Friday, February 19, 2021

Netflix Retrospective - The Dragon Prince Book 1 Chapters 1-3

I’ve been on the fence about doing this one with the allegations against Aaron Ehasz, it's claimed he was discriminating against women in the workplace, these are statements made by former employees of Wonderstorm, the start-up company behind this show. However, the people making these allegations have encouraged people to continue watching and unlike, say, JK Rowling, who’s work I am now boycotting, Arron Ehasz has not spreading hate in the public view.

So with that disclaimer out of the way, The Dragon Prince. Arron Ehasz was one of the brains behind Avatar: The Last Airbender. In 2017 he co-founded a company called Wonderstorm with Justin Richmond and Justin Santistevan. They made a pitch for a new animated adventure, this time utilising computer-generated animation, and Netflix bought onto it, thusfar ordering 7 seasons of around 9 episodes each.

The show has been positively received an won an Emmy, but let’s take a look and see how it handles itself narratively.

Echoes of Thunder

So, we get some opening exposition. It’s a world where humans, elves and dragons once co-existed with some being able to master one of the 6 primal sources of magic (earth, ocean, sky, sun, stars, moon) unfortunately, a human discovered dark magic, draining the essence of magical creatures. So horrified by this, humans were forced lest and the land was divided in 2 with the Elves living in Xadia, under the protection of the dragons, and the humans living in human kingdoms.

Unfortunately, the humans didn’t stop, and eventually used dark magic to slay the ‘King of dragons,’ his heir was also thought to be destroyed. You might notice the animation looks a bit choppy. They deliberately used a lower framerate to make it ‘look like hand-drawn animation.’ It doesn’t help, the aesthetic uses what I think is cell-shading to animated hand-drawn looking characters in a CG environment, with the occasional painted background. They dropped this technique for subsequent seasons.

We’re introduced to 2 of our main characters, Callum and Ezran. If you recognise Callum’s voice, it’s because he played Sokka in The Last Airbender. And if you were really listening, the narrator was the same voice actor who played Koh the Face Stealer

It’s a dark and stormy night as a guard is ambushed by elf assassins. One of the elves gives chase and has him pinned down, but stops short of killing him. He runs back to Lord Viren, the High Mage of the town who is obsessing over a mirror. He goes to King Harrow, explaining that the assassins are Moonshadow elves, with the full moon coming, even Harrow’s army won’t stop them at night, so Harold orders they be searched for during the day.

The elf we saw let the guard go uses berries to cover her sword in something that looks enough like blood to fool the others. In the town, which the description tells us is Katolis. Ezran sneaks around is about to take something from a local baker. He uses his pet Bait to distract the guard and escape. Callum meets up with Soren, who is about to train him to sword fight.

Callum isn’t very good at sword-fighting and they both know but it’s expected, even of a step-prince. Yeah, Callum isn’t a blood relative of Ezran, which you could kinda tell. Anyway, we’re also introduced to Soren’s sister, Claudia. Interestingly enough, when Soren can see that Callum has a bit of a crush on her, he allows Callum to win a sword duel to impress her.

With an attack imminent, King Harrow orders Ezran and Callum sent to a Bantha Lodge, their winter retreat. In the mean time, Soren has been tasked with leading an attack on the moon-shadow elves, with Viren giving him a moon-moth that is drawn to their energy so they can find them. Callum, overhearing some of this tries to go on the mission with them but Soren sends him on his way.

Meanwhile the elves bound themselves in a ritual, each willing to give their lives for seeking justice for the King of Dragons. They bound their arms in a magical cloth and split it, creating binds on each of their arms. Callum tries to convince Ezran to pack, but may have overstepped slightly by revealing the whole truth.

Soren’s group follow the moon moth as the elves are busy dipping their arrows in poison. However, the moonshadow elves have one more trick, using an artefact to turn themselves invisible, with no sign of them, Soren orders his troops to withdraw. The Elf from before, Rayla, is reprimanded for letting the guard go.

It’s a slow start to be sure, but this is designed to be binge-watched, and at 24 minutes it’s not painfully slow. It provides some easy exposition, introduces all the major characters and establishes some of the main plot

Rating 7.5/10

What is done

The Moonshadow elves know that the humans will be expecting their attack, and the leader of the pack believes Rayla’s a liability and they’ll stronger as a group of 5. The leader tells her she lacks a killer instinct and despite being faster and stronger than most of them, that moment’s hesitation proves she’s really too young to be on the mission.

Callum tries to apologise to Ezran, even offering to do the ‘I’m a jerkface dance’ but gets no response.


The Elves leave Rayla to commence their attack, but eager to fix her ‘mistake’ Rayla heads off on her own. Whilst looking through the library for some books, we see Claudia mess with him with some magic. She has a sphere, known as a primal stone, which she can use to channel some magic, including a wind breath spell “Aspero”

With the troops failing to find the elves, they’ve returned to bolster Katolis’ defences. King Harrow has accepted his fate, though Lord Viren is still searching for a solution in dark magic, something Harrow has become disillusioned with. Still, Claudia believes she may have an idea.

Callum goes to get Ezran but, shockingly, finds he isn’t in his room. He’s wants to be seen by King Harrow, alone. Rayla begins her approach to the back walls of the castle, ascending the cliff edge using her blades as pick-axes.

Back with Callum, he’s given a royal scroll, with all the things the King can’t pluck up the courage to say to him. Callum asks why they can’t make peace but it’s naturally more complicated and this is a result of centuries of history and wrongs on both sides. Harrow has accepted that he will pay the prices for his choices.

Rayla has managed to climb her way into the castle, and all before sunset. But on her way inside, Callum spots her out of the corner of his eye and thinks it’s Ezran. They two eventually have to face each other. Callum runs, hoping to get Viren’s help but is cornered in his office. Rayla is after the King, yes, but also Ezran. Callum gives himself up as Ezran.

Meanwhile, Viren gives his plan, to use a double-headed snake that consumes souls and magic to switch his soul out with someone else, so whilst his body would die, his soul would live on. Ezran calls out to Callum from the other side of the painting, saying he’s found something. This eventually gives the game away. But Bait glows bright enough to temporarily blind her.  

Harrow hates the idea of using more dark magic to correct a problem dark magic caused, the price is always paid somewhen down the line. Using dark magic to ‘destroy’ the egg is what lead to this attack. Viren points out that every soldier in the guard is happy to lay down their life for him, and the hows of that aren’t really important. But then Harrow asks is Viren would do it, Viren hesitates and is told to get out.

Ezran and Callum head into the castle’s lower levels, finding an inner sanctum that it took Ezran months to figure out the code to enter. It takes Rayla 5 seconds to follow them down and corner them. But as Rayla is about to strike them down, Ezran shows her something under a tarp. He’d heard something living inside and as it turns out, it’s the Dragon Egg, which wasn’t destroyed.

Whilst it offers some interesting growth, not a lot actually happens in this episode.

Rating 7/10

Moonrise

Prince Harrow prepares for battle, although he knows it’s a battle he’s not likely to win, Soren and the guards are by his side ready for the attack. Viren and Claudia discuss the King, how he insisted Viren stood by his side for his first portrait, he knows he has to stand by his side, even if that means offering his own soul for the switching spell. He leaves Claudia, who finds the King’s message for Callum, which Callum dropped in the room when he was cornered by Rayla.

She spots the handprint on the portrait and heads after them, using a spell to create torchlight from her hand. She explains, the best that she can, upon confronting them, that Viren took the egg in order to protect them as it could be used as a weapon against them. Given the context of where we are the story there are a number of holes in that but here we are.

Both Ezran and Rayla agree that the Dragon needs to be returned to its mother. Claudia wants to stop them, but Callum blocks her, chaining her hand and taking her primal stone. She manages to use some magic to send creatures after them. Rayla tries to fight them but the creatures are made of smoke so her swords are pretty useless. Fortunately, Callum uses the magic from the primal stone and the spell Claudia had used earlier to blow them away, he’s elated at the idea of being a mage.

Rayla realises that with the egg, they may have a chance of stopping the assassins. Speaking of that, Viren’s attempts to convince Harrow to swap souls with him backfire spectacularly, Harrow believed the debate closed and doesn’t even let him bring it up again. He probably should’ve just opened with it. But it’s this push that sends Viren further down the path this series has in store for him. I mean, despite having some redeeming moments, it’s hardly subtle that he’s being set up as an antagonist.

Unfortunately, there are complications with Rayla’s plan too, their binding means they can’t stray from the goal, and the humans still struck down the dragon king and planned to use the egg for Dark Magic. Rayla fights against the leader of the group to allow the to start off this quest. I mean, we’re nearly 1/3 of the way through the season at this point, you’d thought the quest would’ve started by now.

Ezran and Bait are hidden in some straw, with Callum heading off to talk to the King, unfortunately he bumps into Viren and wastes time smack-talking him. Viren responds by having the guards restrain him and taking his voice using dark magic so he can’t scream. The other elves, now invisible thanks to the full moon begin their infiltration of the castle, these plots eventually clash as in the conflict between the guards and the elves, Viren is hit and forced to release Callum’s voice. He calls out but realises there’s nothing he can do now, and his best bet is to save the egg and take it to Xadia. Bringing the egg back to its mother could well bring peace.

But it’s not great news for Harrow, as the last surviving elf fires his victory arrow into the air before being captured. Claudia spares his life, believing they may find more practical uses for him. Rayla feels one of the binds fall off, and sees the victory arrow, realising what has happened but chooses not to tell the others, which I’m sure won’t be a source of conflict later.

This show takes a slow-and-steady approach to starting off the journey, which would be more acceptable if the season wasn’t already 1/3 over.

Rating 8/10

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