‘Kill the Boy’ is the fifth episode of the fifth season of HBO’s fantasy television series Game of Thrones, and the 45th overall. A healthy world in which the good guys won the war of the previous century wouldn’t present us with a romance between two mulattoes like the one we see in this episode. Worse still, in her efforts to pacify the civil war in Meereen, the blonde Dany proposes to a high-born mulatto from that city.
Regardless of those toxic messages for the mental health of the Aryans, there are strong cinematographic flaws in the episode. Remember what I said about the silly scenes of violence when Bran and company reached their destination? Something similar happens in this episode, and precisely in another mysterious area that required calm and tranquillity, like the movies of yesteryear. I mean the scene that immediately follows when Tyrion spots Drogon in the sky, in awe. The scriptwriters spoiled the entire magical setting with an attack by some kind of lepers: a scene that completely broke the rhythm of the film, just as they broke it when Bran reached the outskirts of Bloodraven’s cave.
This is a problem with modern cinema, so ready to abuse special effects at the cost of the plot. When I was a child at least some films made us reflect, occasionally with artistic masterpieces. Nowadays, the multi-million dollar productions can be summed up in a formula: All for the eye, nothing for the mind. That is why, when Martin apparently advised something ‘for the mind’ in the grand finale the fans didn’t get it.
Two years ago I wrote on this site several posts about how it was that the idiotic fans of today’s cinema didn’t get it. But let’s go back to the present episode. In the scene that precedes the silly scene of the ‘lepers’ attackers, Tyrion deduces that Jorah is taking a shortcut through Valyria. The shots when they enter the smoky sea are well thought out and set us in a mysterious place.
Valyria, also called Old Valyria, was a city in Essos and the former capital of the Valyrian Freehold. In times of the internal chronology of Martin’s novels, what we now see on the screen is in ruins, consumed by time. It had been destroyed along with the entire empire by a cataclysm known as the Doom of Valyria, more than four centuries before.