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House of the Dragon, season 2 episode 4 review: Matt Smith is great, but please tone down the CGI
The action kicked up a notch in the fourth episode but A Dance of Dragons wasn’t quite as thrilling as the producers might have hoped
- This review contains spoilers
Episode four of this second series of House of the Dragon (Sky Atlantic) was a big one for barbecue fans. It’s that time of year. Finally, after three episodes of talking about an inevitable war between the forces of Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) and Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy), both houses (inevitably) had the same idea: unleash the dragons.
It led to a flame-grilled set piece in which Aegon himself, drunk, impetuous and feeling emasculated and undervalued by his advisors, decided to mount up and show everyone what he was made of. That he did: he’s a berk, and he got barbecued.
The climactic dragon-off was not as jaw-dropping as I suspect the producers were hoping, if only because CGI, even at its best, can never quite match the intensity of scenes with lots of real human extras running around and battering one another (see the astonishing Hardhome, or Battle of the Bastards, from the original Game of Thrones).
When it was dragon-on-dragon action, all flaying claws and lizardly malice, the battle was brutal. When it was human slashing human, it was great as well. But when it was humans flying on the back of dragons, it looked as if it was a person sitting on a pommel horse in front of a green screen and an industrial fan. Strong Superman 2 vibes.
It broke the spell, I have to say, which was a shame as the spell had been carefully concocted for the previous 45 minutes. Daemon (Matt Smith) was off at Harrenhall, quietly and then not-so-quietly losing his mind in a solo plot-line that seems expressly written to let Smith flex his acting muscles.
Elsewhere, there were some delicious manoeuvrings both on Aegon’s Small Council and (initially in her absence as she came back from trying to broker a truce with Alicent) on Rhaenyra’s. In particular, the dawning realisation on Aegon’s face that he had been outwitted by Larys (Matthew Needham) and Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) was delicious. It was enough to drive him to drink and dragon – and we all know what happens when you’re drunk at the wheel.