How To Train Your Dragon Slayer
The underrated post-apocalyptic fantasy ‘Reign of Fire’ is fire
There are two primary reasons to watch immediately, or rewatch, the 2002 post-apocalyptic blockbuster flop Reign of Fire and about a dozen or so secondary reasons, which include Matthew McConaughey’s smoldering performance as Van Zan, a greasy, lunatic dragon hunter with a shaved head. He is a cigar-chomping scene-stealer.
The sight of McConaughey leading a ragtag army prompts the leader of a small band of survivors in the UK countryside to deliver a slyly political one-liner about the only thing more destructive than a dragon… which is Americans. In 2002, you see, the U.S. was in a fightin’ mood.
The first reason to stream Reign of Fire is a scene at the movie's beginning that establishes a colony that has survived the end of the world.
In two of their most likable roles, Christian Bale and Gerard Butler are survivors performing their interpretation of the climactic lightsaber fight between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back for a crowd of wide-eyed children, all of them orphans.
It is a touching moment as these two rising action stars mug and plays make-believe for parentless kids and a handful of families hiding in the bowels of a broken-down castle, safe from dragons but slowly starving.
This simple scene establishes high stakes for Reign of Fire. As the song goes, I believe the children are the future.
As Quinn, the leader of this motley crew, Bale is in peak form, as intense and vulnerable as he’s ever been, and this movie came out a couple of years before he dons Batman’s cape and whispery baritone becomes famous. Quinn’s best buddy is Gerard Butler’s Creedy, and Butler’s unique macho vibe is also on full blast in this movie as a growly, bug-eyed bro-mensch. These two have great best-friend chemistry, and I’d love to see them do another movie together, maybe something heist-y.
The movie includes brief performances from blue chip character actors Alexander Siddig, Alice Krige, and Izabella Scorupco as a hardbitten helicopter pilot who helps McConaughey’s Van Zen take down dragons.
The second reason to stream Reign of Fire is, well, because the action is tight, like a crossbow string pulled back. The dragons are genuinely terrifying, and McConnaughy’s character’s tactics for taking them down are insane. The movie is 100% heavy metal fury.
Reign of Fire is a bleak, inventive, and original genre-bending action movie. Director Rob Bowman’s dystopian future is one where humans hide while dragons feast on ashes. Bowman was a television director with many beloved shows on his resume — like The X-Files and Star Trek: The Next Generation — and four so-so feature films, including the pre-MCU superhero movie Elektra starring Jennifer Garner. But Reign of Fire is special, a popcorn blockbuster par excellence. Bowman must have been inspired.
While most movie dragons star in medieval-inspired fantasies, Reign of Fire drops them into the middle of modern times, with a bit of narration thrown in to explain why the Earth is overrun with beasts that can breathe napalm. But even that narration lacks details: one day, the dragons just woke up. Humans dug too deep. That’s it. Let that be a lesson to future generations: drilling for oil and burning fossil fuels is wrecking the environment. Also, mythological behemoths could be unleashed.
The dragons are an elegant stand-in for climate change or just man’s hubris in general. The world’s governments responded to the dragons with nukes, further destroying civilization. Reign of Fire is two timely cautionary tales: human greed and industry will destroy us all, and so will nuclear weapons.
Two-thousand and two was a competitive year for special-effects-stuffed spectacles — Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man swung into theaters, as did the second Star Wars prequel Attack of the Clones and the first Harry Potter movie. That’s some stiff competition. And the elevator pitch is, even now, quirky: Reign of Fire is Mad Max meets flying dinosaur flamethrowers.
Hollywood has been addicted to the safe bet of IP for two decades now and it wouldn’t kill the industry to invest in more original, batshit ideas (Moonfall notwithstanding).
The dragon movie genre is a limited one. The best probably being 1981’s deadly serious Dragonslayer, a Tolkein-esque story about a boy and a surprisingly realistic, virgin-hungry relative of The Hobbit’s Smaug. In 1996, Sean Connery lent his voice to a CGI dragon in Dragonheart, a movie I would not recommend watching or rewatching.
Recently, there was the animated How I Trained My Dragon trilogy, and those movies are perfectly watchable if you’re a grown adult trapped on a red-eye flight, for instance.
Speaking of The Hobbit, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Smaug was an incredible creation. It’s just too bad his performance is buried deep inside Jackson’s tedious follow-up to his Oscar-winning The Lord of The Rings adaptations. They should never have stretched The Hobbit into three long-ass movies, but money talks.
The popularity of HBO’s hit fantasy-drama Game of Thrones and its spin-off House Of Dragons has returned dragons to the center of pop culture. If you’re drawn to HBO’s winged lizards, you’ll enjoy Reign of Fire’s prehistoric beasts. The dragons of Game of Thrones resemble Reign of Fire’s monsters, with tattered bat-like wings and sleek demonic faces that can launch fire tornadoes from their mouths.
It’s too bad there was never a sequel to Reign of Fire — the somewhat happy ending is a little too pat for me and, oh, spoiler alert about the ending. Humanity survives, but I just can’t help but think there are more dragons out there, patiently waiting for more hairless monkeys to flame-broil.