Welcome back everyone this will be my non-spoilery house of the dragon episode 1 review i was invited
to the premiere so i have seen episode one if you're brand new to the channel i'll be doing
videos for all the episodes just like i did for the main game of thrones show so be sure
to subscribe to get all those but it felt really good to go back to westeros house of the dragon
starts a little under 200 years before the events of the main show and it's set during the height
of targaryen power in westeros when they had the most dragons the most political power the
most respect just physically the greatest actual number of targaryens existing together on screen
at the same time as opposed to the main show where you really only had daenerys her brother
viserys for a little while r.i.p and then jon snow of all the different time periods they
could have done for this show they said that they wanted to set the show during a period in history
just before the bloom came off the rose for the targaryen family so to speak like this was the
beginning of the end for their family and a big part of that was them having a huge civil war
where like half of them tried to kill the other half one of the things they do try to do during
the first episode is let you know that one of the most dangerous things for the targaryens is other
targaryens and even though there's a ton of very familiar stuff there are several moments during
the show particularly episode one items lines of dialogue that are meant to be direct references
to the main game of thrones show characters from the main show later in the timeline
things that they'll do big things that will happen to them interestingly enough i was surprised to
see that there were a lot of direct references to the actual books themselves separate from the show
there'll be several moments during episode 1 where even if you're not like a huge book reader you'll
be pointing at the screen going full meme like ah he said the thing he said the thing he said
he said it felt like that was meant to be just enough hand-holding in episode one and doing it
in a way that i think will make it easy for people who didn't watch the original game of thrones show
to start brand new with house of the dragon but even if you're not a super fan of the song of ice
and fire books and you just watched the game of thrones episodes you will still pick up a lot of
the references that they make to the events of the main show the story is mostly based on the fire
and blood book which is basically like a history book written as a history book it's not written as
a novel like the song of ice and fire novels it's written like an actual history book just about the
targaryen family in the things that happened to them during different periods in history
but one of the other differences from the main a song of ice and fire novels is that it's not
written in first person perspective it's written by a third party or a couple of third parties that
are trying to remember things that happen so they wind up getting a lot of things wrong or
incomplete and it might be a very subjective tale about this family during these periods in history
whereas during the main song of ice and fire novels like game of thrones storm of swords clash
of kings each of the chapters is written in first person perspective so you're getting way more of
what the characters are actually thinking and feeling as things are happening to them so what
they said that they aimed to do when they were doing this series was to give you a more objective
tale about what actually happened so they're taking like an old maester's remembrance of what
happened and giving you more of that objective a song of ice and fire treatment where you get more
of what each of the characters is thinking and feeling during all these events i think during
firing blood there's like an old maester in like a court jester that wind up telling most of the
story during that george r martin wrote it this way on purpose so the show is just trying to fill
in a lot of those gaps and if it wasn't clear this actually started life is george r martin's show
like he's the person who developed it he hired the show runner before hbo ever learned about the show
they worked on it for a while then he brought it to hbo and said hey make this show so he brought
the showrunner to hbo themselves and ryan condole is the person who does most of the writing miguel
sapochnick the other show runner you remember was the director of some of the best episodes of
game of thrones he's mostly focused with like the practical aspects of making the show and just the
way that they actually film it he did hard home battle of the bastards the winds of winter but
throughout all of it george r martin was helping make a lot of decisions about what they did with
the actual show so he had or he has way more control over this show and the other spin-offs
that they plan on doing the other prequels they plan on doing than he did during the main show
so this is very much george r martin's show in the way that the main show wasn't all the main cast
are totally new actors to the show who weren't on the main show because this is set so much earlier
in the timeline but the way george r martin does a lot of his world building in the song of ice
and fire is that across history there are a lot of recurring names motifs with different generations
like families will reuse names across generations so there will be names on the show that pop up and
sound familiar like there'll be a lot of familiar houses but during this period in history a lot of
the main characters are from great houses that you didn't see a lot from in the main show so
like the starks the lannisters the baratheons for instance are present during the events of this
show but they're not nearly as big a characters as the targaryens the valerians or the high towers
the high towers basically control old town that's where the maester citadel is we saw a little bit
of that during the main show the valeryons are a vassal house of house targaryen they also descend
from valyrian blood which is why they all have white hair during the events of the show the sea
snake is one of the main characters and he's meant to be like one of the greatest naval commanders
in the history of westeros during this part of the timeline they're also one of the richest
families in westeros because they earn a lot of their money from the sea trade in this area
so even though there are a lot of very familiar sights and places that we'll visit in this show
a lot of the main locations that we'll visit are meant to be brand new locations that we heard
about during the main show but never actually visited for instance driftmark which is meant
to be the home of the valerions which is right next to dragonstone here and we'll also spend a
lot more time at dragonstone but even though there's a whole bunch of new places a whole
bunch of new characters in a bunch of great houses that you didn't see that much during
the main show the way things flowed in episode one it didn't feel that confusing they didn't
try to throw too much at you at once so if you're brand new to the show or if you have a hard time
with that kind of stuff don't worry even though there are a lot of characters arguably the most
important three characters on the show are rainier targaryen allison hightower and daemon targaryen
the series starts much earlier in the timeline so they aren't jumping backwards and forwards all
the time they start earlier and then they'll jump forward later i think around halfway through the
episodes and you'll get the older versions of the characters and i think of all the main characters
only rhaenyra and alicent have younger actresses and older actresses both playing the character
because it's about 10 years later in the timeline and when you pick up with the characters they're
meant to be like young girls but like matt smith for instance is playing daemon targaryen in all
periods of the timeline because he doesn't look that much different 10 years on as confusing as
it sounds the way that they presented in episodes is really easy to follow so don't worry about it
all three of them the younger actresses and matt smith did a great job so far
there is a ton of table setting that they had to do to introduce you to all the new
characters in episode one reintroduce you to all the big locations in westeros like i said things
look very familiar but they are very different at the same time patty considine was great as
viserys targaryen rhys efons seems like he'll be really fun as otto hightower now he's not like a
littlefinger type of character but there are a lot of character traits that you see in people
on the house of the dragon show that will give you the same vibe as characters from game of thrones
the way they're presenting it is not like the main show where you had starks versus lannisters like
really good house against kind of a bad despicable house on house of the dragon it's more like bad
people doing bad things to other bad people who themselves are also doing bad things it's almost
like the later seasons of breaking bad in that way just a little bit where you have like a character
that you're rooting for but they're also kind of doing bad stuff at the same time one of the
really cool things though is that just the overall tone of the episode just the look the feel the way
that they wrote everything made it feel a lot like the early seasons of game of thrones like game of
thrones season one and season two when there was way more palace intrigue and it was more of a show
about just really really good meetings and they had also really big wtf stuff in the background
but easily one of the most noticeable upgrades they've made is the visual style of the show
so if you watch house of the dragon and then you go back and you watch the first couple of episodes
of game of thrones it makes the original show feel more like what you would expect a traditional tv
show to feel like in the look and feel of house of the dragon just makes it feel more like an
actual movie like just the physical way that they actually filmed the show just got a huge upgrade
they also gave the dragons a huge upgrade to like metaphorical and literal because all the dragons
are meant to be way bigger than the dragons during the main game of thrones show but also the way
that they filmed them got a huge upgrade they used some of the same technology that they used
to film the mandalorian with those led stages to film their dragon scenes with them flying through
the air so it looks amazing they did have some cool dragon scenes during the later seasons of
game of thrones but just on house of dragon in general they look way way better so if you think
that all the dragons look cool in episode one it's just going to get way way crazier and way cooler
in later episodes and later seasons when we meet all the other dragon seeds there are supposed to
be 17 dragons according to the showrunner but i believe he also said that we wouldn't meet
all 17 during season one but we'll see way more than what they've revealed in trailers so far the
only ones we've seen in the trailers i believe are syrax rhaenyra's dragon caraxes daemon's
dragon veigar and valerian the black dread and with valerian it's only his skull because he's
meant to have died years before the events of episode 1. there are a couple new concepts that
they introduced during this show that they only hinted at during the main show so like the lore
gets a little bit deeper in a really cool way i'll explain what's going on with that more when the
actual episodes are released publicly in a couple weeks and even though the show is all about this
targaryen civil war with targaryen vs targaryen bad person versus bad person all within their
family they do some table setting in episode one to set up other tertiary villains that are outside
their family so like this isn't completely just totally focused tunnel vision on the targaryens
like there's a lot of other stuff going on around them because part of the idea is that a lot of
alliances will change over time the way that people feel about other characters will change
remember it's going to be like 10 years later in the timeline in the later episodes a lot of you
asking what was going on with the intro do they have a new theme song i can't really get into too
many spoilers or anything like that but they did open the show with like a totally different type
of intro i don't want to talk too specifically about it but it felt totally different from
the way that they opened the original game of thrones show and i don't know if they're going
to do it the same way for all the episodes or if it was just a thing that they did for episode one
a lot of you may have seen that rameen javadi came back to do all the music for house of the dragon
it sounds very familiar there are a lot of like remix themes from the main show so during specific
parts of the episode you will hear very familiar sounding theme songs but it is brand new music
they use a lot of the music to reference stuff from the main show on game of thrones too like
little music cues that are like directly taken from the main show overall i really like the
episode i think i'm gonna really like the series i've only seen episode one so i can't say too
much about the later episodes but it just feels like it's going to be a really strong show so i'm
really excited about that they did say that there were going to be several more trailers before
episode 1 is actually released publicly so i will do more house of the dragon videos when
we get those and of course i'll do regular episode videos like i did for the main show
bonus videos so if you have any special requests or any big questions just write them below in the
comments everyone click here for my big house of the dragon trailer breakdown in easter eggs
and click here for my black panther wakanda forever trailer breakdown and marvel easter eggs
thank you so much for watching everyone stay safe and i'll see you guys in the next one!