mediocre movie
Jul. 17th, 2002 09:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
egypturnash'Reign of Fire', in three words:
Not. Enough. Dragons.
When watching a movie, I'm always conscious of the little marks in the upper right corner that indicate an oncoming change of reels. With the exception of the last reel, there's an average of about a minute of dragon per reel, maybe less. The second reel is completely devoid of dragons.
All the fiery-destruction-of-civilization is shown via a montage of magazine and newspaper articles, with voiceover. The poster is like that 'Attack of the Saucers' poster from the 50's, which showed a saucer destroying the Washington Monument - an iconic, attention-grabbing image that doesn't appear at all. Same with dragons setting all London afire.
The dragon shots are nice. The film-makers are smart about never giving us a clear look at them, never giving us unnaturally perfect viewing conditions; they don't feel overly CG. Unfortunately, as I said, there's perhaps a total of seven or eight minutes of dragon footage in the whole movie.
I could go into the dumbness of the plot and the flatness of the acting, but, look, we all know what anyone's going to go see this thing for: dragons. And there's just not enough of them in it.
Avoid.
Not. Enough. Dragons.
When watching a movie, I'm always conscious of the little marks in the upper right corner that indicate an oncoming change of reels. With the exception of the last reel, there's an average of about a minute of dragon per reel, maybe less. The second reel is completely devoid of dragons.
All the fiery-destruction-of-civilization is shown via a montage of magazine and newspaper articles, with voiceover. The poster is like that 'Attack of the Saucers' poster from the 50's, which showed a saucer destroying the Washington Monument - an iconic, attention-grabbing image that doesn't appear at all. Same with dragons setting all London afire.
The dragon shots are nice. The film-makers are smart about never giving us a clear look at them, never giving us unnaturally perfect viewing conditions; they don't feel overly CG. Unfortunately, as I said, there's perhaps a total of seven or eight minutes of dragon footage in the whole movie.
I could go into the dumbness of the plot and the flatness of the acting, but, look, we all know what anyone's going to go see this thing for: dragons. And there's just not enough of them in it.
Avoid.
Out of curiousity..
Date: 2002-07-17 11:15 am (UTC)Is this, indeed, how they wound up handling the human characters?
Re: Out of curiousity..
Date: 2002-07-17 01:53 pm (UTC)It's just an average bad movie, to be honest. It's not mind-shatteringly bad like Phantom Menace or Plan 9. I didn't leave the theatre feeling like I'd completely and utterly wasted the running time, just that it'd been mildly wasted.
Are there EVER enough dragons?
Date: 2002-07-18 03:25 pm (UTC)Hmm. I wonder if we could rig the sound system to...
Bad Ami. Bad, bad, bad.
We don't take out a portion of the population, even if it is a relatively non-productive, *stupid* segment.
Bad, Bad Ami.
Going away now.
No paying with the low frequency register!
Date: 2002-07-18 03:55 pm (UTC)Even though it would be VERY easy to sneak in...