Movie Review: Reign of Fire (2002)

INFO: Directed by Robert Bowman, Touchstone, PG-13, 101 min.

ABSTRACT: Dragons exist; they are awakened in England and destroy the world; in the post-apocolypse, the remaining humans fight back.

STYX RATING: 2 stars, 2 FFWD

This could have been a good movie. Maybe even great. As it is, there's one "huckleberry" (a performance so good that it merits seeing the film) - Matthew McConaughey as a psycho-biker-dragon hunter. The rest of the movie is undone by B-movie idiocy.

The merits:

(1) Decent acting (no joke) by the leads, McConaughey and Christian Bale.

(2) The director (of X-Files fame) was able to depict a sci-fi world of devestation and scope - not carried off easily by even the greatest of directors. Tim Burton failed miserably at this in the Planet of the Apes (2001), -- Burton's ape world felt so much like a movie-set that we wonder if the nerve disease that forced him to make the movie in the first place addled the remainder of his abilities.

(3) Decent special effects integration and quality - the dragons felt realistic even though the whole movie was covered with that pale-gray Saran Wrap sheen that's the hallmark of digital necessity.

What went wrong? This is not an idle question because mucho dinero was poured into this dog-turkey and every wasted dollar in Hollywood is passed onto the consumer. Better movies and/or less wasted money - that's all we ask. I wish they had given me a call before they OKed the script (three scriptwriters: Gregg Chabot, Kevin Peterka, and Matt Greenberg - the first feature for the first two and Greenberg is responsble for low-grade horror writing here and there). There were just stupid narrative issues. No complaints about logical inconstistancies here - that ain't worth it. But *narrative* problems drive me buggy.

Example of narrative problem: the writers couldn't decide about how to kill a dragon. The beginning of the film claimed that nuclear weapons didn't work on them. Then it seems liquid nitrogen works. Then the American Wackos are introduced and they kill dragons by having people jump from helicopters on top of a dragon and ensnare them in a net. When that doesn't work, they find they can kill 'em with a rocket shot to the heart. Then a crossbow. AUUUGH! Keep one answer, OK! Because the writers set up a whole system within the story - and then reject it as being extraneous - they declare half of their movie disconnected from the other half.

And, during the narrative waste, they kill a lot of innocent people on screen. That's just wrong. I'm willing to witness executions and murder on screen but make them relavent! Make them worth the pychic scar! There's a value in seeing violence and other dramatic depictions (don't believe me? ask Aristotle, he's older, wiser, and Greeker) - but only if they are cathartic. And catharsis requires narrative! Without logical/story coherence, then violence on screen is just depravity and degradation.

Why I even care? I happen to like vampire-hunting movies. Not vampire films - those are either pure grotesqueries (Coppola's "Bram Stoker") or fey romanticism ("Interview with a Blahblah"). I mean, who wants to watch the hero eat someone else? I don't identify with monsters nor do I glorify them. I want to see some bad@$$ with a gun beat vampires up - I identify with that quite a lot! So movies like Blade, Blade 2, Blade Pi, et al. are my preferred entertainment.

A dragon movie of this sort falls under the Vampire Hunter genre. Instead of blood they use fire, same difference. So my ire about this movie was the vast loss in potential. We end as we started, this could have been a good movie. Maybe even great.

Rating explanations:
0 star = gong. I stopped watching this due to disgust
1 star = Stopped watching because I was bored out of my skull
2 stars = A tragedy.
3 stars = Average. Kept me entertained.
4 stars = Me like.
5 stars = Anthem movie. Defines my consciousness.
FFWD = how many times I fast-forwarded through a scene.
PAUS = how many times I paused the movie due to discomfort