124: ‘She-Hulk’ vs. ‘House of the Dragon.’ Plus: Lena Wilson of the NYT vs. Amandla Stenberg of ‘Bodies Bodies Bodies.’

Welcome

back to across the movie I will present to my Bulwark. Plus, I am your host, Sunny Vonage, Culture Editor of The Bulwark. I’m joined as always by Alyssa Rosenberg of The Washington Post and Peter Souderman. I’m raising magazine. Alyssa Peter.

How are you today?

I’m well.

I am happy to be talking about movies with friends.

First up in controversies and controversies. We’re gonna talk about one of the silliest feuds in recent months, and it’s gonna take me a second to set stage here. So go grab a white claw, kickback, wait, you just take it all in. Alright? So here’s here’s what’s going on.

The the critic Lena Wilson reviewed the new a twenty four thriller slash satire bodies bodies bodies for The New York Times. Handing out one of the movie’s few negative reviews. Of last week, Wilson posted a privately sent direct message from one of the movie stars, Amanda Steinberg, that said the the following, this is what Amanda said to, Lena, quote, your review was great. Maybe if you had gotten your eyes off my tits, you could have watched the movie exclamation point end quote. Wilson tweeted out the DM and suggested that it was rank homophobia Stenberg to send that to her suggesting that she wouldn’t have done the same to Anthony Lane or Alison Wilmore.

And at first, I was actually kind of sympathetic. To to miss Wilson’s complaint here. You know, there’s that’s a weird thing to be democratic. Right? That’s just very weird.

Some important context that I was at the time unaware of, and later found out, In her review, Wilson described the film as a quote, ninety five minute advertisement for cleavage unquote, which is a sort of catty line that sounds kind of good in your head, but doesn’t really make much sense as a critique of the film if you’ve actually seen it. There’s actually not a lot of cleavage. Anyway, neither mind, whatever. Seeking sympathy for being bullied by this jokey and privately sent DM that she posted for the world to see, Wilson instead found herself under attack, not only for, you know, revealing private discourse whatever. I I’m not too sympathetic to that.

If you get an unsolicited DM, you’re allowed to post it. That’s one of the rules of Twitter. But she also the people found the kind of hilariously diluted TikTok videos that Lena Wilson has done in which she talks about how good she is at her job, and got yelled at for refusing to acknowledge her own privilege, her father is an editor at the time. Blah blah blah. The whole thing is almost too silly for words, but it is it’s funny And it’s relevant here because it actually feels like something from the movie bodies, bodies, bodies itself.

It’s a movie about late millennial, early Gen Z, and securities about social media and the reflexive effort to use identity as a cudgel to win arguments of all sorts. And it confirms one of my absolute bedrock beliefs about the state of modern criticism and really journalism in general, artists should not take reviews personally. And critics really need thicker skins if they’re gonna be in the business of criticizing other people’s work just as a part of their job. Alyssa, is this all incontrovertible proof that we’re living in the dumbest timeline?

Yeah. I think there’s there’s reasonable case to be made there. One thing that you forgot to mention is that this is also proof that we all just have way too much access both to media that let us get in touch with each other and with media that let hep pathological overshares express themselves. Right? Like, none of this would have happened if it took actual work for a man with Danberg to get in touch with Lina Wilson.

And if Lina Wilson did not have like, the technology and the platform that allowed her to, like, put herself out there on the Internet. And everyone involved, all of us observing this, and the two participants would be much better off. We, all of us, and I include I include, you know, Sunny with his movie opinions, Peter with his terrible terrible Twitter puns, just have way too many opportunities to express ourselves, to way too many people. And It’s bad. The Internet was a mistake.

We should all go back to living in a much more siloed time and we would all be better for it. None of us are as interesting to the rest of the world as we think. Even those of us who have a low opinion of how interesting we are to the rest of the world, we should all express ourselves much less and we would all be better off.

I I I do wanna I wanna highlight just one thing that you said the the having access to everybody at all I do think that this is a real problem with the modern critic artists relationship. And I’ve written about this before for you at the at the Russian postal site. But I think it’s a real mistake for artists to be very online just in general. And, like, I hate to I hate to suggest that they should they need to separate themselves from the rest of it. But being being constantly barrage by both praise and criticism is really unhealthy.

And it’s unhealthy for critics as well. I mean, I know you know, look, I there there are critics who have relationships with artists that I find to be slightly too close for comfort. I’ll put it that way. I think I think and I I think Twitter in particular really encourages a lot of that. And it’s bad for the discourse just in general, but it’s bad for, like, criticism as an art form.

Yeah. No. I think that’s absolutely correct. I mean, I think one of the things that social media, particularly Twitter does, is it makes Everyone feel like everyone else to a certain extent. Right?

I mean, obviously, when, you know, some blue check unleashes the hoards that person has a disparate impact on Twitter. But, like, you know, someone who’s incredibly famous can show up in your timeline in the exact same way. As someone who has twelve followers. If you have open DMs, anyone can get at you. And that leveling effect decreases both the sense of distinction between different kinds of people.

And in some ways, that’s good. Right? I mean, it’s like everyone gets you know, everyone has the chance to make and ask themselves and exactly the same way. But decreasing those sort of barriers to entry and access, you know, theoretically, there’s a leveling effect there, but there also is a almost a removal of a speed governor. Right?

There’s a removal of that. Like, do I actually wanna say this to this person? Is this a good idea that, you know, if you actually have to make an effort to either say something or get in touch with someone else, you inherently have more time to consider whether voicing that sentiment is a good idea. And you know when the barrier to entry are this low, people aren’t going to end up making fools of themselves as everyone involved. I think did here.

Yeah.

And this this is another good case for having handlers, having having press people and having publicity agents to who serve as an intermediary. If

you are an extremely famous person who wants to maintain your connections with everyday life, like, there are things that you can do that don’t involve being on Twitter. Like, You could do volunteer work. You can, like, be, you know, go canvassing for a local candidate. You can be in the PTA. You can care about your school board.

Like, there are ways to behave like a normal human being and get like salsa of the earth experiences that are much more useful to you and much less distorting and sort of ego morphing than spending all your time on Twitter reading what an unrepresentative sample of the most opinionated people on earth think about you. Yeah.

Peter, you you have seen the move. You’ve seen body’s body’s body’s as have I The thing that jumped out of me again about this whole situation is that it really felt like something out of the movie. I did you did you get that sense while you were catching up on this nonsense?

It

is the kind of thing that the movie is sadderizing, I think. I don’t know if it feels exactly like something out of the movie or it which deals with actress are you acting and and podcasting and sort of people in the parks of the media business, but doesn’t deal with journalism and criticism. The movie it reminded me of is now just the name is escaping me, but it’s the Black and White Netflix film. Oh, Malcolm memory. Malcolm memory.

But the filmmaker who has just, like, spends a whole evening complaining about the critics and their reaction to his work. And it reminded me a little bit of that too. I I suppose the strangest thing to me is to see that there are people in the world who you can imagine they could live perfectly productive lives without being on Twitter at all. And yet, they choose to be on Twitter. And I like, it’s just genuinely the case that in our line of work, you get a Twitter’s terrible, whatever, but you get a lot of you like, work useful information.

Stuff we have to talk about. Stuff if you’re an editor, you’ve gotta understand just like quickly what a bunch of people are saying. I’m not saying it’s completely impossible to do the kinds of jobs that the three of us do without Twitter. At the same time, it’s just it’s actually a useful tool for us, and I’ve come to, like, sort of grudgingly accept that I will have to check-in with Twitter and see what’s going on so that at least to sort of scan it and get a sense of of what people are saying. And it genuinely provides a lot of very up to date information and argument pretty quickly, which is something that we all need to be able to just consume that stuff.

A lot throughout the day. I mean, you’d be able to get that kind of information. But but if you’re an actress, you don’t need to. If you’re on set, trying to like delivering lines. Now, I get that people say, look, I need to know what people are saying about me because I am a public figure and my business is is to sell myself to the world.

This

is what you have a publicist for. Right? This is where you have someone who in addition to booking your appearances and, like, coordinating your interviews, has, like, an intern or whatever, search for a man with Danberg on Twitter, put together a digest, and then, like, you the publicist turn that into, like, a usable set of insights where you can help someone see if their public image is trending in the directions that they want or not. Right?

So I I think that’s true in many cases, but I will say that, you know, I have no idea how, like, financially successful Stenberg is. Right? And that is and that’s they’re having a publicist and having a service do that for you. Is something that costs money. And if you’re a Nicole Kidman and you travel, you know, and you like, the studio is paying for a hundred thousand dollars a month and, you know, putting you up and up.

An entourage and a private plane and all that sort of thing, then that makes totally makes sense. But for an up and coming young actress, I I don’t I’m not saying it’s not financially feasible. But I will say, like, we all think we think of these people as like being super rich. They’re not necessarily if they are starring in relatively low budget a twenty four films, and they’re under twenty five or thirty years old.

Also, I I I would like to push back a little bit on the suggestion that if you are a productive, you know, member of the creative community. You don’t need to be on something like Instagram. So for the record, this is an Instagram DM. It wasn’t a Twitter DM. But like but like, you know, I I do think that that’s actually part of the job of being a a six a modern successful young actress is having that sort of Instagram presence.

You have to be you have to be putting putting your image out there. You have to be interacting with people at least on some very basic level. Like, that is part of the modern star creation idea. Right?

I think that’s probably yeah. That’s certainly more true for Instagram than for Twitter. At the same time, like, there is no obligation to get no critics DMs. Right? They’re like, that is not part of the job.

And you know, it took back up for a second. I mean, part of what’s strange about this is, you know, Lina Wilson’s criticism of body body bodies bodies, bodies may or may not have been on point. I haven’t had a chance to see the movie in part because my child has stopped sleeping. And therefore so of aye. But, you know, what she is saying is that the like, the camera and the movie are focused on the actresses’ cleavage.

Right? I mean, the piece doesn’t say, like, I just couldn’t take my eyes off of a Bandwidth’s tits. Right? Like, that’s not what she said. And so her perception of the movie’s focus may be wrong, but what she was writing about was what the camera in the movie was doing, not like sitting there with her tongue out about the actresses.

And so, you know, it contributes to my sense of, like, everyone in this is sort of, like, a manless Emberg kind of seemed to be getting in her DMs for the, like, I’m gonna punch back and, like, you know, be sort of feminist. Lena Wilson is, like, you know, claiming this was homophobic when it’s, like, I think, pretty clearly not. And now every single step of the way, it’s not just that this is you know, people who have gotten addicted to expressing themselves, expressing themselves and ways that making them look bad. But every step of the way seems to involve a fairly substantial mis meeting in a way that is fascinating. Yeah.

Well, bad faith. I mean, there there’s just bad faith all the way down on this is is I think I think a fair way to put it. I

do think that what’s different about this is that it plays out in public in real time because it if you read histories of Hollywood and of also of criticism and of of of, you know, film critics, you often see stories about film critics running into directors or actors and like spats happening. Right? Because like an actor will remember that a cutting line from something that the times, you know, the LA Times or New York Times critic wrote a couple of years ago, and we’ll, like, come up to them and be sort of bitchy about it at you know, party at Sundance or something. And like that sort of thing has kind of always happened. And there have always been the the sort of weird Parosocial odd relationships between critics and filmmakers.

Some critics obviously, you know, really separate themselves from the artists some really try to, like, get to know those people and become, you know, quite close with them. I think there’s arguments for both approaches both can provide services to the public in different ways. But those that sort of like semi public argument has always happened. But typically, unless you were quite, you know, into the the scene. Right?

Unless you were at the event or, like, really, you know, new people who were there you know, this wouldn’t be the sort of thing that everyone could then seed on the Internet that would get written up by BuzzFeed, that would be turned into something, it would be turned into a kind of secondary entertainment for public consumption. Or if it was, it would only happen in, like, a a magazine feature article six months later or a book two years later as a story that has recalled about something that happened, not in this sort of real time way. And that’s it to me seems like the different thing is that this immediately becomes something that is sort of not just package that is, like, delivered for public consumption. And that’s that’s on will Right? Because it was it was Wilson who took this public and decided to make this, you know, the decision to, like, display this for the world.

And that seems to me, like, a bigger error of judgment than the initial DM, which it’s not something that I would recommend. Like, just like, you’re if you were an actress, if you are if you are a performer, if you are a director, if you are a writer, if you whatever, like, if you are a creative person who puts material out in the world, you will get bad reviews. Like, it will happen, and you will have to learn to live with that. And, like, I I I’m genuinely sympathetic. It’s really unpleasant.

If you’ve

ever had like a a bad thing written about something that you have worked on for months of your life, it’s very unpleasant to see somebody just sort of casually dismiss it. At the same time, like, this is you just have to find some way to be like, okay.

Now I’m gonna do

the next thing, and the next thing will be good, and I’m gonna try and make it good, and that’s what my life was gonna be. And I’m I’m not gonna not gonna respond. Well,

and also, I mean, your point about there being these sort of backs in the past, a lot of those happened in person. Right? And there’s a much higher barrier to saying something to somebody in person. There’s a reason that, like, say it to my face is a challenge. Right?

And so, again, I think, you know, this is a display of bad impulses and bad faith by everyone enabled by tech technology that has just warped a lot of people’s brains and sense of propriety and what’s interesting to other people. Yeah.

I I would suggest in the future that folks not cloud chase by highlighting DMs if you have made TikToks talking about how you’re extremely talented and great and stuff. Just a just a protip. Alright. So what do we think is the controversy or an controversy that artists and critics are acting like children on main, Peter.

Never ever do anything on the Internet. That’s why I don’t post anything except puns. That’s that’s all I had to say.

Alyssa, It’s a controversy as our Peter’s Puns.

Controversy. Peter’s Puns also everything else that Peter tweets controversy. That’s I’m just gonna throw that out there. Wow. We got a new segment.

Alright. Make sure to tune in for our bonus episode this Friday. Look back at Game of Thrones. Three years after the finale left us going, oh, okay. That was that was alright.

That was fine.

That was

fine finale. Alright. Speaking of Game of Thrones, on to the main events. This week, we are trying something a little different in a segment I am unilaterally naming right now. Which is worth your time.

Question mark. We’re looking at the first episode of two new shows. She hulk and House of the Dragon, and asking whether or not and based entirely on the first episode, it’s worth your time to start the program. There are nine on infinite viewing options out there and yet you still only have twenty four hours in the day, not but twenty four hours. So we are here to make the tough calls so you don’t have to.

So first up, we have Sheelk. The latest iteration of Marvel’s content machine, Tatiana Masani plays, Jennifer Walters, a prosecutor who becomes She Hulk after some of her cousin Bruce Banner’s played by Mark Ruffalo. His blood accidentally mixes with hers in a car crash. The entire episode more or less is a flashback to this origin story we see her transform and immediately learn to control her transformation because as the show didactically explains to us at life, ladies always be harassed you. I mean, that’s it.

That’s that’s like the whole explanation there. There’s something about genetics I don’t know. Something the blood mixes Omega. I don’t know. Anyway, She hulk is very proud of the fact that it feels like it’s written by Ascension Twitterbot with its man’s dudes and it’s set design celebrating Ruth’s condo forever and its speeches about cat calling and how women can ever tell anyone that they’re always mad.

As if they’re not doing this all the time on Twitter, which fine, fine, it’s, you know, whatever, it’s fine. But I’d it’d be nice if they spend as much time making the CGI look like something other than complete trash or a mass the ability to have Bruce Banner look like a good and caring ally while he listens to She hulk complain. Luckily, the episodes are only half an hour long. So that’s got something going for, you know? House of the Dragon meanwhile is roughly the complete opposite of She hulk in every direction.

It’s an hour long. It has zero jokes. In it, assuming that you don’t find comedy in rapist getting their testicle spike to tree stops. It shows us misogyny rather than simply telling us about it. And instead of having two characters on screen talking to each other for the whole show.

Because I mean, that’s really what the whole first episode of She Hulk is just two people talking to each other. I hate it has, like, two hundred characters. All talking to each other and some of them doing violence to each other and and do looking at each other weird ways. And there are new houses. I don’t know some of these houses.

I I know the Baratheons, but I don’t know who these high towers are. I don’t know. Anyway, they’re all jockeying for attention and position. Other words, it is a Game of Thrones joint. As things open, a new Targaryen takes the throne, Acerus the first, is played by Patty Considine.

He wants a male heir and is willing to sacrifice his wife to get it, all while ignoring the capable daughter at his side. Meanwhile, his brother Damon He plots to take the iron throne. He’s leading the the city guard. He’s gonna do lots of things. It’s pretty obvious.

So much drama, so many dragons, so little time. There wasn’t even really this wasn’t even really a prologue so much as like a prologue to the prologue. Remember back to the original series and how that took like four episodes just to introduce us to like everybody in the show. I mean, that that series took forever to get going, but once and dead, it was pretty fun. That said, there were there was actually some action in this on, like, in the the original series, the jousting sequences gave us a bit of that rousing bloody action that we love from the show The only thing these two things really share in common is a fairly staggering amount of kind of shoddy doggy CGI.

In in the new Game of Thrones, there are all these shots of swooping overhead and like kind of Dragon’s eye views of Kings Landing that feel very much like something out of a AAA video game like a assassin’s creed. Or something like that. It’s not quite as jarring as the the facial work on she hulk, which is really bad and in close-up for way too much time, but it’s not great either. Peter, you love somewhat shoddy c g i, which show was better on that

front. Are you asking which show had better shot at CGI? Which show had better bad CGI? Man, I was actually gonna talk about how I thought that She Hulk looked kind of pretty good. Really?

So not

great. It looks cartoony at times. It look it doesn’t look you know, solid and realistic. But I’m thinking back to just over a decade ago when Avatar came out. And Avatar obviously looks better than this movie.

But when Avatar was, like, oh, man, they can make a nine foot tall blue creature and they can make it look like and, like, it took, you know, a zillion dollars and gym camera into, like, basically demand that every affects house in the world, like, figure out how to do stuff that they’d never done before. And somehow another, like, twelve, thirteen years later, Disney plus is just putting this out in a half hour comedy. And that’s how like, it’s not exactly the same. But my point is that, like, Forbes Television You just said it’s worse.

You just said it’s worse. You just said it’s thirteen thirteen years later and it’s worse.

For television, it actually looks pretty good. The other thing that I’ve been watching recently is old is old episodes of Babylon five. Which had CG back in the early nineteen nineties back when this was, like, a CG was really expensive and something that, like, was basically, that you’d ever saw on television. And the thing is the show is still pretty great. Like, it’s it’s a dorky sci fi show in its own way, but it’s also kind of intricate.

It’s, you know, one of the first shows. I believe the first show where a single writer ever wrote to the whole season j o s j Michael Strasinski, the show creator, wrote all of seasons three, four, and five, I believe, entirely by himself. And, like, the show works because the writing is good. And because the acting is often is is often quite good. Not always great, but like the, you know, the fundamentals of the storytelling are sound.

And to me, that’s where Chihoke falls apart and where it’s like it kinda doesn’t it it doesn’t deliver is that it’s this what’s wrong with that show isn’t the CG which is actually, hey, that looks pretty good for television for a thirty minute you know, sort of family friendly kind of TV show. What’s wrong with She Hulk is that, like, the characters, the storytelling, the the sort of the The basic work of, like, engaging you in in drama and comedy isn’t done well enough to to actually make me feel like I need to continue watching this show. I definitely

feel

like it’s and Disney has gotten into the habit of dropping the first two or three episodes of a show at once. They’ve done that. They did that with Obi wan. They did it with, I think, the Mandalorian, some of their some of their other Star Wars stuff. And some of their other Marble stuff too.

And I feel like this is a show that definitely could have used a smoother transition than

like thirty

minutes of exposition and then two minutes of a courtroom

fight, which

is a mess. It’s

it’s very weird for a show that starts by saying basic like, literally, monologue into the viewer. They’re they’re where the the main character turns to the camera and talks directly to the viewer and says, look, we you know, this is gonna be a courtroom drama, but you’re probably wondering about the superhero stuff. So let’s get that out of the way. Well, they get that out of the way, and then there’s no courtroom drama. I mean, there is the courtroom drama to the extent that it happens is a She hulk fight, a a very brief one.

And it’s this, like, all of the press stuff. And again, you shouldn’t necessarily judge a show based on, you know, what it what the actors and had created writers and directors are saying two years beforehand when they’re developing it, you know, what they’re telling comic con. At the same time, all the press has been like, no, this is gonna be a kind of intimate personal show that’s more about the law, and it’s sort of a legal comedy. And, you know, we fought with some superhero elements. And the show delivers that message.

Two viewers directly in the opening scene and then isn’t a legal show at all in the first episode. Well

and more than that, the show on her actually gave an interview where she was like, yeah, we were writing the show and realized that, like, none of us know how to do, like, witty courtroom stuff. Which what? I’m sorry. Right? Like, if if you’re not comfortable doing that, you should not be adapting the superhuman law.

She hulk stuff, which clearly is supposed to be at the heart of the show and is why I was excited for it in the first place. I mean, it’s just the sort of advanced press for the show was insanely badly calibrated just in terms of the number of people who were like, yeah, what are really good at some of this stuff, and it’s just bizarre. And, you know, It does not seem to me to be a case of a showrunner miss speaking because clearly they don’t seem comfortable doing the courtroom stuff. And the, you know, the statement that Jennifer Walters is rehearsing at the beginning of the episode is, like, bad and generic and uncompelling. And the whole point of the superhuman law arc in the comics is that Jennifer Walters is such a good smart creative lawyer that a firm hires her not for She Hulk but as herself to open a superhuman law practice to come up with creative legal theories on behalf of its, like, super powered clients.

Right? Like, that’s what’s interesting about the series is the sort of funny smart legal takes on stuff, and then sort of contrasting the cerebral nature of Jennifer Walters with her, like, big green semi alter ego, which well, yes, she is, like, under control. She’s in control. She is not, like, dumb hulk, but she’s, like, hornier and funnier then Jennifer herself normally is. Like, there are a bunch of running jokes about, like, how hard she hulk parties and, like and, you know, from the trailers, it seems like we’re gonna get some of that material, but, like, you know, it is it is not like a downward comic.

It’s funny and, like, kinda sexy and silly. And that does not come across in the pilot at all, which I just found incredibly smug. Yeah. I

mean, I do you do you take issue with the way I I kind of dismissively described the No. The because I I feel like I you know, as the man explainer on the show, you know, maybe I just don’t. I don’t get it. And

is the foremost I think probably the foremost, she hulk booster not just like on the show, but probably among critics anywhere. Like, I think your description is accurate, and this is a bar. It’s I mean, I there was I never conceived of a world in which a Tatiana Maslani starring adaptation of one of my favorite comics would seem unwatchable to me after the pilot, but this was awful. Alright. So let’s

shift let’s shift a little bit. Let’s talk about Game of Thrones. Listen, what did you make up new Game of Thrones? Game of Thrones two point o? Or really like zero point five since it’s a prequel?

So I wanna

be clear, I have seen the first four episodes of the series, and I will endeavor not to talk about them all because, you know, not trying to be a jerk. You know, I I didn’t immediately love this the way that I law immediately loved Martin’s novel the when I first read it. You

mean the prequel novel that this is based on? No.

No. The like, the game yeah. Like, I’m talking about a Game of Thrones, the novel, and then the show it was based on. I’ve read the I’ve read the short story on which this is based, but I have not red fire and blood in part because my husband has our copy and is monopolizing it. You know, I think this is House of Dragon is more dour than game of Thrones.

It doesn’t have you and Peter talks a lot about the idea of rootability on this podcast. And this show, I think, believes that it has a readable character in Rainera, but doesn’t really do that much to doesn’t do much positive to explain why you should prove for her. Right? I mean, you see that she has been, you know, sort of, disadvantaged as a potential heir. You know, you see her father basically ordering her mother be butchering so we could have a male heir like that cesarean section season.

Seen, no joke. But you don’t get the sense that Rona is like, you know, has some, like, incredible head for military strategy or for finances or for politics that would make her sort of a natural choice or, you know, that make her incredibly terming. Right? Like, you you know, she she’s sympathetic in those opening scenes where she shows up on dragging back. She shows sympathy for her mother when nobody else really cares.

But, you know, she there’s just not that much to distinguish her as a character yet. And a lot of the rest of the characters are, you know, like, it’s really funny to think back to the fact that, like, Rice hyphens used to be a kind of, like, goofy weird, you know, character actor because here he is just being, like, the human embodiment of the word tower as auto high tower. I really like petty constantine a lot, but clearly part of the setup here is that, like, maybe not that great at this king business kind of fascinating, etcetera. You know, I I like Matt Smith a lot. I think he’s quite good is Damon Targaryen.

I love I am, as you know, who we’ve talked about a lot on this podcast in part for her work in Alex Garland and stuff, most notably Debs. And ex machina. But again, that character comes across as, like, you know, it’s rather than sex position, we’ve got, like, post coital positioned in this episode. So I guess that’s like a little bit of a change from Game of Thrones. But, you know, this is This is not a pilot that feels superdeft at sketching out the characters through their interactions with other We’re very much introduced to them sort of like buy their rolls, but it’s a promising cast.

I’m, you know, like, I’m a sucker for this stuff. And you know, it’s not a bad pilot. It’s not I don’t think it’s as strong a pilot as the Game of Thrones pilot, but I think it’s a pretty good pilot. Pilot

the original Game of Thrones pilot did have that great kind of shocking ending with the, you know, the kid getting trucked out of the tower and, you know, we’re all Yeah.

And that’s again, but that’s like an amazing you both get information. You know, the Game of Thrones pilot has so much information about the characters both in terms of their temperments and as people of action. Right? I mean, the fact that you go from, like, the king is visiting he and his wife are clearly not on good terms. Oh, she has a long term relationship with her brother, who murder who, like, does attempted murder on, like, a seven or eight year old.

Like, that’s that is a lot of character and plot development in a single episode and you know, I you pointed out that, like, you have both the, like, the really harrowing c section sequence and the tournament. And I think in a way starting off with that much action actually ends up being a little bit of a mistake because you don’t have as much time or space for those sort of lower stakes character interactions that would lay out who these people are in a way that hooks you in a little bit more.

Yeah. Now, Peter, you actually had you threw a out of the dragon Game of Thrones prequel party at your with drinks And what how how did it go? I wanna know. I wish I could have been there. I wasn’t invited, but I wish I could have been there.

You you

live in Texas, man. And so this is It was mostly it was mostly some people from the office who are are fans of Game of Thrones. The the party went well. The I and I enjoyed the pilot. I didn’t think Alexa, I thought it was good, but not great.

And it’s the sort of thing that could develop well. I haven’t seen any additional episodes here, but I’m a little worried about it. I don’t think it’s gonna be a disaster. Obviously HBO, the executives, understand that this is a high profile kind of thing. You know, there’s already reports out suggesting this is like that the biggest, most watched a debut on on streaming or something and, like, this year or something like that.

I mean, like, a lot of people tuned in. So I think, you know, there’s they understand there’s a lot of pressure to make this work, but I am concerned to some extent just by how much it relies on nostalgic tingling for the the previous show. Right? Like, there’s there was so much just like, hey, remember this thing that was on the previous show. Right?

Hey, remember those people. Remember those people? It literally starts with like a title card. It’s like this is a hundred and seventy two years before Daenerys. Before Daenerys.

Right? Okay. So we’re gonna get the story of, like, the right? And, like,

I don’t I don’t think the

show has to be stuck that way and I get why they would want to market, advertise, and structure the pilot. As a a sort of an exercise in self referentiality and in sort of reminding people, oh, you you did really like. Game of Thrones, but there were the things about Game of Thrones that we liked are not many of them I think are not present here. And I and I think the existence of Game of Thrones basically, in fact, makes this this show’s job like, it’s a more it’s a more challenging show to pull off in some ways. Because Game of Thrones came into the world in a war when big effects shows were basically didn’t exist.

I mean, like the if you if you go back to the first season of Game of Thrones, the show looks great. And there’s a bunch of great sets. But there’s not a huge amount of of, like, computer generated imagery. There’s not, you know, big, stunning dragon sequences. All of that stuff would come later as the show would be we’d become more popular.

And in fact, this as the show became more focused on these big effects driven action sequences, it it it kinda lost its way. Because what was great about that about Game of Thrones was that it was a fantasy show that actually didn’t have all that much in the way of Fantasy Elements, especially in those first couple of seasons. Instead, it was about the people and the politics and the circumstances. Gamma Thrones also had something else that I’m afraid I’m like worried this show won’t have. And that is that Game of Thrones was designed with a kind of

I’m gonna call it

an ideology, but I don’t mean an ideology in the sense of any kind of politics. It had it had a a narrative project. That it wanted to that that it was, like, determined to pull off, which was that it wanted to take all of the romantic like, fun tropes of high fantasy, and it wanted to show you how if they actually happened in in a real world that prorated with real people and real, like, laws of physics and and dirt and and, like, death and disease. That all of those things would be awful, and that the heroic narrative of of of romantic high fantasy was just horseshit. And so what it did was it simply, like, rolled out every single trope of high fantasy and then every point where it’s supposed to pay off and, like, here’s victory.

It’s happy. It’s wonderful. Nope. Actually, everything just got worse for everyone. Until

the last couple seasons. Right.

Until the last couple seasons, which again, is part of where it starts to where it starts to lose its way. You know, and it’s all and, like, at all of high it’s like it it wants to sort of show us that that the world of high fantasy that we’re that, like, people romanticize as this sort of, like, escapist thing is actually grubby, awful, sexist, and, like, dirty, and full of death.

And I

don’t like, it’s the show did that already. And if I don’t know what the ethos is for for a House of the Dragon. Like, I don’t know what its narrative project is.

Yes. You guys know Are you guys familiar with the source material at all? I am not.

Okay. Yeah. I mean,

I think that that is absolutely true. And, like, Part of the challenge was setting House of the Dragon up as a successor to Game of Thrones is that It’s I mean, it’s just very different material. It is about a civil war. Interestingly, it you know, it’s about a conflict between women in particular. It’s in a lot of ways like much sexually weirder than Game of Thrones, and I’m gonna be very curious to see how people react to that.

And it’s it’s structurally kind of difficult. Right? I mean Game of Thrones is like pretty much a straightforward linear narrative. What we have here like, this is gonna be a lot of prequel and set up to the actual conflict. And unlike in Game of Thrones, like halfway through the season, we’re gonna jump forward a bunch of years and the key actresses are going to be placed.

So like the

crown — Wow.

— to boilers. I mean, also a

little like for all mankind. Yeah. I

mean, but it’s, you know, it’s a much more claustrophobic story. Right? It’s about sort of the rot in a family. And that family is sort of going to war internally with a lot of other allies and great houses and yada yada. But it’s it is primarily a family drama.

And it’s on an epic scale. There are dragons, there are battles, there are politics around that. But it is a different thing. And, you know, I think, interestingly, we’re at a political moment where a lot of people have really turned inward. Right?

I mean, there is you know, there’s the sort of focus on trauma in general and the way that people sort of process that and the status gives them, which is something that Game of Thrones was concerned with too, but on sort of an epic geopolitical scale. There is, you know, there’s the great resignation. There is discussion of, you know, those sort of line flat movement in China. The idea of people turning away from you know, work in engagement and toward introspection. You, you know, have a rise of more conservative and domestic aesthetics.

And to a certain extent that makes past the dragon, you know, potentially an interesting fit for this moment, but it’s, you know, it’s a different conflict. It’s a different, you know, ideological project and so much is that it’s To a certain extent, about just like monarch Right? And it’s more narrowly focused on the extent to which monarchy is corrosive. And insular families are corrosive. And I think it’s just it’s gonna hit different.

I don’t entirely know how it’s gonna spin out. At least we know how it ends because Martin has, like, written, you know, this is something where, like, the story is finished and Martin has written it. It

ends with Daenerys going mad a hundred and seventy two years later. Yeah.

But I’m just I’m I’m very much you know, I wanna keep watching it because I’m curious, but it is in its own way as much of a gamble as doing game of Thrones without the end written was. And I’ll be curious to see how it turns out. Alright. So you gotta pick one of these.

This is the game we’re playing. You gotta pick one of these shows. You gotta pick one show to keep watching based on the first episode, Alyssa. Which is worth your time? So this

should have been like a Solomonic splitting the baby episode for me. And instead it’s like pretty clear, I’d say stick with us the dragon. Peter. Again,

you gotta pick one. There’s none of your libertarian. I’m gonna pick both here. You gotta you gotta follow the rules.

I think people should pick whichever one they wanna watch. I think you could watch both. You could watch both. Of course. No.

I but I’m gonna But I’m gonna stick with the dragon because and she hulk just

it

was it wasn’t terrible. But it also didn’t deliver on its like, all the promise it makes viewers in the opening five minutes. Alright. My time is very valuable

as you know. I have many podcasts to

do.

So I don’t wanna have time to sit around watching television shows all day long. And as such, the program that is worth my time is House of the Dragon, but only if they keep up with the bloody violence and the post sex position scenes, that’s that’s what I’m here for. Sex and dragons. Alright. That is it for this week’s show.

Make sure to swing by h m a dot forward dot com for our bonus episode on Friday. Make sure to tell your friend strong recommendation from a friend is basically the only way to grow podcast audiences. And if we don’t grow, we’ll die. You did not mubbed today’s episode, please complain to me on Twitter at suny brine chug that it is in fact, best show in your podcast feed. See you guys next

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