DRAGON WARS!!!

I saw it on Sunday, but not without foreknowledge. I checked the Rotten Tomatoes score before I went--it was dismally bad. The reviews were so scathing that I almost skipped going to this one, except that one of the reviews caught my attention. It said "This is the movie Ed Wood might have made if CGI existed back then." So then I figured this movie was probably going to be in the so-bad-it's-good territory.

I went. And it was SOOO bad. It willl surely take a spot in the Top Three of Worst Movies Ever Made--possibly usurping Battlefield Earth. The plot was infathomably scattershot. The characters were dumb and their motivations were stupid.






SPOILERS FOLLOW:

My biggest complaint was the cosmology. It was very uneven --which is to say they over-explained some rules of how this fantasy/concept/world operated, and under-explained others. Key points of foreshadowing did NOT happen at all. And then plot exposition --especially when details and secrets were being revealed specifically to the characters-- was either assinine or else laughably non-existent. And the weird and non-credibile straddling between Los Angeles reality and some alternate reality (the dino-looking creatures that rode into battle during the flashback to 500 years ago, and the current day Los Angeles--where did THEY come from? and where have they been hiding all these years?) was just juvenile. Were those creatures from Hell? The story vaguely mentioned the existence of Heaven, but never said a thing about Hell.

The icing on the cake for the dumb-dumb-stupid cosmology was the part at the end where the hero and the girl get in a car crash somewhere in New Mexico (how they got to New Mexico from Los Anegles by car in a matter of hours is never explained) and then the hero woke up tied to some tree or pole or whatever (why didn't kill him is also never explained--they didn't want him, they wanted the girl, so they should have either kiled him or else left him to die back at the car crash) and when he opens his eyes he's suddenly beholding a dark and stormy desert plain somewhere that looks quite similar to the Land of Mordor with a huge castle built on it. Neither the location nor the very existence of this dark evil Mordor-looking plain was ever foreshadowed earlier, nor explained there at the end. Was the castle in New Mexico? Was it an alternate reality? Where did the alternate reality come from? How does one cross back and forther between our world and the world of this dark evil castle? It made absoultely no sense.


I suggest you go see this movie with friends and joke and jeer all through it.

Oh, here's a fine example of unbelievable character motivations.


The three of them (hero, girl, side-kick) escape in a car from the hospital where she was beig detained (thus she's in a hospital gown) but then the bad guy (looking like a normal person) appears from out of nowhere right in the path of their car. They plow him down and then stop the car, assuming they have just hit some innocent pedestrian. But then when he stands up unharmed, they realize he's the bad guy in disguise. The hero and the side-kick get into a hand-to-hand tangle with the bad guy, but are no match for him because of his bad guy powers. But then suddenly, someone else comes along with their own car (turns out to be a mystical guardian pretending to be some random lady in a station wagon) and likewise plows down the bad guy with her own car (as if that's going to do anything to the bad guys since he already survived the first car strike). The hero and the girl jump into the car and speed away with the station wagon lady--and like good friends and true heroes, they leave behind the side-kick with a bad guy who is obviosuly capable of surviving car-plowings. After the station wagon lady drops off hero and girl someplace, the girl turns to the hero and says: "What about Bruce?" (he's the side-kick). And the hero says: "I'm sure he's fine. We gotta get you some clothes."

avid-dreamer said:

I have one question: WHO THE @$%# WROTE AND DIRECTED THAT SCRIPT???
I went to see that tonight and wound up walking out before it got half-way! IT WAS HORRIBLE!!
-scenes were too short and jumping all over the place!
-The graphics sucked
-there was no coherency!
-there was no logic!
-some guy was running around looking like a 1960's version of a Power Ranger!
-some old Chinese dude was doing karate, flying around and throwing power balls like KEN from Street Fighter

It was like the producer decided to take a big cauldron and mix in everything he knew about fantasy, Power Rangers, Asian history, Street Fighter and then bring it to a rapid and salty boil that just erupted into one big cinematic FLOP!
I don't understand how such things can make it to the big screen when there are so many talented writers out there with MUCH more to offer!!!
OK, I'll shut up now.

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This was a re-dubbed South Korean film aimed for a South Korean audience that was likely familiar with a lot of the stuff relating to its own mythology and completely unfamiliar with a lot of stuff relating to America and American characters, so who knows how much was literally "lost in translation."

How does a movie like this get released?

Tail end of the summer. No big action fantasies around. I'm sure the North American rights were available for a song and whoever acquired them probably made their money back and then some just on the strength of the numbers they could put in the theatres off the rather cool-looking trailer.

Hell, the damned thing looks so kooky, I'll probably go see it.

As between Jodie Foster playing the Charles Bronson role in an unofficial remake of "Death Wish" and some zany thing with Dragons and tanks and crazy ass Koreans fighting with magic swords in L.A. -- I know which theatre I'd rather be in.

NMS

Okay, the trailer was enough to keep me away... But if I'm lucky it will never hit the Danish cinemas

One good thing I will say about this film--the cinemetography was superb. Whoever did this film has a great sense of lighting. Three scenes that still stick out in my mind are:

1) The scene where the hero first gets introduced to us and he's sitting at his desk in Los Angeles, and then we go to a close up of just a partial side-long shot of his face. The light was streaming from a background window and right past the front of his eyes in such a way that the brown color of his irises was just glowing with gold.

2) The scene where the FBI agent wants to kill the girl. They went to some abandoned warehouse kind of a building and they chose make the entire room glow with an overtly blue hue. There was a small high-up ventilation type window in the background of the room and a pale cold northern night was streaming down through it into the blueness of the room. And I think they even dressed up the scene a little bit with a fog machine so that the light from the window was filtering through the fog. Very nicely lit.

3) The ending scene where the hero has his back to us and he's looking at the sunrise. But then he turns and looks over his shoulder at us as the sun is rising in the background. Again, very nicely done.

One ofthe things that I think many Ameriacns will find downright odious about this movie is that a lot of innocent people got killed by the big snake monster as well as by the army of dino-riders. Americans sensibilties generally dictate that these kinds of films (sort of cheesy/kiddie fare) should spare as many innocent people as possible. And the only time people in a movie should get killed like that would be if they were somehow nasty/unlikable to begin with.

Case in point: the female roommate of The Girl. The female roommate was obviosuly a nice person, very kind and caring. And while she was in the middle of the very noble and selfless task of packing an overnight bag for The Girl (because The Girl was now in the hospital), she got chomped by the giant snake, and then her corpse was tossed by the snake into a swimming pool and left floating. That was a not-nice ending for a very nice person. Americans don't sit too well with stuff like that. If the film had painted her as a total bee-yatch, it would have been "okay." But she was completely likeable and therefore --in the American outlook on filmmmaking--completely undeserving of such a fate.

Another dumbness item:

The zoo employee was NOT believed when he claimed that a giant snake monster killed the elephant. So the carted him off in a straight jacket to a psyche ward. But wasn't there like maybe ..... you know ........ a dead elephant hanging around at the zoo as proof of his claim? It's kind of hard to overlook a dead elephant.

This movie is the most expensive Korean film ever made: I was embarrassed to be Korean in the Theatre.

I really hope this turd of a project does not reflect on other Korean films.

Check out: Old Boy.

Can you guys please whisper. If my kids hear about this movie they'll DEFINITELY drag me to it. Let's keep it on the Q-T.

nmstevens said:

How does a movie like this get released?

No big action fantasies around.

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Did they look in the dungeon? What? All gone, too? (Sigh) Why didn't they say so?

Excuse me, Hollywood! I got a great sci-fi/horror/action spec to sell. Right. He's real wicked. Excuse me? Oh. Can my diblo pimpslap that skank queen Alien? Bah! Sir, my diablo will do that and have them cornfed predators wear bell bottom plaid pants and happy feeting to disco fever while making sushi for your mom. What do I want? Give me $200,000 up front and wire the rest to my starving mistress right away.

Hollywood, ya'll need me immediately yesterday already!

Please...

So, THAT'S what triggered the Eragon/Reign of Fire Stink-O-Meter!

Hollywood is flush this year thanks to us: four billion USD. So, it could afford a few projects like this as gravy and it's riding the tide of more visual/less story. Really it's all visual/just an outline written on a legal sheet of paper.

Fret not, however, if you miss it in theaters; that bad boy will be on TNT.

"We know Dragons."

jst5150 said:

Hollywood is flush this year thanks to us: four billion USD. So, it could afford a few projects like this as gravy and it's riding the tide of more visual/less story. Really it's all visual/just an outline written on a legal sheet of paper.

Fret not, however, if you miss it in theaters; that bad boy will be on TNT.

"We know Dragons."

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Yeah but ... when there are so many of us (not just here in this forum but elsewhere in the world) who believe that we have supremely superior scripts ... it's the production and then the actual distribution of films like this that kinda rubs us the wrong way.

JoeEkaitis said:

So, THAT'S what triggered the Eragon/Reign of Fire Stink-O-Meter!

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Hey! I liked Reign of Fire!

Plot Device said:

Yeah but ... when there are so many of us (not just here in this forum but elsewhere in the world) who believe that we have supremely superior scripts ... it's the production and then the actual distribution of films like that kinda rubs us the wrong way.

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With Merchant & Ivory now long gone, and Sundance crowded like a Roach Motel filled with Jujubees, it's a long haul.

But I feel ya. I feel ya.

Plot Device said:

The zoo employee was NOT believed when he claimed that a giant snake monster killed the elephant. So the carted him off in a straight jacket to a psyche ward. But wasn't there like maybe ..... you know ........ a dead elephant hanging around at the zoo as proof of his claim? It's kind of hard to overlook a dead elephant.

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Wouldn't the elephant be the big fat lump about halfway down the snake monster's body?

-Derek

dpaterso said:

Wouldn't the elephant be the big fat lump about halfway down the snake monster's body?

-Derek

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It's not a snake, you silly boy! It's a hat!








And in the movie, the giant snake crawled into the elephant pen, chomped the elephant to death, then tossed his bloody carcass out of the elephant pen about fifty feet away onto one of the sidwalks of the zoo. Kinda looked like they were doing an homage to Lord of the Rings. There was this one image of a dead Oliphaunt from LotR floating arond the internet for an entire year prior to the the release of the first LotR film. I think they were trying to mimick the imagery of the dead Oliphaunt from that one rather famous-to-the-fans image. Let me see if I can find it.

Found two such images.





and

I went. And it was SOOO bad

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methinks with the amount of time spent discussing this flick that you actually like and enjoy "bad". <<<the NikeeGoddess just shakes her head>>>

How does a movie like this get released?

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so much is contingent on the market. if people still spend their hard earned money on this crap then this crap will continue to get made. if you're a screenwriter and complain about this crap yet passively endorse it by going to see it on it's opening weekend then your just perpetuating the problem and therefore should not be able to complain.

i love dragons and vampires as much as the next person. but they're not real.

People go to see movies expecting to be entertained. If they're not, they're certainly able to complain about it.

I saw the review of this movie on the horror site, and they were dumbfounded at how bad it was. Not even a "so bad it's good" movie. And that's saying something, because I find that horror reviewers are the most forgiving.

Now see, I liked the trailer. It looked pretty cool. You can't frack up giant CGI beasties VS. The Army wrecking havok in downtown (insert name of city here), but, I guess you can...

My friend made me go see it with her. I love dragons, but dragon movies are notoriously crappy, imo, and that makes me sad. This one, WOW. We did jeer through it the entire time.

*Spoiler alert*

And what was up with the sudden "OMG you are the love of my life!" thing between the girl and guy? They met about 2 hours before, and yes, I realize they were "destined" to be together from a past life, but how did the girl know this at all? I mean, it's not like the guy looked anything like she might have seen in a dream of the past. And would the guy really buy it so fast? And can you say "worst deus ex machina ending ever?" Ugh! OMG, this light comes from my pendant that I've been wearing since I was five, and it does all the slaying for me while I'm tied to the wooden post like a dumbass!" And by the end, I just decided to go ahead and figure that every other character in the entire movie was that stupid old man.