A fan film of epic proportions.
Get ready to start angry-tweeting me: I’ve never seen a lick of Game of Thrones, not a single episode. It’s not an intentional oversight, I’m not willfully ignoring the biggest thing to hit TV in the last decade, it’s just one of those shows that has hovered around the three-slot on my series-to-see list, but one and two keep turning over thanks to the onslaught of great television out there right now, so I never get to it. Admittedly fantasy isn’t my favorite genre, and dragons leave me a little blah, but I’m not so stuck up the ass of my own preferences that I can’t recognize the series’ greatness and appreciate the need to experience it.
All this is to say, I’m about to introduce a short film whose quality and articulation I found to be exceptional, though I’m going to describe it using a lot of words I don’t know. If you are a fan of the show, however, all this should make perfect, intriguing sense.
Written, directed and produced by Irish film students Shane Gibson and Ciaran McIlhatton, the film is called The Wild Wolf and it centers on the character of Brandon Stark, relative of Lyanna and Ned, and his duel with Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish for the hand of fair Catelyn Tully, all of which is a predecessor to Robert’s Rebellion. Clocking in at 16 minutes, it’s full of exquisite – and I assume faithfully-accurate – production design, and the performances, led by Gibson himself as Stark, are top-notch. If this is the kind of storytelling the series boasts, I need to reevaluate that list of mine.
So even though I’ve never seen any Game of Thrones, and even though owing to that deficit I personally was lost at moments, I can’t deny the appeal and excellence of The Wild Wolf from both a narrative and a technical perspective. And if I can enjoy the film as much as I did, imagine the level of enjoyment if you’re a die-hard Game of Thrones fan.