN IN HER EMERGE DURING HER TIME WITH JAIME www.sfx.co.uk
Game Of Thrones is notorious for its frequent and unpredictable deaths. Does it make you nervous about how long your character will be around for? “Yes, but that’s all part of the fun of doin g a job like this because you don’t know when it’s going to end. So, series by series, you have to embrace it and literally play it in the moment. Whatever’s happening with your character, they don’t know when they’re going to die either, so it’s quite helpful in that sense. It’s certainly not very secure but at least it’s exciting!”
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
23
NO
The Game Of Thrones WMD isn’t quite as batty as what the Americans had planned in the real world, reveals Helen Keen
I
n the climactic Battle of the Blackwater, the mighty forces of Stannis Baratheon are ranged against the beleaguered capital, King’s Landing. Tyrion Lannister, occupying the unenviable position of Hand of the King (best not to think about where King Joffrey’s actual hands have been) sends a single ship to meet the invading fleet. That ship is laden with wildfire and, ignited by a single arrow from Bronn’s bow, it swiftly engulfs the closely packed enemy galleys in flames. “Wildfire” is a creatively unpleasant addition to Westeros wars as it burns all before it and spreads like, well, wildfire. The manufacture of the substance is a secret closely guarded by the Alchemists’ Guild. It is apparently known in less enlightened parts of the Kingdom as “pyromancer’s piss” (NB, if your wee is capable of burning men alive/setting ships ablaze it may seem cool now but you should probably seek medical attention, just in case.) Human beings being what they are, it’s no surprise to discover that, in our world, science has created a weapon that is more than a match for wildfire’s sinister eternal flames. In the 1940s a team led by organic chemist Louis Fieser and based at Harvard University found
that adding a thickening agent to fuel created something that burned longer and also tended to stick to surfaces. Napalm (named after two of the constituents of its thickening agent: naphthenic acid and palmitic acid) is a burning gel, usually based on petroleum, that sticks to roofs, furniture and skin. Being oil-based it will burn on, and not be easily extinguished by, water – just like wildfire. Napalm’s horrific role in the Vietnam war is notorious, and the UN finally outlawed its use against civilians in 1980.
BATS OUT OF HELL But during World War II there was a plan to deploy it that could’ve come straight out of the imagination of George RR Martin himself... The US military plotted to arm killer bats with napalm. Really. This plan was known as Project X-ray (as, presumably, Project Bat S**t didn’t quite strike the right note). Louis Fieser was asked to build tiny incendiary devices that the bats could carry into enemy territory, and came up with oblong, nitrocellulose cases filled with thickened kerosene with a small time-delay igniter cemented along one side. This – to say the least – curious scheme originated in the mind of a 60-something Pennsylvanian dentist,
Lytle S Adams. He wrote to US President Roosevelt vividly setting out how “the millions of bats that have for ages inhabited our belfries, tunnels and caverns were placed there by God to await this hour to play their part in the scheme of free human existence, and to frustrate any attempt of those who dare to desecrate our way of life...” FDR was quick to get on board with the idea of bats as divine defenders of the free world, emphasising to the military (no doubt unnecessarily…) “this guy is not a nut”. But in our world as in Westeros this highly potent fire isn’t too fussy about what it burns, and during a test “flight” the bomber bats accidentally set a US military base ablaze. However, the deployment of their fatal flames during World War II was prevented by the speedier development of an even deadlier weapon, the Atomic Bomb. Perhaps in comparison the wars and tactics in King’s Landing aren’t so terrifying after all… The four-part second series of Helen Keen’s excellent comedy series, It Is Rocket Science , starts airing on Radio 4 on Wednesday 2 April at 11pm
) 2 X ( K C O T S I ©
24
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
GAME OF THRONES
THE SCIENCE OF WILDFIRE
Blackwater becomes Greenwater. And it’s not because of the algae.
…and the fleet was no more.
Abandon ship…!
www.sfx.co.uk
…Aaaaagggh! Aaaaagghhh!…
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
25
BEYOND THE THRONE BORN: 1969 FROM: Glasgow, Scotland GREATEST HITS: Alexander , Hot Fuzz , Clash Of The Titans RANDOM FACT: Early in his career McCann appeared as a scantily-clad hunk in a vest and kilt in a commercial for Scott’s Porage Oats.
GAME OF THRONES
RORY M CCANN
SANDOR “THE HOUND” CLEGANE
Rory McCann The fire-fearing man mountain that is the Hound will see plenty more scraps as he continues his adventure with young Arya
F
ormerly the despicable King Joffrey’s personal bodyguard, scar-faced Sandor “The Hound” Clegane has been his own boss since fleeing King’s Landing during the Battle of the Blackwater – although his attempt to claim a reward for returning the errant Arya Stark to her family was foiled by the gruesome developments of the Red Wedding. Sandor and Arya make for a very unlikely team… “It’s been a bit of a Scooby-Doo/Scrappy-Doo road trip! The characters are still in a place of turmoil and have been torn apart by civil war. It’s a really dangerous place but I’m sure the Hound can help his fellow companion survive and show her how to dodge this sword-blow or kill that person.” Have Sandor’s feelings towards Arya changed over the course of their journey? “I feel like the Hound sees her as part of this whole package where she’s his meal ticket and that this is his chance to find another castle and to certainly find a better wedding to go to. Maybe he’ll end up with a bag of gold, maybe another job or
We’re weary just watching…
maybe he’ll be at peace. You never know, the Hound might find peace one day.” Were you shocked by the Red Wedding? “I hadn’t read the script so I didn’t know what happened. I didn’t dream that it was going to be as bad as that! I felt like crying and then after it went out, I saw some clips online of people watching the Red Wedding and they were all wailing. So I went from crying to laughing hysterically!” Your fight last season with Beric Dondarrion and his flaming sword was really spectacular. How do you top that? “I feel like that was nothing, which is crazy because I worked really hard on that. But I’m fighting all the way through this season as per usual and after what I’ve recently seen in the sound studio – because sometimes you have to go back in to make some grunting noises – I just thought, ‘Bloody hell! They’re going to be blown away!’ I was saying that last season about a big dark fight with a sword on fire but this is going to go even crazier!” Do you spend a lot of time rehearsing your fights? “Even though I was only filming for 20 days, it still ended up swallowing up several months of the year as there was so much training. It’s like a dance that you have to get right – I ended up feeling like I’d been through a few battles. But it was a joy to do as the stunt team are fantastic and it really was a laugh. It was a lot of work and I had to spend a lot of time in the gym to keep in peak condition – so I was actually really boring, just staying in my room and cooking plain chicken and boiled eggs. I didn’t go out once.” Does it take a lot of time to put on Sandor’s facial make-up? “It took about two hours, although they’ve got a new prosthetic, which is nicer and a bit cooler. But it still took a lot of faffing about to put it on and between takes the whole team would come in and pull it, so no wonder I’m such a grumpy character!
I’M SURE THE HOUND CAN HELP ARYA SURVIVE AND SHOW HER HOW TO DODGE THIS SWORD BLOW OR KILL THAT PERSON
www.sfx.co.uk
Will appearing in the series allow you to go up for more ambitious parts when you eventually move on from Game Of Thrones? “I just want to go up for better jobs and work with some decent directors. Maybe I’ll step away from the swashbuckling and cutting off of heads, but we’ll have to see what happens.”
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
27
BEYOND THE THRONE BORN: 1961 FROM: Dublin, Ireland GREATEST HITS: Clash Of The Titans , The Wind That Shakes The Barley RANDOM FACT: In the ’80s Cunningham spent three years at a safari park in Zimbabwe training electricians.
GAME OF THRONES
LIAM CUNNINGHAM
SER DAVOS SEAWORTH
Liam Cunningham Ser Davos knows his onions, but will his sense of honour be his salvation or his undoing?
W
hile popular characters often suffer unexpected demises, Liam Cunningham’s character Davos Seaworth made a welcome return from a watery grave in the last season of Game Of Thrones. Cunningham insists that the Onion Knight is not out of his depth, though, as he enters an enthralling battle of wills with aspiring monarch Stannis Baratheon and sinister witch Melisandre. How would you sum Davos up? “He’s kind of a simple guy, who started out very poor. He’s ended up in a nest of vipers and trying to remain honourable in the middle of all that is incredibly difficult. I tend to think of it in governmental terms, as art should hold a mirror up to society. So, in a sense, Game Of Thrones is like watching political parties operate. Anywhere there is power and the desire for power, there’s going to be Machiavellian types who do not necessarily consider the interests of the people they’re supposed to represent. So for an ordinary guy like Davos to end up in the middle of all that is very interesting. I tend to think of him almost as an audience member; he’s an
Talking business on the beach.
WE COULDN’T HAVE THE VIOLENCE OR THE SEX WITHOUT WELL�ROUNDED CHARACTERS � BOTH MALE AND FEMALE
www.sfx.co.uk
everyman who has to deal with people like Melisandre and her way of doing things. They both want the same thing but he doesn’t like her methods – he wants it done with honour and respectability.” Does Davos form an unholy alliance with Melisandre? “She seems to have become a bit more of a lynchpin this season. At the end of season three, Melisandre has a vision and says, ‘This is not the real war, the real war is coming.’ The war hasn’t finished fo r Davos, Melisandre and Stannis and what we will see is that these guys are definitely on a mission. It’s like the poster says, ‘The War is not Over’, and for us the war isn’t over until we get Stannis on the Iron Throne. So Davos and Melisandre both have the same motivation, and they’re both trying to do the same job, but they just have very different methods of getting Stannis there and that’s going to be explored more in season four.” Melisandre is definitely a tough customer! “She’s f**king dangerous! But all the women in this show are f**king dangerous! There are not many shows or Hollywood movies that show women as fully-formed characters that men live in fear of most of the time. Look at Cersei, Melisandre, Khaleesi and even little Arya. Arya is dangerous, man! But on this show, we couldn’t have the extremity of the violence or the sex unless it was justified by having well-rounded characters that are both male and female, which is another reason why people have taken the show to their hearts. Women aren’t being patronised in this, even when they get up to no good you think, ‘This is what they have to do’. You might not agree with their methods but you can see the thinking behind it. “It’s like when Catelyn Stark was killed. The loss of that character was huge but you can only experience that loss if the character has been drawn properly.” We also see the various storylines starting to overlap more in season four… “There is a bit of that and what brings them all together is very unpredictable. Who would have thought at the beginning of season three that at the end of i t, Stannis would be attempting to kill Davos and Melisandre would end up saving his life? That’s one of the reasons why people love the show: there’s that element of unpredictably. Anything can happen and anyone can go. Nobody is safe. Will I be killed off again? Who knows – but my bank manager is quite scared!”
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
29
BEYOND THE THRONE BORN: 1976 FROM: Leiderdorp, Holland GREATEST HITS: Black Book ,
Valkyrie , Repo Men RANDOM FACT: Van Houten is also a singer and made it to #1 in The Netherlands with Dutch rock band Kane, in 2010
GAME OF THRONES
CARICE VAN HOUTEN
MELISANDRE
Carice Van Houten “The real war is coming,” she proclaimed; expect the Wicked Witch of Westeros to be leading the charge…
F
rom her sensational debut in season two, Carice Van Houten’s mesmerising performance as Melisandre has sent shivers down spines. But just like Game Of Thrones’s other leading female protagonists, there is more to the mystical Priestess of R’hllor than meets the eye.
Was it a daunting prospect joining such a successful series as Game Of Thrones? “The first time I arrived on set, it was a bit overwhelming because it was already like a very well-oiled machine so I felt a little bit new to it. It’s such a big show. There are three cameras on all the time and you hardly know anyone because it takes so long before you get to know everybody’s name. But as I’ve got to know more and more people, I’ve gotten a little bit more confident. In Holland, we have such a small industry and everybody k nows each other, so I know what kind of jokes I can make. Back home, we have a saying: “We’re looking the cats out of the tree,” which means that we’re a little shy and insecure. But I’m slowly getting out of that shy shell.” Stannis is under Melisandre s spell. ’
Melisandre is one of Game Of Thrones’s nastiest characters, which is saying something… “In Disney films, she would be the wicked stepmother. In this world that we’re creating, what’s good about it is that it’s so much more grey and more complex. Yes, her methods are very cruel but in order to play a character like that, you have to somehow justify what she’s doing. In her head, it’s for the greater good and she’s doing the right thing, which of course is dangerous, because that’s how people with evil plans justify themselves. They don’t think they’re doing evil stuff. But what attracts me to her is that she i s so strong and a little mysterious, even to me. As an actor, it’s great to be able to not have to play the wife of someone, or someone who is in the castle feeding the baby and waiting for their prince to come home.” Will we see Melisandre locking horns with Davos again in series four? “In the fourth season, you’re not going to see that much of those two together. Basically what you’re going to see from my character is a little bit of the Stannis household, which is Stannis, his wife and his other wife, which is me. There’s going to be that triangle and you’ll also see Stannis with his wife and his daughter, and Melisandre and the daughter. So you’ll see a bit more of all of that.” Game Of Thrones has a reputation for killing off characters at unexpected moments. Do you fear for Melisandre? “Mostly it’s the first thing you say to the writers, David Benioff and Dan Weiss, when you see them somewhere in the hotel: ‘Am I still alive?’ Of co urse, it’s always a surprise and you don’t necessarily know even if you’re a fan of the books because they’re diverting off from the books sometimes. They might just not like someone and often they’ll have dinner with people they’re going to kill off. I had dinner last year with one of them and in the taxi to the restaurant I was thinking, ‘Wait a minute, this might mean I’m going to die!’ It ended up just being a nice meal – but you never know.”
IT’S GREAT NOT TO PLAY THE WIFE IN THE CASTLE, FEEDING THE BABY AND WAITING FOR HER PRINCE TO COME HOME
www.sfx.co.uk
Have you read George RR Martin’s novels? “I read as little as possible. I can only compare it to Breaking Bad because I’m obsessed with that show but it’s like getting a part in that series while you’re in the middle of watching it. I don’t want to know how it’s going to end, I just want to play my part. I can then sit down at home and have the same experience as you.”
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
31
NO
Helen Keen reveals a rather surprising way to wipe
out the overly inbred dragon bloodline
W
hile nefarious brother and sister act Jaime and Cersei Lannister are surreptitiously at it all over the place, one family that doesn’t bother to hide its incestuous tendencies is House Targaryen. It wears its inbreeding with a pride seldom seen outside Norfolk (okay – sorry – seldom seen outside a rather obvious comedy sketch about Norfolk...). The Targaryens encourage incestuous marriage to conserve as much of their special “blood of the dragon” as possible for their offspring – and who can blame them? At least some of the time it gives them special powers: the power of fire resistance, a rapport with flame-breathing reptiles and superfetching, Timotei ad blonde hair. All this has worked out pretty well so far, at least for Dany. But what happens when our Royals keep it in the family? How does all this work in the world of Gregor Mendel as opposed to the world of Gregor Clegane? The problem that arises f rom breeding with blood relatives (apart from the inevitable awkwardness at Christmas) is that this can give recessive genes a chance to express themselves.
We all inherit two sets of genes, one from each parent. We can carry all sorts of potentially harmful recessive genes, passed down from either our mother or father, with no ill effect whatsoever, just as long as they’re matched with a harmless dominant gene from the other parent. Autosomal recessive disorders such as sickle cell anaemia or cystic fibrosis occur when both mother and father pass on the same recessive gene – and the chances of both parents carrying the same potentially harmful recessive genes increase significantly when they come from the same family. Probably the best documented case of inbreeding in European royalty occurred in the 17th century. Charles II of Spain – also known as Charles the Bewitched – was the end product of his family’s determination to keep possession of all their property by marrying each other. Over a period of 200 years, nine of the dynasty’s 11 marriages were between blood relatives; Charles’s mother was the niece of his father, and his grandmother was also his aunt. Charles himself was beset by health issues, prematurely aged with difficulty speaking, and he died, childless, at 38. A record of his post
mortem makes rather grim reading: “A very small heart of the size of a grain of pepper… the intestines putrefactive and gangrenous… a single testicle as black as coal and his head full of water.” On the flip side, there’s evidence that, over time, inbreeding can actually purge a population of harmful recessive genes. These “bad” genes are way more likely to be expressed, so, ultimately, the lines of the carriers are more likely to die off. Following what experts think was a population bottleneck several thousand years ago, cheetahs are all closely related – but also have remarkably few genetic illnesses. However, a lack of genetic variation in a population can also mean they’re all susceptible to catching and subsequently dying from the exact same disease. Individuals simply aren’t different enough to be in with a chance of diversely reacting to disease and surviving. So, it’s possible that Robert Baratheon could have wiped out the Targaryen line most effectively during the War of the Usurper not by joining forces with Ned Stark and Tywin Lannister but instead by infecting them all with a particularly nasty bout of flu…
) 2 X ( K C O T S I ©
32
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
GAME OF THRONES
THE SCIENCE OF BLOODLINE
Dany’s dragon blood can’t save Drogo.
But hey, the blood must be kept as pure as possible.
Somehow the inbreeding has avoided the misshapen heads business.
The four-part second series of Helen Keen’s excellent comedy series, It Is Rocket Science , starts airing on Radio 4 on Wednesday 2 April at 11pm
www.sfx.co.uk
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
33
BEYOND THE THRONE BORN: 1999 FROM: Kent GREATEST HITS: The Awakening ,
Closed Circuit RANDOM FACT:
Hempstead-Wright may ditch acting for a career in science. “I’d quite like to try new things,” he says. “I like particle physics, which would be interesting.”
GAME OF THRONES ISAAC HEMPSTEAD�WRIGHT
BRAN STARK
Isaac Hempstead Wright Bran’s had his fair share of heartache – not least being crippled by Jaime – but he’s well on his way to becoming a man
J
ust 10 years old when he initially joined the cast, Isaac Hempstead-Wright has grown up on the set of Game Of Thrones. Now 14, he’s really started to come into his own as Bran, the second youngest Stark sibling. Having stoically accepted his inability to walk, he’s gradually getting to grips with his emerging magical powers and, at the end of season three, we saw him heading North with his mentor Jojen Reed.
Being on the set of a fantastic fantasy series such as Game Of Thrones must be every teenager’s dream… “It’s really cool to go into this world with swords, decapitated heads and skulls everywhere. You could be walking through the studio and there’ll be a line of dead bodies to the side of you that you can go and take pictures of, which is a lot of fun.” Bran’s had it pretty tough.
WHATEVER DOESN’T KILL YOU MAKES YOU STRONGER AND FOR BRAN, EMOTIONALLY, THAT IS ESPECIALLY SO
www.sfx.co.uk
You were such a tender age when you first started out on Game Of Thrones; did you have to be shielded from the more gory elements? “I was 11, nearly 12, when the first series came out, so too young to watch any of it. But I did see some of it and then I gradually watched it all. A lot of the violence is completely debunked because you’ll be on set and there’ll be all these severed heads and buckets of blood and when you look at a scene with a beheading, there’ll be a guy behind the stone pumping the blood out of a decapitated body. The sex was a bit more difficult and my mum would give me equally inappropriate talks.” Bran was crippled after Jaime Lannister threw him off the top of a castle at the start of season one. How do you cope with that disability as an actor? “It’s pretty much impossible to know how awful it would be to lose your legs and luckily that’s out of my personal sphere of experience. You just take it as it comes really, you just act thinking, ‘I can’t move’. But it ’s completely changed Bran. He has had to become hugely strong – although I think he’d have become just as strong as a result of all the losses he’s had: his family, his home. It’s just like another knock on the head kind of thing, but, you know, whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and for Bran, emotionally, that is especially so.” Bran separated from his younger brother Rickon and the Wildling Osha at the end of the last series. Does that prove to be a difficult move for him? “Bran has learnt to deal with loss. He first lost his dad and for all he knows his sisters are gone as well. He’s also lost his home and his legs, so loss has become a pretty prevailing theme in Bran’s storyline. The thing about losing Osha and Rickon is that as much as he loves them – as kind as Osha has been to him in terms of being not only a matriarch but a sister-like figure, and he’s always cared for his little brother – the fact that he tells them to go really shows that there has been a huge step-up in his maturity. He is becoming the man of the house and the honourable Ned Stark figure who can say, ‘You know I love you but it ’s for the best’.”
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
35
BEYOND THE THRONE BORN: 1980 FROM: Heilbronn, Germany GREATEST HITS: When We Leave , Head-On RANDOM FACT: Kekilli would like to see Meryl Streep and Al Pacino play her mother and father in GOT . Stranger things…
GAME OF THRONES SIBEL KEKILLI
Shae
Sibel Kekilli Shae is the love of Tyrion’s life and according to the actress who plays her, it goes way beyond favours for money
F
a secret in her eyes so you’re always asking, ‘Is that real love? Does she really feel it?’ or ‘Is she doing good by him or not?’ You can never read her like a book.”
As the seasons have gone on, have you had the opportunity to expand upon Shae’s character? “I’ve had a big chance to improve her. But even if she doesn’t have a very big part to play, she still has so many diff erent qualities to her, such as loyalty, love and honesty. And because her background story is not the focus, I can create my own story for her, which I can fill in as I play her. There’s always
Game Of Thrones is celebrated for its well-crafted female characters and, although she is a prostitute, Shae is no exception… “The series is, of course, based on George RR Martin’s books but we have some really rare writers in David Benioff and Dan Weiss who like to write stories like that for women. In most films and TV series, women are like the cherry on top of an ice cream. Here they are vulnerable and strong and even if they are prostitutes, they have power in themselves and they can be manipulative. I love that, because it’s not like just black and white thinking, good and bad. They’re just as human beings really are; they’re real people.”
amous in her native Germany for performances in films such as Head On and When We Leave, Sibel Kekilli made her first foray into English-language productions when she landed the role of Shae in the inaugural season of Game Of Thrones. Starting out as a minor character, the steely but affectionate prostitute-turned-handmaiden has melted the heart of her lover Tyrion Lannister, at the same time as winning over audiences worldwide.
Shae’s escaped her lowly start.
THERE’S ALWAYS A SECRET IN HER EYES SO YOU’RE ALWAYS ASKING, “IS THAT REAL LOVE? DOES SHE REALLY FEEL IT?”
www.sfx.co.uk
Shae has gradually grown closer to Tyrion. What does she see in him? “The first time she met him it was a job for her, but in their second scene he opened his heart just a bit when he told her the story about the love of his life. At that moment, she saw something in him that the people around him don’t see, which is that he’s vulnerable and has a good heart. Something else that connects him to her is that he’s had such a hard life: his father didn’t want him because he wasn’t the strong son Tywin Lannister wanted. “I really think that he loves her. She’s his second real love. The first was the prostitute hired by Jaime but Shae is now his real love. Like her, he’s also looking for the one place where he can maybe be himself and be happy, sad and trusting. There was that scene when he comes back from Cersei and he’s saying to her, ‘Please promise me I am yours and you are mine’. He’s so upset because he thinks Cersei has found out about Shae. That was one of the warmest scenes that I’ve done as I could feel that this is the real Tyrion and that’s why she believes in him.” What’s Peter Dinklage like to work with? “He’s really witty and he’s got this intelligent sense of humour. And he’s really empathetic when he sees you. He saw me very briefly one day, and when we met again the next day, he said, ‘Is everything okay with you? You looked sad’. That is also the way he acts – he reacts when you act. He listens to you and he acts with his eyes, which is a really special thing.”
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
37
BEYOND THE THRONE BORN: 1990 FROM: Southwark, London GREATEST HITS: Love Actually ,
Nowhere Boy , Nanny McPhee RANDOM FACT: Brodie-Sangster is Hugh Grant’s cousin: his great-grandmother was the sister of Hugh’s grandmother.
GAME OF THRONES THOMAS BRODIE�SANGSTER
JOJEN REED
Thomas BrodieSangster Introduced in season three, Jojen has become Bran’s mysterious, supernatural guru as they journey beyond the Wall
A
n experienced child actor with a range of impressive credits including the magnificent Doctor Who two-parter “Human Nature” and “The Family Of Blood”, Thomas Brodie-Sangster is venturing into new territory with Game Of Thrones. Bringing a slightly sinister edge to adolescent prophet Jojen Reed, he takes fellow skinchanger Bran Stark under his wing as they head North. This is your second season of Game Of Thrones. Are you feeling more at home now? “I was able to go in knowing to a certain extent what to expect. I was looking forward to it because I knew people and was seeing them again. It’s the first time I’ve actually ever gone back to a character as normally I finish filming and move
Osha’ssuspicious of Jojen’s motives.
on. I’ve never done a sequel or an ongoing TV show before, so it was really nice to go back to a character and see what else I could add to it. It did feel different, like an extension of what we did last year, which it i s.” What does season four have in store for Jojen and Bran? “We find out more about why Bran is more important than perhaps even he knows. Now that we’ve moved North of the Wall the stakes are higher because the viewers, and even Jojen – who is able to see glimpses of the future – don’t quite know what’s out there.” Do we find out more about Jojen’s enigmatic nature? “That becomes clearer as his relationship with Bran develops. Jojen came along in season three as a very mysterious and mystical character. I don’t know if Bran was entirely sure how trustworthy or useful he was. In season four Jojen starts guiding him, as a kind of guru – it’s like Bran has got used to that way of him talking. They understand each other better.” Have you read George RR Martin’s novels? “I haven’t, and that seems to be the case for most of the cast. It could be a bit dangerous because when I first joined, I became aware that my character was meant to be in the previous season. Something had obviously changed and I arrived in season three in a very, very different set-up to how it is in the books. So I decided to just read the scripts and know as much per season as I needed to know. Anything I didn’t know about, I’d ask my girlfriend – she’s a massive Game Of Thrones fan.”
IT MAKES YOUR LIFE SO MUCH EASIER IF YOU REALLY ARE FREEZING YOUR TITS OFF ON THE TOP OF A MOUNTAIN www.sfx.co.uk
Do the lavish sets help fuel your imagination as an actor? “It’s so much better than being on a massive green screen in a studio. It just makes your life so much easier if you really are freezing your tits off on the top of a mountain! The sets are huge but it’s not really about how big they are, it’s more the detail. When you get up close, it still looks real. There’s one scene where I have to slip a bit and there were these barrels and branches that looked absolutely genuine but you kick them and realise that they’re made of foam. The thought that goes into it is staggering.”
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
39
BEYOND THE THRONE BORN: 1968 FROM: Dublin, Ireland GREATEST HITS: The Dark Knight
Rises , Queer As Folk , The Wire RANDOM FACT: Gillen was born as Aidan Murphy, but adopted his mother’s maiden name for Equity reasons.
GAME OF THRONES AIDAN GILLEN
LITTLEFINGER
Aidan Gillen He fed Ros to the lion and declared chaos his friend; now the power-hungry Baelish is en route to the Vale of Arryn
W
ith his penchant for treachery and shifty dealing, Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish doesn’t seem a million miles away from Tommy Carcetti, the ambitious city councillor Aidan Gillen played in The Wire, another acclaimed HBO drama. According to Gillen, though, the ruthless Westeros whore-master is a very different breed of political animal.
Do you think Littlefinger has much in common with Tommy Carcetti? “When I first looked at it, I thought, ‘This guy’s a politician,’ but he’s not. As Master Of Coin, initially his position within the Small Council was a political role but then it became something else. He’s definitely a player and he could have been a politician but he hasn’t turned out to be that. To begin with, the connection to my character on The Wire was more obvious and there was probably some through-line there when I was cast as Petyr Baelish. But they don’t really share the same traits – although they are both quite hard to put a finger on.” Always lurking in the background…
ALTHOUGH IT’S A FANTASY SETTING, IT’S REALLY ABOUT HUMAN EXPERIENCE AND ACTUAL EVENTS IN OUR HISTORY
www.sfx.co.uk
And rather than the mean streets of Baltimore, Game Of Thrones takes place in the mythical landscape of Westeros… “There is that, but what’s clever about Game Of Thrones is that although it’s a fantasy setting, the world it’s rooted in is not pure fantasy as such; it’s really about human experience and actual events in our history. In some cases, it’s based on real people, who are not all that far away in time. T here are real human themes just as you get in war stories like Band Of Brothers, including loyalty, love, death, revenge, power and family. That makes it interesting because the audience is maybe getting more than they would have reckoned on from the outset. The Lord Of The Rings is an easy comparison to make but that was based on real stuff as well, whether it’s religion or the Second World War. “It’s exciting to be part of a series with such massive scope – when you don’t know where it’s going to go next. That’s fascinating for the actors because they don’t know what’s going to happen either. And the characters change as well – you think that you know them and then maybe you’re not so sure.” So where do Littlefinger’s allegiances currently lie? “As far as allegiances go, he’d be reluctant to tie himself too closely to anything or anyone, knowing that the world of the show is so turbulent. While he will play as many people as he can, and glean as much information as he is able, he will generally be looking way down the road, maybe even to the next generation.” Season four has been described as more fast paced than previous series… “The seasons have all been different in different ways. There’s certainly a lot more going on now. The uncertainty and the turbulence that follows in the wake of the Red Wedding means that the world is much more unsettled. A lot of stuff always happened but it’s not going to be spaced out in the same way. “After seeing a few seasons, people have started to predict what’s going to happen, saying, ‘There’s always a big event around episode nine’. But it would be irresponsible to continue conveying things in that way by sticking to set patterns. You can, of course, read the books but because most of the first three books have been done now – season five will be shot soon – there has to be a little taking something from here and then another thing from there, and maybe saving something for later.”
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
41
NO
Helen Keen wonders if Beric Dondarrion’s amazing ability
to recover from death is actually all that outlandish?
E
xtraordinary advances in modern medicine in the past 100 years mean that conditions and diseases that would’ve been a death sentence for our ancestors are now preventable or curable for us. Westeros doesn’t enjoy the advantages of any kind of national health service, but Beric Dondarrion of the Brotherhood Without Banners benefits from regular revivification. He’s brought back to life six times by Red Priest Thoros of Myr (played by Paul Kaye, aka – for readers of a certain age – Dennis Pennis). But what chance does anyone in the real world have of living forever/getting over the odd mishap with a broadsword? It seems that Thoros’s prayers won’t entirely fix faulty parts – Dondarrion’s right eye doesn’t return after it has a Lannister dagger stuck into it, and Dondarrion gradually loses some of his memory every time he’s brought back to life. But in our world there are animals with regenerative abilities that make R’hllor the Lord of Light look like a rank amateur… Salamanders can regrow entire limbs, making them the most effective vertebrates when it
comes to regeneration – and the animal most likely to be cast as the next Doctor Who. The key to regenerative powers in real life seems to be stem cells. Stem cells have a lot in common with the Faceless Men (apart from, you know, the being crack assassins part), in that they are able to transform – turning into other types of cell when necessary. Because of this they can be used to replace or even heal damaged tissue, it seems they just need to be told where to go.
THE WORM THAT RETURNED The flatworm is a favourite test case: some species can regenerate, others can’t and the hapless invertebrates often end up with their heads cut off in the name of research. A team at the Max Planck Institute in Dresden has discovered that tweaking flatworm genes in a species that can’t normally regenerate can change how stem cells are marshalled. As a result, normally non-regenerative tissue was able to regrow fully functional heads (Ned Stark would surely be green with envy…). In a peculiar twist, biologists at Tufts University, Massachusetts trained another
variety of flatworm – one usually able to regenerate body parts – to take food from lighted areas, something that goes against all their natural wormy instincts. Then they chopped the worms’ heads off and waited for a fortnight for them to grow back. Astonishingly, the worms retained memories of where to find food: another win for the real world over R’hllor. It’s not clear how this happens, though researchers think that memory might be stored in body cells outside the brain. If these kinds of medical advances continue, we really will start to have the edge. To paraphrase the great Rocky Balboa, in life as in Game Of Thrones it’s not how hard you can hit, it’s how hard you can get hit... or impaled on a lance... or stabbed in the eye with a dirk... or shot with an arrow... or smashed round the head with a mace and keep moving forward… The four-part second series of Helen Keen’s excellent comedy series, It Is Rocket Science , starts airing on Radio 4 on Wednesday 2 April at 11pm
) 2 X ( K C O T S I ©
42
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY GUIDE
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
GAME OF THRONES
THE SCIENCE OF REBIRTH
Dennis Pennis works his magic on Beric.
He’s not always resurrected fully intact, though…
What he needs is some Salamander blood.
“B*****ks,” thinks Beric. “Here we go again.”
www.sfx.co.uk
ULTIMATE FANTASY GUIDE
SFX
43
GAME OF THRONES BY NUMBERS Statisticians: Jordan Farley & Bridie Roman Unless otherwise stated numbers refer to the TV show
108
S D N O C E S
LENGTH OF OPENING
TITLE SEQUENCE
HR
M
EPISODES CO-WRITTEN BY DAVID BENIOFF
AND DB WEISS
LENGTH OF
HIGHEST RATING
(2.10 “VALAR MORGHULIS”)
M
S
50 34
LENGTH OF SHORTEST EPISODE
(2.04 “GARDEN OF BONES”)
18 SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
ON HBO
(3.06 “THE CLIMB”)
2.2
MILLION DOWNLOADS OF THE SEASON
THREE FINALE VIA BITTORRENT (according to TorrentFreak)
5.5
MILLION
LONGEST EPISODE
5.9
WRITTEN OR NUMBER OF ILLEGAL
S
1 03 24
44
21
NUMBER OF
ON�SCREEN
DEATHS
*
N LOWEST O SEASON 1: 49 I LRATING SEASON 2: 77 L I SEASON 3: 61 ON HBO (2.02 “THE KINGSROAD”) *THE DEATH BLOW MUST M
S SINCE GEORGE RR R A MARTIN WROTE A E YGAME OF THRONES
BE CLEARLY VISIBLE, SO THE THOUSANDS KILLED IN BLACKWATER AND THE VARIOUS BATTLES
DON’T COUNT
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
GAME OF THRONES
339
ESSENCE OF NIGHTSHADE 1 DROP
CHAPTERS IN THE FIRST FIVE BOOKS BY CHARACTER
SOOTHES NERVES 3 DROPS
TYRION
47
JON SNOW
42
DAENERYS
31
ARYA
30
28
CATELYN
25
USES OF
SANSA
22
BRAN
21
HOUSE
JAIME
17
EDDARD
15
DAVOS
13
CERSEI
12
SAM
10
BRIENNE
8
THEON
7
REEK
3
ALAYNE
2
MELISANDRE
1
235
TALKING CHARACTERS
WORDS
1 SEVERED
NIPPLE
1GAG
FART
38
SEASON 1 98 SEASON 2 84 TIMES HODOR SAYS SEASON 3 53 HODOR! www.sfx.co.uk
DEEP, DREAMLESS SLEEP 10 DROPS
DEATH
700 SEATS IN THE
SANCTUM AT KING’S LANDING
50 3
BY NUMBERS
MILES OF TUNNELS UNDERNEATH KING’S LANDING
THE NUMBER OF TIMES BRONN HAS
BROKEN HIS NOSE
84 INSTANCES OF CHARACTERS SWEARING * * F�BOMBS, C�BOMBS AND S�BOMBS ONLY ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
45
t f
THE
SIZE OF ARMIES
HEIGHT 0 0 WALL 7 OF THE
100
200 NORTH MEN KILLED AT
HARRENHAL (OFF CAMERA)
9
THE NUMBER OF CRASTER’S
INCESTUOUS SONS S E M I T
3.5
YGRITTE SAYS “ YOU
KNOW NOTHING ” JON SNOW *
BARATHEON (RENLY) LANNISTER KHAL DROGO’S KHALASAR ONE INSTANCE GETS CUT * STARK THE LENGTH OF TIME THE SHORT WHEN JON PROVES LATEST SUMMER HAS LASTED HE KNOWS SOMETHING ASTAPOR UNSULLIED
YEARS 46
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
100,000 60,000 40,000 20,000 8,000 Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
GAME OF THRONES
THE 5
NUMBER OF TIMES
JOFFREY IS
SLAPPED
4
8.5
DECAPITATIONS *
THE TOP OF
KNOT HIS HEAD IN “BLACKWATER” AND YES,THAT DOES
INCLUDE THE HORSE
18
SEX 4
BARATHEON
4
STARK
3
TARGARYEN
3
GREYJOY
2
TYRELL
2
23 THE NUMBER OF TIMES
JON SNOW IS CALLED/
CALLS HIMSELF A
BASTARD www.sfx.co.uk
CASTLES ON THE WALL, ONLY THREE MANNED (CASTLE BLACK, EAST WATCH BY THE SEA AND THE SHADOW TOWER)
4
NUMBER OF ARROWS IT TAKES TO LIGHT HOSTER TULLY’S FUNERAL BOAT
STANNIS SAYS SHIPS
MY FORCES
10:1
LANNISTERS’!
5:1
OUTNUMBER THE ARMY
SCENES
LANNISTER
19WATCH NIGHT’S
NUMBER OF *ONE UNFORTUNATE WOMEN WHO CAN PERFORM FELLOW ONLY LOSES A MEEREENESE
BY NUMBERS
6,000,000 THE DEBT THE BARATHEON REGIME OWED IN
GOLD DRAGONS IN SEASON ONE. BY SEASON
THREE THE LANNISTERS OWED THE IRON BANK OF BRAAVOS TENS OF MILLIONS
OF GOLD DRAGONS
6
THE NUMBER OF
TIMES A KING IN THE NORTH HAS FAILED TO
INVADE
60
INSTANCES
OF DAENERYS BEING CALLED
KHALEESI
THE TYRELLS GAVE THE LANNISTERS 1,800 MOUNTED LANCES 12,000 INFANTRY MEN 1 MILLION BUSHELS OF WHEAT 500,000 (EACH) OF BARLEY, OATS AND RYE 20,000 CATTLE 50,000 SHEEP 200,000 SLAVES IN YUNKAI ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
47
THE CULTURE SHOW
Game Of Thrones ’ extraordinary success has
sent ripples through the rest of pop culture, as Will Salmon discovers…
T
here comes a point in a hit TV show’s life where it goes beyond being merely the latest fad nattered about around the watercooler (though honestly, does anyone ever really do that?), and becomes something greater: a phenomenon. Suddenly it’s being mentioned on the news, in sports games and parodied on The Simpsons. That cool cult show you’ve been watching has gone mainstream. Game Of Thrones hit that point very quickly. It’s one of the biggest shows on TV right now. In terms of genre, only The
Walking Dead eclipses it in viewing figures. “Mhysa”, the season three finale, gained ratings of 5.4 million in the US – astonishing figures for the subscription-based HBO, and a 28 per cent increase on the previous year. DVD and blu-rays of the second season sold more than 241,000 copies in one day in the UK – and that’s despite the fact that it is the world’s most pirated TV show. It’s no surprise then that people have been dropping references and jokes about it into their own shows. From parodies and homages on your telly box to online skits, Game Of Thrones is so hot right now.
GAME OF THRONES IN POPULAR CULTURE
Hope the book says more than Hodor.
South Park does the battle of, er, Black Friday .
SPRINGFIELD IS COMING The king of this sort of thing is, of course, The Simpsons. No show can truly claim to have made it until it ’s been referenced by Homer and the gang. The perennially “it ’s-not-asgood-as-it-was” animation did a pitch perfect spoof of the Thrones opening titles for “The Ten-Per-Cent-Solution” in its 23rd season. The other great long-running satirical ’toon, South Park, went several steps further. In “Cartman Finds Love”, Mr Mackey gave a sterling presentation to his class about the complexities of Westeros genealogy. That was followed up with an entire trilogy of episodes that riffed on the show. In “Black Friday”, “A Song Of Ass And Fire” (y ’see what they did there?) and “Titties And Dragons”, Kyle, Cartman, Kenny and the gang are desperate to get their hands on an Xbox One (“Winter is coming... and the next gen gaming devices are hitting the shelves”) and must face the
www.sfx.co.uk
terrifying US cultural apocalypse that is the Black Friday sales. A “wiener”–obsessed GRRM makes an appearance – we should stress here not actually played by George himself – and the Mall security act like members of the Night’s Watch. As ever with South Park, it’s both well-observed and as crass as humanly possible. Thrones has also featured in a short scene on the culty Adult Swim cartoon, Venture Bros, when The Monarch and Dr Girlfriend engage in a bit of Drogo/Khaleesi-style roleplay. Yikes. It isn’t just cartoons that have got in on the action. Sitcoms are falling over themselves to
include references to the show. 30 Rock snuck an early one in, when a pervy IT billionaire referred to Liz Lemon as Khaleesi. She looked distinctly creeped out, but in another episode
AS EVER WITH SOUTH PARK , IT’S BOTH WELL�OBSERVED AND AS CRASS AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
49
“Bloodlines Of Conquest” in Community .
Valyrian steel in The Big Bang Theory .
made a list of tasks for her boyfriend Criss to do – one of which was to call her that. Fickle, Lemon. There’s also a cute little moment where a startled Grizz is reading the first book and hits the scene where poor old Ned loses his head... Parks And Recreation has made a habit of sneaking the show into episodes. In one episode, dim-witted Andy (Chris Pratt, soon to be seen as Star-Lord in Guardians Of The Galaxy ) listed a number of alternative places to live, including New Caprica (from Battlestar Galactica ) and Winterfell. In season four’s “Pawnee Rangers”, a peeved Ben gripes “They would never cancel Game Of Thrones – it’s a crossover hit!” when colleague Donna tries to goad him. And then they did it again
“Oh my God! Ned Stark is dead ?!”
when “Tall Tyrion Lannister” outbid Anne on eBay, prompting much confusion and an appreciative discussion of Dothraki physique from Donna. If you’re not already on the Parks And Rec train, incidentally, you need to jump on post-haste – it’s excellent. The US version of The Office is that rarest of things – a decent remake. Indeed, at this point it’s probably got a stronger fan following than the UK original. “You wanna learn a really impressive second language?” asked Dwight in “Andy’s Ancestry”. “Try Dothraki.” He then convinces a girl to speak the language of the burly horse lords. The amount of sex and nudity in Game Of Thrones has certainly not gone unnoticed. US TV institution Saturday Night Live poked fun
“YOU WANNA LEARN A REALLY IMPRESSIVE SECOND LANGUAGE? TRY DOTHRAKI” 50
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
GAME OF THRONES
IN POPULAR CULTURE
GEORGE GETS IN ON THE GAME
A game of swords in Castle .
Winterfell tops Andy’s list of places to live in Parks And Recreation .
No author is free of influences, and George RR Martin has always been very vocal about his. A Song Of Ice And Fire is littered with references to other writers and novels that he’s enjoyed. Robert Jordan – best known for his Wheel Of Time series – is clearly a favourite of GRRM’s. The author, who was frequently published by Tor, is name-checked as Lord Trebor Jordayne of the Tor in A Storm Of Swords , while Archmaester Rigney (who theorises that time is a wheel...) takes his name from Jordan’s birth name: Oliver Rigney Jr. Horror icon HP Lovecraft gets several nods. Dagon Greyjoy takes his forename from the Lovecraft story of the same title, and the city of K’Dath in Essos is named after The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath . House Costayne is named for historical author Thomas Costain, and the house’s coat of arms – a silver chalice and a rose – is a direct reference to his novel, The Silver Chalice . On a similar note, House Vance is a reference to Martin’s favourite writer, the great Jack Vance. There are several nods to Vance’s work in A Song Of Ice And Fire , including Ronald The Bad (after Vance’s novel Bad Ronald ) and the fact that the house arms show dragons, in honour of the author’s novel, The Dragon Masters . But of course the most obvious is Samwell Tarly – the plucky member of the Night’s Watch, who is a clear descendent of JRR Tolkien’s Samwise Gamgee.
Norway “gives it some Khaleesi” at Eurovision.
at it in a sketch that suggested that one of the show’s staff was actually a 13-year-old boy. It followed it up later with Game Of Game Of Thrones – a parody game show where three Thrones-fans did great at answering questions on their favourite fantasy show, but had trouble with basic, real-world queries. Not SNL’s finest moment, but it raises a smile. Then, of course, there’s Community. This show, beloved o f SFX , has genre homages at the heart of its DNA. In many ways it feels like the US answer to Spaced . So of course GOT is on its radar. Unfortunately, it fell during the show’s weak fourth season (“the gas leak year” as it has since become known in-show). During the wonky “Alternative History Of The German Invasion” episode, Troy shows his disdain for studying by quipping “I don’t get history. If I wanted to know what happened in Europe a long time ago I’d watch Game Of Thrones.” More recently, season 5’s “Analysis Of Cork-Based Networking” hinged around “Bloodlines Of Conquest” – a (mythical) long-running
www.sfx.co.uk
series of fantasy books (that “really get the incest right”) and its TV adaptation. There are many more. New Girl name-checked Winterfell. Chuck dropped in a quick reference to the first novel (“Eddard you don’t let your k ids keep a direwolf – that’s a terrible idea!”). And the long-running laughter graveyard that is The Big Ba ng The ory also turned its jaundiced eye towards the show. In the episode “The Russian Rocket Reaction”, Sheldon and Leonard pick up a replica of Jon Snow’s sword, Longclaw.
BUT SERIOUSLY, FOLKS Of course, we expect this sort of thing from comedies. But dramas are doing it too. Louis Litt from Suits – the US hit about a law firm – made a point of helping another colleague, quipping “I always pay my debts. I’m a Lannister.” Mystery series Castle also got in on the action, with the titular crimesolving mystery novelist noting that a sword being used as a murder weapon is “so Game
Samwise & Samwell: cut of the same cloth.
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
51
ADrogo/Drago mix-up in Venture Bros .
Of Thrones”. Richard Castle is played by beloved genre thesp and fan Nathan Fillion, and hearing him say those words raises a bit of a smile. You might not think that the sports world is teeming with Game Of Thrones fans, but you’d be wrong. An American football commentator snuck a reference into an Illinois vs Western Michigan game, noting that an “intersection” (no, we’ve no idea either) from Alex Carter “cuts like Valyrian steel”, much to his colleague’s obvious bemusement. It wasn’t a one-off – a commentator on a diff erent game noted that “Randall Dunn... falls right into the Vale of Arryn” as the man in question took a tumble. Basketball team, the Sacramento Kings have an entire Thrones-themed opening video that recalls the Night’s Watch. Then there was a commentator on TSN (The Sports Network) who pointed out that an audience member during an ice-hockey game looked a bit like Varys. We’re assuming that’s because he was bald, and not because he knew something intimate about him… During the 2013 Eurovision heats on BBC Three, commentator (and Scissor Sister)
Can Eddie save the theme park? A game of Game Of Thrones .
52
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
GAME OF THRONES
IN POPULAR CULTURE
Zelda -style RPG.
With boobs!
Ana Matronic referred to Norway’s singer, Margeret Berger, as “giving it some Khaleesi”. She wasn’t far wrong; Berger may as well have been cosplaying.
HACK AND SLASH FICTION One of the truly great things about a beloved show like Game Of Thrones is how much creativity it inspires in its fans. In the olden days that meant making fan films and writing up terrifyingly detailed sexual encounters between your favourite characters, but these days it encompasses so much more – especially when it comes from fans who know their way around a copy of Final Cut Pro. The clever folk at Bad Lip Reading take footage from hit shows and films and re-dub them to hilarious effect. Their version of The Walking Dead was one of the funniest things online last year (“La-bibbida-bibba-dum!”) and their Thrones effort is almost as good. Medieval Land Fun-Time World reimagines the show as a comedy set in a preposterous historical theme park. Tyrion becomes Terry, a jive-talking dealer; Jaime is a creepy whispering weirdo, while everybody still hates JoJo – sorry, Joffrey. Genius satirical site The Onion has featured the show several times, with spoof news stories such as “Game Of Thrones Season Three Opens With Every Character Getting Fingered While Discussing Arrival Of Winter” and a think piece – supposedly by GRRM – about the Red Wedding entitled, “Oh
Shit, I Totally Forgot That Happens!” The UK’s equivalent, The Daily Mash has run a few too, including the frankly worrying “Game Of Thrones ‘All Just A Dream’”. Now now, George’d never do that to us… would he? Fans of vintage videogames were treated to collegehumor.com’s mighty Game Of Thrones RPG, which reimagined the show in a Legend Of Zelda style, complete with primitive SNES graphics. Seasons one and two have been recreated, with famous scenes reimagined as different level types. Ned’s quest to discover Joffrey’s true parentage is realised as a classic puzzle game, and there’s a very funny adventure game sequence with Jaime shagging Cersei (“A wild BRAN spotted your incest”). And if that’s whetted your appetite, there’s an excellent fan-made Thrones side-scrolling platformer available to download. There are a host of other mashups out there. You can find the series recut as a ’90s network drama (all VHS distortion and weird smiles in the title sequence); School Of Thrones (a faintly grating, if well produced, John Hughes homage with a great title sequence); the show as a romantic comedy (Carley Rae Jepsen on the soundtrack, pink fonts) and many, many more, some funny, some appalling. And that’s before you get to the myriad Tumblrs, such as 30 Thrones (mixing 30 Rock quotes with GOT screencaps), Thrones And Recreation (take a guess…) and so on. So Game Of Thrones fans are creative, and they get everywhere. And that’s all well and
WEIRDER STILL WAS THE FLURRY OF BABIES WHO HAVE BEEN NAMED “KHALEESI” www.sfx.co.uk
good, but sometimes – just sometimes – things get a little weird. Take, for instance, Kings Langley – the small Hertfordshire town that renamed itself King’s Landing in February of this year to much public fanfare. Okay, so it was a publicity stunt to promote the launch of the season three DVD, and the town will only be called that for a week, but that sort of thing never happened for Doc Martin or Midsomer Murders. Weirder still was the flurry of babies who have been named “Khaleesi” (146 in the US according to The Baby Name Wizard blog) by parents who are surely keen for their kids to be picked on at schoo l. And that’s despite the fact that it’s not even a name – it ’s an honorific.
A STORM OF SMUT And of course, finally, there’s the porn. If there’s one certainty in life it’s that if something is popular, then someone will make an adult version of it. And so it goes with the inevitably named Game Of Bones (personally we prefer South Park’s “Song Of Ass And Fire”). Subtitled “Winter Is Cumming”, this hardcore version features several well-known characters going at it, and an Iron Throne made out of dildos. So we’re told. A rival film, the confusingly titled This Ain’t Game Of Thrones XXX is also cumming – sorry, coming soon. And so we approach season four and the show is in the public’s consciousness more than ever. The heartening thing about all of this is how funny and affectionate all of these references are (okay, maybe not so much the porn). It’s a tribute to the quality of A Song Of Ice And Fire and the amazing television series that it inspired, and long may it continue.
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
53
THE PATH TO THE
THRONE ALL 30 EPISODES OF GAME OF THRONES SO FAR, IN ORDER OF HOW YOU RANKED THEM We asked visitors to SFX.co.uk to name their three favourite Game Of Thrones episodes. Thousands of you voted, and from those votes we have crafted this Top 30, from worst (or more charitably, least loved) to best. There are a few surprises along the way; you lot clearly liked “The Climb” a lot more than many internet pundits did and season two’s premiere came shockingly low (thank God, you kept watching!). But we don’t think many people will argue with the top three
Wrong, Theon. Just plain wrong.
30 THE NIGHT LANDS
29 DARK WINGS, DARK WORDS
Writers: David Benioff & DB Weiss Director: Alan Taylor Run Time: 54 minutes The one where: Theon returns to Pyke
Writer: Vanessa Taylor Director: Daniel Minahan Run Time: 57 minutes The one where: Jaime gets captured…
What is it with this show and incest? First it was the Targaryens, who wed brother to sister for hundreds of years. Then Jaime and Cersei, and Craster has been at it north of the Wall for god knows how long. Now it’s Theon and his sister Yara (or Asha, to book readers). So Theon didn’t recognise her, that’s hardly an excuse for fondling a strange woman while riding a horse. His groping and sense of entitlement disgust his Ironborn family. In King’s Landing Tyrion exiles the commander of the City Watch, Janos Slynt, to serve the Night’s Watch (he’s bound to reappear in season fo ur). Dany vows she will have vengeance for her slain bloodrider Rakharo.
…Again. For one of the most renowned swordsmen in Westeros Jaime sure is stupid. Bantering with Brienne provides some great scenes for the viewer, but surely he should have just shut up until they got to King’s Landing? Instead he fights the lady of Tarth until they are captured by Roose Bolton’s bannermen. That’s the third time Jaime has been taken prisoner; it’s like he’s trying to set a record. Sansa comes face to f ace with Olenna Tyrell, who gives her lemon cakes in return for the truth about Joffrey. Arya and co meet the Brotherhood without Banners. Theon’s torture is only just beginning. Margaery fondles Joffrey’s crossbow.
SEASON 2, EPISODE 2
54
A slice of cake and Sansa crumbles.
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SEASON 3, EPISODE 2
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
GAME OF THRONES Crikey, Grey Wind got big.
30 EPISODES RANKED & RATED
The Little and Large of Westeros.
28 THE NORTH REMEMBERS SEASON 2, EPISODE 1
So… is it a boy or a girl?! “
”
Writers: David Benioff & DB Weiss Director: Alan Taylor Run Time: 53 minutes The one where: Tyrion becomes acting Hand
Arriving in King ’s Landing in time for Joffrey’s name day Tyrion quickly settles into the role of acting Hand. On Dragonstone Stannis declares himself the true heir to the Iron Throne and sets his sword on fire, while the red priestess Melisandre declares him as the Lord of Light’s chosen one. Robb sends his peace terms to King’s Landing, and Cersei demonstrates for the second time that she is skilled in the art of paper tearing. The young wolf also sends out his mother and Theon in search of allies; his first big mistake. The Night’s Watch pay a visit to Craster’s Keep, where a lecherous old Wildling lives with his daug hter-wives.
Littlefinger lurks like only Littlefinger can.
Joffrey finds fun in strange places.
27 LORD SNOW
26 GARDEN OF BONES
Writers: David Benioff & DB Weiss Director: Brian Kirk Run Time: 58 minutes The one where: Daenerys finds out she is pregnant
Writer: Vanessa Taylor Director: David Petrarca Run Time: 51 minutes The one where: Melisandre gives birth to the smoke monster from Lost
As soon as it’s announced that the Khaleesi has a bun in the oven Ser Jorah mysteriously disappears to Qo hor, but let’s gloss over that like everyone else did (honestly, was no one even a little suspicious?). Back in Westeros Catelyn hides out in Littlefinger’s brothel like some back alley sally, while Ned learns that the throne is massively in debt and his daughter wants to stab things. On the Wall Jon finds out that he’s not exactly making friends with his new brothers, which is hardly surprising given how well he fights. But Tyrion saves the day by humbling Jon into teachin g them, and then pisses off the Wall because well, who wouldn’t?
Over in King’s Landing Cersei is trying to replace her brother with her cousin, which work s to Tyrion’s advantage, since he’s not above blackmailing his kin. After saving Sansa f rom a beating the Imp wonders why his nephew is so messed up (answer: it’s probably something to do with his mushy inbred brain). As he and Bronn discuss how to put the King in a better mood Bronn has one of his greatest moments, as he declares that “there’s no cure for being a [c-word]”. Bronn’s right of course, and Joffrey certainly earns that moniker as he has Ros savagely beat another prostitute for his own amusement.
SEASON 1, EPISODE 3
www.sfx.co.uk
SEASON 2, EPISODE 4
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
55
Cersei tries sincere. Cersei fails.
25 A MAN WITHOUT HONOR
23 WHAT IS DEAD MAY NEVER DIE
Writers: David Benioff & DB Weiss Director: David Nutter Run Time: 56 minutes The one where: Sansa becomes a woman
Writer: Bryan Cogman Director: Alik Sa kharov Run Time: 53 minutes The one where: Tyrion plays games with the Small Council
Sansa wakes up to discover she has been bleeding. Her first period means she can now marry Joffrey (as if periods aren’t bad enough) and though her and Shae try to hide it, the Hound finds her blood-stained bed and informs the Queen. Poor Sansa has to have the “you’re a woman now” chat with possibly the least sympathetic female in all the seven kingdoms. Someone get the girl a lemon cake! Up in the North the youngest Stark siblings a re also having a bad time, but manage to escape Theon, who burns two orphan boys and passes them off as Bran and Rickon. Catelyn frees Jaime and sends him back to the capital with Brienne.
The Imp outwits the entire Small Council by telling each member a different story about his plans for Myrcella’s wedding. When Cersei confronts him about marrying her off to the Martells, Tyrion realises that Grand Maester Pycelle is the leak, and has him sent to the dungeons. In the Stormlands Renly has mustered his army and wed Margaery Tyrell. Unfortunately for Renly that’s the wrong Tyrell – he’d rather be plucking a different rose. On the King ’s Road Arya and the Night’s Watch come under attack from Lannister men. Yoren goes down fighting, and he takes a handful of Lannister soldiers with him.
SEASON 2, EPISODE 7
The house guests from hell.
SEASON 2, EPISODE 3
A million viewers rejoice.
24 THE KINGSROAD
22 THE OLD GODS AND THE NEW
Writers: David Benioff & DB Weiss Director: Tim Van Patten Run Time: 56 minutes The one where: Joffers gets slapped for the first time and Catelyn plays CS I
Writer: Vanessa Taylor Director: David Nutter Run Time: 54 minutes The one where: Someone throws dung at Joffers
In the North the Starks are reeling from Bran’s injury, and the Lannisters are clearly up to something. But still, the King must return to the capital and he needs his Hand with him. On the road Arya acts out against her future brother-in-law and smacks the smarmy bastard (isn’t Arya ace?). Joffrey does what he does best and lies through his teeth which results in Lady, Sansa’s direwolf, being killed. Across the Narrow Sea Dany is given instructions on pleasing her Khal, and Viserys is already growing impatient. Jon discovers that the Night’s Watch is the dumping ground for Westeros’s criminals.
After saying goodbye to Mycella, who is being shipped off to Dorne for marriage, the royal procession makes its way through King’s Landing. In the streets Joffrey gets some dung thrown at his nasty little f ace. One thing leads to another and before you know it the city is rioting. Sansa is saved by the Hound from being raped and Joffrey gets slapped by Tyrion again. It’s a good episode for Joffrey haters (which is everyone). Beyond the Wall Jon takes a prisoner and has his vows tested. Meanwhile his brother Robb is also getting flirtatious and struggles to keep his own vow to Walder Frey. Dany discovers the theft of her dragons.
SEASON 1, EPISODE 2
56
Don’t mess with Brienne.
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SEASON 2, EPISODE 6
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
GAME OF THRONES Talisa was determined not to blink first.
Stop looking at her arse, Robb.
30 EPISODES RANKED & RATED
Dominic West was offered the role of Mance. Fact.
20 VALAR DOHAERIS SEASON 3, EPISODE 1
Writers: David Benioff & DB Weiss Director: Daniel Minahan Run Time: 55 minutes The one where: Dany is saved from a second assassination attempt
Dany arrives in Astapor to view its slave army, the Unsullied. In a demonstration of their obedience and fortitude the slave master slices off an Unsullied nipple. On the docks the warlocks send an assassin after the Khaleesi, but she is saved by Ser Barristan Selmy. Jon comes face-to-face with the King Beyond the Wall, and expresses his desire to fight for the living. Davos returns to Dragonstone to find his King apathetic towards his suffering and grief, which enrages the Onion Knight. Tywin is back to being horrible to Tyrion, denying him rule over Casterly Rock despite his valiant efforts to save the city.
Brienne and Jaime make like a tree.
21
SEASON 2, EPISODE 8
THE PRINCE OF WINTERFELL
Danger lurks around every dark corner.
19 THE WOLF AND THE LION SEASON 1, EPISODE 5
Writers: David Benioff & DB Weiss Director: Alan Taylor Run Time: 54 minutes The one where: Arya and co escape Harrenhal
Writers: David Benioff & DB Weiss Director: Brian Kirk Run Time: 55 minutes The one where: Robert and Ned fall out
Aided by Jaqen H’gar, Arya, Gendry and Hot Pie (Hot Pie!) escape the castle in the hopes of getting to her brother. Robb himself is busy courting Talisa, dealing with his mother’s betrayal and making more terrible decisions. Qhorin Halfhand gives Jon his last command: to defect from the Night’s Watch and find out Mance Rayder’s plans. To make the deception convincing Qhorin starts picking fights with Jon. In the crypts below Winterfell Osha, Hodor, Bran and Rickon hide from Theon’s Ironborn. Ser Davos recounts the adventures which led to him earning the title of “Onion Knight”. The capital prepares for war.
Remember how Jorah snuck off when Dany got pregnant? Well turns out he was selling secrets to Varys. He’s since stopped being disloyal (mostly because he fancies her) but that doesn’t stop the secrets he’s already sold getting back to Robert, who demands that Ned organise Dany’s assassination. This tweaks the honourable Stark’s nose, and Ned quits. Without the protections given to him as Hand of the King, Ned is open to an attack from an angry Jaime (the only Lannister that likes Tyrion). Jaime slays dear old Jory Cassel with a knife through the eye, then battles Ned until the Northman is put down with a spear to the knee [insert Skyrim pun here].
www.sfx.co.uk
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
57
I told you winter was coming… “
”
Yep, that’s the spot. Right there.
Enjoy it while you can, Jaime.
17 WALK OF PUNISHMENT SEASON 3, EPISODE 3
“
”
Writers: David Benioff & DB Weiss Director: David Benioff Run Time: 53 minutes The one where: Jaime loses his hand
The Kingslayer sweet-talks Brienne out of being raped and straight into having his sword hand chopped off. Theon “escapes” his captors thanks to a mysterious cleaning boy. Dany makes the decision to buy all 8,000 of the Unsullied using Drogon (the biggest of her dragons) as payment. Slaver Kraznys bad-mouths the Khaleesi in High Valyrian, which is much funnier when you know that she speaks High Valyrian too. Tyrion discovers the crown is massively in debt, not only to his father but also to the Iron Bank of Braavos. If the crown doesn’t make their payments the kingdoms c ould go into foreclosure (or at least have their enemies funded by the bank).
Poisoned wine? Jorah’s not fooled.
”
18 YOU WIN OR YOU DIE
16 THE GHOST OF HARRENHAL
Writers: David Benioff & DB Weiss Director: Daniel Minahan Run Time: 58 minutes The one where: The series got i ts title
Writers: David Benioff & DB Weiss Director: David Petrarca Run Time: 55 minutes The one where: A man gives a girl three lives
Ned confronts Cersei about her twincestuous bastards. Cersei politely threatens Ned, telling him “in the game of thrones, you win or you die”. Unfortunately Ned isn’t very good at this game (he doesn’t seem to know the rules, or rather he sticks to the rules too often). Meanwhile, Jon and Sam take the Black, saying their vows to serve the Night’s Watch. In Tywin Lannister’s first scene he makes Jaime look like a silly boy, while skinning a stag (ooh symbolism!). Tywin is ruthless, on that we can all agree, but you have to admit he’s a man to admire. An assassination attempt on Dany gives Drogo a reason to f ight for her Iron Chair.
A girl encounters Jaqen H’gar, who tells a girl she saved three lives and so a man will give her three lives. All a girl must do is say a name and a man will kill for her… Meanwhile Theon becomes captain of the Sea Bitch, and is encouraged to ignore plans to raid villages; instead he plots to take Winterfell. Bran dreams of the sea coming to Winterfell and drowning many of the people there, including Ser Rodrik. Of course everyone ignores that ominous warning because the people of Westeros never listen to prophecies or symbolism. Tyrion prepares for the upcoming battle, and is shown the city’s supply of volatile wildfire.
SEASON 1, EPISODE 7
58
Ikea you say. Do they do it in red? “
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SEASON 2, EPISODE 5
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
GAME OF THRONES Could be an event at the Winter Olympics.
15
SEASON 3, EPISODE 6
THE CLIMB
30 EPISODES RANKED & RATED
The bear’s real name is Bart. Fact.
13 THE BEAR AND THE MAIDEN FAIR SEASON 3, EPISODE 7
Writers: David Benioff & DB Weiss Director: Alik Sa kharov Run Time: 54 minutes The one where: Robb makes another bargain with Walder Frey
Writer: George RR Martin Director: Michelle MacLaren Run Time: 58 minutes The one where: Jaime rescues the maiden fair
It’s surprising that Robb thinks his Uncle Edmure (who can’t fire a bow very well and doesn’t really follow orders) i s an equal replacement for himself. But hey, Robb hasn’t lost a battle yet, so surely he knows what will please Lord Frey, right? Right? The Brotherhood turns Gendry over to Melisandre and boy is Arya pissed. Melisandre predicts that they will meet again someday – will this be something we see in later books? It hasn’t happened yet… Jon and Ygritte climb the Wall with only a slight bit of difficulty. You have to wonder if that massive crack they made will undermine its overall structural integrity, they did manage to rip out a fairly sizeable chunk.
Jaime gets a bit of a bad rap, really. Sure he pushed a small boy out of a window and he’s been carrying on an incestuous relationship with his sister. Oh, and there was that time he killed the King he was sworn to protect. And he stabbed Jory in the eye. But he’s a good guy deep down! This episode he proves it by jumping into a bear pit, unarmed, to save Brienne. Theon loses his best friend and everyone watching crosses their legs and winces. Daenerys arrives at Yunkai and meets with an envoy who tries to bribe her into leaving. But why accept bribes when you have three dragons and an army of 8,000 Unsullied?
Not sure who looks more horrified…
14
SEASON 3, EPISODE 8
SECOND SONS
Events at the Wall take a sinister turn.
12
SEASON 1, EPISODE 8
THE POINTY END
Writer: David Benioff & DB Weiss Director: Michelle MacLaren Run Time: 57 minutes The one where: Melisandre’s bedroom antics cross the l ine
Writer: George RR Martin Director: Daniel Minahan Run Time: 59 minutes The one where: Drogo fights his final battle
After teasing Gendry Melisandre puts leeches there. If that boy’s not going to be scarred for life then the Mountain is a fluff y kitten who likes cuddles. Wedding bells are ringing at King’s Landing for Tyrion and Sansa and for once it’s not too lively an affair, except for the Imp threatening to castrate the King. Sam and Gilly continue their journey to the Wall and discover the importance of the dragonglass daggers. Here’s hoping Sam gets called “Sam the Slayer” next season. Daario Naharis conducts a violent takeover of his mercenary army and pledges the Second Sons to Daenerys’s service.
The Khalasaar go pillaging to earn the gold needed for their invasion. During a fight Drogo is wounded and Dany requests a captive from the village, Mirri Maz Duur, heal him. At the Wall cold winds are rising and so are the dead. But Jon and Ghost (who we really don’t see enough of ) manage to save the Lord Commander from the Wights. Down in King’s Landing Ned is taken prisoner, but Arya has time to escape thanks to her dancing master Syrio Forel, who holds off four armed knights with a wooden sword. Robb calls his bannermen and marches to war. Tyrion makes friends with the hill tribes.
www.sfx.co.uk
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
59
The man with many lives.
11
Poor Shae. Love thwarted.
SEASON 3, EPISODE 5
KISSED BY FIRE
Poor Theon. Taunted with a sausage.
Writer: Bryan Cogman Director: Alex Graves Run Time: 58 minutes The one where: Jon gives Ygritte the Lord’s Kiss
Turns out Jon Snow does know something, and that something is pleasing the ladies. In the Riverlands, the Hound faces Beric Dondarrion in a trial by combat. Dondarrion sets his sword on fire, which is a cheap trick, but the Hound still ends up slicing the Lightning Lord almost in half (alright, there’s a slight bias for the Hound here. He’s an alright kinda guy!). Luckily for Dondarrion he is blessed by R’hllor, and brought back to life. Robb does things the old way and personally chops of Lord Karstark’s head for treason; Ned would be proud. The Tyrells have their schemes scuppered when Tywin announces he will marry Tyrion to Sansa, and Cersei to Ser Loras.
The Imp figures he’s cornered.
10 CRIPPLES, BASTARDS AND SEASON 1, EPISODE 4
BROKEN THINGS Writer: Bryan Cogman Director: Brian Kirk Run Time: 56 minutes The one where: Samwell gets a warm reception at Castle Black
Lord Piggy, as they call him in the books, is very out of place among the Night’s Watch, but Jon convinces his new brothers to accept their newest recruit. Tyrion’s journey home begins with him gifting Bran the blueprints for a saddle that will help him ride despite his crippled legs. But Tyrion’s travels are interrupted by Catelyn, who takes the Imp prisoner. In the capital, Littlefinger starts creeping on Sansa during a very eventful tourney. Viserys hits his sister, but she finds her own fire and tells him the next time he raises a hand to her will be the last time he has hands.
60
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
Hands up who loves Dany!
09 MHYSA
SEASON 3, EPISODE 10
Writers: David Benioff & DB Weiss Director: David Nutter Run Time: 63 minutes The one where: Dany frees the slaves of Yunkai
With the help of Daario Naharis, Jorah and Grey Worm Dany has liberated the city of Yunkai. The Mother of Dragons very quickly becomes The Mother of Thousands of Hungry Freedmen, but she seems happy. The news of the Red Wedding ruins the growing affection between Sansa and Tyrion. Tywin sends Joffers to bed with no dinner, but it might be too little too late when it comes to disciplining the boy. Sandor and Arya flee the harrowing scenes at the Twins, and you can tell that it’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Stannis is convinced he must go north. Yara decides to save Theon (again, too little too late).
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
GAME OF THRONES That Viserys. He had it coming.
08 A GOLDEN CROWN SEASON 1, EPISODE 6
30 EPISODES RANKED & RATED
A gruesome discovery.
Doesn’t Jaime look young?
Writers: Jane Espenson, David Benioff & DB Weiss Director: Daniel Minahan Run Time: 53 minutes The one where: Viserys gets his golden crown
Dany’s brother takes it a little too far this episode, charging into Drogo’s celebrations brandishing a sword and threatening the Khaleesi. All he wants is the crown, and in one of Game Of Thrones’ most iconic scenes, Drogo is happy to oblige. You almost feel sorry for Viserys when the molten gold pours down his face. Up in Winterfell, Bran takes his first ride on the new saddle and is ambushed by Wildlings. In the capital Ned sets Beric Dondarrion out on his quest to bring down Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane and figures out that Joffrey and his siblings are the bastard children of the Lannister twins.
Smoking is bad for you, kids.
“So, do you come here often?”
07 VALAR MORGHULIS
06 WINTER IS COMING
Writers: David Benioff & DB Weiss Director: Alan Taylor Run Time: 64 minutes The one where: Winterfell burns
Writers: David Benioff & DB Weiss Director: Tim Van Patten Run Time: 62 minutes The one where: We get introduced to the world of Westeros in all its brutal glory
Theon gives a very rousing speech to his small band of Ironborn, in the hopes that they will want to go out fighting against whoever is besieging Winterfell. He is betrayed however, and the gates to Winterfell are o pened to Roose Bolton’s bastard. The battle is over in King’s Landing but the Game continues. Arya is given a coin by Jaqen, and told to use it and the words “Valar morghulis” (“all men must die”) in order to find him again, before he changes his face an d leaves her company. Dany unleashes her dragon’s fiery wrath against the warlocks of Qarth. Sam comes face to face with the vast undead horde of the White Walkers.
On the way back from a beheading the Stark boys stumble across a dead stag and a direwolf with fatal antler wounds. You could say this is a dire warning [Sorry – Ed]. Ned is named Hand of the King; the Starks, Baratheons and Lannisters party in Winterfell and then Bran gets hurled out of a window for witnessing a sordid royal affair. Across the Narrow Sea the Targaryens are planning Dany’s wedding and Viserys is being his creepy old self. Magic creatures, death, beheadings, twincestuous sex and attempted child murder. It’s a good introduction to the overall tone of the series.
SEASON 2, EPISODE 10
www.sfx.co.uk
SEASON 1, EPISODE 1
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
61
Fear not, young dragon…
Drogosplutters his last breath.
04 FIRE AND BLOOD SEASON 1, EPISODE 10
…Dany has a plan.
Writers: David Benioff & DB Weiss Director: Alan Taylor Run Time: 53 minutes The one where: Robb is crowned King in the North
Robb’s army mourn the loss of Ned, but the death of their liege lord only fans the flames of hate, as the northerner’s proclaim Robb their king and vow to fight for the freedom of the North. Dany builds her husband’s funeral pyre, placing her beloved dragon eggs alongside her sun and stars. As the flames devour the body of her husband (and Mirri Maz Duur) Dany steps into the pyre. What is left of Dany’s Khalasar discover her naked amongst the ashes, with three beautiful dragons. Shivers, goosebumps and excited shouting from viewers ensue. Putting the ice in A Song Of Ice And Fire the Night’s Watch begin their expedition beyond the Wall.
Cersei’s met her match in Olenna.
GOT ’s first really
big shocker.
05 AND NOW HIS WATCH IS ENDED 03 BAELOR SEASON 3, EPISODE 4
62
SEASON 1, EPISODE 9
Writers: David Benioff & DB Weiss Director: Alex Graves Run Time: 54 minutes The one where: Dany builds her army
Writers: David Benioff & DB Weiss Director: Alan Taylor Run Time: 57 minutes The one where: Unspeakably horrible things happen
Fire and blood are the words of house Targaryen, and Dany certainly starts living up to that mantra this episode. She sells her biggest dragon for 8,000 Unsullied, only to tell the masters that dragons are not slaves and burn the city to the ground, liberating everyone. Fire and blood indeed. In the lands beyond the Wall the men of the Night’s Watch are at each other’s throats. They’ve not eaten in a while, it’s really cold and they keep having to shovel sh…stuff. It might be hard work but it’s no excuse for stabbing Lord Commander Mormont. Craster had it coming though. Beric Dondarrion makes his return with a new actor in the role.
It was a clever trick, sticking Eddard prominently on the advertising, making it look like he would live forever. But casting Sean Bean should have tipped everyone off about his fate – the man’s a walking spoiler! Ned’s sense of honour is what got him killed, but Joffrey’s monstrous nature is to blame too – even Cersei was shocked at his actions. Robb takes an oath that he really should have stuck to and Tyrion meets Shae, the funny whore. Meanwhile, Drogo’s wounds take their toll and he falls from his horse, becoming unfit to lead the Khalasaar. In a last-ditch attempt to save him Dany uses blood magic and learns the lesson that only death can pay for life.
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
GAME OF THRONES
02 BLACKWATER SEASON 2, EPISODE 9
30 EPISODES RANKED & RATED
The CGI budget goes up in smoke.
Writer: George RR Martin Director: Neil Marshall Run Time: 55 minutes The one where: They spent all the CGI budget
And it was money well spent! War has come to King’s Landing, and the city is preparing for siege. On the Bl ackwater Davos leads Stannis’s fleet into the bay, perplexed by the lack of resistance. Then Tyrion gives the signal and all hell breaks loose. The explosion of wildfire destroys a chunk of the Baratheon fleet, with many men leaping into the water, although that doesn’t stop the fire from burning. The rest of the fleet lands outside the walls, and the battle begins in earnest. Tyrion commands the Hound to lead a sortie into the burning battlefield but having already been out there Sandor isn’t so keen and leaves in style, telling the Imp and the King to go… fornicate themselves. Inside the Red Keep Cersei is wearing some bizarre breast plate armour and getting increasingly drunk. Sansa, on the other hand, seems to be keeping fairly calm considering the situation, and leads the women in prayer. Cersei demands that her darling boy be brought back from the battle and he happily goes running back to mummy. Outside Tyrion leads his men into battle, only to be turned upon by one of the King’s Guard, suffering a sword slash to the face. Cersei, fearing the worst, summons Tommen to the throne room, where she plans to poison both of them rather than be taken by Stannis. Just as she lifts the poison for Tommen to drink, the doors burst open; Tywin Lannister has saved the day.
The Imp gets slashed.
Noooooo! Noooooooooo!
Surely he’s too pissed to fight?
We’re starting to feel uneasy…
01 THE RAINS OF CASTAMERE SEASON 3, EPISODE 9
Writers: David Benioff & DB Weiss Director: David Nutter Run Time: 51 minutes The one where: Even more horrible things happen
It’s really hard to write about this episode, the grief, the horror… it’s all too much! It was bad enough reading it; watching it was a special kind of torture. It’s Edmure Tully’s wedding day and the Freys have caught themselves a fine fat fish, but why did they have to go after the wolf pelts
www.sfx.co.uk
too? The look that comes across Catelyn’s face when she sees the doors being closed and hears “The Rains Of Castamere” playing brilliantly mirrors your own sinking sense of fear and worry. We should have been prepared for it after Ned’s death. And Jory’s, Jeor Mormont’s, Ser Rodrik’s and all the rest. But still this episode comes as a massive shock. In one episode the ambitions of the Northmen come crashing down around them. In other, less distressing, scenes
Jon turns his cloak again and leaves for the Wall. He might have fallen for Ygritte, but he is a sworn brother of t he Night’s Watch. As he battl es for his escape he’s aided by Bran, who has warged into his direwolf, though Jon is unaware of his presence. Hodor says Hodor a lot (you can see how many times on page 44). Across the Narrow Sea Daenerys sends Daario, Jorah and Grey Worm into Yunkai. They make a brilliant three-man army. Now excuse us while we go cry.
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
63
MERCHANDISE
IS COMING
A STORM OF GOODIES IS ON ITS WAY! In the Game Of Thrones you win or you die. Not great odds. Luckily SFX was at the New York International Toy Fair in February where some safer Thones -related playing options were on display By Tara Bennett Photos Bill Edwards
$ 20
£6
F unk o’ s new line of 2 .5-i nc h My st er y Minis w ill be pac ke d in “ blind bo x es” so y ou w on’ t k now w hic h of t he 16 G am e O f Th r o n e s c har ac te r s in E dit ion 1 y ou’ ll be get ti ng – and some ( Ja ime and Dr ogon) w ill be har der t o find t han ot her s… AV AILAB LE 3 0 M AR CH w ww . st ar ac ti o nfi gur es .c o .uk
64
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
g Will this sligh tly scragg y lookin ou three-e yed Ra ven ( yep, we know y fini tel y can onl y see one, bu t there's de ture ? three ) help you see in to the fu
sor A VAILABLE 20 14 ( sub jec t to licen appro val ), w w w. fac tor yen t.com
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
GAME OF THRONES
A FEAST FOR FANS
$ 199
St ep int o Robb St ar k’ s f ur r y boot s w it h y our v er y ow n c lot h map of W est er os c omplet e w it h six sc ulpt ed, hand-paint ed ma p mar ke r s. AV AILAB LE NO W w ww . d ar kh
£ TBC
or se .c om
$ 225
ck o f Ar ya S tark and Needle – che tue ta s ch 1-in , 1 tion edi ted i A lim almos t feel the rage. ou t tha t furro wed bro w, you can arkhor se.com A VAILABLE JUNE 20 14 w w w.d
F unko’s Deluxe Legacy Collection f eatures all yo ur f avourite G OT characters. Each figure has 20+ points of articulation and its own removable accesso ries.
AV AILABLE 2014
www.sfx.co.uk
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
65
£ TBC £ TBC
bus t o f the This impressi ve, lim ited edi tion ged visor so you Hound has a helme t w ith a hin scar y. can hide his face if he looks too arkhor se.com A VAILABLE JUL Y 20 14 w w w.d
Slouch on your own Iron Throne with this replica of Joffrey’s crown. Tilt it forward and adopt a sulky sneer to really nail the look. AVAILABLE END OF 2014 (subject to licensor approval), www.factoryent.com
Collect this litter of three super-cute direwolf puppies: Shaggydog, Nymeria and Lady. AV AILABLE END OF 2014 (sub ject to licensor appr oval), www.f actor yent.com
$ 60
$ 85
You never know how an episode will end, so these luxurious House pillows are ideal for hiding eyes – or catching tears. AVAILABLE 2014 www.factoryent.com Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
GAME OF THRONES
A FEAST FOR FANS
$ 23
£ 23 Jamie and Cersei Lannister, the scariest siblings in Westeros, demand respect even when they’re only eight inches tall. AV AILABLE JULY 2014 www.dar kh or se.com
A t temp t to ha tch your o wn dragons w ith this se t o f three, d, plush eggs, each w ith a tex ture shell-like ou ter fabric. t.com A VAILABLE NO W w w w. fac tor yen
$ 100
$ 45
A limited edition Weirwood Snow Globe featuring a red-leaved, white-barked Heart Tree of the Godswood. Give the globe a shake and winter will have arrived! AVAILABLE MARCH 2014 www.darkhorse.com
www.sfx.co.uk
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
67
$ 99
C olle ct ibl e dra g on e g g box . B e low , sig il rin g s
£ 28
£ 45
£ 21 C er se i Lannis ter and dr a gon egg nec klac e . R i ght, Hou se pe nd ant s
68
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
GAME OF THRONES
A FEAST FOR FANS
OLGA GANOUDIS JEWELLERY &
DRAGON EGGS As the actors all agree, it’s the incredible attention to detail that makes the world of Westeros so believable and one woman who plays a crucial role in bringing the fantastical to real life is high-end jeweller, Olga Ganoudis. From the tiny realm (okay, state) of Delaware, Ganoudis creates fine jewellery pieces for art festivals and private clients. She got swept into the world of Game Of Thrones through her work creating collectible pendants for the hit ABC series, Lost . For that show, she made pewter Dharma pendants and a sterling silver reproduction of Charlie’s Drive Shaft ring – both of which were a hit with Lost ’s dedicated fanbase.
Ganoudis started creating pendants featuring the various House sigils and items inspired by Dany’s dragons HBO liked her original twist on the show’s tangible bits of mythology and Ganoudis was invited to pitch for the job of making collectible pieces reflecting the various Houses of Westeros. She was awarded the gig and has been producing items since season one. Ganoudis started creating pendants featuring the various House sigils and items inspired by Dany’s dragons. “First, we did the dragon egg necklace,” she says, “then we did all of the House pendants, and then the dragon eggs and the dragon egg paperweights.” From her little studio, Ganoudis designed each piece and decided which metal to use for the jewellery. The egg necklaces are made in bronze, while for an earthier look, the House sigil pendants are made of pewter and hung on leather thongs. Ganoudis had
www.sfx.co.uk
to draft in other craftsmen to help her produce enough pieces, but even she was surprised by the reaction from fans when everything went on sale. Fans have been snapping up their favourite pieces – sales figures show the most popular are House Stark, House Targaryen and, of late, House Greyjoy. Ganoudis says the biggest hurdle in crafting the pieces came near the end of the first season. “HBO decided to put the dragon egg paperweight in the first season DVD so we had to make 50,000 eggs! We got it done but I was amazed we did it!” To coincide with the start of season four, the line has been expanded to include the intricate Cersei Lannister pendant and the heavy, sterling silver sigil rings for each House. “Last season,” says Ganoudis, “Warner Bros France had me design the collectible dragon egg box so I’m very grateful for that and we’re really happy with how it came out.” The collector’s box holds three resincarved dragon eggs, reproduced and coloured from the props used in the series. In the set, the eggs rest together in a satin-lined, wooden case, which retails at $99. Now if you’re a Baratheon, that’s an easily digestible price, but we don't all have the wealth of a realm at our fingertips, so Ganoudis created a more wallet-friendly option. “We did all three dragon eggs as paperweights before the start of the last season. We always had the green one, Rhaegal, but then we added the other two – Viserion (taupe) and Drogon (red) – so people have the option to buy them one at a time.” The paperweights have a flat bottom and come stamped with the series logo, and if they’re bought individually they come encased in a muslin pouch. Apparently they’re popular as birthday or Christmas gifts, or for Game Of Thrones viewing parties. As for how the line may expand, Ganoudis says that’s up to the show’s producers, but she hopes to add more House sigils and pieces honouring fan favourite characters.
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
69
art book, part map, all
P magnificent paper engineering. Look in awe upon Game Of Thrones: A Pop-Up Guide To Westeros. At first it’s a book. A pop-up book. And even on that level it’s a card and paper marvel with towers and castles and the Wall
unfurling in front of your eyes, plus loads of extra bits and pieces to pull open to reveal spell-binding corrugated surprises. But break the magnetic seal on the spine and you can open the entire thing out into a pop-up map of Westeros that’s about three-feet
long. It’s like recreating the opening titles on your li ving room floor. It’s £40, and it ’s available from Bantam Press from 24 April. And no, you can’t have ours because there’s currently a Game Of Thrones-style power-play going on in the office to prove who is worthy to own it.
The Eyrie even features a bonus pop-up of the Justice of the Moon Door and someone falling through it.
King’s Landing makes for an impressive opening for the book. It’s huge!
70
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
There’s both a raven and a direwolf hidden under this flap. But we don’t want to spoil everything.
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
GAME OF THRONES
Dotted everywhere around the map are tags to pull, which either reveal more pop-ups or extra information.
The Heart Tree of the Godswood, located in the grounds of Winterfell (map clearly not to scale).
www.sfx.co.uk
POP�UP BOOK
AARRGGHH! The White Walker pop-up has to be one of the best. It may be small but the eyes are freaky.
The port city of Qarth in the continent of Essos (which also boasts a great pop-up of the Unsullied).
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
71
spoiling yourself AND WHY IT CAN BE A GOOD THING WHEN IT COMES TO GAME OF THRONES
Two Game Of Thrones fans – one who’s read the books, the other who hasn’t – discuss how that difference affects the way you watch, and enjoy, the show. Rob Power and Dave Golder talk it out… Dave: “I don’t read the books, and I’m fascinated by how reading them might affect the way people watch Game Of Thrones. It’s such a plot-lead show; one of the reasons I watch it is because I never know what’s going to happen and it ’s always outrageous. Surely, if you’ve read the books, that pleasure is denied to you. So is it a case instead of wondering how they’ve changed things or how things measure up to what you had in your head?”
minor character who was a singer, and there’s a part where he sings a song that Joffrey doesn’t like, so Joffrey has his tongue ripped out. Now, in the book that character goes on to have quite a significant part to play. He appears to be quite minor, but he ends up being used as a scapegoat for a murder. It seems really tiny and incidental, but it’s those little things that get me thinking, ‘How are they going to do that now, then?’
Rob: “That’s definitely a part of it. So
Dave: “So the changes tend
far the differences have been quite subtle, but they have been there. There’s a butterfly effect going on where the little things that have been changed are going to start having bigger repercussions. I quite like that. For example, in the first season there was a really
to be character-based
rather than plot-based?” Rob: “Pretty much. They’ve played quite fast and
loose with supporting characters, killing them off or changing characters completely, leaving
some out and creating entirely new ones, such as Ros the whore. I find myself wondering how the changes are going to play out. All the big plot turns have been the same in effect, if not in detail. And anyway, a lot of the key events are so massive and spectacular; I want to see how that is visualised. “I’ve always known how I thought certain things should look, but with something like the Battle of the Blackwater or the Red Wedding, it was great to see them on screen. Sure, they changed some details from the books. For example, in A Clash Of Kings, Tyrion has this scheme running all the way through where he gets all the smiths in King’s Landing to work on links for a giant chain. Eventually, at the Battle of the Blackwater, Stannis’s ships all enter the bay and Tyrion’s chain is lifted out of the water, trapping them all. I was quite disappointed that was missed out. Tyrion’s a military genius! But in the end, it didn’t matter. The way the whole battle was played out was incredible anyway. After all, the show is so well designed, the set design and every detail is so painstakingly put together, that you can’t help but not really mind when they change certain things.” Dave: “It’s one of the things I love about the show. You have got your classic fantasy castles, like up in the North. But all the other areas have their own little aesthetic details that are just spot on. But, do you think the readers of the books get some weird pleasure in hearing non-reader fan reactions to some of those setpieces? Did you spend the week before the Red Wedding going, ‘I can’t wait to see what the reaction’s going to be’?” Rob: “With
Dany s quite a bit younger in the books. ’
72
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
the Red Wedding, I was really impressed by how many people were genuinely surprised. I thought that surely everybody must have known what was going to happen. I think it says something for long-term readers and fans that they haven’t ruined it for viewers, even inadvertently! That whole season, I had a feeling of, ‘You’re never going to believe what’s
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
GAME OF THRONES
TO READ OR NOT TO READ?
GRRM loves Natalia Tena’s portrayal of Wildling Osha.
Ros doesn’t feature in the books at all.
I’VE ALWAYS KNOWN HOW I THOUGHT CERTAIN THINGS SHOULD LOOK, BUT WITH SOMETHING LIKE THE BATTLE OF THE BLACKWATER OR THE RED WEDDING, IT WAS GREAT TO SEE THEM ON SCREEN Rob
www.sfx.co.uk
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
73
ONE OTHER THING ABOUT WATCHING AS A NON�READER IS TRYING TO REMEMBER WHO EVERYONE IS. I WANT TO WATCH THE SHOW RECORDED, SO I CAN STOP IT AT THE SCENE CHANGES AND TRY TO REMEMBER WHAT EVERYONE WAS UP TO LAST TIME WE SAW THEM
The superlative Diana Rigg.
Jeyne in the books, Talisa on TV.
Dave
going to happen!’ It’s amazing to see people react to it for the first time, and be so shocked and outraged and hurt.”
One face that’s hard to forget.
Dave: “It’d be great to know if people had a
different reaction reading it to watching it. Was it more or less shocking?” Rob: “Well, Benioff and Weiss were very
smart with the Red Wedding. It didn’t play out exactly as it had in the books. They threw in extras. For example, Robb Stark’s wife Talisa. She’s an example of a character that is totally changed from the books – in fact, she doesn’t exist in the books. In A Clash Of Kings, Robb’s love interest is a girl called Jeyne Westerling, the daughter of a local lord. Robb gets injured in an attack, she nurses him back to health, they fall in love and get married. She’s still alive in the books, and there’s a whole question over whether she’s pregnant or not. Nobody knows; she’s disappeared into the background. So when her equivalent character was chopped up quite badly on screen that was shocking. It was really brutal what they did to her. “So there are still surprises, even at these major plot points. There are still changes that they’ve made where you realise you’re not as clever as you thought you were. And also, because you’re so familiar with what’s going to happen you’re not even thinking of different things that could happen, so it’s even more of a shock when it does.” Dave: “The other thing about watching it as a
non-reader – I don’t know if you have the same problem as a reader – is trying to remember who everyone is. Sometimes, I want to watch the show recorded, so that I can stop it at the scene changes and try to remember who everyone is and what they were up to last time we saw them!” Rob: “That was one
Poor Ned loses his head.
74
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
advantage of having read everything that was published up to the point the series started. You knew who everyone was. You even knew who the non-speaking actors in the background were! Because GRRM goes into such depth and there are so many characters, by the time you’ve absorbed all those hundreds of thousands of words, you instinctively know who everyone is.”
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
GAME OF THRONES
TO READ OR NOT TO READ?
Different tactics, same results.
Even readers didn’t see that coming. Dave: “Doesn’t it already hold
a record for the most speaking parts in any drama created in the US? And it’s only 30 episodes old! Dallas went for 10, 12 years, and yet Game Of Thrones holds the record!”
Dave: “It was a clever way of getting
information from characters in one part of the plot to characters in another.” Rob: “And they were just lovely scenes.
Rob: “And even with that in mind, I still think
that it’s quite a limited cast on screen. There are lots of characters, some minor, some not so minor, that I really like in the novels who haven’t turned up. I wish they’d done 24-episode seasons so that we could have the whole lot in there. But I ’spose you can’t have your cake and eat it. They’d never have been able to afford it for a start! But I’ve never been confused about the characters, that’s definitely a bit of a bonus from having read the books. I just want more! I want it to be lo nger; I want The Lord Of The Rings Extended Edition version!” Dave: “I wanted an entire episode of the Queen of
Thorns. I felt cheated in the last season when there were episodes that she wasn’t in! And I could watch Charles Dance as Tywin all day.” Rob: “Absolutely. He’s been brilliant.
Those scenes with him and Arya in Harrenhal in the second season were just superb.”
www.sfx.co.uk
It stretched credulity a little bit, you couldn’t quite imagine that Tywin would let the educated serving girl go, but it still worked. Then of course there’s Tyrion. Peter Dinklage is so good. He’s much better looking than Tyrion is made out to be in the novels – let’s face it, Dinklage is a pretty good looking dude! He’s cool, he’s got swagger, he’s just brilliant.”
Rob: “He’s just got bundles of charisma. He’s so
easy to watch and he’s got an aura about him. I think they’ve done a good job of keeping the moral complexity that the novels have too. Tyrion is an interesting character. He’s not afraid to go whoring or send people to their deaths or be quite Machiavellian, but he’s still likeable. It’s all still in the pot. Nothing has been over-simplified; they’ve kept all the good stuff that GRRM does so well.” Dave: “Do you think that any of the changes made
for the TV version will aff ect how he writes the last few books?”
Dave: “It’s great that he can be
such a strong character even though he’s playing a character derogatively referred to as a dwarf. You’d have thought that would be appalling and terrible and a PC minefield, but they ’ve created a really strong character. That’s kind of more PC than dancing around the subject! Sometimes, when TV does differently abled characters but seems scared to paint them at all in a negative light, it comes across as embarrassingly patronising. Tyrion’s great because he can be a complete dick and nobody goes, ‘Ooooh, negative depiction of a dwarf!’ because actually, we all love him.”
Rob: “No, I don’t think
so. He’s quite bloodyminded and he doesn’t pander to anyone. Which is why he takes so lon g! When I interviewed him a couple of years ago, he said that the only effect he could imagine was with the Wildling Osha, because of the way that Natalia Tena had played her. But other than that, nothing. All of the key characters have been transferred so carefully that there isn’t really any difference. Obviously the books are big, but every word is considered. I think he knows where he’s going. And he won’t be rushed getting there!”
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
75
“Have a run round King’s Landing and tell me that’s not impressive”
GAME OF THRONES
THE VIDEOGAME
YOU GAVE THE GAME OF THRONES VIDEOGAME ANOTHER CHANCE? The game was mercilessly panned, but Jordan Farley argues that it has a pretty major redeeming feature
G
eorge RR Martin’s A Martin’s A Song Of Ice And Fire series Fire series is a once-in-a-generation fantasy saga that even annoying gits who claim a deep loathing for “fairies, goblins and all that guff” can’t help but become obsessed with. Even Even more people adore HBO’s small screen adaptation, Game Of Thrones, Thrones, but did you know there’s more to Westeros Westeros than what you’ve seen on TV or read in books? A videogame with a tale to tell that offers all the political intrigue, bloodthirsty action and jaw-flooring twists the series is best known for? Thrones, The modestly-monikered Game Of Thrones, from French developer Cyanide, was widely panned on its release in 2012, but Jordan Farley has assembled the SFX court court to argue that if you’ve written off this underplayed gem, you’re missing out on one of the best Fire has to offer… stories A stories A Song Of Ice And Fire has PROSECUTION: “Your
Honour, my learned colleague, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, today we present to you the case against the Game Of Thrones videogame. Thrones videogame. Hang on… they made a Game Of Thrones videogame?” Thrones videogame?” DEFENCE: “Of course they did! How can you have a case if you don’t even know the thing you’re prosecuting exists?” PROSECUTION: “I’m just yanking your chain, I know it exists, which is more than I can say for
www.sfx.co.uk
99 per cent of the people who watch A watch A Game Of Thrones on Thrones on TV.” DEFENCE: “Fair point, but the size of your audience doesn’t always directly correlate with quality. How else do you explain Fifty explain Fifty Shades Of Grey selling Grey selling 90 million copies?” PROSECUTION: “A planet full of perverts?” DEFENCE: “Let’s hope the Judge isn’t a Fifty a Fifty Shades fan… Shades fan… This is beside the point. The Game Of Thrones RPG Thrones RPG is superb despite its despite its criminally small audience.” audience.” PROSECUTION: “You can understand why audiences were turned off: it looks pants. I mean, look at it! (Exhibit A) The textures are muddy, the character models appear to be glorified Lego men and it’s full of immersion-breaking bugs. And don’t get me started on the voice voice acting.” DEFENCE: “Not every game can have the Auto or an production values of a Grand Theft Auto or Assassin’s Creed , because few developers have the kind of resources that Rockstar or Ubisoft have. Cyanide is a fairly small studio based in France who are best known for strategy games. Game Of Thrones was Thrones was a big step up for them and though it’s far from a technical marvel, it’s plain to see that a lot of accomplished craft went into the creation of the environments (Exhibit B). Have a run round King’s Landing, or Riverspring (a town created for the game) and tell me that’s not impressive.” PROSECUTION: “It’s not impressive.”
EXHIBIT A
EXHIBIT B Sylvain Sechi, lead designer at Cyanide, on building Westeros: “We started with a lot of documentation to really capture the essence of the books. Then, we did ‘realistic’ architecture. In games, most of the time architecture makes no sense. Houses have no kitchen or toilets, rooms are mostly empty. We were careful to ask ourselves these kinds of questions at all times. Finally, we ‘aged’ everything. Nothing is new; nothing is ‘out of the factory’. We were really inspired by the first Star Wars in that respect.”
ULTIMATE ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
77
EXHIBIT C Sylvain Sechi on that ending ending (no spoilers): “The darker story elements definitely felt natural. The ending was obvious for us, but we had a really hard time convincing the publishers/ distributor as they feared it was too dark and would displease some players. Game Of Thrones isn’t My Little Pony . We kept our ending.”
“It’s how the two characters are connected and the tragic events in the final third of the game that make their story truly memorable” EXHIBIT E Sylvain Sechi on storytelling: “Storytelling was our biggest production effort. It took us a year, just to get the backbone of the script right and to create all of the characters... It was actually a long and painful road as we wanted the game to respect both what was already written an and d what GRRM will write later. We therefore therefore had a lot of work to do on coherence and consistency, in order to make sure that the incredibly rich universe of Game Of Thrones was treated as it deserved to be. Regarding our efforts, we had a team of 10 people (writers and designers alike) dedicated to the story.”
78
SFX
ULTIMATE ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscr www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions iptions
GAME OF THRONES
THE VIDEOGAME
EXHIBIT D Sylvain Sechi on character building: “Creating the characters was one of the most difficult parts, as we really wanted them to feel real and detailed, as if they truly existed in that world. It took us a long time to define the relationship our heroes had with every single other character in the stories. And since we knew that was the way to make a rich story, we also did that with all of the other characters. Working on this huge web of relationships was a complex matter, especially because the choices you make change the way characters react towards either Mors or Alester (or both).”
EXHIBIT F Sylvain Sechi on George RR Martin’s involvement: “GRRM is a very passionate and busy man. We had some really intense sessions with him to share our story and to hear his feedback and input, and also to make sure everything was perfectly consistent between the game and the books. He also reviewed everything we wrote (dialogue included) regarding characters that exist from the books. I know he was happy with the story we created in his world, and we’re truly proud of that.”
DEFENCE: “Did
you even play it?” played it for an hour or so.” DEFENCE: “Well, that’s the problem you see, all the good stuff comes later.” PROSECUTION: “That’s not my problem, that’s a problem with the game.” DEFENCE: “We got lucky with A with A Game Of Thrones on Thrones on television, it hit the ground running and the pace hasn’t slowed since. But how many other (brilliant) shows can you say have done that? Not enough to require two hands, that’s for sure. And the same is true of videogames, especially RPGs, which generally generally require dozens of hours to complete.” PROSECUTION: “Are you saying I have to play an ugly game for dozens of hours to get to the good stuff?” dozens, but around 10 should do DEFENCE: “Not dozens, it. The game has a complicated split narrative PROSECUTION: “I
www.sfx.co.uk
that builds to the meeting of the two main characters: Alester Sarwyck (a Red Priest of R’hllor) and Mors Westford (a member of the Night’s Watch). The opening chapters are important for building empathy with both of them before you get to the really juicy stuff when they come together, and especially by the end. Oh boy, that ending (Exhibit C). They ’re brilliant characters, two of the best ever created for the A Song Of Ice And Fire series Fire series in fact. Needless to say, they have a complicated history. They operate in a moral grey z one, have chequered pasts and crucially feel ‘real’ (Exhibit D), something few RPGs ever achieve with their main characters.” PROSECUTION: “Yeah, “Yeah, but the books and the TV show have ‘real’ characters in spades; what makes Alester and your man Mors so special?” DEFENCE: “First of all, the huge amount of
ULTIMATE ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
79
“My 70-year-old dad watches Game Of Thrones . How do you expect him to play the game when he doesn’t have the hand-eye co-ordination to play Pong ?” EXHIBIT G
EXHIBIT H Sylvain Sechi on the game’s reception: “We’re still a bit bitter that the game received a mixed reception. From the RPG/story lovers, the game was incredibly well received, but the broader audience was probably expecting a more ‘action’ game or a ‘play exactly what is told in the TV series’ game. We wanted to create something new that is perfectly faithful to the universe, with a quality story, and in that respect, we were successful. If we could do it again, or make a sequel, I would definitely change the combat system. I’d also add more choices/ consequences. I think I’d also try to push the character sheet customisation deeper. And I’d definitely make one of the lead characters a female.”
80
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
well-written dialogue in the game means you get into their heads like few other characters in the series. Secondly, it’s how the two characters are connected and the tragic events in the final third of the game that make their story truly memorable, but it would be unethical of me to go into details because spoilers, sweetie.” PROSECUTION: “Who let River Song in here? So we’re just supposed to take your word for it that the story is good?” DEFENCE: “Not at all. (Exhibits E and F) Not only was the story Cyanide’s ‘biggest production effort’, but GRRM himself reviewed almost every single word written for the game. He even makes a meta-cameo as Maester Martin (Exhibit G). The story is 100% canon, taking place during the events of the first season/book, with appearances from Cersei Lannister, Jeor Mormont and Lord Varys. It was even written with future books in mind, so there could be no conflict with future stories. The murder of Jon Arryn is the spark that ignites the tale, much as it is in A Game Of Thrones, while Ned’s death is important during the game’s climactic moments. Heck, the reason why Mors is sent to The Wall is because he refused Tywin Lannister’s order to kill the children of mad king Aerys Targaryen during Robert Baratheon’s rebellion. Rather than simply retell the events of the first season (Exhibit H) the game tells a unique tale that’s so immersed in A Song Of Ice And Fire lore no true fan could play it and not be dazzled.” PROSECUTION: “Okay, I’ll admit it, the story is probably quite good. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that the combat is really rubbish.” DEFENCE: “If you’ve only played it for an hour… oh, who am I kidding. If you’ve played it
for an hour you’ve seen pretty much all there is to offer in terms of the combat. There’s an admirable scope to customise your character’s abilities, and while you’re playing as Mors you can take control of your dog at any point ( he’s a skinchanger, you see), but once you’ve found three or four attacks that work you’re given no reason to do anything different for the rest of the game. And there are a lot of battles.” PROSECUTION: “Objection! Are you the prosecution, or am I?” DEFENCE: “Oh yes, sorry. Do continue.” PROSECUTION: “Thank you. What was I saying? Rubbish combat, right. Another crucial problem is that RPGs are built on complex systems with numbers flying about all over the place. My 70-year-old dad watches Game Of Thrones. How do you expect him to play the game when he doesn’t have the hand-eye coordination for Pong ?” DEFENCE: “Everyone’s got to start somewhere!” PROSECUTION: “Right…” DEFENCE: “It’s true, games aren’t for everyone, especially RPGs, which require more of a commitment than your average shoot-’em-up, but the investment is worth it. If you’re a gamer you really have no excuse not to play it. Or at the very least watch someone else play it on YouTube.” PROSECUTION: “I can just watch it on YouTube? You could have just said that from the start!” DEFENCE: “But that’s not the best way to experience it!” PROSECUTION: “Ah, details. I think we’ve got everything we need to reach a settlement. DEFENCE : “Hang on, I didn’t get to tell you about the bit where…” JUDGE : “Case closed.”
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
Save 25% and never miss an issue again!
SUBSCRIBE TO SFX SPECIAL EDITIONS
S AV E £ £ £ !
❱ SAVE 25% COMPARED TO
BUYING IN THE SHOPS ❱ NEVER MISS AN ISSUE AGAIN ❱SIX ISSUES PER YEAR DELIVERED TO YOUR DOOR (P&P INCLUDED) ❱SUBSCRIBE FROM JUST £22.49 EVERY SIX MONTHS Live outside the UK? For fantastic savings please visit www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/film/sfxspecial-editions-magazine-subscription
Subscribe today! Visit myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/sfsp1m Or call us on 0844 848 2852 (quote SFSP1N) Lines open Monday–Friday 8am–9.30pm, Saturday 8am–4pm
GO DIGITAL Search for SFX on your favourite device and start your free subscription trial!* *Free trial not available via Zinio.
. 4 1 e 0 r 2 a u y a o M y f t I s 1 . 3 t s : e s u d q n e r e r e n f o f p O u . e s l b m a r e l i t a g v a a m e / r a g a e . e m t n v a a f r a y u m g : i t t i s b i e v d e s t c a e e l r i d p s e n h o i t t f i o d s n l i o a c t e d n d a l l u s F m . r r e a t l e l y u a f n r o i s F . e e u s g s n i a x h i s c o e t v t i c e e c j e r b l u l i s d w u n o a Y t . n r y i l p n f o o ) t e i b i e m d t t t a c t e c r i r d e r y o b c g s e n i c i y r a P . p s ( e s r u s e s b i i r d c e s l b i a u s m t n n u i r l p l a K r U f o w u e o n y r d o n f u s f i r e e r f l f l i o w s i h e T w . d d n n a a t e s s m i w t e y n n K a U t a m n o o r i f t p s i e r u c s s s b i u d s e r c i r u o p - y l l l e u f c n x a i s c o g t n s i y u l u b l a o c t r d o s e r u a o p t m e o t i c r s w g n n i a v c a S u : o S y N y a O I w T I y D n N a O n C i D d e N i A f s i S t M a R s s E i T d
K C O T S I ©
DANGEROUS WOMEN
THE PRINCESS AND THE QUEEN
THE
PRINCESS AND THE
QUEEN
OR THE BLACKS AND THE GREENS A new 100-page novella by George RR Martin, set in the world of A Song Of Ice And Fire and revealing the origins of the Targaryen Civil War, is included in Dangerous Women, a recently published anthology edited by GRRM and Gardner Dozois. We publish an extract for you here… o banners flew above the blackened towers and ruined keeps of Harrenhal when Prince Daemon descended from the sky to take up the castle for his own. A few squatters had found shelter in the castle’s deep vaults and undercellars, but the sound of Caraxes’s wings sent them fleeing. When the last of them was gone, Daemon Targaryen walked the cavernous halls of Harren’s seat alone, with no companion but his dragon. Each night at dusk he slashed the heart tree in the godswood to mark the passing of another day. Thirteen marks can be seen upon that weirwood still; old wounds, deep and dark, yet the lords who have ruled Harrenhal since Daemon’s day say they bleed afresh every spring.
www.sfx.co.uk
On the fourteenth day of the prince’s vigil, a shadow swept over the castle, blacker than any passing cloud. All the birds in the godswood took to the air in fright, and a hot wind whipped the fallen leaves across the yard. Vhagar had come at last, and on her back rode the one- eyed prince Aemond Targaryen, clad in night-black armor chased with gold. He had not come alone. Alys Rivers flew with him, her long hair streaming black behind her, her belly swollen with child. Prince Aemond circled twice about the towers of Harrenhal, then brought Vhagar down in the outer ward, with Caraxes a hundred yards away. The dragons glared balefully at each other, and Caraxes spread his wings and hissed, flames dancing across his teeth. The prince helped his woman down from Vhagar’s back, then turned to face his uncle.
“Nuncle, I hear you have been seeking us.” “Only you,” Daemon replied. “Who told you where to find me?“ “My lady,” Aemond answered. “She saw you in a storm cloud, in a mountain pool at dusk, in the fire we lit to cook our suppers. She sees much and more, my Alys. You were a fool to come alone.” “Were I not alone, you would not have come,” said Daemon. “Yet you are, and here I am. You have lived too long, nuncle.” “On that much we agree,” Daemon replied. Then the old prince bid Caraxes bend his neck, and climbed stiffly onto his back, whilst the young prince kissed his woman and vaulted lightly onto Vhagar, taking care to fasten the four short chains between belt and saddle. Daemon left his own chains dangling. Caraxes
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
83
hissed again, filling the air with flame, and Vhagar answered with a roar. As one the two dragons leapt into the sky. Prince Daemon took Caraxes up swiftly, lashing him with a steel-tipped whip until they disappeared into a bank of clouds. Vhagar, older and much the larger, was also slower, made ponderous by her very size, and ascended more gradually, in ever widening circles that took her and her rider out over the waters of the Gods Eye. The hour was late, the sun was close to setting, and the lake was calm, its surface glimmering like a sheet of beaten co pper. Up and up she soared, searching for Caraxes as Alys Rivers watched from atop Kingspyre Tower in Harrenhal below. The attack came sudden as a thunderbolt. Caraxes dove down upon Vhagar with a piercing shriek that was heard a doz en miles away, cloaked by the glare of the setting sun on Prince Aemond’s blind side. The Blood Wyrm slammed into the older dragon with terrible force. Their roars echoed across the Gods Eye as the two grappled and tore at one another, dark against a blood red sky. So bright did their flames burn that fisherfolk below feared the clouds themselves had caught fire. Locked together, the dragons tumbled toward the lake. The Blood Wyrm’s jaws closed about Vhagar’s neck, her black teeth sinking deep into the flesh of the larger dragon. Even as Vhagar’s claws raked her belly open and Vhagar ’s own teeth ripped away a wing, Caraxes bit deeper, worrying at the wound as the la ke rushed up below them with terrible speed. And it was then, the tales tell us, that Prince Daemon Targaryen swung a leg over his saddle and leapt from one dragon to the other. In his hand was Dark Sister, the sword of Queen Visenya. As Aemond One-Eye looked up in terror, fumbling with the chains that bound him to his saddle, Daemon ripped off his nephew’s helm and drove the sword down into his blind eye, so hard the point came out the back of the young prince’s throat. Half a heartbeat later, the dragons struck the lake, sending up a gout of water so high that it was said to have been as tall as Kingspyre Tower. Neither man nor dragon could have survived such an impact, the fisherfolk who saw it said. Nor did they. Caraxes lived long enough to crawl back onto the land. Gutted, with one wing torn from his body and the waters of the lake smoking about him, the Blood Wyrm found the strength to drag himself onto the lakeshore, expiring beneath the walls of Harrenhal. Vhagar’s carcass plunged to the lake floor, the hot blood from the gaping wound in her neck bringing the water to a boil over her last resting place. When she was found some years later, after the end of the Dance of the Dragons, Prince Aemond’s armored bones remained chained to her saddle, with Dark Sister thrust hilt-deep through his eye socket. That Prince Daemon died as well we cannot doubt. His remains were never found, but there are queer currents in that lake, and hungry fish as well. The singers tell us that the old prince survived the fall and afterward made his way back to the girl Nettles, to spend the remainder of his days at her side. Such stories make for charming songs, but poor history.
84
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
It was upon the twenty-second day of the fifth moon of the year 130 AC when the dragons danced and died above the Gods Eye. Daemon Targaryen was nine-and-forty at his death; Prince Aemond had only turned twenty. Vhagar, the greatest of the Targaryen dragons since the passing of Balerion the Black Dread, had counted one hundred eightyone years upon the earth. Thus passed the last living creature from the days of Aegon’s Conquest, as dusk and da rkness swallowed Black Harren’s accursed seat. Yet so few were on hand to bear witness that it would be some time before word of Prince Daemon’s last battle became widely known. Back in King’s Landing, Queen Rhaenyra was finding herself ever more isolated with every new betrayal. The suspected turncloak Addam Velaryon had fled before he could be put to the question. By ordering the arrest of Addam Velaryon, she had lost not only a dragon and a dragonrider, but her Queen’s Hand as well... and more than half the army that had sailed from Dragonstone to seize the Iron Throne was made up of men sworn to House Velaryon. When it became known that Lord Corlys languished in a dungeon under the Red Keep, they began to abandon her cause by the hundreds. Some made their way to Cobbler’s Square to join the throngs gathered there, whilst others slipped through postern gates or over the walls, intent on making their way back to Driftmark. Nor could those who remained be trusted. That very day, not long after sunset, another horror visited the queen’s court. Helaena Targaryen, sister, wife, and queen to King Aegon II and mother of his children, threw herself from her window in Maegor’s Holdfast to die impaled upon the iron spikes that lined the dry moat below. She was but one-and-twenty. By nightfall, a darker tale was being told in the streets and alleys of King’s Landing, in inns and brothels and pot shops, even holy septs. Queen Helaena had been murdered, the whispers went, as her sons had been before her. Prince Daeron and his dragons would soon be at the gates, and with them the end of Rhaenyra’s reign. The old queen was determined that her young half-sister should not live to revel in her downfall, so she had sent Ser Luthor Largent to seize Helaena with his huge rough hands and fling her from the window onto the spikes below. The rumor of Queen Helaena’s “murder” was soon on the lips of half King’s Landing. That it was so quickly believed shows how utterly the city had turned against their once beloved queen. Rhaenyra was ha ted; Helaena had been loved. Nor had the common folk of the city forgotten the cruel murder of Prince Jaehaerys by Blood and Cheese. Helaena’s end had been mercifully swift; one of the spikes took her through the throat and she died without a sound. At the moment of her death, across the city atop the Hill of Rhaenys, her dragon Dreamfyre rose suddenly with a roar that shook the Dragonpit, snapping two of the chains that bound her. When Queen Alicent was informed of her daughter’s passing, she rent her garments and pronounced a dire curse upon her rival. That night King’s Landing rose in bloody riot.
DISCOVER MORE DANGEROUS WOMEN GRRM and Gardner Dozois have put together an impressive collection of specially commissioned stories from some of the biggest names in fantasy, including: “THE PRINCESS AND THE QUEEN” by George RR Martin “NORA’S SONG” by Cecelia Holland “BOMBSHELLS” by Jim Butcher “WRESTLING JESUS” by Joe R Lansdale “NEIGHBORS” by Megan Lindholm (aka Robin Hobb) “SHADOWS FOR SILENCE IN THE FORESTS OF HELL” by Brandon Sanderson “A QUEEN IN EXILE” by Sharon Kay Penman “VIRGINS” by Diana Gabaldon (an Outlander story) “SOME DESPERADO” by Joe Abercrombie (a Red Country story) WARNING! Contains sword-wielding
women warriors, deadly female serial killers, formidable female superheroes, seductive femme fatales, female wizards, hard-living bad girls, daring dragon riders and many more. Available now from HarperVoyager in hardback, £20.
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
A SPECIAL SCENE�BY�SCENE BREAKDOWN OF PETER JACKSON’S EPIC TRILOGY. WARNING! INTENSELY PACKED WITH TRIVIA
THE LORD OF THE RINGS THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING
A tree and a pipe. What more does a Hobbit need?
The Fellowship Of The Ring Key
TRIVIA: Interesting
DID YOU SPOT?:
WTF?!: Did that
Rings factoids
Missed moments
really happen!?
BONUS: Extended
GOOFS: Bloopers
FRODO FALLS: This
edition extras
and gaffes
happens a lot
The Prancing Pony Drinking Game xxxxxx DRINK
EVERY TIME...
O N E D R I N K
T H R E E D R I N K S
T W O D R I N K S
Bilbo or Frodo get their fingers on the ring.
n
Merry, Pippin or Sam have a chat about food.
n
Frodo looks weepy or actually sheds a tear.
n
Legolas fires an arrow.
n
n
n
The Ringwraiths scare someone (including Hobbits). Gollum appears or is mentioned.
THE LORD OF THE RINGS
THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING n
Year: 2001
n
Director: Peter Jackson
n
Writers: JRR Tolkien, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson
0:01:02 The opening scenes of The Fellowship Of
The Ring are given an expository voiceover
from Cate Blanchett as Galadriel. Her smooth Elven tones tell us: “Much that once was is lost; for none now live who remember it.” This is the Tolkien-ised version of: “A long time a go, in a galaxy far, far away...” 0:02:09 “One ring to rule them all,” Galadriel
says, and there’s a rather lovely shot of Elvish writing appearing on the ring on Sauron’s finger. Clearly, that ring spells Trouble with a capital T. 0:03:14 Sauron looms over the human and Elvish
troops facing him. He’s huge, although not actually as big as you’d expect, given that he spends the rest of the trilogy as a gigantic fiery eye on top of a tower. 0:03:58 There goes Sauron’s finger, courtesy of a well-timed swing from Isildur. The result? Sauron goes KABLOOIE! Armies are felled in vast swathes by the explosion – impressive CGI for the year 2001, and the result of the computer program known as MASSIVE (Multiple Agent Simulation System in Virtual Environment), which was used extensively in these films. Its selling point
www.sfx.co.uk
n
Starring: Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Orlando Bloom, Cate Blanchett
was that each computer-generated person would react realistically to events happening around them… although at first, during battles,
little chaps and chappesses, some large pigs and a Hobbit flicking earwax off his fingers.
the programmers were amused to discover that all their people simply ran away from harm.
0:09:37 Our first glimpse of Samwise Gamgee,
, . S D E V D D I U N G O E S S N E O H I T I T F D E O S D E E S D O P N E R T U X P E E E H H T T R D E O F S : U E E T V O A N H E E S A W
smiling at a pot of flowers in a rather over-thetop way (does he fancy them or something?).
0:05:26 “History became legend,” says Galadriel.
“Legend became myth.” Hang on, aren’t they one and the same? Now the action has leapt forward by, er, 2,500 years. Gollum has the ring , and for the first time we hear the words “My Precious”! Then the action cuts forward another 500 years. You certainly can’t say that The Lord Of The Rings is a small, intimate story. 0:06:51 Bilbo Baggins finds the ring in Gollum’s
cave in a scene which was recreated in the later Hobbit film, An Unexpected Journey . Rather amazingly, Ian Holm’s voice sounds very much like Martin Freeman’s, even if they don’t quite look identical. Further proof that Freeman was destined to play Bilbo, perhaps? 0:07:52 The Fellowship Of The Ring
appears on screen, superimposed over the interior of Bilbo’s wooden dwelling, Bag End. We now get a charming and bucolic Concerning Hobbits sequence introducing the
0:10:33 Gandalf wheels into view, singing
“The Road Goes Ever On”, a walking song Tolkien first used in The Hobbit . 0:10:47 Gandalf: “A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins. Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.” This quote has since been appropriated the world over by kids late for school or workers late to the office.
E L P
0:11:24 The first proper shot of the trilogy featuring a Hobbit and a regularsized person (or wizard). It looks perfectly natural: it’s not long before we take these sights for granted, despite the astonishing amount of behind-the-scenes work. This shot, for example, didn’t actually use CGI: it was filmed using forced perspective. Elijah Wood was really sitting about four feet behind Ian McKellen and they were told where to look so their eyelines matched up. Sneaky!
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
87
Sing: “Frodo and Samwise sitting in a tree…”
0:12:00 Frodo and Gandalf drive into
Hobbiton, an extraordinary fake town created in New Zealand’s Matamata region that still exists as a tourist attraction today after being rebuilt for the Hobbit movies (www.hobbitontours.com).
0:22:00 Bilbo goes a bit wonky while making his
birthday speech, insulting the crowd (possibly) and then disappearing theatrically after putting on the ring. Weirdly, it doesn’t seem to occur to anybody other than Gandalf (and much, much later, Frodo) to check Bag End afterwards to find out if that was where he vanished to…
0:16:04 Gandalf enters Bag End and bangs his
head on a beam. Note: a wizard bangs his head on a beam precisely when he means to. 0:19:01 Bilbo and Gandalf sit outside Bag End
eyelines between humans and Hobbits don’t quite line up, sadly, although given that this scene features Bilbo wandering in a
and blow smoke rings. Gandalf sends a galleon-shaped ring through Bilbo’s humble circle, just because wizards are show-offs. (See also: wizard fireworks.)
complicated manner around a room while Gandalf looms over him, we’ll let them off. It must have been a bugger to film, and you can’t fault the ambition.
0:20:04 Katie and Billy Jackson, the
offspring of Peter and Fran Walsh. They’re the two wide-eyed Hobbits hearing Bilbo tell his troll story. Look out for these guys throughout the trilogy… 0:20:40 Meriadoc Brandybuck and Peregrin
Took, aka Merry and Pippin, make their first appearance as thieving Hobbitses – stealing Gandalf’s fireworks. What were they thinking? Didn’t it occur to them that Gandalf was going to fire them all anyway? Incidentally, the firework Pippin runs off with looks more like a giant prawn than a dragon.
88
SFX
0:25:13 One of the few times when
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
0:26:40 Gandalf tells Bilbo off and the lights in
the room darken as he makes his feelings known. Despite the smoke rings and the fireworks, this is our first glimpse of the true powers of a wizard – helped along by some excellent sound effects. You can almost feel the building shaking.
If the ring is so incredibly powerful that he doesn’t want to touch it, why on (Middle-)earth does a simple piece of paper protect him from its powers? 0:31:25 Ringwraiths ride from Minas Morgul for
the Shire after we h ear Gollum’s tortured voice screaming. We can tell they’re evil because a) they’re all in black robes and b) there’s a choir on the soundtrack. The Omen has a lot to answer for. 0:35:35 Gandalf burns the ring and the famous
words appear: “One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.” By the way, Gandalf’s nose is fake. Just in case you were wondering. 0:40:39 During the course of this trilogy
Frodo falls over a lot . We’re going to call this his first fall, although technically he only falls to the ground because Gandalf tells him to. Be ready for many, many more Frodo-falls...
0:30:12 So this is confusing. Gandalf
doesn’t pick the ring up off the floor: he waits for Frodo to do it, reluctant to touch it. He gets Frodo to put it in an envelope, then closes it and seals it with wax before handing it back to the Hobbit. But why?
0:43:00 As Sam stops by the scarecrow
and tells Frodo this is the furthest he’s ever been from home, a car goes over the hill in the background. Or at least, it used to: you could spot it on a cinema screen, but
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
THE LORD OF THE RINGS THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING
Scared of water, apparently.
Saruman reveals his dark side.
Who’d have thought… it’s a perfect fit. not on a TV screen. (There’s a chance it was corrected before the film hit DVD… but trust us, it was there.) 0:43:08 Frodo and Sam investigate some
Wood-Elves. Sam says, “I don’t know why, but it makes me sad.” Hmm. Let’s think. Could that be something to do with the maudlin dirge they’re singing as they slip away from this realm to the Grey Havens, never to be seen again? 0:47:40 Gandalf discovers that Saruman the White is actually Saruman the dirty traitor. The more times you watch the wizard duel that ensues, the sillier it gets. It’s as if it’s backed by a law of diminishing seriousness. 0:51:00 Frodo gets knocked over as he and Sam bump into Merry and Pippin, who talk about a “shortcut to mushrooms”. This is the name of the fourth chapter of Tolkien’s first book in The Lord Of The Rings. 0:52:38 The Hobbits hide among some
tree roots while a Ringwraith sniffs around for them. Merry distracts it by throwing something to one side and the Hobbits run for freedom. However, this makes no sense: unless the Ringwraith was incredibly
www.sfx.co.uk
stupid, deaf or blind, it would have clearly seen and heard the Hobbits escaping!
instantly impresses, adding a layer of grit and seriousness to the action.
0:55:00 More proof that the Ringwraiths
1:01:01 The gatekeeper at Bree is crushed
aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer. One of them chases the Hobbi ts
by a falling door in a manner that seems incredibly cartoonish for such a serious
onto a wooden ferry… and then gives up on them. But by our reckoning, its horse could clearly have jumped onto the ferry over the tiny gap, or it could have tried to jump itself, or it could have swum across. Sauron’s been after this ring for 3,000 years: why let a little water get in the way? Ringwraith, you are the
moment. See how it squashes him totally flat! Is he Road Runner?
weakest link. Goodbye. 0:56:09 Peter Jackson makes a cameo as
a man eating a carrot and belching. Do carrots really make you belch? Discuss. 0:57:43 Pippin makes a discovery: “It comes in
pints?” To which we say… Hobbits must have very large bladders. 0:59:40 He slips up on some beer and
the ring just happens to fall onto his finger. What’re the odds, eh? Naughty ring. Sauron’s giant fiery eye is pretty scary, by the way. 1:00:45 Strider, aka Aragorn, saves Frodo and meets the rest of the Hobbits. Viggo Mortensen
1:04:02 The Hobbits get stuck in a swamp
and complain about mosquitoes, then make camp in a rather unconvincing studio set. Aragorn sings a song about Luthien and Beren and Frodo asks him about it. Hobbits must have fantastic hearing, because Aragorn mumbles his reply and Frodo hears it from a long way away. Must be the pointy ears. 1:07:08 The Hobbits reach Weathertop. This was where the film had an intermission in some cinemas on the UK release. You can also spot Weathertop in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey as the campsite for Azog’s Orcs. 1:09:50 Say what you like about Hobbits, but they’re certainly brave. Check out how Sam attacks the Ringwraiths and then Merry and Pippin stand in front of Frodo to keep him safe. Naturally, once they’re despatched, Frodo falls over.
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
89
It’s the pointy ears that give it away.
Pretty, pretty sundappled Rivendell.
What’s the betting he doesn’t last long?!
Although, oddly, not this type of water… 1:12:47 Aragorn
to the rescue! This was Mortensen’s first filmed scene after he replaced Stuart Townsend in the role, arriving on set and stepping into another actor’s shoes with barely any time to prepare. You’d never know it. 1:14:35 Sam
comments on the fact they’ve found Bilbo’s trolls. This now makes a lot more sense if you’ve seen The Hobbit …
1:20:29 This
bit is rather confusing. Arwen seems to offer Frodo her grace to keep him going, but we don’t get much of an explanation for exactly what happened. Later we find out she’s dwindling away somehow, but never do the films say why
discussion about what to do. A UN council meeting, if you will.
(other than general “Elves leaving Middle-earth ennui”, that is).
say that Sean Bean is absolutely nailing it as Boromir: so many levels, and a world-weariness that makes a lot of sense when you find out more about him in the second film.
1:22:00 The eagles save Gandalf from his imprisonment at Isengard. If only he’d asked them to take Frodo to bloody Mordor, eh?
1:15:42 Arwen appears. You can tell she’s
an Elf because she comes accompanied by her own light source, moves in slowmotion and has a pretty choir soundtracking her movements. Also, her cloak disappears when we see her from Frodo’s point of view: is this a side-effect of being poisoned, that he can remove layers of clothing from women? We’ll call this a blooper, but there is a chance it was deliberately filmed this way. 1:17:22 Arwen’s
ride to safety with Frodo doesn’t happen in the original book, but at least it’s a chance for a female character to do something. Also, how rubbish are the Ringwraiths? They’re scared of the Brandywine River but quite happy to ride across an Elvish river with a powerful Elf waiting for them on the other side. Horse-wave SMASH! Serves ’em right.
90
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
1:23:14 Rivendell establishing shot. Rivendell is very pretty. Rivendell should be real. Why isn’t Rivendell real? Hmph. 1:29:39 “The
shards of Narsil,” says Boromir, having a mooch around one of the rooms in Rivendell while Aragorn watches. “The blade that cut the ring from Sauron’s hand. Still sharp...” This is an interesting little scene character-wise, but it’s interesting in another way: the way that Aragorn stares at Boromir is decidedly homoerotic. What’s that about? 1:34:00 The
slightly extended Council of Elrond. Famous for being the moment in the book that many readers can’t get past (wusses), in the film it’s a beautifully-shot
1:38:00 “One does not simply walk into Mordor!” Ah, the line that launched a thousand internet memes. We have to
1:39:16 “I
will take it!” yells Frodo, and the way
Gandalf closes his eyes in resignation is a beautiful touch. You can tell how bad this is going to be already, even though the next moments are filled with people swearing to help him. (Also, the look of disgust on Elrond’s face when Hobbits start appearing from every quarter is priceless.)
DISC TWO 0:00:10 Aragorn visits the grave of his mother, Gilraen. A nice bit of backstory, but you can see why it wasn’t in the theatrical release. 0:02:07 Bilbo loses control of himself for a second and tries to snatch the ring from Frodo. This totally unexpected scary moment caused one or two nightmares…
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
THE LORD OF THE RINGS THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING
Gimli: “The chambers of Moria!”
Frodo surprises everyone! 0:03:00 Elrond wishes the Fellowship goodbye and Frodo has to ask if Mordor is left or right. It’s left. Fact for you: lefthandedness has always been associated with evil; indeed, the Latin word “sinestra”, which later morphed into “sinister”, means “left hand”.
0:08:52 The Fellowship climbs the
mountain route of Caradhras. Notice how Legolas can walk on the snow because he is an Elf, while the rest of them struggle through it. Elves are cool.
Has he spotted some more crebain?! happened to Moria. Points go to Ori for use of the dramatic phrase “drums in the deep”. 0:25:45 Pippin drops a skeleton down a well.
Fool of a Took! The sound is astonishing – those drums are exquisitely realised.
0:10:40 You can tell Gandalf is a wizard 0:04:00 Lots of shots of New Zealand looking
majestic. You can almost sense the New Zealand tourist board starting to salivate.
because even after an avalanche, his hat stays on. 0:12:36 A breathless Gimli exclaims, “The walls
0:05:41 “No Gimli, I would not take the roads
of Moria!” You can imagine him doing that all
through Moria unless I had no other choice,” says Gandalf. So naturally the audience thinks, “Guess we’ll be going through Moria, then.”
the way through the mines, can’t you? “The floor of Moria!” “The tunnels of Moria!” “The stairs of Moria!”
0:06:06 We get our first real sense that
Legolas is more than just a chap with a bow who said nice things about Aragorn at the Council. Here, he spots an incoming murder of crows with his Elf eyes, yelling what is surely the franchise’s most unintelligible sentence: “Crebain from Dunland!” After which 99% of viewers went, “Huh?” (Crebain are large crows in Middle-earth.) 0:07:11 He trips over in the snow like the
unsteady Hobbit that he is. But it does give Boromir an opportunity to pick up the ring and go on about what a “little thing” it is. Alas, it’s all downhill for Boromir from here…
www.sfx.co.uk
0:14:47 Any pony-lovers can rest assured that in the books, Bill gets back to the Shire safely after Sam sends him off. 0:16:36 In his defence, however, he has just been grabbed by the Watcher in the Water…
0:27:19 The way Boromir sneers, “They have a
cave troll,” is priceless. And he sounds so Northern, it’s as though he’s channelling his other warrior alter-ego, Richard Sharpe. 0:28:24 Aragorn swipes the head of a goblin
clean off its shoulders. Name one person who didn’t cheer when that happened in the cinema and we’ll show you a filthy goblin-lover. 0:30:26 The cave troll surprises him and
off he goes.
0:31:39 He hits the ground after being
skewered. Guess we should probably let him off this one.
0:24:50 The Fellowship finds the tomb of
Balin, who is played by Ken Stott in the Hobbit films (set many years before this, obviously). Beside the tomb is the skeleton of Ori, played by Adam Brown in the Hobbit trilogy. His bony fingers are holding the Book Of Mazarbul, which helpfully explains what
0:32:03 The cave troll raises a hand to its
mouth pathetically after Legolas shoots him. This kind of anthropomorphising of a monster was a Ray Harryhausen speciality and Peter Jackson is, unsurprisingly, a massive Harryhausen fan.
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
91
Galadriel talks… verrry… sloooowwly.
Hang in there Gandalf. The eagles are coming.
Frodo blubs almost as often as he falls over.
Gimli sure knows how to wield an axe. 0:33:08 Nobody in the entire history of cinema
could have sold the line “To the Bridge of Khazad-dum!” as well as Ian McKellen does here. It’s a bit silly, after all. 0:39:30 Gandalf faces off with the Balrog.
“YOU SHALL NOT PASS!” he yells. Incidentally, in the book he says “You cannot pass!” But it’s still cool.
0:54:28 Frodo looks into Galadriel’s
magic pool and sees the Shire being razed by the forces of Sauron. This actually happens in the books – “The Scouring Of The Shire” – but was dropped from the movies because, let’s face it, the final film went on for long enough as it was. 1:04:36 Oh look, more scenery-porn to please
1:16:23 The Hobbit tumbles down a hill
while running away. Because of course he does. 1:17:50 Merry and Pippin are trapped by the
Uruk-hai... and Boromir comes flying to the rescue! He completely redeems himself for attacking Frodo during this fight; therefore, he dies an honourable death.
the New Zealand tourist board. 0:40:10 As many wags on the internet have
since pointed out, when Gandalf says, “Fly, you fools!” before falling to his apparent death, he might as well have been telling the Fellowship to use the eagles to get to Mordor. Oh well, hindsight’s a wonderful thing and all that. 0:43:40 Haldir has a chat with the
Fellowship. He seems to talk very slowly, as do Celeborn and Galadriel in the following scene. Are they all stoned? 0:49:46 As the Elves sing a lament, Sam
comes up with a poem about Gandalf’s fireworks. This proves Sam isn’t much of a poet, but his heart’s in the right place. 0 : 5 1 : 2 4 ? Boromir tells Aragorn, “My
father is a noble man.” His father is Denethor, played by Fringe star John Noble. So he’s right!
92
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
1:18:08 Legolas proves his archery skills, 1:06:00 Boromir and Aragorn discuss the
fact that Gollum is following them, then have a bit of a chat about the ring. This is all build-up to Boromir’s betrayal in the next few minutes… 1:12:28 Frodo runs away from Boromir and hits the ground. To even the odds, Boromir himself slips over a few moments later. Must be contagious. 1:15:29 Frodo’s sword glows blue and
Aragorn tells him to run – but he seems to know which direction the Uruk-hai are coming from without checking first. Is he psychic? However, this small hiccup doesn’t matter because suddenly they’re on him and a marvellous fight ensues. Gotta love how Aragorn raises his sword to salute the lead Uruk-hai before it starts, too. Cool factor: 1,000.
managing to kill six opponents with six arrows. Incidentally, there’s something to be said for holding the camera still and just letting the action happen: this is one of those times where it works a treat. 1:18:24 Check out this wonderful crane-
shot down the hill towards the battling Boromir – you get a real sense of how many Uruk-hai he’s really up against. You also have to bear in mind that the actors wearing Uruk-hai masks couldn’t see where they were going as they ran down that slope; kudos to them for being so brave! 1:19:43 The dramatic impact of Boromir
being hit with his first arrow is slightly undermined by the fact that there’s a statue of what seems to be Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi directly behind him.
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
THE LORD OF THE RINGS THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING
Boromir shuffles off this mortal coil. Sob.
A couple of eagles and they’d be there in a shot.
The effects team turns wind into water. 1:21:19 Earlier we were wondering if the Ringwraiths were stupid; now it’s time to doubt the Uruk-hai. They sweep up Merry and Pippin and run off with them, but wouldn’t it have been better to check with them first that they hadn’t stashed the ring somewhere safe? Even if the Uruk-hai didn’t know why they were capturing Hobbits, surely Saruman must have mentioned that he wanted an item they were carrying rather than simply the Hobbits themselves! 1:21:37 The creaking of the Uruk-hai’s bow as he
1:22:09 Aragorn fights with the lead Uruk-hai and
were actually filmed dry – his hair is moving thanks to a wind machine!
may well ruin Boromir’s death scene for you, so don’t read on if you don’t want to know… Still here? Okay. When we see Aragorn leaning over Boromir from behind, Boromir’s hand is on his left shoulder. When we see Boromir’s point of view looking up, his hand is nowhere in sight. Oops. 1:24:19 “I would have followed you, my brother.
My captain. My king...” For an actor who has
www.sfx.co.uk
1:31:03 The film ends with Frodo and Sam
heading off towards a Mordor that’s glowing red on the horizon. It actually looks surprisingly close. They could probably drive there in a few hours. Or fly there in a few ticks if only they’d bothered to talk to the eagles...
the legend around the filming of these movies, when Sean Astin waded into the water to follow Frodo, he cut his foot on a piece of glass and had to go to hospital. Ouch. 1:27:20 The shots of Sam underwater
1:22:40 Be warned: here’s a mistake that
quiver of arrows on his back as he discusses whether to go after Frodo and Sam with Aragorn.
1:26:30 In a story that’s become part of
pulls back an arrow to finish Boromir off is a gorgeous piece of sound design.
the creature stops for a moment to lick blood off a knife. Cool factor: minus 1,000.
1:29:28 Note how Legolas has a full
made a career out of dying on screen, our familiarity with watching him pop his clogs hasn’t hurt Sean Bean’s ability to break our hearts. “That was the most heroic death I’ve ever done,” Bean told us. “And it was a really good send-off, so I quite enjoyed that. If you can enjoy being killed! ” RIP Boromir.
1:57:29 The credits on this Extended Edition end.
That’s right, they’re more than 16 minutes long. The film lists the many charter members of The Lord Of The Rings Official Fan Club – who each paid $39.95 for the privilege.
EXCITE�O�METER™ Gandalf turns up
THRILLED ENTERTAINED
Hiding from the Ringwraiths
NODDING OFF
ZZZZZZZZZ … Z
RUNNING TIME (MINS)
Weathertop ruckus
Wizard fireworks. Oooh! Ahhh! Bilbo and Gollum!
0
30
The Watcher in the Water Drums in the deep...
Arwen’s ride
END
Avalanche!
The ring at the Inn Lots of talking in Rivendell
60
Boromir gets Beaned
The Balrog!
90
Lots of talking in Lothlorien
120
150
180
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
210
SFX
93
THE LORD OF THE RINGS THE TWO TOWERS
“One little move fish-breath and you’re skewered!”
The Two Towers Key
TRIVIA: Interesting
DID YOU SPOT?:
WTF?!: Did that
Rings factoids
Missed moments
really happen!?
BONUS: Extended
GOOFS: Bloopers
FRODO FALLS: This
edition extras
and gaffes
happens a lot
The Prancing Pony Drinking Game DRINK EVERY TIME...
O N E D R I N K
T H R E E D R I N K S
T W O D R I N K S
Frodo fingers the ring, or goes a bit weird because of it.
n
Sam is horrible to Gollum.
n
Eowyn moons over Aragorn.
n
Gandalf is unnecessarily cryptic.
n
n
n
Gollum talks to his other half. A shot of people looking scared in the caves under Helm’s Deep.
THE LORD OF THE RINGS
THE TWO TOWERS n
Year: 2002
n
Director: Peter Jackson
n
Writers: JRR Tolkien, Fran Walsh
n
Starring: Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen
0:01:46 We see Gandalf face off with the
0:09:06 Gollum climbs down a cliff
0:11:07 “Every Orc in Mordor’s going to hear
Balrog again in a segment that could just as easily have been called “Previously on The Lord Of The Rings!” This time, however, we follow him as he falls… And boy, is it a long way down. People have skydived to the Earth from the edge of space in less time than this.
towards the sleeping Hobbits, all the while talking to himself at normal
this racket!” Sam says about Gollum. Although he doesn’t so much say it as YELL IT!
volume without the faintest attempt at a whisper. No wonder they knew he was coming! Silly Gollum. 0:09:58 Frodo is tossed to one side and
tumbles to the floor in the fight with 0:04:00 The Two Towers’ title card
appears over a shot of Sam and Frodo descending a rock face. We also find out how they keep reusing the same rope – it’s real Elvish rope, and magically unties behind them. Cooooool. 0:06:47 A vision of Sauron’s giant fiery
eye sends Frodo down onto his bum. For the first time, he mentions that the ring is getting heavier. 0:08:48 Sam remarks on a nasty stink and
wonders if there’s a bog nearby. Frodo tells him, “We’re not alone.” From this little exchange, are we to assume that Gollum smells like a bog? We’d have definitely pegged him as more of a fish-stinker, ourselves…
www.sfx.co.uk
Gollum. Given that this is our first real look at the CGI fella, it’s a mighty impressive one: he’s interacting with the real world (namely the Hobbits as he wrestles with them) as though he’s really there, in a feat that involved both Andy Serkis in person and lots of play-acting from Wood and Astin. There’s also a moment in which he puffs out his cheeks that’s startlingly realistic. Kudos to those clever boffins at Weta Digital for their Gollum-wrangling. 0:11:00 Gollum begs and screams to be
released from the Elvish rope the Hobbits have tied around his neck, but why he can’t take it off himself is a bit of a mystery. It isn’t even tight! Perhaps he should have been shown trying to do it and failing – it is Elvish rope, after all...
, . S D E V D D I U N G O E S S N E O H I T I T F D E O S D E E S D O P N E R T U X P E E E H H T T R D E O F S : U E E T V O A N H E E S A W
Pot, meet kettle! 0:14:40 The Uruk-hai carrying Merry and
Pippin meet a band of Orcs: clearly these guys hate each other. It seems there’s a class system in the world of Tolkien’s creatures; Uruk-hai are at the top of the ladder, Orcs are lower and we’d guess that Goblins are the ones they both look down on. This is actually suggested in Tolkien’s books, as the Orcs talk a kind of Cockney-English that implies they’re working-class types. In a Dickens novel they’d be chimney sweeps.
E L P
0:17:00 Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli race
through the countryside. This segment, yet again, could be sponsored by the New Zealand tourist board. Joking aside, visitors to the country did jump by 40 per cent from 2000-2006, largely due to the success of the films. Another note: during the filming of these running scenes, Mortensen had two broken toes, Bloom had a cracked rib and John Rhys-Davies’s double, Brett Beattie, had a dislocated knee. Not a fun day for them!
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
95
A million teenage hearts flutter.
“Why can’t we have some meats…?”
Horse whisperer extraordinaire. 0:18:25 Legolas utters the immortal line:
“They’re taking the Hobbits to Isengard!” Do we have to tell you why this has become legendary? If you don’t know, please type these words into YouTube and watch the video that comes up. We’ll wait.
Nori in the Hobbit movies. This isn’t Jed’s only role in The Two Towers : he also plays Sharku, the nasty Warg-rider who tangles with Aragorn later on. 0:28:50 And so a question we raised during our
Fellowship annotation is answered... The 0:20:12 Saruman tells his lackey to burn the
forest of Fangorn. He’ll be regretting that later, ho ho! 0:22:19 In a scene that helps to make the
following action make a lot more sense, we see Eomer and his troops discovering the half-dead Theodred after an Orc massacre.
Uruk-hai leader tells the Orcs that Saruman wants the Hobbits because they are carrying an Elvish weapon. So they do know that the Hobbits were supposed to be carrying something, yet they still didn’t check before they started on this journey that they hadn’t hidden the weapon somewhere! Fool of an Uruk-hai! 0:29:17 An Orc is eaten in a cannibalistic
0:24:00 Blimey, our first glimpse of Theoden is a
bit of a shock. He needs a bath, some hair dye and a shot of Viagra, pronto.
frenzy. Note the intestines flying into the air: Peter Jackson did, after all, make his mark in such gore-tastic films as Bad Taste and Brain Dead …
0:27:46 While discussing the forest,
Merry tells Pippin about something in the water that could make trees come alive. “Alive!” gasps Pippin, shocked. It seems Hobbits don’t realise that trees are, um, living things already.
96
SFX
0:33:31 Eomer whistles, calls their names and
two horses trot over to him, riderless. If we weren’t already tipped off to the fact that the Riders Of Rohan are good with horses (one of them firing a bow and arrow from a galloping horse earlier was a sure sign), then this is the guarantee. Hell, most humans can’t even get their dogs to come when they’re called. 0:34:48 Aragorn kicks a helmet in
frustration because he thinks Merry and Pippin are dead. This was how Mortensen broke two of his toes; the scream he lets out is a scream of pain. Because it was the best take, it got used regardless. 0:35:40 Somewhat belatedly, we see Pippin
sawing his bound hands apart. Better late than never, eh?
0:30:06 Pippin is threatened by one of
the Rohirrim’s horses. In one shot, his hands are tied; when he rolls over, they’re untied. Did a scene of the ropes being cut get, er, cut?
0:28:00 The Orc who wants to eat the
0:30:19 Legolas: “A red sun rises... blood has
Hobbits is named Snaga and is played by Jed Brophy, who went on to play
been spilled tonight.” Wow, in Middle-earth they take things a lot more seriously than our
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
“Red sky in the morning, shepherds’ warning” nonsense, don’t they?
0:36:37 Aragorn deduces that the
Hobbits have run into Fangorn Forest. “Fangorn,” breathes Gimli, shocked. “What madness drove them in there?” Hmm, let’s see: how about the contingent of Uruk-hai and Orcs behind them, not to mention the horsemen currently riding around killing everything in sight?
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
THE LORD OF THE RINGS THE TWO TOWERS
The years have not been kind to Theoden.
“I see dead people. ”
Close your gob! That water looks icky. The trees are ALIVE!
He’s back from the dead.Hurrah! 0:36:57 For this sequence inside the
forest, the cut on Merry’s head has swapped sides, as have the marks on Pippin’s cheek. 0:38:22 Treebeard picks up the Hobbits
(incidentally, the marks on Pippin’s face have now totally vanished) and goes for a wander. In retrospect, it’s a shame that John RhysDavies voices the Ent: despite some vocal effects, he still sounds identical to Gimli.
0:47:50 We see a Black Rider atop his steed.
0:54:53 Another example of great horsemanship:
Then, as the camera pulls out, we see that it’s not a horse at all – it’s a honking great dragonthing! (Their technical name is Fell Beast, but we prefer honking great dragon-thing.) It’s a brilliant psych-out moment, followed by some
Gandalf whistles for his horse, Shadowfax, and up he gallops. Generations of horse-owners seethe with envy. May we also say that not since the days of the Lloyds Bank adverts has an equine galloped so beautifully.
truly scary swooping and screaming. 0:55:49 Gandalf doesn’t use a bridle or 0:50:27 Legolas strokes an arrow in a
surprisingly erotic manner. What? Just saying…
reins for any of his riding scenes: he just sits bolt upright and Shadowfax knows where to go.
0:51:15 Gandalf makes his big 0:41:40 Gollum catches a worm and
sucks it down like spaghetti. Bizarrely, Gollum is at his most endearing when he’s complaining about being hungry or when he’s eating something – although it makes sense when you consider that he’s fundamentally a Hobbit, albeit a scrawny naked one. And we all know how much they love food. 0:44:31 He splashes into the Dead
Marshes, and then rather weirdly forgets to close his mouth while he’s underwater with all the dead bodies. Ew. 0:47:11 As the Nazgul approach, Frodo
feels a twinge from his sword-wound and collapses. And yes, it totally still counts as a fall if he was already sitting down.
www.sfx.co.uk
reappearance as Gandalf The (Persil) White. We finally get to see what happened with the Balrog, before there’s some jiggery-pokery about Gandalf being resurrected. A Christ metaphor, perhaps? Although perhaps not – Tolkien’s work wasn’t really Christian in its origins (unlike his friend CS Lewis). Either way, he’s back now, and his black eyebrows don’t match his hair. Tsk. 0:54:10 Gandalf mentions that Merry and
Pippin might be able to unleash a giant force in the forest (ie wake up all the trees). But you have to wonder why he left them to do it instead of having a word with the Ents himself – surely they’d respect him more than a pair of Hobbits? Imagine the time they would have saved! It’s like the eagle thing all over again. Wizards are weird.
0:58:20 Gandalf and Aragorn discuss
Sauron. Well, Aragorn stands and listens while Gandalf spouts a ton of exposition. Guess this bit is for all the viewers who got lost along the way. 1:01:35 A pair of chained-up cave trolls open the
Black Gate into Mordor. You have to feel sorry for them; they’re the Rancors of Middle-earth. 1:05:20 Merry and Pippin drink some
water and get a bit bigger; then a tree tries to eat them. This is an odd little scene and its omission from the theatrical version is perfectly understandable. But you can understand why Jackson and co wanted to keep it: it’s actually a moment from the Fellowship Of The Ring book that didn’t make it into the film (along with Tom Bombadil).
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
97
The years are getting much kinder…
A ringside seat at the Oliphaunt show…
“If I stare really hard
he’ll surely notice me.”
…and the six-tusked beasts are awesome . 1:10:44 The
beautiful city of Edoras was built by the Rangitata River among the Potts Range in Canterbury. Once seen as remote and almost untouched by humans, it’s becoming a popular tourist destination thanks to the films, and there are many
1:35:20 “Master’s
location tours available.
1:39:43
1:17:49 The
backwards ageing of King Theoden is bloody extraordinary. Guess Gandalf brought him some Viagra after all. 1:19:07 Some
love here must also go to Howard Shore’s strings on the score – truly majestic. The Rohan music is some of the best in the entire trilogy, perfectly evoking the landscape and nature of the country.
1.20:49 “Where
is Theodred? Where is my son?” asks Theoden. Rather distractingly, this was where the intermission took place in many UK cinemas. 1:27:00 Aragorn
helps to calm a horse in the stables. “Turn this fellow free,” he says. “He has seen enough of the war.” This little scene explains why Brego – the horse in question – turns up later to save Aragorn after the Warg attack. Without this knowledge, he’s just a random horse who likes to wander up to injured humans and lick them.
98
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
my friend,” says Smeagol. “You don’t have any friends!” replies Gollum. It’s a scientific fact that this exchange made more people laugh in cinemas than any other moment in The Lord Of The Rings trilogy. Oliphaunts! We hate to backtrack on our earlier comments, but these guys are definitely cooler than the honking great dragon-things ridden by the Nazgul. Again, as with the cave trolls, these guys have been enslaved and you have to feel sorry for them as they’re attacked by Faramir’s men. 1:41:00 Faramir
gives a little soliloquy about a fallen Haradrim soldier, just so we know he has a softer side.
DISC TWO 0:00:00 Theoden and Aragorn discuss Eowyn. They’re already setting her up as a potential love match for Aragorn, although we know that he prefers pointy ears. We also discover that Aragorn is a whopping 87 years old: this is because he is one of the long-lived race of men known as Dunedain. 0:06:00 A
flashback sequence to Rivendell shows Aragorn trying to break up with Arwen because he
knows she’ll live forever and he won’t. More importantly, we’re left wondering (not for the first time) why the font the DVD makers have used for the subtitles is so ugly. Elvish is such a beautiful language – would a few pretty, curly letters have been out of the question? 0:10:18 If
there’s one moment in the entire trilogy in which the CGI isn’t quite up to snuff, it’s the shot of Legolas hurling himself onto Gimli’s horse during the Warg attack. A pity, because if it had worked – and we recognise that it must have been a tricky one to pull off – then it would have looked super cool. 0:15:14 An
observation about the otherwise truly impressive set of Helm’s Deep: the battlements don’t have a wall or railings behind them, so soldiers can easily step back from surveying the land before the keep and then fall into the drop below. Health and safety, chaps. Health and safety. 0:16:30 Eowyn
looks heartbroken to hear that Aragorn has died, although, rather oddly, she doesn’t show any interest in who else might have carked it during the battle with the Wargs, even though she probably knew most of them far better than she knew Aragorn.
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
THE LORD OF THE RINGS THE TWO TOWERS
Oh Grima… what have you done…
There’s something in our eye.
Horse drool will make it all better. 0:18:19 A marvellous moment, this. Saruman
0:29:40 Frodo and Faramir get to know
shows Grima the true extent of his army before sending them to Helm’s Deep to wipe out the people of Rohan. Grima’s response? He weeps a single tear, clearly overwhelmed at the cold reality of his treachery. For a moment,
each other. When Frodo mentions Boromir, Faramir says that his horn was washed up on a riverbank six days previously, cloven in two. And yet when Boromir was laid to rest after fighting the
he’s almost human again.
Uruk-hai, his horn was still in one piece (blimey, it’s hard to say that without sounding dirty). So who sliced it up?
0:20:39 Brego finds Aragorn. One thing:
given that he was set free, why is he still wearing a bridle? Was he going to be stuck with it forever? Poor thing! Mortensen liked this horse so much he actually purchased him; his real name was Uraeus. 0:22:00 Arwen’s vision of her life without
Aragorn is heartbreaking. That is all. 0:24:50 A curious scene in which Galadriel tells
Elrond what’s going on with Saruman and Rohan… through the psychic power of her mind! While it’s probably necessary if you’ve lost track of the plot, it’s a peculiar idea. 0:26:56 Faramir consults a map of
Middle-earth. Helm’s Deep doesn’t have an apostrophe. Noooooooooooo! That’s it, the entire trilogy is ruined! …Oh, wait, hang on. Tolkien left the apostrophe off his maps as well. Fair enough. Emergency over.
www.sfx.co.uk
In Elvish Faramir means “jewelled hunter”. We see Sam and Frodo chatting in front of some barrels, but when Faramir walks in and they both jump to their feet, the barrels are totally missing and the light’s completely changed. 0:42:40 Today’s shots of Aragorn riding through
the scenery on a horse are brought to you by Pure New Zealand. Be sure to book a holiday with us soon!
0:30:03 Faramir sees a vision of his
brother’s funeral boat. Then there’s a big flashback to Boromir reclaiming Osgiliath for his people. “That scene was shot 15 months later after principal photography,” says John Noble, who plays Denethor. “[Producer] Barrie Osborne called and said, ‘We need to do a scene because Faramir’s being introduced and we’re concerned people won’t understand him. Can you come and film it?’ And they were lucky enough to get Sean and David [Wenham], too. And they shot it in a day, which is pretty quick... In my opinion, it should have gone in the film, and many people were very upset that it didn’t, including Barrie. But it was necessary to leave it out; introduce a new character in a flashback, you know...?” 0:40:16 Some very wonky editing here: it
appears that two totally different scenes have been spliced together!
0:44:00 A close-up of Aragorn’s bloody
hand is a prime example of the verisimilitude of this film (er, not that they used real blood, mind you). Any shots of Mortensen’s hands have invariably featured skinned knuckles, grime, blood and general wear and tear. Because Mortensen is famously Method with his acting, we suspect much of the crap on his hands was real – particularly the odd black fingernail, probably earned during fight scenes. 0:50:27 Peter Jackson’s kids cameo again. 0:50:35 Lots of moody tension-building here, as
Aragorn and Legolas discuss the fact that the soldiers of Rohan are made up of men who have seen too many winters – or too few. There’s a real sense of despair as the time for battle approaches, and it’s exquisitely handled.
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
99
And not a moment too soon, Haldir.
“Looks like we’re in for a right Barney!”
The Battle of the Hornburg.
He’s not one for quitting. Yay Aragorn! 0:52:20 Somehow, the sight of King Theoden
0:58:34 The sound of rain hitting metal armour
having his armour put on him while he recites a poem becomes one of the most moving scenes in the entire trilogy. Bernard Hill is perfect here. “How did it come to this?” Ooh, it gives you tingles. To go from this scene to a bunch of
and marching Uruk-hai feet combine to build the tension even further. Seriously, could this even get any more tense?
Ents standing around in a forest clearing seems a little sacrilegious. “It did work,” said Bernard Hill when we mentioned it to him. “He’s such a great filmmaker, Pete, he kind of knew that at that stage in the film you needed something that was going to slow it down, take it more into the mythical area; so you had a link and a memory to the other aspect of the stories – the mythical characters, the Hobbits, Gollum. Because you’re dealing very much with the world of man.” 0:56:30 Here come the Elves! The Elves are here!
The Elves will save them! Yay for the Elves! . .. Sorry, getting a bit carried away. Although not as much as Aragorn, who gives Haldir a giant bear hug because he’s so happy to see him. 0:58:06 And now for the second-funniest
moment of the trilogy: Gimli moaning, “You could have picked a better spot!” as he tries to see over the battlements. With so much tension in these scenes, it’s a joy to have something to laugh about (that’s good screenwriting, right there). Of course, it doesn’t last long…
100
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
0:59:00 Fran Walsh makes a cameo.
that Jackson deliberately threw in a similar moment in The Return Of The King (we’ll let you know what it is when we come to it). Of course, looking at it cold right now, it does seem a little silly – particularly when the stairs seem to go on for way too long...
1:01:10 The Uruk-hai charge. “So it begins,” says
1:10:03 Poor Haldir bites the dust. It’s serious stuff
King Theoden. By which he means, “One of the greatest battles in the history of cinema.”
when Elves die – they live forever, after all – hence the slow-motion and choir as he shuffles off this mortal coil. It’s a very emotional scene, given that we barely know Haldir... although, as
1:05:46 “Is this it?” asks Theoden. “Is this all you
can conjure, Saruman?” Don’t goad him, you fool! Or at least touch wood when you say stuff like that. Jeez.
actor Craig Parker pointed out, “I’m helped incredibly by the fabulous editing and the most beautiful music it ’s just exquisite. You could have a scene of a puppy and you’d cry!”
1:06:06 The Uruk-hai racing towards the
gunpowder like a runner with an Olympic torch is surprisingly humorous… until you realise what he’s about to do. When the wall goes boom, it’s s pectacular. 1:07:19 Oh look, it’s Peter Jackson – this time as a
soldier throwing a spear. He’s a man for all seasons, isn’t he? 1:08:15 Here’s a moment for Legolas-
lovers: he throws his shield to the floor and shield-boards it down a staircase, firing at bad guys. It’s proper Errol Flynn stuff, and the response to this scene was so huge
1:13:14 We know that Aragorn is special, but after fighting for hours, how on Earth does he still have the strength to pick up Gimli and throw him all that way? A few scenes later he also grabs a rope and hangs on to both himself and the Dwarf as they’re yanked up the wall. 1:18:02 It’s pitch-black at Helm’s Deep, daylight as Frodo and Faramir get their first view of Osgiliath, and daylight when Treebeard discovers the massacre of his tree friends. Is Helm’s Deep in a different time zone to everyone else?
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
THE LORD OF THE RINGS THE TWO TOWERS
Those Elves have got smart helmets.
“My, what very big wings you have.” It’s the revenge of the trees.
1:19:57 “The last march of the Ents,” declares a furious Treebeard, as the forest comes to life behind him. At last, thes e trees have stopped being twee and comical and have become cool .
Fill your boots, boys!
1:30:17 Frodo stands on a rooftop before a flying
1:34:32 There are a few extra scenes here:
Nazgul and goes to put on the ring. A simple idea that’s absolutely creep-tastic in its execution, although naturally, given that this is Frodo, it’s followed by him falling over.
it’s great fun watching the forest wiping out the Uruk-hai, even though we don’t actually get to see any of it; Merry and Pippin have a comedy moment in the waters a round Isengard; and Faramir says goodbye to Frodo
1.22.55 It’s daylight in Helm’s Deep now. Sunrise
has actually become a plot point, because that’s when we expect Gandalf to return. 1:25:11 “Forth Eorlingas!” When Theoden charges
it’s hard not to applaud. Just watch those horses kick Uruk-hai off the ramp! In other news, Gimli has been blowing that horn for ages. Dwarves must have massive lungs. 1:26:13 Gandalf to the rescue! Go Gandalf! Go
Gandalf! Fistpumps ahoy! 1:26:27 One thing though: the hill Gandalf,
Eomer and the rest of the horsemen ride down is impossibly steep. Forget a triumphant ride into battle; those horses would have slid down on their arses. 1:27:58 An Ent picking up two Orcs and bashing
their heads together? Don’t mind a bit of that! 1:29:00 The dam breaks and water races towards
Isengard. A burning tree runs forward and douses its branches in the torrent. What a fantastic touch, eh?
www.sfx.co.uk
1:30:35 Sam yanks him off the rooftop and
and Sam.
saves his life. We’re not quite sure how two Hobbits can fall off a rooftop and not be hurt, but there you go. Maybe they bounce?
1:41:40 Smeagol and Gollum have another
little chat among themselves. “We could let HER do it…” he mutters. Boy, will it be hard to forgive him after we meet the “her” that he
1:31:50 Sam’s speech about the great stories and
speaks of…
how even darkness must pass is terribly cheesy. But who cares? It’s perfect. Even Gollum seems moved, although not enough to stop him betraying Frodo in the next film, the stinker.
1:43:48 The end credits begin. As with the last
film, they’re filled with fan club members and last for 20-odd minutes this time. Epic!
EXCITE�O�METER™ ENTERTAINED NODDING OFF
Forth Eorlingas!
Meet Gandalf The White Wizard Vs Balrog
Treebeard awakes!
They’re taking the Hobbits to Isengard!
ZZZZZZZZZ … Z
RUNNING TIME (MINS)
The Battle commences
Eomer meets the Fellowship
THRILLED
0
30
Oliphaunts! Gollum vs Smeagol
Boromir’s back!
Warg mayhem
The march of the Ents
END
Isengard floods
Where is the horse and the rider... Entmoot
60
90
120
150
180
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
210
SFX
101
THE LORD OF THE RINGS THE RETURN OF THE KING
He’ll be ruing the day he picked that blinkin’ ring up.
The Fellowship of The Ring Key
TRIVIA: Interesting
DID YOU SPOT?:
WTF?!: Did that
Rings factoids
Missed moments
really happen!?
BONUS: Extended
GOOFS: Bloopers
FRODO FALLS: This
edition extras
and gaffes
happens a lot
The Prancing Pony Drinking Game xxxxxx DRINK
EVERY TIME...
O N E D R I N K
T H R E E D R I N K S
T W O D R I N K S
Frodo witters on about how heavy the ring is.
n
Faramir looks hurt or upset.
n
n
n
Arwen or Galadriel pop up for no reason.
n
Gandalf says something portentous.
A Fell Beast grabs a clawful of warriors and drops them.
n
The film fades to black or white, as if it’s ended, but it hasn’t.
THE LORD OF THE RINGS
THE RETURN OF THE KING n
Year: 2003
n
Director: Peter Jackson
n
Writers: JRR Tolkien, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson
0:00:45 After two films, we finally get to see
Andy Serkis pre-Gollum. Is it just us or does his voice sound as though he’s been inhaling
n
Starring: Elijah Wood, Viggo Mortensen, Ian McKellen
smoke, like the scallywags they are. Gandalf mutters, “Hobbits!” He does look fed up. Probably wanted some Old Toby for himself.
, . S D E V D D I U N G O E S S N E O H I T I T F D E O S D E E S D O P N E R T U X P E E E H H T T R D E O F S : U E E T V O A N H E E S A W
0:25:52 Frodo leads Gollum away from Sam as
though he’s a dog at his heel. Gollum turns back and gives Sam a sneaky, knowing glare.
copious amounts of helium? 0:01:53 Deagol picks up the ring from the
riverbed – so it was his hand we saw way back in the original film’s prologue! By the way, most Hobbits can’t swim, but Deagol and Smeagol are descended from the Stoors – Hobbit river people. They’re the only Hobbits who can grow beards, too. 0:02:58 Smeagol calls Deagol “my love”. Hobbits
really aren’t scared to share their feelings… although he does kill him in the next scene, so he can’t have loved him that much.
N O I T C E L L O C L A B O K E H T ©
0:04:36 “My Precious!” Poor Smeagol gets one moment of perfect happiness when he tries on the ring for the first time, and then it’s downhill from there. Eating raw fish, living in caves, losing his hair and, eventually, his clothes. Pay attention, kids: rings are bad, m’kay? 0:09:03 After a scene catching up with Sam and
Frodo, we see the Fellowship arriving at Isengard. Merry and Pippin are having a good
www.sfx.co.uk
0:11:00 This entire sequence deals with the fate of Saruman and was famously cut out of the theatrical version – much to Christopher Lee’s annoyance. “My point was not that, as an actor, I’d had my scenes taken
0:26:50 Eowyn tells Aragorn about a dream she just had. Incidentally, he tells her that it’s “not yet dawn” but the hall is lit as though it’s daylight – oops.
out,” he told Total Film in 2005. “It was the story. You can’t have a man looking frantic on a balcony while everything is bein g destroyed and then never see him again!” He may have a point, but it’s certainly not an essential scene in an otherwise overlong film.
0:28:44 Pippin steals the Palantir from Gandalf,
0.11.48 Saruman mumbles a few words from the top of Iseng ard’s tower. Miles below, everybody can hear him. Were they all wearing microphones or something? Their eyelines are all wrong as well – the actors aren’t craning enough to see. 0:17:54 A beautiful sweeping shot of
Eowyn standing outside the Great Hall at Edoras, her hair flapping in the wind. She seems to do a lot of that. Then again, what else is there is to do at Edoras?
but not before he gets a shock: wizards sleep with their eyes wide open! How cool is that? 0:32:44 Gandalf explains that the forces of
E L P
Mordor are going to attack Minas Tirith. “Why should we ride to the aid of those who did not come to ours?” says Theoden. What do we owe Gondor?” And that, right there is humanity in a nutshell: small and petty. Bigger picture, Theoden! 0:34:10 “How far is Minas Tirith?” asks Pippin.
“Three days’ ride, as the Nazgul flies,” replies Gandalf. Or an eagle, of course. Because an eagle would have covered it much faster. And you know what, eagles could also fly to – wait for it – Mordor! Tell that to Frodo and Sam’s aching feet!
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
103
Stay away from the gates Frodo…
The menace in the misty air is palpable.
This Angmar fella must be proper scary.
…now look what he’s gone and done. 0:35:50 We see Arwen and the Elves gliding
through the forest towards the G rey Havens. It’ll take them ages to get there if they keep walking in slow motion like that. 0:40:10 The broken sword Narsil is re-
forged. It’s a good thing all those Elven blacksmiths hung around in the deserted Rivendell on the off-chance they were needed, isn’t it? 0:41:10 Gandalf and Pippin ride Shadowfax
through Minas Tirith towards the white tree. Howard Shore’s gorgeous string section lets rip and makes it a horse ride to remember. 0:44:01 Pippin offers his service to Denethor to
repay him for Boromir’s sacrifice. For once, he does something right, although Gandalf looks rather irritated. You can’t win with Ga ndalf.
0:48:43 Frodo and Sam find a crossroads with some creepy statues.
0:53:05 Gandalf tells Pippin about the WitchKing of Angmar, the leader of the Nazgul and
the guy they should fear the most in the coming battle. It’s strange how Gandalf can defeat a Balrog but looks like he’s going to poop himself about this Angmar chap. 0:54:14 Frodo is drawn towards the
gates of Minas Morgul; there are two giant horned statues in front of him. If we didn’t know better we’d swear these were the Middle-earth version of the terror dogs from Ghostbusters… 0:54:39 Frodo staggers like a drunk on his way home from the pub; Sam and Gollum pull him over.
0:45:14 A shout-out here for John Noble as
Denethor, sporting a droopy grey wig and oozing insanity and malice. If Theoden was petty when he said he didn’t want to help Gondor, Denethor’s a whole new level of petty, refusing to give up his Stewardship to the real King of Gondor (that’ll be Aragorn) even as the armies of Mordor threaten his city. No wonder the Elves are leaving Middle-earth if this is the way humans act…
104
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
0:59:43 A horde of Orcs row their way towards
Osgiliath in a surprise attack. This is a truly creepy scene: the ruins of the town and the grossness of the Orcs combine to make us very happy that we’re not a Gondorian soldier on this particular night.
Did the Queen nick this idea for her Jubilee? of the beacons – a truly dramatic and even emotional experience. You have to wonder about the poor bastards waiting to light those beacons, however: where do they s leep? How do they keep from freezing to death? Or blowing off the peaks? If only someone would invent the telephone and save the poor bastards from their plight! 1:05:04 “Gondor calls for aid!” cries Aragorn.
Dramatic pause. “And Rohan will answer,” declares King Theoden. Hurrah! He saw sense! Maybe humans aren’t so bad after all. 1:08:38 Just when you think the poor soldiers of
Osgiliath can’t suffer any more, the Nazgul arrive on their Fell Beasts and start swooping on men, throwing them all over the place. And boy, the sight of these creatures chasing the soldiers out of the town in a frantic horse stampede is one of the highlights of the entire trilogy: it’s the kind of scene fantasy films were made for. 1:10:05 There’s a Wilhelm Scream as a soldier flies through the air.
1:10:21 Gandalf lets rip with his staff and beams 1:02:03 Yet again, Shore’s score makes an
otherwise uninspiring sequence – the lighting
of light scare the Fell Beasts away. It’s about time he did something useful…
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
THE LORD OF THE RINGS THE RETURN OF THE KING
Anduril means “flame of the west”. Fact.
Would you trust this face? Foolish Frodo.
“If your name’s not down…” 1:13:30 Denethor is a total bastard to Faramir. At
least King Theoden was being controlled by Saruman when we first met him; there’s no excuse for Denethor’s behaviour. You could argue that he’s been driven mad by grief, but after meeting him in flashback in The Two Towers , it’s
clear he’s been a git all along.
1:17:05 Faramir has a chat with Pippin, telling him that his new livery used to belong to him.
hooves of their horses. Two of the children watching are Peter Jackson’s. 1:27:27 Faramir leads his soldiers to death.
Pippin sings a lament to the oblivious Denethor. If you’re not moved by this sequence, you really did miss the point. 1:28:30 Billy Boyd wrote the song he sings himself, and was proud to contribute to the music used in the films. “Out of the 18 hours I wrote 30 seconds!”
1:19:09 Denethor orders Faramir back into
Osgiliath on a suicide mission. Faramir realises that his father wishes he’d died instead of Boromir. Oh, the heartbreak! David Wenham sells his hurt and anguish beautifully. “If I should return, think better of me, father.” That sound you hear is the crack of hearts breaking. 1:23:40 He separates Sam from Gollum as they fight and then faints.
1:31:53 Rohan warriors gather at Dunharrow. A
spooky passageway into the mountain which is freaking out the horses. “None who venture there ever return,” explains Eomer. Clearly our heroes will be venturing there later, then. They may as well have put a sign on it saying, “Watch this space!” 1:35:29 King Theoden’s tent is pretty cool. This
could be the Rohan version of glamping, perhaps. It’s good to be the king. 1:25:00 Frodo, in a fit of paranoia, sends Sam
home. Sam simply bursts into tears and then lets Frodo go on alone. Wuss. 1:26:10 As the Gondorian soldiers ride
out of Minas Tirith and to their deaths, townsfolk throw flowers under the
www.sfx.co.uk
1:35:53 “Arwen is dying,” Elrond tells Aragorn, pointing out that Arwen’s life is tied to the fate of the ring. Is this because she shared some of her powers with Frodo? Is it because she’s decided to stay in Middle-earth? Is it because she’s in love with
Aragorn? Or is it simply because the writers are desperately trying to keep her in the film? 1:43:12 An extended sequence following Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas into Dwimorberg, the Haunted Mountain. For
once, this is a scene that really should have stayed in the theatrical version: it’s great fun in its own disturbing way, and never have so many skulls rolled around with such wild abandon. 1:45:50 A soldier rides up behind Merry
and swings him up one-handed. It’s Eowyn. Okay, so Merry’s kid-sized, but he’s still wearing armour – how was she strong enough? Is it possible? Someone needs to recreate this on Mythbusters. 1:47:01 Inside the mountain, Legolas reveals that he can see “shapes of men, and of horses” while Aragorn and Gimli see nothing. This means that Elves can see dead people, Haley Joel Osment-style. Incidentally, Billy Boyd once informed SFX that Orlando Bloom smells of bubblegum. “Always. He’s bubble-icious.” So now you know. 1:49:23 “The dead do not suffer the living to
pass,” says the ghost in charge of all the soldiers inside the mountain. “You will suffer me!” snaps Aragorn. Insert cheers here.
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
105
An “aura of terror” overhead.
A face not even a mother could love.
That’s last week’s dinner right there.
The charge of the phantommenace. 1:55:25 The
Orcs rain severed heads down on Minas Tirith. (The Lord Of The Rings: not for kids.) Denethor takes one look at the armies marshalled before his city and you can almost hear the pinging in his head as the cogs come loose – a few seconds later, he’s completely insane. Hurrah for Gandalf, then, knocking Denethor out and taking control of his forces!
DISC TWO 0:00:35 The
Corsair that Legolas
“accidentally” kills with an arrow is Peter Jackson.
0:04:20 He panics and stumbles into a sticky patch of spider-webs.
0:05:26 Shelob makes her debut. She’s very, very old and, in case you were wondering, she is responsible for all those nasty spiders that attacked Bilbo and the Dwarves in The Hobbit . 0:05:45 Because of course you want to fall over if you’re running away from a
106
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
about Elijah Wood’s grunts and groans that make it unexpectedly hilarious (sorry). Thankfully Sam pops up and attacks Shelob in what’s actually a very cool fight – love how Shelob casually kicks the light of Elendil out of the way! 0:18:20 While
charges him and he hits the ground. On the plus side, Gollum then goes flying down a cliff. 0:08:49 Now he collapses, but at least he gets to have a nice little dream in which Galadriel talks to him.
0:02:10 Frodo
enters the tunnels belonging to what we soon realise is a big-ass spider. In the book, the tunnels are completely dark – Tolkien does a wonderful job of describing Frodo and Sam’s growing terror as they can’t see where they are – but that clearly wouldn’t work on screen. Sadly, this means that when Frodo (on his own here) uses the light of Elendil given to him by Galadriel, it doesn’t have quite such a vivid effect.
0:15:33 Frodo gets poisoned by Shelob. It’s supposed to be dramatic but there’s something
Hobbit-eating spider. 0:08:15 Gollum
0:00:38 “Boarded? By you and whose army?” yells a Corsair. “By this army,” Aragorn replies, and the ghostly warriors surge towards the ship. Let’s face it, if you were a Corsair, you’d s**t yourself.
trolls that walk through the door instantly start throwing soldiers all over the place. What does Gandalf know anyway?
0:10:10 Merry and the undercover Eowyn have a chat. It’s odd how nobody looks twice at her even though she’s taken her helmet off and is quite clearly a lady. 0:14:11 The
giant battering ram fondly known by the Orcs as “Grond” finally breaks its way into Minas Tirith. “You are soldiers of G ondor! You will stand your ground!” yells Gandalf. The cave
we may have sniggered at the sight of Frodo frothing at the mouth after being stung, there’s nothing funny about his little (apparently) dead face after Sam clears the cobwebs off him. It was a perfect psych-out in the book and works just as well here. 0:22:35 Pippin grabs Gandalf from the middle of battle to tell him that Denethor is about to toast his son. As they ride through the city, the WitchKing suddenly lands in front of them. He breaks Gandalf’s staff, the bastard! Luckily, he’s distracted by the arrival of the Rohirrim and doesn’t kill the wizard – it would have been interesting to see what would have happened if Theoden had arrived a few minutes l ater.
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
THE LORD OF THE RINGS THE RETURN OF THE KING
Eowyn does wide-eyed so well.
Ouch
For a minute there, he had us worrried… 0:26:30 King Theoden’s troops ride into battle.
Although Helm’s Deep is regarded by most as the best battle in the Lord Of The Rings films, there’s no denying that this is possibly the most epic in scope. It’s tough on the horses, though...
0:38:46 “You fool… no man can kill me!” gloats the Witch-King. “I am no man,” declares Eowyn, and kills him. Women everywhere cheer. 0:40:15 Legolas gets to do some showing
off in this shameless crowd-pleaser.
That Legolas, he’s just a big show-off. over your face. His eyelids were later kept open by CGI. 0:45:46 The Houses of Healing sequence was completely omitted from the theatrical release. It expands upon a
Watch as he climbs the tusk of an Oliphaunt, then up its leg, then onto its back to kill every Haradrim riding it (counting as he does so, because he’s keeping a running tally). Then he swings around for a bit so he can cut off the saddle and finally shoots three arrows at once into the Mumakil’s head, surfs down its
subplot from the book which sees Eowyn and Faramir fall in love while they recover from battle injuries, but as this happens over a period of time, it doesn’t really fit in with the rest of the film’s action. It’s clunkily reinstated here just before Pippin finds Merry on the battlefield, implying that the poor Hobbit was
focuses on Theoden’s shocked face as he realises that the Haradrim – and their enormous Oliphaunts, also known as Mumakil – have entered the battle. The Oliphaunts are truly astonishing; they’re what’s been missing from every war movie ever made (although The Empire Strikes Back did a little homage with its AT-ATs).
trunk and lands on the ground as the beast collapses behind him. “That still only counts as one!” grunts Gimli. It’s ludicrous, but who cares? Legolas! Legolas! Legolas!
lying out there for weeks.
0:34:20 Merry acquits himself beautifully as he
0:41:50 It’s goodbye to King Theoden. He’s been
gets stuck into the fight. Eowyn also punches the Orc leader, Gothmog, right in the kisser. This is why you shouldn’t discriminate against women and short people, folks.
a grumpy old sod over the last two films, but it’s a hard heart that isn’t affected by his death, or by Miranda Otto’s performance as she weeps over him. Hankies ahoy!
0:38:05 The Black Ships arrive at the battle – as
0:41:25 Bernard Hill’s eyes flickered as he was
do the ghosts. Aragorn’s charge here is a fist-pump moment and no mistake.
supposed to be lying dead – it’s tough not to blink when there’s a wind machine blowing
0:29:47 His funeral pyre goes awry and
Denethor runs out of the tomb and off a cliff. And bloody hell, does he run a long way for a man consumed in flames... 0:30:24 A truly affecting moment, as the camera
www.sfx.co.uk
0:40:40 There’s a Wilhelm Scream when a soldier falls off the Oliphaunt.
0:48:11 Frodo wakes up half-naked and tied up in the Tower of Cirith Ungol. This scene inspired some interesting responses from fans who saw Frodo and Sam as more than friends. When we interviewed Sean Astin a few years back, he mentioned some artwork made by a fan: “It wasn’t really erotic, but it was kind of suggestive – it was this poster-sized image of the Tower of Cirith Ungol with Frodo with his shirt off and Sam sort of looking at him. But the way they’d rendered Frodo was like the cover of one of those romance novels! And my assistant actually put it up in my bathroom, behind my office door, so I went in and was startled to see this giant image of me looking longingly at this quite svelte Frodo…”
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
107
Throw it Frodo! Just bloody throw it!
Gandalf looks like he needs a pair of specs.
Definite signs of gingivitis.
Yay! Sauron’s allseeing eye crumbles. 0:51:22 Somehow Sam runs up every step in the
absolutely enormous tower. 0:52:36 You can see chafing around Frodo’s neck where the weight of the ring has eaten into his skin. The ring’s
weight isn’t just psychological; it’s physical, too. 0:56:17 Aragorn reveals himself to Sauron
through the Palantir. Sauron is not best pleased…
insists on calling him “Master” even after everything they’ve been through, and it never occurs to Frodo to say, “Just call me Frodo.” Class distinctions, eh? They survive the wilds of Mordor and the prospect of certain death. 1:05:40 This is the most dramatic fall of all, as Frodo collapses in front of Sauron’s giant fiery eye in an extraordinarily over-the-top manner. 1:07:00 The Mouth Of Sauron rides out
0:58:50 Frodo and Sam get swept up in a
column of marching Orcs. 1:00:27 Frodo collapses under the weight of the ring.
to meet our heroes from the Black Gate of Mordor. He has the most bizarre set of teeth in the entire trilogy: he wouldn’t be out of place in a Hellraiser movie. 1:08:00 The Mouth Of Sauron produces Frodo’s
1:02:00 The black lands of Mordor were inspired by the volcanic wastes of Iceland. A few purists have actually complained that the films should have been shot there instead of New Zealand. 1:02:26 That ring’s heavy again...
mithril shirt to prove that they’ve killed him, lying through his (enormous) teeth about having tortured him. This changes the entire nature of the final battle – far from it being a last-ditch attempt to help Frodo, it becomes vengeance. Which explains why Aragorn yells,“For Frodo!” later (even if he’s not entirely convinced he’s dead). 1:11:03 He slips over on the rocky slopes
1:04:43 “I don’t think there’ll be a return journey,
Master Frodo,” Sam says. Isn’t it odd how Sam
108
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
of Mount Doom. You have to feel for him here, though: he’s so determined to get to the crater that he starts crawling.
1:14:09 Sam finally has a eureka moment. “I can’t
carry it for you, but I can carry you!” And this said, he scoops Frodo up into his arms and does just that. Bravo, Sam! And bravo to Sean Astin, who does a terrific job with this important scene. 1:16:04 Noooooo! In spite of being carried by Sam, an unexpected attack from Gollum causes them both to go flying. Bad Gollum! And blimey, he really is indestructible, isn’t he? Didn’t he fall off a cliff? 1:17:49 “The eagles are coming!” yells Pippin, as a giant bird brings down a Fell Beast. “WHAT BLOODY KEPT THEM?” asks everybody else. 1:18:33 Frodo is finally inside Mount Doom. Meanwhile, all we can think is: who built that precipice overlooking the lava? And why? Is it solely there for ringthrowing duties? 1:19:20 Uh-oh. Frodo can’t throw the ring into
the lava. It’s all gone wrong! 1:20:40 You have to feel for the CGI team here: trying to animate an invisible Hobbit with a Gollum on his back without making things look silly must have been a gargantuan task. Luckily they achieve the desired result… but only just.
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
THE LORD OF THE RINGS THE RETURN OF THE KING
Cheesy grins all round…
The eagles have finally flippin’ landed.
…Okay, we admit it, we’re welling up.
Aragorn leans in for a spot of tonsil hockey. 1:21:15 Gollum has a moment of victory. It’s hard not to feel happy for the little blighter, although that’s undermined by him hitting the lava a few seconds later and not even screaming in pain. Doesn’t he have any nerve-endings? That’s lava, not water! 1:23:35 Sauron’s eye goes BOOM. The way it
darts about in a panic as it falls is a fantastic touch; even though it’s just an eye, you can almost hear it thinking, “No! No! This isn’t happening! Balls!”
1:35:00 Aragorn makes an announcement: “My
1:48:03 The little girl who runs to greet Sam when he returns home is his own daughter, Alexandra Astin. The baby held in the arms of his wife, Rosie, is the real child of actress Sarah McLeod.
friends, you bow to no one.” The whole of Gondor bows before the stunned Hobbits. There’s something in our eye… 1:36:29 The Hobbits return to The Shire
1:50:100 Annie Lennox croons over the end
to find it hasn’t changed at all. This isn’t what happened in the book. 1:42:02 Galadriel: “The power of the three rings has ended. The time has come for the dominion of Men.” Always so serious. Do you think she’s
credits. “I think that when I die I want Howard Shore to be played at my funeral,” John Noble told SFX . “Can you make a note of that, please? At my funeral, when I’m 80, they can get Annie Lennox to sing Into The West .”
ever told a “knock knock” joke?
Right-o, John.
1:43:33 Gandalf says goodbye to the Hobbits.
2.00.00 The list of fan club members begins. It
They realise, to their horror, that Frodo is leaving too. There are many tears.
ends 10 minutes later. And that’s your lot: the trilogy is final ly over. Mourn .
1:28:27 The eagles arrive and rescue Sam and
Frodo. “Why didn’t we just fly here in the first place?” the Hobbits don’t say. 1:28:59 Frodo’s reunion with the Fellowship is a bit of a misjudged nightmare. Perhaps if all the laughing and bouncing around hadn’t happened in slow-motion it wouldn’t have been quite so bad, but there’s something about watching people cackle in half-time that makes it seem ridiculous. 1:33:45 Arwen appears from behind a banner to
surprise Aragorn during his coronation. An otherwise slow and soppy moment is given some life by the fact that he suddenly snogs her like a maniac. Kind of awkward, though, given that her dad is standing right there...
www.sfx.co.uk
EXCITE�O�METER™ Frodo in a sticky spot
Minas Morgul
THRILLED
Eye go boom! “I can carry you!”
ENTERTAINED NODDING OFF
ZZZZZZZZZ … 0
30
END
Frodo’s most dramatic fall
In Shelob’s lair
The Grey Havens: this really is the end now
Ghosts and skulls
Gandalf rides to rescue Faramir
Z
RUNNING TIME (MINS)
Pippin sings as Faramir rides out
Minas Tirith
The Oliphaunts arrive!
60
90
120
150
180
210
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
230
250
SFX
109
THE TOP 25 DRAGONS IN POP CULTURE by Joseph McCabe The dragon – that eternal symbol of hope and fear, of awe and amusement – is as emblematic of fantasy as robots and rockets are of science fiction. The lifeblood of the heroic epic, dragons have come in as many shapes and sizes as the human beings who’ve fought with and sometimes alongside them. Herewith are the 25 most noteworthy dragons (and, in a few cases, species of dragons) in western pop culture
25
24 Folk Tale
BEOWULF DRAGON: UNNAMED FIRST PUBLISHED: 8TH�11TH CENTURY
Folk Tale
ST GEORGE AND THE DRAGON DRAGON: UNNAMED FIRST PUBLISHED: 10TH CENTURY
Arguably the first significant dragon in popular western culture is the one in “Saint George And The Dragon”, an episode in the biography (or hagiography) of Saint George, the patron saint of England. As legend has it, the land of Silene, in Libya, was forced to sacrifice its children, each chosen by lottery, to a great beast that it may spare them. When Silene’s king was forced to give up his own daughter, the crusading knight George, who was passing through the region, agreed to slay the dragon once the k ing’s people converted to Christianity. The tale’s inspiration is found in everything from Gordon R Dickson’s Dragon Knight book series and the film Dragonslayer to Ted Hughes’s The Iron Man (the basis for The Iron Giant ).
110
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
The oldest surviving epic poem in Old English (the manuscript for which resides in the British Library) is also the source of one of the most fearsome dragons ever conceived, one deadly enough to kill the first hero in English literature. Robert Zemeckis’s 1997 motion-capture-animated film adaptation (scripted by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary) presents the creature as the spawn of Beowulf and Grendel’s mother (sired after Beowulf slays Grendel). Its look, conceived by production designer Doug Chiang, is both beautiful and horrifying; and its battle with Beowulf – on land, in air and under sea – may be the finest choreographed duel between man and dragon in any movie.
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
TOP 25 DRAGONS
IN POPULAR CULTURE
23 SIEGFRIED Opera DRAGON: FAFNER FIRST PUBLISHED: 1876 The third of four operas in Richard Wagner’s The Ring Of The Nibelung is based on the Norse myth of Sigurd, a hero who slays Fafner, a dragon who was once a humanoid giant (or, in the original myth, “Fafnir”, the son of a dwarf king). Fafner and his brother Fasolt receive a payment of treasure – including a magic helmet and ring – in exchange for building Valhalla for Wotan, king of the Gods. Fafner kills his brother, uses the helmet to turn into a dragon, and hoards his treasure in a cave. Years later, Wotan’s human grandson Siegfried slays Fafner. The influence on Tolkien is evident.
N E G N U L E B I N E I D S ’
G N A L Z T I R F
22 Book
THE RELUCTANT DRAGON DRAGON: UNNAMED FIRST PUBLISHED: 1898 Kenneth Grahame’s beloved children’s story is perhaps the first major retelling of “Saint George And The Dragon”. A whimsical tale first published as a chapter of the author’s book Dream Days, it broke ground by offering a sympathetic portrayal of the titular creature, who – with his penchant for poetry – is befriended by a small boy in Oxfordshire. The fearful locals call on Saint George, who arranges a fake joust, eventually convincing the town of the dragon’s innocence. The Reluctant Dragon was adapted into a beautifully animated sequence in the 1941 Disney film of the same name.
www.sfx.co.uk
21 Film
SLEEPING BEAUTY DRAGON: MALEFICENT FIRST RELEASED: 1959 For the post-World War II generation, the word “dragon” is synonymous with the obsidian behemoth in the finale o f Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. Animated by Eric Cleworth from a design based on a rattlesnake, in a sequence directed by Wolfgang Reitherman, this dragon is, in reality, the wicked fairy Maleficent, who takes its fire-breathing form in order to stop Prince Phillip from saving the Princess Aurora. Originally presented in the ultra widescreen Super Technirama 70 format, the film’s climactic duel – with Maleficent in all her devil-horned, purple-bellied, green-eyed glory – appears to have inspired the fight between the Balrog and Gandalf in Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings films.
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
111
20 Comic Book
BONE DRAGON: THE GREAT RED DRAGON FIRST PUBLISHED: 1991 Cartoonist Jeff Smith’s 55-issue comic Bone laces comedy with epic fantasy in its tale of everyman hero Fone Bone and his quest to save his adopted Valley from the Lord of the Locusts. Smith’s work is influenced by Carl Barks and Walt Kelly, but his love of animator Chuck Jones shines in his creation of the pompom-eared Great Red Dragon, ancient guardian of the Valley and protector of Bone and his friend Thorn Harvestar. Reminiscent of Eastern dragons in his serenity and concern with nature, the Red Dragon is most often present as a head peering in from off-panel and a pair of oddly human-like hands.
19 Song
PUFF, THE MAGIC DRAGON DRAGON: PUFF FIRST RELEASED: 1963 Folk music trio Peter, Paul and Mary’s “Puff, The Magic Dragon” has often been described as a drug metaphor, a label its creators have vehemently denied, insisting it’s about the loss of innocence. The song – adapted by Peter Yarrow from a 1959 poem by Leonard Lipton (who was himself influenced by Ogden Nash’s poem “Custard The Dragon”) – tells the story of Puff, a dragon who “lives by the sea” and befriends a small boy named Jackie Paper. The single reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and inspired a 1978 animated TV special in which Puff was voiced by Burgess Meredith.
112
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
18 Comic Book
“CALAMITY ON THE CAMPUS!” (FANTASTIC FOUR #35) DRAGON: DRAGON MAN FIRST PUBLISHED: 1965 Issue 35 of the Fantastic Four , by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, introduced Dragon Man. Despite his uninspiring name, the character has remained a staple of Marvel comics and animated TV shows for almost 50 years. Technically a half-human, half-dragon android created by Professor Gregson Gilbert of Empire State University, this dim-witted construct was brought to life by the alchemical powers of the FF’s arch-foe Diablo. Regarding Sue Storm as his Fay Wray, he sadly lost her to Reed Richards, who proposed marriage to the Invisible Girl shortly after freeing her from Dragon Man’s super-strong clutches.
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
TOP 25 DRAGONS
IN POPULAR CULTURE
Film
15 17 Book
DRAGONFLIGHT DRAGONS: MISCELLANEOUS FIRST PUBLISHED: 1968
Second only to Ursula K Le Guin’s dragons in its influence on post-World War II dragon literature is Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders Of Pern series of novels; the first of which, Dragonflight , is a reworking of her Hugo and Nebula-winning Pern novellas. Dragonflight brought adult themes to dragon lore, as it chronicles a planet on which certain humans are chosen to bond with dragons empathically and telepathically. Shades of Pern can be seen in James Cameron’s Avatar .
PETE’S DRAGON DRAGON: ELLIOT FIRST RELEASED: 1977
Disney’s second most popular dragon (after Sleeping Beauty’s Maleficent) is Elliot, the title character in this musical adventure combining animation (Elliot himself ) with live action (everything else). Animated by Don Bluth, Elliot has the power of invisibility, which gets his vagabond orphan pal Pete in and out of trouble until he finds a family to care for him. Cute and stuffed with toothless but pleasant songs, Pete’s Dragon proved a modest hit for the Mouse House of the ’70s, though its virtues were quaint in light of the fantasy film revolution launched a few months prior to its release by Star Wars.
14
16 Book
THE FARTHEST SHORE DRAGONS: MISCELLANEOUS FIRST PUBLISHED: 1972
Though dragons feature throughout Ursula K Le Guin’s six Earthsea books, they’re most prominent in this third volume. What’s remarkable about Le Guin’s dragons is their accompanying mythology. According to the books, dragons and humans were originally one race, which agreed to split. The dragons made their home in the air and fire, the humans in the earth and water. As Asimov redefined robots, so Le Guin redefined dragons.
www.sfx.co.uk
Book
THE NEVERENDING STORY DRAGON: FALKOR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1979
Michael Ende’s German novel The Neverending Story is best known these days as the inspiration for Wolfgang Peterson’s 1984 film adaptation, but both incarnations of the tale feature Falkor, a “luckdragon” upon whom the story’s hero Atreyu rides as he tries to save his world from the all-consuming Nothing. In the film, the whitefurred Falkor possesses the head of a dog and a serpent-like body. He also has the ability to fly (though he lacks wings) and breathe blue flame; and, like all luckdragons, he’s extraordinarily lucky. Falkor’s voice in the original film is provided by Alan Oppenheimer, who also voiced Skeletor in He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe.
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
113
13
12
Film
THE FLIGHT OF DRAGONS Comic Book DRAGONS: MISCELLANEOUS FIRST RELEASED: 1982
An altogether different kind of animated dragon species, one based on natural evolution, is present in The Flight Of Dragons. John Ritter and James Earl Jones lend their voices to this feature film from TV cartoon mavens Rankin/Bass, based on both Peter Dickinson and Wayne Anderson’s 1979 bestiary of the same name and SF writer Gordon R Dickson’s novel The Dragon And The George. Its central question – can science and magic coexist? – is heavy stuff for a kids’ film, and so earned The Flight Of Dragons unusually high praise for a direct-to-video feature.
“LIVE FREE OR DIE!” (X�MEN #166) DRAGON: LOCKHEED FIRST PUBLISHED: 1983
Another Marvel Comics mainstay was introduced in writer Chris Claremont and artist Paul Smith’s run on X-Men – Lockheed the dragon. Part of a hive-like alien species, the diminutive purple hero saved Kitty Pryde from their mutual enemy the Brood, who’d kidnapped the X-Men in outer space. After going home with Kitty, Lockheed became telepathically linked to the young mutant, eventually joining her in co-founding the UK-based superteam Excalibur. TV
11
114
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
DRAGON BALL Z DRAGON: SHENRON FIRST AIRED: 1989
The Dragon Ball Z anime TV and film series and videogames – as well as the Dragon Ball manga on which they’re based – owe their existence to Shenron, the “Holy” or “Eternal” Dragon, whose summoning unites the saga’s protagonists. A wingless Eastern dragon, his tail occupies three quarters of his body. Residing in the Earth’s fiery core, he can only be called forth by gathering the planet’s seven Dragon Balls. And once called, he’ll grant almost any wish – even bringing the dead back to life (provided they did not die of natural causes).
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
TOP 25 DRAGONS
IN POPULAR CULTURE
09 10
08
Book
Book
GUARDS! GUARDS!
THE IRON DRAGON’S DAUGHTER
DRAGON: ERROL FIRST PUBLISHED: 1989 Terry Pratchett’s eighth Discworld novel – and his first to feature the City Watch of Ankh-Morpork – is one of his most popular, due in no small part to its dragons. Concerning a plot to replace the city’s leader that goes awry, resulting in a dragon despot seizing control and demanding treasure and virgin sacrifices. When Watch Captain Vimes’s wife Sybil is chosen as a sacrifice, Watch mascot, a swamp dragon named Errol, battles to save her life. Possessing plenty of the usual Pratchett humour, Guards! Guards! also contains a twist ending that adds a touching grace note to dragon lore.
Videogame
SUPER MARIO WORLD DRAGON: YOSHI FIRST RELEASED: 1990 Introduced in the SNES’s Super Mario World , Yoshi is perhaps the most controversial dragon in this list. For not only was he created for a videogame, but he’s usually referred to as a dinosaur (indeed his homeland is Dinosaur Land). But his inclusion is justified by the fact that some Yoshis can breathe fire, while others have wings. And because he’s the most popular dragon in videogame history. Usually portrayed as green (though available in a variety of colours), Yoshi went on to star in several Mario sequel games as well as his own spin-off series.
DRAGON: MELANCHTHON FIRST PUBLISHED: 1993 Michael Swanwick’s World Fantasy Award-nominated novel The Iron Dragon’s Daughter delights in being what critic John Clute called an “anti-fantasy”. Mixing sci-fi and fantasy tropes, it’s the story of Jane, a changeling girl forced to toil in a factory and build semi-magical, semi-mechanical dragons to be used for war. One day, she meets an old dragon, Melanchthon, who helps her escape… but will he destroy her in doing so? Swanwick’s work is notable for offering a dark alien universe in which even the fiercest of dragons are vulnerable.
07 Film
DRAGONHEART DRAGON: DRACO FIRST RELEASED: 1996 Dragonslayer special effects maestro Phil Tippet (along with sculptor Pete Konig) was also responsible for the design and animation of Draco, the last dragon, in director Rob Cohen’s fantasy film Dragonheart . Voiced by Sean Connery and based on the look of a Chinese guardian dragon, Draco earned Dragonheart an Oscar nomination for visual effects, though Tippet tells SFX the CG talking dragon wasn’t easy to animate: “I designed the face not so elongated like a crocodile’s, but a great deal on how the muzzle is around a gorilla. Because that gave us a starting point, to be able to engineer the lips so that dialogue could be delivered and not look ridiculous… It was a difficult task to have that thing’s lips flapping all over the place.”
www.sfx.co.uk
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
115
Film
MULAN DRAGON: MUSHU FIRST RELEASED: 1998
06
Some may scoff that Mushu is one of only two Eastern dragons on this list, but since we’re focusing on western pop culture, his absence would be more questionable. A winning Eddie Murphy voices the slick fast-talking sidekick/guardian/ protector of Fa Mulan, the Chinese folk hero who disguises herself as a man in order to – in Disney’s version of the legend – battle an invading Hun army. By aiding Mulan, Mushu hopes to once more become a guardian spirit to her family, instead of the incense-burning “gong-ringer” he was long ago demoted to.
05 Film
REIGN OF FIRE DRAGON: MISCELLANEOUS, FIRST RELEASED: 2002
“Fight fire with fire,” reads Fire,, the tagline of Reign of Reign Of Fire and director Rob Bowman’s apocalyptic fantasy almost lives up to it. In the year 2020, decades after London Underground workers accidentally awaken hibernating dragons that decimate the planet, Christian Bale leads a squad of survivors who team with Matthew McConaughey’s American band to destroy the last male dragon, on whose survival his species depends. The science is suspect, some effects are dodgy, and the ending is underwhelming, but Reign but Reign Of Fire still offers unpretentious millennial B-movie fun.
116
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscr www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions iptions
TOP 25 DRAGONS
IN POPULAR CULTURE
Film
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON
04
DRAGON: TOOTHLESS FIRST RELEASED: 2010 How To Train Train Your Your Dragon’s Toothless is the most sympathetic dragon yet depicted on screen. An adaptation of Cressida Cowell’s book series, the Dreamworks Dreamworks Animation film is a 21st century retelling of ET , stuffed to its scales with humour, heart and memorable characters. Jay Baruchel voices Hiccup, the misfit Viking boy who spares and befriends the deadly “Night Ranger”, and uses his smarts to save his village and end the war between humans and dragons. This summer’s sequel is anxiously awaited.
03 TV
GAME OF THRONES DRAGONS: DROGON, RHAEGAL AND VISERION FIRST AIRED: 2011
The most popular dragons of the past decade are undoubtedly those belonging to Daenerys Targaryen, the Mother of Dragons, on TV’s Game Of Thrones (adapted Thrones (adapted from author George RR Martin’s A Martin’s A Song Of Ice And Fire series). The dragons were first given to Daenerys as a wedding gift, in the form of three petrified eggs that hatched when placed on her husband’s funeral pyre. Coloured whitepeach, green and black, they now aid and protect Daenerys – who communicates with them in High Valyrian – as she prepares to conquer Westeros.
www.sfx.co.uk
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
117
N O I T C E L L O C L A B O K E H T ©
02 Film
DRAGONSLAYER DRAGON: VERMITHRAX DRAGON: VERMITHRAX PEJORATIVE FIRST RELEASED: 1981 PEJORATIVE FIRST RELEASED: 1981
Of Dragonslayer Of Dragonslayer’s ’s place in the firmament of dragon movies, Guillermo del Toro has said, “One of the best and one of the strongest landmarks that almost nobody can overcome is Dragonslayer is Dragonslayer.” .” Del Toro’s praise is Wars, director understandable, understandable, since, like Star like Star Wars, Matthew Robbins and writer Hal Barwood’s film is a culmination of much of what preceded it as well as a starting point for what followed. The film takes Fantasia takes Fantasia’s ’s “The Sorcerer’s Stone, and the Apprentice”, Apprentice”, The Sword In The Stone, legend of “Saint George And The Dragon”, and filters them through the wiseass sensibility of late 20th century ironic humour. Tropes aren’t just upended, upended, they’re demolished. demolished. Heroes Heroes prove prove incompetent, virgins are slaughtered, priests incinerated and a wizard stabbed to death before even setting out on his quest. But best of all is Vermithrax Vermithrax Pejorative, Pejorative, the most fully realised realised dragon in live-action English-language cinema. Designed and animated by stop-motion legend The Empire Strikes Back’s Back’s AT-ATs Phil Tippet ( The and Jurass and Jurassic ic Park’s Park’s dinosaurs) and shot by his ILM partner Dennis Muren, Vermithrax makes Dragonslayer Dragonslayer the the definitive dragon movie. “Matt and Hal wanted it to be very old and craggy,” Tippet tells SFX tells SFX of of the dragon’s design.
118
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
“They wanted to be able to feel it was thousands of years old. So it was this very decimated, almost skinny, skinny, craggy thing, to try and impart that this was a very ancient animal. We built one large dragon that was used for all the material in the caves, and then we did two flying dragons, that were much smaller. They had about a 16- inch wingspan. We used them for the flying shots that were shot on a motion control stage.” stage.” Of the design challenge, the FX veteran says, “I didn’t look at a lot of historical dragon reference. There were certain things that it needed to do, that had to be engineered and worked into it, that were mostly engineering problems, like how to make the thing walk and appear to be able to fly. So the big stop-motion puppet that we used inside the cave actually had a wingspan of six feet. It was an unruly puppet to manage.” “As the B-movie budgets grew,” explains Tippet of the film’s stop-motion technology breakthrough, “from a few million million dollars for a Ray Harryhausen movie to $10m, $20m dollars, the level of sophistication had to be amped up to help integrate the characters more seamlessly and make them more lifelike by introducing the quality of motion blur. A great deal of the early R&D that we did was based on what we had discovered during Empire during Empire.. We’d hooked up the Tauntaun to a one-axis motioncontrol rig and we were able to introduce a motion blur just on that one axis. It showed us a direction to go, so we started to do a good amount
N O I T C E L L O C L A B O K E H T ©
of R&D in making up a computerised rod puppet that we called ‘go motion’ because we couldn’t think of anything else.” Despite the advanced tech he created, in the end, Tippet (like a certain Jedi Knight he’s animated), relied on his instincts. “I did a lot of homework before we started and looked at a lot of animal references – things like Komodos – to get my brain around how quadripedal reptiles actually moved. I had a huge telephone-booksized book of notes.” notes.” “By the time we started shooting,” he laughs, “I got rid of the notes and just kind of went for it.”
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscr www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions iptions
TOP 25 DRAGONS
IN POPULAR CULTURE
01 Book
THE HOBBIT DRAGON: SMAUG FIRST PUBLISHED: 1937
The most popular dragon in all of western literature is JRR Tolkien’s Smaug. Introduced in the Oxford professor and author’s 1937 novel The Hobbit, the mammoth, centuriesold creature uses his brains, brawn and molten hot breath to defend his hoard of gold deep within the bowels of the Lonely Mountain. He’s eventually thwarted by Bilbo Baggins, who spies and exploits a chink in the beast’s scaly armour, but not before searing his way into the hearts of fantasy lovers the world over. In Peter Jackson’s Hobbit film trilogy, Smaug is voiced and motion-capture performed by Benedict Cumberbatch, whose otherworldly tones lend a seductiveness to one of the most fearsome creatures ever imagined. “I first discovered Smaug with my dad, who’d read The Hobbit to me at bedtime when I was six or seven,” says Cumberbatch when SFX catches up with him at the Los Angeles premiere of Jackson’s second Hobbit film, The Desolation Of Smaug . “For the role, I went to the reptile house in the London Zoo. And then I went to New Zealand, where I received Peter’s input and began playing like a kid on the mo- cap stage… It was hugely,
www.sfx.co.uk
hugely helpful. I started off with Peter and Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, just the three of them and me, which was a privilege in itself – because of how large everything else is on this film – to have their sole attention… It began as a physicalisation, both voice and body work, the whole thing.” Cumberbatch describes Smaug as “a flying, psychotic napalm machine,” and his performance – which he’ll conclude later this year in the third Hobbit film, There And Back Again – as “absolutely abstract”. “It’s an impression of a serpentine reptile that can breathe fire and fly, and I’m a limited biped mammal. But I’d squeeze my legs together and use my hands as claws and throw back my neck. It was a really fun way to work.” Cumberbatch’s one regret is that due to the nature of his role, he didn’t meet most of his cast mates while filming. “Sadly, I met hardly any of the cast. Rich Armitage and I met once. I crossed over with people as they were coming back to do, I think, their third stint. Martin Freeman, I didn’t spend any sort of live time with Martin, which was sad. But no, it was fine. We know each other quite well so we kind of secondguessed, in a weird way, our performances to some degree. I didn’t cross over with anyone. I’ve had scenes with people I haven’t even met yet. So that is bizarre.”
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
119
PRESENTS
CONAN Two stunning previews of the comic adventures of the most famous fictional barbarian of them all
KING CONAN: THE CONQUEROR Robert E Howard’s Cimmerian barbarian was created in 1932 for a series of high fantasy adventures in Weird Tales magazine. Howard died just a few years later, at the shockingly young age of 30, however his pulp creation not only lived on in novels by other writers, but became more of a fantasy icon than his creator could ever have imagined. Conan rst became a comic hero in 1970 in Marvel’s Conan The Barbarian series. Since 2003, Dark Horse has been charting the comic adventures of the sword-wielding savage/king/conqueror/ barbarian* (*delete as applicable). Over the next dozen or so pages you will nd not one, but two extracts from Dark Horse’s most recent Conan series. First, we give you six pages from King Conan: The Conqueror , which is currently midway through its six-issue run.
King Conan: The Conqueror © 2014 Conan Properties International LLC (“CPI”)
CONAN KING CONAN: THE CONQUEROR
www.sfx.co.uk
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
121
122
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
CONAN KING CONAN: THE CONQUEROR
www.sfx.co.uk
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
123
124
SFX
ULTIMATE ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscr www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions iptions
CONAN KING CONAN: THE CONQUEROR
www.sfx.co.uk
ULTIMATE ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
125
126
SFX
ULTIMATE ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscr www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions iptions
CONAN PEOPLE OF THE BLACK CIRCLE
CONAN: PEOPLE OF THE BLACK CIRCLE Next we give you six pages of glorious artwork from Conan: People Of The Black Circle , which was originally published in series format last year and will be available as a hardcover collected edition on 7 May. Conan: People of the Black Circle © 2013 Conan Properties International LLC (“CPI”)
128
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
CONAN PEOPLE OF THE BLACK CIRCLE
www.sfx.co.uk
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
129
130
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
CONAN PEOPLE OF THE BLACK CIRCLE
www.sfx.co.uk
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
131
132
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
CONAN PEOPLE OF THE BLACK CIRCLE
www.sfx.co.uk
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
133
MAN Joe Abercrombie, king of artfully violent fantasy, is back with a new novel. But it’s… young adult? Rob Power finds out what he’s playing at…
T
here are an awful lot of imitators, but there’s only one Joe Abercrombie. The man behind the wildly successful First Law trilogy and the creator of some of modern fantasy’s most compelling characters, his reputation as one of the brightest lights in the genre is well earned. But with six thrilling, trope-bending novels behind him, Abercrombie is taking a rest from the world of the Bloody Nine to channel his talents in a different direction.
134
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
Half A King , the first of a new YA trilogy set in a Viking-esque world, tells the story of Yarvi, the crippled second son of a royal house, as he comes of age. Except, well, it’s not going to be as straightforward as all that. After all, it wouldn’t be an Abercrombie novel without a hefty dose of violence, sex and tricksy plotting, which means that Half A King isn’t going to be your standard young adult fair. We caught up with Joe to talk inspiration, writing youngsters and stepping away from the First Law...
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
INTERVIEW
www.sfx.co.uk
JOE ABERCROMBIE
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
135
Half A King is a young adult novel – what made you decide to go in that direction? “I set out to write something partly aimed at young adults, but I certainly also set out to write something that the majority of my established readers would enjoy as well. If I wanted it to be totally different I’d write it under a pen name and do something different, I think. If you’re attaching a name to it you owe it to the fans, all five or six of them, to give them something that they’re going to like. So it’s not massively different in many ways. But then, when I’m talking about young adult I’m talking about writing for the kind of person I was at that age, 12 or 14, and honestly what I was reading then is not that much different to what I’d read or like now.” What were you reading then? “I was reading a lot of stuff like David Eddings and Dragonlance. I’d also read The Lord Of The Rings long before that and I was reading a lot of much more adult general fiction of all sorts really. Stuff like Dickens and Jane Austen and all the classic kind of things. So, you know, what I wanted out of a book wasn’t massively different, I don’t think, to what I want now. What I was aiming at with Half A King was something shorter, more f ocused, more kind of simple – not simple in the way that it’s written, but in the amount of stuff going on.
136
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
INTERVIEW
JOE ABERCROMBIE
AS A KID I DIDN’T WANT TO READ SIMPLE, SCHMALTZY NONSENSE AND I CERTAINLY DON’T WANT TO WRITE IT “The First Law has six point-of-view characters interwoven, and this basically just has one. It’s a much purer, tighter story, but it’s almost like taking one thread out. So it’s not dumbing down in any way, and it’s honestly not much less intense on the violence or the sex. It’s a bit less, and it’s less on the swearing probably, but it ’s certainly no less in terms of its moral complexity, or its darkness, or its difficulty. As a kid I didn’t want to read simple, schmaltzy nonsense – I don’t think anyone does – and I certainly don’t want to write it. I’d be bored writing that.” And you wouldn’t want to patronise young adult readers… “No, of course, that’s the last thing you want. And in a way, young adults are more averse to being patronised than anyone. They want to feel like they’re reading something about adults – the ‘adult’ bit is the key part of the term. But I think at the same time, the feeling was not only to reach out to possibly a slightly younger audience. I mean, a lot of young adults read my stuff now – I get emails from 10-year-olds reading it, which always slightly worries me – but the idea was also to reach out to a more general adult audience who maybe are interested in fantasy but are sort of turned off by the scale and the complexity, or the size. Because things like The Hunger Games, or even Harry Potter, aren’t successful only because kids love them; they’re successful because adults read them. And ideally a good book works for everyone. Adults and young adults have a lot in common when it comes to taste.” Yarvi, the protagonist of Half A King , is a lot younger than any character you’ve written before – why did you decide to go in that direction? And what were the challenges of writing a younger protagonist? “The weird thing about YA as a category is that it’s infinitely variable. It can sort of have anything in it, but the one thing it has to have is a young adult protagonist. And I guess a lot of classic fantasy has that, ‘the boy with the special destiny’, King Arthur, or Garion in David Eddings’s The Belgariad : the young lad who is shown his destiny by a wizardly mentor. That’s the classic form. “And I suppose generally I’ve tended to do much more used-up, older characters that I instinctively prefer. Because they’ve already got a personality, there’s something to latch on to straight away. I don’t really like that sense of starting with a totally blank page, because
www.sfx.co.uk
life isn’t like that. Part of doing this was to work with young adult characters to see what the feeling was like. And it’s different, to a degree. There’s inevitably what you might call a ‘coming of age’ feel to these books, because you start wit h a character who is very young, untried, and the story is kind of the story of their development into an adult. That’s almost inevitable with having a young adult character. So it’s been interesting. “He’s quite a vivid character, quite a disadvantaged character in a certain type of world – he has a crippled hand, basically. It’s in a slightly Viking-esque kind of world. So there’s a big emphasis on men being warriors. The man should be a warrior or a sailor, he should be able to swing an axe and tie a knot and draw a bow. And most of all hold the shield in the shield wall, because that’s the way they fight. Their society has become structured around the shield wall. “So not being able to hold a shield because he has a crippled hand makes him not really a man, or a huge disappointment anyway. He’s second in line to the throne but it’s assumed he’ll never become king because he’s got an older brother. So the fact that he has to survive in this world lacking the skills he’s expected to have sets the tone for the relationships. He has to find a way to prevail using other talents. “The idea was that this was a break from the adult stuff – I’d started to feel like I was treading over the same ground and becoming a bit stale with it. The idea was to do something different, and something very fast moving as well, so it doesn’t take long to get going.” You mentioned that this is a Viking-style community. Was it tempting to set Half A King in some far away corner of the First Law world? “That was one possibility. There were three possibilities: write in a different corner of that world and hence draw on some of those things that were already there; write in a totally new invented world; or write something that’s in an alternative history of our world. And I kind of plumped for doing the second two. So it’s implied it might be following an apocalypse in our world, vaguely. There is that hint to it. There’s the wreckage of an ancient civilisation left over which may or may not be our civilisation.” So it’s a sort of post-apocalyptic fantasy? “One of the things I brought into this were the things that I read as a young adult, Rosemary Sutcliff and so on, that very much don’t
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
137
talk down, that you can totally read as an adult and are uncompromising, quite dark. The Prince In Waiting by John Christopher was one of the touchstones I was thinking of. It’s a post-apocalyptic thing set in Winchester after a nuclear war. It’s regressed to the Middle Ages, but there are fragments of technology hanging over. That was the thing that was chiefly in the back of my mind, but also slightly the feeling that there are some people who maybe would never pick up something in an invented world, but something that’s notionally in our world, I think, makes it more palatable.” But you still have a free reign to use fantasy settings and ideas… “The advantage you have doing something in an invented world is that you don’t have to research nearly so hard. I had this epiphany when I was writing the first book years ago. I had a character who needed to be thrown through a window, and I was thinking, they might have windows, but what century am I in here? Is this 16th century Florence we’re talking about? What sort of glass would they have? How heavily leaded would the windows be? Would someone just bounce off? Would they go through? “And suddenly it occurred to me, I can do whatever I like! I can make the kind of window that explodes in the most artful way. And I don’t have to think would they have pointy shoes or round-toed shoes, I can just make the kind of shoes I want. And I think that has a certain appeal. And the fact that you can combine. The Heroes is a mash-up of Napoleonic stuff with medieval stuff and 14th century stuff. I think that gives it a kind of universal quality in a way that you don’t get so much if you’re going for a specific time period. “For me, I like that leeway that you get writing in an invented world. And you can also do something that’s a bit larger than life. Why do fantasy if you want to be scrupulously realistic?”
How does your planning process work? Do you have characters coming together in the back of your head all the time? “They tend to stew away for a while. The First Law was stewing for years obviously, and then as I was well under way with the third book, my editor said, ‘What are you thinking of doing next?’ Which was a moment of horrifying realisation. You never look past the end of a massive three-book trilogy, it seems inconceivable you’ll ever get to the end. And you get to the end, and you’re thinking, ‘Shit, I need to find some ideas!’ “I’d had some vague ideas, and I’d half-written something before when I nearly gave up writing The First Law because it didn’t feel like anyone was going to publish that. And so I pulled those bits of ideas apart and used some of them, and came up with the concept for Best Served Cold . And sort of at the same time, I had the vague concept for The Heroes. As you’re writing a book there are times when ideas come to you and you start thinking about the next one. In an ideal world, by the time you finish a book there’s a bit
THE ADVANTAGE YOU HAVE DOING SOMETHING IN AN INVENTED WORLD IS THAT YOU DON’T HAVE TO RESEARCH NEARLY SO HARD
of a loose structure and some ideas about who the characters might be, and then you sit down and start working through that.” Half A King is the first of a projected trilogy – how far ahead are you with the next book? “Actually the next one is nearly finished as well. The plan is that the first one will be out in July, that’s definite, then it looks like the second one will be out in February – which is roughly definite. And then the third one the following July.” That’s a swift trilogy… “But they’re much shorter books, that’s why it’s possible. Given that it is possible, it felt like a good idea. When talking to my agent, I said, ‘You know, this book has gone pretty quickly, I reckon I can have all these done in a year or two,’ and he was like, ‘Brilliant!’ My thinking was, publish them one a year, big head start, time off, twiddle thumbs, play computer games. And what of course happened was, as soon as I got in the meeting he said, ‘How do you feel about publishing every six months?’ And I thought, ‘F**k’. But there you go! “But I’m on target ,amazingly. The second one’s nearly done, nearly drafted – there’s still a lot of work to do. And then I’ll need to finish the third one by the end of the year.” Half A King is out in July via Harper Voyager.
138
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
FROM THE ARCHI VE S THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN SFX ISSUE 236
I’m probably the only human being who has never read Sandman, and can never read Sandman, and has no idea what it’s like to read Sandman, because while Sandman was happening I was writing it. I meet people whose lives were changed by Sandman. I see the Sandman tattoos. I thought I was doing something that was very transient and very of its time. I can look back at it now and remember where I was when I wrote everything, how I felt when I saw the artwork come back, how I felt when I got the first edition of the comic, the arguments that I had on the phone with the editors. It’s all there. I’m enormously proud of it – it was so weird, so personal. I was so lucky.
Neil Gaiman
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
THE SANDMAN
NEIL GAIMAN INTERVIEW
More than 25 years after Neil Gaiman’s fantasy epic began, Joseph McCabe talks to the man himself about his triumph
t begins, as so many things do, very small. Just a simple advert, running throughout DC Comics’ monthly comic book titles. The profile of a gaunt, pale face, black hair strewn across it, inside of which the eyes are small red, fiercely burning orbs. A hand reaches in to the foreground of the image. A tiny golden glow. A spark. A supernova. “I will show you terror in a handful of dust,” reads the tagline – a proclamation and a promise borrowed from TS Eliot’s “The Waste Land”. Additional words run across the bottom of the ad: “The Sandman: HE CONTROLS YOUR DREAMS. A horror-edged fantasy set in the DC Universe.” Neil Gaiman’s wildly popular, critically adored and terrifically trendsetting comic cosmology began its landmark 75-issue run (eventually collected in 10 volumes) at the perfect time, in January of 1989. Inheriting an audience eager for adult graphic literature like that of Alan Moore and Frank Miller, Sandman provided Gaiman with the perfect means to explore the medium’s potential – and incorporate the narrative ideas and techniques of the finest prose fiction – while examining the foundations of graphic storytelling. It would draw from world mythologies, theologies, philosophies, punk music, modern art, transgender subculture and Mary Poppins. But, first and foremost, it was a story. One its creator summarised as “The King of Dreams
www.sfx.co.uk
realises he must change or die a nd he makes his choice.” It would prove a fitting epitaph for the comic itself. “I always knew that was what the book was going to be about,” Gaiman tells SFX . “What I didn’t know was whether or not I was going to be able to tell that story, which is slightly different. I set up pretty much everything I needed. The important part of the end was set up in probably the f irst two issues, over the first four or five. Although Preludes And Nocturnes really didn’t hit its stride or hit its shape until the end, most of what I was doing there… I knew where it would end. “I was setting up in the very beginning. I didn’t believe that I was ever going to get to tell my story, but I didn’t see there was any reason not to set up for the kind of story I wanted to tell. If that makes any sense.” endless dream
In telling his tale, Gaiman conceived of the seven dysfunctional Endless siblings, each an embodiment of a particular aspect of the universe: Destiny, Death, Destruction, Despair, Desire, Delirium and the tall, moody, haunted title character himself, Dream – whose lengthy imprisonment on Earth, and subsequent release, is detailed in the series’ first issue, inked by then newcomer Mike Dringenberg and illustrated by Sam Kieth. All three gentlemen had a deep love of DC’s ’70s horror titles – books like House Of Mystery and House Of Secrets – out of which came Bernie
Wrightson and Len Wein’s Swamp Thing , and Alan Moore’s ’80s reboot of the title. The early issues of Sandman, collected in Preludes And Nocturnes, are bursting with a passion for such material. Though some growing pains were felt. “ Sandman #1 was written without really knowing who was drawing it,” says Gaiman. “I think I had to write Sandman #1 while we were still looking for an artist. Sandman #2 was written to Sam’s strengths, because it was sort of pure Bernie Wrightson. Sandman #4, I wrote to Sam’s strengths, and Sam loved it so much, he went off and inked the double-page spread [pages 12-13] himself.”
I ALWAYS KNEW WHAT THE BOOK WAS GOING TO BE ABOUT Though Gaiman would tailor his scripts to the skills and interests of each of his artists, Sandman’s first illustrator felt he was the wrong choice for a story that quickly transcended its horror roots. “Sam was miserable. Sam really was in the wrong band. Sam said, ‘I’m like Jimi Hendrix
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
141
The Sandman with a mask that recalls his ’30s predecessor.
Sam Kieth – mad landscapes and “goofy” hero.
There’s always Alton Towers.
DREAM A LITTLE DREAM On designing the sandman… “Dave McKean had drawn a couple of pictures of a guy in a trench coat,” says Sandman’s first penciller Sam Kieth. “He looked like John Constantine… I sent some sketches off, and nobody liked the first round. Then I sent a second round off and the one they chose is the one we went with, which looked a little like David Bowie, a little bit of a cropped top. The look was really heavily championed through Neil and Karen Berger… I would have his hair matted to his head. I wasn’t with the whole, hip trendy Sandman. I wanted the goofy Sandman.”
142
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
in the Beatles. I’m miserable here.’ And we were all relieved – I was terribly relieved – when Sam quit. Not because I didn’t want Sam as an artist, but because I’d have these phone calls with him, and he would sound like he was going to slit his wrists… ‘Hi Sam. How’s it going?’ ‘They’re going to see this comic come out and they will hate me.’ ‘I don’t think they will hate you…’” Kieth eventually chose to leave and, with issue #6, his f riend and inker Dringenberg took over the book’s pencilling, helping Gaiman establish a style and tone that would become synonymous with The Sandman. Most famously with the introduction of Death, Dream’s older, eternally wise and perennially perky sister, in #8 (“The Sound Of Her Wings”). “With Mike working on the book ,” explains Gaiman, “I had that sense of place. I could actually say, ‘Great. I have a diner. I have the front of this diner, I have this whole space, and I can move people around in it. And you will believe in it the whole time.’ In the same way that I could do #8 and move the Sandman across New York. Although, even when Sam was still on the book, it was
always planned that one was going to be drawn by Mike.” After 11 issues, which spanned Preludes And Nocturnes, the title’s acclaimed second volume The Doll’s House, and the prologue and epilogue of volume 4, Season Of Mists, Dringenberg too departed, and a new artist was brought on for each subsequent story arc. “Mike’s departure was a complicated thing. Mike basically said, ‘I can’t always do a monthly book. I can’t meet these deadlines. I’d like to do some painting, I would like to do something more… Because Mike had gone off and we got Kelley Jones in, we just sort of had the perfect artist doing Season Of Mists. At that point, there was a sort of ‘Okay, what are we going to do now? How are we going to do this? Are we going to try and get a regular artist for the book forever?’ I think there were things that Kelley wanted to do. For A Game Of You, I began by saying ‘I want an Eric Shanower kind of look’. And we got Shawn McManus, who I loved. I loved his ‘Pog’, his Swamp Thing story. For Brief Lives, I wanted something very, very understated. Very realistic. Done by somebody who could draw girls who looked like girls. I was shown this Jill Thompson drawing and I thought, ‘Yes, that’s what I want.’” Sister act
Brief Lives found Dream and his mad sister Delirium (formerly Delight) on a quest to find their brother Destruction, who’d abandoned his realm. The Sandman’s next major arc, The Kindly Ones, would be its longest. Adorned with the minimalist art of Marc Hempel, it pitted Dream against the Furies (or Fates), who sought vengeance on behalf of a human woman who blamed the Prince of Stories for the loss o f her son. The
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
THE SANDMAN
NEIL GAIMAN INTERVIEW
LIVING DEAD GIRL The sandman’s most popular character was no dream… “The way Neil originally described her,” says artist Mike Dringenberg of Dream’s older sister, “was very much a Louise Brooks kind of concoction. He wanted that look, with sort of a short, black bob… [But] Death is based on, primarily, my friend Cinnamon, who was a ballet dancer. Death’s ankh was indeed my idea. Since Cinnamon was prone to wearing a little silver ankh – a sign of immortality and rebirth – I thought it both a fitting tribute to a beauty, and a lovely irony – worthy of such a deity, a kind of cosmic joke.”
The foxiest grim reaper you ever did see.
resulting conflict would forever alter the Sandman’s realm, the Dreaming. “Technically, the thing I’m most proud of, in the whole of Sandman,” says Gaiman, “is probably in The Kindly Ones – watching Lyta Hall, on the one hand, going through this huge internal quest through all sorts of mythic realms with all sorts of mythological characters, and, on another level, wandering completely crazy around LA. You realise that she’s talking to her reflection, or a traffic light, or whatever. And managing to make that work – and Marc Hempel’s genius in designing the pages – so that you realise that both of these things are true. One of them is a way of looking inside her head.” March of 1996 marked the release of Sandman’s final issue, #75, “The Tempest”. This standalone tale was illustrated by
The Cure cover that never was?
www.sfx.co.uk
Charles Vess, the artist with whom Gaiman had won, in 1991, what is to date the only World Fantasy Award (for “Best Short Fiction”) ever given to a comic book – #19’s similarly Shakespearean “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. Change or die. In the end, Dream made his choice. Did it reflect any options that Gaiman himself had faced? “I don’t know,” he tells us. “That’s probably the most ho nest answer. There are three different philosophies about coping with untenable situations. There is Destruction’s point of view and there is Lucifer’s point of view, both of which sum up to, ‘You really don’t have to stay anywhere forever. You can move. If it’s horrible, you get out of there. If you’re not happy, you move on.’ And then there’s Dream’s point of view, which is ‘You
do the right thing if it kills you. You have your responsibilities. You cannot walk out on them. There are things you cannot get out of.’ I’m sure that I must have been in both of those positions during my life. Just given the way that I’m made up, I’m pretty much more likely to do a Sandman than I ever would be to do a Lucifer. I’m much more likely to stick to somewhere, even if it’s untenable, and say, ‘I gave my word, I’m going to see this one through.’” Though the Sandman’s story ended, as befits one of the Endless it never really stopped. Spin-off titles like The Dreaming , Lucifer, the rebooted House Of Mystery and a line of Sandman Presents books followed, as well as Gaiman’s own Death miniseries
CHANGE OR DIE. IN THE END DREAM MADE HIS CHOICE ( The High Cost Of Living and The Time Of Your Life ), his illustrated novella The Dream Hunters, and his anthology collection Endless Nights. A 25th anniversary project, The Sandman: Overture, written by Gaiman and illustrated by JH Williams III, also started at the end of last year. (Issue #2 should be in shops by the time you read this, but i t was already two months behind schedule.) Sandman’s greatest legacy may be – in addition to launching the career of one of the most popular and acclaimed writers of our time – the sheer number of doors it opened for storytellers not only seeking to tell comic book stories with the depth and complexity of prose, but who wish to tell full, complete, adult stories within the medium. Per Gaiman’s wishes, DC has not continued Sandman since he ended his saga. Instead, the book’s success launched the publisher’s Vertigo line, and the many titles comprising it, from Preacher to Transmetropolitan, 100 Bullets to Y: The Last Man. And to think it all began with a handful of dust.
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
143
FROM THE ARCHI VE S THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN SFX ISSUE 221
THE DARK TOWER
STEPHEN KING
Stephen Jewell traces the history of the Maine horror master’s gunslinging fantasy masterwork If there’s a sci-fi/ fantasy saga whose time has come around, it has to be Stephen King’s magnum opus The Dark Tower. Inspired by his love of The Lord Of The Rings, Arthurian legend and such seminal Spaghetti Westerns as The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, the Master of Horror first began chronicling last gunslinger Roland Deschain’s epic journey across the deserts and plains of Mid-World in the early ’70s – before concluding that he didn’t yet possess the necessary maturity to bring the story to life in his own distinctive vision. After putting the incomplete manuscript away in a box, he pulled it out again in 1977 and showed it to his then agent, Kirby McCauley, who sold it in sections as short stories to Fantasy And Science Fiction magazine editor Ed Ferman. “Not bad for an old story that was moldering away forgotten in a wet corner of the garage last year,” King wrote in his journal in August 1978. “Ferman told Kirby that Roland ‘has a feel of reality’ that’s missing in a lot of fantasy fiction, and wanted to know if there might be even more adventures. I’m sure there are even more adventures, but I have no idea what they might be.” Despite the bestselling popularity of the Maine-born author’s ’70s classics such as Carrie and The Shining , The Gunslinger was only released as a limited run of 10,000 when it was eventually collected in 1982. Second instalment The Drawing Of The Three was
www.sfx.co.uk
published in 19 87, followed by The Waste Lands and Wizard And Glass over the next decade before King ’s near-fatal encounter with a Plymouth minivan in 1999 prompted him to finish the final three volumes Wolves Of The Calla, Song Of Susannah and The Dark Tower, which were issued in quick succession in 2003 and 2004 alongside a newly revised and expanded The Gunslinger. “I had no urge for The Dark Tower to be filed away with The Canterbury Tales and The Mystery Of Edwin Drood ,” King wrote in the introduction to the 2003 editions of The Dark Tower series, referring to Geoffrey Chaucer and Charles Dickens’ respective
dedicated fans – than his traditional, more earthbound horror offerings such as The Stand and Lisey’s Story, although they are all essentially based in the same thematic milieu. “Steve has always described The Dark Tower cycle as the centre of his creative universe, and I think that ’s really accurate,” says Robin Furth, who as King’s long-time researcher, the co-writer of Marvel’s prequel comic book series and the author of The Dark Tower: A Concordance arguably knows the intricate details of Roland’s fictional realm better than the big man does himself. “Most of Steve’s non- Dark Tower novels take place in our world, but in a version of our world where
A NEAR�FATAL ENCOUNTER WITH A MINIVAN PROMPTED KING TO FINISH THE BOOKS unfinished masterpieces. King’s readership was certainly hungry for answers: a terminally ill grandmother and a death row inmate both wrote to King over the years, requesting to be taken into the author’s confidence about Roland’s eventual fate before they passed on, an explanation he would have happily supplied if he was privy to it himself. “I once had an outline, but I lost it along the way. All I had was a few notes.” centre of the universe
Although its followers are loyal and enthusiastic, The Dark Tower has historically appealed to a smaller and more specific breed of Constant Reader – as King dubs his most
creatures from other realities break through, or where people have very unusual psychic abilities. The supernatural is such a big part of his vision. In The Dark Tower novels, we learn that there are multiple realities, and that magic and psychic abilities are real. In a way, you could say that in all of his other novels, The Dark Tower universe is breaking through into our reality.” From Father Callahan featuring in both Salem’s Lot and The Wolves Of The Calla to a graphic novel called “The Dark Wanderer” cropping up in Cell, elements of The Dark Tower have regularly appeared in King’s other works. “Randall Flag, who is also Walter O’Dim, the Man in Black, pops up in many
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
145
King has described his Dark Tower books as his “magnum opus”.
books like The Stand ,” says Furth, referring to Roland’s chief nemesis. “He just keeps coming back in so many different stories. Then you have the low men, who are also the can-toi, who are in From A Buick 8 in a very different form. The name cantoi, which Steve says means ‘little servant’, comes up in Desperation. Although it’s not the same kind of can-toi as in Dark Tower, the two types of creatures are related. It’s almost like that idea [Roland’s adoptive son] Jake Chambers has when he’s falling into the Abyss at the end of The Gunslinger. ‘There are other worlds than these,’ and all the worlds echo each other.” Like the Pevensies in The Chronicles of Narnia, 11-year-old New Yorker Jake was propelled into The Dark Tower’s sinister otherworld after a traumatic traffic accident. “They’re both about stepping through a doorway of some kind and entering a different reality, which is attached to our reality,” says Furth. “That has always appealed to me, perhaps because it makes it seem more real. It’s like it’s a part of this world as well; the magic is more a ccessible.” With its groundbreaking combination of Tolkien-esque mythical realms and postapocalyptic dystopian scenarios, The Dark Tower was one of the first stories to draw equally on both science fiction and fantasy. “I would describe it as an adventure quest, similar to other Knight-errant tales,” says King’s UK editor Philippa Pride. “That’s a significant part of its appeal as the reader, like Roland, wants to reach the Dark Tower. It is the way that Steve draws upon these diverse influences – as only he can – to create a series which is utterly unique and totally Stephen King’s Dark Tower, together with characters we really care about, that has kept fans captivated book after book.” inspirations and influences
As quoted at the close of The Dark Tower, Robert Browning’s 1855 poem “Childe Roland To The Dark Tower Came” was also a significant touchstone. “It was one of his big inspirations when he was young and at university,” says Furth. “Reading that poem really caught his imagination, especially the opening lines where you have this knight riding towards this strange, dark tower in this bleak landscape. That tale of Childe Roland is also related to the whole Arthurian cycle, which has had many incarnations. The
146
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
Arthurian legend is something we keep coming back to in the comics as (Roland’s homeland) Gilead is almost like a fantasy and sci-fi version of that Arthurian dreamscape.” As with the stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable, the Norse Ragnarok and even the perpetually repetitive storylines of superheroes, The Dark Tower controversially proved to be literally cyclical, a n atural transition that King paved the way for in the revised The Gunslinger. “I wasn’t exactly crazy about the ending either, if you want to know the truth, but it’s the right ending,” he says to any disgruntled readers in the final volume’s Author’s Note. “The only ending in fact. You have to remember that I don ’t make these things up, not exactly; I write down what I see.” Mirroring authors such as Grant Morrison and Paul Auster, King risked even further outrage by meta-fictionally writing himself into the text. “It’s like the author’s dream life becomes real. As an author, there’s always that fascinating idea that when you write you’re creating a world, but that world and its characters also have an existence of their own, completely separate from you,” says Furth, who has spotted parallels between King’s 1994 novel Insomnia and his dash with death on a Maine highway five years later. “There are pre-echoes of Steve’s accident throughout his early books. People say that you can’t discuss such things because it means you think certain events are fated, but in physics they do talk about the strange nature of time. We don’t actually understand it and maybe it’s not linear in the way we think it is, but that ’s how we perceive it. The Dark Tower novels are full of time travel, and events that echo and pre-echo each other. In Wolves Of The Calla, Eddie Dean and Jake Chambers both go back in time a nd Jake sees his earlier self.” While The Dark Tower was enjoyed by a niche readership during the three decades of its publication, it has risen in prominence since coming to a conclusion in 2004. For the past five years, Furth has collaborated with seasoned scribe Peter David and leading artists such as Jae Lee and Sean P hillips on Marvel’s Dark Tower comic book series. But while the ambitiously interlinked Ron Howard-helmed film and HBO television series have apparently stalled, the phenomenal
success of the American cable channel’s adaptation of George RR Martin’s Game Of Thrones has raised fantasy’s cachet amongst mainstream audiences. the final instalment
It’s no surprise, then, that 2012’s The Wind Through The Keyhole was the most highly anticipated Dark Tower adventure to date, although Furth attributes its existence to that fickle muse: inspiration. “Once the winds of Mid-World begin to blow, Steve writes,” she laughs. “I think he was as surprised as anybody that this book came along.” Described by Philippa Pride as “an enchanting Russian doll of a novel,” The Wind
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
THE DARK TOWER
STEPHEN KING
TOWERING AMBITION king’s tale in word bubbles
I WASN’T EXACTLY CRAZY ABOUT THE ENDING, IF YOU WANT TO KNOW THE TRUTH
Through The Keyhole takes place between the fourth and fifth books, Wizard And Glass and Wolves Of The Calla. “It’s a story-within-a-story-within-a-story,” reveals Furth. “At the outset, Roland and his American tet (companions) are travelling towards the River Whye in Mid-World. A great storm, called a Starkblast, is about to blow. While our tet is sheltering from the storm, Roland tells a story about his younger days, when he and his tet-mate Jamie DeCurry were sent to Debaria to investigate reports of a skin-man, a kind of dangerous shape-changer. While there, the young Roland retells another tale, an old fairytale taken from a book called ‘Magic Tales Of Eld’. All three stories are
www.sfx.co.uk
As Robin Furth reveals, the comics are not just a straightforward adaptation of the novels. “What we set out to do was to adapt 1998 novella The Little Sisters Of Eluria and The Gunslinger but we’ve also brought in information from the other novels because of the form the comics take. “It’s kind of like how a film of The Dark Tower would be, it’s the same story and the same world but sometimes to fit the new medium and shape, it changes a little bit and you fill in certain things that you know from other parts of the story.” After reaching the end of The Gunslinger in 2012, the series continued with all-new material, written by Furth, drawn and inked by Richard Isanove and with King serving as creative and executive director. Sheemie’s Tale and Evil Ground , both two-issue limited series, were followed, in August 2013, by the conclusion of Marvel’s Dark Tower comic book series So Fell Lord Perth .
connected to the winds of the Starkblast.” After the unexpected arrival of The Wind Through The Keyhole, Furth believes that this isn’t the last we’ve seen of the enigmatic gunslinger. “I’m really hoping that Steve writes more, but we’ll have to see,” she says. “Steve is so busy, so a lot depends on his time and inspiration. But he has such tremendous energy and imaginative force that I can’t see him not continuing to tell stories about Roland and his tet.”
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
147
FROM THE ARCHI VE S THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN COMIC HEROES ISSUE 21
C N I , S C I H P A R G P R A W 4 1 0 2 © T R A T S E U Q F L E
ELFQUEST
INTERVIEW
LEGACY AND INSPIRATION
Left: Elfquest #1Fire And Flight is where it all began in 1978 – the first tale of the Wolfriders. The second volume,Siege At Blue Mountain , above, came out almost a decade later in 1987, originally in black-and-white, later coloured.
Pini, vidi, vici It was born in the independent comics scene of the 1970s and recently launched its long-promised Final Quest . Dave Bradley quizzes Elfquest ’s founders about more than 35 years of epic fantasy… n a world where “comics” is often shorthand for “superheroes”, one title has consistently shown that epic fantasy has a place at the heart of the industry. Wendy and Richard Pini have been creating Elfquest for over 35 years, inspiring generations of readers, artists and writers. The pair met and married when Richard read a letter Wendy had published in issue five of the Silver Surfer comic book, and together they took a punt on Wendy’s idea for a fantasy series. Launched in 1978, it describes a community of elves struggling to survive on an Earth-like world with two moons. Now published by Dark Horse, the first issue of their Final Quest came out in January and is going to take “three or four years” to finish. As well as its creator-owned roots and longevity, what marks the comic as special is that it ’s still run by
I
www.sfx.co.uk
the same couple and it always had a story arc, a direction. So what can the two creators reveal to SFX about their methods and processes? SFX: How did Elfquest originally come about? Richard Pini: “Wendy’s been a storyteller and an artist all her life. In 1977 she shared an amazing
WE WERE YOUNG AND WE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT WE WERE DOING
When Elfquest launched, the independent comics movement was in its infancy, meaning the field was wide open for Wendy and Richard Pini to try something new. “We had almost no competition!” confesses Richard. “The field was so fertile and we grew in it. If we were trying to do Elfquest now with digital, with apps, with all the new technologies, I don’t know if we’d be able to have the same impact. We’re so happy that we’re old fogies in this business, because we had that advantage. So we’re very interested to see what newcomers do.” But today’s comics scene neophytes do not have quite the same open goal. Says Wendy: “I will advise people to try launching their product on the web first to build their audience interest. I see a similar spirit that’s happening in web comics that was happening in the ’70s with independent comics.” After so long it’s only natural that Wendy and Richard Pini would be an inspiration to a whole generation of comic creators, a phenomenon Richard describes as “the best part of the job”. He tells us: “People who are big names in movie and TV come up to Wendy and say ‘I’m here because of what you did’. Chris Sanders who createdLilo And Stitch said we were a seminal inspiration. You just reel back at the connections you never knew you made. Greg Weisman who created the Gargoyles TV series grew up reading Elfquest – and there’s a lot of Elfquest influence in that show.” With not a single note of sadness, the pair reveal: “Early on we decided never to have biological children, but all of these people, they are like our kids. The whole audience are our kids and there’s nothing like it.”
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
149
150
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
ELFQUEST idea with me, which was the genesis of Elfquest. We didn’t know anything about publishing; we wanted someone else to publish it! We took it to Marvel and DC but none of them wanted it, so we realised we had to do it ourselves. So we set about simply learning, making mistakes.” WP: “I had one advantage – I had a reputation for being a science fiction illustrator. Phil Seuling was our East Coast distributor and Bud Plant our West Coast distributor and both knew me. So I think they were much more willing to take a chance on an independent comic with large numbers...” RP: “We started out with 10,000 when everyone else was selling in the hundreds! Bob and Phil, bless them bot h, were willing t o take that large number on the strength of Wendy’s reputation, and it just sky-rocketed from there.”
YOU CAN READ IT ALL FOR FREE! IT’S OUR GIFT TO READERS SFX: When you look back at those first issues, do you think you would do it differently now? Do you think your abilities have changed over the years – or maybe your sensibilities? WP: “Everything was perfect for the time it was done in, and every story arc in Elfquest reflects a different phase and mind – the first issues of Elfquest reflected the ’70s; the pages were crammed with panels and big fat lettering. By the time we got to the late ’80s and early ’90s we
Left: Elfquest:Shards – and its predecessors New Blood and Hidden Years – took the story forward in time from the prehistoric to the medieval period. Return To Centaur is the first volume of a graphic novel adaptation of Piers Anthony’s Isle Of View , featuring Wolfrider Jenny Elf. Later books, including,Blood Of Ten Chiefs , above, expanded on the history of the Wolfriders.
www.sfx.co.uk
were doing Kings Of The Broken Wheel which was totally anime influenced. So every phase and every story arc reflects my development. “But this is our finest hour, right now. I became a completely digital artist in 2003. I started working on a tablet and I’m creating my best work as a result of going digital. Many comics companies were observing how much quicker deadlines got met as a result of digital. So it became a fact that if an artist or colourist wasn’t digitally savvy they weren’t getting as much work. The old-fashioned ways, as lovely as they were, went into the background. And the work right now reflects my animation roots. I started out as a huge fan of animation with Disney, and I discovered anime when I was 10 years old. So there’s always been an anime following to my comics work, and when you work digitally you can create an animation cel effect with beautiful, rich backgrounds and then the characters moving on top of that – it’s a look that I adore.” SFX: It always seemed that you had an ending in mind. How important is the arc to understanding the success of Elfquest ? RP: “Absolutely true. Wendy sat me down and told me what I’ll call the ‘first chapter’ which is actually made up of many individual issues. And we did that first chapter in the ’70s and ’80s and it came to a very satisfying conclusion. And then we went to the next chapter and then the next. What we’re doing with Dark Horse is the next, we’re titling it Final Quest. And what that means is not the end of Elfquest but it does mean the conclusion of this grand, over-arching story that we have known from the beginning.” WP: “I’ll give you the key to it in one word – Cutter. This is his hero’s journey. It took us 35 years to get there but he’s gonna go through the cave and we’re gonna see how he comes out with the elixir.” RP: “It’s very Joseph Campbell, it’s very true to the archetypes and the basic underlying structure of mythology. But we were very young and we didn’t know what we were doing. It was all instinctual, and I think this is the magic of archetypes. You don’t really have to know what you’re doing consciously, but the story will move according to the archetypes.”
INTERVIEW
BEHIND THE MASQUE Elfquest isn’t Wendy Pini’s only claim to fame. She started out contributing covers to Galaxy Science Fiction and Galileo magazines in the ’70s, establishing herself as a sci-fi artist. She has also illustrated stories for Marvel and DC, as well as creating a graphic novel based on the Beauty And The Beast TV show. Then, starting in 2008, she took the Edgar Allan Poe story “Masque Of The Red Death” and created an edgy, futuristic graphic novel. “When Warner Bros optioned Elfquest in 2008, part of the contract was we couldn’t do anything with it as they were sitting on the rights,” she reveals. “So I had this wonderful four-year block of space where I could get Masque out of my system. Not many people know this but I’m actually a horror artist and an erotic artist, but I don’t get much chance to express those aspects of my life. With Elfquest there’s a certain line that we won’t cross, so Masque enabled me to do everything I couldn’t in Elfquest and express that side of my creativity!”
SFX: So if someone has never read Elfque st , but would like t o, do t hey have to go back t o the beginning and read the first one? RP: “It’s really better if they do, and I realise that by saying that I’m making it more difficult for them, because that’s 35 years’ worth of material. However, we have a digital archive and I uploaded almost 7,000 pages, everything we’ve ever done, to www.elfquest.com. You can read the whole thing for free! It’s always been much more important to me that somebody be able to read the thing, than to be able to command a high price for a back issue. I want the story accessible, I don’t care. I saw that Marvel was starting to put stuff online for 99c. I thought to hell with Marvel and DC, we’re okay, we’re in a good place financially and this is our gift to existing readers who may have missed a few issues, or to new readers who would never be able to discover it and go along with it if this weren’t here.” Elfquest: The Final Quest #1 is available now from Dark Horse; The Final Quest #2 is due out on 26 March.
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
151
N AR N I A
M I D D L E � EA R T H
FANTASY
TREKKER’S
GUIDE BOOK Fed up with the traditional global hotspots and fancy visiting an alternate reality realm instead? Here’s our rough guide to what you can expect to find in four of the most popular fantasy destinations…
WESTEROS
152
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
One of the best things about fantasy is that it allows us to escape reality; to leave this dull world of work, bills and Peter Andre behind, and travel to faraway lands of magic and adventure. Why, you might ask, can’t we just stay there instead? It would be so much more exciting. But would it really? Because think about it: what exactly would these fantasy worlds be like? We drag them back under the cold, hard light of reality to find out…
W IZ ARDING W ORLD
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
FANTASY LANDS
THE TREKKER’S GUIDE
There are NIMBYs in Middle-earthtoo.
MIDDLE�EARTH SOCIOLOGY Underpinned by a long, dense history, the society we find in the Third Age of Middle-earth is a rather strange one – and that’s even without Tom Bombadil. For this world – with its Elves, Ents and men – may be diverse, but it’s not inclusive. It’s a segregated society of divided kingdoms, where the ruling races do not mix (think how much of a hassle it was for Aragorn and Arwen to get it on), and below which sits a disenfranchised underclass: namely Orcs, Goblins and any other creature that may bring down house prices. Was it really such a surprise that these scattered, oppressed minorities rallied around Sauron? An evil Martin Luther King with a dream that, someday, an Orc may be able to pop down the shops without finding an Elven arrow in his head. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, after all.
POLITICS For all its talk of freedom, Middle-earth is no democracy. Instead, it subscribes to the fantasy world philosophy of a “rightful king”: the belief that if a man – and it nearly always is a man – with the right genes emerges, then peace will prevail. This, it has to be said, is a rather naïve system. For yes, Aragorn may know what he’s
www.sfx.co.uk
THE LORD OF THE RINGS
doing with a sword and a bottle of shampoo, but in a time of peace, what does he know about taxation? Or agriculture? Or trade routes? This is a king with no experience of ruling, which could either lead to him starting wars to justify his position – he is a skilled warrior – or result in an unstable economy, an unstable society and, eventually, revolution. Would you really want to take the risk?
ECONOMY Given that it’s made up of separate kingdoms, it’s difficult to judge Middle-earth’s economy as a whole. Mordor, for instance, appears to function on brute force and Stalin-style industrialisation for its economic power, while the Dwarves have built their capitalistic wealth on the mines of Moria. However, when it comes to visiting this land, we’re inclined to recommend the Shire, which appears to function on the niche economic theory of distributism. Lying somewhere between socialism and laissez-faire capitalism, distributists believe that the means of production should be dispersed as widely as possible among individuals, rather than belonging to a government (as they are in communism or socialism) or by a few corporations (as in most capitalist systems).
Of course, on a wider scale, distributism probably wouldn’t work. But, in the agrarian bubble that is the Shire, it’s beautifully simple.
THREATS That very much depends on whether there’s a giant eye in the sky waging war on all other forms of life, really. If so, then yes: Middle-earth in the shadow of Sauron is quite possibly one of the most dangerous places you could choose to visit. And if not, there are armies of Orcs sacking cities, kings being corrupted by evil wizards and the Nazgul flying around scaring the bejebus out of everything. On other occasions, then it’s... well, still dangerous. Middle-earth, even in peacetime, is a horrifying place of natural predators and ancient evil. Why choose to travel to a land, for example, where Orcs and Trolls kill at will? And that’s not even factoring in such horrors as the Balrog or Shelob the giant spider. No wonder no one ever wants to leave the Shire…
VERDICT
TREKADVISOR RATING
Middle-earth is a beautiful but fundamentally flawed and ultimately dangerous place to visit. Unless you’re planning to stay with the Hobbits, you should probably forget it.
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
153
NARNIA
No trip would be complete without a tour of Cair Paravel.
THE LION, THE WITCH & THE WARDROBE SOCIOLOGY Natives of Narnia include Dwarves, Fawns, Ogres, Centaurs, Horrors (not the band) and even Father Christmas. In terms of human visitors, you may be a tad hard-pushed: a grand total of 11 dwell in this world. Neighbouring districts play host to hundreds of other races, who cross over every now and then – but are often just one-dimensional and mutinous. It’s all fun and games and casual racism, until the realisation comes that the snowy expanse is not some sort of expanded Santa’s Grotto, but instead the 100-year Winter, as imposed by the White Witch, who ruled over the country from the years 900-1000. Once the Ice Thatcher era is out of the way, though, morale perks up in Narnia. That’s not to say the society isn’t without its foibles. Some may find the feminist scene a little backwards. In the final book, The Last Battle, Queen Susan leaves the world of Narnia due to an interest in “nylon, lipstick and invitations” as the characters explain quite hastily. Tsk, typical woman. As such, Susan is “no longer a friend of Narnia” – despite all the battles and the losses she experienced – because she has sex now. It’s not surprising, really, when you consider how inherently religious Narnia’s population is. Aslan serves as a sort of lion demigod and ultimately the magical creatures who don’t believe in him are turned back int o regular an imals and banished to an “unmentionable place”. Nothing wrong with traditional, but we don’t think Richard Dawkins’s biography would be a bestseller in Narnia’s WHSmiths.
POLITICS
THREATS
You might consider Narnia’s politic al model to be a little “off the bat”, after all, the crown seems to be inherited by whoever stumbles into town, and the nation was founded by a giant talking lion. Still, it beats the Tories. Narnia doesn’t have a voting system as such. In The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe Edmund, Lucy, Susan and Peter become kings and queens because a prophecy dictates that four kids (“two sons of Adam, two da ughters of Eve”) would sit on the thrones at Cair Paravel. So what if they don’t have any administrative knowledge or the emotional experience to run a country?
Despite all the magical loveliness, Narnia’s history hasn’t been short of a war or two. In The Last Battle, someone observes at one point, “It’s a pity there’s so much always happening in Narnia,” suggesting it’s the fantasy world’s equivalent of Beirut. In one particularly brutal invasion, a band of bloodthirsty warriors from the mysterious neighbouring colony of Telmar ended up taking over the entire country. When asked why the Telmarians invaded, Aslan simply responded, “It’s a long story.” Narnia is eventually destroyed, of course, – so if you want to visit, you’ll need a time machine – during the reign of King Tirian. After a scuffle with another neighbour, Calormen, a race of “cruel and ancient people”, Aslan proclaims the end of Narnia and calls all his faithful to the aptly named Aslan’s Country.
ECONOMY Its war-ravaged history has taken its toll on Narnia’s economy. A particularly troubled time was the Narnian world’s mysterious Middle Era – or as the locals refer to it, “unenlightenment”. The epic Dark Age of Narnia began after the mysterious disappearance of its four monarchs and saw a decline in economic prosperity and widespread social collapse. The situation improved considerably after that, of course, but you still might feel a little foolish changing your currency at the post office – the equivalents to our pounds and pennies are known as “lions” and “trees”.
154
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
VERDICT
TREKADVISOR RATING
Narnia has its problems. However, its vast selection of towns, cities and provinces; its charming talking animals; Father bloody Christmas; and the opportunity to be plonked on the throne regardless of your lineage; means it still has a lot to offer the casual tourist. (Before the race hate and its eventual destruction, of course.)
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
FANTASY LANDS
THE TREKKER’S GUIDE
The Wall s only for the intrepid traveller. ’
THE SEVEN KINGDOMS OF WESTEROS GAME OF THRONES SOCIOLOGY The Seven Kingdoms of Westeros are divided, socially, by north, south, east and west. These are represented, respectively, by the Starks and Wildlings; the Lannisters of King’s Landing; the third world continent of Essos; and the Greyjoys. It’s a society defined by the medieval structure of feudalism. Nobles rule over the common smallfolk within their territory through a system of fealty and sworn oaths. It’s a rigid structure o f class with very little room for social mobility; everyone knows their place and those who are born commoners will, in all probability, die commoners. No matter where they were born, though, Westeros’s conservatism is worse for women. The patriarchal society means that women not only have few roles beyond marriage and childbirth, but also face an egregious threat of sexual assault with little or no hope of justice. Perhaps because of its bleak, war-torn history, compassion is not something going spare in Westeros.
POLITICS While the ruler is dictated by his bloodline, George RR Martin is not as naïve as JRR Tolkien when it comes to fantasy’s “rightful king” trope. In Westeros, King’s Landing – the political capital – is a snake-pit of back-stabbing ambition and woefully inept, “rightful” rulers. In fiction, it’s gripping. In reality, you’d merely be an insect
www.sfx.co.uk
among kings – kings who have no qualms about stepping on you. With so many forces vying for the throne and so much political unrest in the throne room, the world of Westeros is not a relaxing holiday destination. The locals don’t know who will be collecting their taxes or ensuring their safety from one month to the next. As Jorah Mormont once said, “The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends... it is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace. They never are.” No wonder Westeros is so on edge.
ECONOMY The economy of Westeros and beyond varies in sophistication from place to place. For instance, at the lower end of the scale we have the Dothraki and the Wildlings, who survive on plunder and the exchange of basic goods, respectively. Intermediately, you have societies such as the Iron Born, who tread the line between tradition and progression with the belief that you pay “the iron price”, ie you take your goods from a slain foe. The height o f Westeros’s economic sophistication, however, lies in King’s Landing. Facing the difficulty of f inancing a seeminglyendless war, the Master of Coin (a position equivalent to a finance minister) invents new taxes; but these last only as long as the
population is able to pay. There is also an unhealthy reliance on borrowing from both Tywin Lannister and the Iron Bank of Braavos – resulting in a huge deficit.
THREATS Yeesh, where do we even begin? Westeros is brutal. It’s a land of death, destruction and dragons with no real sense of law or lawenforcement; a wild west-eros where anyone not packing a sword is fair game and could be stabbed through the face. And that’s just during peacetime. When at war, the citizens of Westeros live under constant threat, never knowing if this will be the day when some army rolls into town and burns down everything they ever cared about. And then, hovering behind all that, is Winter. It is coming, so say the Starks, and when it does hundreds of thousands will die of starvation and the never-ending cold, before coming back to life as zombies to kill everyone else. It’s safe to say that wrapping up warm may not suffice.
VERDICT
TREKADVISOR RATING
Unless you’re a fan of never progressing in life, freezing to death or being beheaded because you stole some bread, we cannot recommend a trip any time soon.
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
155
WIZARDING WORLD HARRY POTTER SERIES SOCIOLOGICAL Although mostly segregated, Harry Potter’s Wizarding World co-exists alongside our regular one, in crevices and corners where us ignorant Muggles aren’t properly looking. You may have spotted a suspicious caped Warlock walking down the street once or twice but dismissed it because you were in Camden. Sharing the same world, however, inevitably causes problems and by the end of the series – which has involved a fully fledged wizarding war led by an omnipotent terrorist – you’ve got to admit, the Wizarding Community is the worst kept secret ever. Although much of the population is made up of an array of loveably eccentric characters, sharing the same world sadly results in a vein of racial prejudice throughout the entire series – with Harry’s adopted family calling him a “freak” several times, and the wizarding community even having their own derogatory slur for the Muggles: “Mudbloods”. Because of the randomisation of the races – it is not uncommon for a wizard to be born i nto a perfectly normal non-magical family, or vice versa – being magically “pure” became as big a deal i n Harry Potter’s Wizarding World as skin colour and religion are in the real world. Indeed, during dark Lord Voldemort’s second coming, some of the later books progressed from using a few cavalier racist terms to full-on Muggle torture. Hogwarts, however, is a cheerily secular community, welcoming multicultural diversity with the Triwizard Tournament, and even embracing dead people, who roam the corridors as chatty ghosts – although the four houses the students are piled into on their first day is a little unorthodox, considering Slytherin is notorious for being exclusively reserved for arseholes.
POLITICS Much like our own system, the Wizarding World has a vast political network strung together by the Ministry of Magic. Run by its own individual Prime Minister (who liaises with the Muggle PM on special occasions), it oversees such things as law systems (run by the Wizengamot), Magical Sports and the Regulation of Magical Creatures. It is also, if the series is anything to go by, woefully inept and corrupt. Its control of the press (if you can call one newspaper, The Daily Prophet, the press) allowed the Ministry to perpetuate dangerous falsehoods about the return of You-Know-You, while its failure to listen to the advice of one of the most respected wizards in the world resulted in thousands of deaths. Surely time for an inquiry?
ECONOMY The Magical Community may have dragons, potions and powers beyond our wildest dreams,
156
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
Be wary of men with wands.
but that doesn’t mean it can get out of paying taxes. Naturally, it has its own currency: galleons (pounds, to us), sickles (silvers) and knuts (coppers – even wizards have annoying shrapnel); and its own banking system, the highly established Gringotts, run by Goblins. The same class issues are prevalent – the Weasleys are often ridiculed for being so hard-up, whereas Potter swans into Hogwarts like Johnny Big Pockets – but a more pressing issue is how the hell anyone makes any money. As Hogwarts proves, a wizarding education is bafflingly bereft of practical skills such as maths or business studies, calling into question how anyone in Diagon Alley can even cou nt, never mind balance the books. No one is going to give a loan to someone whose only qualification is being able to transfigure a cat. But then, if you’ve got the whole world at your beck and call with the flick of a wand, who needs to be bogged down by such frivolities as buying and selling anyway? If you’re a bit short doing the weekly shop, use the Doubling Charm on the pennies in your purse. If you’re late on your mortgage payments (do wizards even have mortgages?!) take some Polyjuice Potion and become Richard Branson. If you’re absolutely anything – then MAGIC. The end.
THREATS As with most fantasy worlds, it all depends on context. In this case, that means whether there’s a big ol’ magical Hitler trying to take
over the Wizarding World. That, you see, would make things tricky: Lord Voldermort’s reign – backed by Dementors, Death Eaters and giants – would be unsafe for anyone vaguely sympathetic to humanity. You’ve also got several issues when it comes to magic itself. Every wand-carrying wizard, by definition, is walking around with a weapon – one that can maim, kill and distort the mind. Not only that, but aspects of magic such as the Polyjuice Potion – which can transform you into an exact replica of someone else – could be used for all sorts of sinister purposes. In the wrong hands, that potential power is terrifying.
VERDICT
TREKADVISOR RATING
Sure, the economy doesn’t really make sense, you could be turned into a toad and out there, somewhere, there’s probably a guy walking around with your genitals, but compared to some other worlds, we’re inclined to just go with it. Plus: magic!
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
N O I T C E L L O C L A B O K E H T ©
LEGEND
FROM THE ARCHI VE S
REVISITED
This is when a beard stops being cool.
THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN SFX ISSUE 207
LEGEND James Clarke recalls the ravishingly handsome
Ridley Scott genre film that wasn’t Alien or Blade Runner …
I IN CONTRAST TO THE STARKNESS AND DARKNESS OF BLADE RUNNER AND ALIEN, SCOTT WANTED LEGEND TO BE A FAMILY FILM
www.sfx.co.uk
t may be diff icult to appreciate now, when fantasy films that are set far from the here and now light up the box office like f ire from a dragon’s jaw, but things used to be a little different. Twenty-five years ago, the lavishly produced all-out fantasy film was not the legitimate commercial prospect of today. Yes, Conan The Barbarian became a cult movie of sorts, along with Labyrinth and Dragonslayer, and these titles were high-water marks for the celluloid worlds of swords and sorcery, beasts and fortresses. What they didn’t quite manage to conjure was the kind of crossover appeal with the general moviegoer found in f antasy comedies such as Ghostbusters and Back To The Future. Legend was one of those “high fantasy” films that didn’t make the box office grade. Boldly realised, American studio financed, British made, the film was directed by Ridley Scott and starred Tim Curry, Mia Sara and a new kid on the block called Tom Cruise. In contrast to the starkness and darkness of Blade Runner and Alien, Scott wanted Legend to be a family film, saying, “I made Legend primarily for children, my children to be precise.” That said, at moments there’s an adult intensity to Legend . Certainly, the film is Scott’s vividly realised take on the fantasy genre, allowing him the chance to max out on the wonders and mysteries of the natural world. It might also be one of his most personal films, deriving as it did from his own initial concept. The key image of the unicorn that helps unlock the meaning of Blade Runner receives a much fuller workout in Legend , a film largely about our connection to the natural world. Ridley Scott was a director to really watch by the early 1980s with The Duellists, Alien and Blade Runner on his resume. Legend marked a new
direction, and saw him finding ways to apply some of the sensibilities of animation to a live action format. Scott said, “I wanted to give Legend a more contemporary movement to it rather than getting bogged down in a too classical retelling.” He also admitted, “It was primarily Disney animation that influenced me.” Legend , originally titled Legend Of Darkness, was written by William Hjortsberg, whose novel Falling Angel was adapted by Alan Parker into the film Angel Heart (1987). Scott had responded to Hjortsberg’s book Symbiography and felt that Hjortsberg, being an American writer, would help make the screenplay accessible to a mainstream audience. Scott and Hjortbserg worked on 15 drafts of the script between 1982 and 1984 and the film was budgeted at $25m. Initially, the script was more intense than Scott wanted. wo rl d of fa nta sy
The film was shot by Alex Thomson who had worked with John Boorman on Excalibur and went on to shoot Jim Henson’s Labyrinth. For Thomson the project was a challenge in terms of investing the material with a real f antasy world feeling. The costumes for Legend were designed by Charles Knode who had performed the same duties on Blade Runner and as with that film there is a real fi t between what characters look like and wear and the world through which they move. The forest set for Legend was constructed on a soundstage. During the film’s development phase visual effects producer Richard Edlund ( The Empire Strikes Back, Poltergeist ) was consulted and suggested a way to make all the characters appear smaller. Edlund suggested shooting in 70mm then taking the negative and shrinking the actors to any size. However, this would have been
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
159
DARKLY DIFFERENT
Demonic Darkness. Proper scary.
prohibitively expensive and ultimately it was not an approach used. Reinforcing Scott’s vision was make-up artist Rob Bottin who had excelled himself with John Carpenter’s The Thing . Bottin’s work for Legend really engages with the visceral. Tim Curry is unrecognisable beneath Bottin’s makeup that remains one of the most frightening visions of screen evil yet produced. Like all great fairytale movies Legend does a mesmerising job of dramatising and visualising the conflict between innocence and experience, as its young characters realise that the world isn’t always going to work in their favour. The premise is nicely straightforward: the evil lord of Darkness wants lightness and innocence obliterated and so charges his goblin minions to sever the horn of a unicorn thereby plunging the enchanted world into darkness. Jack O’ the Green must quest to restore order. Meanwhile the girl he loves, Lili, i s taken prisoner by Darkness in an attempt to seduce her. Indeed this attraction of great evil to great good predates Hannibal’s attraction to Clarice in Scott’s Hannibal. Scott’s affinity for the wilderness and the power of natural and elemental forces extends some of the ideas and images found in Alien and Blade Runner, but does so with a very different tone.
Of the film’s nemesis, Darkness, there’s something in common with the enraged energy of Roy Batty in Blade Runner and there’s even a moment where Darkness, like Batty, charges at full pelt towards the hero of the story. Ultimately, Darkness is a lonely figure (akin to Beast in Cocteau’s La Belle Et Le Bête ). Indeed, the old-school movie influences on Legend can also be seen in the critical dance scene in which Lili is seduced to the dark side. The scene recalls the work of the great fi lmmakers of the 1940s, Powell and Pressburger. Like Scott they were cinema fantasists but of a more surreal inclination. Scott’s precision of technique is on display through the film. As Lili runs through Darkness’s lair its sinister atmosphere is enhanced by the absence of any sync sound and so becomes all the more visually driven. Scott’s skills as a stylist are also on f ull display in the film. Whilst Legend doesn’t have that snappy, buoyant kind of American fantasy-movie style to it, its strength, and perhaps why it flopped, was its lyrical quality. The film’s gorgeous sense of otherwordliness still works but much of that comes by dwelling on moments rather than telling the story at full throttle. Style is substance after all and Legend is an intriguing fusion of coherently realised
MUSICAL LEGENDS Jerry Goldsmith’s lush score, drawing on Impressionistic, Romantic and pastoral traditions of classical music was composed over three months in London. It has a distinctly British sound to it, nodding to the example of composers Ralph Vaughan Williams and George Butterworth. For the American release the lush and dense orchestral score was replaced by a synth score by Tangerine Dream who had only about three weeks to compose their alternative soundtrack. Bryan Ferry recorded the song “Is Your Love Strong Enough?” to tie in with the film. Jerry Goldsmith’s score was finally released on disc in 1996.
160
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
A number of anomalies and differences exist between the American and European versions of Legend . In the American version we see someone being tortured by demons at the start of the film and Darkness sitting on his throne. In this scene, Darkness appears blue. In the European cut we only see Darkness’s arm at this point and there is no torture scene. In the European cut, Lili is referred to as a princess but in the American version she is called a Lady. In the American version Lili has a vision of the future where she is briefly encased in ice.
settings, costume and character design and even character names. The film is awash with brilliantly dovetailed influences, critically Peter Pan, The Hobbit, The Red Shoes and the animated films of the Disney studio, notably Fantasia (1940), and its “Night On Bald Mountain” sequence. Scott screened the film for Cruise as a way of clarifying the kind of performance needed for Jack O’ the Green. Critically, too, there’s the influence to be seen of British illustrator Arthur Rackham, whose work so often drew out the magic and mystery of woodland. Indeed, Rackham’s work would become key to the fantasy vision of Gui llermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth 20 years later. Legend excels in conjuring a sense of menace. There are moments centred around Darkness that have something of the visceral intensity and threat of scenes in Alien; quite something for a kid’s film. Legend manages to hint at horror and sex amidst the wonder and cuter aspects of it all. There’s something grown up about Scott’s film, rather like another film of the same time made in Britain, The Company Of Wolves which adapted the Angela Carter novel. post-prod troubles
In post-production, the picture was edited by Scott’s regular collaborator during the late 1970s and ’80s, Terry Rawlings. At the time
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions
LEGEND
REVISITED
He’d look better in a flight jacket.
N O I T C E L L O C L A B O K E H T ©
THE STUDIO WANTED TO PLAY WITH IT. THEY WANTED IT TO GO FASTER
www.sfx.co.uk
of the film’s American release Scott revealed that “the studio wanted to play around with it. They wanted it to go faster… Many of the lingering moments were lost…” Scott’s initial cut of the film ran to 125 minutes which he then cut down to 113 minutes. A test screening for American audiences led to the studio instructing Scott to reduce the film to 89 minutes. The studio even feared Cruise’s long hair would not appeal to a teen audience. Universal seemed desperate to appeal to a youth market, perhaps encouraged by the massive success of their other fantasy outing, ET , in 1982. Originally, Legend was to have been released in America in June 1985 but it was then rescheduled for 8 November 1985 and then its release was delayed again. In December 1985 Legend was released in the UK, having opened the Venice Film Festival that autumn, but its release was postponed in America until spring 1986 when the film never found enough of an audience.
Reaction to the film on its original release was not especially enthusiastic with the UK’s Monthly Film Bulletin stating that “…like Blade Runner before it, the film suffers so much from an over-emphasis on details it becomes a plodding bore.” Roger Ebert had the American view: “ Legend is an impressive technical achievement. Scott is a perfectionist who takes infinite pains to make things look right.” Like other movies that didn’t meet original box office hopes Legend has endured via DVD and found a new and welcoming audience. So popular has it become that a few years ago a sculpture of the Darkness character became available. You wonder too if, given Guillermo del Toro’s film savvy, the film didn’t suitably influence his approach to the fantasy genre. At one point in Legend , Honeythorn Gump says, “If life is a dream, many dread the waking.” Isn’t this just as applicable to the spell that films cast over us, reinvigorating our imagination in readiness for our return to the ordinary world? Scott’s film certainly believes it is.
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
SFX
161
THE QUESTOR’S QUIZ Because every great fantasy needs a quest, and health and safety told us we couldn’t send you to Mount Doom… 1 A. C. E. G. I.
Name the writers who created the following fantasy lands… Pellucidar Neverland Oz Dinotopia Midkemia
B. D. F. H. J.
Dreamlands Narnia Abarat Malazan The Realm Of The Elderlings
Fantasy authors love their initials… A. But what do the two Rs stand for in JRR Tolkein? B. And the CS in CS Lewis? C. And the K in JK Rowling (’cos we all know the J, right)? D. The JM in JM Barrie?
2
Sean Maguire, who currently plays Robin Hood in Once Upon A Time, played which eponymous fantasy “hero” in a short-lived BBC sitcom?
3
Actress Jean Marsh played witches in which two 1980s fantasy films?
4
7
At the end of His Dark Materials Lyra’s daemon Pantalaimon settles into the form of which animal?
5
6
What fantasy land is this an outline of?
8
Name the film and the character
What kind of a dragon is this?
y r o t S g n i d n e r e v e N e h T m o r f n o g a r d k c u l A 8 o d u L , h t n i r y b a L 7 s o r e t s e W 6 n e t r a m e n i p A 5 z O o T n r u t e R , w o l l i W 4 n o o d n ä M d ö r K 3 w e h t t a M s e m a J D e m a n e l d d i m o n s a h e h s – g n i h t y n a r o f d n a t s t ’ n s e o d t I C s e l p a t S e v i l C e u e R d l a n o R 2 B l A b b o H n i b o R J t s i e F E d n o m y a R I n o s k i r E n e v e t S H y e n r u G s e m a J G r e k r a B e v i l C F m u a B k n a r F L E s i w e L S C i r r a B M J C t f a r c e v o L P H h g u o r r u B e c i R r a g d E A 1 S D e B s R E W S N A
162
SFX
ULTIMATE FANTASY SPECIAL
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscriptions