Matt Smith and Milly Alcock play Targaryens on the edge in HBO’s big, somewhat unwieldy epic.
The good news withHouse of the Dragonis that the beginning is the worst part.
This is the blandest possible orientation, Epic Fantasy for Dummies.
Milly Alcock’s Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen stands before the Iron Throne in ‘House of the Dragon’.Ollie Upton/HBO
WhateverThroneswas, it was never that.
After the prologue, one titular beast flies skyward above King’s Landing.
It’s ridden by 15-year-old Princess Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock), wise beyond her overlooked years.
Matt Smith stars as Prince Daemon Targaryen in ‘House of the Dragon.'.Ollie Upton/HBO
Dragonforegrounds its fictional country’s real gender divide.
“The childbed is our battlefield,” Queen Aemma (Sian Brooke) tells Rhaenyra.
She knows from experience.
Aemma’s pregnant for the fifth time in a miscarriage-haunted decade.
Her husband is certainthischild will be his promised prince and organizes a tournament to coincide with labor.
(Great birth plan, pops.)
The easiest way to meet a big cast is to invite everyone to a party.
Otto’s a born schemer.
Corlys is a pirate-explorer-general-aristocrat, like if Blackbeard was also Francis Drake plus Lord Nelson times Odysseus.
Daemon lives out of a brothel and commands his City Watch to punish minor misdemeanors with major amputation.
As Viserys’ closest male relative, he’s also the heir apparent.
That’s a lot of people with platinum hair, though the names are easier to say than spell.
Age carries the friendship into dangerous waters.
Each time jump nudges Westeros toward calamity.
This rapid chronological pace honors franchise mastermindGeorge R.R.
Martin’s vision.Dragonadapts his bookFire & Blood, a faux-history of the Targaryens.
Martin himself co-createdDragonwithRyan Condal, who showruns withMiguel Sapochnik.
The latter directed four famousThronesbattles and it’s notable thatnoneof those battles have appeared in Martin’s novels yet.
Nearly every dialogue scene is about succession.
An early tangent veers into naval warfare, with various forces fighting for crucial shipping lanes.
The climactic skirmish is ridiculous on a strategic level and gorgeous.
At one point, in the ultra-distance 50 miles away?
we see two battleships and a dragon dodge flaming catapults.
Characters constantly overhear the wrong thing around the corner.
There is a horse-related fatality that is (accidentally) funny.
Two performances stand out, and a third turns extraordinary.
Alcock is an outright discovery, playing a young royal with shades of over-it indifference and wounded ambition.
She evokes a very Targaryen paradox, the sense that the incestuous family floats ethereally but also rains hell.
Smith’s Daemon is a veritable hell hurricane, bringing faint nobility to his wild-card impetuousness.
By comparison, Considine seems cursed with no fun, as his King sinks under the crown’s weight.
Is it a problem that only the Targaryens pop?
“Were I born a man, I could bed whoever I wanted!”
declares Rhaenyra, when a whole episode revolves around Red Keep goss about who’s boning who.
Rhaenyra and Alicent both get imprisoned by cultural expectation, pimped out by dads for high-status matches.
We’re a long way from adoring crowds cheering for Khaleesi.
Instead, there’s a constant argument that the country will rebel against any matriarch out of pure dick-ishness.
So the showwantsthe relationship between Rhaenyra and Alicent to take center stage.
But the early episodes bungle their dynamic, with an unspecific friendship that’s relegated to the sidelines.
The drama heightens when clear battle lines get drawn.
The first introduction of the grown-up characters is flat-out stunning, establishing palpable and sorrowful consequences for earlier decisions.
