Stage combat experts point out a goofy moment on House of the Dragon

The fight scenes on House of the Dragon are impressive, but you can find an oopsie in there if you’re looking hard enough.

One of the great things about the big damn genre shows we’re getting these days is that there are so many ways you can analyze them. Take HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel show House of the Dragon. How closely does it match the source material? What do we make of the vast time jumps? Are the costumes more fantastical or historical? How far are those dragons pushing forward the field of special effects? There’s just so much to a show like this that you could keep talking about it practically forever, and we may need to, since we likely won’t see season 2 until 2024.

A teacher and student at the North Carolina School of the Arts have heeded this call and taken a close look at some of the one-on-one combat scenes from the show, specifically the tournament in the first episode. How realistically did Daemon Targaryen and Criston Cole beat each other up? See what the UNCSA experts had to say about it:

At first, Professor Kelly Mann compliments the way the performers are working with the weight of the armor and weapons they’re using, conveying an accurate sense of how difficult it must be to swing this stuff around. Then, they notice something I admit I didn’t see the first time around: when Daemon has Criston on the ground, he gives him a little kick…and Criston fully flips over, even though that seemed wildly out of proportion to the force of the kick.

But hey, you try managing a multi-million dollar series and making sure every single thing is exactly right, from the writing to the directing to the stage combat to the catering. It’s harder than it looks and it does not look easy!

But seriously, this is a fun little video. Congratulations to the UNCSA class of ’22. You made it!

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