Where HOUSE OF THE DRAGON Triumphs Over GAME OF THRONES

I have no intention of proving that House of the Dragon is better than Game of Thrones. I only intend to explain in what aspects it is better. This doesn’t mean that the overall rating must be higher or lower. This is irrelevant to the level of praise because we’re dealing with ratings of 8-9, which are very high. Moreover, I clearly remember what I wrote in the review of the first episode of House of the Dragon Season 2 – it has the potential to receive an even higher rating from me than GoT if the quality of both the first season and the first episode is maintained. The second episode has thus maintained and even condensed the action to make the emotions more intense. If this continues, the creators will achieve something remarkable, and they have a chance to do so due to the nature of the material and the approach to making the series. It’s evident from these efforts that the production and script lessons from GoT have been learned excellently. House of the Dragon is no longer an experimental field but implements the conclusions and practices that Game of Thrones tested on a smaller scale or unfortunately abandoned for various reasons. Therefore, I don’t think the series will suddenly deteriorate for some reason, but I will be 100 percent convinced of this only after the season finale when I write its critical summary in relation to the source text.

So, in what ways does House of the Dragon win over Game of Thrones? To start, the opening sequence, which is a clever blend of GoT music and interesting graphic animation. The creators risked being accused right from the start of cashing in on past success, but it resulted in an intriguing marriage, as the same motif does not interfere at all. Attention is drawn to the images forming before our eyes, and the music itself almost subliminally reminds us that we are in the same universe, at least equally good. The move may have been risky, but it turned out great. The already familiar melodic motif was dressed in an impressive graphic setting, reintroducing viewers to a world of similar climate, but with a much greater dose of fantasy right from the start. And so, I naturally move to the next advantage of House of the Dragon – the dragons.

I remember that in Game of Thrones, knowing the books well before watching, I complained about the lack of dragons. Both in the text and in GoT, there was much talk about them, recalling the reigns of the Targaryens, but no dragon was shown for obvious reasons – dragons had long been extinct by then. The last of them was born during the reign of Aegon III, known as the Dragonbane. It had no name. It was weak and stunted. None of its eggs hatched. It is said that Aegon poisoned it because he had feared dragons since childhood due to the tragic death of his mother, who was eaten by the dragon of his uncle Aegon II. With the death of the last dragon, magic left Westeros, which is also evident in GoT, and perhaps something else happened that was not fully exploited in the first series – winter returned to the world, and with it came malevolent magical creatures. It took 150 years for new dragons to hatch from Daenerys’ eggs, but they did not prevent the fully developed winter. So, the advantage of House of the Dragon is the presence of dragons from the very beginning, making the presented world saturated with magic. In Game of Thrones, this moment was very delayed, as first there were no dragons, and then for a long time, they were small, unable to influence the plot. The thread of the approaching cold beyond the Wall was also dragged out. It spanned all seasons, and when it finally arrived, it did not have as apocalyptic a dimension as it had been announced throughout the series. Similarly, in the book. I thought the creators would make the necessary modifications to raise the level of suspense. So far, House of the Dragon does not have such drawn-out threads, whether magical or generally dramatic. And this is another advantage and improvement compared to GoT, resulting from the amount of material to adapt. Sometimes less is better.

The creators of Game of Thrones had a difficult task as George R.R. Martin wrote five novels in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, not counting the two still planned, The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring. GoT, at some point, carried the plot without coverage in the literary original, further complicating the narrative. In the case of House of the Dragon, there is much less material. It is based on the chronicle novel Fire & Blood, published in two volumes on the Polish market by Zysk i S-ka. The creators find it much easier to choose the most important threads and shape them into a continuous serial story. Game of Thrones always suffered from an abundance of characters, and individual elements of the story were better or worse written, not to mention how they were connected. In House of the Dragon, this lack of balance is not yet visible. The story is coherent, not suffering from an excess of characters and side plots, and most importantly, some events signaled at one point quickly find their development, e.g., the Mysaria thread, and because there are fewer of them, viewers are less likely to get lost and lose emotional contact with the main narrative line.

And it should be large because the characters are effectively, distinctly, and sometimes controversially crafted. I don’t mean the actors’ skin color now, but how well-known their names are, what their characters do in the plot, the rational brutality of decisions (Otto Hightower), as well as their appearance. White hair adds distinctiveness, not only against the dark skin but also generally. Despite the lesser-known actors, House of the Dragon has handled the artistic breath of fame exuded by the actors in Game of Thrones. Undoubtedly, this is another advantage of the production, and perhaps even surpassing GoT in this field. Similarly with special effects, especially in the first seasons. House of the Dragon surpasses Game of Thrones in terms of image quality, i.e., camera shots, shadow data quality, the number of reproduced colors, lighting effects, Dolby Vision use, and dragon designs. Game of Thrones struggled with this, especially when Drogon, Viserion, and Rhaegal were small. Their adult versions are much better, but the full beauty of dragons was only presented by Caraxes, Syrax, Arrax, and especially Vhagar. I cannot yet comment on the battle scenes, but I hope to do so after the Season 2 finale. As for the sense of showing violence and nudity in terms of quality and quantity, Game of Thrones currently has the advantage. House of the Dragon sometimes seems too sanitized, as if the creators were blocked in some scenes – e.g., by mass petitions from more sensitive and shy fans, although I don’t suspect Martin’s audience and readers of that. They are probably aware of themselves and their requirements, unlike the viewers of The Boys, those on the right, who were not even aware that the series mocked them. Perhaps only a more intellectually penetrating analysis of the Firecracker and Ezekiel rally made them realize that they were indeed the butt of the joke and even a highly harmful societal element.

I mention The Boys not only on the wave of just watching the fifth episode of the fourth season but also because of the violence and sex that were much more present in Game of Thrones, and sanitized in House of the Dragon. The Boys is a positively defiant example of not adhering to artificially set rules because everyone should know how much today’s world is based on harming others and eroticism. Everyone should also be aware of how much the world used to rely on them, albeit dressed in a mask of duplicity. In this respect, House of the Dragon disappointed me with its restraint, and I wanted to use the rational inclusion of controversial human behaviors, and those natural but tabooed, as a plus compared to GoT. So, as you can see, there are many weaknesses in the latest series based on Martin’s prose, although this does not detract from him as a writer. I remind you that these two series are vying in my mind for a slight change in rating. It’s more about ambition, not a rating that changes anything in the desire to watch both titles. It’s important that the pluses do not overshadow the minuses, nor do they grow into rampant criticism because, unfortunately, House of the Dragon lacks the suspense resulting from the final mystery, as this time we know the ending if we’ve read Martin’s prose.