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House of the Dragon - Game of Thrones prequel

JohnC

By JohnC,
in Film, TV & Radio

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jonamok

jonamok

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Posted

I still want him to die though. I want all of them to die. I loved Tyrion, Tywin and Jaime Lannister. They were all an utter pleasure to spend time with. And whether doing good or ill, I still wanted them to prevail. Here, I just plain hate everyone.

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FishyFish

FishyFish

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One thing I’ve noticed with this is that there seem to be few well fleshed-out secondary characters. When they are present, it’s always when one of the main players is there.

 

There are no characters akin to The Hound, Littlefinger, Varys, Sam Tarly and the like. Characters such as Ser Christan and Larys feel thinly sketched in comparison. As a result HotD feels much narrower in scope than GoT did.
 

The world also seems much more confined, most of the activity taking place in the region of Westeros around King’s Landing. It may well broaden in scope as places like Winterfell and The Vale possibly become part of the fray, but season one of GoT by comparison had cast its primary characters far and wide, giving a much greater sense of scale to the world.

 

The whole thing feels smaller scale at present. Not that it’s harmed it particularly, but I’ve found it noticeable.

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FishyFish

FishyFish

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1 hour ago, JohnC said:

In fairness, it’s mainly about one house, not the continent. 

 

True, and fair enough, but the stuff about many of the characters not being as well fleshed out still holds, I think.

 

Thinking back to S1 of GoT, there were nine main members of the Stark household, all well fleshed out and readily identifyable - most with their own ongoing plot arcs. Only Rickon was sidelined, really. On top of that you had a bunch of well-defined secondary charactes attached to the Starks - Hodor, Maester Luwin, Old Nan, Jory etc. And that's just the Starks. You had a whole bunch of similarly well defined Lannisters and Baratheons, and their contingents too.

 

HotD has some great characters, but it feels almost theatrical in it's focus on the main characters. Even the main Tagaryen and Valeryon offspring are not that well defined, and some are barely featured at all.

 

There's plenty of scope to expand on them, but I think the show could have done more to cement them in viewers minds.

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BitterToad

BitterToad

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Posted
1 hour ago, FishyFish said:

One thing I’ve noticed with this is that there seem to be few well fleshed-out secondary characters. When they are present, it’s always when one of the main players is there.

 

There are no characters akin to The Hound, Littlefinger, Varys, Sam Tarly and the like. Characters such as Ser Christan and Larys feel thinly sketched in comparison. As a result HotD feels much narrower in scope than GoT did.
 

The world also seems much more confined, most of the activity taking place in the region of Westeros around King’s Landing. It may well broaden in scope as places like Winterfell and The Vale possibly become part of the fray, but season one of GoT by comparison had cast its primary characters far and wide, giving a much greater sense of scale to the world.

 

The whole thing feels smaller scale at present. Not that it’s harmed it particularly, but I’ve found it noticeable.

For me this makes for a much more satisfying TV show overall though. It's obviously subjective but I much prefer watching one story that the writers both know the end of and want to finish than 15 that they don't. You also lose that thing where if there's one story you're not into (a man can't think of any that come to mind...) you're bored for a bit of every show, or even worse if one story doesn't have enough to be featured as much as the rest they just have to pad them out for a whole season.

GoT's best asset was how big its world felt but we kind of already know how big everything is so it's nice to be able to settle on a few locations in HotD and just let it tell its story. And when you do see that map at the end with your Starks and your Lannisters etc all over it in a way the world feels big because you've not seen those places in this period yet. "Oh shit the Starks will have been having their own issues and conflicts miles away!"

 

I don't know, I'm in a weird place with this show because I really really liked it and felt that GoT just kind of went in circles with occasional big moments after its excellent first season. I much prefer the focus of this story and using the time jumps to let the characters have all of their boring moments off screen than having to see every single walk from one place to another from a massive cast of characters for years. 

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Eric86

Eric86

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Posted

Just finished the

Spoiler

green wedding

 

episode. This is really good so far. Matt Smith is great. There's a good amount of politicing and shifty looks. But it's a shame they used the Quake II engine for the CGI. And I hope Rhys Ifans is given more to do beyond saying 'your grace' occasionally. 

 

 

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Chadruharazzeb

Chadruharazzeb

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I'm slowly catching up with this now and watched episode 5 last night. Not sure if the main scene of the episode was a wild fever dream or what but it didn't make any sense.

 

Spoiler

Daemon is not only allowed back but given a place at the table. The gay dude taunting Ser Bodyguard With Benefits about shared secrets - why? Some unknown event spooking everyone in the feast causing a stampede*. Ser Fuck Buddy going all Fight Club on gay dude's skull to absolutely no reaction from anyone - he even decks the groom and nobody says or does anything. The wedding ceremony taking place immediately that night with no guests, after a brutal murder and with the blood puddle still on the floor.

 

Did I miss something?

 

* I had hoped the Alt Shift X vid might explain this but he didn't even mention it.

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choddo

choddo

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Posted
3 minutes ago, Chadruharazzeb said:

I'm slowly catching up with this now and watched episode 5 last night. Not sure if the main scene of the episode was a wild fever dream or what but it didn't make any sense.

 

  Hide contents

Daemon is not only allowed back but given a place at the table. The gay dude taunting Ser Bodyguard With Benefits about shared secrets - why? Some unknown event spooking everyone in the feast causing a stampede*. Ser Fuck Buddy going all Fight Club on gay dude's skull to absolutely no reaction from anyone - he even decks the groom and nobody says or does anything. The wedding ceremony taking place immediately that night with no guests, after a brutal murder and with the blood puddle still on the floor.

 

Did I miss something?

 

* I had hoped the Alt Shift X vid might explain this but he didn't even mention it.

Spoiler

The stampede was because of Ser attacking the groom’s lover to ensure his secret didn’t get out. Of course he went all red mist about it because that just introduced a new problem.
 

The ceremony was rushed through because they needed the political goals to stay intact, but the guests were all a bit put off the reception dinner by the gruesome murdering so got an early train home.

 

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Darren

Darren

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We’ve just watched all of this over the last week or so. After the way Game of Thrones ended I had no plans to bother with it at all, but we got a cheap NowTV offer so gave it a go. And I’m so glad we did. This has got all the family feuding and politicking of those fantastic early GoT seasons without any of the shark jumping from later on. I was never a fan of Dynasty but Space Dynasty is pretty damn brilliant.

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schmojo

schmojo

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Posted

For people who watch the explainer videos, do you feel like this should be information you can glean easily from the original episodes?

 

Or is it just good additional lore and content that you're happy to consume alongside?

 

Any time I feel like additional content outside of the primary show/book/whatever is needed for clarification, I feel like the storytelling has failed a bit.

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Ravern

Ravern

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8 hours ago, schmojo said:

For people who watch the explainer videos, do you feel like this should be information you can glean easily from the original episodes?

 

Or is it just good additional lore and content that you're happy to consume alongside?

 

Any time I feel like additional content outside of the primary show/book/whatever is needed for clarification, I feel like the storytelling has failed a bit.

 

Alt Shift X is much closer to well informed and stimulating criticism than an explainer.

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DirkCrisis

DirkCrisis

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Haven't quite finished this yet but having just done episode 9 I will once again say that the foot people are out of control, escaping the porn realm and infesting real people shows. We need to engage with the leaders of the foot people and negotiate a settlement as this can't go on. 

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