‘House of the Dragon’ and Why Some Oceans Are More Battlefields Than Others

"House of the Dragon" kicked off Season 3 with a massive naval battle. But scale, not dragon scales, is its true enemy.

[Editor’s Note: This article contains Spoilers for Episode 1 of “House of the Dragon” Season 3]

“House of the Dragon” kicked off its third season with the battle that was meant to end Season 2 — a huge, nasty naval affair between the armada of Corlys Velaryon (Steve Touissant), the freebooting fleet commanded by Sharako Lohar (Abigail Thorn), who can throw me over the side any time, and of course three dragons under the command(ish) of the young Targaryen riders Jace (Harry Collett), Baela (Bethany Antonia), and Rhaena (Phoebe Campbell). Director Loni Peristere has spoken about building two full-size sailing ships for The Battle of the Gullet and wanting to leave as much out on the deck, visually, as possible in the epic clash between (these are the real ship names) The Queen Who Never Was and The Bitchfist. 

Peristere and “House of the Dragon” join a large number of shows, particularly in fantasy, sci-fi, or period worlds, that want to do as much practically as they can. From “Our Flag Means Death” to “Severance” and “The Rings of Power” to “Pluribus” — not to mention Westerosi cousins “Game of Thrones,” “House of the Dragon,” and “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” — the IndieWire Craft team keeps talking to directors, cinematographers, and production designers who prize capturing big sets and key moments of spectacle in the real world, in front of the camera, as much as they can. 

And for good reason. The more tactility and depth and nuance you’re able to achieve, the easier it is for an audience to believe what’s in front of them. No one’s put it more viscerally, perhaps, than Boots Riley on a recent episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit Podcast. “I often say this thing with CGI: You could have a skyscraper stand up, walk over, and take a shit, and it wouldn’t be amazing. Because there’s something about it. It’s not about us thinking it’s not real — that’s fine. We know it’s not real. But there’s something about the way we know it’s fake — the light hitting it, something that feels less tangible to us, and too smooth, in the wrong ways”

When anything can be made to look photoreal — like my favorite veal connoisseur with a 140-foot wingspan who has just reluctantly adopted the least confrontational Targaryen —  it invites a danger that the most epic, unreal images can start to look like nothing. One dragon can spoil the broth, either if there’s a visible disconnect between the aesthetics of the visual effects and the “base” reality of the world, or if the base reality of the world is pounded into a purgatory of flat lighting and endless medium shots in order to better accommodate the visual effects. 

This is 400 words of throat-clearing to say that The Battle of the Gullet looks fine, actually. It’s cool. My heart goes out to the small army of carpenters, set dressers, armorers, SFX technicians, stuntpeople, and VFX artists who made it happen, and for once not because their work’s gotten flattened by the kind of compression struggles that can make a “Game of Thrones” battle sequence unwatchable in most settings. Particularly once the battle settles into a chase — Corlys leading Lohar through a dangerous strait and Lohar having tricks to surprise the Sea Snake on the other side — there is a pleasingly tense rhythm to it, and real dramatic stakes for a set of characters we know and care about. 

Where the Battle of the Gullet struggles isn’t to do with how handmade the gunwales are, nor how battered the oars. Peristere has also talked about going to a screening of “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” and being inspired by the Peter Weir sea epic, maybe the most Dad Film to have ever been made in the 21st Century. Weir’s movie is justly celebrated for how handmade it is — you can still go visit HMS Surprise at the San Diego Maritime Museum, that’s how well they built that ship. And the battle sequence at the end — this is the technical term — fucking whips. 

150 million dollars, a script that builds to precisely that final sequence, the time and space to shoot it properly without having to prep eight more hours of story will all do that. “House of the Dragon” is very much an orange to Weir’s apple. But there is a lesson in “Master and Commander” that every TV show could stand to learn when it comes to crafting a compelling battle sequence, on the water or off: Small, clear goals inside of a larger struggle are actually more epic than the sweep of fleets, armies, or even dragons. 

If you break down the Battle of the Gullet — being generous to the crosscutting between Corlys’ and Lohar’s ships and ignoring the cutaways back to Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) trapped in the body of a weak and feeble woman and, also, her bedroom on Dragonstone — there are about 22 discreet beats to it and about 20 minutes of actual capital-B Battle, taking up the back half of “Salt and Sea, Fire and Blood,” which runs just about an hour and four minutes in total.

You kind of have to be generous because “House of the Dragon” still has other lines of action it’s tending to — Rhaenyra; Rhaena and Sheepstealer rocking up to, uh, save the day with a severe question mark at the end of that sentence; Addam (Clinton) and Hugh (Kieran Bew) and Ulf (Tom Bennett) all getting weirded out by Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin) because, really, who hasn’t? While the first moment Corlys’ ship spots the Triarchy’s fleet gives the Gullet 38 minutes to unfold before we sink into the waters below Jace with Vermax (RIP), there’s almost 15 minutes of getting all the players in place before we see any sails on fire; then there’s one (dress) gutting Rhaenyra scene at the first hinge point of the action. 

By contrast, “Master and Commander” only has about seven minutes of capital-B Battle at the end. From the moment that good Doctor Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany) spots the French frigate Acheron while jaunting across the Galapagos to the start of the funeral for the fallen crew of the Surprise is 20 minutes exactly. There’s an over 10-minute windup of preparation, a chance for Russell Crowe to intone “This ship is England,” and several beats of repetition so that the audience knows what the plan is (impersonate a whaling ship so the French ship will come close enough to be attacked) and what success looks like for the characters. 

Lucky Jack Aubrey (Crowe) and his crew need to get rid of the other ship’s mainmast, fight their way below, free some captured whalers, force the French to surrender, and not die. The Surprise will get two rounds of cannon fire to make this happen once they’ve sprung the trap. That’s it. That’s all we have to keep track of. And having a clear narrative throughline frees the audience to, instead of making logistical sense of each shot, really key into the emotional and dramatic beats of the sequence. 

It helps that beats in “Master and Commander” — if you’re really being strict with lines of action, it has 12 — are longer on average. We tend to spend about 40 or 50 seconds with characters we care about as they navigate the changing landscape of the battle. The cuts between Corlys and Alyn (Abubakar Salim), Lohar and Tyland Lannister (Jefferson Hall), Jace and Baela and Rheana, are all more like 20 or 30 seconds before we’re shifted into the next line of action.

Again, “House of the Dragon” is tending its own oranges. Once it makes the choice (one that all “GoT” shows have made, for what it’s worth) to bounce between both sides of a fight, it has to cover both fleets and the situation in the air. And everybody kind of has their own goals — certainly Tyland learns that his goals and Lohar’s are not the same. I honestly have no idea how many ships are involved before they’re on fire. Maybe Mushroom knows for sure, but it seems like a lot. It’s no coincidence, though, that when the ship count goes down to four, and then to two, as Lohar pursues Corlys through the strait, and as the Bitchfist prepares to ram right into the exposed side of the Queen Who Never Was? That’s when the action comes alive. 

It doesn’t matter how photoreal or ‘authentic’ (ugh) something looks if we can’t parse it in a dramatic context; likewise, all the HBO money in the world is no replacement for the determination so grim that it’s almost serene on Thorn’s face when she says, “Take the ship.” It’s the moments that are simplest — that, Rhaena realizing her dragon is going after her sister, Jace begging Vermax to fly after the poor dragon’s been shot through with, seemingly, a giant anvil from the Acme Corporation — where the Battle of the Gullet feels large. Even the big establishing shots hit harder, once they’re woven into that context. 

Everything else, no matter how massive in scale or painstakingly rendered, is just sound and fury, not the master nor commander of anything. 

New episodes of “House of the Dragon” air on HBO each Sunday night at 9pm ET/PT before streaming on HBO Max.