House of Dragon

[shadowkat]

Binged the first six episodes of House of Dragon - which my co-workers can't stop talking about. Or rather the co-workers under the age of 50, the rest of us - don't really chat about television shows that much.

I like chatting about television series - but I'm also incredibly critical of them. I like to tear them apart. And they like to squee over them. Plus? We don't necessarily have the same taste in television series and movies. They love horror. I do not. They loved Squid Game. I did not. They loved Severance. I did not. A bunch of us do like the MCU superhero stuff, but I couldn't get into The Boys.

Anyhow, as much as I enjoyed Game of Thrones...House of Dragon isn't in my opinion squeeable. (Personally I think it is overrated). It's kind of annoyingly predictable. I saw Game of Thrones and read the books - so I'm on to the writers fetishes and patterns by now. This does have new show-runners, so that helps. But it's not quite in the same league as the prior series in my opinion.

Also, I can't stand two of the main characters - who I think I'm supposed to be rooting for. Alicent Hightower, the Queen, and her father Otto Hightower, along with the knight Ser Cristian Cole. They all fit a character trope that irritates me to no end - kind of the Ned and Caitlin Starks of Game of Thrones. I don't like self-righteous/sanctimonious characters who stand in judgement of others, while killing people right and left themselves. They annoy me. And I wish the writer would just kill them off within the first three episodes and put me out of my misery. But no.
In this epic, they get to hang around throughout most of the story, unfortunately.

So I don't know if I'll stick with House of Dragon.

Production value? About the same as Game of Thrones. Acting? About the same as Game of Thrones, except the actress playing Alicient isn't very good. Nor is the actor playing Cristian Cole or Alicent's kids. This doesn't help things. Everyone else is fine. I like the actors playing Rhanerys, and Matt Smith grows on me - he's quite good, even if he has no eyebrows.

Writing...it's okay. There was better dialogue in Game of Thrones, S1-3.
This is lacking somehow?

Plotting? It's a medievalist political drama with dragons. It's not really fantasy. I need more than dragons for the fantasy title to stick. Feels more like Alternate Medievalist History. I am not a medievalist. Medieval history annoys me - it's frustratingly misogynistic, homophobis, chauvinist, and sexist, and favors big white men who like to throw their dicks around and strut their stuff. After about an hour of it - I start thinking castration is a good idea, and lets eliminate some of these folks from the gene pool. Six hours? Misanthropy has set in.

I'm thinking I should flip over to Amazon's Rings of Power, which is a touch less medievalist. I don't know people study this period in history. Let's just say it was called the Dark Ages for a reason.

I'm also half-convinced that we do not have a good record of it - and really have no clue what it was like. There was a pandemic. And most of the writing was done by assholes.

I don't know if I'll continue with it or not. After reading about the book's plot, I think not. It has lots of battles - which I find boring, not helped by dark lighting. And a lot of people being burned alive or fed to dragons, or tortured and feed to crabs, not entertaining to me either. Along with lots of other torture scenes - including tongues being chopped out.

So, I may pass on the rest of it.

Comments

[shadowkat]

The Greens are sanctimonious twits. But per GRR Martin's books, the Greens succeed, not Rhaenyra and Damon (who are the only characters that I like). Also Matt Smith is alarmingly good at growing on me - regardless of the role. There's something incredibly affable about that actor - which I can't quite put my finger on. I think he has an innate charm or kindness about him that he brings to all of his roles? In a recent article - he complained about the number of sex scenes and the nudity, felt it was exploitative, and was glad for the intimacy coordinator.