Reign of Fire
Reign of Fire. Dragons blowing stuff up. Humans fleeing like little tiny bugs on the countertop of the planet. What a great concept for a movie. But, the everpresent question is - can they pull it off? Luckily, I'm a trained professional - let me do the talking.
Storyline
Hmm... well, first off, prepare for a slight disappointment. This isn't really the story of mankind v. the dragons. For whatever reason, the film instead deals with the endgame - humanity has already been decimated, the dragons have already taken over, and the survivors are eking out a living on the fringes of what's left of civilization. There are only a few dragons left, due to massive overpopulation, which more or less reduces the entire conflict to who can hold out the longest. A young Brit and a psychotic American dragon-hunter team up to take out the sole male dragon on the planet, thus ensuring that no more dragons can be born and that the remainder will eventually starve to death and vanish. What this really all boils down to is another post-apocalyptic world in which the vagabond underdogs must fight valiantly against incredible odds to ensure their very survival. Doesn't sound so innovative that way...
Characters
We're first introduced to the aforementioned young Brit, Quinn, who at the beginning of the movie is a rather troubled boy living in downtown London. While visiting his mother at her job, which apparently has something to do with drilling large tunnels under the city for some reason, Quinn encounters the first dragon hidden in a cave deep in the earth. Of course, the dragon awakens and proceeds to wreak havoc, and poor Quinn witnesses the death of his own mother at the dragon's... um, hands. Flash forward twenty years, and it turns out that all of this back story is totally irrelevant. Quinn is currently the leader of a small group of survivors outside London, though we really don't know why everyone ended up following him, why some of the bolder survivors are disgruntled with him, etc etc. The backstory is pretty much all the character development of Quinn we get. Not that it's all that necessary.
Van San, an American soldier displaced in England during the great war, is a mighty dragon hunter. Apparently his method of killing dragons involves a lot of swaggering around, being incredibly arrogant, and snarling at them until they die laughing. Van San is not ineffective at his self-chosen profession, utilizing the luxury of an attack helicopter and a desperately loyal command unit with deadly results. Of course, his arrogance is his downfall in his first confrontation with the male dragon, and his obviously tenuous grasp on sanity is not the greatest advantage. Van San is the more developed character of the two, but that's really not saying much. This movie isn't about the humans - it's about the dragons. It just pretends to be about the humans.
Effects
Ooh... dragons! ~drool~ But we'll get to them in a few. Sadly, the B-movie curse doesn't stop at the hackneyed story concept - it's pretty clear that the special effects budget was spent entirely on the two dragons and the pyrotechnics. Scenes of people leaping through the air, standing on tall buildings, or running away from huge explosions are obviously filmed in front of a blue screen, to the point of laughability. They didn't even go to the effort of including recognizable but mostly destroyed landmarks, or any such "coolness" factors. Bare bones, as I said, except for the...
Dragons
~Drool~ The sight of one of these beasties soaring through the air, torching everything in sight, and perhaps even snatching innocent people off the ground and munching on them - that's why I went to see this movie. Was I rewarded? Well, yes and no. Yes, the dragons kicked total ass - in the air. If I saw one of 'em flying toward me, I'd need to change my underwear. The aerial combat scene was highly cool and pretty convincing. Unfortunately, while the dragons (all two of them!!!) were on the ground, they were kinda hokey. They lost none of their realistic look, but they didn't look much to me like dragons should. Walking around on their wings?? They looked like giant friggin' bats. And while firebreathing bats may sound cool, they really aren't - not when one is expecting dragons. ~grumble~
And did I mention there are only two of them?! I mean, come on. The people came for dragons, and you give them two! The closest the film ever comes to showing more than one dragon on-screen at the same time is some blurry photos from the original "invasion" and a bunch of silhouetted dragons far away flying over London. Otherwise, our boys only need fight one beastie at a time. Why? Because they're dying out. In other words, we don't have enough money for more than two. Argh!
Acting
Only one actor really jumped out in this movie, and that was Matthew McConaughey as Van San. His swaggering self-confidence, arrogant agressiveness, and nearly animal instincts are really creepy to watch. McConaughey walks, talks, and fights big; and when he's grunting and snarling as he dashes across open ground, you don't think "monkey," you think "wolf." "Crazy wolf." Christian Bale simply doesn't muster up any sort of style or substance as Quinn - he may be the so-called main character, but he doesn't really do anything to make the audience care either way about him. But, as I mentioned, this movie is not about the people.
Romance
Er. Well, I had to throw this in, as Quinn and the chopper pilot get together in the end. Why? Who knows? Maybe because she was a female about his age, but that's about all I can figure. There wasn't any romance leading up to it, but since they hooked up, I felt obliged to note their lack of chemistry and curious, near-random semblance of attraction for each other. ~shrug~
Overall
I was really disappointed at the tack the story took in this film. To set the scene of the main plot after the invasion seemed a very peculiar choice - one would think that the severe coolness factor would be in actually seeing the war between dragons and humans. The dragons emerge and begin to spread; humanity brings out the big guns; major landmarks and icons are destroyed; dragons are blown up by tanks, and vice versa; and so on and so forth. For whatever reason, the writers decided not to take it from that angle. Eh. I would have done it different, but then, I didn't make the movie.
So, what was the point of this movie? To see dragons blow things up. For a mindless, plotless, B-movie flick, it wasn't half bad. Many of my points above may come across rather negatively, but the fact of the matter is, Reign of Fire isn't particularly intended to stand up to incredible intellectual scrutiny. It's a campy sci-fi flick that doesn't really have to make a lot of sense to be fun to watch. Just check your brain at the door, and just sit back and enjoy the cheesy goodness.
Overall rating:
Send me on my way... back to the main page
