Fifty Game of Thrones characters, matched with their favorite movies

Ned Stark: Saving Private Ryan

Even if Ned Stark were alive and well in the real world, I’m not sure he’d be a movie buff. Outside of spending time with his children, he doesn’t seem like the kind of man who enjoys letting his hair down. Still, I think there’s a certain genre of film that would almost certainly appeal to him: war movies.

Having fought in Robert’s Rebellion, Ned intimately understands the toll that war takes on a people, as well as on a family. His own family was marred by tragedy when his sister, Lyanna, died during that conflict, as did his older brother Brandon. Of all the war movies out there, arguably one of the best is Saving Private Ryan. This raw and emotional film follows John H. Miller, an Army Captain who has been tasked with leading a party behind enemy lines to find the sole surviving brother in a family of soldiers. Ned Stark would be all over it.

It’s easy to see the parallels between Saving Private Ryan and Ned’s own story. The film covers themes of emotional torment, moral struggles and the cost of war. Ned has suffered his share of emotional torment, as when he pledged to raise the the infant Aegon Targaryen as his own bastard son, telling no one, not even his wife, to keep the boy safe. And Ned would appreciate the attention to detail in the movie, which depicts a brutal battle on the shores of Normandy as it happens. Ned doesn’t believe in sugar-coating the truth, and neither does Saving Private Ryan.