Two mighty fantasy franchises battle it out this month as The Rings of Power, a prequel to The Lord of the Rings, and House of the Dragon, a prequel to Game of Thrones, come to streaming services. But which of these much-anticipated epics is the best?
HBO’s House of the Dragon and Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power are very much stamped from the same mould, both large-scale epics with huge international casts in which men and monsters fight with swords and sorcery in a mediaeval world full of violence and turmoil.
The original and best epic fantasy novel, JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, was turned into a hugely successful movie trilogy by Peter Jackson – he even managed to squeeze a further three movies out of its shorter prequel, The Hobbit. Wisely, Jackson chose to concentrate on the battles and intrigues of the books, rather than on the balladry and linguistic detail to which Tolkien was devoted.
The success of the Rings movies left other companies casting around for similar fantasy epics they could adapt, and HBO’s solution was George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, an interminable dynastic fantasy vaguely based on the Wars of the Roses. Martin had picked up some of the most obvious fantasy elements of The Lord of the Rings – dragons, elves and so on – and without any of Tolkien’s erudition and cultural insight, bashed out a series of pot-boilers where plausibility and consistency took second place to blood and thunder. Ideal material, thought HBO – and, being a subscription channel, we could throw in some extreme violence and nudity as well.
House of the Dragon
The result was Game of Thrones, which dominated the streaming landscape for eight years, running to 73 episodes from 2011 to 2019. The series received 59 Primetime Emmy Awards, the most by a drama series, including Outstanding Drama Series in 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2019. But it ran into creative difficulties when the episodes began to outpace the published novels, and the final season received significant critical backlash for its reduced length and creative decisions, with many considering it a disappointing conclusion.
But such success demanded a sequel (or prequel, in this case), based on portions of Martin’s 2018 novel Fire and Blood. Set two hundred years before the events of Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon chronicles the downfall of the House Targaryen, and the events leading up to and covering the Targaryen war of succession, known as the “Dance of the Dragons”.
House of the Dragon received a straight-to-series order in October 2019 with casting beginning in July 2020 and principal photography beginning in April 2021 in the United Kingdom. The series is scheduled to premiere on August 21, 2022. Its first season will consist of ten episodes. Though the material it draws from seems to be slim, there’s every prospect that it will be drawn out to at least five seasons, so buckle up for a long, hard ride.
Stars of House of the Dragon include Paddy Considine as King Viserys Targaryen, the fifth king of the Seven Kingdoms; Emma D’Arcy as Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, a dragonrider who expects to become the Seven Kingdoms’ first queen; and Matt Smith as Prince Daemon Targaryen, the heir presumptive to the Iron Throne.
The Rings of Power
Meanwhile, Amazon bought the television rights for The Lord of the Rings for US$250 million in November 2017, making a five-season production commitment worth at least US$1 billion. This would make it the most expensive television series ever made. Of course the problem was that the main threads of the story had already been filmed, so a plot had to be cobbled together from appendices and supporting material. The series is set in the Second Age of Middle-earth, thousands of years before The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Despite this, the production intended to evoke the films with similar production design, and several members of the series’ large international cast portray younger versions of characters from the films.
Stars of The Rings of Power include Cynthia Addai-Robinson as Míriel, the queen regent of Númenor; Robert Aramayo as Elrond, a half-Elven architect and politician; Maxim Baldry as Isildur, a Númenórean sailor who will eventually become a warrior and king; and Lenny Henry as Sadoc Burrows, an elder of the Harfoots (sort of proto-Hobbits). It premier on Friday, September 2nd, with two episodes.
But which of the two series will capture the audience and critical approval?
Critics
Ahead of release, critics are putting their money on House of the Dragon, which has the most proven brand and platform. Amazon’s Prime Video has yet to demonstrate it can pull off a TV epic, and will have to draw new subscribers to its service to make its huge financial gamble pay off. Though it does have the residual popularity of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings movies to draw on, it doesn’t have Jackson’s name, nor, it has to be said, much star power. It will, though, be family friendly, so if you don’t like gore and nudity, it’s the safer bet.
Remember though that as both are prequels, they labour under the burden that we pretty much know what’s going to happen in the end; and that’s that what did for the critically panned Star Wars prequel movies.
The real question is whether either fantasy series can turn into a returning attraction for season after season, matching the success of Disney+’s Star Wars series.
One thing is certain; if both shows are hits, it will lead to a flood of derivative and possibly inferior imitations. There doesn’t have to be a single winner, but both could be losers if they fail to match the creative quality of their progenitors.
So, whether you choose to watch House of the Dragon, or The Rings of Power, or both, or neither, we’re in for an epic fantasy battle that may determine the look of subscription TV for years to come.
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