House Of The Dragon

[Famous Mortimer]

Looks like the Game Of Thrones prequel is finally almost upon us.

Ringer article which is extremely optimistic

Oh, it's August. But I've started threads for worse reasons.

Does anyone like prequels? The number of good movie prequels is incredibly small, and it gets down to "fingers of one hand" numbers when you eliminate all the ones where the prequel nature is irrelevant to the plot ("Casino Royale", "The Good, The Bad And The Ugly", etc.) There are even fewer good prequel TV shows - "Better Call Saul", I suppose? "Bates Motel"?

I think the last season of "Game Of Thrones" (and the crappy last couple of books) means I'm really unlikely to watch this. Was anyone crying out for a show about what happened 200 years before the stuff we've already seen? I'd love to why they decided on this, rather than just picking up the rights to a book series that's already finished and going with that.

But maybe I'm just being too negative and online about this. Paddy Considine is good, it'll be nice seeing him. I don't know.

[mjwilson]

I guess the good news is that it doesn't particularly the into Game of Thrones, it's not going to be trying to set up events of that show and it should be able to stand alone if it's done well.

Bad news is that the characters don't have the same kind of depth in the source material as in Game of Thrones. Plus the books here are presented as being collected from a variety of unreliable historical sources. So both of those mean that the writers have a big task on their hands.

[elliszeroed]

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly was a prequel? I never realised that before!

[BritishHobo]

It's got a good task, but my issue is it looks like essentially the same thing as Game of Thrones, only with more Targaeryans and less world-threatening peril. Just more squabbling over who gets the Iron Throne.

[purlieu]

Yeah, it feels like it was a very safe option: GoT 0.5, rather than some of the other possibilities they had exploring the far north, or much further back in the world's history.

[Chollis]

This could be good I reckon. Cast looks solid. The story is decent enough, though like purlieu said it could just be GoT 0.5 if the showrunners can't elevate the less fleshed-out story.

You'd think there's still a big audience for the franchise, lots of potential with Dunk and Egg, Dawn Age/Age of Heroes etc. but they need to get this one right after how Thrones ended. Does sound like George is more interested in bringing those stories to TV than he is finishing the Thrones books anyway.

[Inspector Norse]

They will presumably have taken note of the reception the last series of GoT got and realised that they need to get this right.

Then again maybe not and they don't really have any intention other than to pump out bilge and sell merch. Who knows?

[purlieu]

I think it's fair to say that if this whole thing had been commissioned after the last episode of GoT, it would have had a harder time getting through. I'd imagine everybody involved is very, very aware of it too.

[mjwilson]

I think it's fair to say that if this whole thing had been commissioned after the last episode of GoT, it would have had a harder time getting through.

Pretty sure it was...

[elliszeroed]

As a casual GOT viewer, (who enjoyed all of the series except the final episode), I have no interest in this. Is there anything in this that would appeal to non-GOT fans?

I imagine at least a quarter of GOT fans won't care about this, due to the disliking of the finale/lack of interest in prequels.

What is audience?

[purlieu]

Pretty sure it was...

Ah, you're right. I thought it had been confirmed before the original show was over.

[mjwilson]

As a casual GOT viewer, (who enjoyed all of the series except the final episode), I have no interest in this. Is there anything in this that would appeal to non-GOT fans?

I wouldn't have thought so. The main selling point is "lots of dragons" I think.

[Mr Trumpet]

This has the advantage over GoT in that the whole story has been laid out already (in a big hardback book I got for Christmas 2018), and it's a comparatively simple one, lightly sketched. So the writers are free to add wrinkles and depth but they don't need to come up with a final third off the top of their heads that awkwardly ties everything together.