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Knightsong Says DRAGON WAR Is Part MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE (1987), Part GINO, And All Bad!!
Merrick here...
Have you been deluged with ads for DRAGON WAR (D-War) like I have in my fair city? Can't seem to get way from it...can't seem to get excited about it.
This is the film that looks kinda like a mash-up of about 25 other movies & whose TV spots are (rather desperately) trying to cash in on the "Their War. Our World." motif of TRANSFORMERS.
Yeah, well, it hits theaters tomorrow and we thought we'd be remiss if we didn't at least offer-up a few reactions to a film whose lifeblood is so clearly Geeky.
Knightsong sent in this little write-up, offering some thoughts after seeing the film. Here's Knightsong...
Had the priveledge tonight to watch D-War a.k.a Dragon Wars, and all I have to say is wow. This has to be the most ambitious movie ever made. Never has any other film(Other than those filmed as spoofs) worked harder to steal moments from other movies. The movie in its entirety is nothing more than probably some of the worst plot and acting on film to date, coupled with some good effects stollen from every movie you can think of in the last decade that had monsters in it.
Let's start by trying to explain the plot, or the cut and paste scrambled mess that passes for it. Every 500 years a girl will be born bearing the mark of the dragon and she will bond herself to a serpent and that serpent will become the dragon of heaven and everything will be merry. BUT, there is another serpent, an evil serpent, that wants the girl more and if she bonds with it (or it eats her) then all the world will fall into to darkness blah blah blah. The movies starts in present day LA and follows the exploits of a young man named Ethan who is a reporter for CGNN. He's at some disaster site that is never explained at the beginning of the movie where he sees a dragon scale uncovered. There is then a rather lengthy flashback involving Ethan as a child being found as the "chosen protector" of the girl who will be born with the dragon mark.
This destiny is revealed to him in of all original places...an antique shop. Where a box opens and Heavenly light shines on him and Jack the owner explains how he and Ethan are reincarnated protectors of the girl who will be born with the Dragon birthmark. This is where the plot really ends...beyond this point, say about ten minutes after force feeding a shaky plot down your gullet they throw you back to the present and from there shit just rolls down hill fast. Ethan becomes obsessed with finding Sarah(the girl who has the birthmark) How he knows her name is Sarah is known only to the screen writer and that fucker ain't sharing the details. There's a lot that asshole doesn't share with the audience. Like who the guy in charge of the evil Dragon(or should I say Gungan) army is. He's just there in the past to get her, and convientently enough he's in the future too! Reincarnated to join in the fun.
The part of the movie any geek worth their salt is going to see the movie for, is the monsters; and while they look acceptable even at times good, so much of what they are are rip-offs that they lose what should be making them cool. Let's start with the uber-serpent...This thing is Speilberg's T-Rex. It's hiding out by pools and slinking all over LA at night being seen only by a few lucky folks. It's bad. Then there is the bad guy's army, which is a direct ripoff of Lucas's Gungan Army, and I defy anyone to claim otherwise. It is really obvious. Then we have the flying dragons that I think steal more from Evolution than Reign of Fire...but there are qualities of both movies, not to mention the Helicopter chase from Godzilla. The movie even seems to reach back a little further to the 80's to dip their pockets in Masters of the Universe(The evil soldier reminded me of skeletors soldiers quite a bit) as well as the antique shop giving me a Garbage Pail Kids vibe. Honestly I could go on, but I don't want to ruin all the fun of watching this cinematic adventure for you. Because the only fun part of this movie is trying to find all the other movies it rips off.
All-in-all, this movie is bad. It had that vibe from start to finish. Why it's getting a theater release at all I don't know. It should have been straight to Sci-Fi and forgotten. This movie will make you appreciate porno with a plot. Because I've seen more well written and acted porn than this movie. The acting is so bland Uwe Boll could have given the director pointers. It is just flat. There is some good imagry, stolen though it might be, but there is no energy. You hate yourself so much for sitting there watching how bad it is, that I could have cared less about who was dying.
Wait til Sci-Fi and get you best friends over to cut it all to hell, then try your best to forget you ever saw it.
Nuff said.
Let's start by trying to explain the plot, or the cut and paste scrambled mess that passes for it. Every 500 years a girl will be born bearing the mark of the dragon and she will bond herself to a serpent and that serpent will become the dragon of heaven and everything will be merry. BUT, there is another serpent, an evil serpent, that wants the girl more and if she bonds with it (or it eats her) then all the world will fall into to darkness blah blah blah. The movies starts in present day LA and follows the exploits of a young man named Ethan who is a reporter for CGNN. He's at some disaster site that is never explained at the beginning of the movie where he sees a dragon scale uncovered. There is then a rather lengthy flashback involving Ethan as a child being found as the "chosen protector" of the girl who will be born with the dragon mark.
This destiny is revealed to him in of all original places...an antique shop. Where a box opens and Heavenly light shines on him and Jack the owner explains how he and Ethan are reincarnated protectors of the girl who will be born with the Dragon birthmark. This is where the plot really ends...beyond this point, say about ten minutes after force feeding a shaky plot down your gullet they throw you back to the present and from there shit just rolls down hill fast. Ethan becomes obsessed with finding Sarah(the girl who has the birthmark) How he knows her name is Sarah is known only to the screen writer and that fucker ain't sharing the details. There's a lot that asshole doesn't share with the audience. Like who the guy in charge of the evil Dragon(or should I say Gungan) army is. He's just there in the past to get her, and convientently enough he's in the future too! Reincarnated to join in the fun.
The part of the movie any geek worth their salt is going to see the movie for, is the monsters; and while they look acceptable even at times good, so much of what they are are rip-offs that they lose what should be making them cool. Let's start with the uber-serpent...This thing is Speilberg's T-Rex. It's hiding out by pools and slinking all over LA at night being seen only by a few lucky folks. It's bad. Then there is the bad guy's army, which is a direct ripoff of Lucas's Gungan Army, and I defy anyone to claim otherwise. It is really obvious. Then we have the flying dragons that I think steal more from Evolution than Reign of Fire...but there are qualities of both movies, not to mention the Helicopter chase from Godzilla. The movie even seems to reach back a little further to the 80's to dip their pockets in Masters of the Universe(The evil soldier reminded me of skeletors soldiers quite a bit) as well as the antique shop giving me a Garbage Pail Kids vibe. Honestly I could go on, but I don't want to ruin all the fun of watching this cinematic adventure for you. Because the only fun part of this movie is trying to find all the other movies it rips off.
All-in-all, this movie is bad. It had that vibe from start to finish. Why it's getting a theater release at all I don't know. It should have been straight to Sci-Fi and forgotten. This movie will make you appreciate porno with a plot. Because I've seen more well written and acted porn than this movie. The acting is so bland Uwe Boll could have given the director pointers. It is just flat. There is some good imagry, stolen though it might be, but there is no energy. You hate yourself so much for sitting there watching how bad it is, that I could have cared less about who was dying.
Wait til Sci-Fi and get you best friends over to cut it all to hell, then try your best to forget you ever saw it.
Nuff said.
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+ Expand All
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ooo first, arnt i fucking special
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To not see this.
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as I just knew I would not truely be first.
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am i?
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knew it
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From what I've seen of the trailer they look like cutscenes from a Playstation2 game. And I love the D-War name..."Hey I'm headin' out to Mickey-D's then catchin' D-War.."
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mainly because it has Dragons in it, and that's pretty much the only reason he wants to see it. It looks like B Quality fun however. Mainly for heckeling it to death MST3K style. I "might" give it a rental, or just laugh at it when I see it in the bargin bin at Wal*Mart. I'm sure it'll be there a month after it's release tomorrow.
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What's the point?
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...was because that teaser poster was pretty geeky cool. Although this movie couldn't be any worse than Dragonheart.
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I don´t expect The Host, but i check anything with dragons.
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I gotta do SOMETHING while my lady watches Tell Me You Love Me. Talk about porno with a plot, THAT shit was awful.
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Nuff said.
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FISH WAR in 2010!!
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Are you shittin me? Don't you compare that movie with this shite.
REIGN OF FIRE was gold. Christian Bale, Matthew Mcconaughey.. That's just cool casting right there. -
. . . gave you a Garbage Pail Kids vibe? Not a Gremlins vibe? Will I post anything on here to avoid work or what?
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You know that.
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The new strategy for doing plants is to trash the movie in order to inspire contrarians to see it. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!
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If you are looking for scenes to compare to other movies and films, you are going to find them.
This movie is korean right? Is it really plausible that they have ripped off All of the movies you have seen? -
I don't know which movie is going to be more exciting...this one or the 1-18 movie.
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I always thought this WAS a direct to TV movie, til I saw an ad on a bus... go figure.
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vintage talkback
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must also sound like Sean Connery." Exshcuse me, there is a shity in Tokyo I musht deshtroy."
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At least the commercials look like it
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I thought it had some connection to The Host. I guess not.
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...that it's destined to be a classic?! "Ask again later."
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Mike Nelson and company over at Rifftrax.com . They've already made a Riff Track for Eragon, so I'm sure Dragon War will provide even more MST3K style fun! Thank goodness for crap movies!
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It is so retarded. And folks, EVERY movie steals from other flicks. There are no really original shots left.
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The director's been busting his ass to get this made for the better part of the decade, on his own terms. Naysayers have been dismissing this film for years, saying it would never be completed, it would never be released (obviously it is), it would fail horribly if it was ever completed or released (it's an enormous box office smash back home in Korea), it'd never play in America (it's playing in America), it'd only be a limited release in the unlikely event it was ever released in America (EXPONENTIALLY the widest release ever for a Korean film in the US), and on, and on. Every step of the way with this thing, Hyung Rae Shim has defied predictions of failure. Is it a good movie? Probably not in any traditional sense, especially if you're a native English speaker. Is it a giant monster movie where LA gets fucked up by enormous armies of heavily armed mystical creatures. Unless the trailer is really misleading, yes. The director's geek credentials are impeccable, and he hired a lot of young, unproven-but-ambitious people to work on it. Indeed, this was in production so long that people who worked on this went off and worked on other projects (notably THE HOST), then came back and worked on D-WAR again once those films wrapped. Comparisons to Sci-Fi channel movies seem misplaced - that channel wishes its movies had effects this good or enough of a budget to shoot in LA. I can overlook the flaws this film will undoubtedly have, because it's the labor of love of one great big nerd and his loyal hand-assembled team of misfits, who didn't get where they are by paying undue attention to naysayers. I'm going to enjoy paying too much for a ticket to this film.
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"Although this movie couldn't be any worse than Dragonheart"
Oh yes it can...far worse. At least DragonHeart had some acting. These people are cardboard.
There's also been some comments that I'm looking for movies to compare this to. Not at all. The images in this movie just leap out and say, Jurassic Park, or Godzilla, or Phantom Menace.
And for all this guys hard work to get this movie done. Bravo...you completed your task. That doesn't mean it's worthwhile in the least. The plot is just a mess and poorly paced. There is some good imagery. But, all in all, this is just a bad movie. I was hoping this movie was a Korean import that we chopped up and re-filmed with some American actors, but from what I've been reading obviously not. It's just bad. -
The plot description of Shim's proposed follow-up FISH WAR makes D-WAR look like a sane, serious cautionary tale about the dangers of modern living. Unfortunately, I am told by people who speak Korean that he's planning to return to his famous comedy character of Young-Gu and do a parody of THE GODFATHER. Clearly he's in a position to do whatever he wants now - it's cool that he wants to do something different instead of immediately jumping into another huge budget FX movie. Then again if I'd spent most of the 00s working independently and largely out-of-pocket on something as large as D-WAR, I'd want a change of pace too... before declaring FISH WAR.
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...the reviewer didn't SAY that, but admit it - it SOUNDS cool.
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being an old school mst3k fan i didnt know rifftrax existed.. it seems like a dream come true.. mst3k doing riffs over movies sci fi or comedy central would never be able to afford. so then why am i hesitant to pay $3 a track? are they worth it?
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Is the fact that its getting a major release and will probably make some money. While movies like The Host, a movie were if you do not use this web site you probably would never see it (though is was reviewed on the Roper no thumbs show), because you had to go and find a movie theater playing it. Every theater is playing D-wars. Why is there never this big of a push for much better forign movies?? Pisses me off.
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i thought that was kinda the same as the first aliens vs predator film. Well, that's what I thought when i first saw the transformers one. Whoever win, we lose or whatever. Anyway, this film has dragons in it so i kinda have to see it but haha oh man it look awful. maybe in a good way, i hope so...
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It was called, "Pirahna 2: The Spawning".
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Who wants to bet this will be the name of a super awesome Asian porn flick? I'll watch...
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I know that the Temeraire series may one day have Peter Jackson behind it, which will hopefully put all concerns to rest, but this thing's likely failure might make some dumb studio exec nervous about a 'Dragons in a Real World' setting.
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I can't believe that serious consideration of plot has been brought to bear on this. It's a movie that has Dragons. WITH FRAKING ROCKET LAUNCHERS! I don't know what's gotten into you folks that you can't enjoy that at face value. We gots the makings of a damned fun Godzilla flick here, and you all turn into pompus art film types.
And what's the deal with the word "shite" Does AICN filter the word shit? Shite looks pretentious. Stop it.
And get off my lawn. 'Cause I'm hoping this flick is gonna be the shizenit.
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That looked kind of cool to me. Is that the bad guy army? The rip off of the Star Wars beast things the reviewer was so pissed about? If so I feel lied to man. The idea of dragons destroying a modern city and humans fighting back using dinosaurs with weapons mounted on them is a cool visual. I guess thats what I wanted to see and my mind filled in the blanks, stupid imagination.
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I knew this movie was doomed.
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...as Dragon movies go. And at least he didn't talk. At least not in English.
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i agree with Memories-Of-Murder there. the only dragon in that series was in The Hobbit.
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dropped the ball in 87. wow, i wanted that movie to be good. i was 11 at the time and into He-Man (which now looks very GAY upon recent viewing. they should have filmed that movie entirely within its own universe. i hate it when movies about distant lands/planets or whatever use earth as a setting. obviously because of budget constraints. "i know its supposed to be some fantasy setting but, hey guys, lets film it in L.A. so we don't have to travel or build sets!" bloody wankers.
He-Man to Skeletor, "I must break you" -
to watch on TV some snowbound Saturday in two years when the internet is down.
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I'll definitely rent it when it comes out. The movie looks so gonzo that I have to see it.
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besides Peter Macnichol's blondfro and the cool go-motion effects (and the great cinematography), was the fact that virgins were being sacrificed in a lottery system. Would not the young lasses been on a fuckspree not to have been selected??
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I guess this finally proves that Asian cinema aficionados are completely fucking tasteless and unexplainable in their enjoyment of seriously bad film. I'm just glad the whole hoo-rah of asiafellatio is finally dying down. Because Ang Lee and John Woo are terrible filmmakers.
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you guys didn't know?
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...monster movies! Roger Corman must be thinking about spinning in his grave once he gets there.Spin. Spin. Spin.The Host was one of the most laugh out loud movies I've seen in a while. Albeit the first 10-15 minutes were good, the rest of the movie was a steaming pile perfect for MST3000. Who'd of ever thunk that Dragon Wars was going to be even remotely good? I don't even understand how any domestic studio looked at the movie and thought, "Wow! This...this looks great! Not TROLL 2 great, but GOULIES 2 great in the least! We need it!" Ooof.
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...do you have ta use all them curse words?
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This movie looks incredibly stupid, no contest there... but Mr. Reviewer, you're making some terrible pulls with your "rip off" claims. By your logic, almost any movie could rip off another movie. ANYWAYS, I can't wait to see this. It looks like good dumb corny fun... plus, it's fun to see Showbox pronounced "Shoebox"
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I'm so excited about this one! In related news I have Mammoth and Infested on their way from QuikFlix...Nuff said...
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I regularly get 1.2 MB/s download speeds elsewhere, but on their site? Forget it.
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.... i really want to see this thing just to see how bad it is.Im a sucker for shitty films that involve giant mosters , and D war looks like it fits the bill.
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No interest in seeing this... but to each their own.
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the reason the movie is doing well in korea is cos of nationalistic pride. they know the movie's shit. you can't mask that fact; so instead, the director appealed directly to the national spirit. i hate the people in korea. i can't wait to leave. watch the movie drunk but get a bootleg somewhere. watch it with friends and enjoy every awful minute of it but for the love of christ, don't give it money.
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DRAGON BUSTERDS!!!
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was 49% Genius, 51% shi-iiiit.
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So what if the director tried hard. A shit movie is a shit movie. You don't mitigate your assesment of a movie just because the makers of it had a hard time. I live in Korea and most koreans went to see the movie out of national pride not appreciattion of the movie its self. Sure it was ambitious but still crap.
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That has to be the funniest thing I've read all week. I also got the TRANSFORMERS vibe from the previews. That's kinda like referencing BLOODRAYNE (or BLOODRAYNE 2!) for your vampire lore.
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Trashing D-WAR (without having seen it) but in the same sentence stating that DRAGONSLAYER (LOL), DRAGONHEART (LOOL) and PETE'S DRAGON (LOOOL) are the ultimate dragon movies is more than just retarded. D-WAR was miles better than crap like ERAGON.The rip-off argument is quite pointless - there's been almost none original story in cinema since the 1960s. Everything has been done before in one way or another.
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i appreciate porn in most forms. Including midget porn. Fuck if its got a plot.
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I'm not going to lie to you. This is gonna get kind of weird. But I'm gonna have to see...two dragons!
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those bastards decided to split the last 20 episodes of BSG into 2 seasons. Fuck 'em.
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Sick bastards. This movie looks like a 90s reject, by the way, not even worth a download.
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reading Anne McCaffrey books gets you all hot and bothered....
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trust the ladies to bring up anne fucking mccaffrey!! go carmilla!
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i don't know much about it except it's PJ and it's 'master and commander' with dragons, right? which sounds rather like a mash-up with dvorak and britney, but, that's just me. so, wait: this isn't a video game movie? it's a movie by 'the host' guy? i loved the host. hy-larious.
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was CLASS? Cmon-he just over blew the insane evilness of him and overacted to fuck cos...well, what else can you do with Skeletor?...it was great!! rest of the movie was crap but c'mon-"I am more than man, more than LIFE!! I....AM.....A GOD!!!!" great stuff!
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what if you "love" the dragon? And what if you only fuck female dragons? You did know having relations with a dragon is accepted practice in Holland and Denmark right?
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Looks like a lotta fun, and I haven't seen a good bad movie in a while.
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Seriously. I want to know how old you were when you saw that flick. Even at the age of 10 I knew that shit was bad. Actually, it was worse than bad. It was completely abysmal. Even Langella. EVERYTHING about it sucked. And I'm a huge MOTU fan.
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Dolph did very good with his Conan attempts. Everything else in the movie (excluding Courtney Cox) was a little bit of a huh(?!).
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Then how did they get from the city to New Zealand (specifically, the Barad-Dur set from LotR) so fast for the last scene? :)
Yes, I paid money to see this... although in retrospect, I should've waited for a matinee showing, or better yet the dollar theater. The big dragon fight at the end was kinda neat. The rest of it... well, let's just say it's ain't exactly Kurosawa. The female lead is a cutey (kinda reminds me of A.J. Langer from "My So-Called Life" and "Escape from LA") but is ridiculously wooden. Actually, everyone in this is ridiculously wooden in a "Star Wars prequels" kinda way, which is likely a sign that it's the fault of the director and/or script. And the story must've been written by a 13-year-old.
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