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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
 Posted - 08/30/2008 : 1:36:28 PM
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As this movie has been covered by plenty of other sites, there’s not much in the way of intro to say. In the late 70s/early 80s, Disney decided to try doing more straight-faced movies. 1979’s The Black Hole and 1982’s Tron were commercial and critical failures, but really fun to watch; as was 1981’s Dragonslayer. The Black Hole swiped the outer space elan of Star Wars, Tron gave us a goofy plot with terrific sfx, while Dragonslayer tried to take a standard damsel-in-distress dragon movie and make it socially relevant. The results are mixed.
Just the way I like it.
In a vacuum, the title of this movie is excellent. Dragonslayer. Brief, with punch. But as the title of this particular movie, it wasn’t the best choice. It gave the audience an expectation that the movie wasn’t interested in satisfying in the first place. This is even more true today. A movie titled Dragonslayer today would be expected to be a non-stop roller-coaster thrill ride, and that was pretty much the expectation upon release. But this movie had different ideas. This was to be a sword-and-sorcery movie with Meaning. And Relevance. And Gripping Social Commentary.
For a movie to try to pull that off is like Dave Kingman trying to rip a homerun. If successful, the viewer will gape in awe as the finished product soars hiiiigh into the night sky and disappears beyond the stands and out into the distant parking lot. But when it fails, the viewers laugh and/or cringe as it strikes out in a tangle of awkward limbs. So for any movie, it’s a tricky feat. For a movie whose title implicitly promises dragons and the slayers of them and all the fixins that come with? Madness! How could such a movie keep an audience’s attention?
The correct answer is: It doesn’t. Dragonslayer faded ingloriously out of theaters without even making a ripple. Audiences didn’t actively hate it, they just found it boring and disappointing for its lack of that which its title seemed to promise. Doubtless, many either fell asleep or walked out halfway through.
In 1981, this movie was playing at the State Theater in downtown Spokane as a double-bill with Flash Gordon. Me and my three brothers went to see them, but since I had a drumming lesson right about the time Dragonslayer was to start, I had to settle for just Flash Gordon (No complaints, for sure!), figuring that I could catch Dragonslayer some other time, no biggie………………
……………………27 years later………………..
After watching it for the first time on July 16, 2008, I can say that it really is dumb and boring. The plot is sprinkled with holes and cul-de-sacs; and there is one moment that insulted my intelligence so acutely that I threw a few solid objects at the screen.
But then the third act happened.
Here we go.
The Paramount/Walt Disney Presents credit on black is heralded with loud low-brass fanfare, kinda cheesy, like the horns that herald the Halls of Justice in Mad Max. The title card itself, though, gets nothing in particular, just a continuation of the theme. Odd. **shrug** It’s an appropriate “Oh no” type of intro music, although the string section is a bit shrill.
Our first image as the credits close is a torch. The scene lightens until we can see several medieval pheasants with torches, all trudging through either twilight or dawn towards a small castle. I wonder if the actual medieval peasants ever inadvertently started any forest fires that way. Bet it hasn’t come up in any D&D games.
Inside the castle, Ulrich the Sorcerer (Ralph Richardson, “Sir Ralph” to us) is mixing stuff in a pot and mumbling in Latin. He extinguishes the candles with a wave of his hand. That was pretty cool. He peers into the flames coming out of the pot and seems distressed to hear a bunch of female screams punctuated by a dragon roar. A premonition!
At the front door of the castle, a funny-lookin’ old man pre-emptorily refuses the greasy-haired peasants entry. I genuinely can’t tell if this was meant to be played for laughs or not. On the one hand, everything is dark and miserable-looking, and the peasant spokeman, the only peasant we get a close-up of, looks rather grungy himself. On the other hand, the old man says that he’s heard it all before, “We’ve come a long way,” “our business is urgent,” yeah yeah yeah, and he slams the door in their faces. It’s no biggie this early in, though.
Peasant spokesman shouts to whoever may be listening that they will stay there until they are heard. Good thing I ain’t a sorcerer, that s**t wouldn’t work on me.
Our main protagonist Galen (Peter MacNichol), Ulrich’s apprentice, enters Ulrich’s chamber and tells him that the protesters won’t leave until Tookie Williams is released. Ulrich (pronounced “UL-rik”) says yeah I know, and that their arrival has to do with the vision he just had. He also adds offhandedly that said vision also includes his own death. That’s right, Galen. You’re gonna have a mighty task on your hands, the fate of the world rests with its successful completion, and your mentor won’t be there to help out. No pressure! This Ulrich guy is taking his impending death in stride, figuring “All this magic. What has it accomplished?” Don’t be a spoiled brat, Ulrich. You know how many people wish they could light and extinguish flames with a thought?
Cut to Ulrich prepping to see the peasants. In a bit that I really like, he asks Galen if he looks forbidding enough in his wizardry attire, then declines Galen’s offer of a staff, saying, “No. They’d think me infirm.” This is snappy. Wizards gotta play the PR game, too. This is also the beginning of a theme that runs all throughout this movie: Nobody is as impressive as they seem. This kinda message has its ups and downs, but in a S-and-S flick, it’s a nice change, at least until it starts getting contrived.
Ulrich goes out to meet the peasants. After making a big show of his pyrokinetic abilities, he then launches into Exposition. I’ll give the movie credit for having the expo delivered by the wizard who impatiently tells his visitors why they have come as a show that he’s way ahead of them. That’s fairly smooth, keeps it brief, and it rattles the peasants.
Long story short:Valerian, the peasant spokesman, does a medieval help-me-OB/GYN–Kenobi-you’re-my-only-hope, Ulrich says he’s too old for this sort of thing, Galen stares all wide-eyed, Valerian says that Ulrich is the last of the wizards,….I don’t think I need to spell it out. Valerian also exposits that twice a year, the king selects a virgin to be sacrificed to the dragon, and in exchange, the dragon leaves the crops and villages unburned. Right off the bat, this reveals that the dragon has intelligence. The movie never mentions it, but it’s hard to miss. Animals don’t do negotiations, ergo this dragon must be at or near human-level integgilence. This begs a few questions that the movie will never answer, but in fairness to the movie, I’ll hold off on asking them for a bit. He also introduces a minor theme of this movie: “If it weren’t for sorcerers, there wouldn’t be any dragons.” It’s unclear if he’s saying that sorcerers created dragons*, but whether he is or not, the theme is that sorcery and dragons are part of the same phenomenon, and that that phenomenon is on its last legs. It’s a potentially interesting idea, but it will contradict another of the movie’s messages later.
[*- If they had, I think the peasants would be having much more fun with the torches.]
The movie goes for the Spielberg-style slow zoom-in on Ulrich as he speaks of dragons, how they once dotted the skies; and this one, judging from the dragon scales that Valerian has brought, is very old, in pain, pitiful,…and spiteful. It’s fairly good. And Ulrich knows the dragon’s name: Vermithrax Pejorative.
VERMITHRAX PEJORATIVE!
Say that to yourself a couple times. If there’s a more bad-ass name for a dragon, I’ve yet to hear it. Especially the “Pejorative.” Who on earth figured out that a simple English adjective could be a perfect last-name for a virgin-eating dragon? Pure awesome!
Ulrich agrees to go make the journey to battle the dragon, a journey that neither Galen nor the funny-lookin’ old man named Hodge think he’s up to. Ulrich literally doesn’t get ten feet past the front door before he’s stopped by Tyrian, a bearded burly man who is pretty much the King’s Chief of Police. I’m gonna call this character Lord Cul-de-sac, because that’s what he is: A contrivance who has no function in the movie outside of providing a human bad guy to pad out the running time. As if a movie about a virgin-eating dragon needs one. And nothing he ever does will make a drop of sense.
He tells the whole gang that neither he nor the King has any love for the dragon, but they don’t like the idea of soliciting a sorcerer to kill it, either. I don’t see why. The dragon has a protection racket going against the kingdom, so I think the King would accept any help in killing it that can be found.
Lord Cul-de-sac expresses an implausible lack of faith in sorcery. How there could be any room lack of faith in sorcery in a world where its so easily practiced, I can’t tell. We’ve seen Ulrich easily ignite and douse flame, and we’ll see levitation and other neato feats later. So in this world, you’d think sorcery would be an accepted fact (in fairness, Star Wars had the same implausibility in Han Solo). The shame of it is that Lord C. actually makes what would otherwise be a fairly good case for his skepticism.
Ulrich magnanimously (not really, but it seems like it until later) offers to prove his magical abilities to Lord C. He removes his amulet and gives it to Galen (plot point, although it reasonably smooth) and tells him to go up and fetch his dagger. Galen scurries up to the dagger closet, retrives the dagger, and throws it down to Ulrich. Ulrich then uses the Force to seal all the windows so Galen won’t be able to interfere with what’s about to happen.
What happens is that Ulrich cheerfully encourages Lord C. to drive the dagger into his chest. Lord C. is in obvious discomfort over Ulrich’s serenity, but goes ahead and does it anyway. Ulrich stands there with a blank look on his face for quite a while, long enough for the audience to wonder if he might not really be okay, but then he collapses to the dirt. Props to the actors playing both Lord C. and Ulrich. They’re both believable at what they’re doing. Look at Lord C.’s eyes. You can see how torn he is. It’s excellent! Props also to the decision to have Ulrich fall in only the faintest of slo-mo. A lesser movie would’ve had this in ridiculous slo-mo with silent “NOOOOOO”s from the peasants and a mournful “Ahhhhhhh” on the soundtrack. No props at all to the movie for the Ben Kenobi-dying-in-front-of-Luke rip-off.
His funeral cremation is unremarkable beyond being more than Ben Kenobi ever got. Everyone looks sad, the flames burn with a bit of a greenish hue, which is neat. The soundtrack is a bit over-the-top, as are the flaming meteors overhead.
Cut to the next day. Hodge is scooping up Ulrichs’ ashes (plot point), muttering to Ulrich’s memory about how careless he was, getting himself killed and all. Galen is stowing away Ulrich’s effects, when the Amulet of Plot Point Reveal starts acting with a mind of its own. I’m guessing this indicates that something of the master still lives, because Galen is pretty excited about it and we kinda figured that was gonna happen anyway. Cut to still later as Galen and Hodge trek on foot towards wherever they’re going. Galen has some playful fun at Hodge’s expense, although if I got promoted to boss, I’d wait at least a little while before humiliating the long-term employees like that. C’mon Galen.
Galen and Hodge catch up to the peasants who are sullenly making their way back to their town. Galen makes a small demonstration of commanding flames to extinguish then tells them he’s the new go-to guy for all their sorcery needs and will fulfill the task that Ulrich is too dead to see to himself. This is the best acting MacNichol does in the movie. Galen expresses a naïve confidence; he genuinely believes he is up to the task, and he also believes that the peasants won’t be less than encouraged by him, although it’s obvious to both the peasants and audience that Galen is by no means up to this.
Time for a display of the virgin BBQ! A procession of official-looking men bearing torches leads the chained virgin riding in a horse cart to the sacrificial post. I gotta say, the virgin (dressed in white, natch) doesn’t seem the least bit bothered by this. She’s not even struggling. This ain’t a parade float, lady! When she’s brought down, though, she remembers that this is a cause for mild concern. A hood is placed over her head, and her manacle chain is hooked to the post (Think of a virgin corn dog). The lead processioner gives a medieval-official proclamation that this virgin, duly chosen, hereby gives up her life for the greater good, the father is free of obligation (meaning taxes, I’m assuming) for five years, and then he shouts “Duly ordained!” as he flees as the dragon is making underground rumbles. I’m guessing that last is to imply a level of cowardice here, but given the situation, you can’t rightly blame him. The five-year tax-exempt years clause is pretty stingy. I understand that Alexander the Grape had a policy that the widows of slain warriors being tax-exempt for life.
But what’s most noteworthy here is the idea of the virgin being a very pretty 20-ish lady. I’m not buying it. With virginity being a requirement for sacrifice, you’d think every virgin (and every parent of every virgin) would make a priority of removing virgin status at the earliest opportunity. So realistically, the only virgins we should see are infants and toddlers. Remember The Monster Squad? That’s what I’m talkin’ about!
For a good solid minute, she tries to pull her wrists out of the manacles as the dragon begins to climb out of its cave. She plays this very well. The virgin, not the dragon. She has an excellently believable combination of fright and resourceful-mindedness. She’s keeping her wits about her (she even spits on her wrists to help them slide free), but she knows she’s gotta hurry. As the dragon approaches, panic begins to win out, and the bit where she first hears the dragon and briefly just wildly yanks on the chains is perfect! Her wrists bleed from the tight manacles, it spatters her dress, she gets a serious sweat going, it’s great! The only negative is that our first glimpse of the dragon’s claw is accompanied by a brief noodle on the flutes that sounds almost comic.
Eventually she does get her wrists free and runs for her life. She doesn’t get very far before she’s blocked by the beast’s talons. Fleeing in another direction, she runs into its tail, although I don’t see how she could’ve missed it, it ain’t exactly inconspicuous. I love the shot of the tail smashing down on the horse cart (the horse having fled seconds earlier). The shot makes the tail seem like it weighs a ton. CGI has never done that well, conveying a sense of weight.
The virgin cowers as we get a dragon POV-shot. From about 10 feet above her, the view slowly ascends to about 30 feet above her, then flames fill the screen to the sound of a flame-broiled virgin filing a formal complaint.
That was awesome! Nobody saved her or even tried to. She was literally toast from the start! The dragon is such a tease, too. Not showing us anything except two claw shots, two tail shots, and a POV-shot. So the movie is doin’ the Jaws thing. Gonna make us hang about ‘til we get to see it for real. Coquettish.
The shot of flames cuts to Valerian the peasant sitting bolt upright as if from a movie nightmare. I hate this. It’s as if the director saw it on other movies and figured that if it was dramatic then, it’d be dramatic here. It isn’t. That wasn’t Valerian we saw getting roasted, so it wasn’t his dream. It’s an attempt at a dramatic cut-away that makes no damn sense. A fade-out woulda been more appropriate.
Valerian makes his way through the camp his band has parked at. Dig his hair. Greasy and realistic! Galen wakes up, banters with Hodge for a bit, and follows Valerian for his morning swim. This idyllic glen in morning light is an excellent contrast to the gloomy-as-f**k stage set of the sacrifice scene. It really does look like a refreshing place for a dip. Valerian, already in the water and just now aware that Galen is approaching, shouts at him to stay away. Galen doesn’t listen and dives in, giving us a shot of his ass (some people never listen. And who suffers? Us!). Galen swims underwater until he comes across a shocking sight: Valerian’s nude body…and it’s female! Valerian is a female chick!
I can’t tell if that’s a body double for Caitlin Clark, or she herself. Either way, I don’t know why Valerian didn’t at least try to turn her back to Galen. **shrug**
Interesting twist in the plot, right? Nice little bit of intrigue, eh?
NO!!!
This is another plot cul-de-sac. This gender-disguise will never enter into anything. Valerian explains to Galen that she’s been pretending to be a boy to avoid the lottery. Fair enough, but wouldn’t it’ve been easier to simply get laid? As the movie progresses, she’ll start looking increasingly feminine to the point that she’s actually a very pretty lady. She shouldn’t have any problem permanently removing herself from the lottery by legit means.
In fairness, the movie does do a fairly good job of making her seem male until now. An effeminate boy, sure, but I can’t imagine that there were too many people in the audience who had already figured it out.
Watching this exchange from behind the bushes is Lord Cul-De-Sac and his assistant. He Snidely Whiplashes that the Galen must’ve taken over for his mahstah and is intent on causing mischief. He tells his assistant to fetch his bow. I don’t get it. Lord C went out to dissuade Valerian from appealing to a sorcerer for help. Lord C himself killed said sorcerer and added insult to fatality by discrediting him in the process. So what is he doing here now? Preventing another sorcerer from taking a stab at Vermithrax? Again, I don’t see why Lord C would have a problem with that.
As Galen and Valerian dress, Galen proves rather slow to figure out that Valerian was in fact evading the lottery. Valerian says that the only virgin girls exempt from the lottery are the rich ones, including the king’s own daughter. The real-world parallel of the military draft is pretty obvious, although why the movie is making an issue over something that had already been abolished years before production of the movie started, I have no clue. Bit late to the party, Disney.
By the way, wasn’t there supposed to be something about dragons in this movie? This is turning into As The Flat World Turns.
Valerian takes off, leaving Galen to himself. Galen gets a funny look like something’s not right and peers into the lake. The water shows him an image of Lord Cul-De-Sac charging forward on horseback and aiming his bow. Pretty nifty power, clairvoyance. It seems that it’s a power that Galen is not entirely in control of. This explains why he doesn’t use it beyond this one time; you’d think it’d be his go-to power. Galen panics and runs screaming for Hodge. He finds Hodge, but it’s too late! Hodge has taken an arrow right in the chest. Ah. Another reason for clairvoyance: Saves the trouble of staging a scene where Lord C shoots Hodge.
Hodge gives the peppiest pre-death speech I’ve ever heard. The first line of it is meant for a laugh. Fairly black humor for Disney. Anyway, the bottom line is that Hodge tells Galen to throw the Master’s ashes into a lake of “burning water.” Galen tries to use his amulet and Latin mumblings to save him, but only winds up burning his own hand. Exit Hodge.
I’m not feeling anything here. Hodge was a goofily doddering character, and wasn’t really relevant to anything. His death was playful enough that there’s no way we can feel sad. We also can’t feel too miffed at Lord C because we have no idea why he did that, nor why he does anything in this movie. For that matter, where is he now? Why isn’t he sniping at Galen? Lord C specifically identified Galen as the Master’s protégé, so he knows that Galen is the man to kill. This is like the Lex Luthor killing Alfred, sparing Robin, ignoring Batman, all the while belonging in a different comic book altogether.
This movie is a f**kin’ mess!
At 32:19, there’s a really neato shot of the peasants riding in a boat. Although that’s all it is, my mind immediately screams “VIKINGS!,” and strains of Led Zeppelin and images of a 6-10 season dominate my awareness from the inside out. And the peasants are all bundled up against the cold, too. Great shot!
Docking at the peasant’s homeland of Urland (gorgeous doomy-lookin’ Welsh cliff faces!), Galen gets curious about the dragon’s lair and decides that he don’t need to wait for he and Vermithrax to get into the ring, he’s ready to go right now (sadly, he doesn’t say, “He is a HO-…MO!” while flexing his biceps).
Ignoring Valerian’s words of discouragement, he cautiously creeps into the cave and calls out to Vermithrax by name.
Waitaminit, did Mr. and Mrs. Pejorative name Vermithrax? Is Vermithrax just a stage name he uses like a pro wrestler? In Jaws, did Quint call out for Carcharadon?
A distant menacing growl, the whole cave shaking, and a cloud of either breath or fart gas or something is enough to send Galen scampering back out of the cave. Whipping out his all-purpose amulet, he stands before the cliff face that towers over the cave and begins to make a Latin incantation. Hm. This amulet is like the gifts from Zeus that Perseus got in Clash of the Oilers: Take that away, and this hero has nothing going for him.
But the cliff face hops to. First, a giant boulder crashes down and seals the cave entrance. But before Galen can look too smug, the entire cliff comes crashing down as Galen and the peasants flee. Wait to go, dork. I don’t know exactly what combination of miniatures and locations were used here, but it comes off reasonably well. The people and the cliff are never in the same shot, but the long low shots of the cliff collapsing do have sufficient weight in every sense of the word.
Cut to that night (or maybe several nights, I dunno). In the village, everyone is partying in that funky medieval manner. Everyone believes the dragon is slain, so drink up! Here we get an insulting implausibility. Valerian, seeing that virgin girls can now be virgin girls and stay raw, decides to come out. She publicly presents herself in a beautiful dress to Galen, and the two merrily dance to the music (real good medieval-sounding stuff, too) as the villagers……seem to have no problem with this revelation at all.
Go to hell.
You’re telling me that there’s not a single relative of a BBQ’d virgin who’d be at least a little bit miffed that this girl dodged the draft? This only makes the whole hidden-gender-identity bit a narratively bad idea. The movie could just as easily have had Valerian be openly female her whole life, participate in every lottery, but simply never having been chosen. As it is, I’m not buying the pleased looks on the villagers’ faces.
Even worse, this sets up one half of the projectile-inducing insult to my intelligence that’s coming.
One of the Valerian’s travelling companions, a burly bearded 40-ish guy named Greil (Albert Salmi), speaks with Valerian’s father. Reading my mind, her father says, “Don’t begrudge a life spared.” It’s not the life spared that anyone’s begrudging, you clod. It’s your daughter cheating her way out of it while others were not spared. Greil brushes it off and expresses puzzlement at what has happened. I can’t put my finger on it, but I love how he phrases his dialogue. He says, “I wonder at what we have seen….and how it was done.” Referring, of course, to the rockslide that everyone mistakenly believes killed the dragon. His tone of voice and the look in his face, it speaks of someone genuinely trying to make sense of something he’s seen but cannot account for, and trying to explain his feeling to someone but coming up a little short. It’s really well-done. But then he introduces another plot cul-de-sac: He mentions that it’s strange that at the moment the dragon was killed, there was a holy man in the village.
I’m not buying it. This guy was present to see Ulrich’s pyrokenesis and levitation, as well as Galen’s pyro-douse when Galen introduced himself as the new top sorcerer. Granted that the collapse of a cliff face is a bit more impressive than all that, still, you’d think sorcery would be a bit more accepted as fact, even if it’s actual mechanics are still unknown to him.
**shrug**
Lord Cul-De-Sac rides up. Guy, you are getting annoying. Get lost! He evilly tells the now-edgy villagers to never mind him, keep partying on. He’s only here because the King wants to meet this Galen character who killed the dragon. And even though he’s looking right at Galen and Valerian, he doesn’t seem to mind Valerian’s new status as Open Chick. You’d think he’d be hauling her off for punishment tout-suite.
Cut the King’s…audience chamber, I guess. Galen is entertaining the King (Peter Eyre) and a crowd of random guests. He gives a stage magician’s spiel about his ability to make this here table float through the air. Once again, Peter MacNichol is excellent at portraying Galen as someone who is overconfident of his ability and not quite aware that nobody he’s speaking to is buying it. After giving all that puffery of his, Galen is only able the make the table quiver and fall over. He’s embarrassed. Then we get our first shot of the king, and I unconsciously grinned. The crown he’s wearing looks ridiculous! It’s rides almost down to eyebrow-level on him. Prop department! Don’tcha have something in his size? The King also has what supposed to be a look of being unimpressed with Galen, but that look coupled with goofy crown makes it look like he’s thinking, “What am I doing in this movie?”
Here the King gets to exposit, and it’s actually rather good. Being the King, he doesn’t need explain to anybody why he does what he does, but he makes a case for himself anyway; and while not an airtight case, the movie could’ve easily not even bothered. He says that his brother, the previous king, set out with his army to kill Vermithrax but they all got killed in the attempt. With no army left, the new King made a deal with Vermithrax: Twice-yearly virgin sacrifices in exchange for leaving the village alone (why everyone gasps when he says that he created the lottery himself, I don’t know). Vermithrax has kept his end of the deal. Galen is appalled, and the King says that the deal has saved more lives than its taken. Fair enough, but I can’t help noticing that the King never adds to the moral ambiguity even more by asking the common-sense question: “You got a better idea?”
More to the point though: The King, seeing Galen’s failure to levitate a simple table, is pretty certain that there’s no way this doofus took out a dragon. He deduces that Galen is actually a mere apprentice, and that Galen’s power comes less from his own skill than from the amulet, which the King now confiscates. He also cusses out Galen for likely infuriating the dragon rather than killing it.
This is interesting inversion. As I mentioned before, this movie is going the Alien/Jaws route of not showing the creature too much. In these kind of movies, the main bad guy in position of power is usually the last one to know/admit that the beast is a danger to anyone. Here, though, the bad guy in position of power is not only aware of the danger, he’s the only one who’s figured out that there’s a danger. And he ain’t brushin’ it off, either. Given this, it’s kinda hard to hate the guy. Laissez-faire draconics ain’t a platform I look for in a leader, how ‘bout you?
This deal with the dragon, though, I’m not sold on. As I said before, this implies intelligence. That being the case, there are a few holes:
1. If Vermithrax wants the supply of humans to continue, why would it demand the ones who have not reproduced yet? Gonna run out of villagers that way!
2. What does Vermithrax care whether or not they’re virgins? When you eat a hamburger, do you care if the cow is a virgin?
3. How does Vermithrax tell the difference between virgin and nonvirgin? What would happen if a nonvirginal ringer was put in? Turn up its nose and demand the waiter take this away?
4. If Vermithrax is intelligent enough to set up a protection racket, then it must also be intelligent enough to know that it can take whatever it goddamn well pleases at any time, else the humans would never have agreed to the racket in the first place.
Anyway, the King has Galen thrown in the dungeon.
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Edited by - Food on 08/30/2008 1:38:00 PM
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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - 08/30/2008 : 1:38:41 PM
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Cut to Galen in the dank cell trying to incant spells on the bars to no avail. A lady’s mocking voice makes him turn around, and he sees the king’s daughter (Chloe Salaman). She haughtily mocks him for his poor Latin and tells him that her father is a good king who puts the well-being of the kingdom at the top of his priorities list. Galen isn’t too impressed and he tells her that she’s been kept out of the lottery. She is appalled at the thought and angrily denies it before leaving in a huff.
We, the omniscient audience, can sense that Galen is correct; but Galen himself is actually taking a bit of a leap of faith. The only evidence he has is the word of Valerian, who he’s known for a couple days, tops. And we never heard him ask her how she knows, either. Nor does the princess ever ask Galen how he knows. For such a cynical and nihilistic movie, there’s a fair bit of blind trust going on.
The princess storms to her father, whose trying in vain to use the amulet to turn lead into gold. She angrily asks him if she’s been kept out of the lottery. He clumsily sputters that it’s not true, and she sees right through it.
I’m not buying it. This is a stunningly gorgeous and immaculately clean child of royalty. I can’t imagine that a pampered spoiled brat like her is gonna be that miffed about being kept out of harm’s way for any reason other than PR purposes; which, in a medieval kingdom, probably wouldn’t be that much of a concern anyway. And it sets up the other half of the projectile-inducing insult to come.
Suddenly, everything starts shaking like there’s an earthquake. I guess the dragon is getting antsy about being trapped underground like that. It’s realized by simply jerking the camera while a few random objects and powder fall. The princess releases Galen from his cell and tells him to flee. He does a couple false starts at saying something to her, then thinks better of it and takes off. Seems like the beginning of standard fairy tale romance. I’m not entirely sold on her releasing him in the first place, because all he did was be proven right about her lottery exemption (and if she’s on the ball, she’ll have deduced that if he, an outsider, knows it, so do a lot of the constituents). Not enough to warrant her to risk her father’s wrath by granting an unauthorized early parole. No biggie, though.
The next couple minutes really aren’t relevant to anything, so I’m gonna brush through it: Everyone in the city is panicking as Galen flees, Lord Cul-De-Sac tries and fails to catch him, Galen somehow appropriates a horse (honestly, this is sloppily cut). He rides the horse into the king’s chamber, dispatching through more sloppy cutting a half dozen guards. When a section of the outer wall crumbles out of nowhere, he rides off into the forest. That was silly.
Cut to that evening for another plot cul-de-sac. A man in clergy robes and carrying a staff with a cross on top leads a bunch of peasants to an evil-looking rocky area. This priest (Ian McDermind, the Emperor from the Star Bores movies) tells them that the rumbling all around them is a sign from God.
If a movie is gonna bash Christians (or anybody else, for that matter), it oughta have a good narrative reason. Such reasons do exist, but this movie doesn’t avail itself of any of them. This scene is a Christian-bash for the sake of Christian-bashing. It has nothing at all to do with the plot, and the hell of it is that it easily could’ve, if only someone had given a s**t.
Even worse, the movie doesn’t recognize it actually portrays the priest as being pretty impressive. Sloppy messaging.
The priest says and “The moment of our fear is the hour of our triumph.” And as soon as the words are out of this mouth, the ground starts pitching and the peasants get more panicked. Irony. HA!
The priest says that wings, tail, and clawed feet is no dragon, it’s Lucifer; he begins to pray to God to show his almighty power, and the ground starts splitting and heaving, and the peasants begin to flee in terror. Another irony, and so soon after the first! Hilarious, even better the second time!
As Greil, who seems to be warming up to the Christian faith, watches in horror from a distance, the priest crawls in mounting panic over the rocks until he comes to a glowing crevice. Out of that crevice (and obscured by smoke a la the opening of a Kiss concert), the dragon’s head arises. We only see its silhouette, though, and next a back-of-head shot, because the movie’s keeping the big reveal for later. The priest, obviously terrified but not budging an inch, shouts “Unclean beast! Get thee down! Be consumed by the fires that made thee!” As soon as he said that, I knew what was going to happen, and it does. The dragon fire-breathes and burns the priest alive. Ah, glorious irony! You just can’t get enough of it, it never gets old!
I’ve no doubt that this was meant as a stand-up-and-cheer moment. The tweeness is all over this scene, from the exaggerated delivery of the lines, to the close-up of the skin burning off his face, to the almost-comic music, the punchline of this scene all but screams, “Yaaaaay!!!”
There’s just one problem.
While everyone else was screaming in panic and running away in terror, this priest swallowed his own terror and stood toe-to-toe with the dragon. He didn’t back down one inch as the dragon is towering over him. So why am I supposed to cheer? However big the stone was that sealed the cave, the biggest stones in the movie are the ones between the priest’s legs.
And once again, this scene has nothing to do with anything for the rest of the movie.
Cut to that night. Galen on horseback reaches the crest of a hill (what in the world is that at 56:49? Angry fireflies?). From his spot, he looks down and sees a cluster of village huts, half of them on fire. Here we get our first full shot of the dragon, and in keeping with the Big Reveal route, it’s just a brief one. The dragon jets over the village a few times, zaps a couple huts with his fire breath, then soars up towards the moon and out of sight. This is reasonably good. The dragon is matted in, and it’s obvious; but it’s brief enough that it’s no bother. His fire-breath is more like a laser: The beam strikes near-instantaneously, and it causes an explosion. Kinda silly (what’s in those huts?), but for this brief village-panic scene, it works just fine. Speaking of the villagers, their behavior scores major points with me, because it hints that somebody on the creative team actually bothered to wonder how villagers would react to a dragon attack if such things really had existed and were taken as a fact of life. The villagers are less a terrified mob than a Rapid Response Team. Sure, there’s plenty of screaming; but instead of scattering in all directions, they’re in teams putting out the fires and moving heavy carts away, presumably to protect valuables. It really is the snappiest bit of verisimilitude I’ve ever seen in any dragon movie. And the coda of the scene, from 57:22 to 57:29, as it flies towards the moon? Oh f**k yeah. F**k yeah! Look at that! That’s a European heavy metal album cover. That’s a snapshot from a way cool nightmare I had as a kid. That’s what a movie titled Dragonslayer should be filled to the rim with!
The next day, Lord Cul-de-Sac rides into the ruins. Fantastic. He and his men barge into Valerian’s home and trash the place looking for Galen. Valerian and her father are rather blasé about it. Lord C. tells Valerian’s father that the king has called for a new lottery, and that Valerian must be in it this time. Given how evil Lord C. is made out to be, I’m wondering why he doesn’t exact more brutal punishment for her previous dodge of the lottery. **shrug** Valerian says with questionable believability that she wants to be in the lottery as a matter of pride. If you say so, lady. Satisfied that Galen is not around, he and his men take off. As soon as they’re gone, Valerian and Pop move the heavy anvil that Pop was doing his metalwork on, exposing Galen hidden in a hole in the ground beneath it. Galen asks with dramatic emphasis, “Have you ever forged a weapon?” In a place where dragons are common enough that the village has Damage Control teams, that seems a silly question. Anyway, it leads to Pop revealing his most prized creation: Dragonslayer. It looks like an ordinary metal spear, and its ability to cut metal seems only mildly impressive. Galen concludes that by itself it’s not enough: He needs his amulet.
Cut to the night-time lottery. The long shot of the torch-bearing peasants converging on the castle at 1:00:30 is beautiful, another shot that this kind of movie should be full of. In the town square, the place is packed, although “packed” looks to be about 100 to 150 people. Everybody wears grim faces, and that’s a nice switch. It’s common for movies to portray publicly enacted death sentences as a form of entertainment for the masses. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, for example. Not here, though. This is serious. The young ladies struggle as they are herded into a roped-off area, and the old folks up in the gallery aren’t smiling a bit. I like it!
The scene plays up this ominous situation by having over a full minute with no dialogue, just shots of the king taking his seat, the huge pot brought out, the bag of tiles being emptied into it, it’s effective! The feeling slips a bit when everyone starts chanting, “Stir the tiles, stir the tiles,” and “Draw the name, draw the name,” but even this is passable, because the close-ups of the villagers’ solemn faces as they chant gives a sense that they’re not looking for spectacle, they just wanna get this horrible thing over with. Good save!
An employee of the king draws a tile and gives an interesting monologue. Here it is:
“Now, my countrymen, hear me. Behold, for I am chosen. I shall die that many may live. I shall lay down my life for family and fellows. I shall go to my grave for the love of our king and his wise policy, and my name is….”
Phrasing it in the first person. I’m guessing this is done to highlight the inherent phoniness of it all, that some government lackey is speaking for whoever is about to get charbroiled, while everyone knows that by no means does that soon-to-be-identified lady share the sentiment currently being ascribed to her. I also sense that this monologue is meant to drive home the military draft parallel, but again, the draft was already abolished by the time this movie was put into production, so it’s an obsolete message. What’s next, a parallel about the evils of Prohibition?
The speaker halts in discomfort at the name he sees on tile. When the peasants, and eventually the king, prod him to read the name, he reads the name as Princess Elspeth Ophelus. The King is shocked and tries to make out that the name has been misread, and the villagers ain’t buying it. Valerian shouts, “What better name than your own kin? At last we see justice done!”
If the lottery is a parallel of the military draft, the obsolescence of the message is magnified here. Now that the draft is no more, it is impossible to send one’s own son/daughter into military service if the son/daughter doesn’t want to.
But that was a secondary observation. My immediate reaction was to cuss at the screen. This is the first half of the double-fisted our-audiences-are-total-f**kin’-idiots insult. Valerian herself has deliberately cheated her way out of the lottery all her life. So who is she to be demanding “justice?” You little bitch. F**k you to hell and back.
But if that was a left jab, what happens immediately after is the full-force right hook that crashes my composure to the canvas and leaves me throwing every one-handed object within reach at the screen. As the King makes to draw a new lot and the peasants shout their disapproval, Elspeth calmly announces that the tile was as read. The King frantically goes through the tiles and finds that they are all labeled with her name. Here’s what she says:
“Hear me, good people. It is true that my name appears on all the lots. This does not invalidate the lottery, it certifies it. It redresses an injustice. I have learnt that my name has been kept from jeopardy in all the drawings in the past. Therefore, I have substituted my name for yours, for the risk that over the years you have taken and I have not.”
Here’s what I say:
“Smear the dead skunk’s cum all over your @$$, you s**tmaggot! F**k you up the @$$hole with a piece of frozen s**t and go lick the sores of the dead hippie’s dick, you c**ks**k** a**h**e f**kmother c**t!”
I’m serious, how f**kin’ stupid does this movie think we are?!? This royal princess is precisely that: A royal princess. Pristine, beautiful, clean….pampered. Remember Ken’s description of Tina Wilcox from Jaws 2? He said, “Tina seems to have lived an extremely pampered life and probably never needed to do anything for herself, much less anyone else.” That describes this princess perfectly. So how dumb would anybody have to be to buy the idea of her not only allowing her name in the lottery (which, if that was all she did, would indeed be believable) but rigging the lottery so that she would definitely be killed?
Analblood Pejorative!
And then to cap it off there’s a shot of Valerian looking up at Elspeth with a look of pure admiration. Yeah, you wish, Val. Dumb bitch.
This movie hates our guts. The makers of this movie thought us all a bunch of f**kin’ retards and treated us as such. That’s okay. They got what they deserved at the box office.
During the lottery, Galen has slipped into the King’s chamber to look for the amulet. There’s a brief bit of the King and Lord Cul-de-Sac approaching the chamber where the King asks Lord C. to do something about all this, anything, if not out of loyalty to him, then out of loyalty to the kingdom. Lord C answers that his first duty naturally is loyalty to the kingdom. Lord C isn’t dismissing the King’s request, nor is he copping an attitude about it. Lord C phrases it as a simple statement of fact. Still, this bit is here to explain why he does what we see him do next, and it holds together well.
They catch Galen in the act of rummaging through the King’s chamber. Immediately upon seeing him, the King tells him that he needn’t go to the trouble, referring to the ransacking of his chamber. Lord C is ready to kill Galen, but the King stays his hand. The King had instantly recognized that Galen is the King’s only chance. So he now returns the amulet to him. Another interesting switch: It’s common for the mini-McGuffin to be found by the hero in a spot that makes the viewer wonder why the villain left it there of all places. Here, the King has had the amulet around his neck the whole time. Points to the King for being sharper than most movie villains. The movie mildly stacks the deck by having the King blubber and ingratiate himself to Galen. That’s a bit out of character. The King was razor-sharp to recognize Galen’s usefulness immediately upon seeing him tearing his chamber apart, so he’s on the ball. I’d think it more believable for the King to simply tell Galen words to the effect of “I still think you’re just a goofball kid and I oughta have you drawn and quartered for breaking and entering, but you’re the only shot we have. So if you wanna kill him, here’s your amulet, anything else you need, lemme know. If you succeed, full pardon; if you don’t, then I was right all along.” The King does get one reasonable bit in the grovelfest, though. He says that Vermithrax is old, so waiting it out and keeping him pacified with semi-annual Virgin McNuggets seemed like an option. **shrug** For all we know, it still is as far as the kingdom itself is concerned.
Cut to Valerian’s place. Pop can’t remember the princess’ name. Galen supplies it with a voice that implies that he’s so distracted by her that he’s not noticing anything else. Oh oh, love triangle with 20-sided dice. Valerian turns away with obvious envy. Galen uses the amulet to magically forge his Dragonslayer spear.
Cut to the morbidly gorgeous Welsh countryside (bleached stones scattered around like bones under a cloudy sky. You get the sense that nothing thrives here). Valerian is collecting scales that have fallen off of Vermithrax like we used to do with Grandma’s toe jam. ‘Member that? She enters the dragon’s lair a few paces to collect more. She gets a start when…..some kind of puppet leaps at her. It’s played for a jump-in-your-seat shock, so I had to rewind to get a good look. I still couldn’t tell, but it will later be revealed to be Vermithrax’s baby. I prolly shoulda know it straight away. For now, it tells us nothing beyond Vermithrax’s gender, but later it might tell us more.
Back to Galen. He’s got his spear slicing right though solid steel. Pop says that Val ain’t around cuz she gets like that, and that he’ll say goodbye to Val for Galen. Galen doesn’t seem too cut up about it and departs.
On the beautiful cliffs, Val finds Galen herself. She throws what looks just like a tortoise to him and says it’s a shield she made that may or may not be fireproof. I like this: A shield whose utility against dragons actually has a non-arcane reason for being useful against dragons. This writers must’ve used the +5 Pens of Believability that was used in the dragon air raid scene earlier. Val then says, “You know, you’re an idiot!” That’s what the writers felt towards us when crafting the lottery scene. She tells Galen about the baby dragons, and then we get a Tearful Goodbye scene. I’m torn about it, I really am. She asks if he’s in love, he says yeah, she says that she understands because the princess is really beautiful, she says that he’s gonna die, there’ll be more lotteries, and she’ll still be eligible because she’s a virgin. Galen says that while he is in love, it’s not with the princess, and then they have a charmingly awkward kiss.
Ups:
- Again, kick-ass scenery. Not the most romantic place to proclaim your love, but when there’s a dragon to slay, who cares?
- Watch Galens’ eyes when she says, “She’s very beautiful.” It’d’ve been very easy to overact that (or over-react, I guess), but he plays it just right.
- I don’t know why, but I love old-style Hollywood kissing scenes. The pressing of lips as opposed to Xtreme Tonsil Hockey. This is old-style, and I like it.
- Valerian is so sweetly adorable. I’d kiss her, too…..
Downs:
- …..but that’s far from the only thing I’d do. Hey Galen! She was right, you ARE an idiot! She just told you point-blank that you’re gonna die, and she’s still potential Purina Dragon-Chow™ because she’s still a virgin. Uhhhh………….I think she’s trying to tell you something! And if this really is your last day alive, which you seem to be aware it might be, that how much more motivation do you need in the first place?!? You know how those silly eye-candy ladies who do the in-game interviews will ask the head coach during a sudden-death playoff game, “How do you get your team motivated for this game?” Well, people like you are the reason such questions gets asked with the asker losing teeth!
- Continuity error: When Galen reaches for Val’s chin, he’s sitting behind her. But in the very next shot, he still holding her chin, but they’re now side-by-side.
- The acting isn’t bad, but it’s not good enough to give this any real romantic punch. If I was watching this with a female woman, I doubt I’d be inspired to get to it unless she was already getting insistent.
Cut to the execution of Princess Elspeth. The scene starts with a close-up of the pole that she’ll be chained to. The skull at the top of the pole has a crown on it. State executioners have a sense of humor, although I doubt their customers appreciate it. The princess quietly takes her place on the Corn Dog Stick of Doom. The lead processioner begins to make the official proclamation, just like he did before. He only gets a sentence of two in, though, before the parchment in his hands bursts into flame. Then there’s a small and strangely quiet mushroom cloud in front of him, and when the cloud rises, Galen is standing there, striking a bad-ass pose. Shield in left hand, spear held in right hand, like a Roman gladiator posing for a photo shoot. There’s a muted sting on the soundtrack, but this is one place where a little bit of bombast would’ve been in order. That’s a great-lookin’ shot! There’s an élan to it, and élan is one thing that’s been BADLY missing amidst at the rubbish social commentary crap so far. The processioner comicly says, “No more smoke! I beg you!” Galen shouts at everyone to scram, and they do. Finally, the movie is shifting into Fun gear. ‘Bout time!
But one man among the procession who does NOT flee is Lord Cul-de-Sac. He swaggers forward and evilly explains that this sacrifice is something that must be done for the kingdom to survive, so he’s not going to let anyone interfere with it. I like this, because it stands to reason that in a place where periodic sacrifices are an accepted fact of life, there likely would be a cop of sorts on hand to prevent exactly what Galen is doing now: Saving the virgin.
Galen draws his Dragonslayer lance (it’s only now that I’m wondering if this wasn’t intended as a potential merchandising thing), and Lord C draws his sword. Then the movie throws us a wicked curveball: The Princess, still chained to the post, shouts that Lord C is right and the sacrifice must happen for the good of the kingdom. I’m STILL not buying it, for all the reasons stated before, but I gotta admit: The idea of a guy saving a princess from the dragon, only to find that the princess doesn’t WANT to be saved is a kind of a kick, isn’t it?
Galen totally ignores her (Hurrah!) and the swordfight is on!
I like this fight, too. Galen is using a spear, not a sword, and it’s a big thing even for a spear. So he’s a bit clumsy with it. Lord C’s sword is a standard sword, but you can tell that it’s a heavy thing. When I was in seventh grade, the history teacher, who was really into medieval history, brought an actual medieval sword in to class one day. I was amazed by how heavy it was and wondered how anyone could actually use it any good. So this is good to see here. Also, when Lord C slashes at the tip of the spear, it makes a semi-cartoonish flash and a semi-sci-fi blast sound. Way cool. It’s enough to highlight that this is no ordinary weapon that Galen’s holding, but the movie’s not getting kid-flick on us.
Lord C soon has Galen sprawled on the dirt. The princess yells at Lord C that the dragon is coming. Again, nice twist! She’s not only doesn’t wanna be rescued from the dragon, she actually cares for the safety of the man who tries to kill whoever would try to save her. F**kin’ bizarre! I love it!
Galen dodges in the roll-around fashion that I don’t think ever works in real life, and the fight is back on. Galen slashes the Princess’ chains, freeing her. He shouts at her to flee, but she calmly strolls right into the dragon’s lair. Kinda makes it a waste of Galen’s time, doesn’t it? Galen naturally can’t believe it, but Lord C is thrilled. He taunts Galen about it, although while his oily confidence is effective and fun*, this would’ve been a great time for him to full-blown laugh out loud. Cuz that’s what I did. That was great! All the trouble he goes to for her, and she just lah-di-dah’s right into Chompsville.
[* - While I still maintain that Lord Cul-de-Sac is a waste of running time, I’ll give credit to the actor: He’s havin’ a blast from start to finish, and now that the movie is getting some fun-ness going, it’s infectious.]
Galen and Lord C do battle with the sacrificial pole between them. I don’t know why, but Lord C hugs himself to the pole and quietly says, “Now prepare yourself.” Galen runs the spear straight through the pole and into Lord C’s gut. I have no idea what Lord C thought he was doing. His death is pretty tame. He pulls himself off the spear, gets an expression like he’s about to give a grudging prop to Galen, then collapses.
Galen isn’t too concerned, though, because the princess’ screams echo out of the cavern. In he goes.
Then we get a moment of such gleeful surprise that I had to pause the movie so I could laugh with crazed approval and shout, “YOU’RE F**KIN’ KIDDIN’ ME!!!” over and over again. Galen cautiously creeps through the cave for a bit and finds…..the baby dragons devouring the princess’ corpse! One dragon wipes blood-covered claws over her face, and another bites a chunk of skin off of her arm. Galen is nauseated and horrified. I’m gleeful and delighted. I can’t believe this! Galen kills both of them, but not before one of them actually bites off the princess’ foot. Fantastic! How on earth did this movie tank?!?
During some websurfing while typing my dissection of Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend, I came upon an ambivalent review for that movie on www.dvd.net.au that makes a neato observation. The reviewer says, “While this film is rather average and weaker today than it was 15 years ago, it does contain the best thing I ever saw, ever. At one stage the baby dinosaur has a pair of jockey underpants on its head and it?s growling its discomfort when a helpful monkey pulls them off its face. Without doubt, this crap is cinematic history. Name any other movie you could see anything even remotely like that in?” I feel the same way watching this graphic depiction of baby dragons munching on the gorgeous dead princess. And with no detectable irony, either. This is golden. GOLDEN!!! You can’t find this sort of thing anywhere else!
I guess I oughta mention the baby dragons. Remember Kruge’s pet from Star Trek III? They look like miniatures of that thing, only with blunted snouts. They serve their purpose well, even though they’re just puppets.
Galen collects himself and continues on into the cavern. Suddenly, he’s set upon by a third baby dragon. This one is kinda goofy. It’s almost like in Hobgoblins, where the attack is realized by having the victim hold onto this puppet and pretend that it’s got a hold of her. This isn’t quite that bad, but it’s close. Galen’s lying on the ground, the dragon is on his legs and growling and hissing at him….it just doesn’t have any oomph. Galen kills it by conking it on the head over and over. That was mean. He ran the first one through, he decapitated the second with one slice, but bashing it over and over just seems cruel. Can’t wait ‘til mom dragon finds out about this, she’s gonna…..
….Holy s**t, I’m sympathizing with the dragons. The makers of this movie are either total incompetents or gloriously brilliant artists. I honestly can’t tell.
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Edited by - Food on 08/30/2008 9:03:39 PM |
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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - 08/30/2008 : 1:39:59 PM
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Galen creeps down a passage and comes into a huge cavern that contains a lake of fire. This looks awesomely hellish. A lake with small rocky islands, and islands of fire spontaneously igniting. The movie takes it time with this. We get good long looks at this as Galen tentatively leaps from rock to rock. At one point, Galen pauses for a moment, and here’s where the Big Reveal of the dragon happens. Unlike Jaws, it’s not a quick reveal. This builds up slowly. First we see bubbles behind Galen. Then a shot from between Galen’s legs as the dragon’s head rises up. Then Galen-POV as he looks in the water and sees the dragon’s reflection! Whipping around, his eyes bulge out as we can see at the very edge of the screen the dragon’s head in profile. Another reaction shot of a terrified Galen. Then a behind-Galen shot of Vermithrax Pejorative spread-winged in all its glory!
I threw my fists in the air! It looks FANTASTIC!!! Sure, the matte line around Galen is pretty obvious, like the Rancor scene in Return of the Jedi, but not on first viewing; because who in their right mind would notice Galen when the most awesome movie dragon you’ve ever seen is dominating the screen? Home run!!!
Galen crouches behind his shield. Vermithrax rears back and fire-breathes right at Galen. We get a long shot from the side, and again, it looks excellent! I hear tell that U.S. Army flamethrowers were used. If so, how much more bad-ass can you get than that?!? Now, THIS is what I call a dragon movie! Nevermind the implausibility of Galen not getting any residual heat damage or oxygen deprivation or smoke inhalation from being enveloped in flame behind his shield, this is what audiences were paying to see!
When Vermithrax stops to catch his breath (awesome shot of the dragon breathing fire at the ceiling of the cave!), Galen runs for his life. Vermithrax chases after. This is realized by a stop-motion technique that became knows as “go-motion,” whereby the natural jerkiness is partially eliminated through computer technology. A precursor of CGI, and it works pretty well. You can still tell it’s stop motion, but it’s very very good stop motion.
Vermithrax finds the corpses of her babies. She roars in grief and charges towards the cave exit. Galen, hiding in an alcove high above, leaps onto her neck for a little medieval bullriding. He plunges his magical spear into her neck. It angers her, but doesn’t seem to do much real damage. He gets tossed free, breaking the spear off in her neck, and has to crouch behind his shield again….
….cut toValerian clambering over the rocky hillside on a cloudy morning. I love the jarring color scheme here. Galen’s fight is yellow-lit, making everything look sulphurous and sinister. The jump is to the white rocks, the white mountains in the background, and the white clouds in the sky. It, too, looks like a place of death more than life, but it still makes you want to take a deep breath to smell something other than sulfur.
Valerian finds Galen crashed out on the rocks. Bleeding from eyebrows and mouth, he defeatedly croaks, “Still alive.”
Waitaminit. How is Galen himself still alive? Did the dragon see him leave the cave and say, “Oh darn, I guess he got away?” That dragon was maternally pissed! I can’t imagine she wouldn’t’ve given chase.
Cut to Valerian’s house. Val pleads with Galen to leave the kingdom with her. He seems zonked until Val’s Pop says that that’s a good idea. Pop speculates that magic seems to be dying out and that the dragon should be dying out along with it. Ulrich said something similar early in the movie, the connection between magic and dragons, with both not being long for this world. But Pop sees it as a good thing. It’s appropriate that he would whereas Ulrich wouldn’t. Ulrich made his livelihood by magic, while Pop had to pretend his daughter was a son to keep her safe from the dragon. I like this.
Brief goodbye scene where Pop give Val a Christian cross necklace. She seems baffled and maybe a little put off, but as Pop points out, “What harm can it do?” Tearful hug, off they go. Another brief shot of Pop and a bunch of peasants attending a Christian mass, the bell of which is rung by Greil. The faith is spreading. It’s never explicitly said that the rise of Christianity is the cause of the demise of magic/dragons, but if it is, then it’s definitely debatable that this would be a bad thing.
Val and Galen are about to set out by boat when Galen suddenly freezes, transfixed what looks like a solar eclipse in progress (Don’t look at it, dude!). He sees a vision in the lake of the flames from the dragon’s lake; and suddenly, he understands what Hodge meant when he shouted about Ulrich’s ashes and burning water! Totally ignoring Valerian, he sprints back to the dragon’s cave, shouting to an uncomprehending Valerian that Ulrich died because he couldn’t make the journey, so he had Galen make the journey with Ulrich’s ashes, knowing that Galen would resurrect him once he reached the lake of fire.
Clever! So all this time, Galen was nothing but a chauffeur. If I were Galen, I’d be miffed. Ulrich really coulda told Galen something about this before hand. All this trying to kill the dragon himself (twice!), getting thrown in prison, having Hodge get shot to death….all of that could’ve been avoided if only Ulrich didn’t insist on playing all I-know-something-you-don’t-know.
Back into the cave again, this time with Valerian in tow. Galen tells her to stay outside, but she insists that she’s tough enough. “I was a man. Remember?” she says. This could be a statement on how she has been treated differently and more delicately since coming out, but it falls flat because we never saw anything at all about how she was treated either before or after coming out, with the exception of colossal free pass the entire village gave her when they found out that she had dodged the draft. So if she’s complaining, she shouldn’t be. Anyway, Galen relents and gives her a torch. Her toughness quickly evaporates when she sees what’s left of the corpse of the princess. The movie is havin’ fun with that, I swear.
At the lake of fire, Galen dramatically flings the ashes into the fiery water. After a pregnant pause, the flames all go out. A single point of glowing green beneath the surface becomes a helix of flame encasing what looks like an Oscar statue. Dream on, movie! Ironically, the soundtrack was indeed nominated for an Oscar (losing to Chariots of Water), but this particularly scene is where it’s at its most irritating. Piercingly high staccato piccolos. I hate it.
There’s a flash, and suddenly the column of fire with the Oscar statue is replaced but a small circle of fire with a spinning horizontal human figure in it. It almost looks like Oscar statue thing was a earlier design that was discarded but someone forgot to edit out that one bit. **shrug** The human form angles upright and solidifies into Ulrich, alive and well, and now clad in what look like ceremonial robes and a Jewish-ish headpiece. He asks Galen if he brought along anything to eat. Hee hee. Galen does the whole “I failed you, I blew it, I suck ass” routine, and Ulrich typically tells him that he did fine, c’mon there a lot to do, etc.
Cut to the church. Greil is baptizing folks and telling them that their faith can kill the dragon and they must be strong, etc.
Cut to the dragon soaring hiiiigh over the barren rocky cliffs. Great shots! Must be what mice feel when they see hawks.
Galen, Ulrich, and Valerian reach some crag somewhere (I have no idea where they are in relation to anywhere else, but it really doesn’t matter). Galen re-introduces female Valerian to Ulrich, who doesn’t seem surprised about it and fingers her cross necklace without comment. He tells Galen that he must destroy the amulet….and Ulrich along with it. Then he winks and teleports higher up the crags and tells him that he’ll know when to act. There you go again, Ulrich. Deliberately cryptic just for its own sake. Just tell the guy what the score is already.
At the moment of full eclipse, Ulrich materializes at the top of the crag.
Waitaminit. If he can teleport like this, then what was the deal with the ashes and burning water and all that crap?
What distracts from this climax scene to come is that everyone is matted in. The scene is rocky treeless crags all the way to the horizon, and it looks great; but the actors standing in front of the scene never seem to be part of it.
Ulrich does some s**t that would do Moses proud: Calling meteorites, cloud cover, lightning, and I guess he even made the eclipse safe for Val and Galen to look at. Damn!
With a dramatic blare of low brass, Vermithrax swoops through clouds into view. She’s matted in too, but that’s okay because there is a nice sense of drama here. This old dude who’s already died once and is about to die again but can command weather versus the most bad-ass dragon ever. This oughta be good!
After some long stretches of Vermithrax flying around, she buzzes Ulrich, knocking him to the dirt. On her next pass, Ulrich shoots lightning out of his staff and tears a hole in her wing. Vermithrax plunges for a ways before leveling out and making another attack run. It was here I noticed that she makes a sci-fi-ish “whoosh” as she flies by. She’s got jet engines!
Valerian antsily tells Galen to smash the amulet. Galen assures her that it’s not time yet.
On the attack, she claws Ulrich’s shoulder. Ulrich is a bit rattled by it. He fidgets with the bloody hole in his robe, and [/b]YIKES!!![/b] Suddenly, Vermithrax is right there bathing Ulrich in fire-breath! That gave me a start! Ulrich ain’t worried none, though. He rattles off some Latin in a tone of voice that seems to say, “Would you knock that off, you dork?” When Vermithrax runs out of breath and flies away, Ulrich disgustedly throws his now-flaming staff aside.
Then Valerian loses some points with me. She snatches Galen’s amulet and makes to smash it. Galen wrestles the smashing rock away from her, shouting that it isn’t time yet.
Smack her, Galen! She doesn’t know anything about sorcery or any of this. And she didn’t seem too panicked when she made to smash it, either. She seemed more in the spirit of if-you-ain’t-gonna-then-I-will. That’s not only impatient, it’s a stupid intrusion into a life-or-death operation that requires skills and knowledge that she knows damn well she doesn’t have. I hate to say this just a few hours after Sarah Palin became the milfiest running mate in history, but stay in your role, Valerian!
After a loooong and pretty cool shot of Vermithrax soaring among and through the clouds, the dragon make a strafe-like run towards Ulrich, who stands with arms spread in a classic “right here, bitch!” gesture. Vermithrax snatches Ulrich in her claw. Galen immediately recognizes that this is the time. Hestitant to slay his Obi-Wan along with the dragon, he waits for Ulrich to throw his voice about ten miles before finally smashing the amulet. Via less-than-convicing superimposed explosions, Ulrich explodes. This Septuagenarian Suicide Bomber (sounds like the name of a horrible San Francisco punk rock band, doesn’t it?) blows Vermithrax’s gut apart. Her corpse plunges as a smoking fire ball into a lake, where it explodes again (???). Magical vapors issue forth from the lake. Opie, today might not be a good day to go fishin’, how ‘bout we go to Mt. Pilot, and we’ll go fishin’ some other time? The eclipse ends. I don’t even know why it was even there in the first place. It probably seemed neato to have, but it does nothing.
Cut to the half-destroyed carcass of Vermithrax. It is realistic-looking, no doubt. In fact, it looks almost as awesome dead as alive. There’s just one problem: It crashed into a lake and now it’s on dry f**kin’land!!! How did this idiotic continuity error happen? It’s not in a lake bed, because I can see ordinary land plants nearby. How did this happen? Sloppy!!!
Galen and Val look stare blankly at the corpse until the Christians come from over the hill, loudly giving thanks to God for delivering them from the dragon. At the same time, the King arrives. He plunges a sword into the dragon’s corpse as his assistant proclaims the King “Dragon Slayaaahhh!!!” Galen and Val exchange unimpressed glances. The ironic message is pretty obvious: Galen killed a dragon and nobody gives him any credit. True enough, but irrevelant for a couple of reasons:
1. Nobody gives him credit because nobody, except maybe the King, knows. The Christians? The last one to see Galen was Val’s Pop, and he last saw them as they were leaving the kingdom altogether. So how are they supposed to know that Galen killed the dragon? And since there was an eclipse going on, you can’t fault them for not looking at the sky too much, nor can you fault them for not recognizing the little tiny dots on the horizon, either.
2. Once again, election-season coverage is seeping into my awareness (there’s just no avoiding it, goddammit all), so I’m more keenly aware now than ever of the power of celebrity status. Through that s**t-filtered lens, I see the movie trying to make us feel disappointed that they don’t get hailed as heroes by the kingdom for saving the kingdom. I can’t feel disappointed, because succeeding at saving the kingdom is the important thing. Who gets the credit is a secondary concern. Not a zero concern, of course; but a secondary concern. It’s a minor enough concern that their lack of props does not take away from the thrill of seeing them succeed. On top of that, Galen and Val don’t seem like they wanna stick around in the kingdom anyway, so why should it bother them at all?
3. Just how much credit does Galen deserve anyway? He was Ulrich’s chauffeur, and simply stood there out of harm’s way until Ulrich said, “Now.” Not entirely Medal Of Honor type stuff.
4. How much credit does Valerian deserve? She not only did nothing, she damn near blew the whole operation by trying to meddle in that which she knows nothing about! Don’t tell me I should feel down that she’s not getting props that she’s not due.
Galen and Valerian stroll through a yellow grassy hillside. He’s gonna miss Ulrich and the amulet, she won’t miss any of it one bit. Galen wishes out loud that he had a horse, and voila! A horse appears on the horizon. Val and Galen stare at it each and each other in shock until Galen starts giddily chuckling. Whether this is recognition of a cute and helpful coincidence or of the possibility that Galen may have some hidden sorcery talent even without the amulet, I can’t tell. Rear shot of the horse with its two passengers strolling into the distance, end credits.
AFTERTHOUGHTS
This was the most scatterbrained dissection I’ve ever done. I said it’d be about a month, and six weeks later, I finally get it done. Not because I was busy, I just couldn’t do a good solid 20- or 30-minute stretch in one sitting like I like to do. I couldn’t stay focused until the third act.
Mostly because the first two acts are so uninspiring. I know the movie wanted to try something beyond the standard dragon fairy tale, and props for it; but the social commentary was sloppy, outdated, and superfluous to the plot, the tone was far more serious than it deserved to be, and while the acting was good enough, nobody (except maybe Lord Cul-de-Sac, who was played with malicious glee) really stood out and made an impact. I never rooted for or against anybody, I rooted for and against the movie itself.
And the double-insult flat-out made me sick.
The third act was grand fun, though. From the shot of Galen interrupting the execution to the dragon plunging into the lake, this movie sparkles with all the fun you’d expect from a dragon movie, and I was getting into it nicely. And of course, Vermithrax Pejorative kicked my f**kin’ @$$.
So was it worth the 27-year wait? **shrug** I’d have to say that it’s just as well. As a kid, I’d’ve been even more bored by Acts I and II, but I wouldn’t’ve noticed the double-insult. I would’ve loved Act III, though. So overall,…**shrug**…it’s just as well.
BOTTOM LINE
Start the movie at 1:15:00. You’ll save that much of your life without losing any of the fun.
For a much concise and far more cerebral review, Opposable Thumbs' review is tops.
End of dissection. Thank you.
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Edited by - Food on 08/30/2008 9:02:14 PM |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 08/31/2008 : 09:42:42 AM
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I was kinda like you; I'd seen this movie in little bits and pieces over the years. It was on TV within the last year or so, and while I didn't see the whole thing, I saw most of it. Good mixed with bad (and the social commentary and the Christian-bashing never fails to annoy, especially when it's this clunky). Ralph Richardson was great as always, and Caitlin Clarke's acting was pretty good. Even if he was supposed to be an immature apprentice in over his head, I had trouble wrapping my head around Peter MacNichol as the hero. I kept wondering when he'd try to psych himself up by playing Barry White songs in his head or whistling through his nose or taking a moment. *grin*
Oh, and that dragon? Baddest. Ass. Mutha. F***a. Dragon. EVAH!!! |
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Nlneff
Diocesan Ecclesiarch of the Sacred Order of Jabootu
USA
84 Posts |
Posted - 08/31/2008 : 4:28:34 PM
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Had this movie been better, I would assume that Lord Cul De Sac's behavior has actually a attempt at subtly, ie he felt that he was always acting in the best interests of the kingdom, and the reason the King didn't want anyone to kill the Dragon was because he felt such a attempt would fail, and be viewed (correctly) as a violation of the agreement and would then lead to his kingdom being destroyed. As it was, these seemed to be more IITS moments. (I actually loved Cul de Sac's speech about magic, it had a lot of validity in a world where magic is not a accepted fact of life, ie the real world. Of course, that just highlighted that the speech made more sense in that context, rather then the one in the movie itself.)
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Greenhornet
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1791 Posts |
Posted - 09/01/2008 : 1:04:36 PM
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quote:
The scene starts with a close-up of the pole that she’ll be chained to. The skull at the top of the pole has a crown on it.
PRINCESS: "By the way daddy, what happened to mommy?"
"The Queen is testing poisons." CLEOPATRA, 1935 |
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Neville
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Spain
1590 Posts |
Posted - 09/02/2008 : 5:07:02 PM
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Are you implying the mother was a virgin too? LOL That would only feel right in the bible or in a Douglas Adams book.
Anyway, didn't see, as far as I can remember, the film back inj the 80s, guess my mum thought it was too adult for kids (ironically, she did watch with me The purple color). I remember glimpses of it from a couple of TV viewings, but that's it.
I finally got to watch the entire film a few years back, and I have to agree with the general consensus. It's really a mixed bag, and you almost feel sorry for the filmmakers, because you can see they were trying their best, and in many places they suceed, but it's just not enough to consider it a classic.
I may watch it again soon, the review has made me realise how little of it I can remember. |
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Greenhornet
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1791 Posts |
Posted - 09/03/2008 : 6:28:36 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Neville
Are you implying the mother was a virgin too? LOL That would only feel right in the bible or in a Douglas Adams book.
Actually, the official story is that the queen had "an unfortunate accident". It seems that she was cleaning her bow and it "went of". Twice.
"The Queen is testing poisons." CLEOPATRA, 1935 |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 09/03/2008 : 7:40:01 PM
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Her mother was Elspeth the Second, her grandmother was Elspeth the Third, and her great-grandmother was Elspeth the Fourth.
There was an accident with a contraceptive and a time machine. (Hitchhiker's Guide fans know where I cribbed that from.) |
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Neville
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Spain
1590 Posts |
Posted - 09/09/2008 : 2:50:50 PM
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Well, in the end I couldn't help it and last night I watched the film again. It had been a while since last time, but I still found it rather enjoyable. Here's a list of stuff I agree / disagree with Food.
a) I'd like to say, as opposed to Food, who only enjoyed the last act, that I did like the first act a lot. It's got plenty of nice details and accomplished scenes, like the "duel" between the old magician and the soldier during the demonstration, where the wizard somehow has the last laugh despite getting killed, foreshadowing later events, or the way Galen finds out the secret of Valerian.
b) Despite this, I have to agree the middle section of the movie, after Galen is very traps the dragon underground, is rather muddled. There are plenty of things going on, maybe too many for the film's sake, and some of the subplots, like Valeria coming out of the closet or what Food calls Christian bashing, are poorly done.
c) Indeed, the film is having lots of fun regarding the princess's corpse.
d) I didn't mind the epilogue, after the dragon is killed. Not only it's an impressive view (the FX guys overdid themselves were), but it also manages to close rather ellegantly some of the subplots and themes of the second act.
The king trying to shamelessly plug himself as the savior of the kingdom was a nice touch, for instance. I guess everybody expected him to admit his faults at this point, of which there are plenty. Yes, alright, his idea of placating the dragon with virgins rather than trying killing him actually made some sense, but that was all. The lottery he stablished was, and he knew from the start, a fraud, and here and there we can notice, specially during the last lottery, how unpopular he is among his people. I liked that rather than trying to redeem himself in the last minute, the filmmakers gave him a last great scene to show how a delusional douche he was.
As for the last instance of Christian bashing, I think it is adequate. I think that what the filmmakers are trying to say with it is not that Christianity is a fraud (not that I need convincing, I'm close to being an Atheist), but that with the killing of the last dragon and the death of one of the last wizards, that era was coming to and end, and that Christianity was to take over.
e) Indeed, "Dragonslayer" is not a very fitting title for the movie. It has a certain ring to it, but the actual Dragonslayer, that spear, barely plays a role in the film. I guess the filmmakers were trying to make the audience believe it was important to Galen's development as a hero, only to take the carpet under their floor in the last act.
The Spanish distributors often change "foreign" film titles, a practice, together with dubbing, most infamous among local cinephiles. This time, though, I think they got it right: rather than keeping "Dragonslayer" as the title, they renamed the movie as "The dragon from the lake of fire". Just for once, I like it much better than the original. |
Edited by - Neville on 09/09/2008 2:54:37 PM |
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Dragonslayer (1981)
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