VFX pros explain why the sandworm ride in Dune: Part Two is better than House of the Dragon's dragon-riding

There's no doubt that House of the Dragon is at the absolute peak of digital effects when it comes to portraying dragons onscreen. Has there ever been a battle between fire-breathing goliaths in the sky like there was at Rook's Rest, when Meleys, Sunfyre, and Vhagar collided? Whether you're an ardent fan of the show, have issues with how it deviated from the source material, or anything else, it's hard to argue that the dragons aren't magnificent.

Or is it? In a recent video from the Corridor Crew YouTube channel, visual effects professionals and hosts Clint, Jordan, and Niko broke down some of House of the Dragon's biggest scenes. The visual effects on House of the Dragon may have wowed us laypeople, but what about those with a discerning eye for the way the visual effects sausage is made? Watch:

How realistic is the dragon fire in House of the Dragon?

This breakdown was all about photorealism, and there were a few interesting scenes that the Corridor Crew talked through. The first is the fiery breath of Vermithor, who roasted a bunch of prospective dragonriders in the penultimate episode of the season. "This is so well integrated," Niko said of Vermithor's initial breath, which cooked Silver Denys while Rhaenyra watched from the balcony above.

"They really sell the scale, 'cause a lot of these shots are from the ground looking up at this massive beast," Jordan added. "It's interesting because the director said — and I don't believe this for a second — he said all the fire is real...the fire visual effects look amazing. But they did use a lot of practical photography of fire. They built a flamethrower, I guess for some shots or elements of its fire breath."

Despite how good House of the Dragon's fire looks, the curtain still comes down on a few shots in particular; namely one scene near the end of the sequence, where Vermithor breathes fire onto the ground and it blooms outward in a cloud across the ground. "So first off, fire doesn't work like this," Niko, the fire expert of the crew, explained. "I'm tired of seeing pre-disturbed, bulbous fluid. That's not at all how this happens...The way the fire is working at the end of this shot shouldn't be pre-contained soft pockets of bumpiness, it should be speed, it should be motion-blurred. Like, where is the movement coming from here? And then secondly here, it's so dark. That thing is a bright wall of fire. There's no light coming from it! I get it, it's a TV show, I get it...but this is my beef with Hollywood fire. It doesn't move like fire, it doesn't light the scene like fire. Turn up those lights!"

"A lot of times adding fake light to make it look good means a 3D reconstruction of your scene, and it's just like...it's not worth it," he added. "I get it. This is better than most films."

VFX pros proclaim: Dune's sandworm riding is better than the dragonriding in HOTD

Qualms about the fire aside, the Corridor Crew hosts had nothing but glowing things to say about the dragons themselves — especially the Battle at Rook's Rest. In particular, the shot where Vhagar and Meleys clutched each other in a death spiral, breathing fire and clawing one another as they plummeted to the ground, impressed.

"I love this shot," Jordan said. "[T]hey studied how birds of prey fight, and they grab each other and enter a death spiral as they spin to earth. Add fire to that, and you get this. And it's so freaking awesome."

That said, the actual dragonriding broke the immersion for the group. "Anyone riding a dragon always looks funny to me," Clint said.

"It's tough," Jordan agreed. "And this is what's so crazy about it. All those standalone shots of the dragon itself, and all the fire effects look really, really, really, really good. The minute you are trying to integrate a person — an actor — riding one of these things, you have to go so hard in the paint as to how they're being thrown around. And while they did have this thing called the Bull...like a big rodeo mechanical bull. And they shot it on a half-volume half-bluescreen, like this really cool hybrid...and the camera mount system had the same programming as the buck."

The team cited an example which they felt was much better: Denis Villeneuve's Dune: Part Two. Yes, Paul Atreides is riding a sandworm and not a dragon in those scenes, but a lot of the same physics still apply since it's a person riding a gargantuan creature. "The Dune [Part Two] sandworm scene. I was expecting that level of jankiness, but the way that [director] Denis [Villeneuve] did that scene? Dude, I bought every second of that," said Clint.

Niko explained that Dune's sandworm scenes were "filmed like you would be filming someone who's riding a sandworm, which is to say, every single shot is as if you had to get a film crew there." There are even some pretty cool shots in the Corridor Crew episode of actor Timothée Chalamet on a big old sandworm prop in the desert. And yes, it looks pretty intense even though it's a just a prop bouncing him around as he clutches to the hooks keeping him on the worm.

"Like literally where is that [in House of the Dragon]?" Jordan asked. "Like you're riding a dragon...the most we really see is this sliding off to the left or the right. Where's the lift of the physical actor being shifted and bounced and lifted off the saddle and stuff?"

The conversation went full circle back to House of the Dragon when the group dissected the dust clouds shot at Chalamet while he clung to the sandworm, many of which were practical. To contrast, they pulled up what Jordan called "probably the worst sequence from [House of the Dragon]," when Rhaenys Targaryen and her dragon Meleys burst through the floor of the Dragonpit and ruined Aegon's coronation in the penultimate episode of the first season.

Unlike the scene with Chalamet, which was filmed in the desert with actual dust, the scene in the Dragonpit was filmed largely in a bluescreen room. All the dust was added with visual effects, and to these pros the difference was obvious. The dust in House of the Dragon's scene didn't obscure the light in the same way, and it was impossible to cover up the fact that all the extras who were being stomped by Meleys in the scene were well-lit when they actually filmed. This makes it a little more incongruous than Dune, where "all the artistry...was in how [to] make dust hitting the camera feel violent and intense."

Now I'm itching for a rewatch to do my own side-by-side comparison. What do you think? Did House of the Dragon's dragonriding scenes pass muster, or were they totally eclipsed by the massive sandworms of Dune? Sound off in the comments!

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h/t Screen Rant