TV

"House of the Dragon" really wants you to remember the climax of "Game of Thrones", and that's what ruins it

Quite a bit in "The Dragon's House", starting from the choice of the story and ending with the opening melody, is designed to please our nostalgia glands.

However, unlike the "Game of Thrones", the monotony of the new series, the measured progress of its plot and the grayness of its heroes, make it a bit boring.

Still, maybe there is hope

Ido Isaiah

22/08/2022

Monday, August 22, 2022, 4:00 p.m

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"Dragon House" - long trailer (HBO)

A huge bag of expectations has been carried on the back of the "Dragon House" since its inception.

For a start, of course, this is the first subsidiary series of the biggest and most successful series in HBO history, one that has high hopes of becoming a big hit and expanding the world of "Game of Thrones", with the events that preceded its plot.

But even beyond that, fate and the programming wanted and "Dragon House" comes a week after the most celebrated prequel in television history ended, one that the increasingly clear consensus claims surpasses even the original.

"House of the Dragon" goes back in time and describes the events that led to the so-called "Dance of Dragons", a war of succession that broke out in the Targaryen family and swept the entire kingdom, including the houses of the great lords who had to choose sides.

The plot, as a caption on the screen at the beginning of the first episode emphasizes to us, begins 172 years before Daenerys Targaryen was even born.

Viserys (Paddy Considine, "Stranger", "Lost Identity") is the current king of the Seven Kingdoms, his only daughter Rhaenyra (Emma Darcy, "Hannah") is a girl of about 15, all her other siblings have fallen or died in the crib.

The queen is pregnant again and the king hopes that this time it will be a son who will survive, his successor.

If that doesn't happen, Viserys' hot-headed younger brother Damon (Matt Smith, "The Crown," "Doctor Who") will be expected to inherit the throne.

Miriam life for women.

Emma Darcy, "Dragon House" (Photo: Ollie Upton/HBO)

Faithful to the way of George R.R. Martin - who is very involved in the new series and is one of its creators - "Dragon House" builds its story with great grammar. With the help of Martin, the directors of the series, Ryan Condell ("The Colony") and Miguel Spuchnik, weave an action Politically calculated, the fruits of which the series begins to reap as it progresses. That's part of what's impressive about "Dragon House" - the way disaster creeps up over the years through relationships that start strong and then unravel.

From the beginning, the series presents a very patriarchal world.

Viserys wins the kingship even though the previous king's daughter was supposedly next in line, but women aren't supposed to rule Westeros.

And within this very masculine world, "The Dragon's House" does a good job of illustrating how uplifting the women's lives are, even the levels of virtue in them.

"The birthing bed is our battlefield," says the pregnant queen to her daughter Rainira.

Later in the first episode, her birth scene, which is cross-edited with a spear tournament in the kingdom's court, becomes one of the most viscerally revolutionary moments in all six episodes sent for review (out of ten included this season).

Moments like these, much more intimate and everyday than swords and dragon fights, provide a certain remedy for the exploitative sins of the parent series, which was too fond of reveling in female nudity and rape.

Beyond that, they apply elegance to "Dragon House" and slowly advance it to the climax that will surely come.

Scenes such as a character's deliberately late entry into a banquet, a statement choice of dress colors, and verbal altercations provide interest in themselves, while also being measured signs that herald the coming of the storm.

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The only character that comes close to being interesting.

Matt Smith as Damon Targaryen, "House of the Dragon" (Photo: Ollie Upton/HBO)

However, this elegance is most of the time surrounded by familiar and hypnotic sights.

At the disposal of the "Dragon House" is an entire world that has already been trained in its honor.

We know the names of the great houses that are casually thrown around here - Stark, Lannister, Dondarion, Bartheon and the rest.

We also know Doran and the Bekaa, know what Septa is and what the Sheva are.

But "Dragon House" plays on a much smaller field and with much fewer options.

Somewhat ironically, the new series details only one character, precisely the one that the previous series is named after - the succession battles for the throne.

Of all the many stories in "Blood and Fire", "House of the Dragon" chooses the one whose basis is again political intrigue and power struggles.

The reason for this is painfully obvious: the series longs for us to feel that it is another layer of what we loved so much in that huge hit.

Sometimes she does it in relatively subtle ways, like introducing the dagger made of Valyrian steel that will later almost kill Bran Stark, roll into the hands of his sister Arya and destroy the Night King;

But not infrequently she also uses horribly blunt tools, ones that are clearly meant to make us feel good in the nostalgia glands.

Thus, instead of trying to establish a new identity for itself, "Dragon House" demonstratively embraces what was.

Already in the opening minutes, Daenerys' name is explicitly mentioned, as mentioned, and the first episode ends with a choral adaptation of the familiar opening melody of that series.

From the second episode onwards, the end of this pleasantry serves as the background for the opening of "House of the Dragon" itself, which shows for a few seconds the symbol of House Targaryen and is satisfied with that.

The differences between the beautiful, original and passionate opening of "Game of Thrones" and the short and uninspired one of "House of the Dragon" represent the entire new series.

If the first one sent arms and characters to all the ends of the seven kingdoms, "House of the Dragon" is content most of the time with the red fortress in the capital city, Ma'ale a king, and with the story of only one family.

Although one with an impressive collection of dragons, these monsters also look more like a flock of fighter jets than creatures we should care about, or ones that have a real connection to the characters as was the case with that Daenerys.

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Relationships break up.

"House of the Dragon" (Photo: Ollie Upton/HBO)

Unlike Game of Thrones, the new series is based on a fully completed book, Fire and Blood, so Condell and Spuchnik can draw on an existing story.

But the concept of the source materials is fundamentally different.

"Fire and Blood" is a kind of history book - rather tedious in itself - which tells the annals of the Targaryen dynasty.

As such it concentrates on the macro rather than the micro.

The first season spans years of events, and each episode features some sort of time jump.

There are no heart murmurs of the characters in the book, but an overview and purposeful description of events.

Therefore, in practice "Dragon House" has the task of breathing life into its heroes.

She does it with only partial success.

Even after more than half a season, it is difficult to find unforgettable characters that were evident in the original series from the very beginning.

There is no Tyrion or Arya or even Ned or Jon here.

There are also no villains that are especially fun to cheer for.

The only one that comes close to that is Damon, a combination of the least expected character (yet somewhat expected, because we've already seen her) and an excellent performance by Smith.

The time jumps don't help identification either.

Not only because some of the main actresses change in the middle, but because sometimes the series skips over essential psychological developments of the protagonists.

One of the characters, for example, changes camp completely between one episode and another, without really getting a satisfactory explanation for this.

Everything results in the whole being a bit boring and boring.

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There are no memorable characters.

Paddy Considine, "Dragon House" (Photo: Ollie Upton/HBO)

In conclusion, despite the inevitable similarities, "House of the Dragon" is a different creation than "Game of Thrones".

It is much less fascinating and exciting, and it takes much more time to build the card tower.

Even so, it's hard not to feel that it's worth sticking with.

The potential is evident in the witty dialogues, the excellent acting and the abundant action, the names behind it are such that you can trust them most of the time, and with every episode that passes it seems that the tower is going to collapse and the cards to be devoured.

When you think about it, maybe the comparisons to "Game of Thrones" and "Trust Sol" actually do "Dragon House" a favor.

Like them, the new series also takes off relatively slowly, like a hatched dragon.

And by the same token, she might be able to climb if she continues, and only patience is required.

A new episode of "The Dragon's House" is available every Monday on Biss, Hot and Cellcom TV, next to the broadcast in the United States.

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