Remember Public Enemy’s lyrics written by Flavor Flav back when hip-hop was actually real? “Don’t believe the hype?” Well, that’s exactly the message I want to convey when it comes to HBO’s House of The Dragon. The George R.R. Martin spin-off of the popular Game of Thrones franchise will try to tell us the story of House Targaryen many years before we saw what went down to King’s Landing.
Sure, the show will have everything that you could expect from a Game of Thrones thing, you’ll have the realistic scenarios, you’ll have CGI dragons, you’ll have plots, and you’ll have violence. But that’s just making up for one huge mistake. And I’ll tell you what I think about this in this review. So, let’s get to it.
House of the Dragon Review: Westeros Returns in Style
House of The Dragon essentially is a Game of Thrones prequel that will tell us the story of King Viserys I, Princes Rhaenyra, and their court in King’s Landing. The cast features Paddy Considine, Rhys Ifans, Emma D’Arcy, Olivia Cooke, Eve Best, Fabien Frankel, Sonoya Mizuno, and Matt Smith. HBO is essentially throwing big bucks at this production in hopes of telling and conveying a ten-episode run of the events of the “Fire & Blood” book by Martin.
Unlike Game of Thrones, —which George R.R. Martin is essentially too much of a lazy f*ck to finish, so he sells out to HBO and has producers Weiss and Benioff find out the entire R+L=J plot embedded in the story, only to have those two majestically screw up the entire book saga for fans with that terrible ending of Daenerys going berserk atop a dragon doing a barbecue roast out of King’s Landing— this time we have a story based upon a finished book based upon the House Targaryen. It was supposed to be published upon the publication of Game of Thrones. Still, Martin being the money-grabbing whore he is, decided to drop a series about another unfinished book series.
What Does Fire And Blood Contain?
Fire And Blood have several stories. Firstly, the book tells us how Aegon I Targaryen conquered the Seven Kingdoms. Then, the book tells us how Aegon I reigns after sweeping through Westeros. After that, Fire and Blood narrate the lives of Aegon’s children, Aenys and Maegor, and their successors. There’s a plot twist in the book that covers a civil war between the Targaryens over Aegon and Rhaenyra.
House Of The Dragon Will Take Inspiration From None Of This
HBO’s House of The Dragon will take inspiration from some or none of all that 600,000-word book that Martin did finish. And it’s disappointing and expected from an author who has no qualms in doing these sorts of things from the realm of high fantasy. Martin has a penchant for disappointing his readers, both for not completing his work and for being lazy at character development —that’s why there are so many characters in Game of Thrones, he just kills them off instead of giving them a conclusion— and story arc. But let’s unpack that a little bit.
The Problem With George R.R. Martin
George R.R. Martin has a huge problem as a writer, he’s lazy, he underdevelops his characters’ story arcs and creates too many —only to kill them off later on— And in the realm of high fantasy, even fundamental values are considered necessary for those giant societies of him to be as developed and prosper. In the same vein that science fiction needs a little internal coherence —hell, even Russian author Alexei Tolstoi when penning The Garin Death Ray had a little coherence years before lasers were invented—high fantasy requires societal coherence from the characters developed by the author.
But that coherence is nonexistent in Martin’s work. In his book, no man sleeps with his wife. Instead, it’s all a melting pot of debauchery of incest, adultery, and villainy. And while that might sound cool and appeal to some public, it lacks the coherence and backdrop for his novels to have such sound internal consistency. In my opinion, there are many other works that HBO could’ve picked up from the fantasy realm to bring them into a series. Amazon is doing its own thing with “The Wheel of Time”, but marketing being what it is, they’re just sticking with what works. We’ll have to see how “House of The Dragon” fares out. But I don’t really give it a shot, despite the cast and CGI dragons. Go on GoT lovers, send me your hate in the comments!
Also Read: Friday Night Lights Filming Locations: Where Is The Football Drama Filmed?
