Back when we were fantasy fans and played The Dark Eye and The Lord of the Rings was our bible and we went to the newsstand week after week to get our Mythor booklet; So back in the days when we were nerds and thought Beastmaster was terribly good and Conan the Barbarian was the best thing we could dream up: it was completely unimaginable that our lust for swords and sorcery, for dragons and dungeons could ever interest anyone but ourselves, the wacky half-kids who listened to Pallas’ great album The Sentinel while playing the paper ‘n’ pencil RPG.
Now, almost four decades later, “High Fantasy”, the kind of fantasy that is not only about swords but also about intrigue, where the network of dynastic entanglements is denser than any thrash it, has arrived in the what you might call mainstream. “Game of Thrones”, the “Saga of Fire and Ice”, then a later canon of high school literature, is now everyone’s taste.
The TV series, based on George R.R. Martin’s novels, it was sort of the biggest TV hit of all time. We, who knew our Tolkien beyond Peter Jackson’s New Zealand tourism ad, adored Robert E. Howard in his graphic (and completely unwoken) world, and more idolized Michael Moorcock’s clever universe from Elric/Melnibone to Dorian Hawkmoon, had to learn to share .
Suddenly everyone knew what a White Walker was, knew the secrets of the kingdom of Dorne, knew the secret passages of King’s Landing. Fantasy had become socially acceptable because fantasy, like all cipher literature, not only tells tales of knights, but also reports on what people do to one another. Quite a lot, as the eight seasons of Game of Thrones taught us. Much blood. lots of sex Much love. Above all, a lot of revenge. a lot of people More than a dime book! That made us fantasy veterans proud. And then somehow not.
On the Mercedes-Benz-Platz in Berlin stands the man-sized egg of a dragon. It glows red and is positioned between some temple debris. This is how you imagine the streaming portal “Wow” (belongs to Sky, broadcasts HBO series) with the fantasy. For the “premier” of the first season of the GoT follow-up series “House of the Dragon” you don’t want to be stingy with the scenery – after all, the prequel will compete against the prequel of “Lord of the Rings” (on Amazon’s Prime) in a good week . The mega duel of the fantastic. 2022. Fifty years ago we would have been laughed at for such a successful model – knights, dragons, dwarves, kings as crowd pullers.
Good. Theoretically, anyone who wanted to witness the history of the dragon clan had two options: on site or – in the streaming sense – at home. Parallel to the glamorous launch event in London, broadcast to Mercedes-Land in Berlin, the first five episodes would be available on the “Wow” press channel. It was said. Annoying: The sending of the five-pack was pushed further and further: from Friday to the weekend, from the weekend to Monday. If you then asked, it said “Please note that today is a public holiday in Bavaria.” House of public holiday.
So I drove to the premiere cinema in the far east of Berlin, got very (very, very) wet in the first rain for months and waited. Apart from me, children were invited, dressed up: a lot of girls had dressed up as dragon queens with no midriffs, a lot of boys wore leather clothes like those of John Snow. Everyone else something to do with hip hop.
That anyone here had ever seen “Game of Thrones” was out of the question. When the series premiered in 2011, most of those present were still singing along to Peppa Pig songs. Accordingly, a moderator (whose “interviews” were transmitted from outside the cinema to the (empty) interior of the cinema) graciously asked all the interlocutors (!) if they had ever seen an episode of “Game of Thrones” and what they could expect now . Standard answer: No and nothing. People preferred to take selfies in front of the series posters, some of which were digitally animated.
How cool is that? Hashtag: HouseofmexHouseofDragon. Or so.
Co-host, “Patrice,” who was in London for the official worldwide premiere, said meaningfully: “A lot of people are also interested in the historical aspects.” Hmmm. In a series set in a continent that looks like some sort of upside-down England with an Irish underpinning? Anyway: expertise was rather annoying, and that’s okay: nobody who watches the “Sopranos” knows the mafia; nobody who likes “Friends” has really cool friends and “How I met your Mother” is also more of a rhetorical statement.
Also that when it finally, finally, finally started – after many interviews from Berlin and London, only a few of the invitees – you have to call them “influencers” – actually went to the cinema to see how the history of the house of Targaryen because now its (temporary) beginning is okay. Most of the visitors to the House of Dragons somehow lost interest in the sheer joy of their own presence and preferred to take a few more selfies. Competitive pressure in the House of Influencers: There was the same type of demonstration that evening in every major German city, the hashtags and links were specified by “Wow” and then there was also a voucher for a drink and one for popcorn.
Kai, Farschid, Wolfgang, Gerd, Thomas and I – the old fantasy gang from the eighties – we would have sat in the cinema as quiet as a mouse and waited quietly for the one-hour premiere episode to begin. We would not have been disappointed – it may be revealed: Farschid, the “Gor” expert would have liked how one or the other was sabered in the middle, Thomas would have loved the big pictures, Gerd (who once got me into the slippery art one introduced by Laura Gemser) the scenes in the brothels of King’s Landing. Wolfgang, the notorious antagonist friend, would have enjoyed the, well, perfectly vicious antagonist, Kai the knight stuff, the lance battles, the “Excalibur” homage.
And me? In everything and in every detail. The only thing I would have missed was good music. But now it’s finally over with Richard Wagner! Hopefully the next episodes will come tomorrow!