Badmovies.org Forum

I have just watched Reign Of Fire, and loved it, as I knew I would.  

I would like to know, do people consider this a "Good" movie or a "Bad" movie?  To what extent does love of crappy movies lead you to try to think of any movie you love as, in some way, a Bad movie? Good Bad vs Bad Bad vs Bad Good......   Does this make any sense at all?

This was a good movie in my opinion, some people here don't like it  and will be glad to point out all the holes in the plot. I liked it  and thought it was well made.

There are good bad movied and then there are movies that are just bad.  A good bad movie is one that ends up making you laugh when the film makers were probably going  for the serious or scary. The bad bad movies are the ones that just bore you to tears.

IT SUCKED! THE DRAGONS WERE AS BORING AS THE CHARACTHERS. YOU NEVER EVEN SEE THEM.

I wouldn't say I hated the movie. It was quickly forgotten after I returned it to the video store though.

Yeah I agree. It's one of those movies you see thats entertaining but very forgettable. I just didnt think it had much character. I'm also really freakin sick of CGI monsters.

Hated it.  Normally I will cut some slack when it comes to plot holes, especially for b-movies, but when you spend a lot of time on the f/x, I don't want holes you can dirve a planet through.  Let's see, you've been fighting the dragons for a century, they've devestated the earth, yet there are still Apache helicopters (with fuel & ammo) flying about from the US to England?!?!?!?

yeah this was a bad BAD movie. the 'dragon slayers' were not effective in killing the dragons. Yes they killed ONE in the entire film.

This movie just had too many plot holes and boring characters. Makes me mad just thinking about this turd of a film.

I didn't find REIGN OF FIRE entertaining and the CGI were very distracting from the dull storyline in my opinion. Normally I like these type films, but this is one that didn't interest me.

Actualy, the chopper was an A-109. An Italian design, If i recall correctly.

However....
Where did the Yanks get the brit kit they drove? That Chieftan Tank for example.
And...judgeing by the size of the head of the one they down, the wee beasties look to weigh about , oh, maby as much as an elephant. Say its twice that, i still have trouble seeing they have to use an flippin' harpoon, when those .50cal Browning M2s they had should have torn the buggers apart!
Ask Andrew, the Ma Duce is awsome.
If the dragons are supposed to be bullet proof...explain why, movie! You owe me that! What, the skin is like Kevlar, and can stop pistol rounds? Okey, maby..and as most people in the world are unarmed, the dragons will have a feast of helpless humans...okey, i can buy that...but not these guys!
I say, a round of .458 Weatherby in the neck will make for a short dragon life.
Two rounds from a Barret .50, and ya got one less dragon to worry with.
Now, if the suprise, panic and dragon tactics  ( Flight and fire) allowed them to surpass humans in the badass department, okey.
But show us that, movie!
Yeesh! Do i realy have to 'splane this to ya?

It was an entertaining diversion to me and I 'm sorry,  but I get tired of hearing the CG distracted me.  Bulls**t!  We get to see a lot of  stuff now that couldn't have been done without  CG.  When it's done right it seamless, and in this movie it was pretty seamless.

However....

It was a movie about freakin' dragons taking over the world and you want to quibble about weapons and caliber and stuff?!?!  If you can suspend disbelief long enough to go along wih the basic premise, the rest is easy

I thought it was okay.  Somewhat good maybe, but it doesn't have much replay value.  I'll switch to it when there's nothing else on TV, but never end up watching more than 5 minutes or so before I'm channel surfing again.  The dragons were cool, I liked that scene where they were chasing them with a military helicopter.  Don't see that every day!  My main problem was that I thought the main character was extremely uninteresting.  The Rambo action dude was cool and I liked the female lead, but not the star.  The movie also dragged pretty bad towards the middle.  They could have left out that scene with the Hendrix music;  that just didn't belong in that movie.  

I don't think it qualifies for any sort of "bad movie" status, the budget was way too high.

Fearless Freep wrote:

> However....
>
> It was a movie about freakin' dragons taking over the world and
> you want to quibble about weapons and caliber and stuff?!?!  If
> you can suspend disbelief long enough to go along wih the basic
> premise, the rest is easy

Well, yes.
For the fantastic parts, I can suspend desbelief.  Dragons? OK, there were pteradactyls (or however it's spelled).  Fire-breathing ?  Well, there are electric eels.  But when it comes to reality based things, such as weapons, they should still function as they do in the real world.  And there are elephant guns and whatnot which take down modern day behemoths.  What bugged me was that they spend time laying the groundwork that the earth had been devastated, and had been that way for a century, and then there comes along pristine 20th century equipment necessary to kill the head dragon.  It's just going to the well one too many times for me to suspend disbelief.

I don't remember the CG from "Reign of Fire" enough to comment about it. Usually when the effects are bad that's the biggest complaint that stays with me. The dragons couldn't have sucked too much.

BTW, you're right about CG, trek_geezer, I'm greatful that it's around. For every 20 movies that feature bad CG, there's always 1or 2 good ones, and the good ones are well worth the effort. i.e.: I was absolutely floored by Gollum (and various other effects) in the LOTR's trilogy. For those movies alone CG has proven it's value a billion times over.

The earlier CGI was poor, but it is getting better. Still prefer the rubber suits doing the impractical. My comments about CGI were harsh, but I honestly feel they ruined a decade of films. Again it is getting better. There are always interesting qualities to most films and everyone has their own taste.  : )

This is a bad movie that isn't even much fun to watch.

Whoops!   Such strong feelings about this one --
Now, my wife & I went to see it on the big screen when it came out, as we knew that big ol' flying dragons would look real good blowed up big-like on the screen.  We weren't disappointed.  Sorta bugged me about that one dragon coming from inside the earth, leading the rest out, and not stopping to eat the kid who sees him, but I accepted that this has to happen for all the mythological-nemesis reasons.  
My wife and I had no trouble at all accepting and enjoying this film on the level of a myth/fairy tale.  It has fairy-tale logic.  Some of the above arguments are sort of like arguing about Snow White or Red Riding Hood.
I mean, c'mon, wasn't watching the dragon crawl along the ground like a vampire bat toward the Northumbria-style castle just a wicked cool image?
Or the scene where the story-tellers are acting out "Star Wars" for the children, as if it were a tribal folk-tale?  This, to me, gave a clue as to how the whole film was to be perceived.
Dragons coming from inside the earth is such a mythological theme -- sort of American Indian by way of Norse.  If I accept that, then matters of gun calibres & helicopters and what-have-you don't confront me none.
Put me down in the "liked it" category.
peter johnson/denny crane

I'm still inclined to agree with those who felt this fantasy strayed a little too far from reality. That is the number one rule in writing science fiction and fantasy: if you want people to buy your unbelievable premise, ground it in reality. Where it strays from reality, provide a reason, and then treat that as any real-world rule. Saying that it's already a fantastic premise, so reality goes out the window, is a poor excuse for sloppy writing, and it doesn't show a lot of respect for the genre. Any good SF writer will tell you this is a common mistake.

As for the telling of Star Wars as a folk tale, I found that to be one of the more insightful and imaginative parts of the movie.

Overall, however, this movie was just plain dull, which again points to a badly written and badly executed story under all of the flash. When a big-budget movie about dragons taking over the world manages to be uninteresting, there is definitely a problem.

Usually I would really like this sorta movie: films which have humans getting kicked, and dragon type creatures roam are usually pretty entertaining, however this one didn't sustain my interest enough.

But that star wars scene was pretty damn funny, if only the film kept that sorta feeling to it all the way through, i may have enjoyed it more.

CG is annoying when used in the wrong way, such as when a studio seems to say: lets make this CGI because its cool, instead of actually doing it properly.  For example, AVP was much better because the Predators and Aliens, for the most part at least, weren't in CGI, yet other films which could do something similar, just went CGI.

There was some good and interesting parts in Reign of Fire, but overall, it didn't deliver.

So I guess that makes me a person who is on the 'didn't like it' side of the pendulum, but not straight out hate.

Pure boredom is never a criterion for a good movie  - neither in the meaning of good good movie nor in the meaning of good bad movie.

To have fun watching a bad movie there is a criterion I think it is the most important of all:
- the unintentional comic effect

Everything that has the opposite effect on the audience instead of the effect the director/the makers intended to is a reason to laugh about. (One exeption: boredom instead of entertainment)

And when laughing is a criterion for having fun, then the unintentional comic effect is a criterion for a good bad movie.

I like Wence's bit of Formal Logic here -- since it made me laugh, I guess it's good Bad Movie Philosophy --
I know that I'm not going to suddenly convince anyone that the film has merit if they plain didn't like it -- sort of like arguing about Ralph Bakshi, if nobody's ever seen the uncut "Heavy Traffic -- but I do wonder at the limitations imposed by Genre and Criteria --
AndyC's point about science fiction and fantasy is well-taken, but isn't it a tad limiting?  I mean, surely there are other types of film:  Un Chien Andalou, for example -- where the hell do we put that one?  Or Magic Mountain?  Or The Cost of Milk?  Each of these films I've named have an extremely high fantasy quotient, but simply don't follow many rules or expectations.  They have elements of Bhuddism, Dada-surrealism, etc., but are mainly -- to me -- Fairy Tale Pictures.  Their logic is so internal as to be invisible.
 As I said, the key for my enjoyment of Reign of Fire was do I accept that winged dragons live for thousands of years beneath the Earth or not?  If I can accept such a wholly outlandish premise, then anything that follows -- and I do mean anything -- is really a piece of cake.
I mean, what the hell did the dragons eat down there?  If they live under the Earth, what the hell are those bat-wings for?  Why do they even have eyes?  Why aren't they all blind?  You can really go on like that forever . . .
Take your standard creation myth in most cultures:   Either we listen to the story and accept that crows flew beneath the ocean & shat out the offspring of a shape-changing seal/seaweed goddess-being, and these offspring became the first Eskimos/men, or we don't.  We're free not to, of course, but we may miss a cool story.
peter johnson/denny crane

I thought this movie looked entertaining.  I watched it.  I nearly fell asleep.  It was simply bad-bad (like Underworld), not good-bad (like Resident Evil).  Shame on everyone involved with this film, but especially Christian Bale, as he's shown he's made of better stuff than this.

peter johnson wrote:
> Each of these films I've named have an extremely high fantasy
> quotient, but simply don't follow many rules or expectations.
> They have elements of Bhuddism, Dada-surrealism, etc., but are
> mainly -- to me -- Fairy Tale Pictures.  Their logic is so
> internal as to be invisible.

I did sort of mention, although maybe not clearly, that where the story strays from reality, it should at least have an internal logic. The fantasy should follow rules as consistently as reality does, even if the rules are silly. Likewise, where fantasy meets reality, I really think reality needs to be correct, no matter how outrageous the fantasy.

That doesn't mean that someone really talented can't do something totally off the wall and make it work, but I think that's the exception and not the rule.

I can actually suspend my disbelief  pretty easily, but the most outstanding stories are the ones that make the suspension almost effortless. To tell a story like that, you have to cover all your bases. To say that because a movie is based on an unbelievable premise, we don't need to expect much from it, or the writer didn't need to do his homework, is an excuse. Or rather, it's no excuse.

If you want people to swallow the unbeliveable, the best way is to make everything else as believable as possible. Not everyone can suspend their disbelief as easily as we can.



Post Edited (11-19-04 13:26)

Ain't that what I said?

I wasn't entertained enough to call it good or recommend it, but the parts I liked like the "Star Wars" kids story/folktale (Wonder if Han shot first in their version?) and the climax were good I just wish the rest of the story had been as well done (no pun). Big holes in the plot and weak writing hurt the film (the one male dragon for the whole planet gimmick, the less than impressive methods of the American dragon hunters). I got the impression that the people involved wanted to make the dragons so badass and make the humans' plight so grim that they wrote themselves into a corner. They so stacked the deck against the humans that it was too hard to tell a good story and have them convincingly win.

So I'm not a fan of the movie, the friends I saw it with liked it, but we all thought most of the film was pretty forgettable. What I did like was seeing how much fun Matthew McConaughey was having hamming it up as Van Zan and looking so freaky with the shaved head, goatee, and ripped muscles (must have had a hell of a portable gym in that convoy of military equipment). He was more fun than the movie, and I usually run hot or cold on his acting. This time I got a big kick out of him showing off. Plus I decided after watching this that if someone ever makes a film of the Cormac McCarthy book "Blood Meridian" I now know who I want to play the preacher character.

Fearless Freep....buddy. I did like Reign enough to have a laugh. I just did not take it seriously, after i...thought about it awhile.
Like, the fact the Dragons have these holes in their wings.
That would have to affect their flying, man. Thise holes would cause drag, and affect the available lifting serface the wings had to work with.

And when the hero's friend said "I'm your best friend"...i knew "Oh, he is SO toasted." And when he did get fried...where was his smokeing corpse when they opened the fire door?

Good dragon CGI, yes. But Shakespear it ain't.
But i love Godzilla and friends, so i shoild talk?

It was good. Great special effects, a good acting and a gloomy atmosphere. I usually hate CGI but this film defenitely was one of the few exceptions.

657657

peter johnson wrote:

> I mean, c'mon, wasn't watching the dragon crawl along the
> ground like a vampire bat toward the Northumbria-style castle
> just a wicked cool image?

I'm with you peter.  The bad-ass images more than made up for the plot holes for me.

Then again, I'm a sucker for anything post-apocalypse or with dragons in it.  Except for DRAGONHEART.  That one sucked so totally and completely, even I couldn't forgive it.

And yes, I even like DUNGEONS & DRAGONS.