joflasher | reign of neverending plot holes

Boy and I went out on a Date(tm) on Friday night. We never go a movie on a weekend night, so it was a Date(tm). And we went to see Reign of Fire, which had the most gorgeous, excellent, wonderful dragons I have ever seen, anywhere. Which makes it so terrible that the rest of the movie blew big hairy donkey ... you get the picture.

First off, the posters all show dragons taking out famous places in Europe with Apache helicopters (two to four, depending on poster) coming at them in the background. So I expected to see at least one impressive air battle between dragons and the Apaches. Um, there was only 1 (count 'em) helicopter in the ENTIRE movie and it was one of those little bumblebee recon things that doesn't even have a gun mounted on it. No impressive air battle. Nothing like getting your hopes up through false advertising.

Okay, but it had AMAZING dragons, so I would have been able to deal. If the writers had ever read what they were writing. This "story" had more plot holes than a Mass. highway. Hell, it contradicted itself all over the place, so even if you believed in their "story", it still didn't help.

One of the things the movie tried to get you to believe (mainly through repeating it over and over again) was that modern weapons killed a few dragons but proved useless because a) they bred too fast and b) they were very hard to kill. But yet a little exposive smaller than my hand, mounted on a cross bow bolt was able to bring them down. No disease embedded tip or anything fancy. Just a little explosive. Uh huh!

And the real kicker is that it had such a dark, intriguing premise. Okay, big vicious monsters awaken from the earth and proceed to smash all of the human race, destroying everyting for the hell of it. I would have loved to see almost any other story done with that premise. And almost any other story would have been better. Maybe it would have been more expensive to make, but why not show the world fighting these things as they started to rise up? Why not get to see modern weapons take on the huge monsters and fail. Why the hell show us a movie about an asshole shooting a CROSSBOW at a dragon while driving around in a tank?

Oh, and the "dragons eat ash, that's why they flame everything" theory just doesn't cut it. Not with those teeth or that snout. Something that needed to scoop up ash to survive would probably develope a big flat snout or bill, similar to water birds. Not a triaglular jaw with big, nasty, pointy, meat-eating teeth and no tongue to speak of. How the hell were they suppposed to get ash into their bodies again...?

ARGH!

It is my dream that someday there will be a dragon movie that gets it right. Has both a believable plot and gorgeous dragons. and I await that day ... until then, I'll just have to buy Reign of Fire and skip any scened that doesn't have a dragon in it. I won't be missing anything and I won't end up nearly as dissapointed.

Check that, skip any scene that doesn't have a dragon in it or have people trying to act out Star Wars to their kids. That was pretty good...