Is the Game of Thrones – Battle of Winterfell too dark?

Without really getting into anything else when it comes to Sunday night’s Game of Thrones episode, there’s a question to wonder about visibility. Specifically, was everything within the Battle of Winterfell perhaps too hard to see?

We should start by noting that we get why the entire sequence would be at night. It’s an advantageous time to strike the living when you’re the undead — presumably, you are impervious to things like fatigue in the same way! It may also be easier for production, since you can hide the number of extras and other things in a better way that you can in the light of date. Also, torches look cool on film — and it’s a pretty terrifying effect having all of them going out at the same time.

Just thirty minutes into this episode, we’re already seeing an abundance of complaints on social media from many people who feel like a little bit of a lighter atmosphere would’ve been appreciated — after all, it’s hard to even see who dies and without closed captioning, it’s easy for someone to feel lost. It was really easy for a White Walker to feel lost, given that we went a pretty large percentage of time in the episode before getting a good look at a number of them.

(Of course, we recognize that these may be some of the only complaints about this episode, which is otherwise delivering all sorts of awesomeness. This is what so many of us have been waiting for!)

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It’s true — the night is dark and full of terrors. But can’t the daytime be from time to time? Ironically, it’s Melisandre herself who deserves some of the most credit for making things a little bit more visible tonight, as some of her fire spells helped to offer up a little more contrast — and, occasionally, the chance to actually see a few faces amidst the sea of darkness.

What show does this right with battle scenes?

Think Vikings, which does actually do the bulk of their battle scenes in the daytime. This isn’t to take anything away from Game of Thrones, who produced some visually mastery here. We recognize that this was one of the most difficult battle scenes to EVER film, one that required months of work — and that’s just in terms of filming. That’s without even mentioning post.

Of course, in the daylight, you wouldn’t have any of these effects play out the same way. We just wonder if there was any way at all that there could be consistent contrast through all of this.

For some other information on Game of Thrones…

Remember to head over to the link here! That’s where you can see our review for tonight’s episode and more.

Do you think that tonight’s Game of Thrones, themed around the Battle of Winterfell, is too dark? Share in the comments. (Photo: HBO.)