Welcome back everyone this is going to be my larger house of the dragon review video i
was able to go to the premiere a little while ago and they're finally letting us post more
complete reviews talking about more specific things it was so great to finally go back to
westeros we've known about this for a long time coming so i'll explain what's going on with the
show compared to game of thrones the main show and how they've upgraded a lot of aspects of it just
in general i will be doing videos for all the episodes when it premieres just like i did for
the main series so be sure to subscribe to get them all episode 1 is releasing this weekend as
the day i'm posting this video so congratulations everyone you made it i used to use long claw in
all my game of thrones episode videos and i did order a new version of blackfire you actually see
king viserys the first targaryen holding blackfyre during the episodes because it's still around
during this part of the timeline it doesn't get lost till later i don't know when that sword is
supposed to arrive in the mail so i'll probably just use a long claw until we get it there are
starks on the show it's just a different group of starks because it's earlier in the timeline
the show does jump around a little in the timeline they're way more comfortable with jumping in
the timeline than they were during the original series but the main plot picks up 187 years before
the events of game of thrones season 1. there's like a quick time jump to before that to the great
council of 101ac to kind of explain how things get to where they are at the beginning of the main
plot i did also like a lot of the references that they included to the main series like there are
direct references to daenerys targaryen the long night white walkers a song of ice and fire just
in general just to help place you in the timeline like this is when this is happening and this is
when that other stuff is going to be happening eventually they actually start the episode with
like a little bit of hand holding for people that are brand new to a song of ice and fire just in
general so if you didn't read the books or if you're coming to this series fresh completely
like you didn't watch the original game of thrones episodes you will be able to understand what's
going on pretty quickly and as someone who spent a lot a lot of time going over those original game
of thrones episodes reading all the books i even read the fire and blood book that this series is
adapted from i didn't think they went overboard with the hand-holding they didn't over explain
the show inside the show that's supposed to be my job some of the references are almost fourth wall
breaking too like you'll be pointing at the screen a couple times going oh my god they said the thing
but they kind of did that a little bit during the original series too where like someone
literally in the episodes would say a song of ice and fire so because this is like literally
the first episode there's a little bit of that going on during episode one but just like the
original game of thrones episode one house of the dragon episode one is largely meant to reintroduce
you to westeros into all these characters do all this table setting to kind of set up
what's going on what the big conflicts are and all the bigger stuff that they plan on paying off in
the later seasons like all the major houses that you remember from game of thrones are still here
but because the events of the series take place so far in the past and the events that they cover are
so different the show largely focuses on a lot of houses that you didn't see a ton of during
the main show but like some of the new houses they introduced like house velaryon in house hightower
were still around during the events of game of thrones on the main show itches that during the
events of that series they chose not to focus on those houses so you don't hear about them
when they were actually writing the show george rr martin actually worked on the scripts with
them help advise them because even though they are adapting the fire and blood book is basically like
a much smaller amount of material that they're adapting then they were adapting for a song of
ice and fire in the game of thrones series 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 they aim to do in this new series is give you that more objective view that you got
during the song of ice and fire novels because the fire and blood book is written in a third
person perspective and gets a lot of these events wrong 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 fire and 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 show runner to hbo themselves and ryan condol 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 one of the biggest changes though is introducing you to the traditional
house targaryen as you would think of the other great houses of westeros like on the main show
there were only a couple living targaryens at the time jon snow secret targaryen as well
on this show there are literally an army of them most of them all have their own dragons
also the other major difference from the main show is that there are 17 living dragons during this
period that we're gonna meet eventually although i think we're only gonna see six of them during
season one once we get to season two we meet the other dragon seeds those are the other dragon
riders in the targaryen civil war then we'll meet the rest of them and they're all different sizes
like this is kind of a size chart to just show you how big some of them are compared to the others
and the whole thing with dragons is that they just keep growing the longer they live so like valerian
the black dread was about 200 years old when he died viserys the first the current reigning king
was actually his last dragon rider when he died you actually see them standing in front of his
skull in a lot of the trailers really good size comparison if you look at the chart here that's
why he's so much bigger than these other dragons like vhagar is the next biggest living dragon
vhagar still alive and they kind of refer to her as like a b-52 type bomber like really hard to
take off in and really hard to land in but once they're in the sky if she gets her claws on you
you are done so when the show begins she is like the oldest living dragon there are only two
dragons in episode one ronira's dragon syrax and daemon's dragon caraxes as you can see one of the
other big differences is they wanted to make each dragon look as unique as possible during the main
show daenerys dragons all look slightly different colors but for the most part they're designed to
look kind of the same they also focus a lot on the dragon's personalities and that'll come out more
in future episodes as you spend more time with the actual dragons and while they're riding them
around just in general the dragons themselves have personalities that are kind of like
cats like they're very standoffish but they become very loyal to their writers they'll also be some
moments during the show where you see people try to win over dragons and become their next dragon
rider because what will happen usually is that obviously dragons will live much longer than
normal humans will on the show so when a dragon has a writer and the writer just dies either
of old age or they have an accident they'll go riderless for a little while but eventually some
other targaryen will come along and try to become their next dragon rider but they'll have to win
them over it won't be like an automatic thing the main focus of the show is the targaryen civil war
the dance of the dragons the two sides are called the blacks and the greens with all the great
houses in the realm splitting their allegiances between them but just like they did on the main
show they don't immediately start with the war of the five kings like they kind of build up to that
they're gonna be building up to the actual civil war itself where they start fighting each other
so a lot of episode one is sort of setting the stage for that explaining who the characters are
what their relationships were between all of them and then eventually through the rest of the season
things will slowly deteriorate until we get to season two and i think that's probably when we'll
start to see the actual formatting of war and even though the dance of the dragons is like the
big thing that we're talking about on this show there are other villains that pop up outside the
targaryen family like crab feeder here is from the triarchy in essos that builds up to the battle of
the stepstones that we see in all the trailers here so like we will have a couple really big
battle episodes that have nothing to do with the actual targaryen civil war there were a lot of
other conflicts going on during this period for those of you asking about the white walkers there
are references to white walkers the night king the long night during the series but at this part
of the timeline they weren't particularly active they were in the lands of always winter there were
white walkers up there like they were active they were just more of a myth at this time that the
realm wasn't really thinking about that much 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 alison 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 vs 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 and 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 the 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 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 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 gonna 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 remin 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 gonna be a really strong show so i'm really excited about that 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 episode one is finally being
released this sunday so my full video for that will post after the episode comes out it'll be the
same schedule as the way that i posted my videos for the original series too everyone click here
for all my house of the dragon videos i'll update the link with my full episode 1 video as soon as
i post that this weekend and click here for my brand new she-hulk episode 1 video in easter eggs
thank you so much for watching everyone stay safe and i'll see you guys in the next one!