additional links
Reign of Fire
I first watched Reign of Fire when it was released and I thought it was quite cool. Then it never managed to find it’s way into my collection as I couldn’t recall it clearly enough to decide whether it would be rewatchable or not. Eventually, I got round to rewatching it, and it’s safe to say that it will soon be found in it’s rightful and well deserved place.
Reign of Fire is a post-apocalypse world in which the apocalypse was not brought about by an asteroid or a nuclear war. Nukes are involved but only as an attempt to destroy the dragons, an attempt that failed, fortunately for us, not so fortunate for the characters in the movie. They have to hide from the dragons and hope to outlive them, not an incredibly likely scenario.
At this point, the film could devolve into a boring drama about the interactions of people when forced to remain cooped up. Fortunately, dragon slayers with a death wish show up, and the rest of the film is pretty much humans kicking dragon ass, and dragons kicking human ass.
Dodginess
Considering that the film depicts a post apocalyptic world in which dragons exist, it’s probably not as dodgy as it could have been, and this may have been a failing on the fimmakers part. It still has it’s dodgy moments, after all, there are dragons, but you could probably have replaced the dragons with aliens, terrorists or any other clichéd world destroyer without having to rewrite very much. Regin of Fire scores a 3 on the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man Scale. The dodgiest moment has to go to Denton Van Zan (Mathew McConaughey) and his attack leap at the dragon off the building which ends with the dragon eating him. Maybe he was hoping that the dragon would be slowed by the nice digestible human to such an extent that Quinn (Christian Bale) would be able to kill it.
Rewatchability Rating
Sometimes, a movie requires that you watch it more than once to truly appreciate it. For some movies this is to appreciate the subtle plot twists and intrigue. Some films require more than one viewing because the visual experience is so overwhelming you can’t focus on anything other than the pretty lights. And some movies require that you watch them more once so as to firmly imprint on your consciousness just how cool they truly are. Reign of Fire is such a film and rates a 5 on the rewatchability index.
Most Memorable Quote
There is one scene in which they are acting out part of the story from The Empire Strikes Back (Star Wars V), but seeing as those lines are from a different movie, they don’t really count. The best line in Reign of Fire that was written for Reign of Fire is “Only one thing worse than a dragon … Americans!”
Final Thoughts
Reign of Fire is great, and it showcases Christian Bale before he came to prominence with his black and white suits of kickassness in Equilibrium and Mathew McConaughey before he became the go-to-guy for chickflicks. It also has dragons, which are always worth watching a film for. So give this one a watch, you won’t be sorry.