Why You Can Trust CNET From start to finish: 'Game of Thrones' vid shows first close-ups, last breaths
Take in the first and final scenes for 35 major "Game of Thrones" characters in this 2-minute-long fan film. Plus, some wise words from Littlefinger. Caution: spoilers await.
Warning: This way there be spoilers!
As any "Game of Thrones" fan knows, characters don't stick around on the show very long. They either have their skulls melted by hot iron, are poisoned, get shoved through a hole in the floor set hundreds of feet in the air or have some unfortunate part of their bodies come in contact with a sword.
"Game of Thrones" fan Fernando Andrés, a director and cinematographer, decided to round up all of the deaths of major characters in the show from its inception till now by showing the first time the character appeared in a close-up shot on screen next to the last moment we saw him or her up close.
The result is the above compelling 2-minute long video that starts with Jory Cassel's first and final scene, and finishes with the same for (one last spoiler alert!) Jon Snow. While that might be the last time we all saw Snow at the end of last season, pretty much everyone is convinced that he'll rise again to battle the White Walkers, so the video might need a quick edit.
"I began to notice how while some characters did not last very long, there were others that when met with their demise had shown a great deal of physical and emotional change," Andrés says in his description of the video.
"And so, I took the very first shots in which we see these characters introduced to the show (their first close-up shots, that is) and juxtaposed it with their very last close-up shot -- many of which show them meeting a very brutal end. The result is a strangely hypnotic way of understanding how 'Game of Thrones' looks at how no matter our nobility or our wealth, we all die the same."
Tacked on to the video after all the "before and after" shots is a scene in which Petyr Baelish (aka Littlefinger) doles out his own life lesson to the creepy son of Lysa Arryn (who we just previously saw taking a trip out the Moon Door). "People die at their dinner tables," he says, "they die in their beds, they die squatting over their chamber pots. Everybody dies sooner or later. Don't worry about your death. Worry about your life."
The quote certainly sums up some of the show's ethos and also hearkens back to one of its main themes, valar morghulis, which means "all men must die." The phrase is also the title of this fan video.
There are 35 characters pictured in all, and the video is set to "The Rains of Castamere," a song that was recorded by the band The National for the show's season two soundtrack.
(Via The Times of India)