# “Reign of Fire” Reactions \*Spoilers\* **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 13, 2002, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reign-of-fire-reactions-spoilers/118758 "2002-07-13T06:27:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Fiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e274bd/32.png) [@Fiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiver)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2002, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reign-of-fire-reactions-spoilers/118758/41 "2002-07-15T15:12:32Z")
Oh, and I thought “they eat ash” was metaphorical also. Obviously their prey was live humans. Which is almost as dumb. Why prey on small, fast, intelligent bipeds who can go indoors or underground to hide, when the continents are swarming with big, juicy fauna such as elephants, yaks, wildebeest, buffalo, zebras, llamas ---
**Author:** ![TigoleBitties](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/cab0a1/32.png) [@TigoleBitties](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TigoleBitties)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2002, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reign-of-fire-reactions-spoilers/118758/42 "2002-07-15T16:59:40Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ratty \* > \*\*Which brings me to their diet: ash?!? Are you fucking serious? Nothing eats ash- it is the product of burning, and therefore has little to no nutrition. \*\* Obviously you have not eaten one of the many steaks done by Mrs. Bitties. IMHO, dont read too much into the movie. If you go in with a clear mind, you are ok. Its fun, brutish, and utterly infeasible but then again so is 85 percent of the movies out there. Go see it at a matinee. It was good for the mindless violence and the effects were well done. I disagree with the earlier post saying Dragonheart effects were better. The guys of “The Secret Lab” (the ones animating the dragons) went all out on their dragons and it shows. Another vote for Eight Legged Freaks. It looks like the perfect homage to 50’s big animal flicks and no way in hell it takes itself seriously. It could be the “Tremors” of the 02. ---
**Author:** ![dalovindj](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/65b543/32.png) [@dalovindj](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalovindj)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2002, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reign-of-fire-reactions-spoilers/118758/43 "2002-07-15T17:23:45Z")
First off, for christ sake, show the destruction of the world. They show the dragon getting uncovered, then some magazine articles and the world is burnt down. Note to all you film-makers out there. When you have a chance to show dragons burn the world, don’t show magazine covers instead. The movie poster had them over DC and multiple helicopters. Is a dragon really a match for an F-16 if a helicopter and some skydyvers can lead one to be taken out by a harpoon? The ash thing was retarded. “He’s not interested in us. He just wants that ash field!” What? Starving beast which eats meat, but given the choice between meat (nutiritious) and ash (no nutritional value) it picks ash? Whatever. There was an article in Time about the boy being the sole survivor. No military force went and destroyed that hole which they knew to be the source? No one found a dragon 5 or 6 times bigger than any others? We couldn’t figure out that every one we killed was female? A harpoon can take one out, but our military was powerless? You flew a plane from America to London without getting into a dragon fight? Can locate them in the air electronically and can kill them with small amounts of explosives? All we needed was a few patriot missiles to kill em. God awful. The skydiving dragon fight was the only redeeming moment. Please don’t make a sequel. ---
**Author:** ![obfusciatrist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4af34b/32.png) [@obfusciatrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/obfusciatrist)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2002, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reign-of-fire-reactions-spoilers/118758/44 "2002-07-15T17:44:33Z")
For _Eight Legged Freaks_ to work it has to take itself seriously. They have to play it straight. That is why _Tremors_ worked. They never winked at the camera. I have no problem with mindless entertainment at the movies, and that is what I was expecting. And that is why _Reign of Fire_ is such a bad movie. I went into expecting a bad movie and it managed to be so stupid that I _still_ sat there saying (to myself) “my, this is stupid.” ---
**Author:** ![Agrippina](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8797f3/32.png) [@Agrippina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agrippina)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2002, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reign-of-fire-reactions-spoilers/118758/45 "2002-07-15T18:03:03Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ratty \* > \*\* > And Christian Bale! I am appalled at his recent career choices. So promising in _Empire of the Sun_; it’s been an uninterrupted downward trajectory from there. \*\* Hey! I thought **American Psycho** was a damn good movie! ---
**Author:** ![Tretiak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a88e57/32.png) [@Tretiak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tretiak)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2002, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reign-of-fire-reactions-spoilers/118758/46 "2002-07-15T19:57:07Z")
I was mildly entertained…mildly. I gotta say, a single male is probably not the best evolutionary model for survival. I think the movie sufferd mostly from a misleading advertising campaign. I thought it was going to be DRAGONS, DRAGONS, DRAGONS!! But it wasn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Horseflesh](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horseflesh/32/7502_2.png) [@Horseflesh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horseflesh)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2002, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reign-of-fire-reactions-spoilers/118758/47 "2002-07-15T23:18:57Z")
Yeah, I agree. Give the flying lizards more screen time. I go into movies like this expecting the background to be laid out in some fashion (good or bad) and then everything _builds from that_. Hibernation for 65 million years? Okay. One male for thousands of females? Sure, why not? If the lone male is killed then one female will probably morph into a male like some amphibians do. Ash for food? Uh…sure. I don’t know anything about dragons so I’ll have to take the writers at their word. HOWEVER, I do know humans. I’m surrounded by them. If some guy tells me that dragons can’t see very well during the twilight, then I expect him _to take advantage of that fact_. Going to the lair of the male during the night hours was lunacy. Put your entire convoy in a single file at a road block? WTF?!? Even the US Army knows not to do this and they probably don’t even have a contingency plan to fight dragons. The only redeeming thing about the movie was the first sequence of Van Zan “Irregulars” (and how’d you like to write the family back home telling them that you’re irregular?) tangling up a dragon with nets in mid-air. I’m sure they couldn’t have _thought_ of a more difficult way to to fight dragons. At least _D&D_ was more tongue-in-cheek. I can’t say that I’d prefer to watch one over the other though. I’m a sucker for dragons. And I’d be willing to bet that Vermithrax could take on the _Reign of Fire_ male any day of the week. ---
**Author:** ![Semp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/fbc32d/32.png) [@Semp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Semp)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2002, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reign-of-fire-reactions-spoilers/118758/48 "2002-07-16T00:29:15Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by dalovindj \* > \*\*First off, for christ sake, show the destruction of the world. They show the dragon getting uncovered, then some magazine articles and the world is burnt down. Note to all you film-makers out there. When you have a chance to show dragons burn the world, don’t show magazine covers instead. The movie poster had them over DC and multiple helicopters. \*\* I’m just pulling this out of my ass (and no, it isn’t pretty) but maybe they had budget issues involved that meant they could show some dragons really well, or a whole bunch that looked cheesy. I agree that it would have been cool to have seen the world torched by the big lizards, but I would rather have the main dragon effects have the resources to look good. But of course, this is just conjecture. Who knows, maybe the DVD will have nice looking cut scenes… ---
**Author:** ![El\_Elvis\_Rojo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@El\_Elvis\_Rojo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Elvis_Rojo)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2002, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reign-of-fire-reactions-spoilers/118758/49 "2002-07-16T17:45:23Z")
I saw this last night, and personally, I enjoyed it. Would have prefered paying matinee prices for it, but it was still fun. One thing everyone seems to be bitching about is the “dragons eat ash” thing. Personally, I don’t mind this too much. In Terry Pratchet’s books, dragons eat things that chemically will help with their fire breathing. I don’t know what type of chemicals and all that stuff that the dragons needed to live and breathe fire, but in terms of that, it doesn’t sound all that inane. I do think they’d prefer meat over ash, but when meat is in a thick metal casing dousing you with water and ash is right there, why go through the hassle? And as for the troups waltzing into the trap, well, convoys usually travel in straight lines, and no knowing the area, they didn’t know they were going to get stuck in a dead end. Of course, having a helicopter flying recon would have been an easy way to avoid that, but, whatever. One thing I had issues with was, if the flames come from glands that secrete stuff, shouldn’t there be a limit to how much fire they can breathe in a specific amount of time? They said the glands are in the mouth, so they musn’t have been that big, but apparently they’re big enough for one dragon to fire one continuous stream for a minute or so to kill all the military guys, then torch an entire castle, and then torch it some more. I’d guess the dragon used his breadth for a good five minute stint, and looking at the amount of fluids that spewed forth to produce the flames, that seemed like a bit much. Also, I was rather upset with Van Zan’s death. That shot of him flying through the air is WONDERFULLY cheesy (that shot in the trailer sealed my “I gotta see this” factor), so the fact he didn’t even hit the thing with the axe was rather upsetting. And why would the King Daddy stay in the same place for 18 years? Eh, overall, it was fun. It was military men vs. Dragons, and it worked for me. ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2002, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reign-of-fire-reactions-spoilers/118758/50 "2002-07-16T18:14:50Z")
> [@](#): > > This is a movie about dragons. You knew this when you went into the theater. Dragons. This is completely in the realm of pure fantasy. All pretty acknowledgements of dealing with the real world are purely for show. Dragons! Big monsters! Out to kill everybody for no real good reason! Surely you must have known that. If you can’t leave your big analytical brain at home, why did you pay eight dollars to see the movie? (Plus snacks.) This is a common misconception. Writing fantasy (or half-baked science fiction, as in the case of _Reign of Fire_) does not excuse one from the normal requirements of logical plotting, unless you’re writing an extended dream sequence. I like dragons, usually like post-apocalyptic movies, like English settings, yet this movie was remarkably uninvolving. But I did learn that, when they’re excavating a new tunnel under a city and break into a cavern, they just send in a 10-year-old boy to check it out. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2002, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reign-of-fire-reactions-spoilers/118758/51 "2002-07-17T05:11:38Z")
This was one of the most unintentionally funny movies I’ve ever seen. I had to cover my mouth during most of it to keep from laughing out loud at the very serious dialogue. I totally lost it at the end - “Here’s one for evolution!” Or whatever that line was. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2002, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reign-of-fire-reactions-spoilers/118758/52 "2002-07-17T05:13:26Z")
Doy! Forgot the main reason I posted: I wanted to add that this would be a great MST3K movie. When they came into London, and we saw all the blasted, burned out buildings, I wanted to say “Look kids! Big Ben, Parliament!” ---
**Author:** ![red\_dragon60](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ce73a5/32.png) [@red\_dragon60](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/red_dragon60)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2002, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reign-of-fire-reactions-spoilers/118758/53 "2002-07-17T06:03:23Z")
Magnesium-tipped C4? What the hell? Magnesium burns very hot, yes, but how do you light it from a crossbow? And C4 is percussion-detonated. If you light it, it just burns like a candle. I hate popcorn chemistry in movies. ---
**Author:** ![Gozu\_Tashoya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/7993a0/32.png) [@Gozu\_Tashoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gozu_Tashoya)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2002, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reign-of-fire-reactions-spoilers/118758/54 "2002-07-17T06:37:13Z")
Well, it is entirely possible that the C4 arrows were something else highly explosive, or used a different detonation system. Van Zan wasn’t exactly a genius, after all. ---
**Author:** ![Speaker\_for\_the\_Dead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@Speaker\_for\_the\_Dead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Speaker_for_the_Dead)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2002, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reign-of-fire-reactions-spoilers/118758/55 "2002-07-17T07:00:23Z")
Saving grace was when the American bluescreen jumped about 15 feet with that axe… I’m still laughing! ---
**Author:** ![sturmhauke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e47c2d/32.png) [@sturmhauke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sturmhauke)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2002, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reign-of-fire-reactions-spoilers/118758/56 "2002-07-17T11:38:51Z")
I was amused when the woman checking tickets asked me what “reign” meant. As for the movie… eh. I thought it was mildly entertaining. Didn’t like the way the dragons looked, especially the holes in the wings. ---
**Author:** ![Billy\_Baroo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/76d3ee/32.png) [@Billy\_Baroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Billy_Baroo)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2002, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reign-of-fire-reactions-spoilers/118758/57 "2002-07-17T16:04:53Z")
I went last night and kept nodding off. Too little action and not enough screen time for the monsters. The FX were very cool. You could believe that these dragons were real. I imagine I will enjoy the DVD. MC Matt is an actor unfettered by the chains of talent - this one and _Contact_ have convinced me. I sense he has fun doing it, kind of like Affleck, so I don’t really mind his sullying of the silver screen all that much. But him crying over his fallen comrades was just godawful. Scorupco had way too many clothes on. The other leads were half naked, so what the fuck, Spartacus? ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2002, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reign-of-fire-reactions-spoilers/118758/58 "2002-07-17T18:21:10Z")
I feel sorry for anyone who took this movie seriously enough to expend any energy whatsoever nitpickping plot points. Clue coming: _Everything in this movie that wasn’t a dragon was a McGuffin._ K? It was like a Ridley Scott movie, without Ridley’s usual fault of taking himself too seriously: it got the tone and momentum and visuals so perfectly right that _nothing else mattered_. No, it was more like a Jan deBont movie; everything but the tornadoes, in _Twister,_ was a McGuffin: nothing else mattered, except at linking devices between dragons/tornadoes. _Reign of Fire_ succeeded almost perfectly in what it set out to accomplish, and wisely ignored only its weaknesses while concentrating entirely on its strengths. I predict it will become an SF-geek classic, like _Ladyhawke_ or _Willow_: two other films with huge, HUGE flaws, but that succeed beautifully on their chosen level. ---
**Author:** ![KGS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/90ced4/32.png) [@KGS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KGS)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2002, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reign-of-fire-reactions-spoilers/118758/59 "2002-07-18T00:34:38Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by airdisc \* > \*\*I liked it too. Though how did they know there wern’t say, 2 males? Or 5? Or 20? Or even 1,000? \*\* Wait for the sequel. 😃 FTR, I thought the movie was great. The only part I didn’t buy was one scene where the dragon was hovering with its wings beating just inches from the ground, yet nothing on the ground was disturbed. CGI department must’ve overlooked that part. As for the rest, well, I kept wondering when it was going to start to suck. It never did. ---
**Author:** ![Phoenix\_Dragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/65b543/32.png) [@Phoenix\_Dragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phoenix_Dragon)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2002, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reign-of-fire-reactions-spoilers/118758/60 "2002-07-18T01:27:29Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Chronos \* > **So, let me get this straight: The sole redeeming virtue of this movie is that the dragons looked cool? Heck, even the D&D movie of a year and a half ago had _that_.** As a very, very (VERY) hard-core dragon fan, I have to say… No, they didn’t 🙂 The dragons in D&D looked like some sort of mutated acid-splashed crocodile-gorilla hybrid. And a poorly-rendered one at that, they always looked out-of-place, obviously rendered, and with blurring that made them look like they would be pixelated if they weren’t blurred. One of the few movies where even the dragons didn’t make it worth sitting though. Ugh. Still trying to repress those memories, better for that movie to not exist. I havn’t seen it yet, but it looks like the little hopes of them showing dragons reasonably realisticly and biologically in Reign of Fire were all for nothing. Not that I expected the way they ‘took over’ or were then beaten to make any sense, either. I didn’t really hold much hope. And now it sounds like it isn’t even worth going to see for the dragons (The holes-in-wings bit always bugs me, let alone the other bits mentioned in this thread). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reign-of-fire-reactions-spoilers/118758.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reign-of-fire-reactions-spoilers/118758.md?page=4)