The battle of the fantasy shows
With House of the Dragon and Rings of Power on TV, it’s a pretty special time for fantasy fans, finds Kylie Klein Nixon.
The next 10 or so weeks will be pretty special for the fantasy fans in your life. On SoHo and Neon, you have the highly anticipated prequel of the greatest fantasy TV show ever made, House of the Dragon, and on Amazon, you have the highly anticipated prequel to the greatest fantasy film trilogy ever made, Rings of Power.
Two ‘‘High Fantasy’’ shows with plots that hinge on prophesies, arcane magicks (fantasy nerds are contractually obliged to spell it that way. I don’t make the rules), the eternal quest for power, good versus evil. And dragons. Let’s not forget the dragons.
What a time to be alive! Let’s compare and contrast:
There’s no debate that the production quality of both shows is top-notch.
Meeting the same high production value bar set by its predecessor, Dragons’ costumes are handstitched, the sets and locations are sumptuous, and the dragons look properly dragony.
Even the many – many – white-blond wigs are on point, and we all know nothing will throw you out of your escapist TV show like a crappy wig.
Amazon is bringing cinemaquality physical effects to the small screen and killing it. Some scenes look so good you could drop them into Sir Peter Jackson’s originals and not tell the difference. That’s nothing less than you’d expect of a show spending a whopping US$60 million per episode.
Dragons, by comparison, cost a more sedate US$20m per episode.
What really matters is the quality of the scripts and the story telling, which, I’m not gonna lie, isn’t thrilling me so far, though I’m intrigued. There is a lot of speechifying in both.
Dragons is sadly lacking a Tyrion, a Jon or an Arya for audiences to pin their hopes to. All we’ve got is hate-watching Daemon Targaryen (a suddenly and inexplicably handsome Matt Smith – who knew all he needed was a blond wig?) and Daenerys-lite Rhaenyra Targaryen (Milly Allcock) beating her path to the Iron Throne.
Similarly, there’s no Frodo or Bilbo for us to relate to in Rings.
It’s clear they want it to be the Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) show, and she is cool, but some might struggle to relate to a semi-perfect 3000-yearold mythical being who looks as good in plate armour as she does in a nice frock.
Frankly, it is brilliant. They could make the whole show just that and I’d watch.
They’ve also stuck with Ramin Djawadi’s frankly perfect score, and done a stonking job of showing us places we know from the original show in a new light: A sprawling Kings Landing looking fresh and powerful; Dragonstone in full use; the great dragon rookery chock-a-block with dragons.