When HBO announced that they were going to launch a prequel show based on RR Martin's Game of Thrones ideas I had mixed feelings. Like a lot of Game of Thrones fans I was quite displeased how the seasons went seriously downhill in the last few years and was especially displeased with how the last season went. So much time has been dedicated to showing how truly awful the final season of Game of Thrones was that I don't really need to get into it. If you liked the show you already know.
My apprehension for House of the Dragon was based on the feeling that they might continue to have the same sort of writing and absurdities that existed in the final season of GoT.
Thus far, I don't feel as though this is a bad show at all but let's give it some time.
src
Another concern that was on a lot of people's minds was whether HBO was going to make the story break from the source material and perhaps make it all woke and weird. HBO has been significantly less guilty of this than other streaming services including and especially Netflix, but you never can tell these days. It seems in many cases that this has become a long-lasting objective of some shows and films and the backlash that a lot of these once-beloved franchises has been swift by the fans. Just look at how they murdered the last 2 Star Wars films or even better, the recent Resident Evil series that was on Netflix.
I don't really care what race someone is in a film or series, but if that character is in direct opposition to the source material, it is irritating to say the least. If the source material says that someone is a pale skinned elf but the studios decide to make the on-screen character a person of color, there is good reason for fans to be displeased. I mean, imagine if they did the opposite? The Twitter outrage would be never-ending.
I'm gonna leave that alone for now though and focus on how for the most part, House of the Dragon has been done exceptionally well thus far.
src
Much like its predecessor, HOTD is rather slow moving in the first two episodes and involves a lot of dialogue that you better pay close attention to unless you want to be totally lost as far as the story is concerned. There are a lot of sections of the story thus far that we only get a taste of what actually happened and instead of seeing a giant and expensive-to-show battle, we just see a few scenes and then some narrator tells us the rest of what happened. This is actually a fantastic method of making a grand battle evident without actually spending the millions of dollars that would be required to actually represent such a battle on screen. I'm ok with it for now but I do hope that some of these battles are actually seen fully on screen at some point.
src
One thing that HBO has done very well with up to now is the sparing use of dragons in the episodes. Since we all know these are primarily CGI, HBO has to be very careful with how they present them, and how often. These scenes are no doubt very expensive to create, and at least from where I am standing, I don't have any negative criticism as to how the CGI has been used thus far.
Thus far I have no complaint about any of the main characters and think they did a good job with casting. The main standout for me and most other people is Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen who is played by Milly Alcock. Despite the fact that she is depicted as a young teen in the show, Milly is actually 22 years old. They did a very good job of making her look extremely young for the show and that had to have been tough to cast. There aren't many 22 year old's out there that can pull off looking 15.
I already know how this story is going to pan out because I am familiar with the source material. However there were many instances in which Game of Thrones deviated from the source material or at times was actually ahead of it in terms of the books that had already been released. It will be interesting to see if they stick to the script with House of the Dragon or if they throw us for a loop and go a different way. I'd prefer to see them stick with canon, but you never know what HBO is going to do. For me, I hope they learned their lesson from the bad press they received during the later seasons of Game of Thrones and don't make the same mistakes twice.
In the meantime I think this show is excellent and you definitely should be watching it. So far it is far less sexual and graphic than GoT, but the writing and acting is really top notch. Fans of the original series are almost certainly going to enjoy this, at least for now!
