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“You can’t follow Thrones, it’s The Beatles.” So said Ryan Condal, who created the Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon with George R. R. Martin, in a breathless Hollywood Reporter cover story on the making of Dragon. Had the Beatles spent two years and record-breaking sums of money recording an abysmal follow-up to Let It Be that would throw the band’s entire legacy into question, this might’ve been an apt comparison. In truth, Martin, Condal, and Condal’s fellow showrunner Miguel Sapochnik have taken on the tougher task of constructing a franchise out of a once-great series whose final season alienated many fans to the extent that, even in our IP-crazy times, few seemed to come out of it clamoring for more.
Amid so much external pressure, it’s legitimately impressive that they managed to put together a pretty decent show. Nothing about the first several episodes of House of the Dragon, premiering Aug. 21 on HBO, marks it as a potential masterpiece. There are structural flaws, elements that come across as excessively derivative, a yawning void where thematic resonance should be. But it’s solid enough to entertain Thrones viewers who preferred that show’s focused, dialogue-rich early seasons to the bloated, combat-packed spectacle it devolved into later.
Although there’s plenty of sex, blood, and dragon riding to overwhelm the senses, the prequel is, at its core (at least in the six episodes provided for review), a family drama. Set precisely 172 years before the birth of Daenerys Targaryen, Thrones’ Mother of Dragons turned destroyer of worlds, it parallels parts of Martin’s novel Fire & Blood, chronicling the civil war that tore apart the reigning House Targaryen after decades of peace and prosperity in Westeros. The conflict is, as usual, about succession. As King Viserys Targaryen (a movingly vulnerable Paddy Considine) ages without producing a male…
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Source : time
