Westeros

Last month, courtesy of HBO, we were able to give an exclusive preview of one of the Histories and Lore from the Game of Thrones Season 5 Bluray set that’s to be released tomorrow. Along with that preview, we received a review copy of the set, and over the last weeks we’ve poked at its various extras to get a sense of what’s new.

On the whole, the extras this year are particularly noteworthy because of the addition of “Dance of [the] Dragons” animated feature fully 20 minutes long, featuring now-departed actors narrating in character (Harry Lloyd as Viserys, Michelle Fairley as Catelyn, Mark Addy as Robert Baratheon, Jack Gleeson as Joffrey, Pedro Pascal as Oberyn Martell, and Kerry Ingram as Shireen Baratheon) the story of the brutal civil war that hastened the end of the Targaryen dragons. The art style for this, and the other Histories and Lore, is somewhat different from that of previous seasons. It’s cleaner in a way, but also sometimes a little more simplistic, even cartoonish, at times. The level of content is, however, quite impressive as they drew heavily from the material written for The World of Ice and Fire to provide substantial insight into the past and present of both Westeros and Essos.

One may nitpick some fine details that they seem to change (for example, they have it as Barristan being the one who’s informed by Rhaegar that he plans to make changes to his father’s reign after he deals with Robert, whereas it’s a significant detail we learn from Jaime in the novels)  or don’t quite seem to follow, but on the whole this is an excellent way to give viewers a taste of the depth of the peoples and lands of A Song of Ice and Fire.

The other extras are equally substantial, including some cases where episodes have multiple commentaries—episode 8 and 9 have commentary tracks featuring directors and performers, as well as various behind-the-scenes individuals like directors of photography, stunt coordinators, camermen, VFX supervisors, and more. For those who are really interested in the smallest details of what goes on in producing a series, these commentaries are particularly worthwhile. Of course the writers comment—Dave Hill on episode 4, Bryan Cogman on episode 6, and Benioff and Weiss on the finale—and those, too, are interesting in their own way. The executive producers don’t shy away from confirming that certain characters in the season are well and truly dead, for those who had any lingering doubts about them.

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Another feature of note is a mini-documentary including George R.R. Martin, as well as noted medieval historian Kelly DeVries, UK presenter and historian Dan Jones, and blogger Jamie Adair. This documentary focuses on the historical parallels in the series, due to Martin mining history (particularly the Wars of the Roses) for characters and events in the novels. It treads a lot of ground that hardcore fans and history buffs already know, but it puts it together in a well-edited package.

As always, these blu-ray sets are high quality, high production value affairs, loaded with features that add additional hours to an already-long series. The commentaries alone add a dozen hours to the package. For the completist and for the hardcore fans of the TV show, it’s a must-have.