Review: Game of Thrones Season 6 DVD/Blu-ray boxset
By Dan Selcke
The Game of Thrones Season 6 home boxset is out tomorrow, November 15, in both DVD and Blu-ray format. We were lucky enough to get an early copy of the Blu-ray version. Here’s what you need to know before picking it up.
The packaging
The discs are encased in a glossy blue package with a Hall of Faces theme. Anybody who remembers HBO’s marketing campaign during the lead-up to the Season 6 premiere will recognize it. The package even says “I AM NO ONE” on the back.
The packaging itself is sturdy and glossy, with a cover that unfolds to reveal the discs, which are stacked in an overlapping fashion. Admittedly, that makes it kind of difficult to, say, access disc 2 without first taking out disc 1, since the former is nested underneath and below the latter, but overall it’s a solid construction.
And in any case, the most interesting thing about the packaging is the color. For the Season 5 box set, the prevailing color was gold, for some reason. Now, everything is the same murky blue that permeates the Hall of Faces. Game of Thrones and dark colors just go together.
The price
The Blu-ray set is more expensive than the DVD set. But then again, as we’ll see below, the Blu-rays come with extra goodies. Per the HBO Shop:
- Game of Thrones: The Complete Sixth Season DVD boxset: $59.99
- Game of Thrones: The Complete Sixth Season Blu-ray boxset: $74.99
Shoppers may be able to get a better deal at Amazon.
The extras: DVD
Game of Thrones: The Complete Sixth Season has some quality extras, although the Blu-ray version has more. Let’s look at the special features the two boxsets have in common.
Recreating the Dothraki World
This 20-minute feature focuses on the reintroduction of the Dothraki culture, which hadn’t been seen since Season 1. Everyone on the show relished the opportunity to return to this corner of the world with the resources they’d picked up in the interim, which may explain why the gate to Vaes Dothrak was so much more elaborate this time around.
Season 1
Season 6
In addition to talking about the extras, the makeup, and the other organizational aspects of bringing Vaes Dothrak to life, the productions talk about how they wanted to shape the story. Writer Dave Hill notes that they always wanted to have Daenerys rescue herself from her captivity, and that sending Jorah and Daario to her rescue was “almost a feint.” Emilia Clarke sums up Daenerys’ reunion with the Dothraki thusly:
"She’s trying to get her bearings, and if she is perceived as being passive, and in no way a threat, then she can do what Daenerys does best, which is sit and wait, and then fuck motherfuckers up."
She also had an interesting comment about how Jorah and Daario were feeling when Daenerys stepped out of that fire at the end of “Book of the Stranger.”
"I think it’s in that moment that they’re filled with a kind of awe and loss at the same time, because they know that if she’s capable of doing that, then why would she ever need them? And the truth is that she doesn’t."
Finally, here’s a brief clip where Clarke talks about speaking Dothraki.
The Battle of the Bastards: An In-Depth Look
The production talks with the likes of Kit Harington (Jon Snow), Iwan Rheon (Ramsay Bolton), Kristofer Hivju (Tormund Giantsbane), showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss, director Miguel Sapochnik, and other members of the cast and crew to get an idea of how “Battle of the Bastards” came to be. Camilla Naprous, who’s in charge of the horses, gets a lot of screen time, because it is not easy to control that many horses.
Lest we forget, there were NO SPECIAL EFFECTS involved in this shot.
This half hour-long documentary underlines what a collaborative effort filmmaking is. Yes, we all want to give credit to Harington for his remarkably physical performance, or Sapochnik for his careful handling of so many different elements. But equally important is the greens department, which made it possible to move over a field that would otherwise be a muddy, impassable sinkhole. Jamie Mills, a military advisor, was another of the battle’s unsung heroes. A military veteran, he was in charge of marshaling the extras, and brought a drill sergeant-like demeanor that made everything go smoothly.
We also get some fun behind-the-scenes tidbits. For example, Sapochnik talks about a problem he encountered during filming. The team had dusted the surrounding trees with snow so it looked like, y’know, the North. But they couldn’t reach the top of the trees, and Sapochnik needed a way to camouflage that. To that end, he brought in the flaming bodies on the Bolton crosses, and used the smoke to cover up the tops of the trees. Bloody serendipity!
I’ll leave you with a quote from Kit Harington: “I would like to put it on record, right now, that I have had more shit thrown at me than any other actor on this show.
18 Hours at the Paint Hall
This feature, which walks viewers through a hectic day on a set of stages at Titanic Studios in Belfast, has been available to watch for a while. What happens when all three of Game of Thrones’ production units are in one place? Have a look:
Gameo Thrones behind the scenes: beautiful chaos.