Monday 24 August 2009

Movie! ‘Dragon Wars’


This was originally going to be a post about the Doctor Who story ‘Revelation of the Daleks’, until I tried watching the DVD that is… As it turned out, the only thing I could really write was ‘this DVD kept repeating the same scene over and over again with no way of skipping past it or choosing a different scene…’ Now there’s one DVD that will be going back to the shop!

Luckily for me, I’ve got a whole load of DVDs that I’ve bought but never got round to watching :o) The reasons behind my purchase of ‘Dragon Wars’ were a mixture of the dragon facing off against the helicopter gunship and the fact that it only cost £6 in the sale. I should have remembered that there are very good reasons why a DVD will end up on the sale rack…

Every five hundred years, an evil serpent will fight to gain the power that will transform it into a celestial dragon and help it reign supreme; it’s round about the time that it all kicks off again… A warrior has been reborn to help the woman who doesn’t even realise that she holds this power within her; the serpent’s henchmen want to reach her first…



When you’ve got a lead actor, Jason Behr, who mumbles every single one of his lines (mumbling isn’t being intense, it’s just mumbling!) then you just know that you’re in for a slow old ride. If that wasn’t bad enough you also have one of those heroines who like to say, “I didn’t ask for this!” at the stupidest opportunity and a wise old mystic who can be relied upon to rescue our hapless duo just when things start to get really interesting. And if that wasn’t bad enough there’s a creaky FBI subplot that doesn’t really have anything to do with the plot and why wasn’t the hero’s last thought, “Where am I and how the hell do I get home?”

You know what though? For a few brief minutes I was able to let all of this go when an entire army of lizards (some of which fired missiles!) descended on Los Angeles and did some serious damage to the city centre. My wife didn’t agree (her running commentary was along the lines of, “They stole that bit from Lord of the Rings, that bit was from Star Wars and wasn’t that bit in Ghostbusters…?”) but there really isn’t anything that’s much more fun than seeing a dragon face off against a military helicopter :o) Fifteen minutes of mayhem almost made up for the rest of the film; what it ended up doing was to get me to watch the rest of the film hoping that something similar would happen. It didn’t…

Good fun but ultimately forgettable…

3 comments:

Thea said...

Ahh, Dragon Wars. It never quite realized the comedic gold it grazed in early scenes (i.e. the senile old lady walking into the fence a few times) - but when I took it as a cheesy comedy (and drinking game), it became infinitely better.

Still, it could never decide if it was meant to be a comedy or a serious fantasy flick.

Graeme, I'm gonna out and dare you a bad movie watch. Can I do that??? If you can get your hands on it, you and your wife should watch TROLL 2. Preferably on a weekend with a good amount of alcohol on hand. It's HILARIOUS because it takes itself seriously, and it's so. gorram. awful.

Please. PLEASE watch it :)

Sincerely, your book smuggling buddy,
Thea.

Graeme Flory said...

Thanks for the award Cherry! :o)

Thea - When payday comes round I'll take up your dare! What goes around comes around though and I have a dare for you too... :o)
If I'm going to be watching 'Troll 2' then you're going to be watching 'Hard Rock Zombies' if you haven't seen it already. It's a film that's so bad it prompted my mate to yell out, "Oh God! Are we only halfway through?!?!"

TheSGC said...

I heard a lot of bad stuff about that. Saw a trailer of it when it came out, was never really interested. Seemed like a Godzilla spoof then.