Dragons and Dragonslaying

[nikolai]

Dragon and dragon-slaying are some of the classic tropes of the fantasy genre. They're also quite difficult to do well. Portraying dragons and their impact on a world well is tricky and arranging a good dragon-slaying is almost imposible, given than any human who goes up against a huge fire-breathing lizard should be dead very quickly.

So what are the best portrayals of dragons out there? The Hobbit is obviously a classic. I also like the dragons in Elric, they're servants of the sorcerers who rule Melnibone. They also don't breath fire in the conventional manner, but have a combustible venom, which ignites stuff it somes into contact with, like napalm. Most their time is spent asleep in the dragon-caves, recharging their venom, which puts limitations on their power as they can only be awoken for a short time.

 

[Endur]

I like the Dragons in the Pern books. The author solves the problem of powerful dragons by making the Dragons pacificistic heroes and heroines who save humanity by burning the dangerous thread. This allows humans to take center-stage in dealing with non-thread problems.

Dragon and dragon-slaying are some of the classic tropes of the fantasy genre. They're also quite difficult to do well. Portraying dragons and their impact on a world well is tricky and arranging a good dragon-slaying is almost imposible, given than any human who goes up against a huge fire-breathing lizard should be dead very quickly.

So what are the best portrayals of dragons out there? The Hobbit is obviously a classic. I also like the dragons in Elric, they're servants of the sorcerers who rule Melnibone. They also don't breath fire in the conventional manner, but have a combustible venom, which ignites stuff it somes into contact with, like napalm. Most their time is spent asleep in the dragon-caves, recharging their venom, which puts limitations on their power as they can only be awoken for a short time.

 

[nikolai]

I should add that I have hope for the dragons in a Song of Ice and Fire. Martin has spent three books building them up as a weapon which had been used for conquest and upon which the power of the Crown has been founded. With them growing, seeing them in action during the Conquest of Westeros in the last books of the series is something I'm really looking forward to. I think he could do something very well that hasn't yet been done.

 

[Richards]

R. A. Salvatore's The Woods Out Back had a cool dragon-fighting scene at the end...one that made a lot of sense.

Johnathan

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

For a film portrayal, I always thought that the dragon in Dragonslayer was pretty good for a non-intelligent dragon. The ones in Reign of Fire were pretty creepy, too; and even Dragonheart wasn't bad (from the dragon's perspective). We'll see after Dragon Storm tonight.

Smaug is, of course, the all-time classic dragon (except for maybe the one in Beowulf), and my personal favorite.

 

[The Serge]

Aside from the dragon in Dragonslayer, every dragon on the big-screen in a live action film has been wanting.

Although the dragons in Reign of Fire looked cool, the execution of the film drained their impact. That, and you see them from the start. Same problem in Dragonheart (well, one of many problems.

I've always felt that a dragon should be handled like the shark in Jaws. You see very little of it through most of the film, but its presence is palpable and you get powerful glimpses from time to time. Indeed, this is one of the reasons why Dragonslayer worked so well (that and the fact that the film largely made sense).

Besides Dragonslayer, the only dragons I've liked are Smaug from The Hobbit and Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty. I've not liked a single anime dragon I've seen to date since in every case, they're cells rather than animated (like in Record of Lodoss War.

As for books... Well, the only dragons I've liked were those in LeGuin's Earthsea Cycle, the one dragon we meet in Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy, and that's pretty much it (well, I already mentioned Smaug). In these appearances, the dragons are clearly larger than life, but also incomprehensible to mortals... Essentially, they're presented in the way I would write a dragon. With the exception of the powerful appearance of Onyx in Dragonlance Chronicles I: Dragons of Autumn Twilight, the dragons in the Dragonlance Saga weren't all that impressive. And I can barely read anything of Salvatore to try and track down more dragons from his books. Beowulf's is pretty cool.

Anyone else have great dragon sightings in books?

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Salvatore's shadow dragon in the Icewind Dale trilogy was so-so, a bit cliched. And there's Mist-something-or-other, in one of the other FR books, who's a bit of a Smaug clone.

I'd forgotten Ursula LeGuin's dragon -- he was pretty cool, and the dragon's the best part of Sleeping Beauty.

There was another animated dragon film, whose title I forget, now. The Last Dragon? Something like that.

Edit: Another thought: two-legged (ala D&D wyvern) or four-legged (ala D&D dragon) dragons? Literature seems to favor the four-legged kind, but films seem to prefer the two-legged versions -- with the occasional clawed "hand" on the wing.

 

[Uruk]

There was another animated dragon film, whose title I forget, now. The Last Dragon? Something like that.

I think you're mixing up The Last Unicorn and Flight of the Dragons since they're both Rankin & Bass I believe and look similar in style.

In regards to the original question I like Barbara Hambly's Dragonbane, but it's a little tongue in cheek at times.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

The Earthsea Dragons are wonderful. Incredibly powerful, incredibly dangerous.

 

[The Serge]

Edit: Another thought: two-legged (ala D&D wyvern) or four-legged (ala D&D dragon) dragons? Literature seems to favor the four-legged kind, but films seem to prefer the two-legged versions -- with the occasional clawed "hand" on the wing.

Well, this is an issue of "Hollywood" and writers trying to be... realisitic about huge, flying reptiles that breath fire, talk, hypnotize, and resist magic. It is physiologically impossible for a dragon to exist with four legs and a pair of wings that are based upon limbs. The wings, at best, would have to specialized ribs or something (see Dickenson's Flight of the Dragon).

Frankly, I think this is really dumb. While I think it's nice to see "realistic" attempts from dragons, I think that sometimes this sort of thing goes too far and, just like the lack of "fantasy/supernature" associated with vampires in most films nowadasy, robs the dragon of its iconic power. This is one of the many reasons why dragons are not especially impressive in most films. They're not magical.

In recent memory,the only dragon that had three pairs of limbs was the imaginatively named Draco from Dragonheart (and, yes, I know there was a rationale for the lame name... I still don't like it). And look at him. Again, he was designed not to be magical and otherworldly, but as human as possible while being a dragon. He didn't have a ridiculously long tail (which makes sense if he's a flying creature... a shorter, stiffer tail would facilitate flight much better than some long, trailing whip), and he had lip and a very simian facial structure to faciliate speech, etc. He looks like child's toy rather than the epitome of mythological beasts.