We all held our breath during “The Spoils of War” this past Sunday. HBO delivered one thrilling moment after another, and none more electrifying than Jaime Lannister’s suicidal attempt to kill Daenerys Targaryen. It was a cinematic moment seven seasons in the making. It was glorious and it was pathetic. It was superb storytelling. Spurring his white steed across a battlefield littered with fire and the cindered bodies of his Lannister soldiers, Jaime stood no chance against Drogon, Dany’s protector, and both Jaime and Tryion knew it.
Was this an impulsive act of defiance by a defeated commander, or was it attempted suicide by a man who can no longer live with what he has become? Talking about the Loot Train Attack with with The New York Times, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau said he sees Jaime’s magnificent charge as a last-gasp effort to cut the head off the dragon, so to speak:
"Jaime’s not a complete idiot. He knows that this is a long-shot. He knows that there is no way they can beat this woman. They cannot beat these dragons. They only way would be to somehow kill her, and for a brief second, he sees that opening. It’s like a Hail Mary."
Game of Thrones producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss have promised that the trade-off for getting fewer episodes this year is that each one would be more spectacular, and the Loot Train Attack proved they were as good as their word. Coster-Waldau, a veteran of high-budget action films like Black Hawk Down and Gods of Egypt, was blown away by the complexity and ambition involved in the production of the battle, which took three weeks to shoot.
"You have the explosions going off. You’re on horseback. It’s quite exhilarating, to be honest. When you see the Dothraki riders, the skill level is insane! Because they do it. It’s in camera. It’s not C.G. I. (Computer Generated Imagery, like Drogon). They jump up on those horses. They shoot a bow and arrow while standing up on horseback, while galloping, on a field that’s not even. It’s rough terrain, by the way. And they didn’t fall off. They didn’t have any injuries. The stunt department set the record for the most men on fire, and it’s scary to see one man on fire, but 20 at the same time? And they get up, like it’s another day at the office."
All that chaos can be intimidating for an actor, but Coster-Waldau can’t let it get to him. “There’s this weird thing that happens when the word ‘Action!’ is yelled out–you have to fool yourself,” he said. “Jaime Lannister would never worry for a second about falling off a horse, so you can’t think too much about it. I mean, I worry about it after…”
As for the catalyst behind Jaime’s desperate charge, Coster-Waldau simply says that “this is Jaime. He sometimes acts before he thinks.” Cersei, naturally, is also a powerful motivator. “He would save his sister, even if he’s the only one who believes she needs saving.”
However, Coster-Waldau also believes that the dragons are “weapons of mass destruction” and the Lannister forces are largely helpless against them. If Cersei disagrees, there could be tension between the two in the future. Coster-Waldau ruminated on the differences between the two siblings:
"He’s such a great military man but when it comes to Cersei he’s just flailing because he doesn’t have that same level of cynicism, or that ability to lie, like Cersei, Littlefinger and Varys. They operate in a parallel universe … it’s all about how she wants to control everything. It’s never going to be enough for her, no matter what. And it’s a tricky situation for Jaime. He’s more romantic about that whole relationship. And she’s not that romantic."
Jaime has always been a man torn between competing influences, and right now, they’re threatening to tear him apart. Where might that take him? “Jaime’s always been on the fringe of this game of thrones, if you will,” Coster-Waldau explained. “I think he’s getting to the place where he’s questioning. ‘What’s the point of all this? Power for the sake of power?'”
And what about that final shot, where Jaime, weighed down by his armor, sinks into the depths of the lake? It took a full day of underwater shooting to get that, and Coster-Waldau did not have an easy time of it. “You have to go down, you have to equalize the pressure, and I’m not very good at that,” he said. “It was just a tough, tough day.”
Then there was the challenge was overcoming the psychological fear that he would drown in his armor
"[Y]ou depend on these divers to come to you when you signal, and you always want to have the feeling that you can escape if something happens. But because of the armor I couldn’t. Once I let go I couldn’t do anything … In my mind I know safety is paramount and people are ready, but when you can’t see and you can’t move and the pressure of the water? It was … absolutely disgusting, to be honest. But it looks amazing!"
So is Jaime getting out of this? “It seems impossible to survive that,” Coster-Waldau said. “Luckily he’s not wearing the Kingsguard armor, which is made of brass.” Huh.
If he does live through this, Jaime has some important information to pass along to Cersei — he knows for sure now that Tyrion didn’t kill Joffrey, “I don’t think Jaime ever thought Tyrion did, but he didn’t know that he didn’t, if that makes sense.”
Next: 'The Spoils of War' is the highest-rated episode of Game of Thrones ever
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