HBO have released behind-the-scenes footage of that nail-biting battle at the end of ‘The Spoils of War‘, which saw the Lannister forces reduced to nothing but burning piles of ash.
They’re calling it ‘The Loot Train Battle‘, which is insanely lame given there’s a ready-fire name for it: Field of Fire 2.0, after the first Field of Fire during Aegon I Targaryen‘s initial conquest of Westeros. But yeah, let’s call it ‘The Loot Train Battle’, despite the fact that all the loot (a.k.a. the harvest) was burnt to a crisp.
The behind-the-scenes footage goes into detail about bringing that entire, epic battle sequence together, including how you film men burning to their death without actually killing them.
“We burned more stuntmen than has ever been burnt in a single shot and in a single sequence,” said director Matt Shakman – who, btw, is better known for being the guy behind ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia‘. This was his ‘Game of Thrones’ debut and he bloody smashed it out of the park.
“We have potentially the most burns ever done in TV history, which is burning 20 men in one shot,” said line producer Duncan Muggoch.
And yeah, that’s a record.
Watching the Lannister army burn during ‘The Spoils of War’ was nuts, but watching actual stunt men who are actually on fire writhe around in pretend-pain is somehow more insane.
At one point in the footage, you can hear someone count down from 20 as the stunt men burn, at which point people immediately set upon them with extinguishers. It’s a long, long, long time to literally be on fire.
Have a watch of the full thing below.
