Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Let’s talk about Star Wars.

BLAAAAAA blablablaaaaaaa blablablabla blaBLAblablabla blaBLAblablabla blaBLAblablablaaaaaaa 

For a sandbox a galaxy wide, there has been little in the way of actual world building since Empire Strikes Back. For six films in a row, the Star Wars universe has been content to replay its greatest hits of Jedi, Death Stars and ultimate evils. From Return of the Jedi to Rouge One, despite what you think of the films themselves, they have traded on and amped up the icons of the first two. Any new addition (from Ewoks to Jar Jar) have been met with either scorn or derision. Common wisdom would dictate that a new Star Wars franchise would be wise to look back, enlarge the icons and play it safe.

This worked for Force Awakens. Disney and JJ Abrams held your hand, soothingly patted your head and gave you Han in the Falcon, a Jedi prodigy on a desert planet, X Wings on a Death Star, stormtroopers in the snow, a baddy in a mask and a bigger baddy behind him. You know this, they said as they produced a very good film, you like this.

Look. you like three things in this already! This is a film you'd like a lot!

This didn’t work (at least for me) in Rogue One. Dreary and loud, they gave you Peter Cushing’s CGI face, Tie Fighters, Death Stars and a very creakily voiced Darth Vader. My own views (too long, too dour, too reliant on your affection for the above) were not shared by the masses who enjoyed it. Doubling down on the glory days of A New Hope and Empire prove still to the be the key to box office gold. By all wisdom, The Last Jedi should have deified Luke, brought back Lando Calrissian, made Snoke that Sith Lord mentioned in the prequels and leaned into the iconography, hard.

Thank God Rian Johnson isn’t very wise.

We still get X Wings and Jedi and lightsabers and the Falcon, but let’s be crystal fox clear about this; this is not a rerun of Empire. Or Hope, Return, or the prequels. This is a breath of fresh air in a stuffy room. This is a glass of champagne in a desert. This is a bloody good film that tells you, calmly but firmly, to kill your heroes and make your own.

Rose is a maintenance worker, Finn a caretaker. Already, these aren’t the cool guys in the X Wings, they’re the background players brought forward by chance and luck. Ray is, literally, no one from nowhere. Kylo Ren is less a Vader, more a lost child wounded by his mentor’s distrust. Admiral Holdo is a beautiful, seemingly aloof leader who doesn’t take kindly to hot-headed flyboys. Poe himself is the handsome fighter pilot we’ve seen many times before, but his early heroics do not result in a gold star from Leia, but a prompt demotion and a scathing exchange about the value of dead heroes. General Hux is an easily and delightfully mocked lackey. Snoke doesn’t matter. Leia grows from snipping at Han in Force Awakens into a leader who inspires the women behind her (which in turn leads to the greatest twenty seconds of screen time in a blockbuster… ever? Ever, yeah, that fits).

I need three more films starring Laura Dern getting it done, five minutes ago

And Luke? Luke is a broken man. From his very first action (angrily tossing aside the icon of Star Wars) to his admittance of his greatest failure, he is snarky, sarcastic, belligerent and closed. He quickly loses the flowing white and grey robes from Force Awakens (Luke has always had style) for the much more practical Hermit Man Ensemble #3. He doesn’t show Ray how to swing a lightsaber or lift rocks, but about the actual nature of the Force; mostly that the Jedi choked on their own hubris and tried to control what does not belong to them. There should be no more gatekeepers to the magic of this world, and, one flash of Force power later, there aren’t. Mark Hamill is a tour de force in this, bringing his all to an unforgiving and harsh character shift. There is a moment when the wide eyed, happy-to-part-of-the-team-guys Luke is on show, and the transformation is astonishing. He is not Kenobi, or Yoda, or (God forbid) Qui Gon Jinn; Luke is a disappointment. It’s utterly intentional and astonishing to see something quite so daring.

My boy Skywalker is calling shenanigans on new Death Stars

The Last Jedi is a very daring film overall. It dares you to look closer at the antics of it’s characters and the world it perceives. It dares you to question its heroes again and again, Poe and Luke in particular. On the fun side quest to Kanto Byte, we see the rich get richer, the poor more destitute and yet hope remain in the fight for justice. The film dares you to resist the pull of nostalgia and dares you to look beyond the small parameters of what a Star Wars film can be. For a company and brand reliant on the very nostalgia it’s asking you to question, it’s one hell of a power move.

It’s still a Star Wars film; the delightful swipe edits, soaring John Williams score, cute critters and corny sense of humour are all present and correct. But where Force Awakens carefully held up a beautifully rose tinted mirror to what you love about Star Wars, The Last Jedi gleefully smashes it to bits.

But oh, do the pieces glitter brightly in the moonlight.

Jet Propelled Ravens: Travel in Game of Thrones

Six episodes into Game of Thrones Season Seven, this is my main take away so far:

ICE DRAGON THEY HAVE AN ICE DRAGON THERE'S AN ICE DRAGON NOW IT’S GONNA GO OOOOOFFFFFFF.

GET HYPE.

However, I was stunned (stunned I tell you, stunned) to find the vast majority of online chatter concerns not the glory of the ice dragon, the sweetness of Dany and Jon making gooey eyes at each other and the satisfaction of Cersei still pulling strong despite pre-season dismissal, but how long it takes for ravens to get from A to B. Have they all ingested some sort of jet fuel? Did the lesser known Tony of House Stark create tiny propellers for them? Is there a Westerosi Amazon Prime that we don’t know of? Because Season 7 is rattling along at a breakneck pace and, unfortunately, it’s shed some of its magnetism along the way.

Let’s look at how Game of Thrones used to show travelling. In the first season, Ned and Robert take the Kings Road from Winterfell to Kings Landing. Characters were carefully developed (this is the first time Joffrey is shown to be absolute oike of the first order) and relationships were established an enhanced. It took a hefty chunk of screen time, but by the time the party got to King’s Landing, not only had the scale of continent been established, but so had the characters.

This took about 3 episodes

Moving further on, one of my favourite parts of Season 5 was Verys and Tyrion cooped up together in a carriage winding its way across Essos towards Daenerys. Along the way, they wax philosophical, crack jokes and become such good company that, when they all separated, fear of death for the characters was outweighed by the knowledge that they wouldn’t share any more screen time together. 

This took the best part of Season 5

On a much smaller scale, take Cersei’s walk of shame from the Sept of Baelor to the Red Keep. Two major landmarks in the city are connected and the viewer was given a sense of scale of King’s Landing. There is the Sept, here is the castle, in between are the commoners. It showed that a person could walk the distance easily (in terms of distance that is, that walk was brutal) and also established the two power houses in King’s Landing, more so than the funerals and weddings in the Sept had before.

Seems less horrifying from this angle, too!

Taking time to travel, using these scenes as character and setting development, made Game of Thrones was it is. The world was shown to be big, gritty and populated. It showed that Westeros is not an easy land to travel. Shortcuts could not be found and, when characters went travelling, you knew that there was a very good chance they wouldn’t make it back. Basically, it added to the realism and jeopardy and it’s a vital part of the show’s DNA.

Now let’s look at travel in Season 7. Ayra Stark starts in the Riverlands (bumping into Ed Sheeran along the way), stops at Hot Pie’s gaff, meets her dire wolf in the snow and ends at Winterfell. The important difference from previous Ayra travels is that she is doing this alone. Where before she had Gendry and later on, the Hound, now she has no one to talk to, missing out on developing key development. When she gets to Winterfell, her go getting, ‘slay the enemies of my family’, can-do attitude hasn’t moved on from the end of Season 6.

However, she is now psychotically mistrustful of Sansa, terrorising her with faces and daggers and creepy, creepy games – how did this switch happen? Wasn’t she supposed to be all for family? The show has Petyr Baelish plant an incriminating letter as a catalyst, but it would have been much more successful for a travelling companion to change Ayra’s steadfast opinion on her family, as it would have done in previous episodes quite naturally. As it is, the viewer is expected to accept a massive character shift from Ayra with very little to work with.

And the ships! Euron Greyjoy goes from King’s Landing to Casterley Rock in what seems to be an afternoon. What previously took episodes worth of time is now covered in a single hour. The scale of the continent and the jeopardy of crossing it are sacrificed in order to get to the action quickly; this is not the Game of Thrones of old.

One episode. One. Episode. 

Which brings us to episode 6 of Season 7. Ooft. Let’s break it down. In the time Jon Snow and his Merry Men are stuck in a stand-off against the Night King (with no obvious supplies and the chill of winter literally surrounding them): Gendry runs back to the Wall; a raven is sent to Dragonstone; Daenerys argues with Tyrion; she flies beyond the Wall to save their frozen behinds.

How long were they there for? It was at least one night, as Thoros of Myr dies in his sleep. By that point, Gendry has reached the Wall, but after that, a raven needs to be found, sent and dragons need to come back. Was it another day? Exposed, with no food and no water? Characters weren’t shown to sleep, eat or drink, things which, again, would have been shown in earlier series. The realism of being trapped on a frozen lake is lost, and without the realism, there was no real tension.

It's been remarked upon by Alan Taylor (the director) that, whilst fans will happily eat up White Walkers, dragons and faces in bags, we’ve become quite the sticklers for time keeping. And though it is fun to nitpick, it means an important facet of the show has been lost. No longer do hero characters sleep, eat, or travel. They land where they need to be, do their thing and go home again. The glory days of Tywin Lannister needing the loo seem to be behind us. They don’t act like human beings anymore.

It’s not a deal breaker though. We’ve have years of these people travelling, talking, eating and sleeping. We’ve (well, myself at any rate) have come to know them like our own families. I trust the showrunners to stick the landing, tie the loose ends and have someone finally tell Jon Snow what his parent situation is.

Hopefully though, not by jet propelled raven.

Hamilton and Me

Hamilton.

Goddamn, Hamilton.

First time I heard about Hamilton – and I mean, literally the first time the name Alexander Hamilton crossed into my sphere of knowledge – was a funny bit on the Daily Show in 2009. President Obama had responded to criticism that he was an elitist by hosting a Spoken Word and Poetry Slam at the White House, to which Jon Stewart railed against in a segment called ‘Old Man Stewart Shakes His Fist at the White House Poetry Slam’. In it, edited clips of the Slam were met with an artfully timed raised eyebrow and an incredulous ‘You’re rapping about Alexander Hamilton? This is kinda ridiculous’ from Stewart. I watched, laughed and promptly forgot about it.

Years later, rumblings across the sea were occurring. There was a big new thing on Broadway, bigger than Book of Mormon, the previous Big New Thing on Broadway. The name Lin Manuel Miranda kept cropping up on Colbert and Conan O’Brien and elsewhere on my Youtube playlist. Miranda charmingly rapped on How I Met Your Mother. Miranda was on board for the new Clements and Musker Disney musical. Miranda wrote the song for The Force Awakens cantina scene. Miranda was a new hotness for Hollywood.

Then the album dropped, and the world turned upside down. Cast members flooded late night TV and therefore Youtube. Miranda rapped about Button Quinett on Colbert. He spoke about Puerto Rico at Congress and then rapped about it on John Oliver. The Grammys and Tonys and the Pulitzer came and all anyone seemed to talk about was Hamilton.

Come July 2016. In a queue for Cursed Child tickets (which I got, natch) I thought as I was going to be online for an extended length of time, I may as well check out this soundtrack that was blowing us all away.

So I listened. Then, two and a half hours later, I listened again.

Hillary Clinton had quoted Hamilton at the DNC. The Hamilton Mixtape with Usher and Busta Rhymes was well underway. The Clements and Musker Disney film was leaning heavily on Miranda’s name in its marketing. ‘He never gon’ be President now’ was quoted after every Trump scandal. It was, not to put to too fine a point on it, effing huge by the time I’d got round to it.

When I find something new I like, I have a tendency to let it consume my waking days. I went in hard and I’m only just really coming out of the other side of it. I bought the Ron Chernow book. I saw In The Heights. I wrote my own version of the opening number about Skara Brae for my class. I’ve tried (unsuccessfully) to get my nearest and dearest hooked. And tomorrow, tickets are available for the London show for those who signed up for the queue before October. There is a real chance that I will see this monster of a show in the near future and that’s so earth-shatteringly exciting that I had to write about it.

So there it is. The story of Hamilton and me. Some say that it’s too anti-British to play here, that it’s too Americanised and it has undertones of American Exceptionalism that go unchecked in a way that is uncouth and not to our sensitive British tastes. The theatre is elitist anyway, right? Who can afford to pay to go to London and see a musical?

All this is, quite frankly, bum. Tickets are paperless and can only be bought four at a time, so price gouging will not happen. London is so well connected to the barren wastelands of the North that anyone from anywhere in the country can get there. And the American Exceptionalism? Listen to the soundtrack and then we can talk.

Please God someone talk to me about Hamilton. 

What's New?

So I’m sure you’ve seen this around:

Yup, Beauty and the Beast is getting a remake. And it’s hard to get excited for it.

It is not because Beauty and the Beast is the latest in a long, long line of remakes, reboots, sequels, sequels-that-are-remakes, sequels-that-are-soft-reboots and cinematic universes that have dominated the blockbuster scene in recent years. Nor is it because this year’s box office could be the first sign that the general population is growing tired of the practice.

Neither is it because Beauty and the Beast is a sacred text for which any other iteration is folly; there were adaptions before, there’ll be adaptations in the future.

And it is certainly not because it’ll ruin childhoods the world over – the original is still omnipresent, Disney aren’t snatching your Blu Rays away in the middle of the night, your childhood is fine.

And it’s no question of ‘why’ either; as a significant part of Disney’s infrastructure and image, the idea of letting such a powerful potential cash-printing machine go unused would be a poor choice. Following the money in this instance does not lead to a huge Disney conspiracy; it’s simply very good business practice to make this film.

The only question I have for Beauty and the Beast is this: what’s new?

Take the first Disney live action remake, 1996’s 101 Dalmatians. The 1961 original was a bright and breezy romp which had a song and not much else. Puppies are born, Cruella wants an impractical dog hair coat, gentle hijinks ensue, they sing Roger’s one hit wonder around a piano.

The 1996 version succeeded by juicing up and modernising Cruella, going full throttle with Glenn Close’s barnstorming performance. Her hold over Anita as an insane, Anna Wintore type boss introduces a fresh dynamic to these character’s relationship and the remake simply glories in her every swish of her coat and every flick of her cigarette holder. She nails every snarky, snippy, lip curling moment, the ‘what’s new?’ question silenced when an early mystery of a disappearing Bengal is solved by a shot of her casually glancing over her new white tiger rug. The animatronic puppies fall to the wayside as she stomps about the place – the reason for this film existing is her and a world without this Cruella would be an emptier one indeed.

There was also much to be championed about the remake of Cinderella. The original was Walt Disney’s favourite film, but again it’s slight on story. The Prince doesn’t even get a line and the mice take centre stage. In Kenneth Branagh’s version, not only is The Prince given plenty to say, he takes an active role in wooing and searching for his Cinderella and he’s given a real, sweet relationship with his father. All this was missing from the original and by giving the Prince, the Stepmother and Cinderella more to do, there’s new depths to be mined in the characters, the charm of the original given a boost by a relatable cast of characters.

What was new for these two remakes were fleshed out, interesting characters. They also helped themselves by steering clear of the musical legacies of their originals; Cruella DeVille and Bippity Bobbity Boo are iconic but stand apart from the musical flavour of their host films and were wisely glossed over in the remakes. Even The Jungle Book managed this (just) by giving Bare Necessities and I Wanna Be Like You to Bill Murray and Christopher Walken, neither actor (as Honest Trailers pointed out) renowned for their singing prowess. By hiding the songs, the story and technical whizzpoppery of The Jungle Book could come forward, something which had been lacking in the original.

All this is a roundabout way of wondering just what was missing from Beauty and the Beast? The story is epic. The main characters are relatable with full arcs and completed stories. The songs are the film. It is the best version of this story Disney could hope to make.

What’s new? Details are Spartan right now, but Emma Watson’s starring. That seems to be it so far. An actress famous for playing a bookish but brave character will play a bookish but brave character – she’s hardly breaking new ground. 

As a contrast, take the live action remake of The Little Mermaid. Again, details are thin, but Lin Manuel Miranda is writing the music, which is enough to justify anything’s existence. What’s new about The Little Mermaid is him and his enormous energy for anything Mermaid related. I mean, just look at this glorious nerd having the time of his life and tell me you're not a little bit excited for what he's going to do when he gets his own hands on a piano: 

                                                           

Beauty and the Beast could be great. It could be wonderful. It could even be magical. It doesn’t look like it will be anything new.

The Martian

The Martian, 2015, 20th Century Fox. Directed by Ridley Scott. Starring Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Peña, Kate Mara, Sean Bean, Sebastian Stan, Aksel Hennie and Chiwetel Ejiofor

I walk into the dank meeting room below the community centre, the florescent strip lights highlighting the faded patch work carpet under my feet. I nervously clutch my Costa latte – it’s too damn late to be drinking it at this hour, but alcohol isn’t allowed at these meetings and my nerves need something stronger than tea. I glance toward my peers as I take a seat in a hard plastic chair, sat in a circle across from the one friendly face in the room. Brian, our community outreach officer, nods and smiles in acknowledgement of my arrival, but I can’t find the words to say hello, and instead grimace and nod in return. 

As the final few people shuffle through the plywood door and take their seats, Brian claps his hands together. I just know he’ll start with me – I was warned outside by an anonymous smoking companion that he always begins with the newest member. “Some rubbish about ‘drawing you out’ or something,” he’d said, as he dragged on his Marlboro. Brian looks everyone square in the eye and I catch my smoker friend roll his eyes. He’s already utterly jaded to this; some people just can’t be changed, no matter how often they talk about their feelings.

“So welcome back everyone, and since we’re a little late, let’s just jump in with introducing our newest friend. So,” he says, gesturing to me, “Tell us a little about yourself, why are you here?” He looks at me, pleasantly and expectantly; he’s the only one who does. I lick my lips, take a deep breath – and begin.

“So, er… hi everyone, I’m Elspeth-”

“Hello, Elspeth,” they drone in response.

“Right, yeah, hi. Well, I’m Elspeth and I hate Ridley Scott films,” I breathe a sigh of relief as Brian smiles encouragingly. I look to the slightly askew banner above his head – Ridley Scott Haters Anonymous it reads in Comic Sans. I suppress a sneer as I note the faux jauntiness of the font.

“Tell us more, Elspeth,” Brian says, soothingly.

“Well, I guess it started when I saw Alien for the first time – I’d been told it was this masterwork of sci-fi and horror, but it did absolutely nothing for me. Same with Blade Runner; I knew I was supposed to be a cornerstone of dystopian cinema, but I couldn’t help myself comparing it to the book, and it bugged me that, if humanity was on the brink of extinction, how come they could fill out a cityscape of that size? It seems like a nitpick, but it stopped me from enjoying Harrison Ford, and that’s old school Ford up on the screen – it made me think I’d lost my mind, but I couldn’t get behind him or the story.” I take a swig of my now freezing cold coffee and carry on, finding that getting this off my chest at long last was empowering.

“I tried one last time with Gladiator – I thought that surely this’d be the one I understood the hype for. It had such a pedigree, but still, there was something missing. Maximus is such a noble character, he becomes impossible to relate too. I found him lacking in any faults and though I get that’s probably the point, it’s about a good man in an impossible situation, I get that, it still doesn’t make him particularly knowable or even likable. So yeah, I sort of gave up on Ridley Scott with that.”

Brian, who had been nodding like a wobble dog the entire time I had been talking, looks at me with friendly concern. “So why have you come tonight then? I’ve been asking you for a while to head down to these sessions, why now?”

“Because… I saw The Martian this week.” My smoker friend groans, and a woman to my left scoffs. Brian’s eyes widen in suppressed shock.

“You paid money for a Scott film? That’s against step one of our twelve step programme, did you not read the pamphlet I sent you?”

“I know that, but it looked fun and like Gravity, but on Mars and with Matt Damon - and I love Gravity and Matt Damon!” The woman to my left tosses her hands up in despair as the rest of the group shift uncomfortably. Brian holds his hand up and they settle again, but this time they each throw me a filthy look.

“So you had a relapse, that’s fine, that’s what this support group is for, right guys? That’s when we need each other the most!” He says, cheerfully. He snaps back to concern as he looks again to me. “Do you want to talk about it? Was it a very terrible experience?”

I wish I had more coffee. “Well, it was about twenty minutes too long and there were probably too many characters; there’s one romantic subplot that could have had more time or maybe even jettisoned entirely.” My smoker friend mutters ‘Typical Scott…’ under his breath. I steal myself for what I say next.

“But apart from that, it’s probably the finest science fiction film I’ve seen in a long time.” The room stills. I have their attention.

“Matt Damon is at the height of his charm in it – when the film is on Mars and focuses on the problems he faces, you really get behind him and what’s more, you like the crew who leave him for dead when they have to abort their mission. And this makes sense; they all have to be smart because they’re astronauts on the debut NASA Mars mission, and they have to be likable and light-hearted because they’re spending nearly two years together; it makes sense for them to be making light of their situation and ribbing each other, and what’s more the screenwriter Drew Goddard takes full advantage of this and there are some truly enjoyable interactions within this group.

“But where the film really works is where you get to see smart people work out impossible problems, and what’s more, it’s not effortless for them. A huge part of the gentle humour that runs throughout the film comes from the long suffering Development team as they stare in horror at their encroaching deadline, and from how Jeff Daniels and Kristen Wiig work out a way to keep the press at bay, whilst still courting all the good PR they can. Sean Bean and Chiwetel Ejiofor only have their astronauts’ safety in mind and the dynamic this creates is fascinating and very fun to watch. They make mistakes on Mars and Earth and the film builds to a truly gripping climax as the margin for error gapes like a canyon before them and you do wonder if they’ll actually get their spaceman back in one piece.

“I guess it’s got all the human reality of a workplace drama, but it has all the scope and excitement of a massive sci-fi epic. Some shots are just a wonder to behold and the editing gives a beautiful flow to the entire piece. But more important than any of this, and what can sometimes be missing from other Ridley Scott films, is that it has a sense of humour about itself. Though Matt Damon isn’t quite as full on as Chris Pratt, the disco soundtrack keeps the tone light, which is probably a lesson well learned from Guardians of the Galaxy. It really is remarkably good.”

Brian stares at me, all friendliness abandoned, his face a blank mask. “You… you actually like it? Really like it?” I stand and pick up my bag; I feel ten feet tall.

“Sorry Brian, you’ve been asking me to come for ages and I really did mean what I said before – I don’t like Ridley Scott. But the thing is, not every Scott project is the same, and the problems I found in his other big works are just not present in The Martian. You should all check it out, even if you do hate Ridley Scott like I did.” I turn and, throwing my coffee cup in the bin, leave them to their support meeting. No, I think, I will probably never get on with Alien, Blade Runner or Gladiator, but I think, if Scott carries on making films like The Martian, even I may call myself a fan one day.

Maybe.

 

The R Word - Women and Game of Thrones

Spoiler/Trigger Warning: 

This blog will analyse the use of rape and sexual assault in Game of Thrones, so if you’re not caught up, or have serious problems with the issues discussed, here’s your fair warning.

Sooo.... Who watched Game of Thrones this week?

Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken is a fairly standard episode (the weak Dorne plotline was compensated by a blistering performance by Dame Diana Rigg, returning as Lady Olenna Tyrell) but it was utterly overshadowed by its final scenes, where Sansa Stark was raped by her new husband Ramsay Bolton, who forced Reek/Theon to watch. To say the internet has lost its hivemind over this is an understatement; it’s got to the point where an actual senator has weighed in, announcing she’s now ‘done’ with the show. But what was it about Sansa’s rape that caused this much controversy?

As a scene, Sansa’s wedding night was lit, framed and staged like a horror film and was as tense as a bow string. Director Alex Graves showed restraint with the visuals and heightened the psychological trauma for both Sansa and Theon. It was very well executed and Alfie Allen nailed his performance as he looked in abject misery as the rape unfolded before him. But however well played and carefully this scene was handled, it was ultimately just another example of sexual assault used as a plot device. 

Though he did perfectly capture the audience's reaction

It’s not the first time that rape has been used like this in film and television, not by a long shot. Often, rape in fictional media reduces the woman to being a passive object who must be saved by the protagonist. By focusing on Theon’s face whilst Sansa was raped, the scene ceases to be about Sansa. It instead becomes the start of a new character arc for Theon, Sansa’s rape the motivation for Theon to claim back his identity. If Ramsay had destroyed a childhood toy, the result for Theon would have been the same; Ramsay crossed a line and now he must pay. Which is great for Theon, less so for Sansa, who for the past eight episodes had been growing out of her victim status and into a character with agency and plots of her own.

It’s also not the first time women have been used as foil for male characters; take the sad tale of Tysha Lannister. In season one, Tyrion tells of the horrific treatment of his first wife Tysha, who was gang raped by order of Tywin Lannister. You don’t pity Tysha (who seems to disappear after this ordeal) but Tyrion, who retreated to wine and prostitutes after this ordeal. Again, if Tywin had destroyed Tyrion’s favourite toy the result could have been pretty much the same if the story demanded it to be so. When Talisa Stark is stabbed in the baby, you don’t mourn her or feel her pain, but linger with Robb Stark, who’s lost his wife and unborn child. You are not expected to empathise with either of these women, but the received pain felt by their husbands.

And of course there were the mutineers at Craster’s Keep. Karl Tanner, when asked what to do with Craster’s daughters, tells his men to “Rape them until they die”.

He also drinks from a skull, in case you didn't get that he was evil.

Sigh.

This is extreme, even for Game of Thrones. The women in Craster’s Keep were props for the mutineers to be nasty to and for Jon Snow’s band of merry men to save. If you replaced each woman with a piece of furniture, the result would have been the same – their sole purpose was to be abused for the sake of melodrama, so as they were not fully developed characters with agency. They had no say in the events before or after the death of the mutineers and chances are they won’t pop up in episodes to follow.

From books to video games, the use of rape can feel sinister. This is because it's used as a way to sneak in nudity under the pretext of drama and yes, that is indeed messed up and gross, it’s not just you. But Game of Thrones doesn’t need a reason for nudity (which is questionable in and of itself, but beside the point of this blog), so rape can be mean more than an opportunity for perverse titillation. For the whole of season one, Daenerys’s naked body is frequently shown, to the point where Emilia Clarke put her foot down and demanded she be fully clothed from then on. But on Daenerys and Drogo’s wedding night, all that’s shown is her face and bare back. It’s not titillating; it’s disturbing and melancholic and begins her arc of gaining sexual agency and power. Daenerys’s rape advances her character, not Drogo’s. No, it wasn't necessary, but at least it had a purpose beyond how it made the men in her life feel.

Game of Thrones is walking a fine line with Sansa. Either she will follow Daenerys’s path to grow into a character who will conquer the Boltons and become the Lady of Winterfell, or she will become a prop to be saved by Stannis, Theon or Brienne. The third option, that it was actually consensual and accidentally edited to look like rape, thankfully doesn't seem to be on the table. As an audience, we can’t tell yet which way the show will fall, but hopefully it will continue to treat Sansa as a three dimensional character, not a destroyed toy or smashed up chair.

Despite this quagmire they've found themselves in, there’s still much to celebrate about Game of Thrones, especially when it comes to its women.  Right now, the main power struggle in Westeros is  between Cersei and Olenna and it’s not a ‘behind the scenes’ puppet show, using men to make their gains – they are literally the most powerful people on the continent. Women like Melisandre, Brienne, Arya and Margaery all have power, character and purpose aside from their men, carrying their own stories within this densely packed saga.   

There’s a dissertation’s worth of analysis when it comes to women and Game of Thrones, but ultimately it’s an adult show discussing serious matters against a backdrop of dragons and ice zombies. It’s frank, brutal and true to the environment created by George RR Martin. He included rape and women-as-props in his books, so the adaptation has to do what it can and so far it’s  made for (on the whole) magnificently epic television. The criticisms thrown into sharp relief by this episode are valid and need to be addressed by future episodes, but making excuses for Sophie Turner (who ‘loved the scene’ but is too naive to get it) isn't right, nor is dismissing every analytical thought because it’s ‘just a TV show’. Game of Thrones has carved itself a substantial chunk of the pop culture landscape and whether it still deserves this depends on how they move on from Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. But it would be rash to write it off this far into the game. 

Here’s hoping, anyway.