Reign of Fire – Dragons of the future

Title: Reign of Fire

US Release: 7/12/2002

Directed by Rob Bowman

Written by Matt Greenberg, Gregg Chabot, and Kevin Peterka

Distributed by Buena Vista Pictures

Cast:

Christian Bale – Quinn

Matthew McConaughey – Denton Van Zan

Izabella Scorupco – Alex

Gerard Butler – Creedy

David Kennedy - Eddie

Alexander Siddig – AJ

Ned Dennehy - Barlow

The Skinny:

                A young Quinn ventures down into a London underground subway tunnel, under construction, to visit his mother who is foreman of the work crew assigned to the site.  Relaying bad news that he did not win an academic scholarship; his mother is quickly called away to an issue elsewhere in the tunnel.  Quinn happens upon a disgruntled employee who dares him to venture into an opening he just discovered while drilling.  Quinn enters into the opening and is awestruck by the strange rock faces he finds.  Suddenly liquid starts dropping from the cave ceiling, turning into fire once it hits the floor.  Scarred, Quinn slowly looks up to see something strange moving in the dark, which spits liquid all over his face.  He flees to his mother, and in a panic she takes him to a medical station to clean out his eyes, while the other workers rush to investigate the opening, only for it to burst into flames.

                The fire spreads rapidly through the unfinished tunnel.  Quinn is rushed to the elevator by his mother and begins the slow ascent to the surface.  Quinn keeps repeating he saw “something” in the tunnel.  The construction elevator is slow, and soon the carriage is beset by a large dragon.  It gets close enough to the carriage to look Quinn right in the eye.  As it takes flight, it crushes the carriage, sparing Quinn but killing his mother.

                A short montage shows the dragons growing in number across the world.  Even nuclear weapons cannot kill them, and scorches the earth making it uninhabitable for even humans.  Soon all organized governments fall, and people gather and hide where they can.  Quinn, now grown up (Bale), is leader of a small colony in Northumberland, and believes humanity can outlast the dragons if they stay hidden, depriving the dragons of food so they will die of starvation.

                This mentality does not sit well with many of the colonists.  One dissenter, Eddie (Kennedy) who has lost some of his own children along the way, wants to take the children he has left and harvest a small grove near the colony.   Quinn forbids this, as leaving during the day time would draw attention to it, and risk the dragons torching it for food.  Quinn’s second in command and best friend, Creedy (Butler), backs him up, though quips later that his tight-fisted attitude does more harm than good.  Eddie leaves anyways, taking his remaining children during the night to harvest from the grove. 

                At sunrise the colony’s only sentry, Barlow (Dennehy), is alerted to the threat of a nearby dragon when his pet hawk starts to panic.  The colony goes into a state of emergency, and all the children of the colony are sent to the basement for protection.  Quinn is informed that Eddie and his children have gone to the grove.  Quinn takes a small rescue party to the grove and rescues Eddie and his children just as a dragon arrives and sets the entire grove ablaze.  Unfortunately, Eddie loses another child.  Distraught, Quinn starts to doubt if he can keep the colony residents alive, while Creedy tries to encourage him to hang on. 

The colony’s communication’s operator, AJ (Siddig) picks up radio chatter.  He raises another alarm, and the adults of colony arm themselves and take positions along the perimeter walls, though it’s revealed they barely enough ammo for their weapons.  A convoy of army vehicles lead by a tank arrive at the front gate, but stop short of barreling through it.  Denton Van Zan (McConaughey) exits the tank and requests to speak with “who’s in charge”.  Quinn, trying to maintain a defensive image, meets Van Zan just outside the front gate.  Van Zan requests shelter for his militia, but also to take from the colony whatever supplies they need, and increase his ranks with any capable residents from the colony.  Quinn, seeing Van Zan is crazy, denies his request.  Van Zan threatens to overtake the colony anyways, but manages to persuade Quinn to help him with an idea to take down the dragons and even producing a dragon tooth, proving his militia can indeed kill them. 

                Quinn hesitantly agrees, and Van Zan along with his militia, almost immediately get a chance to prove they can kill dragons when one flies near the colony.  Alex (Scorupco), who pilots the only helicopter available for the militia, scouts the area, and uses skydivers to divert the dragon into position to bring it down.  The militia is successful in slaying the dragon, but loses 3 of its own in the process.

                The colony breaks out in celebration, witnessing the first slaying of a dragon.  Van Zan however backed by his militia, berate the colonists for ignoring that 3 men died taking down one dragon, and such odds would not mean success.

                Alex and Van Zan discuss with Quinn the use of the armory of the colony and even drafting colonists into his militia.  Quinn dismissing the idea with extreme prejudice.  Van Zan informs Quinn he was able to trace the origins of the dragons back to London, and that all the dragons they have killed were all female.  He believes there is only one male that fertilizes all the dragon eggs, and if eliminated, would begin the annihilation of the dragons.  Quinn realizes he saw the male dragon in the underground tunnel as a boy, but is unwilling to face his past or allow anymore people under his care to leave and face almost certain death.

                Van Zan ignores Quinn’s authority and starts his own draft.  Quinn, in front of the entire colony, tackles Van Zan leading to a scrum.  Van Zan turns his punches aside and quickly gains the upper hand before his own men pull them apart.  Quinn, afraid that if the militia leave will give the dragons a trail back to the colony, but his warnings go unheard and the militia leave with colonists added to their ranks.

                Van Zan’s militia gets stuck en route to London, and taken out by the male dragon.  Van Zan survives along with Alex and Eddie, and realizes Quinn was right.  He rushes back to the colony in the helicopter, but is too late.  The male dragon has set the colony ablaze.  Quinn and Creedy manage to get all the children to the basement and trigger the sprinkler system to keep the fire from spreading to them.  Creedy goes back to round up any survivors he can but is killed when the fire spreads. 

                Quinn, now without a choice, takes control of the situation.  He orders Alex to fly him and Van Zan to London, and back to the very tunnel the male dragon crawled out of.  Taking what weapons and ammo they have left; they head to London in a desperate attempt to bring down the male dragon.

On the Surface:

                This film fits into the “miscellaneous” category of sci-fi as it is set in the future, but not in space, and incorporates the fantasy elements of dragons, but gives a pretty realistic explanation for their existence and what modern steps would need to be taken to eliminate them.  Making extensive use of CGI, partial set compositing, and lots of practical pyrotechnic effects, the film has a gritty and grim feeling, aiming for a realistic feel and not a medieval, heroic “Knight of the Valiant slays dragon to restore honor and peace to the land”.  Many hardcore sci-fi fans dismissed this film because of the dragons alone, and the post-apocalyptic tone was dismissed because the destruction was caused by fantasy creatures not by man made weapons alone.  Still, a lot of fans have called this film the “Logan’s run” of modern science-fiction, because its unique enough to stand out, but does not follow many sci-fi tropes and relies more on human emotions to drive the story.  It could be regarded as a popcorn flick, but even casual sci-fi fans who enjoyed this movie still enjoy it with a bucket of Orville Redenbacher’s to nack on.

Production wise:

                The film was shot in Ireland, but an outbreak of Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease throughout Europe brought on quarantines that restricted filming and lead the producers to drop many sequences from the shooting script.  Creating the look of the dragons proved difficult, has many close-up shots just looked rubbery when rendered.  Using techniques pioneered in Disney’s 2000 feature “Dinosaur”, the dragons were painstakingly modeled, textured, animated, and rendered into a realistic result that gave them the necessary appearance of scales and a wingspan that looked to be 300 feet wide when the wings were fully extended.

                Rob Bowman, a veteran of sci-fi, directing many episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, X-files and directed the X-files feature film “Fight the Future”, has stated he wanted to create a realistic sci-fi film.  Unhappy with the alien scenes in the X-files film, he wanted to give more screen time to the dragons so the audience would see their size and be able to grasp how destructive and almost invincible they were supposed to be.  This proved difficult as no props were used for the dragons inflight, so trying to convey to the camera operators the proper framing was a daily challenge.  The method of dragons making fire was derived from certain species of snakes that spit venom combined with certain species of beetle that have similar qualities.  The result was two glands in the dragon’s mouth that secret separate chemicals that when mixed on exhalation, create a reaction that produces flame.

                Matthew McConaughey, known to use method acting on occasion, was said to have gotten so into his character, that he had nightmares for a while after production wrapped.

                The dragons seen in the film, per fantasy classification, are not really dragons, as dragons have 4 legs and a set of wings.  The dragons in the film are technically Wyvern’s, since they have one pair of hind legs, and their two front appendages can be used as legs while on the ground, but serve more as wings when in flight.

Why I like the film:

                Dragons haven’t been used very much in film history in general.  Given that the characterization of dragons can be customized in a variety of different ways and creating a compelling vision of the character will always be challenging, it’s sad to see them relegated to cheap b-movies or monster of the week movies shown on Sy-fy channel.  When I saw the trailer for this film, I thought “finally, someone has risen to the challenge of making a dragon film and incorporating it into a modern setting.” 

                The angle of dragons creating a post-apocalyptic world was original and fitting.  Since dragons are the de-facto villains for pretty much all medieval fairytales, making them into an unstoppable force just seemed like a natural progression for a modern film.  Fairytales boil down common problems and scenarios into basic elements so they can be explained very simply.  But seeing the dragons of this film, gives a simple explanation for why problems can seem so impossible to overcome.

                This is shown in Quinn’s character having to face the death of his mother by a creature he didn’t even know existed and would soon learn, like the rest of the world, how powerful it was.  This was the first time I would see Christian Bale on film.  Thankfully it was in the theater, as the big screen made it easier to appreciate his performance.  Using his native Welsh accent gave his character credibility, as Denton Van Zan slaying the dragon would seem awkward.  Matthew McConaughey’s performance as Van Zan was touted as derivative and stereotypically “American”.  I took it as an American who didn’t want to live in fear of the dragons anymore.  He didn’t come to England to “subdue” it through killing dragons, he came to end the dragons, and was so single minded in his goal he didn’t want to be distracted by anything else.  Because killing all the dragons would benefit all of the human race.  His demise at the end of the film was perfect for his character.          

                A big fan of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, I enjoyed seeing Alexander Siddig in a big budget film showcasing more of his acting range.  I still laugh at his “wanker” insult to Barlow.

                The modern military elements were what I was looking forward to the most in the film.  I have always been fascinated with bringing together separate, almost polar opposite elements into a well rounded and effective final product (IE: the music of Nightwish, Eluveitie, and Five Iron Frenzy are prime examples), and I have seen a lot of great films, tv episodes, music, etc. that have blended odd combinations together well, but get dismissed immediately because a lot of people don’t know how to classify it or what it really is(since it’s a combination of 2 or more genres but doesn’t sound or look like any of them).  This film deserved more credit than it got, and for the amount of effort, let alone budget, that went into it, the finished film was beyond “a weird Sci-fi movie” label it’s been condemned to.

The film is rated PG-13 for “intense action scenes”.  Stream or rent where available for when you want to enjoy a unique Sci-fi movie, with A-list actors who show their mastery of the craft and top-notch special effects, all while enjoying a bucket of popcorn.