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Reign
of Fire could have been one of a number of movies. It could have been a good “peek-a-boo” movie,
where the dragons are ominously in the back of your mind the
whole time, just waiting for their moment, seen just a few
times, but very dramatically those few times.
It could have been an internal struggle movie, in which
the surviving Brits and the Americans have to come together
to beat this seemingly unstoppable force. It could have been a profile of a leader, torn
by the stress of the unrelenting dragons, losing and/or finding
his humanity along the journey.
Or it could have been an all out dragonfest, all about
blowing up really cool creatures.
The
sad trouble is, when you reach for as much as Reign of
Fire reaches for – and you fail – you fail on an epic
level. Instead of
having a great, fun, smashing summer movie, you get a muddled
mishmash that doesn’t satisfy on any level.
It
would be easy to say that no matter how much lifting and how
much head-shaving Matthew McConaughey does, he just
isn’t going to be an action hero. I think he acquits himself well as an actor, but he just isn’t that
guy. Christian
Bale is allowed none of the charm that will eventually,
if he ever finds the right role in the right movie, make him
a star. (And who the
hell forgot to fix the suddenly bright red beard in the final
frames of the film?!?!?)
Izabella Scorupco is magnificent to look at,
but she a somnambulistic actress.
But
none of this matters because the movie is b.o.a. (boring on
arrival) and the actors never had a chance.
I often got the impression that Bowman & Co. were
trying for so much that they just kept forgetting where they
had been.
For
instance, what is the deal with the dragons?
Are they rational?
Are the territorial? If they live on ash, why don’t we see them
feeding on anything but living animals, human and otherwise? If there is only one dragon that really matters,
why do we wait until the last 10 minutes of the film to confront
him? And why is the
first dragon P.O.V. shot in the last 15 minutes and why, oh
why, does it look like old stock footage from Wolfen?
The
shark in Jaws is a character.
Kong is a character. The dinosaurs in Jurassic Park… all
distinct characters. Go
back to Frankenstein… the villagers think he is a monster
with no heart or mind, but he is a child, protecting himself
and not knowing his own strength. It is what failed about the Godzilla movie that Roland
Emmerich did… Godzilla was just an animal, protecting
itself and its young. As
terrific as the CG was, it didn’t have the personality of
the guy in the rubber suit that was either destroying Tokyo
on purpose or destroying Tokyo to protect it from the Smog
Monster.
Reign
of Fire is like a bad sequel. Think Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, but without Mel Gibson
or Tina Turner or the intense rage of the Thunderdome
crowd. And the movie
keeps taunting you with the idea of things that have happened.
If you can’t afford to show the dragons taking London…
if you can’t afford to show a battle between a team of trained
flyers in Top Gun jets… if you can’t afford to show the devastation
of nuking your own cities out of desperation… then you have
to make a movie that doesn’t make you miss all those things.
I’m
not going to give away the ending of this film, but if the
ending that happens is possible, then why didn’t we see it
in the first 20 minutes?
They could have fit a full screening of Men in Black
II and not cracked the 2 hour mark.
UNUSED
TAG LINE: “I Can’t Stand
The Reign!!!”
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