This week has been utterly consumed by Skyrim for me, I have no power against it. For those of you not into video games, Skyrim is a free roaming game set in a land of dungeons, swords, magic,.....and dragons. The game got me thinking about how underused dragons are in pop culture. How to Train your Dragon was one of the best recent animated films, and the Eragon book series is a favorite of many friends of mine (movie was admittedly terrible), but outside of those two examples, there is not much to go off of. Recently a movie came out called "There Be Dragons", you can understand my excitement based off that title, and my sheer disappointment when I found out there are no dragons in it. So based off this recent thought process, it got me thinking of the 2002 action film "Reign of Fire" starring Matthew McConaughey and a pre-stardom Christian Bale. The story is that the world is ravaged by dragons when the King dragon is awakened by miners in London, and the world quickly becomes post apocalyptic. Bale plays the leader of a small camp of survivors who hide in fear of the dragons. Things are going along just fine when an American crew led by McConaughey (with a mean looking shaved head) shows up and lets the survivors know he has tracked the boss dragon here and intends on killing it. In stark contrast to Bale's group, McConaughey relishes killing dragons, not hiding from them. Bale and McConaughey clash over their differing styles, and you get great performances from Bale, a pre-300 Gerard Butler, and surprisingly enough, from McConaughey. While most people rip McConaughey for his comedy and rom-com's, his performances in serious films are not too bad, I cite this as well as the horror film "Frailty" as examples. While the film offers up nothing short of what you would expect in regards to cheese, it is very effective. The dragons look great and the characters are realistic and well portrayed. In addition, "Reign of Fire" has one of the best deaths in the history of film, and one that is even better if you watched the trailer for the film as one of the big points of the preview immediately precedes said death. I will never say Reign of Fire should have won Oscars or been film of the year, but it is a fun, crazy, unique ride though a world I wish we saw more of in film.
Reign of Fire is directed by Rob Bowen, and stars Christian Bale, Matthew McConaughey, Gerard Butler, and Izabella Scorupco.
-Maximus
I love this movie! I think you hit it on the head with your explanation. Does it make my top 10? Of course not but is it a sweet movie to sit down to, absolutely. I would recommend this one to anyone who likes Christian Bale or Matthew McConaughey because they do give very solid performances and it's pretty cool to see the Gerard before his glorious 300 performance.
ReplyDelete-Diomedes