[OT] Reign of Fire

[Sodalis]

hey Folks-

I was watchin Undercover Brother the other night (Hilarious movie by the way...) and one of the trailers was for Reign of Fire- a movie about the future discovery of dormant dragon eggs that hatch into fire breathing dragons.

My question to you is- and BADD members- is it really cool to destroy an icon? I dont know what the general public thinks buta Dragon is a mystical, mythical creature- and to bring it down to dinosaur status (though still very high on my list) is kind of a slap in their scaly face.

I would pay tohave this movie end with the dragons taking over the world and Human's time ends- that would be more realistic. But the way I see it, and knowing how Hollywood goes, the Dragons- that is DRAGONSSSS- plural- will be killed off by chain wielding bikers and road rage freaks that have never handled a gun before in their lives....

In addition, it looks like the dragons are ancient (they said older than the dinosaurs) and they breathe fire.... FIRE...

the effects are cool and everything, but i cant stomach the fact that they wil be killing dragons. One i can deal with- but having tens of them slaughtered cause it was a cool story- i cant deal with. I love dragons and have much respect for them (can you tell) and have always thpught that they were unstoppable, unbeatable, and if you ever see one, sit down, bend over, put your head between your legs and kiss your arse goodbye... unless it is a chromatic dragon- then you have a chance of survival if you play it cool...

 

[EricNoah]

Gonna move this over to the fantasy/sci fi movies etc. forum.

 

[Skarp Hedin]

In my campaign world, dragons are very big lizards with a few different breath weapons (predominantly fire and acid). They're smarter than dogs, but not much. Intelligence 2 or so. They're fiercely territorial, well-known as vicious, ill-tempered, ravenous beasts. They're sort of like huge fire-breathing badgers.
They're smaller than traditional D&D dragons, but still quite large.
Still hard to kill, but not near so hard.. though they're rare, and I wasn't planning on really using them as encounters, more as background data.

Why do I bother telling you this here? Well, there're lots of ways to visualize dragons, from the "unbeatable titans of doom" that predominates (or seems to predominate) ENWorld thinking, to the "really tough, but dragonslayers are cool" view that seems to hang out in the PH and MM, down to even the cutesy "dragons are so precious!" view that encrusts those godawful figurines you can find in Hallmark-esque stores. There's nothing wrong with preferring a view.. but I like seeing other views, too.

As for Reign of Fire, I haven't seen any trailers (lots of mixed reviews of 'em here), but it doesn't seem all that amazing to me that a dragon could be shot down and killed. If, as you say, the dragons are nasties who predate the dinosaurs and have been dormant for so long, well, they probably haven't adapted to the New World too well. Unless they're magical, bullets will pierce their hide just fine, even if they have better natural body armor than a rhinoceros.

So kill 'em all, I say. A few LAW rockets (do they even use those anymore?) and some, uh, hong rod penetrators will do draco draconis a world o' good.

 

[Leopold]

a SAW and a few rounds of artillary makes a dragon burger tasty!

 

[Umbran]

Traditionally, European dragons aren't particularly mystical or magical things. They're nasty, vicious brutes. More like Skarp Hedin's dragons than the MM's. And the Asian views on dragons are different yet again. So, there's more than one way to skin that particular cat.

 

[Skarp Hedin]

This is pretty off topic, so I'll keep it short: for decent examples of the "vicious brute" style of dragon in decent fantasy literature, check out Moorcock's Elric series and Harry Turtledove's Darkness series. In Elric, dragons are huge, serpentine, and drip highly volatile venom or acid (it's kind of unclear. Really corrosive venom, maybe?) from their fangs which causes most substances to ignite on contact. The dragons in the Darkness series are flown like early fighter planes of the WWII era, but they're described as unbelievably stupid and vicious, all they want to do is eat and kill. Great stuff.