I’m looking forward to this movie. It looks like it’s got some kind of Dragonslayer meets The Road Warrior thing going for it, and, for my money, you can’t go wrong with that 
See, I don’t mind when movies are stupid on purpose - it’s when they take themselves seriously that I get irritated. This one will be fun.
Oh, yeah! I hadn’t quite put that spin on it!
I am really wanting to see this one, as opposed to Eight Legged Freaks. shudder I do not ever want to see a spider that big!
Well, I’ll wait for the reviews before I decide on Reign of Fire. Personally, though, I think this will probably tank at the box office. In the trailer, the special effects don’t look that great and the acting sucks. Critics will trash it. As for “the advance buzz”, it’s almost always positive for big hollywood movies, even for Episode II.
Anyway, Hollywood and I seem to totally disagree about what a dragon should look like. In my mind, they should be brightly colored and have shiny scales, have relatively short necks, and move slowly and ponderously, like an elephant. But Hollywood always make them dull colors, with long, dinosaur-style necks, and capable of very fast movements.
It is, though mostly in eastern mythology. Western mythology typically portrays dragons as being just huge beasts with little more intelligence than the typical predator, but there are several exceptions (Though few come to mind right now…).
The only problem I really have with the movie is that it seems unreasonable that the dragons would have been able to take over, even with the huge growth rate they mentioned. An assault rifle would still do some nasty work on a critter that size, close-support aircraft would be able to hit and leave without retaliation, and assault helicoptors would probably tear them up. And of course, given their size, I don’t think there’s anything they could do to a Challenger tank other than damage the more sensitive externals (And they didn’t look big enough to do more serious external damage, like bending the main-gun barrel). Unless there’s a lot more explanation in it about how they did it. Of course, it’s a hollywood movie, so I won’t get my hopes up too high.
I’m still going to go see it, but I’ll probably be rooting for the dragons 
I think you can guage the level of realism this film is aiming for by virtue of the fact that it’s set (or at least was in the news stories I read) in the mountains of Norfolk in the UK.
Norfolk doesn’t have any mountains. It barely has hills. Think Holland.
It all looked good for me until that silly shot of Matthew lunging through the air with an axe and an incredibly stupid look on his face. I like the premise, and it’s about time there was another dragon movie, but I’m a little sketchy. Hollywood never seems to be able to pull off anything good these days when it comes to an original idea. I don’t think it’s going to do all that well, but I’ll definitely put my $5.50 matinee money towards it. And love every minute of it, too.
puts on dragon hat
pulls on t-shirt with big dragon on it
places hand lettered sign in shoulder reading:Go Dragons!
Goes to wait in line
And I thought nobody would want to see this but me. I’m stupidly excited for this, and I don’t even normally go in for action movies. It just looks so interesting, and it’s nice to hear that the buzz for it is good.
All of the above vulnerabilities make some sense, but only if one insists on going the same ill-considered “Ameri-Godzilla” route of making the monster prosaic for the sake of “realism”. Should you be able to kill a gigantic mutated iguana, hundreds of feet tall, with a pair of 500lb warhead anti-ship missiles? Sure, if it’s made of ordinary flesh and bone. But ordinary flesh and bone couldn’t support a creature that size in the first place. Its mere existance requires a certain measure of finesse – and if you’re going to contrive some rubber science to explain how your monster can stand up, it seems like a minor matter to also explain why it can shrug off missiles and artillery fire, and breathe radioactive fire, like the real Godzilla.
It certainly makes at least as much sense as ballistic missile subs maneuvering in the apparently 750’+ depths of the Hudson river.
Dragons, of anybody’s mythology, should likewise not be able to stand or breathe, much less fly, if they are nothing more than hormonally overendowed monitor lizards (that book of some years back that attempted to explain them as living, hydrogen-filled blimps notwithstanding). The dragons of myth and literature are always strongly associated with magic or magically-tinged natural principles, like alchemy. A “realistic” biological dragon wouldn’t have blood that would let you understand the language of animals when you tasted it, or render you invulnerable if you bathed in it, or that was so venomous that its poison would travel up a spear shaft to kill the person who stabbed it. Its teeth wouldn’t grow into warriors if you sowed them on the ground, and so forth. I don’t think that there would be anything inherently unreasonable about a magical dragon’s cold iron scales being able to deflect hypervelocity tank rounds (save for one missing scale over the heart perhaps), or its breath being hot enough to bake a tank crew, or detonate its fuel and ammunition, or melt the whole thing to slag.
I have some hopes for Reign of Fire to be at least a satisfying spectacle, and a throwback to the pulp cinematic sci-fi of the '50s and '60s (the poster puts me in the mind of an an update of an old Quatermass movie). I fear though, given its pedigree, that it might just end up as something lame and bland.
It does seem kind of cool, but I can’t get over the fact that humans will eventually defeat the dragons in the movie. We’ll see how they handle it. If they make the dragons too strong, then you end up with ID4, where they have to make up some stupid one shot deal that magically stops all the dragons. If the dragons are too weak, us dragon fans won’t be satisfied with them. Hopefully there’s a nice balance.
When I first saw the posters for this film, my jaw hit the floor and I drooled and stared.
Then I saw the trailer, and I completely lost the desire to see the film.
I am so tired of the whole post-apocolypse deal that I really don’t care any more.
Why the hell do film makers add this element in? To make it more interesting or to add another challenge for the heroes to overcome?
Nope. I just don’t like it.
I need one of those signs 
Umbriel:
Actually, the dragons themselves in Reign of Fire are reasonably realistic, and explained as being completely biological and natural (At least, this is what I get from the trailers…). The breath was a binary chemical, and they’re not so hugely oversized as to be unreasonable (The biggest problem might be the wing size. They did seem to have pretty big wingspans, but maybe not big enough. Depends on how light-weight they are. If they’ve got some of the same weight-saving techniques as avians, it might work). But while it seems like the dragons are being portrayed realisticly, their chances aren’t; Being the completely natural creatures they’re explained to be in the movie, they wouldn’t have much chance of taking over so quickly… Unless the movie does a GOOD job of explaining it (In which case, one wonders how a small group of survivors is going to do diddly squat to them once they’ve spread and taken over so far…)
Personally, I’ve always prefered the more contemporary view of dragons, which generally involves little if any magic (Fire breath being the most variable, though lately being more explained by chemical reaction or the like; Then again, would some medievel knight think a beast breathing fire was doing it through magic, or chemestry?), and are generally on the smaller scale, ranging in size from human to elephant, most often (A rather reasonable size-range). It just seems much more “right” to me And besides, who says the dragons of western mythology were really so big, you know how fishing tales go, just imagine the stories some knight would tell; Would he admit the critter he fought was ‘only’ the size of his horse, or would he “stretch the truth” just a little? You know how it goes… “Yeah, it was a good 80 feet long, honest! Teeth like huge swords, and…” etc, etc. Heh. As for the stuff about poison blood and planting teeth for warriors, they got all sorts of stuff wrong about common animals, too
I’m mostly just going to go to see some dragons in action. If it’s a good movie, all the better, but hopefully the dragons will make it worth it in any case… Too bad they’re probably going to loose, it would be nice if the dragons could win for a change.
So far as the medieval mind was concerned, chemistry was alchemy, and the distinction between “natural” and “supernatural” was not particularly sharp (nor is it to many modern minds, I trust ). Mythological/literary accounts are usually vague and erratic regarding dimensions and physical parameters. While folktales might have described some dragons as being the size of buildings or hills, engravings and tapestries seldom depict them as being much larger than horses (scale and perspective were not major concerns of such artists, as seen in the many depictions of city defenders and besiegers towering over the city walls).
While it’s all good fun to try to “engineer” a way for dragons to exist as real animals, simple biology tells us that any flight-capable creature much bigger than a contemporary eagle or condor would have to be so lightly built as to be pretty darn easy to slaughter with a baseball bat. Hypergolic breath, or some giant avian variation on the spray of a bombardier beetle, might enhance their survivability somewhat, but they’d still be much less dangerous overall than a large bear.
I’ve heard it suggested that “fragile dragons” might actually reconcile with medieval accounts, as any heroes who fight them seem to win, and references to those who fell before might be written off as embellishments akin to the venomous blood and such mentioned above. I think, though, that whatever the armchair speculative appeal of a “realistic dragon”, a more grandiose and overtly mythic beast would make for a better cinematic foe, particularly if it’s going to go head-to-head with 21st century human firepower.
My 100th post, ladies and gentlemen… Thank you! Thank you very much! 
Yeah, last time i buried platypus teeth hoping to grow a skeleton army, instead i got an army of duckbilled monkeys that throw feces at everyone. Stupid myths!!
On the caveat that the film features “real” dragons and not some silly scifi rationale for their presence…
I am going to be terribly miffed if the dragons are defeated by a group of pitiful humans led by Matthew McConaghey. I mean, basically we have the cast of Road Warrior battling dragons! How could the humans possibly win? How could they possibly deserve to win? Oh well, here’s me snubbing the inevitable and unpaletable victory of humans over dragons. (I’m still going to root for the dragons anyway)
You didn’t pay attention to the trailer. The dragons bred like crazy and burned down civilization. The post-apocalypse setting is adirect result of the dragon’s rebirth.
I hope the dragons are unrealistic; I also hope that they’re not the only magical element in the world. I want magic weapons, wizards and prophecies - in other words, I want a fantasy epic, not some half-baked sci-fi. It’s not just because I’m more of a fantasy fan, although I am, it’s just that magic is more… believable.
I mean, think of it this way: real, scientifically-based dragons are ridiculous. They can’t exist, and no pseudo-logical explanation will convince me otherwise, because I understand science and I know what can’t be real. Magical dragons, on the other hand, are quite plausable - if you accept the existance of magic.
I have to say, it looks like fun…lots of eye candy for the ladies.
And I just love that shot of Matthew flying through the air with the axe or whatever…it’s a great shot.
The apocalypse is caused by the dragons. And it’s Christian Bale who reawoke them, so he feels pretty guilty about it. I think that’s an interesting take on it.