Screencap breakdown: The Game of Thrones season 7 teaser trailer
By Dan Selcke
Next, we get a preview of things to come: a swirling shot of a grisly tableau, as stag, lion, wolf, kraken, rose, and dragon are all at war. We hear another of Daenerys lines from “Hardhome,” one that promises a lot of violence: “Lannister, Targaryen, Baratheon, Stark, Tyrell…They’re all just spokes on a wheel. This one’s on top, then that ones on top, and on and on it spins, crushing those on the ground.” Daenerys was last seen setting sail to Westeros. It sounds like she plans to jump right into the fray.
However, note that the teaser leaves out her follow-up to that speech. “I’m not going to stop the wheel. I’m going to break the wheel.” By omitting, I feel HBO is telling us that Daenerys isn’t the favorite to win the coming war, or that focusing on a winner is to miss the point. If anything, the teaser implies that there won’t be a winner, because the next images we see are each of the statues crumbling.
Lion, dragon, wolf…no one is spared. By the end of this sequence, all of the statues have been mashed into dust, arranged in a creepy circle of the kind we’ve seen White Walkers make.
For comparison’s sake, here’s the corpse circle Tormund and company stumble across in season 3, after the battle at the Fist of the First Men.
The message is clear: the wars between the great Houses mean nothing, not when the White Walkers are coming to kill all of humanity. Jon Snow underlines this point with the only new line from the teaser: “The same thing is coming for all of us. There’s only one war that matters. The Great War. And it is here.”
Next, the camera zooms out to reveal that all of this is happening in the iris of an ice-blue eye. Of course, the White Walkers and the wight have eyes like this, which reinforces Jon’s point.
Again, maybe everyone should stop fighting each other and turn their attention north? If this trailer is any indication, that will be the main theme of season 7.
Finally, we get the premiere date.
I think this was a smashing teaser trailer, and more carefully constructed than I first thought. What did you guys think? Did I miss any of the symbolism?