movrev: Reign of Fire
What movie combines Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt, Batman and King Leonidas of Sparta? Only 2002’s dragon fighting flick, Reign of Fire, starring Matthew McConaughey, Christian Bale and Gerard Butler.
Granted, for true sci-fi fans, the premise of the movie is a little shaky. Excavators in London awaken a hibernating fire-spitting dragon, who smokes all of the workers except young Quinn (who grows up to be Batman, a neat trick). The dragon proliferates his species in exponential fashion; the world leaders try to nuke ’em, but the dragons and the bombs take the world back to slightly before the stone age.
In 2020, Quinn is now leading a colony of sorts, trying to not be made extinct by dragons. King Leonidas is his best friend (yet another neat trick).
Into this colony rolls (and flies, with a helicopter, no less) tattooed and head-shaved Matthew as Van Zan, a Kentucky-regular dragon killer (who apparently eats cigars for breakfast). Van Zan has a tank and a helicopter, a some suicidal maniacs called ArchAngels who jump out of the helicopter trying to chain the wings of dragons and bring them down. This is one of the most fun scenes in the flick, when they bring down a large dragon using Quinn as bait.
Van Zan’s team believes there is only one male dragon (nice job!), and it is the one Quinn saw at the beginning in London. If they take that one out, the rest will die off. Van Zan takes a team, gets most of them killed in an attack by the male, but then Quinn shows up to save the day.
Great image of Van Zan jumping off a tower with his dragonslayer axe, only to be eaten in mid-air by the big male.
A fun movie, apparently didn’t make back its budget at the box office, but tasty fare.