Title: Reign of Fire (2002)
Director: David Bowman
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Christian Bale, Gerard Butler, Izabella
Scorupco
Review:
Dragon films are a rare bunch, and most of the time they are
not taken very seriously. The big problem with dragon films is that same as
werewolf movies, for some reason they are not very popular with the masses. It’s
only when these films are prepackaged as family friendly fare that the make any
bank, for example Rob Cohen’s Dragonheart (1996), a family friendly dragon film
if there ever was any that went on to make a hefty intake at the box office. Taking
in consideration how few good dragon movies get made, when a big budget dragon
movie comes along, I always raise my hopes up, excited at the prospect
of seeing these mythical creatures come to life on the silver screen.
The last time that a dragon film truly impressed me was with
Matthew Robin’s Dragonslayer (1981). To date, and in my humble opinion, that is
the best dragon film ever made. That film presented us with not only an awesome
looking dragon, but also a very believable depiction of the Dark Ages. And again,
it was a flop at the box office, which does not make it a bad film, it only
affirms the fact that dragons aren’t all that popular with audiences. Other
films have come close to being as good, but they’ve never surpassed the
awesomeness that is ‘Vermithrax Pejorative’. When Reign of Fire came along, I
was expecting something awesome. Why? Well, the creative team behind it was a
good one, the cast was top notch…the posters promised chaos in the London
In Reign of Fire, the world has been ravaged by fire
breathing dragons. They’ve burned the earth to a crisp; you see in this film, these
monsters live off of ashes! The governments of the world retaliated by trying
to wipe these creatures out with nuclear weapons, but that plan failed. These
creatures are impervious to even that! Unfortunately, the battle against the dragons
has transformed the entire world into a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Human
survivors are scarce. The film focuses on a group of survivors who live in an
old castle in England
The film does present us with an interesting premise, that
of dragons taking over the world. Dragons have burned the earth to a crisp! Some
time has elapsed since the dragons first appeared and humanity has now all but
faded. This has made the creatures extremely hungry, which makes them all the
more dangerous; in spite of this the film fails to make the dragons feel like a
real threat, in fact, save for the finale, the dragons aren’t really seen all
that much. What Dragonslayer did so right was transmit the idea that this evil
creature was alive, the dragon never talked (they sometimes do in these movies)
but you could almost hear the thoughts stirring in its head. Put plainly, the
dragon in Dragonslayer had a freaking personality. In contrast, the dragons in
Reign of Fire are lifeless, almost non existent. They aren’t characters. To be
honest, these dragons felt like CGI background to me; as if the director was afraid or embarassed to be making a monster movie. In his own words Bowman says on the dvd that he couldnt believe he was here, making a monster movie. A B-movie. So he set out to make a b-movie with a-list production values. Unfortunately, he decided not to focus on the creatures we are so eager to see; which in part is what
brings the film down for me and one of the reasons why this film is a notch
below Dragonslayer. The dragons simply didn’t feel tangible or organic, this my
friends is a problem I have with many of today’s effects heavy films and it’s
something I try and get adjusted to, but hell, its kind of hard to connect with
something that is so obviously not there.
I don’t want to turn this review into another rant about the
pitfalls of CGI, but I miss those days when I felt like the monsters where
there. Still, I’m not saying that Reign of Fire is a complete throw away of a
film because it isn’t. The cast is solid, we get to see Gerard Butler back in
the days when his career was just getting started; McConaughey when his career
still mattered and a pre Dark Knight Christian Bale. Oddly enough; it’s not
Christian Bale who shines on this one but Matthew McConaughey with his ‘Van Zan’
character. Aside from having a cool ass name, his character’s just a kick ass
mother. He’s intimidating, he chomps on cigars, he’s bald and he’s oh so
American. Van Zan and his group of dragon
slayers suddenly invade the film. They present us with an interesting contrast
to the colony Christian Bale is the leader of. You see, Quinn’s followers hide
from the dragons and are waiting for them to die off on their own while Van Zan
and his team take dragons head on. Van Zan has found a way to kill dragons! And
I’m watching the film and thinking how this film would have been so much more
exciting had it been told from Van Zan’s point of view. The story of Van Zan
and his team of dragon slayers seemed more interesting to me then the one about
Quinn running an orphanage. Van Zan’s team has this technique where they try
and catch dragons with nets, by flying extreme hights on helicopter and then
jumping off the choppers with parachutes and these giant nets. These scenes
actually make up the most thrilling scenes on the film. Unfortunately, the film
doesn’t focus so much on this new technique for killing dragons and you’re kind
of left with the desire to see more of Van Zan and his ”angels”.
The dragons themselves leave a lot to be desired, you kind
of want to see more of them. The film does this really lazy thing where it kind
of shows us how the apocalypse began via a series of news paper articles and
news footage. This is not what we want to see. What we want to see are dragons
destroying London
Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5