With The Walking Dead's Season 7 premiere leaving fans traumatized, and polarized, EP Greg Nicotero, who directed the episode, took some time on a conference call to talk about the levels of extreme violence that have drawn criticism from some fans and critics. Did the premiere go too far by taking up a whole hour with bullying and brutality?
Spoilers follow for The Walking Dead's season premiere.
"Yes, it was intense," Nicotero noted. "You know a lot of people who read the comic book and read the graphic novels, there are moments that are pretty ingrained in their brain. I was standing next to Steven [Yeun] when I read issue #100 and talking to him and Robert [Kirkman] about it and, to me, of course it was horrifically graphic and senseless and brutal. I wanted to try to capture those moments. We've spent a lot of time on the show setting up groups of people. We had Woodbury, we had the Claimers, we had Terminus. This is by far the most despicable villain that we have ever encountered."
Nicotero wanted to make it clear that the premiere was purposefully done through Rick's eyes because it centered on him being utterly defeated. "The way that the [Negan] character is designed, by Robert and Scott [Gimple] and of course Jeffrey [Dean Morgan], is that when he's there, he's on stage. He's doing all this to really prove a point. He wants to make it clear that 'these are my rules.' So we felt it was important to launch us into the season by showing the extent of what Negan is capable of because that drives so much of where the season is going from here on in."
"It's graphic and it's horrible," Nicotero added. "We wanted to push it a little bit. When we shot the Season 5 premiere, we had everybody at the trough and we went down the line and you saw these guys being murdered and drained of blood. That was purely a mechanism just to show how bad the people in Terminus really were. With Negan, you only have to see that once or twice to know this guy means business. The haunting remnants of that episode are very very similar to how I felt when I read the comic book and I experienced that sense of loss and the futility of trying to step in. Rick Grimes is powerless to stop this and that's something we've never seen on the show. I think the violence and brutality are a part of the helplessness. Seeing our hero completely crushed in front of us is more disturbing than the actual violence for me."
What does Nicotero think about the usual "I'm never watching this show again!" backlash from some distraught fans?
"I'm a big Game of Thrones fan and I've been shocked by the turn of events on that show," he said. "But you know what? I still love it. And I'm still committed to seeing where that story goes. I think it's a knee-jerk reaction that people have because they care about these characters."
Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association (TCA). Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at http://ift.tt/2aJ67FB.
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