The time has come! Believe it or not, though the show is still in mid-production, we now have the first teaser trailer for the Game of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon!
With the familiar sounds of Ramin Djawadi on the background, Matt Smith’s Daemon Targaryen pronounces these ominous words: “Gods. Kings. Fire. And Blood. Dreams didn’t make us kings — dragons did.” As he speaks, we see a succession of quick shots:
Prince Daemon walks with a torch through a dark cavern.
Are these the old dragonglass caves of Dragonstone?The Rogue Prince and Emma D’Arcy’s Rhaenyra Targaryen look out to the sea.A dragon head surrounded by candles. Is this a statue, a skull, or a very still live dragon?Rhys Ifans’ Otto Hightower handles his lapel, letting us see his Hand of the King pin.Paddy Considine’s Viserys I Targaryen, sitting on the Iron Throne.
Is this Blackfyre, one of House Targaryen’s ancestral Valyrian steel swords?A beautiful profile of a younger Rhaenyra, played by Milly Alcock, also seen at the top.A tourney combat with lots of Targaryen regalia and a truly amazing armor set with a winged helmet, probably belonging to Daemon Targaryen, which would make that sword Dark Sister.Steve Toussaint’s Corlys Velaryon!The Velaryons: Corlys, Theo Nate’s Laenor, Eve Best‘s Rhaenys, Savannah Steyn’s LaenaThe entire Velaryon ensemble enter the throne room.Sonoya Mizuno’s Mysaria, a Lysene dancer and ally of Daemon.Olivia Cooke’s Alicent Hightower runs through the crowd with a dagger in hand.
Does it look familiar or are we imagining things?Rhaenyra and Alicent sit together for a momentous tourney.An older Laenor Velaryon played by John MacMillan fights a duel; who’s the other combatant?An adult Rhaenyra walks toward the Iron Throne, which looks much closer to how it’s described in the books (whilst still being consistent with the original show).Finally: the new logo in all its fiery glory!
Understanding the music from teaser trailers tends to be stock music and not what will actually be in the final product, this still makes me wonder now if Ramin will actually reuse any of the familiar leitmotifs from Game of Thrones.
This was light on content, but it’s good to see they’re not having any serious setbacks. Time sure does fly. I suppose we’re still thinking April is a likely premiere target?
Looks Good
Dreams didn’t make us Kings – Burgers Did.
It may only be a tease, but it looks damn good, and completely consistent with the tone and visual style of the show we all love so dearly.
We’re back in business, baby!
I thought the blonde (in the show anyway) lady looked attractive in the trailer. I don’t like it when people say so-and-so person isn’t ‘hawt’ enough to play x character. I actually popped here to mention the trailer but rats! Foiled again! You’re just too quick for me. Now to pop down to Poundland or another cheap shop to get some mopheads to start my business in cosplay Targaryen wigs!!! (That IS meant to be a joke).
This trailer looks beautiful 🙂
Could Laenor’s opponent be Qarl Correy?
I wonder if that’s supposed to be Aemond and Lucerys dueling, or is it a younger Laenor fighting someone?
Uhh… that’s definitely the catspaw dagger that Alicent Hightower is holding right?
When I tell you my jaw fell to the floor! I wasn’t expecting anything so I got overly excited hahaha
The teaser looks absolutely gorgeous, very dark and even more medieval-esque than Got.
My girl Alicent was running with a dagger in her hand and I have a possible idea of why that might happen but I’m not a thousand percent sure.
Now I need my lovely friend AriadnaCandle to remind me how to put the spoiler tag, hopefully I’m doing it right!
Maybe Alicent is claiming an eye for an eye, quite literally lol, but that happened in Dragonstone so that cannot be, can it? Could someone try to attemp on Alicent’s life? because she looks quite distressed
My favourite moment by far wasthe drop dead epic Velaryons entrance into the throne room, GOTdamn, that’s what I have no doubt that they are gonna be amazing, the costumes, the gold, the look in their eyes, they all command respect, so so so brilliant.
Futhermore, Having looked into the still, it looks like there is a Velaryon banner on the throne room next to that of the Targaryens, so maybe this could mean…
The official announcement of Rhaenyra and Laenor´s wedding? maybe?
Last but not least, I wanna applaud the costume designer for not shying away from being BOLD, I thought we were fonna have more of a ren-fair feel to the show but it looks extraordinary, I still think about those Velaryon outfits lol.
We should honestly just all hang out and do a podcast or something because I cannot wait to talk to people about this!! And, I have to say, I’ve seen many many people very excited about the show, not only hardcore fans like us.
That was my first thought but I think if you squint you can see that it’s Laenor. Could be wrong though!
That was fine, wasn’t bad. I will say, the best trailers usually throw you into the middle of something, something so new and different that you don’t even realize the thing that’s being shown is for the show or movie you’ve been waiting for for years. It presents it in a different light that you could never have imagined. This was pretty by the numbers / as expected. That said I always felt the trailers and teasers for the original show were pretty bad, so maybe whoever HBO has do the promotion just isn’t that great (the promotional material for Many Saints of Newark is also evidence of this). But I’m happy that we at least didn’t get some lame cover of an old song playing in the background.
Definitely got me hyped!! Thanks for the shot by shot breakdown 🙂
Great write-up, Luka! Glad the community here is still going strong.
Me, waking up this morning. “I finally have a day off work today. I think I’ll use it to catch up on some things.”
HBO: *Drops an amazing trailer for House Of The Dragon*
Me, after devouring said trailer: “F that. I need to go rewatch my favorite Game of Thrones episodes NOW!”
Thank you as ever, Game of Thrones, for being so viscerally engaging that you destroy my productivity for the entire day every time you drop a new episode or trailer because I truly can’t think about anything else.
Holy shitballs will you look at that! This looks amazing! And I love the way they’ve retained the look of the throne room for continuity purposes- and look at that damn Iron Throne!! Even the costumes and those awful mop wigs look good on screen! I have much higher hopes than I did before!! 🤩
Afterthought… that definitely looks like LFs blade!
Well even a small trailer like that shows me it definitely has a different aesthetic to what we’re all used to with the original show. Much more in line with the books too I might add as I already recognize several source material subtleties that are showing up here.
That can be both good and bad. Time will tell.
So after sleepless night, 7 hours of seminar today and thankfully getting out of the capital before riots started there, I saw my (online) friend and fellow GoT fan Stacey post this on her profile… well, you can imagine I immediately went to watch it and… wow! Just wow! I admittedly didn’t focus a lot of my TV show nerd hype into HotD in recent months (mainly due to watching and rewatching several other TV shows at this moment) but after watching this, it totally got me now. I recently said I’ll judge costumes only when I get to actually see them on screen and not on amateur photos… well, they look amazing! And most importantly, this definitely feels like the same universe that GoT was set in to me! This is something I had most worries about.
Now after watching this, I think I added even more fuel to my upcoming GoT-rewatch hype. Guess it’s really getting close after 2+ years of not watching.
I’ve begun my long-delayed re-watch just a few days ago. Good timing, I’d say!
This looks great! (Even the costumes that were slightly maligned based on previous photos!)
Off topic, I read on a (non-ASOIAF) that it was on this day (5th Oct) in 1969 that the BBC first aired ‘Monty Python’ – crumbs 52 years ago. Not that I’ll still be on the planet I wonder if on 17th April 2063 people will recall that GoT first aired on 17th* April 2011.
*If that date is wrong blame Google not me.
The arrival of the teaser trailer has certainly made this site lively today.
5,000,000 views in 16 hours. So much for the diminished audience narrative. 😀
It’s Theo Nate who plays Young Laenor. He’s 23-24,
John MacMillan is Older Laenor. He’s in his 30s. He’s the one with the sword fighting.
Throne improvement! 😃
Steve Toussaint is so darn good looking.
The guys’ wigs are still distracting, although Matt’s isn’t bad.
I wish I was more excited about this.
Dame of Mercia:
Now to pop down to Poundland or another cheap shop to get some mopheads to start my business in cosplay Targaryen wigs!!! (That IS meant to be a joke).
😂😂😂
Sorry…but that looks awful…for a moment there I thought I was watching the teaser for a new fantasy show on the CW! The show seems to have succumbed to the consequences of “todayness”, to follow prescribed orthodoxies, norms, expectations and quotas. Pitty…that mediocrity seems to have reared it’s ugly head here as well. But we do live in 2021, where mediocrity, stupidity and ignorance are the norm, as well as a lack of creativity, imagination and talent.
I guess, we will have to see more and the actual show itself (though to be honest at this point I’m not too enthused at the prospect), to render a fuller verdict of course…but speaking for myself, this teaser trailer didn’t do “House Of The Dragon” any favours .
So far I’m more inclined to look at it as I did at MTV’s horrible series “The Chronicles Of Shannara”…somewhere between not at all and lowered to non-existent expectations. I hoped at least it’d look better than that crummy “The Witcher” refuse…
😀 I’m having a day off as well, and planned to do lots of fun stuff relating to my favourite hobby, knitting (or should that be my second favourite after obsessing over ASOIAF/GOT, ha ha!)… Then over my mid-morning coffee I pop in here and BAM!
Now I’m having trouble concentrating on counting stitches and gauges, designing my dream cardigan!
Wow, just look at those Velaryons! They’re the richest house in Westeros and they’re letting it show, and then some! I especially love Rhaenys’s look. The gown, the HAIR!
I know some fans are sour that Corlys Velaryon is black but I think that is a brilliant move by the showrunners. It makes explicit the best kept “secret”, that
Rhaenyra’s three oldest sons are not fathered by her mixed-race husband Laenor Velaryon but by her lover Harwyn Strong – a white man.
Everybody sort of knows but can’t say so because King Viserys has threatened to rip out the tongues of anybody who says so. Which reminds me of Tyrion’s advice to Cersei after Stannis exposed her kids as bastards fathered by Jaime. Something like, by ripping out tongues, you’re not denying the lie, you’re showing you’re afraid of what the tongue-ripees might say.
I’ve been re-reading [i]Fire and Blood [/i], and I’m starting to think pretty much everybody on both sides are pretty awful people, ha ha ha! Well at least among the main characters, maybe some secondary/tertiary characters might be OK 😀
That said, “pretty awful people” can make interesting characters if written skillfully. (Fingers crossed!) Certainly more interesting than goody-two-shoes “perfect” characters.
I’m getting hyped for this new show and will renew my HBO subscription to view the first few episodes. After that, I’ll decide whether I like the show enough to keep up the subscription. (In my country, HBO usually offers first month free, then the going rate (about 10 euros/month, I think), so I could potentially watch first 4 or 5 episodes of HotD free before deciding.)
OK, now I’ll try to get back to the knitting…
It seems I’ve forgotten how to do italics on this site. Fire and Blood in my previous comment should be in italics. It’s the GRRM book that contains the basic story of what happens during this era, even the background – some of it goes as far back as late 40s AC – so about 80 years before the events in this show!
OK, it seems I’ve now remembered how to do italics 🙂
orange:
…. I already recognize several source material subtleties that are showing up here.
Might I ask what are those subtleties?
I’m noticing the winged helm. Looks great & is book accurate but actually a terrible idea in an actual combat situation: your opponent can lodge his weapon in the crook of that wing and yank your head this way and that, possibly even breaking your neck!
Real medieaval battle armor was designed best to deflect blows, to turn them aside. Maybe late medieaval parade armour would have fancy embellishments but those wouldn’t be used in actual battles/duels. OK, I can envision a situation when an unforeseen duel happens when wearing parade armour, no opportunity to change into more practical armour. (Only the very rich top people would have separate parade armour, all others just had the practical kind – hey, a downside to being too rich and showing it off, ha ha!)
Lord Travis:
I wonder if that’s supposed to be Aemond and Lucerys dueling, or is it a younger Laenor fighting someone?
At first glance, it doesn’t seem to be either Aemond or Lucerys. It’s difficult to tell the skin tone (keeping in mind the casting decisions) in that dim lighting but the ages don’t seem right for that – they should both be younger, Lucerys five years younger than Aemond, and in the books
Lucerys died at 14 years of age after REFRAINING from a fight/duel with Aemond (Luke was an envoy). Aemond then went after him and killed him in a dragon fight.
The show could, of course, be playing with the timeline, stretching ages here and there, and to avoid the CGI cost
of a dragon on dragon fight
, made some changes.
WotW/Luka’s caption says it’s Laenor Velaryon (the whitish hair seems to be frizzy, consistent with his mixed-race descent on the show) and an unknown opponent. Now I’ll go away and try to look at the background for some clues.
(Yeah, I was supposed to devote this day off to my new knitting project but it’s not happening yet 😀 )
Afterthought… that definitely looks like LFs blade!
I also like the continuity of retaining the “chair” from GoT but adding a bit more swords, spikes, (maybe even steps?), to make it look a bit more vicious, a bit more imposing, a bit more like the book description.
Yay! It’s the “catspaw dagger” again! Maybe the reason why Sam saw a picture of it in the old books in the Citadel will be explained! About 170 years previously, it was in Alicent Hightower’s hand during some momentous moment, some maester wrote about it, drew a picture, little knowing what history-changing things that dagger would twice go on to do… Nice (backwards) continuity between the shows.
Dark Sister:
The teaser is amazing! Oooo and I see a Bolton and Stark banner side by side at the tourney scene 👀
Uh, I missed the Stark/Bolton banners. I was so focussed on the colour of Alicent’s and Rhaenyra’s dresses!
In the book, Rhaenyra wore black, Alicent green, hence the monikers for the two factions, the Blacks and the Greens.
Judging by this short glimpse, Alicent is wearing something greenish, but Rhaenyra seems to be wearing something reddish, not black. Is it going to be the Greens vs. the Reds, ha ha ha!
Reading through the comments thus far (6th Oct ’21) the reactions seem to be SLIGHTLY more on the positive than on the ‘meh’ or even of the ‘What the heck’s this, let me run for the hills’ side.
I hadn’t noticed this myself but someone pointed out that the dragon on the three headed symbol towards the end of the trailer had FOUR legs (not including the wings) whereas Dany’s dragons were technically wyverns with two legs and two wings.
I’m holding off reading the source material (a) because I don’t want to be disappointed by possible changes (b) it would be kind of nice to have the sixth ASOIAF book and every side project GRRM has makes the (hopeful) publication of said book further off.
😀 I feel like I’m spamming the site with so many comments back-to-back, but our North and South American friends are asleep and our European fans are at work. (Apparently not many Asian/Australian/Oceanian fans contribute here..?).
I have a day off and I’m so excited about this tidbit of a teaser it’s silly! My day off plans went to shot, I’m peering over screenshots, watching in 0.25 speed… obsessing! 😀
OK, now I’ll try to get back to my knitting project. It’s only lunchtime here so not all is lost… But it will be hard to concentrate on the knitting!
I’ve been trying to regain my knitting/crochet mojo. So far I’ve only done small things like a baby sweater for a project the church takes part in and some dishcloths. I’ve done sweaters for myself in the past though I always had a pattern. Watching YouTube videos and studying other online resources I never knew that there was ‘English’ or ‘Continental’ or ‘Portuguese’ knitting – I thought it was just knitting though it’s all knit and purl with some yarns over or crossing stitches for cable etc in the end. We never saw anybody knit in ‘Game of Thrones’ did we? Knitting was a thing by medieval times (thinking of the picture of the ‘Knitting Madonna’) which is the timeline on which Westeros in GoT was loosely based). I think there may have been some costumes made from knitted fabric in the show.
I hadn’t noticed this myself but someone pointed out that the dragon on the three headed symbol towards the end of the trailer had FOUR legs (not including the wings) whereas Dany’s dragons were technically wyverns with two legs and two wings.
Yeah, that caught my eye. Four legs plus wings = six limbs.
The modern Welsh dragon has four legs plus wings, but medieval depictions of dragons/wyverns vary.
I think GRRM has wanted to be somewhat biologically accurate with his magical beasts. Wings plus hind legs. As a rule, large vertebrate land animals have four limbs = hind legs and fore legs that might be wings, like bats or some dinosaurs, or GRRM’s (and GoT’s) dragons.
More to the point, no reptile has six limbs. Four, two or none. Dragons are reptiles, right? Or if they’re a kind of a dinosaur – some dinosaurs being precursors of modern birds – again four limbs.
Insects have 6 or 8 limbs or even more.
Of course, this is all a fantasy world, so the rules of our real world do not apply. But my nit-pick with that six-limbed dragon sigil is that it’s been established visually by GoT (and GRRM in writing) that dragons have four limbs (hind legs and wings), this new show’s dragons will probably be like Dany’s dragons in GoT. So why the inaccurate six-limbed dragon sigil?
We never saw anybody knit in ‘Game of Thrones’ did we?Knitting was a thing by medieval times (thinking of the picture of the ‘Knitting Madonna’) which is the timeline on which Westeros in GoT was loosely based).I think there may have been some costumes made from knitted fabric in the show.
In GoT, we saw Old Nan knitting while she told Bran the story of the Long Night. In the books, it’s even more delicious. Click-click went her sharp needles while she told young Bran of the horrors, and click-click went the needles. (Nowadays, you’re not allowed to bring knitting needles on flights because they’re potential murder weapons…)
GoT costuming. Several characters wore something knitted. I remember best Thoros’s faded red rainment. Loosely knitted. When I saw it, I immediately began to think, what type of yarn, what type of stitch…
In GoT, Arya is scornful of knitting, a “girl” or “woman” thing to do. This is wrong on a couple of levels (notwithstanding Arya’s internalised misogyny).
Firstly, apparently the first knitters (about 1000-1500 years ago?) were artesan men. As late as 18th century, respected Sanquhar (Scotland) knitters were men. Women, however, gradually acquired the skill and developed it to the heights of today. Arya is not scorning the skill, she’s scorning it because it’s associated with women. Little internalised misogynist, she.
Secondly, Arya and every misogynist is wrong to scorn “girls’s/women’s” skills like knitting.
Knitting wins wars.
Finnish Winter War (1939-1940), Finland was facing an overwhelming foe, the Soviet Union. It was a bitter cold winter, the coldest in decades. The Finnish soldiers had woolen socks, mitts, scarves, hats, sweaters, long johns knitted by their mothers, wives, sisters, grandmothers, aunts, nieces, great aunts, even unknown women and girls. The Soviet soldiers didn’t have that, no proper winter clothing. They froze, were less able to fight against the warm, woolen-clad Finnish soldiers.
Also, apparently half of Finland’s bedsheets were made into snow camouflage suits, sewed by the women; the Soviets had less and worse executed snow camouflage. So let no Arya disparage the worth of women’s work in sewing and knitting!
I know about these things because a couple of years ago I edited a book of war-time correspondence between my grandparents and several relatives and friends. I’d known my grandfather was at the front, grandmother at the home front. Reading the letters, it made it more real. The worry, the knitting, the sewing of snow camo, running the farm while the husband is away at war, likely to die.
Anything “bad” life throws at me, it cannot be as bad as war, the things my grandparents and their friends and relatives went trough.
Well remembered about Old Nan knitting – I listened to the ‘A Game of Thrones’ book when the Roy Dotrice audio version was on YouTube but haven’t gone back over the books. I know some people read and re-read the books though I don’t own them – I either listened to them or borrowed them from the library. I’d read that there used to be knitting guilds run by men back in the day and (as you likely know) a man, William Calverton, invented the stocking frame machine in 1589 (post-medieval but not that long post-medieval). You are quite correct though, GRRM did in fact mention knitting and it was depicted as an activity in season 1 as you say.
… I never knew that there was ‘English’ or ‘Continental’ or ‘Portuguese’ knitting …
The English (and US) knit in a weird, slower and more awkward way. Fair dos if you’ve learned and perfected that skill. The end result (the garment, scarf etc) is the same. I once tried to learn to knit the “English way” and it was really awkward and unergonomical, and slow. No wonder the interwebs are full of videos like “amazing new skill”, “learn to knit faster” “learn to knit simpler”. Teaching English/US knitters the continental style. I don’t know anything about Portuguese knitting and how that might differ from basic “continental” = European knitting.
Veering back to GoT/HotD, once houses are rich and powerful enough, their ladies don’t need to spin, weave/knit, they are able to wear rich fabrics extracted from their underlings, or bought from Myr etc. Just look at the Velaryons!
talvikorppi: In GoT, Arya is scornful of knitting, a “girl” or “woman” thing to do. This is wrong on a couple of levels (notwithstanding Arya’s internalised misogyny).
I’m sorry for going on a bit of a side here! 🙂 You are right about the importance of textiles and fibre works! However, I don’t remember Arya being scornful of knitting or things traditionally done by ladies. She was frustrated as she struggled with these activities (her work being criticized by the septa while Sansa was praised and could do these activities well) and didn’t want to be limited to roles based on her gender. And there’s that her skills and interests were elsewhere. However, I don’t think that’s an internalized misogny — not the way Cersei resented being a woman. I don’t remember Arya resenting being a girl, just being limited to roles and certain kinds of activities because she was a girl.
Portuguese knitting is where the thread is put around the back of the neck of the knitter. It’s supposed to be good for maintaining tension. Tension is something I have to watch as I can have loose tension (not that that matters for knitting dishcloths!). If I know a way which works for me I’ll stick with it. I heard of the ‘Portuguese’ method from this amazing lady on YouTube who lost an arm to cancer but managed to carry on knitting using an adaptation of ‘Portuguese’ knitting and the belts used by Shetland knitters. https://youtu.be/KOB6wMrwkv4 The only spool/loom knitting I ever did was when I was about 6 or 7 at school when we had homemade knitting Nancies. Our teacher said get our Dads to knock four nails into a cotton reel (that may be called a sewing or thread spool in some countries). I’m that old that I can remember cotton (sewing) reels/spools being made out of wood!!! We called it ‘French knitting’ though I’ve also heard it called corking or spool/loom knitting. I never knew what to do with the tails (the long, thin cord of knitting). It’s a bit like luceting only more prongs – thinking back it was sort of like what we call an I-cord nowadays.
Thinking about knitting/sewing etc., I quite liked them and still do though I’m not an expert by any manner of means but I can remember girls at school who were like Arya and weren’t interested in such pursuits. One girl I knew was even like Arya in being horse mad and hating knitting/sewing. She lives in a different part of the country so I don’t see her now but she may have changed her mind a bit when she became a mother and later a grandmother.
Arya is never in doubt that she is a girl, and resents the strictures on what a girl can do in her culture. Very commendable.
She also labels “girly” things as “stupid” = internalized misogyny. Fair enough, not as full-blown as Cersei’s, and she is a young kid, but it’s there.
Maybe it’s the writer GRRM, or the (male) fans who cheer “badass” Arya and scorn “ladylike” Sansa. That’s low-level misogyny right there. GRRM isn’t a misogynist, he took care to make Catelyn a real, rounded character, and her arc is a thriump in writing. But GRRM seems a bit shaky when writing about women/girls. Not misogynistic, just not quite getting it. Quite good writing about Cersei’s internalised misogyny, hinting at Arya’s.
It’s the fans writing reams about how Catelyn is the worst person ever, it’s all her fault, and her daugher Sansa is the same if not worse (while the male characters do whatever). That is misogyny right there. I don’t think that was GRRM’s intention.
I’m thinking GRRM wrote Arya to break the mould and do fairly well, Sansa work within the mould and learn to do well. Neither is wrong or better than the other, just different.
What I don’t like is some of the fandom raising “badass” Arya (=acting like a man) over “ladylike” Sansa (=acting like a woman). Or more broadly, praising un-womanly women like Brienne, a badass fighter, over more traditional women… It’s almost like a female character has to eschew her womanhood and act like a man, weild a weapon, to be considered truly worthy. Nevermind the Catelyns, Cerseis, Queen of Thorns. Pah, just women.
Now, I don’t mind peope in-story thinking this way – it’s a traditional patriarchical society. What gets my goat is modern fans thinking this way.
talvikorppi: She also labels “girly” things as “stupid” = internalized misogyny. Fair enough, not as full-blown as Cersei’s, and she is a young kid, but it’s there.
In the books at least, I don’t remember Arya quite doing this or her aversion to activities like needlework coming from a place of resenting girly things or her gender. But I could be missing something! I believe her dislike of needlework comes from her inability to do it well and being scorned for it — Arya is scolded for her lack of skill in this area and for her failure to conform to (traditional conventions) of femininity. She likes Lady Smallwood a great deal (who’d she’d be willing to attempt needlework for if Lady Smallwood asked her to), she cared for the young girl Weasel, she later feels guilty over not conforming better to gender ideals per her mother’s wishes, she is annoyed when she’s mistaken for a boy, she’s curious about the courtesans in Braavos, and she declares “the woman is important too!” when talking about Joffrey’s sigil on his shield representing both maternal and paternal houses.
I had the impression that when Arya dislikes something or someone, it doesn’t seem to be because of gender but because of the person themselves or the activity. I don’t think Arya’s core issue is with being a girl or hating other girls because they’re girls — but with Westeros wanting her to conform to roles she feels ill-suited for and displaced in, which I think is an important difference.
What I don’t like is some of the fandom raising “badass” Arya (=acting like a man) over “ladylike” Sansa (=acting like a woman). Or more broadly, praising un-womanly women like Brienne, a badass fighter, over more traditional women… It’s almost like a female character has to eschew her womanhood and act like a man, weild a weapon, to be considered truly worthy. Nevermind the Catelyns, Cerseis, Queen of Thorns. Pah, just women.
You’re right in that they are all just women, all just individuals, and I also agree this wasn’t GRRM’s intention for this reaction. I can’t speak for anyone else in the fandom, I can only say I have my own preferences, likes, and dislikes. I relate to Arya because she is a misfit and faces scorn, struggling to find some sort of place for herself in a world with rigid rules and roles. I’ve wondered if perhaps other bullied kids who don’t fit in relate to Arya growing up at Winterfell because of this. I can also relate to Sansa in some respects too: a) I would consider myself traditionally feminine and participating in traditionally “feminine” activities (sewing, embroidery, knitting — although, I think in some cultures, these are practiced by both genders 🙂 ), b) I have no interest in any martial areas, c) I’ve been slapped in the face by the reality of things vs how I dreamed them to be, and d) I’ve been in Sansa’s place in the Sansa-Arya relationship and I’ve done a few things Sansa has. I’ve also experienced those same frustrations too that I’ve had with my sisters, one in particular.
So those are some of my views! But I can’t speak for anyone else 🙂
I’m thinking GRRM wrote Arya to break the mould and do fairly well, Sansa work within the mould and learn to do well. Neither is wrong or better than the other, just different.
You make some very good points about Arya and how she is uncomfortable/dissatisfied about of what is expected of her because of her sex, attempts to shoehorn her into the gender roles of her society. It’s not Arya’s fault, it’s the society that is not very accommodating of tomboys and women not content with traditional gender roles.
However, poor Arya has already internalised some of her society’s inherent misogyny. She repeatedly thinks of “girly” stuff as “stupid” and idolises/prefers (presumably not “stupid”) boy/men stuff. Because her society scorns, demeans and diminishes girl/woman stuff and idolises boy/men stuff, and Arya doesn’t want to be scorned, demeaned or dimished because of her sex. Only, scorning, demeaning and diminishing people of her own sex, girls and women, in turn, isn’t a very good coping strategy and Arya is probably somewhat aware of it, yet unable to work the dilemma – she’s only one eleven-year-old kid against centuries of patriarchical culture.
It’s not about how skillful Arya is at a given task, it’s about the cultural values attached to various tasks. Arya bought into the patriarchical value system: women’s stuff: less worthy, trivial, silly, stupid. Men’s stuff: worthy, real, honourable. But she’s only about 11 yr olds by now, and troubled by the way people are treated differently because of their sex, shoehorning them into narrow gender roles, so there is hope.
However, poor Arya has already internalised some of her society’s inherent misogyny. She repeatedly thinks of “girly” stuff as “stupid” and idolises/prefers (presumably not “stupid”) boy/men stuff. Because her society scorns, demeans and diminishes girl/woman stuff and idolises boy/men stuff, and Arya doesn’t want to be scorned, demeaned or dimished because of her sex. Only, scorning, demeaning and diminishing people of her own sex, girls and women, in turn, isn’t a very good coping strategy and Arya is probably somewhat aware of it, yet unable to work the dilemma – she’s only one eleven-year-old kid against centuries of patriarchical culture.
And thanks for your considered and thoughtful reply in turn! 🙂 I am a bit stoned so if something doesn’t make sense, just ask me for clarification!
I think this is where we differ quite a bit in our views of the text. I don’t remember Arya calling girly things ‘stupid’. I remember that she herself just didn’t want to do or wear things simply because they are deemed “girl” things in Westeros, viewing this as stupid. It’s not my impression that Arya doesn’t like needlework or other traditionally female activities because she’s afraid of being scorned, demeaned, and diminished. Arya is scorned and demeaned as it is because she doesn’t act within female gender roles. If she did conform and perform these tasks well, she wouldn’t face nearly the amount of trouble as she does at this time. She’d fit in. I can’t really remember Arya scorning or diminishing a character for being a girl or a woman in the books.
It’s not about how skillful Arya is at a given task, it’s about the cultural values attached to various tasks. Arya bought into the patriarchical value system: women’s stuff: less worthy, trivial, silly, stupid. Men’s stuff: worthy, real, honourable. But she’s only about 11 yr olds by now, and troubled by the way people are treated differently because of their sex, shoehorning them into narrow gender roles, so there is hope.
Well, I don’t think Arya prefers martial pursuits because of cultural value attached to them or because men do them). I think she wants to participate in more martial pursuits because she has a desire to try these activities and this, it turns out, is where her skillset lies.
I mean, I’ve never been good at cooking or have had an interest in cooking. I’m also drawn toward some more traditionally “masculine” activities — woodworking and playing with lasers for instance. I can’t say I’m particularly good at woodworking but I find it so much more interesting than cooking. I think that’s kind of how Arya feels too. She’s neither skilled at or has interest in the things Westeros expects Arya as a highborn girl to be skilled at or interested in. Add to that, she doesn’t feel she fits in within these roles and is criticized for her poor execution of them so she just…. gives up. Like a kid at school who is often being told they’re getting it wrong, they’re criticized for how they do it, etc. I think that’d sap any enjoyment or desire Arya would have in these areas and she’d naturally look elsewhere to find this kind of fulfillment — not to mention Arya faces criticism over how she looks too. She’s been bullied as “Arya Horseface” by her sister and her sister’s friends growing up, she’s facing frequent criticism of her skills as a highborn lady from her septa and mother, she’s being told she can’t do this because she’s not a boy — and I think that would amount to one big ball of aversion and frustration, making her resent gender roles even more. However, I don’t think that means Arya resents or looks down on women. I don’t remember her ever looking down on Sansa or Catelyn, but feeling angry for how she is treated.
I think Arya was simply frustrated by the shackles imposed on her by society at the time. She didn’t want to be told what she could or couldn’t do. I really don’t think it’s much more complicated than that at all.
I never got the impression that she specifically disdained women who did not feel exactly the same as herself or had some kind of “internalized misogyny” at all.
I don’t think she’s specifically against marriage either. It’s just “not her”.
Yeah! I think she wanted to be free to determine her own path and role in life — free of Westeros’s standards and conventions. A pretty difficult thing to do in a medieval society but I think that’s where her desire stems from.
Hi all, I hope everyone is well. The trailer looks interesting. I must confess to not being much of a Targ fan, so it will be interesting to see if this batch of new characters win me over. I’m quite interested in the Dunk and Egg show if it ever happens, that is on a much smaller scale. It just seems nice lol
Jenny:
Hi all, I hope everyone is well. The trailer looks interesting. I must confess to not being much of a Targ fan, so it will be interesting to see if this batch of new characters win me over. I’m quite interested in the Dunk and Egg show if it ever happens, that is on a much smaller scale. It just seems nice lol
I have similar feelings. I’m ok with the Targs, but I hope the entire family saga isn’t going to be reduced to some “will they go crazy or not?” storyline. That card was played to death during GoT, IMO, quite figuratively and literally.
“The show seems to have succumbed to the consequences of “todayness”, to follow prescribed orthodoxies, norms, expectations and quotas.”
Could you please be kind enough to elaborate on this statement? Because I have an idea of what you are refering to and, its honestly exhausting..
Even the biggest of book purists has to accept that Steve Toussaint looks absolutely magnificent as Corlys.
Yes please let’s. First I don’t know who all those book purists are….this nebulous group of outhere gatekeepers…of whom I am not part of, since I haven’t read “Fire And Blood” and with each passing day I’m less inclined to want to.
Now let’s address Steve Touissant and his absolutely “magnificent look”. Remember that I am referring to his look here aka character design, not to him as a person or an actor.
Maybe to you, the book purists and whoever else, he looks magnificent, to me he doesn’t. As I’ve said before on a previous thread, when a few months ago I saw the first official pictures of the actors and the characters they would embody, I was less than impressed. I was struck by the fact that Steve Touissant’s character Corlys Verlaryon, bares a striking resemblance (obviously they don’t look exactly the same) to the character of King Ezekiel from “The Walking Dead” played by Khary Payton an actor a I quite like. Ezekiel is one of my favourite characters on “The Walking Dead” and he was one of the much needed shots in the arm of a show that was getting stale. I’m sorry to say that I have no such inclinations towards Corlys Verlaryon as a character. To me, the character design is at best mediocre and at worst lazy and unimaginative.
The same goes for Emma D’Arcy as Rhaenyra Targaryen who reminds me of Queen Lagertha from “Vikings” played by Kathryn Winnick. That is by the way not a plus. Then there is Matt Smith as Daemon Targaryen…and ehhhh…he is Matt Smith…and I’ll leave it at that. I could go through some of the other characters but there’s no point.
The rest of my statement was just a long-winded and perhaps harsh (maybe unduly so) way of saying that the trailer, or teaser trailer, was underwhelming. At least I found it so.
I have to reiterate once again, that I have no desire or wish for the show to fail. It’s just that at this point, the vibes I’m getting and what I’m seeing, preliminary impressions though they may be, doesn’t fill me with much hope. Nor with even lowered expectations. Sorry, but that is just how I feel.
From past experiences as a fan, once there is a franchise expansion and we get into prequel, sequel, reboot territory there are almost always diminishing returns (for heaven’s sake they just announced a reboot of “Babylon 5”!). “The Walking Dead” and it’s increasing number of spin-offs is a good example of that, so is “Star Wars”, “Harry Potter” and I could go on. Even perhaps my favourite trilogy of movies of all time, “The Lord Of The Rings”, eventually went through that and we got “The Hobbit” trilogy. And I’m nowhere as tough on those movies because I actually like them (emphasis on like). There are very few franchises, movies or series, that benefit from an expansion. Maybe “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul” and HBO’s “The Corner” which eventually inspired and led to “The Wire” are a few examples of the opposite effect. I think “Game Of Thrones” is on the threshold of that…and I think diminishing returns seems to be a more probable future. It remains of course to be seen.
You know having said all this, what I find exhausting (and I don’t mean this to be a snarky reply to you, so sorry if it sounds that way), is people looking at someone’s differing opinion and parcing it for something that isn’t there, or implying there is.
I think that I got to the point that I have to jump off of the GOT/HOTD bandwagon. I don’t think I have anything insightful or interesting to contribute anymore to the discussions here. The last thing I want to do is create anymosity or rancor.
Honestly, I am more interested in returning to and dedicating my attention (and resources such as they are) to movies and shows I’m interested in, such as “The Expanse”, “Mindhunter” (tremendous show) and even upcoming “Star Wars” projects, which despite the current chaotic and shattered state of the franchise, seem more interesting (“Andor”, “Obi-Wan Kenobi”). I especially want to focus on my favourite new series “Shadow And Bone” (for as long as it’s around). Someone here remarked that “Shadow And Bone” isn’t like GOT. And you know what…right now am glad it isn’t!
So for now I bid you adieu, farewell and all the best. I hope “House Of The Dragon” is successful and everything everyone else here wants and expects it to be…
I haven’t read Fire and Blood but I think one character in particular goes down that road, so hopefully they won’t be too heavy handed with everyone else. I don’t know, they are so over powered, it’s great for the spectacle but it’s obvious that nobody should have that much power and it’s always going to end in disaster. I just never got invested in them, conquerers aren’t my cup of tea. If anything, I worry that there will be too much focus on the battles and dragons, which were the least interesting parts of GOT for me. I’m in the minority though, the show will be big because it is about the Targ’s. The reception of S8 is irrelevant, everybody is going to have a look, and GOT became the phenomenon when it got bigger and more expensive towards the end. I just like chatting in rooms, and odd couples on the road
Jenny: I just like chatting in rooms, and odd couples on the road
…and the occasional cooking lesson. You can’t give up on the gravy, don’t you know.
Jenny: The reception of S8 is irrelevant, everybody is going to have a look, and GOT became the phenomenon when it got bigger and more expensive towards the end.
I agree. I hated the way the GoT ended with a passion, but I will definitely be watching HOTD when it comes out. Even though I’m always particularly skeptical when it comes to prequels, sequels, remakes, reboots, etc…I’m going to give this one an honest shot.
They have the blessed benefit of working from a finished book, so they have no excuses for poor pacing etc. With it being a history book of sorts, they might have had to write an awful lot of original dialogue though. The attempts to imitate GRRM’s writing don’t always work. Could be wrong on that though, I’m not sure how the book is put together. I’ll give it a shot too
I’m sure some people will be watching the first season with their arms crossed, sitting on their couch with an “ok, impress me” frown on the entire time. I’m not going to do that. I’m going to relax my expectations as much as possible, but still expect an entertaining and intriguing product at the same time.
Some of my absolute favorite tv shows of all time had less-than-stellar first seasons when compared to the later seasons: Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, Simpsons, Seinfeld, Family Guy, etc…
The most important thing is they all had something unique to offer that kept you coming back, albeit with a rough, raw quality.
When I go back and watch the first season of GoT, it’s clearly a raw, unfinished product, but there’s plenty of tasty meat on the bone to keep you wanting more.
“…and GOT became the phenomenon when it got bigger and more expensive towards the end. I just like chatting in rooms, and odd couples on the road.”
Speaking only for myself, it was the scenes of people “chatting in rooms and odd couples on the road” that made GoT enjoyable – and rewatchable.
When the show “got bigger and more expensive toward the end” (i.e., more dragons! more battles! less dialogue!), it wasn’t as good.
”and the occasional cooking lesson. You can’t give up on the gravy, don’t you know.”
Ah, a whimsical yet high thread count scene from my #1 episode, S4e7: wall-to-wall high thread count scenes.
Nice teaser trailer. Shows us things that are “familiar but different.” Good stuff.
Bottom line about HotD and the other GoT prequels is that the showrunners and writers must prioritise intelligent dialogue and intelligent storylines above all else. The rest of it is important, sure, but it’s those two factors that elevated GoT to greatness at the height of its success. This sounds like common sense, but there’s a fairly long list of shows that similarly started off focusing on the right things but eventually went off the rails because the people in charge became too self-indulgent, or complacent, or they didn’t actually have a carefully mapped start-to-finish storyline all along. The fact that GRRM is personally involved in the new shows and there’s detailed source material for at least some (all?) of them should hopefully keep things under tighter control this time. Hope springs eternal.
“Speaking only for myself, it was the scenes of people “chatting in rooms and odd couples on the road” that made GoT enjoyable – and rewatchable.
When the show “got bigger and more expensive toward the end” (i.e., more dragons! more battles! less dialogue!), it wasn’t as good.”
I honestly couldn’t agree more, what made me fall in love with both GoT and ASOIAF was the flawed and complex characters and the dynamics between them, that’s what made it fascinating and I expect to see that here.
I also love big battles and high spectacles but it was those small moments like Cersei and Tyrions scenes that transformed the show from great to extraordinary, all of that was completely demolished by season 7 and there was none of that left during season 8 sadly.
But I’m hopeful, I see that the show runners truly love both the show and the source material and they will do everything in their power to adapt it the best way possible, just like the previous show runners did at the beggining.
Well, obviously do what is right for you. Everyone is entitled to an opinion. I don’t loathe the end of GoT with the fierce dislike some people do. It’s unfortunate that GRRM hadn’t overcome his writer’s block/managed to revive his interest/or dispelled whatever other unknown reason there may be in order to finish the ASOIAF book saga in a timespan where the showrunners would have had the books to work with. When B&W committed to the adaptation they thought they would have the full series to work with – probably at the time the dramatisation was given the go-ahead GRRM thought he would have the books completed. I’m inclined to be more tolerant of B&W because they had to work from ‘not there’ books towards the end. I think the ending will be somewhat similar if the books are eventually finished though it remains to be seen if GRRM can pull off a version of the ending which is satisfying to more people. I think I’ve mentioned before there were twenty years between the publishing of the fourth and fifth Poldark books but that was because the author originally intended the series to be four books only and then several years down the line decided to write about the older version of the characters with their children grown up.
Would you mind if I mentioned the information about the snow camouflage from bedsheets and the warm knitted underwear worn by Finns on a history forum I sometimes visit. I’d probably say something like “A Finnish lady mentioned on another forum I visit………..”
You are right about the Welsh “Y Ddraig Goch” having four legs. I never learned Welsh though although my mother came from there. I heard one theory that the character of Daenerys might be partly inspired by Henry Tudor who became Henry VII of England who had a dragon banner and was a successful invader (though of course he wasn’t bumped off by a lover in his moment of triumph). Dany wouldn’t solely be based on one historic character of course.
As I say, I haven’t memorised chapter and verse of the ASOIAF novels, but I recall something about her wishing internally that she could go back to being a little girl. Can Ariana through any light on that? I believe GRRM had likened Arya’s position (so far in the books) as being something akin to a child soldier – unfortunately there have been some children who have been forced to be child soldiers in some parts of the world (says me, when it’s something everybody knows).
Regarding this whole “flashiness and battles” against “people chatting in the room”, I’m like this: I don’t mind if the show starts slow and focuses mainly on characters and such without some “big bang” events. In fact, I prefer it that way instead of firing all the guns in pilot and then following with much slower and less flashy episodes on prolonged term because I know it’s the first season and that it will “only get better” when I continue my journey… something especially prominent on rewatches. GoT is a big example of this because I realize on rewatches I’m nowhere as emotionally or visually thrilled about season 1 as I am for later seasons but due to it being first season, it “works”… it prepares me for the “big events” later, the ones where my thrill and emotional connection will be at highest level. So when I push through S1, and enter S2 and S3 which are in my opinion already “step-up” in case of what they make me feel and absorb with my eyes, and eventually enter S4 where I think it’s the most obvious how the scale and visuals went to even upper level and eventually progressing to my personal “biggest episodes” in later seasons… it’s a complete ascension journey for me.
But if the show that starts slow and on lower scale, decides to amplify its scale, spectacle and such at one point, or even if it decides to become darker, I now have this “internal demand” that it at least stays on this level or progresses higher. In other words, I wouldn’t like if it went back to those low level scales because I already closed that chapter. ANd no, I don’t mean that I now expect every episode to be the biggest thing I can watch on TV… the slower smaller episodes work well as the necessary transition between the big ones for me but as polished and as detailed the conversations may be in those episodes, I know those episodes are and will never be the actual peaks of my journey. It’s obvious here which GoT episodes are my top 10:
1) The Long Night
2) Battle of the Bastards
3) The Winds of Winter
4) The Watchers on the Wall
5) The Bells
6) Beyond the Wall
7) The Door
8) Blackwater
9) Hardhome
10) The Children
(for comparison, my highest S1 episode is on no.22)
This perspective of mine may be quite an unpopular opinion but it’s the reason why later seasons are usually my favorites in TV shows that I really love, and earlier seasons among my less favorites (although not meaning at all that I wouldn’t enjoy them… in case of GoT, all 73 episodes are “great enough” for me that I look forward to watching each one of them). Another thing that benefits for me when it comes to later seasons is my attatchment to characters. I realized with rewatches of various TV shows my emotional connection to the characters is always much bigger in later seasons because by that point, I already spent so many hours with them and even most trivial interactions may spark some “feelings” inside of me because I feel I “know” them. Even though I know on rewatches where the story is headed, this feeling remains the same or it only deepens for me exactly because of knowing the whole story.
So even if there are less character moments and developments and such and more flashy stuff in endgame stages, I realize that it usually doesn’t bother me at all because I already have hours and hours of “character moments” imprinted in my brain from past seasons and I don’t feel the need that these characters need to go somewhere further as characters themselves. But what would bother me (and luckily GoT is very rarely the case here for me) is if an ensemble cast show initially puts majority of its main characters in spotlight, but then some formerly prominent characters eventually slide into passive role and you barely feel their presence in the story anymore. For an ensemble cast show, I fully expect it to be “ensemble” in full meaning a.k.a meaning that its major characters can fully carry the story on their own and I keep sensing their existence as I’m watching them. As I mentioned, GoT is thankfully not a case for most of the time for me, with exception of maybe (the absence of) Bran in S5 and Ellaria being reduced to minimum in S6. But this is a complaint I can quite firmly apply to actually my favorite TV show LOST at some points (although thankfully not to my favorite characters there).
So this would be the end of my nerdy rambling… I imagine this is probably weird to read for an outside perspective but it’s usually a reason why I’m fond of later seasons so much in various TV shows even if there are complaints about some “declining quality” from the audience… and also the reason why “the big ones” in terms of episodes’ scale are guaranteed to land very high on my ranklist.
Sorry I have some keys which are duff on my keyboard so I beg pardon for typos in earlier posts. For clarification, I was referring to Arya wishing she could go back to being a little girl – not Dany. My earlier post was a bit confusing.
Jenny: They have the blessed benefit of working from a finished book, so they have no excuses for poor pacing etc.
I’m not so sure about that. Fire & Blood is/was expected to be a two-part collection of maester-driven histories. Who knows when we’ll get Part II, which will probably expand the tales of the Great Bastards (yum!) and more Blackfyre rebellions. In any case, HotD seems to be adapting the standalone short stories/histories The Princess & the Queen and The Rogue Prince, with F&B worldbuilding, all three of which focus on the Targ dysfunctions/disasters that led to their dragonless demagoguery and eventual fall.
Looking forward to it. Lots of good fantasy adaptations arriving soon!
Martin couldn’t even stop his own story from going off the rails, so his involvement in House of the Dragon doesn’t fill me with confidence. Hopefully, he has very little creative control. This is the man who thought creating three seasons out of Feast and Dance was a good idea, after all.
I agree completely. The character moments were fantastic in GOT, but there are fantastic character moments in a lot of other high quality shows. It was the spectacle that made GOT one of a kind. Even now, no other show could match GOT’s spectacle, not even the Marvel shows. That being said, I hope House of the Dragon doesn’t rush into having big battles. Like GOT, they need to make us care about the characters first.
I agree completely. The character moments were fantastic in GOT, but there are fantastic character moments in a lot of other high quality shows. It was the spectacle that made GOT one of a kind. Even now, no other show could match GOT’s spectacle, not even the Marvel shows. That being said, I hope House of the Dragon doesn’t rush into having big battles. Like GOT, they need to make us care about the characters first.
Completely agree regarding not immediately jumping into big battles and instead fleshing out the characters first and provide big moments in form of… well, not battles at first and then potentially “scaling it up” in second half of the season or something.
I think this show is mainly from Volume I of Fire & Blood as I the focus will be on the Dance of Dragons so technically HotD should be working on “completed” material as far as how Fire & Blood is written. Like Hodors Bastard said, they are written in the style of history books from a Maester’s perspective so there’s room for errors and untrustworthy narration which is always fun. But it’s also chronological by Targaryen lineage. I’m assuming the show will pull from the following chapters/sections (with some titles that give things away):
Heirs of the Dragon - A Question of Succession;
The Dying of the Dragons - The Blacks and the Greens;
The Dying of the Dragons - A Son for a Son;
The Dying of the Dragons- The Red Dragon and the Gold;
The Dying of the Dragons - Rhaenyra Triumphant;
The Dying of the Dragons - Rhaenyra Overthrown;
The Dying of the Dragons- The Short, Sad Reign of Aegon II.
I'm assuming HotD will end with Aegon III's reign? Volume II of Fire & Blood will most likely be the continuation of Aegon III and end with the Mad King, according to the lineage timeline at the end of Fire & Blood. Unless they're specifically waiting on GRRM to finish the series so that info about Daenerys can be added to Volume II
I think a natural progression towards big spectacle is expected, especially in a show with a ‘big bad’. GOT did the work in the early seasons and hopefully HOD does the same. GRRM getting excited over 17 dragons in Season 1 gives me pause, because I’ve never been in awe of them really. Except for that Season 5 episode when Dany rode Drogon for the first time. That was such a well earned moment. The dragons will be commonplace in HOD. Hopefully they strike the right balance, because they aren’t building towards a final battle for mankind, the battles are all political. If done well, the politics and battles should compliment each other and the thought of that gets me quite excited
So they could do 2-3 seasons on volume 1, and if/when GRRM is done with Volume II carry on for a couple more seasons. I can’t imagine them doing more than 5. I actually do trust GRRM to finish this one, it seems like an easier task all-around. I’ve pretty much given up on Winds, he keeps getting himself attached to new projects, I actually forgot that he was involved in this, it would be nice if he wrote a couple of scripts, I liked some of his GOT scripts.
Side note, is there a reunion this month? Between D+D, GRRM and a few actors? Have I imagined this?
Too late to edit, but that reunion thing was fake lol. Thought it was odd, and i’m not sure why anyone would bother to fake something like that. Never mind
Well this came out of nowhere! I must say I’ve had some (mild) reservations about HotD however the trailer has got me super excited! They’ve really nailed it to make it feel like Game of Thrones but also been able to carve it’s own path and from what I’ve seen on social media (admittedly not a great echo chamber) the vast majority of people love the look and feel too.
I think a natural progression towards big spectacle is expected, especially in a show with a ‘big bad’. GOT did the work in the early seasons and hopefully HOD does the same. GRRM getting excited over 17 dragons in Season 1 gives me pause, because I’ve never been in awe of them really. Except for that Season 5 episode when Dany rode Drogon for the first time. That was such a well earned moment. The dragons will be commonplace in HOD. Hopefully they strike the right balance, because they aren’t building towards a final battle for mankind, the battles are all political. If done well, the politics and battles should compliment each other and the thought of that gets me quite excited
One huge challenge for this show is going to be how to realistically display the dragons especially when it comes to the inevitable battles. In the mid seasons of GOT I think the show struggled with this (see the battle at Dazniks pit) however by S8 things were a lot more smooth however this will be a whole new level of investment.
Hopefully better than they did in The Long Night. That shot of them above the clouds was stunning, but that was one section where I literally had no idea what was going on, and not in a fun way, it was just irritating. Maybe an editing issue I don’t know
Yea, the first time we saw Dany/Drogon flying together was pretty bad CGI, but it improved dramatically from there. I don’t think there will be any CGI issues with dragons this time, IMO.
Damn edit timer…
Out of all the potential pit falls for HOTD, CGI won’t be one of them.
…rest assured, everything will look very expensive.
Dark Sister: But it’s also chronological by Targaryen lineage. I’m assuming the show will pull from the following chapters/sections
Interesting. I find it fascinating how GRRM has been transfixed by the events leading up to and including The Dance of Dragons over the years. He kept returning to this period of Targ dysfunctions, starting with references throughout ASoI&F, then more detail in The World of Ice & Fire, then further detail in the short stories TP&tQ and TRP, and finally culminating in the massive detail in F&B. One day, we’ll probably have The Unabridged Autobiography of Mushroom to complete the set!! (jk) 😉
Speaking only for myself, it was the scenes of people “chatting in rooms and odd couples on the road” that made GoT enjoyable – and rewatchable.
When the show “got bigger and more expensive toward the end” (i.e., more dragons! more battles! less dialogue!), it wasn’t as good.
While I continue to disagree with you on that last part, I agree completely that the show really elevated intimate dialog to an art form rarely seen on television. But there were plenty of “people chatting in rooms” even in S8. A partial list:
– The entire final section of S8E2, topped off by that incredible scene which ends with Pod singing Jenny’s Song;
– The victory celebration in S8E4, which has a slew of “people chatting in one room,” (the Great Hall of Winterfell);
– Hound & Arya on the road, one last time!
– “Thanks, Sandor.”
Even the final episode has many:
– “How much more defeated do you want them to be?”
– Tyrion resigns;
– “I know a killer when I see one.”
– Jon talks with prisoner Tyrion;
– Dany’s death scene;
– Tyrion talks with prisoner Jon;
(I’d even include the “dialog” between Tormund & Jon as they meet at Castle Black, and ride beneath & beyond The Wall.)
A lot of the dialog scenes in S1 set up some of the spectacles of later seasons, directly or indirectly. In S1 we hear about the Siege of Pike, Thoros of Myr & his flaming sword, and observe King Robert’s nostalgia of Great Battles with Jaime Lannister and Barristan Selmy. All of this primes the audience for the later spectacles.
1. I did not watch the trailer. However, I think the series will do well.
The books and the world created by George remain very popular. The series has hired solid talent and the production photos look really good. George as a writer remains well-respected. Attaching his name to this is a bonus. The GOT final controversy seems to have generated more disapproval of the producers.
2. On character building – that is a double-edged sword.
GOT did that very well in the early seasons and many felt the final episodes failed them by ditching the built characters to deliver shocks, surprises and big fights. (Even if not ditched, some characters such as Bran needed more building for his endpoint.) If this new series spend time on character building then it needs to honor those characters (and their audience) through to the end.
If they cannot, then just stay true to the flashy battles throughout as there is also a good audience for action as well.
Final Game of Thrones season literally had two episodes where almost nothing important happened. Characters just talked and talked.
And yet common narrative is that it was all action. How?
Commentary around Game of Thrones is so often divorced from reality.
The original idea that GRRM and D&D had was to end Game of Thrones with movie trilogy because they thought it was impossible to do what they wanted on television. Because ASOIAF is an epic fantasy and it will end with epic battles.
It was natural to have action at the end, but they still dedicated a lot of time to these slower moments.
I find it ironic that he is most excited about dragons, for many reasons.
Well the board seems to have gone moribund again. Now I’m going to do the naughty thing and go off topic but has anyone found if they visit YouTube recently there tend to be threads along the lines of “I can thoroughly recommend Billy Bloggins as an investment advisor” or “Mr Fred Flapkins can really help you plan buying cryptocurrency” to be followed by their friends (or themselves with other sock puppet accounts) singing the praises of Messrs Bloggins and Flapkins. They are maybe best ignored but I’ve once or twice asked them to stop spamming up the comments sections and said I hoped I wasn’t so thick that I’d fall for their spamming.
Rant over, getting back to the forthcoming HoD show, can any book reader(s) tell me in a “non-spoilery” way whether I can look forward to an exploration of themes GRRM sometimes touches on such as no-one being wholly good or wholly bad, the theme of identity (similar to Arya and Sansa both assuming false identities in the main ASOIAF novels – book Sansa has been Aleyne since 2011 after all). Petra wrote about Helaena Targaryen having to make a difficult choice in an article some time ago but I won’t go into that here.
I also like to think of real life events which might have inspired happenings in the series but as I’m not planning on reading ‘Fire and Blood’ I’ll have to wait until HoD is broadcast to think about that. I know that the back story of Princess Nymeria of Dorne (not the Sand Snake) was that she had her fleet set on fire when she landed in Westeros so that nobody could run away. That might be based on Hernan Cortes scuttling his ships (unless anyone else knows of a more likely inspiration).
I highly disagree that Martin is still respected. The man’s name is becoming a punch line and he’s losing more and more credibility every year he fails to deliver his next book. The man ran his series into the ground.
The GOT so called “controversy” was generated by the vocal minority and shouldn’t be taken very seriously. I think it’s become clear that the vast majority of viewers were satisfied with the final season. Otherwise, the finale wouldn’t be the most watched episode in HBO history, the season 8 Blu Ray wouldn’t have topped the sales charts, and GOT wouldn’t still be one of the most in demand shows two years after it ended.
GOT had never stopped taking care of developing their characters, and the final season was no exception. Theon, Danerys, Jaime, Arya, Jon, etc. were all given endings that completely fitted their characters.
Final Game of Thrones season literally had two episodes where almost nothing important happened. Characters just talked and talked.
And yet common narrative is that it was all action. How?
Commentary around Game of Thrones is so often divorced from reality.
The original idea that GRRM and D&D had was to end Game of Thrones with movie trilogy because they thought it was impossible to do what they wanted on television. Because ASOIAF is an epic fantasy and it will end with epic battles.
It was natural to have action at the end, but they still dedicated a lot of time to these slower moments.
Completely agree. S7/S8 definitely did not lack character moments and ironic thing is that more than often, GoT was criticised in later seasons for its intimate talk scenes. I remember everyone complaining about the numerous High Sparrow talk scenes in S6. Any time there was a big epic spectacle episode, it got immensely good ratings, scoring over 9.5 on IMDB. Judging from ratings alone, I would say those big episodes were what majority of audience “aimed for” when watching GoT and I don’t get why is there suddenly a consensus GoT was good only when there were no epic scenes.
Maybe I’m wrong but I feel a lot of praise of early season dialogue (especially from book readers) also stemmed from the fact that it was adapted from the books. When dialogue suddenly didn’t have a written counterpart anymore in later seasons, I feel people started paying way less attention to it even though the dialogue was still there. Or maybe the reason was that in early seasons, dialogue was pretty much all we had with few exceptions here and there. Obviously when the show got bigger, it had to move from words to actions and while there was still a lot of dialogue there, people stopped paying attention to it in favor of much bigger scenes.
It is indeed! Though I prefer to think of it as the dagger that Arya Stark used to slay the Night King and save the world. 😉
Speaking of famous iconic daggers, there’s Shakespeare’s “happy dagger” from Romeo and Juliet (Juliet: “Yea, noise? Then I’ll be brief. O happy dagger, This is the sheath. There rust and let me die.”)
Here’s a modern revisionist version I enjoyed, followed by the originally scripted version from Zeffirelli’s 1968 movie…
• Romeo & Juliet alternate ending (9/23/21), with Julie Nolke as Juliet
As someone who didn’t watch live until S5/6 (my job had a little lending library going on, we signed the boxsets in and out, definitely unique to GOT) am I right in thinking that was when the show got really popular? I wonder if new viewers were less interested in the slow pace of the early seasons. Either way, the shift towards action and spectacle is to be expected at the end of a story like this. I didn’t like the pacing of S8, which is probably my main issue with it really. Episode 4 was obviously 2 episodes crammed into one and probably one of my least favourite episodes of the whole show because of it. There is a clear break between 2 storylines, very odd decision imo. Same for episode 6, I wish that had been 2 episodes as well
As someone who didn’t watch live until S5/6 (my job had a little lending library going on, we signed the boxsets in and out, definitely unique to GOT) am I right in thinking that was when the show got really popular? I wonder if new viewers were less interested in the slow pace of the early seasons. Either way, the shift towards action and spectacle is to be expected at the end of a story like this. I didn’t like the pacing of S8, which is probably my main issue with it really. Episode 4 was obviously 2 episodes crammed into one and probably one of my least favourite episodes of the whole show because of it. There is a clear break between 2 storylines, very odd decision imo. Same for episode 6, I wish that had been 2 episodes as well
Missed the edit again!
I thought the first 2 episodes worked well as a build up to the battle, but I remember people complaining about episode 2 being pointless, it is one of my all time favourite episodes. Obviously people have different priorities, although to be fair, a lot of that criticism came from concern about the amount of story left to cover in 4 episodes. In retrospect, they weren’t wrong, for the reasons I mentioned, they crammed an awful lot into those 4 episodes
As someone who didn’t watch live until S5/6 (my job had a little lending library going on, we signed the boxsets in and out, definitely unique to GOT) am I right in thinking that was when the show got really popular? I wonder if new viewers were less interested in the slow pace of the early seasons. Either way, the shift towards action and spectacle is to be expected at the end of a story like this. I didn’t like the pacing of S8, which is probably my main issue with it really. Episode 4 was obviously 2 episodes crammed into one and probably one of my least favourite episodes of the whole show because of it. There is a clear break between 2 storylines, very odd decision imo. Same for episode 6, I wish that had been 2 episodes as well
I’m not fully sure but I think it was with (or after?) S3 when GoT gained worldwide popularity to the extent that the producers became sure they’ll manage to film it to the end without fear of getting cancelled or running out of budget. If I remember right, GoT started to get much bigger budget from S4 onwards and consequently episodes and visual effects on much larger scale (for comparison, Benioff and Weiss literally had to beg HBO executives to temporarily increase the budget for Blackwater in S2 and they almost didn’t suceed… they also had to “lie” a bit to HBO before filming S1 that GoT will not have any big battles but only character scenes, otherwise HBO would have never approved the show in first place). So I think it was post-S3 when it gained this immense world popularity… it would make even more sense why Benioff and Weiss had a sitdown with GRRM about mapping out the entire future plot points after S3 (according to GRRM’s interview from 2011, they already discussed it when S1 was filming but it was in 2013 when he really mapped out the story for them what he had in mind then).
You’re defintiely right about earlier episodes being less interesting to some first-time viewers. In fact, I’ve heard myself in my private life how people started watching, but gave up after 2-3 episodes because they found it too dull. I actually now always say to people that they need to “push through” first 4 episodes or so and if they don’t get hooked in episodes 5-6 of S1, then the show is likely not their taste. In fact, I would even say for myself that S1 doesn’t translate that well on rewatches for me in terms of my personal enjoyment (this may be an unpopular opinion but for me, I think it’s exactly because it so heavily relies on book dialogue & scenes… kind of feels too “controlled” to me).
All in all, I don’t have much issue with S8 pace…. certainly nowhere close to other viewers. I have even less issue with pace if I treat S7&S8 as one 13-episode endgame season (that way, the pace flows much nicer to me). I do agree that if I changed anything in S8, I would probably split 75-minutes long episode 4 into two normal-length episodes at least. That way we would get about 30 minutes of additional footage and more equally divided story which I’m sure would benefit the overall flow (if it was up to me, I would use the additional 30 minutes of footage on characters themselves as they struggle with their decisions… such as Sansa telling Tyrion about Jon’s heritage, Jaime’s decision to leave Brienne, Varys deciding to act against Dany and so forth). But I personally wouldn’t split the final episode… extend it a bit probably for additional footage (maybe pushing for 105 minutes like “The End” from LOST instead of 80 mintues like we got) but I feel that if this epsiode was split in two, the very final episode would be pretty much without any stakes and certainly not interesting to me. I’m a big supporter of final episode needing to have firm stakes, not being just an epilogue afterthought where majority of stuff is already sorted out… I would add a few scenes between Dany’s death and Dragonpit so we get more clear idea about what happened. But I wouldn’t split it in two.
(Answer to your second comment)
I think 8.1 and 8.2 defintiely worked well as a buildup for battle, even more if we consider that was THE battle of ASOIAF when the fate of entire human race was at stake. As I said in one of my comments above, build-up episodes are usually among my “less favorites” (although in case of GoT, there’s no episode I would actively not look forward to) but as I said, I appreciate build-up episodes as glue between the big ones a.k.a the episodes my journey is building up to. If there was just one explosive episode after another, they would lose the charm. But by putting slower episodes in between, it makes the big ones more special to me and helps making me care about the characters more.
I think I benefitted from not reading the books until after i’d seen S1, I might even have seen S2 on DVD before reading them, I can’t remember. So I didn’t make the comparisons to the books straight away, and I still don’t on rewatches, not too much anyway. I always think that it’s better to go in blind with adaptations, it took me a really long time to stop getting mad over changes, an adaptation is exactly that. I normally enjoy going back to the small beginnings of stories when things were so much simpler, but as you say, some people found those dialogue heavy seasons boring.
Totally agree about the characters/plots that could have used more time, although it’s a much bigger deal for me. The Jaime plot in particular needed some breathing room, I think that led to so many people wondering why he was going south, we couldn’t quite believe that he was going back after she had tried to have him killed 2 scenes before, it was very quick. I had to read interviews and articles to make sense of it, it was funny because they didn’t all agree either. Arya leaving forever was a big decision that just happened in 2 minutes. I think Varys’ betrayal of Dany could have been fleshed out too, he went from uncertainty, to talking about her like Darth Vader, to trying to get rid of her in Episode 5. Just a lot of character development in that episode, which unfortunately soured the rest of the Season for me because I was all ?????? over too many things. I did enjoy the Stark endings though (Arya’s not so much) I’m not someone who is upset by Jon’s ending, it was very fitting. I’m not in love with his Targ lineage resolution but it started the story and it ended it. It had a purpose, but I still think that will be fleshed out in the books, if they ever appear.
I agree about the final episode now that you mention it, if it was split into 2, it would have to end with Jon’s arrest to give the final episode high stakes. A feature length episode maybe
Understanding the music from teaser trailers tends to be stock music and not what will actually be in the final product, this still makes me wonder now if Ramin will actually reuse any of the familiar leitmotifs from Game of Thrones.
This was light on content, but it’s good to see they’re not having any serious setbacks. Time sure does fly. I suppose we’re still thinking April is a likely premiere target?
Looks Good
Dreams didn’t make us Kings – Burgers Did.
It may only be a tease, but it looks damn good, and completely consistent with the tone and visual style of the show we all love so dearly.
We’re back in business, baby!
I thought the blonde (in the show anyway) lady looked attractive in the trailer. I don’t like it when people say so-and-so person isn’t ‘hawt’ enough to play x character. I actually popped here to mention the trailer but rats! Foiled again! You’re just too quick for me. Now to pop down to Poundland or another cheap shop to get some mopheads to start my business in cosplay Targaryen wigs!!! (That IS meant to be a joke).
This trailer looks beautiful 🙂
Could Laenor’s opponent be Qarl Correy?
I wonder if that’s supposed to be Aemond and Lucerys dueling, or is it a younger Laenor fighting someone?
Uhh… that’s definitely the catspaw dagger that Alicent Hightower is holding right?
When I tell you my jaw fell to the floor! I wasn’t expecting anything so I got overly excited hahaha
The teaser looks absolutely gorgeous, very dark and even more medieval-esque than Got.
My girl Alicent was running with a dagger in her hand and I have a possible idea of why that might happen but I’m not a thousand percent sure.
Now I need my lovely friend AriadnaCandle to remind me how to put the spoiler tag, hopefully I’m doing it right!
My favourite moment by far wasthe drop dead epic Velaryons entrance into the throne room, GOTdamn, that’s what I have no doubt that they are gonna be amazing, the costumes, the gold, the look in their eyes, they all command respect, so so so brilliant.
Futhermore, Having looked into the still, it looks like there is a Velaryon banner on the throne room next to that of the Targaryens, so maybe this could mean…
Last but not least, I wanna applaud the costume designer for not shying away from being BOLD, I thought we were fonna have more of a ren-fair feel to the show but it looks extraordinary, I still think about those Velaryon outfits lol.
We should honestly just all hang out and do a podcast or something because I cannot wait to talk to people about this!! And, I have to say, I’ve seen many many people very excited about the show, not only hardcore fans like us.
OberonYronwood,
You’ve got the spoiler coding just about right! Just remove the spaces and make ‘spoiler’ lowercase and singular: like this 🙂
Wow, looks promising for sure. Looking forward to this!
OberonYronwood,
I edited the spoiler tags for you; now they work 🙂 You have to write “spoiler” in singular and without spaces between the “[” or “]” and the text.
Darrin,
It is indeed! Though I prefer to think of it as the dagger that Arya Stark used to slay the Night King and save the world. 😉
Hodor!
The teaser is amazing! Oooo and I see a Bolton and Stark banner side by side at the tourney scene 👀
Lord Travis,
That was my first thought but I think if you squint you can see that it’s Laenor. Could be wrong though!
That was fine, wasn’t bad. I will say, the best trailers usually throw you into the middle of something, something so new and different that you don’t even realize the thing that’s being shown is for the show or movie you’ve been waiting for for years. It presents it in a different light that you could never have imagined. This was pretty by the numbers / as expected. That said I always felt the trailers and teasers for the original show were pretty bad, so maybe whoever HBO has do the promotion just isn’t that great (the promotional material for Many Saints of Newark is also evidence of this). But I’m happy that we at least didn’t get some lame cover of an old song playing in the background.
Definitely got me hyped!! Thanks for the shot by shot breakdown 🙂
Great write-up, Luka! Glad the community here is still going strong.
Me, waking up this morning. “I finally have a day off work today. I think I’ll use it to catch up on some things.”
HBO: *Drops an amazing trailer for House Of The Dragon*
Me, after devouring said trailer: “F that. I need to go rewatch my favorite Game of Thrones episodes NOW!”
Thank you as ever, Game of Thrones, for being so viscerally engaging that you destroy my productivity for the entire day every time you drop a new episode or trailer because I truly can’t think about anything else.
Oh, how I’ve missed you, and that feeling! <3
Love it. The Velaryons look incredible.
Adrianacandle,
Luka Nieto,
Thanks guys!!
Holy shitballs will you look at that! This looks amazing! And I love the way they’ve retained the look of the throne room for continuity purposes- and look at that damn Iron Throne!! Even the costumes and those awful mop wigs look good on screen! I have much higher hopes than I did before!! 🤩
Afterthought… that definitely looks like LFs blade!
Well even a small trailer like that shows me it definitely has a different aesthetic to what we’re all used to with the original show. Much more in line with the books too I might add as I already recognize several source material subtleties that are showing up here.
That can be both good and bad. Time will tell.
So after sleepless night, 7 hours of seminar today and thankfully getting out of the capital before riots started there, I saw my (online) friend and fellow GoT fan Stacey post this on her profile… well, you can imagine I immediately went to watch it and… wow! Just wow! I admittedly didn’t focus a lot of my TV show nerd hype into HotD in recent months (mainly due to watching and rewatching several other TV shows at this moment) but after watching this, it totally got me now. I recently said I’ll judge costumes only when I get to actually see them on screen and not on amateur photos… well, they look amazing! And most importantly, this definitely feels like the same universe that GoT was set in to me! This is something I had most worries about.
Now after watching this, I think I added even more fuel to my upcoming GoT-rewatch hype. Guess it’s really getting close after 2+ years of not watching.
Jared,
I’ve begun my long-delayed re-watch just a few days ago. Good timing, I’d say!
This looks great! (Even the costumes that were slightly maligned based on previous photos!)
Off topic, I read on a (non-ASOIAF) that it was on this day (5th Oct) in 1969 that the BBC first aired ‘Monty Python’ – crumbs 52 years ago. Not that I’ll still be on the planet I wonder if on 17th April 2063 people will recall that GoT first aired on 17th* April 2011.
*If that date is wrong blame Google not me.
The arrival of the teaser trailer has certainly made this site lively today.
Teaser trailer on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNwwt25mheo
5,000,000 views in 16 hours. So much for the diminished audience narrative. 😀
It’s Theo Nate who plays Young Laenor. He’s 23-24,
John MacMillan is Older Laenor. He’s in his 30s. He’s the one with the sword fighting.
Throne improvement! 😃
Steve Toussaint is so darn good looking.
The guys’ wigs are still distracting, although Matt’s isn’t bad.
I wish I was more excited about this.
😂😂😂
Sorry…but that looks awful…for a moment there I thought I was watching the teaser for a new fantasy show on the CW! The show seems to have succumbed to the consequences of “todayness”, to follow prescribed orthodoxies, norms, expectations and quotas. Pitty…that mediocrity seems to have reared it’s ugly head here as well. But we do live in 2021, where mediocrity, stupidity and ignorance are the norm, as well as a lack of creativity, imagination and talent.
I guess, we will have to see more and the actual show itself (though to be honest at this point I’m not too enthused at the prospect), to render a fuller verdict of course…but speaking for myself, this teaser trailer didn’t do “House Of The Dragon” any favours .
So far I’m more inclined to look at it as I did at MTV’s horrible series “The Chronicles Of Shannara”…somewhere between not at all and lowered to non-existent expectations. I hoped at least it’d look better than that crummy “The Witcher” refuse…
Jared,
😀 I’m having a day off as well, and planned to do lots of fun stuff relating to my favourite hobby, knitting (or should that be my second favourite after obsessing over ASOIAF/GOT, ha ha!)… Then over my mid-morning coffee I pop in here and BAM!
Now I’m having trouble concentrating on counting stitches and gauges, designing my dream cardigan!
Wow, just look at those Velaryons! They’re the richest house in Westeros and they’re letting it show, and then some! I especially love Rhaenys’s look. The gown, the HAIR!
I know some fans are sour that Corlys Velaryon is black but I think that is a brilliant move by the showrunners. It makes explicit the best kept “secret”, that
Everybody sort of knows but can’t say so because King Viserys has threatened to rip out the tongues of anybody who says so. Which reminds me of Tyrion’s advice to Cersei after Stannis exposed her kids as bastards fathered by Jaime. Something like, by ripping out tongues, you’re not denying the lie, you’re showing you’re afraid of what the tongue-ripees might say.
I’ve been re-reading [i]Fire and Blood [/i], and I’m starting to think pretty much everybody on both sides are pretty awful people, ha ha ha! Well at least among the main characters, maybe some secondary/tertiary characters might be OK 😀
That said, “pretty awful people” can make interesting characters if written skillfully. (Fingers crossed!) Certainly more interesting than goody-two-shoes “perfect” characters.
I’m getting hyped for this new show and will renew my HBO subscription to view the first few episodes. After that, I’ll decide whether I like the show enough to keep up the subscription. (In my country, HBO usually offers first month free, then the going rate (about 10 euros/month, I think), so I could potentially watch first 4 or 5 episodes of HotD free before deciding.)
OK, now I’ll try to get back to the knitting…
It seems I’ve forgotten how to do italics on this site. Fire and Blood in my previous comment should be in italics. It’s the GRRM book that contains the basic story of what happens during this era, even the background – some of it goes as far back as late 40s AC – so about 80 years before the events in this show!
OK, it seems I’ve now remembered how to do italics 🙂
Might I ask what are those subtleties?
I’m noticing the winged helm. Looks great & is book accurate but actually a terrible idea in an actual combat situation: your opponent can lodge his weapon in the crook of that wing and yank your head this way and that, possibly even breaking your neck!
Real medieaval battle armor was designed best to deflect blows, to turn them aside. Maybe late medieaval parade armour would have fancy embellishments but those wouldn’t be used in actual battles/duels. OK, I can envision a situation when an unforeseen duel happens when wearing parade armour, no opportunity to change into more practical armour. (Only the very rich top people would have separate parade armour, all others just had the practical kind – hey, a downside to being too rich and showing it off, ha ha!)
At first glance, it doesn’t seem to be either Aemond or Lucerys. It’s difficult to tell the skin tone (keeping in mind the casting decisions) in that dim lighting but the ages don’t seem right for that – they should both be younger, Lucerys five years younger than Aemond, and in the books
The show could, of course, be playing with the timeline, stretching ages here and there, and to avoid the CGI cost
, made some changes.
WotW/Luka’s caption says it’s Laenor Velaryon (the whitish hair seems to be frizzy, consistent with his mixed-race descent on the show) and an unknown opponent. Now I’ll go away and try to look at the background for some clues.
(Yeah, I was supposed to devote this day off to my new knitting project but it’s not happening yet 😀 )
I also like the continuity of retaining the “chair” from GoT but adding a bit more swords, spikes, (maybe even steps?), to make it look a bit more vicious, a bit more imposing, a bit more like the book description.
Yay! It’s the “catspaw dagger” again! Maybe the reason why Sam saw a picture of it in the old books in the Citadel will be explained! About 170 years previously, it was in Alicent Hightower’s hand during some momentous moment, some maester wrote about it, drew a picture, little knowing what history-changing things that dagger would twice go on to do… Nice (backwards) continuity between the shows.
Uh, I missed the Stark/Bolton banners. I was so focussed on the colour of Alicent’s and Rhaenyra’s dresses!
In the book, Rhaenyra wore black, Alicent green, hence the monikers for the two factions, the Blacks and the Greens.
Judging by this short glimpse, Alicent is wearing something greenish, but Rhaenyra seems to be wearing something reddish, not black. Is it going to be the Greens vs. the Reds, ha ha ha!
Terry,
You’re right! I mixed them up.
Reading through the comments thus far (6th Oct ’21) the reactions seem to be SLIGHTLY more on the positive than on the ‘meh’ or even of the ‘What the heck’s this, let me run for the hills’ side.
I hadn’t noticed this myself but someone pointed out that the dragon on the three headed symbol towards the end of the trailer had FOUR legs (not including the wings) whereas Dany’s dragons were technically wyverns with two legs and two wings.
I’m holding off reading the source material (a) because I don’t want to be disappointed by possible changes (b) it would be kind of nice to have the sixth ASOIAF book and every side project GRRM has makes the (hopeful) publication of said book further off.
😀 I feel like I’m spamming the site with so many comments back-to-back, but our North and South American friends are asleep and our European fans are at work. (Apparently not many Asian/Australian/Oceanian fans contribute here..?).
I have a day off and I’m so excited about this tidbit of a teaser it’s silly! My day off plans went to shot, I’m peering over screenshots, watching in 0.25 speed… obsessing! 😀
OK, now I’ll try to get back to my knitting project. It’s only lunchtime here so not all is lost… But it will be hard to concentrate on the knitting!
talvikorppi,
I’ve been trying to regain my knitting/crochet mojo. So far I’ve only done small things like a baby sweater for a project the church takes part in and some dishcloths. I’ve done sweaters for myself in the past though I always had a pattern. Watching YouTube videos and studying other online resources I never knew that there was ‘English’ or ‘Continental’ or ‘Portuguese’ knitting – I thought it was just knitting though it’s all knit and purl with some yarns over or crossing stitches for cable etc in the end. We never saw anybody knit in ‘Game of Thrones’ did we? Knitting was a thing by medieval times (thinking of the picture of the ‘Knitting Madonna’) which is the timeline on which Westeros in GoT was loosely based). I think there may have been some costumes made from knitted fabric in the show.
loco73,
“The show seems to have succumbed to the consequences of “todayness”, to follow prescribed orthodoxies, norms, expectations and quotas.”
Could you please be kind enough to elaborate on this statement? Because I have an idea of what you are refering to and, its honestly exhausting..
Even the biggest of book purists has to accept that Steve Toussaint looks absolutely magnificent as Corlys.
Yeah, that caught my eye. Four legs plus wings = six limbs.
The modern Welsh dragon has four legs plus wings, but medieval depictions of dragons/wyverns vary.
I think GRRM has wanted to be somewhat biologically accurate with his magical beasts. Wings plus hind legs. As a rule, large vertebrate land animals have four limbs = hind legs and fore legs that might be wings, like bats or some dinosaurs, or GRRM’s (and GoT’s) dragons.
More to the point, no reptile has six limbs. Four, two or none. Dragons are reptiles, right? Or if they’re a kind of a dinosaur – some dinosaurs being precursors of modern birds – again four limbs.
Insects have 6 or 8 limbs or even more.
Of course, this is all a fantasy world, so the rules of our real world do not apply. But my nit-pick with that six-limbed dragon sigil is that it’s been established visually by GoT (and GRRM in writing) that dragons have four limbs (hind legs and wings), this new show’s dragons will probably be like Dany’s dragons in GoT. So why the inaccurate six-limbed dragon sigil?
In GoT, we saw Old Nan knitting while she told Bran the story of the Long Night. In the books, it’s even more delicious. Click-click went her sharp needles while she told young Bran of the horrors, and click-click went the needles. (Nowadays, you’re not allowed to bring knitting needles on flights because they’re potential murder weapons…)
GoT costuming. Several characters wore something knitted. I remember best Thoros’s faded red rainment. Loosely knitted. When I saw it, I immediately began to think, what type of yarn, what type of stitch…
In GoT, Arya is scornful of knitting, a “girl” or “woman” thing to do. This is wrong on a couple of levels (notwithstanding Arya’s internalised misogyny).
Firstly, apparently the first knitters (about 1000-1500 years ago?) were artesan men. As late as 18th century, respected Sanquhar (Scotland) knitters were men. Women, however, gradually acquired the skill and developed it to the heights of today. Arya is not scorning the skill, she’s scorning it because it’s associated with women. Little internalised misogynist, she.
Secondly, Arya and every misogynist is wrong to scorn “girls’s/women’s” skills like knitting.
Knitting wins wars.
Finnish Winter War (1939-1940), Finland was facing an overwhelming foe, the Soviet Union. It was a bitter cold winter, the coldest in decades. The Finnish soldiers had woolen socks, mitts, scarves, hats, sweaters, long johns knitted by their mothers, wives, sisters, grandmothers, aunts, nieces, great aunts, even unknown women and girls. The Soviet soldiers didn’t have that, no proper winter clothing. They froze, were less able to fight against the warm, woolen-clad Finnish soldiers.
Also, apparently half of Finland’s bedsheets were made into snow camouflage suits, sewed by the women; the Soviets had less and worse executed snow camouflage. So let no Arya disparage the worth of women’s work in sewing and knitting!
I know about these things because a couple of years ago I edited a book of war-time correspondence between my grandparents and several relatives and friends. I’d known my grandfather was at the front, grandmother at the home front. Reading the letters, it made it more real. The worry, the knitting, the sewing of snow camo, running the farm while the husband is away at war, likely to die.
Anything “bad” life throws at me, it cannot be as bad as war, the things my grandparents and their friends and relatives went trough.
talvikorppi,
Well remembered about Old Nan knitting – I listened to the ‘A Game of Thrones’ book when the Roy Dotrice audio version was on YouTube but haven’t gone back over the books. I know some people read and re-read the books though I don’t own them – I either listened to them or borrowed them from the library. I’d read that there used to be knitting guilds run by men back in the day and (as you likely know) a man, William Calverton, invented the stocking frame machine in 1589 (post-medieval but not that long post-medieval). You are quite correct though, GRRM did in fact mention knitting and it was depicted as an activity in season 1 as you say.
The English (and US) knit in a weird, slower and more awkward way. Fair dos if you’ve learned and perfected that skill. The end result (the garment, scarf etc) is the same. I once tried to learn to knit the “English way” and it was really awkward and unergonomical, and slow. No wonder the interwebs are full of videos like “amazing new skill”, “learn to knit faster” “learn to knit simpler”. Teaching English/US knitters the continental style. I don’t know anything about Portuguese knitting and how that might differ from basic “continental” = European knitting.
Veering back to GoT/HotD, once houses are rich and powerful enough, their ladies don’t need to spin, weave/knit, they are able to wear rich fabrics extracted from their underlings, or bought from Myr etc. Just look at the Velaryons!
I’m sorry for going on a bit of a side here! 🙂 You are right about the importance of textiles and fibre works! However, I don’t remember Arya being scornful of knitting or things traditionally done by ladies. She was frustrated as she struggled with these activities (her work being criticized by the septa while Sansa was praised and could do these activities well) and didn’t want to be limited to roles based on her gender. And there’s that her skills and interests were elsewhere. However, I don’t think that’s an internalized misogny — not the way Cersei resented being a woman. I don’t remember Arya resenting being a girl, just being limited to roles and certain kinds of activities because she was a girl.
talvikorppi,
Portuguese knitting is where the thread is put around the back of the neck of the knitter. It’s supposed to be good for maintaining tension. Tension is something I have to watch as I can have loose tension (not that that matters for knitting dishcloths!). If I know a way which works for me I’ll stick with it. I heard of the ‘Portuguese’ method from this amazing lady on YouTube who lost an arm to cancer but managed to carry on knitting using an adaptation of ‘Portuguese’ knitting and the belts used by Shetland knitters. https://youtu.be/KOB6wMrwkv4 The only spool/loom knitting I ever did was when I was about 6 or 7 at school when we had homemade knitting Nancies. Our teacher said get our Dads to knock four nails into a cotton reel (that may be called a sewing or thread spool in some countries). I’m that old that I can remember cotton (sewing) reels/spools being made out of wood!!! We called it ‘French knitting’ though I’ve also heard it called corking or spool/loom knitting. I never knew what to do with the tails (the long, thin cord of knitting). It’s a bit like luceting only more prongs – thinking back it was sort of like what we call an I-cord nowadays.
Thinking about knitting/sewing etc., I quite liked them and still do though I’m not an expert by any manner of means but I can remember girls at school who were like Arya and weren’t interested in such pursuits. One girl I knew was even like Arya in being horse mad and hating knitting/sewing. She lives in a different part of the country so I don’t see her now but she may have changed her mind a bit when she became a mother and later a grandmother.
Adrianacandle,
You’re both right and wrong.
Arya is never in doubt that she is a girl, and resents the strictures on what a girl can do in her culture. Very commendable.
She also labels “girly” things as “stupid” = internalized misogyny. Fair enough, not as full-blown as Cersei’s, and she is a young kid, but it’s there.
Maybe it’s the writer GRRM, or the (male) fans who cheer “badass” Arya and scorn “ladylike” Sansa. That’s low-level misogyny right there. GRRM isn’t a misogynist, he took care to make Catelyn a real, rounded character, and her arc is a thriump in writing. But GRRM seems a bit shaky when writing about women/girls. Not misogynistic, just not quite getting it. Quite good writing about Cersei’s internalised misogyny, hinting at Arya’s.
It’s the fans writing reams about how Catelyn is the worst person ever, it’s all her fault, and her daugher Sansa is the same if not worse (while the male characters do whatever). That is misogyny right there. I don’t think that was GRRM’s intention.
I’m thinking GRRM wrote Arya to break the mould and do fairly well, Sansa work within the mould and learn to do well. Neither is wrong or better than the other, just different.
What I don’t like is some of the fandom raising “badass” Arya (=acting like a man) over “ladylike” Sansa (=acting like a woman). Or more broadly, praising un-womanly women like Brienne, a badass fighter, over more traditional women… It’s almost like a female character has to eschew her womanhood and act like a man, weild a weapon, to be considered truly worthy. Nevermind the Catelyns, Cerseis, Queen of Thorns. Pah, just women.
Now, I don’t mind peope in-story thinking this way – it’s a traditional patriarchical society. What gets my goat is modern fans thinking this way.
In the books at least, I don’t remember Arya quite doing this or her aversion to activities like needlework coming from a place of resenting girly things or her gender. But I could be missing something! I believe her dislike of needlework comes from her inability to do it well and being scorned for it — Arya is scolded for her lack of skill in this area and for her failure to conform to (traditional conventions) of femininity. She likes Lady Smallwood a great deal (who’d she’d be willing to attempt needlework for if Lady Smallwood asked her to), she cared for the young girl Weasel, she later feels guilty over not conforming better to gender ideals per her mother’s wishes, she is annoyed when she’s mistaken for a boy, she’s curious about the courtesans in Braavos, and she declares “the woman is important too!” when talking about Joffrey’s sigil on his shield representing both maternal and paternal houses.
I had the impression that when Arya dislikes something or someone, it doesn’t seem to be because of gender but because of the person themselves or the activity. I don’t think Arya’s core issue is with being a girl or hating other girls because they’re girls — but with Westeros wanting her to conform to roles she feels ill-suited for and displaced in, which I think is an important difference.
You’re right in that they are all just women, all just individuals, and I also agree this wasn’t GRRM’s intention for this reaction. I can’t speak for anyone else in the fandom, I can only say I have my own preferences, likes, and dislikes. I relate to Arya because she is a misfit and faces scorn, struggling to find some sort of place for herself in a world with rigid rules and roles. I’ve wondered if perhaps other bullied kids who don’t fit in relate to Arya growing up at Winterfell because of this. I can also relate to Sansa in some respects too: a) I would consider myself traditionally feminine and participating in traditionally “feminine” activities (sewing, embroidery, knitting — although, I think in some cultures, these are practiced by both genders 🙂 ), b) I have no interest in any martial areas, c) I’ve been slapped in the face by the reality of things vs how I dreamed them to be, and d) I’ve been in Sansa’s place in the Sansa-Arya relationship and I’ve done a few things Sansa has. I’ve also experienced those same frustrations too that I’ve had with my sisters, one in particular.
So those are some of my views! But I can’t speak for anyone else 🙂
Yes, I agree with this.
Adrianacandle,
Thank you, Adriana, for such a considered reply.
You make some very good points about Arya and how she is uncomfortable/dissatisfied about of what is expected of her because of her sex, attempts to shoehorn her into the gender roles of her society. It’s not Arya’s fault, it’s the society that is not very accommodating of tomboys and women not content with traditional gender roles.
However, poor Arya has already internalised some of her society’s inherent misogyny. She repeatedly thinks of “girly” stuff as “stupid” and idolises/prefers (presumably not “stupid”) boy/men stuff. Because her society scorns, demeans and diminishes girl/woman stuff and idolises boy/men stuff, and Arya doesn’t want to be scorned, demeaned or dimished because of her sex. Only, scorning, demeaning and diminishing people of her own sex, girls and women, in turn, isn’t a very good coping strategy and Arya is probably somewhat aware of it, yet unable to work the dilemma – she’s only one eleven-year-old kid against centuries of patriarchical culture.
It’s not about how skillful Arya is at a given task, it’s about the cultural values attached to various tasks. Arya bought into the patriarchical value system: women’s stuff: less worthy, trivial, silly, stupid. Men’s stuff: worthy, real, honourable. But she’s only about 11 yr olds by now, and troubled by the way people are treated differently because of their sex, shoehorning them into narrow gender roles, so there is hope.
talvikorppi,
And thanks for your considered and thoughtful reply in turn! 🙂 I am a bit stoned so if something doesn’t make sense, just ask me for clarification!
I think this is where we differ quite a bit in our views of the text. I don’t remember Arya calling girly things ‘stupid’. I remember that she herself just didn’t want to do or wear things simply because they are deemed “girl” things in Westeros, viewing this as stupid. It’s not my impression that Arya doesn’t like needlework or other traditionally female activities because she’s afraid of being scorned, demeaned, and diminished. Arya is scorned and demeaned as it is because she doesn’t act within female gender roles. If she did conform and perform these tasks well, she wouldn’t face nearly the amount of trouble as she does at this time. She’d fit in. I can’t really remember Arya scorning or diminishing a character for being a girl or a woman in the books.
Well, I don’t think Arya prefers martial pursuits because of cultural value attached to them or because men do them). I think she wants to participate in more martial pursuits because she has a desire to try these activities and this, it turns out, is where her skillset lies.
I mean, I’ve never been good at cooking or have had an interest in cooking. I’m also drawn toward some more traditionally “masculine” activities — woodworking and playing with lasers for instance. I can’t say I’m particularly good at woodworking but I find it so much more interesting than cooking. I think that’s kind of how Arya feels too. She’s neither skilled at or has interest in the things Westeros expects Arya as a highborn girl to be skilled at or interested in. Add to that, she doesn’t feel she fits in within these roles and is criticized for her poor execution of them so she just…. gives up. Like a kid at school who is often being told they’re getting it wrong, they’re criticized for how they do it, etc. I think that’d sap any enjoyment or desire Arya would have in these areas and she’d naturally look elsewhere to find this kind of fulfillment — not to mention Arya faces criticism over how she looks too. She’s been bullied as “Arya Horseface” by her sister and her sister’s friends growing up, she’s facing frequent criticism of her skills as a highborn lady from her septa and mother, she’s being told she can’t do this because she’s not a boy — and I think that would amount to one big ball of aversion and frustration, making her resent gender roles even more. However, I don’t think that means Arya resents or looks down on women. I don’t remember her ever looking down on Sansa or Catelyn, but feeling angry for how she is treated.
Adrianacandle,
I agree with you Miss Candle.
I think Arya was simply frustrated by the shackles imposed on her by society at the time. She didn’t want to be told what she could or couldn’t do. I really don’t think it’s much more complicated than that at all.
I never got the impression that she specifically disdained women who did not feel exactly the same as herself or had some kind of “internalized misogyny” at all.
I don’t think she’s specifically against marriage either. It’s just “not her”.
Mr Derp,
Yeah! I think she wanted to be free to determine her own path and role in life — free of Westeros’s standards and conventions. A pretty difficult thing to do in a medieval society but I think that’s where her desire stems from.
Hi all, I hope everyone is well. The trailer looks interesting. I must confess to not being much of a Targ fan, so it will be interesting to see if this batch of new characters win me over. I’m quite interested in the Dunk and Egg show if it ever happens, that is on a much smaller scale. It just seems nice lol
Adrianacandle,
“woodworking and playing with lasers…”
🙂
I have similar feelings. I’m ok with the Targs, but I hope the entire family saga isn’t going to be reduced to some “will they go crazy or not?” storyline. That card was played to death during GoT, IMO, quite figuratively and literally.
Yes please let’s. First I don’t know who all those book purists are….this nebulous group of outhere gatekeepers…of whom I am not part of, since I haven’t read “Fire And Blood” and with each passing day I’m less inclined to want to.
Now let’s address Steve Touissant and his absolutely “magnificent look”. Remember that I am referring to his look here aka character design, not to him as a person or an actor.
Maybe to you, the book purists and whoever else, he looks magnificent, to me he doesn’t. As I’ve said before on a previous thread, when a few months ago I saw the first official pictures of the actors and the characters they would embody, I was less than impressed. I was struck by the fact that Steve Touissant’s character Corlys Verlaryon, bares a striking resemblance (obviously they don’t look exactly the same) to the character of King Ezekiel from “The Walking Dead” played by Khary Payton an actor a I quite like. Ezekiel is one of my favourite characters on “The Walking Dead” and he was one of the much needed shots in the arm of a show that was getting stale. I’m sorry to say that I have no such inclinations towards Corlys Verlaryon as a character. To me, the character design is at best mediocre and at worst lazy and unimaginative.
The same goes for Emma D’Arcy as Rhaenyra Targaryen who reminds me of Queen Lagertha from “Vikings” played by Kathryn Winnick. That is by the way not a plus. Then there is Matt Smith as Daemon Targaryen…and ehhhh…he is Matt Smith…and I’ll leave it at that. I could go through some of the other characters but there’s no point.
The rest of my statement was just a long-winded and perhaps harsh (maybe unduly so) way of saying that the trailer, or teaser trailer, was underwhelming. At least I found it so.
I have to reiterate once again, that I have no desire or wish for the show to fail. It’s just that at this point, the vibes I’m getting and what I’m seeing, preliminary impressions though they may be, doesn’t fill me with much hope. Nor with even lowered expectations. Sorry, but that is just how I feel.
From past experiences as a fan, once there is a franchise expansion and we get into prequel, sequel, reboot territory there are almost always diminishing returns (for heaven’s sake they just announced a reboot of “Babylon 5”!). “The Walking Dead” and it’s increasing number of spin-offs is a good example of that, so is “Star Wars”, “Harry Potter” and I could go on. Even perhaps my favourite trilogy of movies of all time, “The Lord Of The Rings”, eventually went through that and we got “The Hobbit” trilogy. And I’m nowhere as tough on those movies because I actually like them (emphasis on like). There are very few franchises, movies or series, that benefit from an expansion. Maybe “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul” and HBO’s “The Corner” which eventually inspired and led to “The Wire” are a few examples of the opposite effect. I think “Game Of Thrones” is on the threshold of that…and I think diminishing returns seems to be a more probable future. It remains of course to be seen.
You know having said all this, what I find exhausting (and I don’t mean this to be a snarky reply to you, so sorry if it sounds that way), is people looking at someone’s differing opinion and parcing it for something that isn’t there, or implying there is.
I think that I got to the point that I have to jump off of the GOT/HOTD bandwagon. I don’t think I have anything insightful or interesting to contribute anymore to the discussions here. The last thing I want to do is create anymosity or rancor.
Honestly, I am more interested in returning to and dedicating my attention (and resources such as they are) to movies and shows I’m interested in, such as “The Expanse”, “Mindhunter” (tremendous show) and even upcoming “Star Wars” projects, which despite the current chaotic and shattered state of the franchise, seem more interesting (“Andor”, “Obi-Wan Kenobi”). I especially want to focus on my favourite new series “Shadow And Bone” (for as long as it’s around). Someone here remarked that “Shadow And Bone” isn’t like GOT. And you know what…right now am glad it isn’t!
So for now I bid you adieu, farewell and all the best. I hope “House Of The Dragon” is successful and everything everyone else here wants and expects it to be…
Mr Derp,
I haven’t read Fire and Blood but I think one character in particular goes down that road, so hopefully they won’t be too heavy handed with everyone else. I don’t know, they are so over powered, it’s great for the spectacle but it’s obvious that nobody should have that much power and it’s always going to end in disaster. I just never got invested in them, conquerers aren’t my cup of tea. If anything, I worry that there will be too much focus on the battles and dragons, which were the least interesting parts of GOT for me. I’m in the minority though, the show will be big because it is about the Targ’s. The reception of S8 is irrelevant, everybody is going to have a look, and GOT became the phenomenon when it got bigger and more expensive towards the end. I just like chatting in rooms, and odd couples on the road
…and the occasional cooking lesson. You can’t give up on the gravy, don’t you know.
I agree. I hated the way the GoT ended with a passion, but I will definitely be watching HOTD when it comes out. Even though I’m always particularly skeptical when it comes to prequels, sequels, remakes, reboots, etc…I’m going to give this one an honest shot.
Mr Derp,
They have the blessed benefit of working from a finished book, so they have no excuses for poor pacing etc. With it being a history book of sorts, they might have had to write an awful lot of original dialogue though. The attempts to imitate GRRM’s writing don’t always work. Could be wrong on that though, I’m not sure how the book is put together. I’ll give it a shot too
I’m sure some people will be watching the first season with their arms crossed, sitting on their couch with an “ok, impress me” frown on the entire time. I’m not going to do that. I’m going to relax my expectations as much as possible, but still expect an entertaining and intriguing product at the same time.
Some of my absolute favorite tv shows of all time had less-than-stellar first seasons when compared to the later seasons: Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, Simpsons, Seinfeld, Family Guy, etc…
The most important thing is they all had something unique to offer that kept you coming back, albeit with a rough, raw quality.
When I go back and watch the first season of GoT, it’s clearly a raw, unfinished product, but there’s plenty of tasty meat on the bone to keep you wanting more.
Jenny,
“…and GOT became the phenomenon when it got bigger and more expensive towards the end. I just like chatting in rooms, and odd couples on the road.”
Speaking only for myself, it was the scenes of people “chatting in rooms and odd couples on the road” that made GoT enjoyable – and rewatchable.
When the show “got bigger and more expensive toward the end” (i.e., more dragons! more battles! less dialogue!), it wasn’t as good.
Mr Derp,
”and the occasional cooking lesson. You can’t give up on the gravy, don’t you know.”
Ah, a whimsical yet high thread count scene from my #1 episode, S4e7: wall-to-wall high thread count scenes.
Nice teaser trailer. Shows us things that are “familiar but different.” Good stuff.
Bottom line about HotD and the other GoT prequels is that the showrunners and writers must prioritise intelligent dialogue and intelligent storylines above all else. The rest of it is important, sure, but it’s those two factors that elevated GoT to greatness at the height of its success. This sounds like common sense, but there’s a fairly long list of shows that similarly started off focusing on the right things but eventually went off the rails because the people in charge became too self-indulgent, or complacent, or they didn’t actually have a carefully mapped start-to-finish storyline all along. The fact that GRRM is personally involved in the new shows and there’s detailed source material for at least some (all?) of them should hopefully keep things under tighter control this time. Hope springs eternal.
Ten Bears,
“Speaking only for myself, it was the scenes of people “chatting in rooms and odd couples on the road” that made GoT enjoyable – and rewatchable.
When the show “got bigger and more expensive toward the end” (i.e., more dragons! more battles! less dialogue!), it wasn’t as good.”
I honestly couldn’t agree more, what made me fall in love with both GoT and ASOIAF was the flawed and complex characters and the dynamics between them, that’s what made it fascinating and I expect to see that here.
I also love big battles and high spectacles but it was those small moments like Cersei and Tyrions scenes that transformed the show from great to extraordinary, all of that was completely demolished by season 7 and there was none of that left during season 8 sadly.
But I’m hopeful, I see that the show runners truly love both the show and the source material and they will do everything in their power to adapt it the best way possible, just like the previous show runners did at the beggining.
loco73,
Well, obviously do what is right for you. Everyone is entitled to an opinion. I don’t loathe the end of GoT with the fierce dislike some people do. It’s unfortunate that GRRM hadn’t overcome his writer’s block/managed to revive his interest/or dispelled whatever other unknown reason there may be in order to finish the ASOIAF book saga in a timespan where the showrunners would have had the books to work with. When B&W committed to the adaptation they thought they would have the full series to work with – probably at the time the dramatisation was given the go-ahead GRRM thought he would have the books completed. I’m inclined to be more tolerant of B&W because they had to work from ‘not there’ books towards the end. I think the ending will be somewhat similar if the books are eventually finished though it remains to be seen if GRRM can pull off a version of the ending which is satisfying to more people. I think I’ve mentioned before there were twenty years between the publishing of the fourth and fifth Poldark books but that was because the author originally intended the series to be four books only and then several years down the line decided to write about the older version of the characters with their children grown up.
talvikorppi,
Would you mind if I mentioned the information about the snow camouflage from bedsheets and the warm knitted underwear worn by Finns on a history forum I sometimes visit. I’d probably say something like “A Finnish lady mentioned on another forum I visit………..”
You are right about the Welsh “Y Ddraig Goch” having four legs. I never learned Welsh though although my mother came from there. I heard one theory that the character of Daenerys might be partly inspired by Henry Tudor who became Henry VII of England who had a dragon banner and was a successful invader (though of course he wasn’t bumped off by a lover in his moment of triumph). Dany wouldn’t solely be based on one historic character of course.
As I say, I haven’t memorised chapter and verse of the ASOIAF novels, but I recall something about her wishing internally that she could go back to being a little girl. Can Ariana through any light on that? I believe GRRM had likened Arya’s position (so far in the books) as being something akin to a child soldier – unfortunately there have been some children who have been forced to be child soldiers in some parts of the world (says me, when it’s something everybody knows).
Regarding this whole “flashiness and battles” against “people chatting in the room”, I’m like this: I don’t mind if the show starts slow and focuses mainly on characters and such without some “big bang” events. In fact, I prefer it that way instead of firing all the guns in pilot and then following with much slower and less flashy episodes on prolonged term because I know it’s the first season and that it will “only get better” when I continue my journey… something especially prominent on rewatches. GoT is a big example of this because I realize on rewatches I’m nowhere as emotionally or visually thrilled about season 1 as I am for later seasons but due to it being first season, it “works”… it prepares me for the “big events” later, the ones where my thrill and emotional connection will be at highest level. So when I push through S1, and enter S2 and S3 which are in my opinion already “step-up” in case of what they make me feel and absorb with my eyes, and eventually enter S4 where I think it’s the most obvious how the scale and visuals went to even upper level and eventually progressing to my personal “biggest episodes” in later seasons… it’s a complete ascension journey for me.
But if the show that starts slow and on lower scale, decides to amplify its scale, spectacle and such at one point, or even if it decides to become darker, I now have this “internal demand” that it at least stays on this level or progresses higher. In other words, I wouldn’t like if it went back to those low level scales because I already closed that chapter. ANd no, I don’t mean that I now expect every episode to be the biggest thing I can watch on TV… the slower smaller episodes work well as the necessary transition between the big ones for me but as polished and as detailed the conversations may be in those episodes, I know those episodes are and will never be the actual peaks of my journey. It’s obvious here which GoT episodes are my top 10:
1) The Long Night
2) Battle of the Bastards
3) The Winds of Winter
4) The Watchers on the Wall
5) The Bells
6) Beyond the Wall
7) The Door
8) Blackwater
9) Hardhome
10) The Children
(for comparison, my highest S1 episode is on no.22)
This perspective of mine may be quite an unpopular opinion but it’s the reason why later seasons are usually my favorites in TV shows that I really love, and earlier seasons among my less favorites (although not meaning at all that I wouldn’t enjoy them… in case of GoT, all 73 episodes are “great enough” for me that I look forward to watching each one of them). Another thing that benefits for me when it comes to later seasons is my attatchment to characters. I realized with rewatches of various TV shows my emotional connection to the characters is always much bigger in later seasons because by that point, I already spent so many hours with them and even most trivial interactions may spark some “feelings” inside of me because I feel I “know” them. Even though I know on rewatches where the story is headed, this feeling remains the same or it only deepens for me exactly because of knowing the whole story.
So even if there are less character moments and developments and such and more flashy stuff in endgame stages, I realize that it usually doesn’t bother me at all because I already have hours and hours of “character moments” imprinted in my brain from past seasons and I don’t feel the need that these characters need to go somewhere further as characters themselves. But what would bother me (and luckily GoT is very rarely the case here for me) is if an ensemble cast show initially puts majority of its main characters in spotlight, but then some formerly prominent characters eventually slide into passive role and you barely feel their presence in the story anymore. For an ensemble cast show, I fully expect it to be “ensemble” in full meaning a.k.a meaning that its major characters can fully carry the story on their own and I keep sensing their existence as I’m watching them. As I mentioned, GoT is thankfully not a case for most of the time for me, with exception of maybe (the absence of) Bran in S5 and Ellaria being reduced to minimum in S6. But this is a complaint I can quite firmly apply to actually my favorite TV show LOST at some points (although thankfully not to my favorite characters there).
So this would be the end of my nerdy rambling… I imagine this is probably weird to read for an outside perspective but it’s usually a reason why I’m fond of later seasons so much in various TV shows even if there are complaints about some “declining quality” from the audience… and also the reason why “the big ones” in terms of episodes’ scale are guaranteed to land very high on my ranklist.
Dame of Mercia,
Sorry I have some keys which are duff on my keyboard so I beg pardon for typos in earlier posts. For clarification, I was referring to Arya wishing she could go back to being a little girl – not Dany. My earlier post was a bit confusing.
I’m not so sure about that. Fire & Blood is/was expected to be a two-part collection of maester-driven histories. Who knows when we’ll get Part II, which will probably expand the tales of the Great Bastards (yum!) and more Blackfyre rebellions. In any case, HotD seems to be adapting the standalone short stories/histories The Princess & the Queen and The Rogue Prince, with F&B worldbuilding, all three of which focus on the Targ dysfunctions/disasters that led to their dragonless demagoguery and eventual fall.
Looking forward to it. Lots of good fantasy adaptations arriving soon!
Jai,
Martin couldn’t even stop his own story from going off the rails, so his involvement in House of the Dragon doesn’t fill me with confidence. Hopefully, he has very little creative control. This is the man who thought creating three seasons out of Feast and Dance was a good idea, after all.
Erik, formerly Lord Parramandas,
I agree completely. The character moments were fantastic in GOT, but there are fantastic character moments in a lot of other high quality shows. It was the spectacle that made GOT one of a kind. Even now, no other show could match GOT’s spectacle, not even the Marvel shows. That being said, I hope House of the Dragon doesn’t rush into having big battles. Like GOT, they need to make us care about the characters first.
Completely agree regarding not immediately jumping into big battles and instead fleshing out the characters first and provide big moments in form of… well, not battles at first and then potentially “scaling it up” in second half of the season or something.
Jenny,
Hodors Bastard,
I think this show is mainly from Volume I of Fire & Blood as I the focus will be on the Dance of Dragons so technically HotD should be working on “completed” material as far as how Fire & Blood is written. Like Hodors Bastard said, they are written in the style of history books from a Maester’s perspective so there’s room for errors and untrustworthy narration which is always fun. But it’s also chronological by Targaryen lineage. I’m assuming the show will pull from the following chapters/sections (with some titles that give things away):
The Dying of the Dragons - The Blacks and the Greens;
The Dying of the Dragons - A Son for a Son;
The Dying of the Dragons- The Red Dragon and the Gold;
The Dying of the Dragons - Rhaenyra Triumphant;
The Dying of the Dragons - Rhaenyra Overthrown;
The Dying of the Dragons- The Short, Sad Reign of Aegon II.
I'm assuming HotD will end with Aegon III's reign? Volume II of Fire & Blood will most likely be the continuation of Aegon III and end with the Mad King, according to the lineage timeline at the end of Fire & Blood. Unless they're specifically waiting on GRRM to finish the series so that info about Daenerys can be added to Volume II
Erik, formerly Lord Parramandas,
I think a natural progression towards big spectacle is expected, especially in a show with a ‘big bad’. GOT did the work in the early seasons and hopefully HOD does the same. GRRM getting excited over 17 dragons in Season 1 gives me pause, because I’ve never been in awe of them really. Except for that Season 5 episode when Dany rode Drogon for the first time. That was such a well earned moment. The dragons will be commonplace in HOD. Hopefully they strike the right balance, because they aren’t building towards a final battle for mankind, the battles are all political. If done well, the politics and battles should compliment each other and the thought of that gets me quite excited
Dark Sister,
So they could do 2-3 seasons on volume 1, and if/when GRRM is done with Volume II carry on for a couple more seasons. I can’t imagine them doing more than 5. I actually do trust GRRM to finish this one, it seems like an easier task all-around. I’ve pretty much given up on Winds, he keeps getting himself attached to new projects, I actually forgot that he was involved in this, it would be nice if he wrote a couple of scripts, I liked some of his GOT scripts.
Side note, is there a reunion this month? Between D+D, GRRM and a few actors? Have I imagined this?
Too late to edit, but that reunion thing was fake lol. Thought it was odd, and i’m not sure why anyone would bother to fake something like that. Never mind
Well this came out of nowhere! I must say I’ve had some (mild) reservations about HotD however the trailer has got me super excited! They’ve really nailed it to make it feel like Game of Thrones but also been able to carve it’s own path and from what I’ve seen on social media (admittedly not a great echo chamber) the vast majority of people love the look and feel too.
One huge challenge for this show is going to be how to realistically display the dragons especially when it comes to the inevitable battles. In the mid seasons of GOT I think the show struggled with this (see the battle at Dazniks pit) however by S8 things were a lot more smooth however this will be a whole new level of investment.
Jon Snowed,
Hopefully better than they did in The Long Night. That shot of them above the clouds was stunning, but that was one section where I literally had no idea what was going on, and not in a fun way, it was just irritating. Maybe an editing issue I don’t know
Jon Snowed,
Yea, the first time we saw Dany/Drogon flying together was pretty bad CGI, but it improved dramatically from there. I don’t think there will be any CGI issues with dragons this time, IMO.
Damn edit timer…
Out of all the potential pit falls for HOTD, CGI won’t be one of them.
…rest assured, everything will look very expensive.
Interesting. I find it fascinating how GRRM has been transfixed by the events leading up to and including The Dance of Dragons over the years. He kept returning to this period of Targ dysfunctions, starting with references throughout ASoI&F, then more detail in The World of Ice & Fire, then further detail in the short stories TP&tQ and TRP, and finally culminating in the massive detail in F&B. One day, we’ll probably have The Unabridged Autobiography of Mushroom to complete the set!! (jk) 😉
Ten Bears,
Speaking only for myself, it was the scenes of people “chatting in rooms and odd couples on the road” that made GoT enjoyable – and rewatchable.
When the show “got bigger and more expensive toward the end” (i.e., more dragons! more battles! less dialogue!), it wasn’t as good.
While I continue to disagree with you on that last part, I agree completely that the show really elevated intimate dialog to an art form rarely seen on television. But there were plenty of “people chatting in rooms” even in S8. A partial list:
– The entire final section of S8E2, topped off by that incredible scene which ends with Pod singing Jenny’s Song;
– The victory celebration in S8E4, which has a slew of “people chatting in one room,” (the Great Hall of Winterfell);
– Hound & Arya on the road, one last time!
– “Thanks, Sandor.”
Even the final episode has many:
– “How much more defeated do you want them to be?”
– Tyrion resigns;
– “I know a killer when I see one.”
– Jon talks with prisoner Tyrion;
– Dany’s death scene;
– Tyrion talks with prisoner Jon;
(I’d even include the “dialog” between Tormund & Jon as they meet at Castle Black, and ride beneath & beyond The Wall.)
A lot of the dialog scenes in S1 set up some of the spectacles of later seasons, directly or indirectly. In S1 we hear about the Siege of Pike, Thoros of Myr & his flaming sword, and observe King Robert’s nostalgia of Great Battles with Jaime Lannister and Barristan Selmy. All of this primes the audience for the later spectacles.
1. I did not watch the trailer. However, I think the series will do well.
The books and the world created by George remain very popular. The series has hired solid talent and the production photos look really good. George as a writer remains well-respected. Attaching his name to this is a bonus. The GOT final controversy seems to have generated more disapproval of the producers.
2. On character building – that is a double-edged sword.
GOT did that very well in the early seasons and many felt the final episodes failed them by ditching the built characters to deliver shocks, surprises and big fights. (Even if not ditched, some characters such as Bran needed more building for his endpoint.) If this new series spend time on character building then it needs to honor those characters (and their audience) through to the end.
If they cannot, then just stay true to the flashy battles throughout as there is also a good audience for action as well.
Erik, formerly Lord Parramandas,
Final Game of Thrones season literally had two episodes where almost nothing important happened. Characters just talked and talked.
And yet common narrative is that it was all action. How?
Commentary around Game of Thrones is so often divorced from reality.
The original idea that GRRM and D&D had was to end Game of Thrones with movie trilogy because they thought it was impossible to do what they wanted on television. Because ASOIAF is an epic fantasy and it will end with epic battles.
It was natural to have action at the end, but they still dedicated a lot of time to these slower moments.
Young Dragon,
Martin isn’t really involved with the show. He wasn’t involved that much with GoT either and here he is involved even less.
People once again want to take credit from hard-working people, which sadly Martin isn’t.
If HOTD is great that will be because of showrunners Condal and Sapochnik.
Jenny,
I find it ironic that he is most excited about dragons, for many reasons.
Well the board seems to have gone moribund again. Now I’m going to do the naughty thing and go off topic but has anyone found if they visit YouTube recently there tend to be threads along the lines of “I can thoroughly recommend Billy Bloggins as an investment advisor” or “Mr Fred Flapkins can really help you plan buying cryptocurrency” to be followed by their friends (or themselves with other sock puppet accounts) singing the praises of Messrs Bloggins and Flapkins. They are maybe best ignored but I’ve once or twice asked them to stop spamming up the comments sections and said I hoped I wasn’t so thick that I’d fall for their spamming.
Rant over, getting back to the forthcoming HoD show, can any book reader(s) tell me in a “non-spoilery” way whether I can look forward to an exploration of themes GRRM sometimes touches on such as no-one being wholly good or wholly bad, the theme of identity (similar to Arya and Sansa both assuming false identities in the main ASOIAF novels – book Sansa has been Aleyne since 2011 after all). Petra wrote about Helaena Targaryen having to make a difficult choice in an article some time ago but I won’t go into that here.
I also like to think of real life events which might have inspired happenings in the series but as I’m not planning on reading ‘Fire and Blood’ I’ll have to wait until HoD is broadcast to think about that. I know that the back story of Princess Nymeria of Dorne (not the Sand Snake) was that she had her fleet set on fire when she landed in Westeros so that nobody could run away. That might be based on Hernan Cortes scuttling his ships (unless anyone else knows of a more likely inspiration).
Mango,
I highly disagree that Martin is still respected. The man’s name is becoming a punch line and he’s losing more and more credibility every year he fails to deliver his next book. The man ran his series into the ground.
The GOT so called “controversy” was generated by the vocal minority and shouldn’t be taken very seriously. I think it’s become clear that the vast majority of viewers were satisfied with the final season. Otherwise, the finale wouldn’t be the most watched episode in HBO history, the season 8 Blu Ray wouldn’t have topped the sales charts, and GOT wouldn’t still be one of the most in demand shows two years after it ended.
GOT had never stopped taking care of developing their characters, and the final season was no exception. Theon, Danerys, Jaime, Arya, Jon, etc. were all given endings that completely fitted their characters.
Young Dragon,
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png
Completely agree. S7/S8 definitely did not lack character moments and ironic thing is that more than often, GoT was criticised in later seasons for its intimate talk scenes. I remember everyone complaining about the numerous High Sparrow talk scenes in S6. Any time there was a big epic spectacle episode, it got immensely good ratings, scoring over 9.5 on IMDB. Judging from ratings alone, I would say those big episodes were what majority of audience “aimed for” when watching GoT and I don’t get why is there suddenly a consensus GoT was good only when there were no epic scenes.
Maybe I’m wrong but I feel a lot of praise of early season dialogue (especially from book readers) also stemmed from the fact that it was adapted from the books. When dialogue suddenly didn’t have a written counterpart anymore in later seasons, I feel people started paying way less attention to it even though the dialogue was still there. Or maybe the reason was that in early seasons, dialogue was pretty much all we had with few exceptions here and there. Obviously when the show got bigger, it had to move from words to actions and while there was still a lot of dialogue there, people stopped paying attention to it in favor of much bigger scenes.
Speaking of famous iconic daggers, there’s Shakespeare’s “happy dagger” from Romeo and Juliet (Juliet: “Yea, noise? Then I’ll be brief. O happy dagger, This is the sheath. There rust and let me die.”)
Here’s a modern revisionist version I enjoyed, followed by the originally scripted version from Zeffirelli’s 1968 movie…
• Romeo & Juliet alternate ending (9/23/21), with Julie Nolke as Juliet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7W4VY4AcD8
• Scene from Zeffirelli’s 1968 “Romeo and Juliet” (Olivia Hussey as Juliet) starts at 1:13
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbaWyJwff-U
🗡
Erik, formerly Lord Parramandas,
As someone who didn’t watch live until S5/6 (my job had a little lending library going on, we signed the boxsets in and out, definitely unique to GOT) am I right in thinking that was when the show got really popular? I wonder if new viewers were less interested in the slow pace of the early seasons. Either way, the shift towards action and spectacle is to be expected at the end of a story like this. I didn’t like the pacing of S8, which is probably my main issue with it really. Episode 4 was obviously 2 episodes crammed into one and probably one of my least favourite episodes of the whole show because of it. There is a clear break between 2 storylines, very odd decision imo. Same for episode 6, I wish that had been 2 episodes as well
Missed the edit again!
I thought the first 2 episodes worked well as a build up to the battle, but I remember people complaining about episode 2 being pointless, it is one of my all time favourite episodes. Obviously people have different priorities, although to be fair, a lot of that criticism came from concern about the amount of story left to cover in 4 episodes. In retrospect, they weren’t wrong, for the reasons I mentioned, they crammed an awful lot into those 4 episodes
I’m not fully sure but I think it was with (or after?) S3 when GoT gained worldwide popularity to the extent that the producers became sure they’ll manage to film it to the end without fear of getting cancelled or running out of budget. If I remember right, GoT started to get much bigger budget from S4 onwards and consequently episodes and visual effects on much larger scale (for comparison, Benioff and Weiss literally had to beg HBO executives to temporarily increase the budget for Blackwater in S2 and they almost didn’t suceed… they also had to “lie” a bit to HBO before filming S1 that GoT will not have any big battles but only character scenes, otherwise HBO would have never approved the show in first place). So I think it was post-S3 when it gained this immense world popularity… it would make even more sense why Benioff and Weiss had a sitdown with GRRM about mapping out the entire future plot points after S3 (according to GRRM’s interview from 2011, they already discussed it when S1 was filming but it was in 2013 when he really mapped out the story for them what he had in mind then).
You’re defintiely right about earlier episodes being less interesting to some first-time viewers. In fact, I’ve heard myself in my private life how people started watching, but gave up after 2-3 episodes because they found it too dull. I actually now always say to people that they need to “push through” first 4 episodes or so and if they don’t get hooked in episodes 5-6 of S1, then the show is likely not their taste. In fact, I would even say for myself that S1 doesn’t translate that well on rewatches for me in terms of my personal enjoyment (this may be an unpopular opinion but for me, I think it’s exactly because it so heavily relies on book dialogue & scenes… kind of feels too “controlled” to me).
All in all, I don’t have much issue with S8 pace…. certainly nowhere close to other viewers. I have even less issue with pace if I treat S7&S8 as one 13-episode endgame season (that way, the pace flows much nicer to me). I do agree that if I changed anything in S8, I would probably split 75-minutes long episode 4 into two normal-length episodes at least. That way we would get about 30 minutes of additional footage and more equally divided story which I’m sure would benefit the overall flow (if it was up to me, I would use the additional 30 minutes of footage on characters themselves as they struggle with their decisions… such as Sansa telling Tyrion about Jon’s heritage, Jaime’s decision to leave Brienne, Varys deciding to act against Dany and so forth). But I personally wouldn’t split the final episode… extend it a bit probably for additional footage (maybe pushing for 105 minutes like “The End” from LOST instead of 80 mintues like we got) but I feel that if this epsiode was split in two, the very final episode would be pretty much without any stakes and certainly not interesting to me. I’m a big supporter of final episode needing to have firm stakes, not being just an epilogue afterthought where majority of stuff is already sorted out… I would add a few scenes between Dany’s death and Dragonpit so we get more clear idea about what happened. But I wouldn’t split it in two.
(Answer to your second comment)
I think 8.1 and 8.2 defintiely worked well as a buildup for battle, even more if we consider that was THE battle of ASOIAF when the fate of entire human race was at stake. As I said in one of my comments above, build-up episodes are usually among my “less favorites” (although in case of GoT, there’s no episode I would actively not look forward to) but as I said, I appreciate build-up episodes as glue between the big ones a.k.a the episodes my journey is building up to. If there was just one explosive episode after another, they would lose the charm. But by putting slower episodes in between, it makes the big ones more special to me and helps making me care about the characters more.
(End of my late evening rambling)
Erik, formerly Lord Parramandas,
I think I benefitted from not reading the books until after i’d seen S1, I might even have seen S2 on DVD before reading them, I can’t remember. So I didn’t make the comparisons to the books straight away, and I still don’t on rewatches, not too much anyway. I always think that it’s better to go in blind with adaptations, it took me a really long time to stop getting mad over changes, an adaptation is exactly that. I normally enjoy going back to the small beginnings of stories when things were so much simpler, but as you say, some people found those dialogue heavy seasons boring.
Totally agree about the characters/plots that could have used more time, although it’s a much bigger deal for me. The Jaime plot in particular needed some breathing room, I think that led to so many people wondering why he was going south, we couldn’t quite believe that he was going back after she had tried to have him killed 2 scenes before, it was very quick. I had to read interviews and articles to make sense of it, it was funny because they didn’t all agree either. Arya leaving forever was a big decision that just happened in 2 minutes. I think Varys’ betrayal of Dany could have been fleshed out too, he went from uncertainty, to talking about her like Darth Vader, to trying to get rid of her in Episode 5. Just a lot of character development in that episode, which unfortunately soured the rest of the Season for me because I was all ?????? over too many things. I did enjoy the Stark endings though (Arya’s not so much) I’m not someone who is upset by Jon’s ending, it was very fitting. I’m not in love with his Targ lineage resolution but it started the story and it ended it. It had a purpose, but I still think that will be fleshed out in the books, if they ever appear.
I agree about the final episode now that you mention it, if it was split into 2, it would have to end with Jon’s arrest to give the final episode high stakes. A feature length episode maybe
Adam,
This April? Have they said yet when this premiers? I can’t seem to find out even here.