Katherine E.

This show is… meh. It’s not terrible, but doesn’t hook you like Game of Thrones. The last season of Game of Thrones was terrible (except for the beautiful dragon CGI, but I’ll get to that later), but the seasons before were masterpieces, genuinely some of the best television ever made. But this? This is just mediocre. The acting is just getting the job done, there’s too much “telling” (exposition) and not enough “showing”, there’s way too many green-screen backgrounds rather than being shot on location with props and practical effects, and the overuse of gore and sex, which was GoT’s biggest flaw in it’s earlier seasons, is disgusting and just the show’s lame attempt at being edgy because the writers are too incompetent to craft compelling drama without cheap gore and sex for shock value. Characters have a lot of corny lines, too. However, by far the worst thing about this show for me is the titular dragons. Their animation and designs are beyond abysmal. They’re just plain hideous! They’re especially shocking when compared to the beautiful dragons of Game of Thrones- those three dragons were, in my opinion, the most beautiful and well-animated dragons ever, in any TV show or movie. Drogon, Rhaegal, and Viserion looked like they were designed by a zoologist, because they looked like real animals that could exist in our world. They also blended with the environment way better- they looked natural, like they were meant to be there. Their animation was smooth and worked from a physics standpoint most of the time, and they had lovely faces and were proportionate. These dragons, on the other hand, look like they were designed based off a child’s drawing, with ridiculously long necks, ugly faces that oftentimes have uncanny expressions, and overly bright coloration. Also, the dragons in Game of Thrones had a variety of unique, individually-designed vocalizations the way a real animal species would, including some truly epic roars- these ones only use generic stock vocalizations and don’t use different vocalizations for different situations. Their animation is also so choppy and defies physics. Even if their designs weren’t ugly, they just don’t fit into the environment- it’s hard to describe because you really have to see it for yourself, but they stick out like a sore thumb compared to their surroundings and look so obviously digital. The dragons are overused as well- I know there’s more dragons during this era than during the GoT era so they’d obviously be featured more, but since they pop up every ten minutes, there’s no sense of menacing power surrounding them like with the Game of Thrones dragons, which were used often enough to impact the plot but not so often that they lost their mysterious, dangerous vibe. Anyways, I actually like where the plot is going so far, even if the dialogue and acting are lame, and the jousting scene was pretty cool. I found myself enjoying several moments of this episode. I’ll try to watch the rest of the season before I judge it too harshly. I would’ve given it three stars if the dragons were the way they were in GoT.