Watch the first trailer for Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon!

Alright kids, this is it. HBO has dropped the first teaser trailer for House of the Dragon, its prequel to Game of Thrones. Set over 100 years before the original series, the new show is about the Dance of the Dragons, a brutal civil war fought between rival factions of the Targaryen dynasty. Brother will fight sister, friend will fight friend, and of course, dragon will fight dragon…a lot.

Watch the teaser trailer below!

Okay, here are some random things I noticed:

• The visuals look pretty slick, as we should expect from a production this important. The one shot of the giant dragon (possibly Vhagar, the biggest dragon alive at this time) looks a little muddy but it’s early to have full special effects yet.
• Matt Smith and Milly Alcock look good as Daemon and Rhaenyra Targaryen, who of the big players in this drama. The white-blonde wigs didn’t always look great in behind-the-scenes shots but I always assumed they would look cleaned up on film.
• The trailer says the show takes place 200 years before Game of Thrones. The actual Dance of the Dragon kicks off around 170 years before, but the events that lead to it happen around 200 years prior, or even earlier. It’s about right.
• The music kind of evokes the original Game of Thrones theme, but mostly it sounds different. And I definitely hear Daenerys Targaryen’s theme at the end there.

Why is the Iron Throne different in the House of the Dragon teaser trailer?

And I have to say something about the Iron Throne. It’s basically the same as the one we remember from Game of Thrones, except that they’ve surrounded it with other swords poking up out of the floor. This seems to be an acknowledgment that the Iron Throne as depicted on the original show wasn’t the same as the one George R.R. Martin imagined when writing his Song of Ice and Fire books; that one is bigger and spinier.

It’s cool that they’ve modified the design a bit, but it strikes me as a half-measure; they didn’t actually redesign the Iron Throne; they just put more swords around it. It looks neat, but I think I would have preferred a whole new throne design, or else just keep the original. What do you think?

But overall, a promising start! House of the Dragon premieres on HBO and HBO Max sometime in 2022.

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