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By Drewsch
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Hey everyone, Drew Diets here again for a huge freakin robot, and this time I’m allowed to talk about something I love I’ve never had to highlight before: Dragons!
Ever since I read The hobbit And watching the 1977 animated adaptation (my favorite version of Smaug), I’ve been enchanted with these fierce fantasy creatures.
So much so, I even watched Fly the dragonswhere John Ritter uses logic to defeat the wicked wicked multi-head dragon voiced by Darth Vader.
And my generation was briefed to get dragon fever thanks to the sweeping production Dragonheart be such a success.
But before the Dragon Market was monopoly by HBO, there was another dragon film that I was excited about in my youth.
And this one looked like the best serious representation of dragons could ever be in a big motion picture up to that point.
But this movie was not close to success Dragonheart And it remains a cult favorite at best.
We’re going to sort through the ash to find out why The reign of fire Failed.
Like many original high concept stories, The reign of fire exists as a script for years before she never made her way to production.
The key story concept is that dragons are hidden underground and are released at the beginning of the film.
This leads to the mass killing of human beings up to the point of post-apocalyptic society.
The main story involves survival community hiding from the dragons. When a roving warrior enters this community, they are brought to fight the fiery monsters.
So this is a initial theory and it must be admitted that it was low in why audiences were not lining for The reign of fireBut it’s a point I think talking to how selling an audience on an idea can be toner than it seems to start.
Look at the The reign of fire Posters.
You see Dragons burning the London landscape as made evident by Big Ben and the Westminster Palace.
That sells a dragonpocalypse movie similar to something like Independence Day. “Come and see Dragons (instead of alien) Destroy the world! “
But if you look at the real pictures of The reign of fire By looking at what they used for the trailer, that idea is not what the film actually represents.
Instead of a chaotic glee similar to Roland Emmerich, The reign of fire Looks to be a very straight and serious attitude on dragons against humans.
And that’s what the movie is.
It’s not a movie about dragons destroying the world. The reign of fire Actually a film about a world already destroyed by dragons. That’s where the majority of the plot occurs.
That probably didn’t seem to appeal to some viewers from the outset who wanted to see a dragonpocalypse movie that was more like a catastrophic thriller.
Y’KNOW, Minister But with dragons. And that is not The reign of fire.
By the time he is in front of cameras, The reign of fire have X-Files Director Rob Bowman at the helm.
Bowman had not only been a prominent director for many key episodes of The X-Files A TV series, but also the director of the first feature film in the franchise.
And very much like he did with The X-FilesBowman wanted to base a supernatural story in a sense of reality.
With this in mind, The reign of fire Finish looks pretty well if your artistic goal is to create a grungy, desperate world that is almost eliminated.
Unfortunately, with such a big and bold concept as “Dragons are real and exist in a modern setting”, there were also audiences that they were not going to buy into this concept at all.
Understanding, I think this is more to do with the general feeling of the times than any permanent issues with them The reign of fire.
Pop culture had just experienced a fantasy revival with the first Harry Potter Movie and the first Lord of the rings Film, both historic successes and films that would win their place as genre classics.
The reign of fire Released a few months after these films and was selling audiences on taking the idea of a modern, polished and base classic fantasy.
Was trying to do this at a time when the classic fantasy elements Harry Potter and Lord of the rings are embraced by wide audiences and found their home in pop culture.
Basically the wrong time was to get people to join The reign of fire‘s artistic taking. Today, this is probably an idea that could work thanks to a post-game landscape of Thrones that allows for less fanciful riffs on fantasy.
Did not help that The reign of fire lacks star power for the time being.
Matthew McConaughey gets the best bills but his warlike American is a supportive character at best. And while he certainly had some storage, he was not some bankable star back in 2002.
Even less notable for the time being Christian Bale. While he definitely had a retiring role in Psycho AmericanHe had not yet put the Cape and the Cowl and became the name of a home.
Look, I like News As much as you, but Christian Bale was not a name that was getting the family to drive in that weekend in 2002.
The same is true of Gerard ButlerWho at the time people might have acknowledged from them, I don’t know, Dracula 2000 If anything?
So we have a dragonpocalypse movie where we don’t get to see the dragonpocalypse happen, a realistic grip on dragons during a time when there is a classic fantasy on the climax of pop culture, and a cast yet to make their biggest marks in the acting world.
Add to that The reign of fire Release during the second week of a highly expected sequence, Men in black IIIn addition to very mixed reviews and you have a recipe for Fflic effects $ 60 million that opened in the number three spots with $ 15.6 million.
The reign of fire could hardly beat the opening weekend of the Halloween A film where Busta Rhymes uses Kung Fu on Michael Myers.
At least the number two spot lost to a great comic book movie, Way to perditionOne of my five favorite Tom Hanks movie.
Now if you want my opinion The reign of fire As a movie, you can get the long version in the Genrevision Film Club episode We did where we put it against Dragonheart.
But while I can approve the effects of the dragon The reign of fireThe real movie is fine. It’s not amazing or terrible and that makes it a little less interesting in its entirety.
However, I say that The reign of fire is the type of film that deserves another shot, either by restart or sequence/prequel.
I mean, Dragonheart Had four sequences! Four sequences! And we can’t tell you one thing about them! Except they are likely to have dragons in them. Maybe one of the sequences has two dragons? Perhaps those dragons are a friend’s dragons or may not be a friend’s dragons. I do not know and I will never know.
But i know the idea of doing The terminator But with dragons destroying humanity instead of robot skeletons it sounds pretty cool.
The reign of fire He promised a film that would do so but did not complete. There is still time to make up for that promise.
And as it is, The reign of fire is the type of film that deserves a cult following.
It’s an ambitious and unique idea that wasn’t quite right for the time being. It does not help that the actual production has to deal with a disease outbreak, leading to breaking some scenes being cut or rewritten out of necessity.
So I have some sympathy with The reign of fire Also shooting under unfair threat.
With all other intellectual property under the sun put through the content churning, why not give The reign of fire Another offer? Cannot be worse than that last Game of Thrones Season!
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