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Friday, March 31, 2023
Review: Dungeons and Dragons movie just barely makes its saving throw
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Thursday, March 30, 2023
Wednesday, March 29, 2023
Tuesday, March 28, 2023
Season 2 of House of the Dragon Rumored to be Chopped Down to 8 Episodes
In case you yearned for the days of shorter seasons of Game of Thrones, Deadline has just announced that season 2 of House of the Dragon will reportedly run only 8 episodes, rather than the standard 10. This comes as a shock to many, given George R. R. Martin himself had indicated that it would take four 10 episode seasons to do HOTD justice. So what happened, exactly? Dive in as I muse…
The rumors are that 10 episodes were planned, but with the full scope of the series outlined, plot points got shuffled around, resulting in a season arc that will take only 8 episodes to tell. It was even noted that an intended season 2 battle was pushed to the as-yet-unordered season 3. Going further, the rumor mill suggests that HBO is seriously considering ordering scripts and casting for season 3 just to get the ball rolling. Of additional note is that GRRM and Ryan Condal (showrunner) have seesawed with each other on whether 3 or 4 seasons are necessary to tell the complete story.
Keep in mind that TV moves both more quickly and more slowly than it used to. I say it moves more quickly because these days, greater budgets are poured into more TV shows than they ever historically have been, leading to longer delays between seasons as bigger and more expensive shows such as HOTD, The Mandalorian, The Boys, The Crown, etc. have far longer and more complicated post-production periods, meaning more people are constantly working for longer. It moves more slowly, however, in that the downtime between filming, from an actor’s experience, can sometimes stretch to over a year between literally being on set from one season to another. What used to be the September to May calendar year for TV is hardly a thing at all anymore.
Bringing this back to House of the Dragon, let’s be real, in an era of expensive TV, it’s STILL among the most expensive shows. Therefore, by scaling back from 10 episodes to 8, it can shorten (possibly) the filming time, cut back (ever so slightly) on the post-production time, (theoretically) allow the writers and producers more time to craft the next season ahead of time, and even get the actors back to work on the next season sooner than it otherwise would, keeping younger actors from aging out of their characters too quickly.
But all of this is rampant speculation; I’m just some guy. What do I even know about TV? I mean, all I do is watch it all the time. But hey, don’t you?
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Monday, March 27, 2023
Sunday, March 26, 2023
New writer added for Season 2 of House of the Dragon
Filming on season 2 of House of the Dragon is not too far away, though starting a tad later than originally reported. But first- a bit of writer news!
According to his agency website, David Hancock is writing two episodes for season 2 of House of the Dragon. Hancock served as a co-executive producer for the first season of the show. However he’s stepping up to the plate and taking on even more responsibilities this year, according to to the site:
David is a writer and producer currently working on HOUSE OF THE DRAGON for HBO where he serves as Co-Executive Producer and has written two episodes for Season 2.
Prior to joining HotD, Hancock worked on Netflix’s The Crown for seasons 1-4, writing on several episodes.
An agency CV also confirms the return of season 1 director of photography Catherine Goldschmidt, who knocked it out of the park for episode 8, “The Lord of the Tides.” Going by her listed credits at the site, once again she’ll be working with the outstanding director Geeta Patel.
Dir: Geeta Patel
Prods: Ron Schmidt, Miguel Sapochnik & Ryan Condal
Filming on the second season is expected to begin sometime around the end of May, with scouting in Spain already begun. Production crews were spotted by the Spanish news in Cáceres, the city that has served as the stand-in for King’s Landing for several years now, after taking over for Dubrovnik, Croatia. Though there have been casting rumors, with filming season almost upon us, we should get some casting confirmations any day now!
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Saturday, March 25, 2023
Friday, March 24, 2023
Look Into the Flames: The Female Line of House Targaryen
By Red Aly
Every mystery embedded in A Song of Ice and Fire offers rich ground for theories to germinate as we wait … and wait … for the conclusion of the series. The speculation is endlessly entertaining, sometimes profound, often frivolous. The best theories are community-building pursuits as they inspire animated discussion among fans and maintain interest between books and between seasons. This series of articles is intended in this spirit.
What will be offered here are not exhaustive theories, but seeds: Possibilities built from questions that may have very interesting answers in the books to come, and which are therefore a chance for us to test our own predictive powers. I will generally avoid topics that have been exhaustively investigated elsewhere unless I have something fresh and worthwhile to propose. The aim is to inspire speculative discussion. There is only one rule: Keep it fun!
Be warned though: The Look Into the Flames series will contain many spoilers and are intended for people who have read all of the A Song of Ice and Fire books released so far, as well as Fire and Blood.
“History does not remember blood. It remembers names.”
Corlys Velaryon in House of the Dragon
One of the objectives George R.R. Martin had in writing A Song of Ice and Fire was to subvert dominant tropes of the high fantasy genre. He has said that he was bothered by the idealization of medieval society in fantasy novels and so in response his own fantasy epic exposes in excruciating detail just how unjust and brutal medieval social structures really were, and also just how hard they were on women.
Westeros is patriarchal to the core. Because it is patriarchal, lands, swords, wealth and names are all passed down from fathers to sons. Wars are fought to prevent women from inheriting. We are given extensive family trees but they do not usually tell us much about what happened to the daughters. Often, they fail to mention the maiden names of the mothers. Whoever these women were before they married, Westerosi historians apparently consider them to entirely belong to their husbands’ families after marriage.
At the same time there are hints that the mothers do in fact matter. The most glaring hint of course is the Valyrian practice of marrying brothers to sisters to “keep the bloodlines pure”. This brother-sister marriage pattern is such a weird thing to give so much prominence if there is no reason for it except to unsettle the readers. Yes, the royal families of Europe were clearly inbred for centuries. It is possible that GRRM was simply trying to show us how sick real history actually was through exaggeration. This isn’t a history book though; it is a fictional epic rooted in inversion of fantasy tropes. Which is why for this article I would like to examine the possibility that GRRM is using A Song of Ice and Fire to flip our own lazy acceptance of the patriarchal premise on its head.
“Dragons are neither male nor female, Barth saw the truth of that, but now one and now the other, as changeable as flame.” – A Feast for Crows
This quote is a great starting point because it is one of the reasons why many people believe that Daenerys is The Prince that was Promised. It is a theory that seems to be further supported when we learn that the word for “prince” is a gender-neutral term in High Valyrian and that using the original language of the prophecy it could just as easily mean “princess”. Regardless of whether Daenerys turns out to be the subject of the prophecy, GRRM has certainly given us cause to examine female bloodlines in more depth and to see where they might lead. Where are the loose ends of the Targaryen family tree? Which other families, beyond those bearing the name Targaryen, should we be looking at more carefully for story clues now that we are paying more attention to the mothers and daughters?
In the case of the Blackfyres we have been directly told that we should follow the female line because the male line is extinct. This small moment in a conversation between Tyrion Lannister and Illyrio Mopatis is the basis for a great deal of well-researched fan speculation on the true objectives of Varys. It is interesting though how quickly fan theories pass right back to looking only at the men. Debates rage online on whether Young Griff is really a Targaryen or a Blackfyre or a Brightflame, completely ignoring the fact that generations have passed and in the meantime, new babies were born. For that, mothers were necessary. Why on earth are fans arguing about it instead of considering that Aegon is likely to be all of those things? Genes come from both parents and the Blackfyres were not the only offshoot of the Targaryen family who ended up in Essos. What about Saera, daughter of Jaehaerys? Interesting isn’t it how close her name is to Serra, wife of Illyrio? Best to think of Essos as a melting pot bringing these threads together. That is easier to do if fans remember that babies are not just made by fathers, no matter what historians making family trees might say. In truth it is NOT about the name, but about the blood.
With this in mind let’s consider briefly a moment early in the series where Ned Stark is asked why he did not just take the Iron Throne for himself when he had the chance. His answer is that Robert Baratheon had the better claim. He was referring of course to the fact that Robert Baratheon’s grandmother was Rhaelle Targaryen. This, along with earlier Targaryen links during the conquest, meant that the Baratheon family was an offshoot of the Targaryen family, and this fact gave them more legitimacy than conquest alone. But I am not the first to wonder why Ned said “the better claim” instead of “I had NO claim.” If they were searching for a touch of legitimacy after the rebellion via links to the defeated dynasty, then surely saying “I had no claim” would have been more accurate? Maybe he too has a female line Targaryen hidden somewhere in his family tree.
I can already see some people’s eyes rolling. Not another hidden Targaryen!
Indeed, the number of characters fans have proposed might be hidden Targaryens over the years and the level of ridiculousness of some of these theories is reason to proceed with extreme caution. I think that our objectives in this are important though. I am not looking for hidden Targaryens because I want to support some outrageous new theory for who the third head of the dragon might be. Rather the opposite: I would be more interested in tracing the female line back to the characters who we know to have Targaryen lineage. For example, I am curious why, after centuries of marrying brothers to sisters to keep the bloodlines pure, it seems not to have mattered in the end that Daenerys Targaryen, indisputably a “dragon,” appears to be half Blackwood by blood (as indeed was her brother Rhaegar). The series has many unresolved storylines and knowing more about mothers and daughters and where they ended up might prove very enlightening. When it comes to the women, there are so many loose ends.
So many in fact that to me it feels deliberate. It feels like GRRM left those strings hanging until he could be certain of the details, and at the same time he is using extreme patriarchy of historical records to hide things that are actually significant. Fans looking only at family names and not full bloodlines make that so easy.
Diving into history then, the first loose end left hanging is an unnamed second daughter of Daenys the Dreamer who would have been born 80 or more years before the conquest. We know that she married, and we know she had at least one child. We do not know how many or who they were. It is probably safe to assume though that this daughter’s bloodline fed into another Valyrian family such as the Velaryons, and that from there it probably fed right back into the main Targaryen family. Chances are high in other words that Aerys, grandson of Daenys, married his cousin who was a granddaughter of Daenys, bringing together male and female lines. House Velaryon meanwhile did not marry only Targaryens and other Velaryons. The same is true for any other Valyrian families this daughter may have married into. These families could have passed on their drop of dragon blood from Daenys to other families in Essos and Eastern Westeros, and this in turn may have been a factor in alliances and marriages in the following generations.
Moving forward in time, I have already mentioned Saera daughter of Jaehaerys I and Alysanne. She is known to have been mother to at least 3 bastards who were born in Lys and Volantis after 80 A.C. Some of her bastards presented their claims for the Iron Throne during the Great Council of 101, and so it is clear they had ambitions in Westeros. This was not long before the conflicts began with the Triarchy, a fact which may be relevant, given those ambitions, since Lys was part of the Triarchy. It is worth also wondering if any of Saera’s children had a connection to House Rogare of Lys who we know had the Valyrian look and owned a pillow house such as the one where Saera established herself. If so, Saera’s line may have fed back into House Targaryen via Larra Rogare, mother of Aegon IV and his sister-wife Naerys. By other routes I would consider it likely that it eventually merged with the Blackfyre line.
Next, we need to look at the Dance of the Dragons. We know that Aemond Targaryen’s lover (possibly wife) Alys Rivers of Harrenhal was pregnant with his child late in the war. A short time later she led a rebellion in her child’s name. Her story goes cold because historians did not track her after the winter fever of 133, but this child, if he lived, would have been the only survivor of the Greens’ bloodline and would have been protected by the supporters of the Greens in the Riverlands such as House Bracken or House Vance of Atranta. Beyond that there is a small possibility that this child carried the otherwise extinct bloodlines of either Visenya or Rhaena (wife of Aegon the Uncrowned) for reasons I will clarify in a future article parsing Harrenhal’s history and that of the relevant Riverlands and Crownlands Houses.
Following the Dance we know of multiple descendants of Rhaena and Baela Targaryen born between 136 and 165 A.C. This is the female line of Rhaenys, Queen who Never Was. Baela and husband Alyn Velaryon had at least one child and probably more as we know Baela was pregnant a second time. Rhaena had six Hightower daughters. We know next to nothing at all about any of them except that they existed. I suspect though that the sequence of events during and after the war offers some clues, for example we know that Alyn Velaryon and Benjicot Blackwood became friends during the Vale’s succession conflict. A decent chance exists that a daughter of Alyn and Baela’s became a Blackwood. Rhaena’s connections in the Vale during the Dance likely mean that at least one of her six daughters married into a Vale family (Corbray, Aryn, Royce). Others would have stayed in or closer to Oldtown (Hightower cousins, Tyrell, Redwyne, Rowan, maybe even Dayne). So, while there are no family trees that clarify the issue, there are hints dropped here and there in the histories regarding which families might be worth looking at when more details are available.
Moving ahead a generation, Aegon IV of course was promiscuous and spread his seed far and wide. Daena Targaryen and Aegon IV were the source of the male Blackfyre line. But Daemon Blackfyre and his right hand Aegor Rivers were not Aegon IV’s only legitimized bastards. Bloodraven had no children that we know of but he did have two full sisters Mya and Gwenys. As great bastards of the King they would have married well to Blackwood cousins of the main line or to Blackwood allies. If they had children they were born between 186 and 224 A.C.
Then there is Elaena, daughter of Aegon III, sister of Daena. She had two bastards with Alyn Velaryon, one son born nominally a Plumm, and four Penrose children born between 184 and 195 A.C. . We can’t trace any of them. We only know that House Penrose fought against the Blackfyres in their rebellions, so Elaena’s Penrose descendants probably remained in families that were loyal to the crown during that time. Her Plumm grand- or great-grandaughters if they existed likely married into other Westerlands Houses such as Marbrand, Westerling, or Reyne; perhaps the roots of Ellyn Reyne’s arrogance and ambition lay in her proud lineage.
Yet another tantalizing loose end concerns Jenny of Oldstones. There is so far no indication that she and Duncan had any children, or if they did, that they did not die at Summerhall along with their father and much of the Targaryen family. Their line most likely ended. I do wonder why though, if Duncan’s line is extinct, are there repeated references in the books to the Prince of Dragonflies in both Sansa and Catelyn’s chapters. Whether Sansa is a descendant of Duncan and Jenny or not via Catelyn Tully, clearly we are supposed to associate her with them. Meanwhile Petyr Baelish does not come across as a hopeless romantic but more of a sociopath. Since regardless of what he says, love seems unlikely to actually be his motive for going after first Catelyn and then Sansa, it is worth wondering what about their bloodline is.
Finally, we have Aegon V’s two sisters Daella and Rhae. Both are known to have birthed unknown numbers of children into unknown families. Their mother was a Dayne which may have influenced where they ended up, though we will have to wait for the next instalment of Fire and Blood to know more. But I can’t be the only reader to look at these vague loose ends and wonder why. Surely these sisters and daughters and offspring would not have been mentioned at all if there was no plan for them? What does all of this mean?
Well, if the Blackfyre line likely merges together the bloodlines of various exiles and bastards, it is reasonable to consider that something similar has been happening in Westeros. This is not a linear story of father to son, but instead it is a more subtle splitting and merging pattern involving both sides of characters’ lineages. If we start with Jaehaerys, essentially 3 bloodlines survived from him; that of Rhaenys, daughter of Aemon, that of Rhaenyra who descended from all of Daella, Alyssa and Baelon, and that of Saera and her Essos bastards. Before and since then there have been more splits and more merges but it all moves in a steady flow that does not ignore one half of the genes just because historians do. It leads to our eventual three heads of the Dragon. Possibly these bloodlines may even be seeking each other out and this is why Targaryen brothers and sisters often became so intensely attracted.
It could be why Aegon IV chose several of the mistresses he did and maybe the rivalry between Bloodraven and Bittersteel for Shiera Seastar’s affections is hinting at some deeper driving force. Or maybe tracing the female line just explains the various wars of Westeros in a new light by providing a clear basis for significant alliances and rivalries.
Whatever it is, hints and open questions on the female line that George R.R. Martin has provided give us a great deal to think about.
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Thursday, March 23, 2023
The Last of Us zombie types
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Wednesday, March 22, 2023
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Wednesday, March 1, 2023
Ewan Mitchell says “the best is yet to come” from Aemond Targaryen
Ewan Mitchell interviews are few and far between, but when they do come around … boy, do they deliver. In his second-ever interview for House of the Dragon, Ewan Mitchell discusses his process for getting into Aemond’ Targaryen’s head, and (very, very vaguely) teases good material in season 2.
In his conversation with The Face, (his go to for House of the Dragon interviews, it seems) Ewan Mitchell explains how he’s gone semi-method in preparation for season 2 of House of the Dragon, walking at a slower pace than usual and dressing all in black.
“There’s a Johnny Cash music video, ‘God’s Gonna Cut You Down,’ and someone says in that that wearing black stands for the poor and the downtrodden. And that’s what Aemond is,” Ewan says, then somewhat contradictorily goes on to explain that he based Aemond’s way of carrying himself on the famously slow gait of movie monsters.
“For Aemond’s walk, there was something I found interesting about 80’s horror icons. No matter how slow they walk, they always catch up with Jamie Lee Curtis. There’s something in the physicality of Freddy [Krueger], Michael Myers, Jeepers Creepers.”
Ewan might not be at the level of method acting where he’ll get stuck speaking with Elvis’ Aemond’s accent for the rest of his life, but he did commit to maintaining distance from Matt Smith while filming season 1.
“I said to Ryan: ‘I’ve got this idea of avoiding Matt Smith’ … because there’s this moment in episode eight where we have that intense stare-down. I thought there was something in experimenting and saving that moment for then. Aemond idolises Daemon, and this is the first time that he makes any sort of contact with him. Their family tree is actually a circle!”
Matt Smith agreed to the arrangement, and Ewan kept apart from his co-star, going so far as to eat lunch away from him. “I just wanted to keep that separation, so that I never saw Matt and I only ever saw Daemon,” Ewan says.
Ryan Condal confirms that Ewan is, indeed, very, very committed to his craft. “I went around the corner and saw Ewan in the corner with his sword, practicing,” he recalls. “That to me felt very Aemond. He’s always working on improving his skills. He’s not taking coffee breaks … I don’t want to say he’s Method because I actually don’t know what his approach is. But he came into [his first audition] as Aemond! I just remember quietly saying to the casting director afterwards: ‘He’s fantastic, I have to have him… Is he always like that?’”
One does get the sense that Ewan’s extreme shyness makes this sort of intense preparation necessary to get into character and Ewan admits that, yes, he’s always been this laconic.
“My friends call me The Iceberg because I’m seen as cool and collected. I don’t show too much. I’m just floating along the seas … I was a very quiet kid growing up, and I always played my cards close to my chest.”
Speaking of quiet, when asked about what’s in store for Aemond in season 2, Ewan claims that “HBO [is] going to detonate this charge in my head if I say anything remotely spoilerish.”
However, when asked if he’s got a message for fans, he replies:
“Stay tuned. The best is yet to come.”
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