Is this a deep cut? Depends on how familiar you are with direct-to-VHS masterpiece Barbie as Rapunzel (2002). But it is an experience that I recommend wholeheartedly. McConaughey convinces Bale to go on one crazy mission that might change all of their lives: Travel across dragon-infested England to kill the only female dragon, who has been nesting in the heart of London all this time. In the form of Matthew McConaughey as the tatted-up leader of a dragon-killing helicopter attack squad. Life is hard - from the dragon attacks - but stable, until, what else: The Americans show up.
I’ll say that again: In Reign of Fire, dragons killed the dinosaurs.Ĭhristian Bale and Gerard Butler are best friends and the leaders of a band of humans who’ve managed to survive in a rural English castle - i.e., a building made of fireproof stone. It was later discovered that this was part of a cyclical pattern and that dragons killed the dinosaurs. You see, in Reign of Fire, dragons just came out of the ground one day and destroyed modern human civilization. What Reign of Fire lacks in any singularly notable dragon, it makes up for with its absolutely b-a-n-a-n-a-s concept: dragon-based postapocalypse. What’s important is Randy Edelman’s orchestral score, which has made me fully tear up during the blocky CGI dragon’s death scene even when coming across it while channel surfing as a fully grown adult. The story of Dragonheart isn’t important, though, nor is the 1996-era special effects that brought Connery’s Draco to life. It’s a movie about a knight (Dennis Quaid) making friends with a dragon (Sean Connery) and years ago that dragon gave half his actual heart ( DRAGONHEART, DO YOU GET IT?) to save a little boy and then that little boy grew up to be a tyrant who cannot be killed unless the dragon is also killed but now he is the knight’s big grumpy CGI friend and he’s also the last dragon ever because the knight killed all the rest of them.Īt least that’s my recollection from seeing Dragonheart exactly once when it came out in 1996. Look, Dragonheart is… I’m not proud of what Dragonheart does to me. Image: Universal Pictures Home Entertainment
Where the original song has him sadly retiring into oblivion when his original child companion grows up and forgets about him, these specials suggested that Puff is a kind of eternal way station for troubled kids - and that imaginary friends are a helpful tool on the path to growing up. Written by Romeo Muller, who also scripted the 1970s adaptation of The Hobbit and wrote many of Rankin-Bass’ stop-motion holiday specials, Puff the Magic Dragon and its follow-up specials positioned the genial dragon as a kind of combination fantasy BFF and insightful child psychologist, leading his kids through weird fantasy lands that help them process childhood traumas and get past their own dysfunctional defensive mechanisms. Burgess Meredith voiced the dragon, a kind of ersatz adult capable of both offering wisdom and of seeing the world with the same outsized imaginations as the kids he helps.
The friendly dragon of Peter, Paul and Mary’s classic song got a trio of gently absurdist animated TV outings in the 1970s and ’80s, courtesy of CBS. The Rankin-Bass version picks up what Tolkien was laying down in drawing his dragon from classic heroic epics: This is a beast of an older, more primal age, something fearsome in size and power that’s also fearsome in its craft and cunning, even if he’s ultimately vain enough to be tricked into courting his own death. This isn’t some upsized version of a familiar reptilian creature, or a sleek fantasy wish-fulfillment pet Smaug is illustrated with intimidatingly fine details, with irregular teeth, coarse hair sprouting from his face and back, and a bulk that suggests a predator big enough to eat whenever and wherever he wants. Have Gun – Will Travel star Richard Boone gave him a gravelly, rich, aristocratic purr of a voice, but the animators made him a uniquely visceral monster. Tolkien’s The Hobbit real ones know that the OG version in the 1977 Rankin-Bass movie is one of the all-time great movie dragons. Forget Peter Jackson’s CGI Smaug in the ridiculously overstretched live-action version of J.R.R.