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This just opened this weekend, with very  little fan-fair-but if your a fan of So-Bad-its-good giant monster movies I recommend it.

This movie is a Korean made, but with new American scences shot for the release. The story is about two giant snake-creatures looking for the Imagooe  When one of them gets it, he will turn into a full fledge dragon.  Well, the imagooe is the life-force of a woman reincarnated  about to turn 20.  Fortuneatly, her lover/slash protector has reincarnates as well.  The rest of the move has them running from monsters, evil soilders,a giant corbra, and the CIA.

The battle scences are impressive.  You have hundreds of smaller monsters, and people battling on screen.  Parts of the movie were given a very LOTR feel.  The human parts, hoevr feel like they were written by a bad comic book writer.  Still, the movie is enjoyable, if seen with a few friends.

Giant monster movies are few and far between these days.  If you like this type of movies, I suggest you go out and see it.

I've got a little extra money right now (meaning I'm only one month behind in my rent instead of two  :tongueout:) so I'm on a minor theatrical kick right now. I think I'll actually check this out later this week... or at least for a matinee... at the cheap theater... and I'll bring a book with me in case I need it...  :wink:

Saw this tonight, with a group of friends including one who is from Korea, and wanted others to see this. Told us the director was originally a very popular comedian there, who branched out into film directing.

It had potential to be goofy fun, but just didn't quite click for me even as a fun popcorn movie. Knowing that new scenes were shot for the American version explains the disjointed feel of things. The Robert Forester scenes in particular.

I did laugh at times, mostly for unintended reasons. I had thought of sugesting a guest review to Andrew of this but dread the thought of paying to see this multiple times for the research, so here's some free "things I learned from this film" bits:

Apparently, dragons really hate cars.

People have flashbacks so they can be told ancient stories (that are really flashbacks as well as it turns out).

No one notices giant flying dragons slithering around buildings until it serves the plot.

There are no fire trucks and damn few first responders in LA. Even in the middle of major disasters with rampent destruction, massive explosions, and loss of life.

Flying dragons put the chomp on cute girls, but leave no unusual injuries or traces.

Mystical villains speak in unknown otherworldly languages that require subtitles, but ther lips match the dialogue in those subtitles.

Compact hatchbacks can outrun p**sed off flying dragons.

Grand Cherokees can really take a beating without damaging the grill or front end, for a while anyway.

Cops don't recognize TV reporters who turn up at their crime scenes quite often.

Your eye color changes from blue to brown from roughly age 11 to 27 if you are a movie hero, but you keep the same hairdo.

9mm SMGs are more effective against small flying dragons than more powerful 5.56mm assault rifles.

Apache helicopter pilots only like to use their chain guns and Hellfire missiles, even when their rockets would be more useful.

CGI, SmeeGI, movies like this need guys in rubber giant monster suits.

I've been seeing ads for it.  My wife commented that it looked awful.  All I could think of when I saw all the white people in it was, "Wasn't this movie made in Korea?"

I remember seeing a trailer a long, long time ago and thinking that it looked completely awful but a part of me really wants to check it out.

While visiting with my daughter and son in law yesterday this movie came up, apparently they've seen it. Ryan told me that if you've seen the trailer you've seen the best parts of the movie, Kari, who mostly shares my taste in movies said that I'd love it. I'm going to wait till it's out on DVD and rent it, that way even if I hate it I'm only out a couple bucks, not $30-40 it costs to see it in a theater. If I like it, then I'll buy it.  :smile:

I'll just wait for the DVD.

ditto.

I got a guy at my job (he's a conductor too) whom I buy movies from.  And he has Dragon Wars already even though it's not clear (I asked him).  But if  he doesn't fix it, I'll wait for it to officially come out on dvd.  I saw the trailer too, I didn't know it was a remake of a Korean movie.  At first glance, I thought it had a B-movie feel to it.

IMO it's the best bad movie of the year!

D-WAR really is like watching one of those cheesy Seventies Godzilla flicks on the big screen but with modern CGI effects. The monster stuff is genuinely fun and pretty well done, but the story is such a gibberish mess that you're either going to despise the film for it or laugh your ass off at how little sense it makes. Put me in the latter category. There's no shortage of story elements that make absolute zero sense and questions you find yourself wondering, not the least of which is how the giant monster snake spends half the film going unseen even though it keeps popping up all over Los Angeles. I'd go so far as to say the the plot to Godzilla on Monster Island made more sense than any of this.

The film also really does feel like a 2+ hour movie that got chopped down to 90-minutes: massive chunks of the film seem to be missing, some scenes feel like they're missing segue, lead-in, or follow-up segments, and a few scenes felt like they may have been out of order. I mean the third act has a character getting knocked unconscious in Southern California and then waking up on what appeared to be the set of the finale to Mortal Kombat: Annihilation with no explanation ever given as to where they are or how they got there.Yet from what I hear, the South Korean cut is the same length, so either Shim never filmed the missing stuff or did so and failed to include it. I don't know but Shim may have out Boll'd Uwe Boll with this one.

And yet I found it to be one of the most entertaining movies I've seen all year. It's by no means a good movie but if you enjoy giant monster movies and have a taste for schlocky films that were clearly made by someone with more enthusiasm than common sense, films that don't feel like they've been cynically processed through the Hollywood machine, then D-WAR is a hoot and a half.

Already almost finished putting together a full blown Foyeurism on the film for October.

It's not a remake.  It's a Korean movie filmed with Native english speakers speaking in English.  From what I've read, it seems fairly obvious that it was written in Korean than translated into English for the actors, as apparently a lot of dialogue is atrocious.

This makes it all the more attractive to me.  I'm a purist when it comes to foreign movies.  Good or bad, I need to see them in their original language with subs.  However, this sounds like Godzilla all over again only this time we get contemporary special effects and no Raymond Burr.

Also: God damn it, Anubis!  That "person" male or female, in your avatar, really freaks me out.  The raw emotion that every frame of that video projects makes me supremely uncomfortable.

The poster art where the serpent is wrapped around the skyscraper just smacks me of Q:The Winged Serpent for some reason.

Just caught this on DVD. This one is really bad.

In the interests of full disclosure, I wasn't completely sober when I watched it, but absolutely none of it makes any sense. Worse, the leading actors lack any chemistry and have the charisma of a potted plant. Granted, the dialogue is very silly, but they don't even make an effort.

Although the plot is very simple: monster needs magical mcguffin at a certain point in time to rule the world, the director goes to extreme lengths to explain all the details of this particular myth before the action really starts. So we get a flashback within a flashback that is a sort of Korean historical drama remake of a Shaw brothers movie, with bits of LotR thrown in. This slows down the action considerably, and removes any mystery from the plot.
Then we are left with a series of disjointed scenes by forgettable actions and passable CGI.

Speaking of the effects, there are a lot of them in this movie, and while they aren't too bad, I still feel the concept was a bit too ambitious for the means they had at their disposal.

On the plus side, this movie has a lot: historical Korean Drama, martial arts, giant toads with rocket launchers, flying lizards, Oriental dragons (looking quite good, it must be said), armies of orcs, giant snakes destroying buildings and a battle against the forces of darkness in downtown LA.

Yet it lacks pace or even a semblance of coherence. Someone like Kitamura would have taken these elements and made them into an exciting roller coaster ride. Here we simply get one WTF scene after another.

Got it really cheap on DVD couple of years ago as a double feature with Emmerich's Zilla.
I remember it being really weird and not really good. But I kinda liked the special effects.

There is a longish segment in Korean w/subtitles.  That segment's actually pretty good.  Don't know what happened w/ the rest of the film; perhaps the language barrier was too much, or perhaps the director wasn't ready for a feature.  I'd like to see what else he could do, but after blowing $70 million on this I doubt he'll get another chance to direct.   :bluesad:

If I remember correctly, he also directed a remake of Yongary, Monster From the Deep.  StompTokyo has a review: http://www.stomptokyo.com/movies/y/yonggary.html (http://www.stomptokyo.com/movies/y/yonggary.html)

Somebody get the Holy Relic of Coolswordoroth and hire a white mage.  Somebody performing necromancy on threads again.