House of the Dragon is supposed to be about dragons, but it gets one key detail wrong. As the first Game of Thrones prequel, the show began in 2022 and depicts the events of a Targaryen civil war. With the war now officially underway, dragons have been facing off on the battlefield and burning hundreds of innocents and soldiers alike. House of the Dragon season 3 is currently in development, and it is expected to be released in 2026.
In a video posted on their YouTube channel, the Corridor Crew critiqued the show’s depiction of dragon fire. They reviewed a season 2, episode 7, “The Red Sowing” scene that featured Vermithor shooting fire at innocent dragonseeds. Niko Pueringer, a pyrotechnics expert, found that the fire seems entirely inaccurate. The fire is too dark, too clean, and far too unrealistic. Check out Pueringer’s full explanation below:
So first off, fire doesn’t work like this. I’m tired of seeing pre-disturbed bulbous fluid. That’s not at all how this happens… Or just the way the fire is working at the end of this fire blast shouldn’t be these pre-contained soft pockets of bumpiness. It should be speed. It should be motion blur. Like where is the movement coming from here? And then secondly, here, it’s all dark. That thing, that’s 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. Just blast those lights! It makes such a huge difference. Just blast the scene with those lights. It looks lovely.
What House Of The Dragon’s CGI Problems Mean
The Dragon Fire Needs To Be Improved
As a show named after dragons, the entire narrative is built on the backs of the supernatural monsters. The Targaryen family thrives when they use the sigil of their House to burn their enemies and to melt castles. The dragons are a massive budget problem, which led HBO to cut two House of the Dragon episodes. Still, they are still shown regularly by necessity. Nearly every major Targaryen character has a strong bond with one of the creatures, and they generally offer bursts of flame with little prompting.
Raising the brightness is an apt and seemingly inexpensive solution.
Considering that there are already budgeting issues, fixing the fire may not necessarily have an easy solution. While Pueringer insists that raising the brightness should be a significant improvement, other issues, including the speed of the flames, might be more expensive to showcase. The dragon scenes drain the show’s budget, so any resolution would likely only make circumstances worse.
Raising the brightness is an apt and seemingly inexpensive solution, however, and darkness is something that Game of Thrones season 8 already received similar criticism for.
Our Take On House Of The Dragon’s CGI Issues
It Is A Problem, But Not The Most Significant Issue
The fire is a serious issue for a show that bills itself as a dragon-driven narrative. Yet, while it is a significant problem, the writing and structural concerns are far more worrisome. Cutting two episodes from the end of season 2 made the pace unpredictable and ruined House of the Dragon season 2’s ending. Writing concerns were so significant that author George R.R. Martin publicly criticized the showrunners. If the show is going to improve anything, narrative pacing is a much more salient problem, as opposed to anything relating to the otherwise stellar visual effects.