House of the Dragon (2022, HBO2theMAX)

[Simple Torture]

what's the budget on this thing?

I dunno, but I think we’ll be able to tell right away if it approaches GOT’s budget.

[Simple Torture]

I got through the Dance of the Dragons portion of Fire and Blood last night. I think it's pretty wild how the whole bit can be broken into 4 or 5 parts; wouldn't be shocked at all to learn that GRRM wrote it imagining it as a TV show. I have to imagine season 1 is going to cover:

Spoiler: show

The Council of 101 (confirmed that the show starts in the past) through the death of Viserys I. Daemon os wearing a gold cloak through much of the first trailer, so we get his time leading the City Watch. There's also footage of him on a beach, so there's his conquest of the Step Stones. Lots of Rhaenyra vs. Alicent stuff. Maybe the final episode of the season is the small council meeting where the greens take power, maybe they save it for the opening of season 2.

[BurtReynolds]

Ha I thought you were joking

[Mecca]

They did almost nothing to endear us to any characters… maybe Viserys?

[Simple Torture]

Where's Mushroom?

#NotMyHotD

[Mecca]

Where's Mushroom?

#NotMyHotD

For real

[Monkey_Driven]

I want that dragon helmet

[psychobain]

I liked it

[Monkey_Driven]

So did I.

[Mickey]

what's the budget on this thing?

I dunno, but I think we’ll be able to tell right away if it approaches GOT’s budget.

Watched 17 minutes and can safely wager that it does not.

[Monkey_Driven]

what's the budget on this thing?

I dunno, but I think we’ll be able to tell right away if it approaches GOT’s budget.

Watched 17 minutes and can safely wager that it does not.

A lot of dragons will be in this and the don't come cheap.

[Mickey]

what's the budget on this thing?

I dunno, but I think we’ll be able to tell right away if it approaches GOT’s budget.

Watched 17 minutes and can safely wager that it does not.

A lot of dragons will be in this and the don't come cheap.

But they do look cheap!

[Ensign9]

That was good but I’ll never be fully able to enjoy this show because of how GoT ended. It’s always in the back of my mind. All I could think about during Viserys’ dramatic conversation with Rhaenyra about the impending Long Night was Bran sitting in his wheelchair under Winterfell’s heart tree doing nothing.

Visual effects were just okay. Lots of it looked like high-end video game cutscene quality, especially the flyovers of King’s Landing. The dragons did look pretty good; Caraxes more so than Syrax.

[Simple Torture]

I think the small council stuff and the tourney/birth scene intercutting were my favorite parts and by far the most effective and artful portions of this episode. The king was the weak link in the council stuff, but I think that may have been by design; he's been either the heir/king for a decade and still doesn't have full control of the room, which speaks to what Daemon says later about him being weak and played with. The scene of Daemon and Rhaenyra in the throne room also provided the right level of ICK that the story requires, too.

I'm neither disappointed nor wowed by special effects much anymore, so none of the dragon scenes bugged me in the slightest, but they weren't memorable, either. I think the best dragon moment was actually in the opening when Rhaenyra was flying over King's Landing and few of the citizens even looked up at her, marking how it's an everyday occurrence in this time period. Contrasts nicely to everyone being stunned by dragons in GOT. Which sort of bleeds into my sharpest criticism of the show so far, which isn't huge, but I do hope there's less hand-holding/references to GOT as the series goes on. I am ok with title card placing this in a specific time period (~200 years before the Mad King's death and Dany's birth) but I eye rolled a bit when all of the words faded except "200 years before Dany." The show shouldn't need to beat you over the head that Dany and Rhaenyra/Rhaenys have similar stories; let it all unfold. The same thing goes for the king's monologue to Rhaenyra about Aegon's dream at the end of the episode; I was hoping the Others would not be mentioned in this story at all. It reeks of the worst sort of prequal garbage, and I hope after this table-setter that there's less of it as things go on.

In that final scene, I was hoping that what he was going to tell her was (don't read this if you haven't read the books, even though it'll probably be revealed in the next episode):

Spoiler: show

That he was going to propose marriage to the Hightower broad. Would've been a nice personal moment between them, not some sort of "we've got to save the world" stuff.

I was hoping we would be done with sexposition. Just boring and tired at this point.

I think there's a lot of good stuff here, and the story gets so rich and vast that there's lots I'm looking forward to, but in some ways I hope it stays narrower and focused on this story, and not the GOT-iverse.

I have more to say about Mushroom that will be its own post.

[Revelator]

Not bad, it was enough for me to return for episode 2. My God that birth scene though....brutal. I could barely watch

[Mecca]

I think there’s at least one element in canon that leaves some room for Aegon’s conquest being more than his marriage suggestions being ignored and general insults from the 7 kingdoms forcing him to exact revenge against the realm.

I consider that Viserys I is adding in a reason, but the Prince that was Promised was a long held prophecy, so it could track. Keep in mind that Viserys rode Balerion the Black Dread as a child until the dragon died of old age; he has a connection to Aegon

[daft twat]

Some of you must not be able to enjoy anything. The graphics look cheap? What the fuck? It’s a girl flying on a dragon. They couldn’t get a real one to cooperate, I guess. They should do it like fucking Falcor in Neverending Story with her clinging to a rubber dragon head? I thought the graphics were great, but I also was blown away when I saw my first Super Nintendo game.

I am not a fan of the graphic nature of the show. The birth, the dismemberment, the axe slowly cleaving a man’s head. Who is asking for that?

The thought that the end of Game of Thrones kind of sullies whatever this is does ring true for me, too, but I’m going to continue watching so I guess they built enough equity along the way for me despite how it ended.

[Mickey]

I thought the graphics and the production more broadly looked significantly cheaper than Game of Thrones, but my main criticism was that the show is aggressively bad.

[Ello Sailor]

The dragons looked fine. There was an overhead shot of the jousting arena that looked very cheap, but overall I didn't notice a dramatic drop in graphical quality.

Some of the acting was pretty good; Considine, Ifans, Toussaint, Best and even Smith seemed to nail their characters. Alcock was okay.

I'll keep watching.

[swan]

6 weeks ago I was in the room to witness my wife give birth to our daughter. There were multiple complications & it was an intensely harrowing, unforgettable experience. Mom & baby are doing fine now, but I’m soooo glad a friend hipped me to the birth scene in this episode. Wife & I were casual GoT fans, planned on watching this. On friend’s recommendation it’s a hard pass now! Never need to see a birth scene in filmed entertainment again.