Director Greg Yaitanes revisited some cinema classics in preparation: How to Train Your Dragon and Jurassic Park.
Warning: This article contains spoilers fromHouse of the Dragon’s season 1 finale.
“Make this aGame of Thronesscene,” Condal said, according to Yaitanes.
Lucerys Velaryon arrives on Arrax to Storm’s End in ‘House of the Dragon.'.HBO
“Lean into everything the show has to offer.”
He didn’t need much more elaboration.
He wasat the helm for episodes 2and 3, which included thebattles at the Stepstones.
Elliot Grihault as Lucerys Velaryon in ‘House of the Dragon’.Gary Moyes / HBO
“Even though I had done a lot of action, I hadnotdone a medieval battle.
I’d done dragon fights.
So what was great was, he left me alone to really choreograph that dragon fight.”
Ewan Mitchell as Aemond Targaryen in ‘House of the Dragon’.Gary Moyes / HBO
She agrees to send envoys to multiple lords in Westeros to rally supporters for the Blacks.
Borros is not as welcoming as Rhaenyra had hoped.
So that, cinematically, was going to be really appealing," Yaitanes says.
So there’s a lot ofJurassic Parkin Storm’s End and in the air."
Yaitanes started thinking about the sequence using toys toy dragons, that is.
The Third Floor, a pre-visualization studio that’s worked on Disney+‘sMs.
Marveland Amazon’sThe Boys, were able to translate the toy videos into CG blocking.
It was the sequence that took the most creative time to do."
Of those three, he had a personal connection to the finale.
One of the reasons for that was Aemond.
Yaitanes is open about the fact that he was bullied as a child.
It’s led to a personal draw to the concept of the bully.
“I found Aemond fascinating,” he adds.
“Bullies are so often the most vulnerable.
It’s such a defense mechanism for them.”
“The bullying of Luke is trying to reclaim power,” Yaitanes muses.
Ina deviation from the source material,Game of ThronescreatorGeorge R.R.
Martin’s bookFire and Blood, both Aemond and Luke lose control of their dragons in the fight.
“This was the example,” Yaitanes notes of the Aemond-Luke flight.
Then to see the complexity and the gravity of what he’s done.
I thought it did such a beautiful job making that character not just a one-dimensional black hat."
