House of the Dragon

Wednesday

The Spectator

This month in culture: June 2024

The Fall Guy In theaters now Ryan Gosling’s career is rather bizarre if you think about it, from drippy romcom protagonist in The Notebook to brooding car noir hero in Drive to laughable failure in The Nice Guys to musical star in La La Land and Barbie. Now he takes a stab at renewing his hardass ways in The Fall Guy, an adaptation of Lee Majors’s 1980s series which pairs him with Emily Blunt and is, in a way, an homage to the careers of “stars who do their own stunts” even if Gosling does not do so himself. There’s even a stunt show planned for Universal Studios’ Hollywood theme park based on the movie, prior to its release.

culture

Wednesday

Robby Soave

The resurgence of Dungeons & Dragons

You are stranded in the middle of an unforgiving desert, and must take refuge from a sandstorm before your Hit Points deplete any further. You find a rock outcropping — after a successful Perception check, a false wall reveals a sprawling cavern. Inside is a long-lost tomb. There are markings: could this be the dreaded Dark Speech of that necromancy cult the innkeeper kept warning you about? You have no idea, sadly. You spent your downtime trying to seduce the elven serving wench instead of reading the innkeeper’s copy of Desert Cults: Their Languages. Trying and failing, mind you — as a dwarven paladin, your Charisma score just wasn’t up to the job. No idea what I’m going on about? Count yourself among an ever-shrinking minority.

Dungeons & Dragons

Tuesday

Grayson Quay

Game of Thrones was the last water cooler show

I realize this is an unpopular opinion, but I actually didn’t hate the ending of Game of Thrones. Sure, the showrunners fumbled some of the character arcs and made some odd decisions (King Bran? Really?). But the broad thematic arc of the series was perfect. Daenerys’s dark turn into madness and mass murder and the subsequent destruction of the Iron Throne served as a hopeful proclamation that, even in our bloody, jaded, pornified world, the true faith lives on. The show understood, on some level, that neither the ideal redistribution of power nor its unfettered aggrandizement could ever be our salvation. Martin made his name as the anti-Tolkien, but it was all a ruse. If his intentions were truly insidious, his story would “look fairer and feel fouler.