DZ Crew

52 Dragon Movie Challenge – Age Of The Dragons Review

2011-06-09T09:52:00.001-07:00

After last week’s impressive straight to DVD movie that was surprisingly ram packed full of dragon action, we’ve got probably the newest dragon movie available at the moment. This movie opened for 3 weeks in March on the cinema in the UK before being released on DVD in the final week of March. Technically this means that it isn’t straight to DVD, but of course, we all know it really is!

I first revealed this movie’s existence on my website Dragon Zoo (http://www.dragon-zoo.com/dragonzoo_news_new_dragon_movie_age_of_the_dragons.html) when I was very excited about the prospect of dragons at the cinema - in a live action film - for the first time in years! It didn’t quite turn out like that as I never had chance to see it at the cinema, so now it’s today that I get to see if this movie lives up to the early promise and the fun concept.

I’ll start by covering the debatably cool concept; the story is based on Moby Dick and the hunt for a giant white dragon. The character names are the same, the story is very similar, all they’ve done is taken a proven classic and exchange a giant whale with a giant dragon. Does this make a classic dragon movie? Only time (91 minutes) will tell... The cast is pretty decent, they’ve got Danny Glover (Lethal Weapon series, Predator 2, 2012) and Vinnie Jones ,(Swordfish, Gone in 60 seconds, X-Men: The Last Stand) neither of which have set Hollywood alight with their acting talents, but at least they’re familiar faces. They’re joined by the obligatory fan boy eye candy in the form of newcomer Sofia Pernas.

Glover stars as the notorious Captain Ahab, scarred for life from a savage attack from the white dragon and out to seek vengeance for his deceased family. He’s joined by his faithful crew, Jones plays Stubb and Pernas plays Rachel. With the background info out of the way I think I’ll press play. Here goes...

After one minute of nice score and introduction I thought for once I wasn’t going to watch a dragon movie with a voiceover...but then...

“I’d heard of him of course, as all hunters have, it was in the time when men still feared dragons...”

Ahab misses the early warning. That shadow is no cloud.

Only three minutes into the film and we get our first look at the dragon, in daylight, and he looks pretty big and pretty mean. Young Ahab looks set to have a very good reason to seek revenge...

This dragon looks pretty mean. Big White scales and wings, sharp rows of teeth, and those bright red albino eyes...

Where other men or women would have probably legged it, Ahab shows that he was pretty fearless even when he was young. Even if he only has a pocket knife and he’s swinging it around with his eyes closed!

It looks like I’m picking out some pretty cool dragon movies! I’ve only watched 4 and a half minutes and I’m seeing a dragon in broad daylight breathing fire and looking pretty darn scary!

The voiceover concludes following this pretty cool early dragon attack,

“some say Ahab lost his mind...and his soul that day...”

By this intro alone it looks like I might have another great dragon movie on my hands! The special effects look great, I know that the story is great, I just hope that they can live up to the potential for the rest of the movie.

After this initial dragon attack I get the feeling there’s going to be a lot of exposition before our next dragon scene. But hopefully it can improve upon the practically absent dragon of DragonHunter! We’re introduced to Ishmael (Corey Sevier, TV actor in the likes of Smallville and CSI:Miami) he turns out to be the voiceover guy and we learn he wants to be a member of Ahab’s team to hunt the dragon.

“We’ve heard that this is the place to sign on and hunt dragons” he says over a frothy looking beer. Vinnie Jones smokes a pipe and looks on. (At least they’re not wasting time assembling the cast)

After a fun game of darts using harpoons, Ishmael manages to prove himself by sticking a harpoon right between a dragon’s eyes. Vinnie Jones is beaten but thankfully impressed. Unfortunately the target is only a painting but the contest was fun. Ahab’s daughter, Rachel (Pernas) not only looks the part, we also learn she’s pretty nifty at kicking some ass. She has a fist fight outside of the tavern with a bunch of drunkards that she makes short work of before getting Ishmael to sign the book and become an official member of Ahab’s latest dragon hunting crew.

Another wise old man shows up with a warning, “Only one man will live to tell Ahab’s tale, one...man...only...” spooky stuff, and something to keep us guessing if the old man turns out to be correct. (They usually are).

The tricky thing this film has is justifying and converting the ship, the Pequod, into a rolling steel tank on wheels. It’s a valiant effort, but on first sighting the vessel seems nothing more than a caravan. However, it does have a one heck of a crossbow with rope made out of dragon entrails!? (Apparently it’s much stronger than rope and doesn’t rot)

The dragon hunt begins and the voiceover gives us a nice little intro to each character, but nothing we haven’t really learnt already. The cook, the captain’s daughter, the harpooners and the mysterious Captain Ahab. Ahab, still suffering from his burns, can’t leave the vessel in daylight. So we learn that he keeps himself to himself, poring over his dragon notes and his maps, issuing instructions on where his daughter should take the vessel.

By learning about journey and the crew through Ishmael’s eyes and voiceover, we get a pretty engrossing story. Danny Glover’s first full appearing makes him look like a Star Wars character of sorts again, but not a deliberate reference (for a change). He makes quite an impression with some effective looking makeup and wispy, damaged voice. He gives the crew some extra incentive in the form of triple profits for the first member to spot the white dragon.

The locations are pretty spectacular, from barren landscapes to snowy tundra. Probably to save on budget, this movie has few sets. But being a road trip on the Pequod rolling tank, there’s not much need I guess. We’re 30 minutes in and our crew find their first dragon!

The dragon gets harpooned

and then gets angry

Ishmael’s hesitancy costs a surprise life to be lost but the dragon is defeated in a great action scene. Any action in a movie that’s heavy on dragon and harpoons has to be good!

As I’m watching the movie I realise that I recognise one of the crew, the man that’s unfortunately called Starbuck is from our other dragon movie, DragonHunter. Luckily he seems to be on better form in this movie than he did playing the phoney old wizard in DragonHunter.

After Ishmael reflects on his indecisiveness, Captain Ahab points to more of his maps. He knows that they must head for the mountains where the great white dragon will be nesting. Judging from the quality of the effects and the dragon action so far, this could have a nice finale up its sleeve. The building and inevitable relationship between Ishmael and Rachel causes some tension between the crew. It’s always nice to have more than just the threat of dragons to consider. The crew member Flask seemingly wants to cut Ishmael when he’s not looking, just what he wants when he’s sharing a fortified caravan with the man!

There’s more relationship building as Rachel and Ishmael break away from the Pequod to hunt for glacial dragon tracks in the woods. Whilst I’m hoping for dragon action, the character Ishmael looks like he’s hoping for Rachel action. Turns out that he’s got a way with the words and he starts sprouting some poetry which is nice. But not as nice as a glacial dragon attack would be!

After finding evidence of the white dragon in the form of a claw in the defeated dragons remains, Ahab gets the Pequod under way again on its journey towards the mountains.

The film picks up the pace again with a great suspenseful, tension filled scene. Our three harpooners go into the dragon’s lair, filled with the snores and shifting shapes of countless dragons. Their instructions from Ahab...to kill them all.

Is that dragon sleeping?

The white dragon gets out of there by moonlight. Good job I’m not wearing 3D glasses!

The dragon vitriol is what these hunters are supposed to extract from dragons once they’ve killed them. It is this vitriol which the hunters seek to make money. After hitting the dragon nest the tensions run high as hunters want to collect the vitriol from their massive kill on the lair. But Ahab, after spotting the white dragon, only has one thing in mind...

The film then takes us through a series of well choreographed fight scenes. Thieves attacking the vessel for the vitriol, and a member of the crew trying to rape Rachel. All of these fights are interesting enough but are soon over and just seem a little bit like filler before the final battle. Ishmael saves Rachel and banishes the dirtbag crew member from the vessel. Hopefully we can move on to some more dragon scenes!

Thankfully we get a well deserved dragon related death for the would be rapist and Ishmael promising some exciting scenes with his voiceover:

“And so we followed Ahab, on towards the white dragon’s lair, on towards caves of death”

Ishmael and Rachel enter the dragon’s lair

There’s a really good story in this film and I won’t spoil it in this review of mine. But the good news is, it involves more dragon action!

Danny Glover as Captain Ahab in the dragon’s lair

Enter the dragon

I like how lean and mean the dragon looks, the special effects are great too.

The final fight scene is unfortunately a little anti-climactic following the great initial dragon battle on the Pequod. The effects are great throughout, the dragons look immense, but as the film draws to a close it does feel like a missed opportunity, like it simply should have been better.

Our good looking heroes look on, but does the mighty dragon survive or not?

Final Score: 6/10.

The story was interesting and the characters were good. Glover was a little over the top as Ahab but for such a big name character he had to make him memorable. The dragon scenes are why I’m watching these movies and fortunately, they’re worth the cost of the DVD and worth investing 90 minutes of your time for. When the dragons are on screen they look great. Well worth checking out, but unfortunately it didn’t live up to its potential for me.

Next week it's Dungeons & Dragons!

If you live in the UK, you can purchase the DVD of Age Of The Dragons from our preferred DVD retailer, Play.com, at the link here

All Images featured in this blog post are Copyright of Dragon Quest Productions LLC. 2011. All Rights Reserved.

WIN THE BIGGEST COLLECTION OF DRAGON DVD MOVIES ON THE PLANET! THAT'S ALL 52 DRAGON MOVIE DVD's USED IN THE MAKING OF THIS BLOG! Here's how... All DVD's will be second hand (as i've watched them) and mostly region 2.

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At the end of the year we'll pick out one email address that has donated to Dragon Zoo on PayPal and the winner gets all 52 Dragon Movies!! How cool is that?

Every donation equal to £1 (UK) or $1.50 (US) gets an entry into our raffle. All donations need to be approved by a paying adult!
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52 Dragon Movie Challenge – Merlin And The War Of The Dragon Empire Review

2011-06-01T10:33:00.000-07:00

Another week, another Dragon Movie! This was in week number 6 and I’ve selected “A Mark Atkins Film” to watch. This is the guy that brought us DragonQuest so I hope that it’s an improvement on that movie. The one good thing is, the guy knows how to put dragons on film, so hopefully if this movie can improve on the awful hammy acting and forced storyline of his last feature we should be in luck. Here goes...

Well the film doesn’t mess about! No titles, no voiceover (yet) just straight in, a guy on horseback and a Dragon!

This must be making amends for last week’s practically 90 minute wait for a full on dragon scene. The special effects look good, the dragon looks nice, and the guy on the horse looks in trouble. Great start to a Dragon Movie!

After the initial eye opener of the dragon attack we then get the obligatory voice over, this time done over a story book. The voiceover tells us it’s “Britain, 420AD...” and “The dark ages of Britain have begun...” Very quickly we get our second dragon movie tick box checked, a shot of a castle! Inside the castle, a young “demon child” is being born, which results in a bit of a bicker between two wizards, they quickly resolve their conflict with a spot of Star Wars-esque lightning magic. It transpires that the “demon child” is actually Merlin, and we’re soon skipping forward in time.

20 years later, Merlin is training to be a magician and a powerful wizard, but is curious as to who is true father is. His foster father (the magician lecturer) has a powerful spell book. Merlin uses this to try and see who his true father is. With the use of some powerful music and decent special effects we soon learn that Merlin’s father could be some powerful, dark, dragon related demon.

Thankfully, it’s become pretty clear already that the acting this movie is a little better than Atkins’ last effort. The trouble is, a quick look on imdb shows that this director is just pumping out lame movies that are knockoffs of real Hollywood counterparts! (Battle of Los Angeles, Journey to the centre of the earth, Allan Quatermain and the temple of skulls, War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave, 2012 Doomsday, AVH: Alien vs Hunter) the list goes on, and each of these I wouldn’t watch in a million years. Luckily, this movie, despite being based on Merlin, isn’t a cheap replication of a pre-existing Hollywood film and so far seems as original as it can be.

Back to the story and Merlin – still recovering from that frightful vision of his demon father – gets a bit of a kiss to help wake him up from what I’m guessing might be his love interest. The Mage, Merlin’s foster father, is played by Jurgen Prochnow in a cast of otherwise unknowns. Admittedly, you might not recognise this guy’s name either, but his stand out movies include The Da Vinci Code, Air Force One and Das Boot. Whilst Merlin is getting some care and attention, his other companion and fellow orphan has gone AWOL, and suddenly found himself what looks like a dragon egg. This can’t be good news.

Another dragon scene shows an attack on a bunch of people in a field, I’m guessing there from a village somewhere but the movie doesn’t really explain this! Really I’m not too bothered about explanations and story right now, especially following the last films dragon shortcomings. Instead I’ve seen some pretty cool effects and the longest, uninterrupted shot with a dragon in it for a straight to DVD movie, over 25seconds of cool dragon screen time!

Merlin’s rival orphan wizard lines up his shot...

Wizards 1 – 0 Dragons. He made that look easy, just one arrow!

The story is at least pretty interesting so far, Merlin’s rival is pretty mean and he possesses some dark secrets and tricks with dragons, LOTS of dragons!

Check out all these bad boys!

This movie has a lot of potential right now. I’m really enjoying it for the sheer amount of cool dragons! They look awesome, and their designs are really interesting and unique!

Oh no! It looks like Merlin has been earmarked as a danger – being the son of a demon and all that – so, the King has been advised that he needs to kill him. A death warrant, lots of cool magic and dragons. The movie is building up nicely after 30 minutes.

There’s a nice bit of horseback sword fighting before a very cool dragon attack on Merlin and his posse. It has to be said that for the amount of CGI that’s in this straight to DVD movie, it really is holding up very well. The dragon scenes have been pretty excellent so far. One thing I haven’t mentioned yet as I’m watching is the scenery. It’s incredible! I’ve since learnt that this movie was shot entirely on location in Wales in the UK, over a period of just two weeks. So far, I’d have to say, what an achievement. I just hope the rest of the movie lives up to the promise of the first 40 minutes.

Running is a good idea

Yet more dragons join the attack!

Merlin performs his first bit of anti-Dragon magic

With all these dragons around, Merlin’s foster father sets him a task. To fetch Excalibur. Before his task can begin however, we get yet another cool shot of some dragons flying over the Welsh landscape. I feel spoilt considering the low expectations I had before watching this movie!

Merlin arrives at the lake for the classic lady in the lake scene; I cannot wait until we see Merlin and his sword Excalibur trying to defeat all of these dragons that are flying about. I just hope that any climactic battle will live up to all of the dragon scenes that have been in the film so far.

We soon learn that Excalibur can only be used by the just and the true. Let’s hope when the time comes Merlin will be up to the job. What this movie is doing is a surprisingly good job of keeping me entertained and drawing me into the story. Whereas DragonQuest was a bit ridiculous, Merlin is definitely a far superior movie, and a good story.

The rival orphan is really kicking into another gear now with his very effective scheme of controlling all of the dragons in Wales. The dragon scenes keep coming thick and fast and before long there’s a big battle in the Welsh valleys. The action is really well done, nice music and great sword and axe fighting. But before long this is what I really liked...

“Send in the dragons!”

Seriously how epic does this look? Straight to DVD, filmed in two weeks, and you get a bunch of dragons about to attack a thousand strong battle. Result!

Merlin’s magic comes in very useful when he discovers a spell to turn his accomplices into dragons to even the odds! This makes for one hell of a lot of dragons flying over some spectacular scenery, all executed with great CGI for a straight to DVD movie. This has been such a fun, dragon heavy movie! You cannot fault the scale and the ambition and the execution of this movie in the slightest!

Incredibly, this is another Dragon Movie, and it features another Star Wars reference! Did I miss the fact that there were dragons in Star Wars or something? “Join me” says our evil orphan wizard whilst shooting electric from his fingertips, “and we can rule Britain!” (I know it’s not quite the galaxy, but it’s a start!) “Never” croaks Merlin. Gripping stuff. Thanks George Lucas.

Shocking.

There’s a good final twist to the battle and a good revelation too. I won’t spoil it here as for once the plot isn’t as join the dots as these straight to DVD movies usually are! Needless to say, Merlin has a bit of fun with Excalibur, and the end is very exciting and well acted.

Final Score: This movie well and truly deserves 8/10. (Bearing in mind we’re rating them as dragon movies and not, in comparison say, to The Godfather)

Despite its budget limitations, is ram packed with ambition, and well executed dragon action. Forget those films with just one dragon, this film has scenes of dragon action throughout, good CGI, and most importantly, loads of cool dragons!

Next week it's Age Of The Dragons!

If you live in the UK, you can purchase the DVD of Merlin and the War of the Dragon Empire from our preferred DVD retailer, Play.com, at the link here

All Images featured in this blog post are Copyright of Shooting Star Pictures and Asylum. 2008. All Rights Reserved.

WIN THE BIGGEST COLLECTION OF DRAGON DVD MOVIES ON THE PLANET! THAT'S ALL 52 DRAGON MOVIE DVD's USED IN THE MAKING OF THIS BLOG! Here's how... All DVD's will be second hand (as i've watched them) and mostly region 2.

All £1 donations to Dragon Zoo through PayPal will get automatically added to our raffle!

At the end of the year we'll pick out one email address that has donated to Dragon Zoo on PayPal and the winner gets all 52 Dragon Movies!! How cool is that?

52 Dragon Movie Challenge – Dragon Hunter Review

2011-05-21T07:33:00.001-07:00

It was always going to be an even bigger challenge this week to fall back down from the dizzy heights of pure blockbusting, grade A special effects, dragon action in Reign of Fire. But at some point I had to do it! So when perusing my ever growing DVD collection of dragon movies I found Dragon Hunter, a straight to DVD effort with no major stars.

The movie tells the story of two brothers that live in a peaceful fantasy kingdom, free from Orcs and Dragons, until one day...

Our first murky glimpse of the dragon attacking the village at night...

So the brothers leg it from the village and away to safety following the extremely dark 2 seconds of dragon attack. The start of the movie should be mentioned really as the first 20 seconds demonstrate some truly gripping, effective editing. It should be commended on its originality! However, before I have time to start thinking how original it might be it’s soon back to formula. The deep voice over begins, coining phrases such as “some things are worse than death.” Pretty scary stuff, or it would be if the shots it’s talking over aren’t all lush and green with close ups of dandelions and flowers. At least it’s colourful in comparison to the UK’s grey filter in Reign of Fire!

After some bickering between the brothers about deserting their now dragon ravaged village we get to our first true action scene. Our brothers are camping in Orc territory and they’re soon attacked, but by another group of humans. A fun sword fight ensues and we’re introduced to the scantily clad elven warrior to keep the fan boys happy. In one of the best apologies ever, this group of warriors promise to accompany the brothers to wherever they may be headed due to the mistaken attack. And this is where the plot kicks in. Our brothers (one of them a hard ass Jason Statham lookalike and the other, a blonde haired, blue eyed nervous wreck with no fighting skills or bravery) decide to go to Ocard, the last castle where you can train to be a Dragon Hunter. Yey! Maybe we’ll see some dragons soon then.

On their journey we begin to learn about the new characters. The female Elf scout with a wardrobe malfunction - which shows her annoying flat stomach the entire 90 minutes – the two truly English gentlemen warriors, two annoying fat blokes that bicker and draw attention, a weakling that’s desperate to learn some skills and a large muscled black warrior that’s a mute.

What’s good about this movie so far, is the characters and the actors that portray them. The acting is solid and there’s no overly cheesy scenes which can often ruin a film like this. So far so good.

We get another bonus fight scene to break up the dialogue scenes, this time featuring some stolen props from New Zealand as the Orcs attack. The slow mo running shots, the long black hair, and the dodgily assembled plate armour are all straight from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings. But who cares? It’s fun, and our black warrior also has some weird Hulk thing going on, single handed taking on about 15 Orcs.

After 25 minutes and only 2seconds of dragon “action” a character in the movie asks, “and what of dragons?” I’m seriously beginning to wonder...

Thirty minutes into the movie and one of our fat annoying characters – the “comic” relief – cries “Dragon!” hurrah! Finally some dragon action.....?

You wait 30 minutes for a blurred half second of dragon...talk about suspense!

No. The blurred half a second is literally all you get. Then it’s back to more enjoyable characterisation and story, JUST NO DRAGONS!

Our team of travellers take shelter in a nearby village for a bit to prolong the dragon action even further. We learn that these dragons do something really weird. During the blurred “attack” our other annoying character gets severely injured too. But apparently there is some Alien business going on. The dragons are revealed to attack their victims, implant a dragon baby into their stomach, and then seal the wound with their fire. Gross! Luckily we’re not subjected to any of this as the viewer, and all we get is a little lifeless dragon baby prop. Still, it’s a weird Alien inspired trait to add to a dragon!

It’s all very pretty and romantic but show me the dragons!

Leaving the village behind, the movie promises to pick up pace again as they arrive at Ocard, the last training ground for the Dragon Hunters. A nice bit of identity crisis builds between the brothers, a sibling rivalry is developed as the skilled Statham lookalike should be the Dragon Hunter, but perhaps is not. The younger brother is supposedly destined to be the Dragon Hunter, but is afraid of fire!

An elderly man pops up to help our Dragon Hunter on his way. He advises the older brother to shift the plot along as there’s only 25 minutes left. The older brother replies, “How do you tell someone that their destiny is to battle the most dangerous beasts on earth?”

JUST TELL HIM! Sheesh. It’s still fun, but with the clock ticking I wish this had a LOTR inspired running time too, with the last 90 minutes dedicated to pure dragon action. It looks like I’m not going to get my wish.

All of the characters are well portrayed and interesting. But they are heavily inspired by LOTR. The fellowship of the dragon!

Again the film begins to pick up pace again with a full on Rocky inspired training montage to get our would be Dragon Hunter in shape just in case any dragon actually show up properly in this movie.

Fitness training on the steps!

Sword skills...

And of course, the wise old man who talks dragon gibberish, complete with dead dragon souvenir! “It can be killed”

Once our Dragon Hunter is looking a bit more athletic and a bit more up to the job, we actually get a quick reminder of what he might actually be fighting against at some point. With our third blink and you’ll miss it glimpse of the dragon we’re getting somewhere.

Glimpse number three of the dragon, and wizard #2 up to no good.

There’s another unseen attack on another village and our Dragon Hunter is really quite miffed off now. Only trouble is, he needs to spend another 10 minutes of running time to take in every dying characters last words, then scream and cry in slow mo. It’s all done pretty well and nowhere near as bad as I’m probably making it sound, but I’m fed up now. For a movie called Dragon Hunter, he’s done about as much hunting as he has flying. Yep, not a lot.

Not that I was counting, but after 1 hour 22minutes and 42 seconds of characterisation and storytelling, we get our first real look at the dragon! And he looks great!

Ok, so the final fight scene is eventually here, and by this point you do actually care about our characters (which is a good achievement for a straight to DVD movie). Because the Dragon is only on screen for a total of about 2 minutes, the special effects are really really good. Whereas Fire & Ice showed us lots of dragon action with varied effects, this movie uses its budget wisely. The dragon looks like a mix between Jurassic Park’s T Rex and DragonHeart. He looks very good for the shots that he’s on screen. Unfortunately, with only 3 minutes of movie time left, the battle is badly shortlived and the dragon doesn’t get a proper chance to stretch his wings.

The climactic battle is somewhat disappointing, with our heroes doing the sensible option for the majority and hiding in the bushes! (It’s probably what we’d all do, but it doesn’t make for an overly exciting final dragon fight like Reign of Fire achieves)

Our heroes use wise tactics and stay well away from the dragon, hiding in the bushes and taking pot shots with arrows. Needless to say, the dragon isn’t impressed.

After the director decides his audience would be pretty hacked off if he didn’t actually make his Dragon Hunter do anything actually exciting, he finally grants us some real action and puts him right in the mix. The special effects hold up well and the fight is a good one, each of our characters that are still with us turn up for a bit of fighting which is nice.

The Dragon Hunter gets dangerously close:

And this guy is just plain crazy...

And finally some flame throwing action, talk about leaving it late for all the good stuff!

Another final twist reveals that a true Dragon Hunter is blessed with fireproof skin. How cool and convenient!? So, with his top burnt off, our buff young hero gets his confidence and not a minute too soon!

Fireproof skin tends to add confidence to a young Dragon Hunter...

Our victorious heroes in a proper Lord of the Rings shot

Final Score: 6/10.

This movie is a great straight to DVD effort, and deserves the 6. There really isn’t that much dragon action in it (especially not for a film called Dragon Hunter) but the acting and the special effects (when they’re finally on screen) really do more than make up for it. What this movie achieves more than anything is so much more from a potential sequel. And wouldn’t you know it, there’s one in the works... Dragon Hunter: Legend of the Hidden City!

The sequel baiting final shot of the movie:

Next week it's Merlin and the War of the Dragon Empire!

If you live in the UK, you can purchase the DVD of Reign Of Fire from our preferred DVD retailer, Play.com, at the link here

All Images featured in this blog post are Copyright of Metrodome Distribution. 2009. All Rights Reserved.

WIN THE BIGGEST COLLECTION OF DRAGON DVD MOVIES ON THE PLANET! THAT'S ALL 52 DRAGON MOVIE DVD's USED IN THE MAKING OF THIS BLOG! Here's how... All DVD's will be second hand (as i've watched them) and mostly region 2.

All £1 donations to Dragon Zoo through PayPal will get automatically added to our raffle!

At the end of the year we'll pick out one email address that has donated to Dragon Zoo on PayPal and the winner gets all 52 Dragon Movies!! How cool is that?

52 Dragon Movies Challenge – Reign Of Fire Review

2011-05-15T04:26:00.001-07:00

This is the fourth week of my dragon movie challenge and, to end my first dragon movie filled month out of twelve, I thought I’d treat myself to a true Hollywood Dragon Movie Blockbuster, Reign of Fire.

Maybe the excitement of the challenge had worn off following the promising start of George & the Dragon, or maybe it was just the two weeks in succession of true amateurish acting that got me reaching for some main stream dragon action. Either way I’d never found myself more excited by a movie opening just because it started with an air of familiarity; The Touchstone pictures logo and the Spyglass Entertainment logo. These were things you saw at the start of normal films, the ones that you see in the cinema! I was happier still when the names started to appear, Matthew McConaughey (U571, Tropic Thunder, The Lincoln Lawyer) the true - love him or hate him - Hollywood Superstar Christian Bale (American Psycho, Batman Begins, Terminator Salvation, The Dark Knight, The Fighter) and even the action star Gerard Butler (Gamer, How to Train Your Dragon, 300), this movie was going to be fun!

The film had me instantly happy and instantly in the right frame of mind, this was going to be one cool dragon movie, luckily, I wasn’t disappointed. For a start, the movie’s 2008 opening sees workmen chilling Budweiser with fire hydrants. Nothing to do with dragons whatsoever I know, but I definitely want to try it out at the next BBQ I host!

So the movie starts as it means to go on, straight into the action, and straight into explaining just where the heck dragons suddenly appeared from. The 2008 set introduction shows that it turns out they were living in a tunnel under London City, trapped, until these workmen and this young cockney schoolboy frees them. As the little boy visits his Mum in the construction tunnels under London you instantly know there’s going to be trouble thanks to dialogue straight from a Ridley Scott Alien movie, “There’s a problem with number 4, it’s hit some sort of a void”. Shots of massive drills in dark tunnels with only torchlight to light the way is as ominous as it can get, especially when they’ve just uncovered a massive inky black underground cave.

Bad news. Let’s send the kid in there to see what’s going on! Oh crap, its dragons.

After a thrilling opening where we get to see a cool bit of dragon action after just 6 minutes, we get transported to the dystopian landscape of an apocalyptic London, 2020AD. We soon learn that regardless of the era, as long as this is a dragon movie, there will be castles. A useful voiceover (when will I watch a dragon movie that hasn’t got a voice over?) from Christian Bale doing his best London cockney (Captain Jack Sparrow) impression tells us that since this early attack, dragons have spread across the world, burning everything in sight. Nuclear war has taken place against the dragons but nothing can stop them, they’re real, they kill, and humans have struggled to survive.

So far so intriguing, it comes off a bit like Terminator Salvation with dragons, which is no bad thing. Bale mutters a pretty cool line, “ancient man made them into myth, but nature made them a horrible reality” and we’re then brought fully up to date to see just what state the human race is in. A combination of impressive costumes and apocalyptic style set design really sets the tone. We’re fully introduced to all of our survivors, huddled into a base camp in a Northumberland Castle.

What is really great is the definite UK feel to it all, grey skies, and UK castles, horses and vegetable patches. There’s no doubt we’re in England here, no matter when the film is set. We even get yet another Star Wars reference, (there have been SW references in all three dragon movies prior to this) where Bale plays Darth Vader and Butler plays Luke in a play for the kids in the castle. It comes complete with light sabres and fake sound effects, which made me smile!

The first real dragon action set piece comes pretty early in (20 mins). Some of our survivors aren’t too happy with proceedings and are up for pillaging some of the grub from the vegetable patch. There’s nothing like an apocalypse or a war of sorts to get people fighting over leadership and food rations! Cue one big unhappy dragon, (Or Wyvern really, as it has no front legs) who turns up in a thrilling attack which combines great misty suspenseful shots and sound before the big dragon reveal. At one point a crow flies overhead noisily making me jump a mile, and it isn’t too long afterwards before we see this guy:

Our first proper glimpse of a dragon in daylight, and he looks incredible!

Bale and Butler don fireproof suits and take to their fire trucks to rescue our veggie thieves in a great piece of action. Fire breathing dragon, flames everywhere and fire trucks smashing into each other, desperate to drive to safety. The scene is really thrilling, really well done, and makes a pleasant change in quality from the movies I’ve watched so far!

After another reminder of how dragons attacked the world (this time using the cool mechanism of a Time Magazine blowing in the wind, it’s pages gradually turning, showing us pictures from around the world of dragons burning New York etc.) Things only get cooler when we’re introduced to Matthew McConaughey’s character. For a start he turns up in an armoured convoy, with tanks and cannon equipped armoured vehicles, oh, and a helicopter. Forget the horses, this guy is ripped and is packing some serious heat. At this point I was crossing everything I had for a Tank vs. Dragon scene...

Christian Bale is far less impressed than I was by McConaughey’s entrance and is even a little scared, but he’s soon convinced after Matt shows him his kickass dragon tooth necklace and tells him he’s a dragon slayer. Matt’s allowed to stay for the time being, if he can help.

Things really get going now when we have our first proper dragon attack where the good guys have something to fight back with apart from water hoses. Tanks + artillery + ammo + helicopter = kickass dragon fight!

Objects in your helicopter rear view mirror are closer than they appear...

Matt reckons he can kill a dragon and Bale needs convincing, so us viewers get treated to a really great dragon set piece involving a helicopter, motorcyclists, a horse and some skydivers! It’s a strange combination and has to be seen to be believed but it really is edge of the seat stuff and our dragon is out for some skydiving meat!

Dragon Vs. Turret. I vote dragon

The “capture the dragon” plan doesn’t exactly go to... er... plan... but Matt shows us all how wicked he is with his fat piece of cannon and his unflinching attitude towards oncoming fire breathing dragon!

Yanks 1 – 0 Dragons

Matt tells us all of his theory about the dragons in this story. He reckons that there is only 1 male dragon in the entire species of dragons on the planet (that’s one busy dragon) and he lives in London. Yep, London. So Bale, ever the sceptic, checks the sex of our recently deceased dragon and, yeah, finds a dragon egg. So at least he knows that dragon was female.

Bale discovers that most dragons are females...

However, Matt’s theory of one male dragon acting like a fish and fertilising all the dragon eggs that are laid by female dragons across the globe just isn’t going to wash with Bale. So Bale stops at the castle whilst Matt heads off to London on his own for what’s definitely going to be one heck of a climactic showdown.

Thus far into the film it’s worth mentioning just how cool the special effects are. These Wyverns really do come to life in this movie. Even though they’re used as nothing more than a creature feature (action/horror monster), the dragons do look and sound incredible, and the acting is intense too. Ultimately it comes down to one thing, story. It’s actually interesting! I’m captivated the entire time and the final show down in London is yet to happen. I find myself on the edge of my seat time and again, waiting for the big dragon battle I just know is going to happen. This movies only let down is the dragons as creatures situation, but there will be movies to come like Dragon Heart and Eragon to get our intelligent, dragons with heart, fix.

Before Matt’s army of 200 men even get to London we get an unexpected dragon attack:

The misty skies hide many dragons and the attack literally comes out of nowhere, destroying all but McCanaughey, the helicopter, and his helicopter pilot. Better get back to Bale and ask for help! However, this dragon isn’t finished yet, after turning the entire army to dust he continues by beating Matt back to Bale and destroying the castle too! Fortunately this means Bale has no choice and we’re off to London. Bale dons his crossbow and joins the fight. Hurrah!

London: “Well this town’s gone to hell”

28 Days Later, I Am Legend, The Book of Eli and The Road are all great films showing apocalyptic city landscapes. But did any of them have dragons? Nuh uh. The picture above is what makes this movie so cool! Tons of dragons are living in London and that includes one badass male (just about to fly over the houses of parliament in the picture). Apparently the UK parliament is still full of dragons even after Margaret Thatcher!

McConaughey has a plan to use the failing light at dusk to confuse the dragons. Apparently their eyesight isn’t up to much at dusk and the dragons struggle to maintain focus on their prey. This tactic should even the odds. The battle is one you can’t help but look forward to as 3 humans take on 1 big, bad dragon in central London.

London’s burning:

I love St. Pauls dome in pieces on the right and Tower Bridge in the background, and, oh yeah! A massive dragon flying right at the screen! Pity it’s not 3D!

The special effects continue to impress

The climactic battle really doesn’t disappoint as our three plucky heroes (Bale, McConaughey and onetime Bond girl from Goldeneye, Scorupco) take on the male of the species. If they succeed, no more dragon babies and a chance for survival, if they fail, dragons win and they’re the dominant species on the planet forever. Cue fight!

The final scenes are pure dragon action excitement

With incredible special effects, edge of your seat tension and excitement, intense, great acting from an all-star cast, and captivating story, this is one dragon movie that is definitely a must see. I was not disappointed by any aspect of this movie. It isn’t even one that just dragon fans would enjoy, (like DragonQuest and Fire&Ice) but any blockbuster loving action fan will get a kick from this movie.

Final Score: This Dragon Movie gets 10/10.

Incredible action, awesome sets, an engrossing, believable futuristic world, great action set pieces and great “action star” acting. Did I mention how cool the dragons were.....? Watch this now!

Next week I’m subjecting myself to more straight to DVD dragon movie fun with, Dragon Hunter!

If you live in the UK, you can purchase the DVD of Reign Of Fire from our preferred DVD retailer, Play.com, at the link here

All Images featured in this blog are Copyright of Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Inc. and Spyglass Entertainment Group, LP. All Rights Reserved.

WIN ALL 52 DRAGON MOVIE DVD's USED IN THE MAKING OF THIS BLOG! Here's how... All DVD's will be second hand (as i've watched them) and mostly region 2.

If you want a chance to grab ALL 52 Dragon Movie DVDs that I've used in completing this challenge you can!

All £1 donations to Dragon Zoo through PayPal will get automatically added to our raffle!

At the end of the year we'll pick out one email address that has donated to Dragon Zoo on PayPal and the winner gets all 52 Dragon Movies!! How cool is that?

52 Dragon Movies Challenge – DragonQuest Review

2011-05-03T12:50:00.001-07:00

DragonQuest is the third movie in my challenge, and the third straight to DVD title in a row, so I’m getting used to what to expect from these films! The films major stars are non-existent, but that’s OK, but surely this means there’s more budget for dragon action...? Only time will tell.

Imagine my surprise when I kick this movie off and not only is there NO narration but we’re also straight into the plot. No messing. Nothing like a break in the format from the first two films to instantly pick up the interest levels.

A spooky hooded figure looking nothing like Star Wars’ Darth Maul on Tatooine is seen doing something scary near a volcano or a valley. Either way the music is full on and there’s a lot of smoke and stuff. Not 100 seconds have passed in the movie and before you know it we get our first proper glimpse of a dragon, yey!

It’s a bit early on for our hero to confront the fire dragon...

You quickly learn that the evil hooded villain’s plot was to unleash the evil fire dragon to help him in his plan to control the ancient fantasy lands. Unfortunately, the one man who can step up to the fire dragon and protect all is old. But his grandson is handsome and a potential dragon slayer called The Keeper, despite the fact that no one thinks he’s ready, I think he is.

The grandpa is full of clichés, “Do what I could not. GO!”

Unfortunately the first glimpse we get of our hero Arkadi, he’s smoking on a pipe and perving on a girl getting undressed. Not the best first impression I must admit, so, he better get doing something cool with these dragons sometime soon.

There is a lot of talk confirming some prophecy about the boy and the red son being a sign. My thoughts on the boy being a potential hero are looking quite promising so far...

Soon the dragon is back on screen again and he’s speaking! The first talking dragon in the 52 movie challenge and we’re only on number 3! Yey! Oh wait, no. It’s the hooded guy speaking through the dragon like its some sort of proxy. And the hooded guy looks familiar? Wait, it’s the alien bounty hunter guy from the X-Files! Pure evil, he must be bad.

After having a chat the dragon takes to the skies...

Once the prophecy of the boy has been firmly established and a random but quite impressive 300 style battle between hundreds of soldiers, we get the chance to find out exactly what the full plot of the movie is based on. Another random old man with a very over the top voice (mate of his grand pa’s) and his beautiful princess accomplice (all very Lara Croft in hot pants and low cut top) meet our hero and tell him he has to find a bunch of stones to fill his ancient amulet that his grandpa conveniently left to him. The story is that forced and clichéd the princess even checks if our hero is still paying attention “are you listening?” I did laugh but I think I’d stopped paying attention.

The old man turns out to be quite a warrior and more than a little Master Yoda. “where are we going?” asks our hero, “HOW we are going is equally important as where!” retorts our wise old man.

What?

Anyway, with the training session over it’s time to find our first ancient stone to complete the worryingly large amulet. I quickly check the running time of the movie (85mins) when I notice there are at least 6 stones to collect. Instantly relieved I look back in time to catch a truly bizarre sequence where the hero is repeatedly swallowed by an underwater serpent.

Instead of trying to find a dragon stone he just tries to light up instead!? After the old man convinces him to pack the smoking in (nothing like a giant water serpent to help kick the habit) he quickly discovers the first dragon stone inside the slimy guts of the serpent before being puked back out! One down...

The weird water serpent

The pace of the film is beginning to quicken now as we meet an old lady who puts them up for the night. The attraction between our hot pant wearing combat Xena princess and our hero is building but for some reason there’s a blonde in a bath tub and she’s asking our hero to join him. Where did she come from and what will he do? Luckily he’s awarded a second dragon stone for NOT joining the bathing blonde and going back to bed next to the brunette princess. “you still stink” she says. Arkadi the hero looks gutted.

Our fire dragon in impressive close up

The night’s sleep is rudely interrupting with a cracking sucker punch to Arkadi and he now finds himself in prison. Luckily the combat princess gets all ass kicking again and manages to free both Arkadi and his cell mate. Luckily the random cell mate also has a dragon stone (every stranger has one of these!? Now I can see why the movie is only 85 minutes!)

Another failed clichéd line is delivered before we’re off on the hunt for dragon stone number 3.

“We are always weakest when we feel strongest.” (Is it just me or do these not make sense?)

Our hero suddenly finds himself in some caves with a massive LOTR style spider. Luckily he stays still and the spider passes him by. Guess what’s on the floor? A dragon stone! I’ve no idea where the cave came from, what the purpose of the spider was or why there was a dragon stone on the floor. But suffice to say, things are turning out great for the kid.

Next up he’s donating some gold to a random stranger and HE has a dragon stone too! How they heck of these things remained hidden? They’re everywhere! All his grandpa had to do was take a Sunday afternoon stroll and he could have completed this amulet himself.

There are some great swordplay scenes and a cool magic mirror that Disney would be proud of before another random stranger gives Arkadi his final dragon stone. With the powers of his dragon amulet, dragon stones, but most importantly virtue, (which must have been mentioned about 20 times and could be a good drinking game) the hero gets himself a magic dragon...

Look what you can achieve with some stones...a magic dragon!

Our hammy old man does some great fighting before one last effort to make me wince and then it’s down to Katya (the ass kicking princess) and Arkadi to take on the soldiers and the hooded dragon conjurer once and for all.

The conclusion to the film is an exciting affair and a grand old effects finale that the straight to DVD movie should be pretty proud of. The screenshot below looks like a deleted scene from Harry Potter of Episode 1, as our hero faces off against that Alien Bounty Hunter X-Files man.

All very Harry Potter now with magic beams...

Of course, it couldn’t just be magic beams. This is a dragon film after all! Now let’s see that same screenshot again, but with ADDED DRAGONS!

As the fight heats up we’ve got our princess hitting countless droves of faceless and characterless guards in her short shorts and we’ve got out hero learning how to control his magic bright blue dragon to fight against the dark lord, I mean, to fight against the hooded bad guy.

Dragon fight! Last week was fire and Ice, now fire and magic!

The special effects really do shine in these last few moments of the film as our main payoff for all this stone hunting and mumbo-jumbo talk is a laser beam fight between two out held hands, and er... a dragon fight, which is cool.

Our prince and princess in not so typical attire

So the battle soon wraps up after some nifty laser beam work, and the film finishes almost without one last Star Wars nod, but not quite. I’ve got to keep reminding myself that I’m watching these movies because they feature dragons, and not necessarily because they have to be any good.

Awesome first date...

Well this one does feature dragons, but isn’t very good. Sure the dragon looks good for a low budget affair, but the unknown cast and the crazy awful cheesy horrible dialogue really do ruin this movie. Oh well, I think I’m going to treat myself to an A-list dragon movie next week. For now, I’ll wrap up this review with a quick final verdict.

Final Score: Overall this dragon movie gets a 4/10.

For all the cool dragon special effects and magical laser beams, it just can’t make up for the fact that the unknown stars of the film really do love to over-act and ruin every scene they’re in. I’m definitely going to jump out of straight to DVD territory for my next Dragon Movie Review otherwise I may not complete this challenge!

Alternatively, you can enter our raffle to win all 52 DVD's used in the making of this blog. All DVD's will be second hand (as i've watched them) and mostly region 2.

If you want a chance to grab ALL 52 Dragon Movie DVDs that I've used in completing this challenge you can!

All donations to Dragon Zoo through PayPal will get automatically added to our raffle!

At the end of the year we'll pick out one email address that has donated to Dragon Zoo on PayPal and the winner gets all 52 Dragon Movies!! How cool is that?

52 Dragon Movies Challenge - Fire and Ice Review

2011-04-30T01:45:00.001-07:00

Onto the second movie in the challenge and for this I’ve found Fire and Ice. It’s a straight to DVD effort in the UK featuring the fantastic talents of Jon Rhys-Davies (Indiana Jones, Lord Of The Rings) and, that fella from The Mummy, Arnold Vosloo.

Fire and Ice or the more epic variation as it is sometimes known, Dragon Chronicles: Fire and Ice, tells the story of a mystical kingdom terrorised by the threat of a fire dragon. As expected for this kind of movie, it begins with some good old voiceover work, decent music and some great visuals of landscape shots.

Amy Acker, a TV regular seen often in Angel and the likes of CSI plays a decent princess who is plucky, modern and a strong female lead. The love interest is also (conveniently) the dragon slayer the kingdom so desperately needs, Tom Wilson (300, The Boat That Rocked) puts in a very bland, wooden performance in comparison with James Purefoy in our last dragon movie, George and the Dragon. In fact, apart from the initial 4minutes of characterisation and the eternally fun John Rhys-Davies, the entire movie is lacking in any decent character interaction and the fun, buoyant scenes and dialogue seen in George and the Dragon is largely missing in this movie.

Where it lacks in characters and decent dialogue, in makes up for in dragon action, which is the whole point of our challenge! The first 8 minutes of this movie alone show more dragon action than the entire 88 minutes of G&TD, starting with lots of fire and flaming stuntmen during the “first dragon attack in 20 years” on the kingdom. Exciting stuff!

The flame dragon descends on the kingdom

He’s getting closer, better run...

Too late. Flaming dragon, burning villages and people on fire, and this is all in the first 8 minutes!

With the village in a right old mess and the king not too happy about it, our feisty princess decides to take it on herself to look for the mighty dragon slayer, one who has reportedly killed an ice dragon in the past. Her first stop? Dagobah.

Ok, so she doesn’t go to Yoda’s hideout planet, but she ends up in a very misty forest place where she bumps into JRD in full on Gimli the dwarf mode. He’s an acting hero, but not particularly an action legend. A bunch of people ghillie suits rock up, seemingly intent on kicking our heroine into next Tuesday. (Apparently they’re tree people) John has it covered but needs a hand, cue straight to DVD dialogue...

“Do you have a weapon?” asks Jon very seriously.

“I have a dagger” responds the Princess with true sincerity.

“A dagger? It’s not a weapon, it’s cutlery!”

You tell her Jon.

So before you know it they’re rescued from their static fight scene by some awful CGI and the timely arrival of handsome dragon slayer. The only trouble is, this isn’t the mighty dragon slayer that took down the ice dragon, this is his son. Is he up to the job? Does he even want the job? Who knows?

The princess twists his arm, takes both the slayer and JRD back to the kingdom to speak to the king when this fella turns up again...

The slayer is forced into action with some tidy shooting of his crossbow and a welcomed action scene.

The king looks on as the dragon wreaks havoc and is understandably a little upset

With the slayer now the hero of the kingdom (for now) after defeating the fire dragon (for now) it’s time for some exposition in the form of dracones, castles, kingdom protection techniques and a truly strange scene with JRD using a projector (in a fantasy flick!?) to teach the others the history of the dracones. Turns out one kingdom is getting its ass kicked because it doesn’t have a dracone on top of its castle. Right.

The young slayer decides to nick this mystical dracone whilst he sends JRD off to wake another dragon. Good idea? Apparently no man can kill a fire dragon, but, an ice dragon might be able to kill a fire dragon. At this point there really are some impressive CGI landscapes and musical score scenes going on before it’s ruined with JRD waking our formidable ice dragon. Here he comes..

The Ice Dragon has woken, and the Fire Dragon hasn’t looked up... (Avatar anyone?)

After the Ice dragon is woken it’s time for the battle to commence. The brawl in the sky is initially quite exciting, and a valiant attempt for a straight to DVD movie.

Pretty much the entire battle between the dragons looks like this. Repeated.

Unfortunately, the battle soon becomes repetitive. It lasts for approximately 15 minutes of the film, intercut with terribly acted scenes from our main actors, the worst being the truly awful rival King from the other kingdom. Having only just seen G&TD the acting in this movie really does pale in comparison it has to be said, and unfortunately the repetitive mess in the skies isn’t something that keeps interest too much either.

Our heroes try not to get caught in the middle of the epic battle, but fail. Miserably.

The main characters are getting themselves into all sorts of trouble during this dragon battle, just so they can keep cutting back to it every now and again and splice it up with lethargic character scenes. Still, the above picture is a very nice composite shot for a TV movie.

Still fighting...

The above picture is a scene involving some really nice bullet time. I thought I’d use it as a sample picture to really highlight how unique the dragon designs are in this movie. They’re more like stingrays than they are your typical dragon. They way they look, the shape, and the way their flight is portrayed is all very underwater, stingray-ish. Different, but not necessarily good!

As the battle continues I found myself thinking back on the scenes I’d witnessed before. The slayer was pretty cool and straight from Assassins Creed or Prince of Persia, but there was some needless neck breaking going on considering that the rest of this movie could so easily be targeted at the under twelves.

I’m broken from my thoughts when the dragon fight is suddenly over in the blink of an eye! And I didn’t really catch what happened. After re-winding it twice I quickly surmise the worst. It’s badly edited and completely rushed. For a battle that’s been going on for twenty odd minutes why did they rush the grand finale? One second there are two dragons, then there’s one. It really is hard to tell exactly how there’s only one dragon left. Thank Mr. Editor and Mr. Visual effects for that.

Ice Dragon looking good!

Ok, Mr. Visual effects redeems himself with a cracking dragon CGI shot on the hour mark of the movie that seems to have 100% more clarity and definition than the rest of the CGI shots of this movie combined! (I guess this was used in the trailer or something)

Actually, a quick note on that. During this 52 dragon movies challenge, I’ve refrained from watching any trailers. How do you think I could put up sitting through 45minutes of tosh just to see a shot of a dragon that i’d already seen from the trailer? Not going to happen! I’m going into all these movies blind so that hopefully I won’t want to scratch my eyes out during the less interesting and lower budget films. *like this one – cough,cough*

So to the conclusion. Slayer versus dragon. Will he match up to his dad? Will he save the kingdom? Has his OUTRAGEOUS plan of waking a second dragon worked out? What do you think!? The climax battle of slayer versus dragon is really pretty poor. You can see what the director was going for but he really is let down by a lack of budget and technical expertise to pull it off. I’m guessing the concept of the final fight all looked very promising on a drawing board (pre-vis) but not on screen unfortunately.

At one point the Princess asks, “what’s happening?” and literally none of the characters answer her. The CGI really does make it difficult for anyone to have the faintest idea.

The battle ends and the movie is quickly wrapped up with a pretty tame ending. Before the credits roll we get the customary sunset, the smiles and some smarmy royalty moments before a strangely downbeat, yet lifeless toast to a character that no-one really cared about. Oh well, movie over and some serious dragon action done and dusted!

Final Score: 4/10.

Far less enjoyable than last week’s George and the Dragon due to clumsy acting and dialogue. Unfortunately the cheese factor and poor characters means the whole movie doesn’t maintain any kind of interest for the bits when I haven’t got dragons to look at!

If you live in the UK, you can purchase the DVD of Dragon Chronicles: Fire and Ice from our preferred DVD retailer, Play.com, at the link here

All Images in this blog are copyright of Medie Pro Pictures 2008. All Rights Reserved.

Alternatively, you can enter our raffle to win all 52 DVD's used in the making of this blog. All DVD's will be second hand (as i've watched them) and mostly region 2.

If you want a chance to grab ALL 52 Dragon Movie DVDs that I've used in completing this challenge you can!

All donations to Dragon Zoo through PayPal will get automatically added to our raffle!

At the end of the year we'll pick out one email address that has donated to Dragon Zoo on PayPal and the winner gets all 52 Dragon Movies!! How cool is that?

52 Dragon Movies Challenge - George and the Dragon Review

2011-04-23T03:58:00.000-07:00

George and the Dragon marks the start of something big, the start of a challenge that I will embark on over the next 365 days. At times I’ll laugh, at times I’ll cry. It’ll be a dramatic adventure the likes of which haven’t been seen for centuries...OK maybe not. But this is my challenge, I will watch and review a dragon movie every week for the next 52 weeks and post up my feedback on my official Dragon Zoo blog! So let’s get started...

One of the biggest challenges isn’t watching 52 dragon movies, it’s finding them! So far I’ve managed to find and buy about 23 and so I need to keep my eyes open for more. To start with I’m going to watch the movies that centralise completely on dragons, but in order to reach a grand total of 52 movies I’m going to have to start to look for movies that just feature awesome dragon scenes such as Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire.

So, sit down, relax, and enjoy my reviews and thoughts on each and every dragon movie I can find. I’ll be writing these reviews as I watch each movie, so they’ll read like a mix between a review and a DVD commentary track. So, where better to start on our dragon challenge than a movie based on one of the most famous tales of all time? “George and the Dragon” and on St. Georges Day to boot!

The movie starts with a classic fairy tale story book opening and voice over, detailing how George has just finished fighting in the Crusades and is looking to return to England to find some land and basically just chill out. The main cast list is really quite impressive featuring a selection of one time Hollywood A-listers, Patrick Swayze (Dirty Dancing, Ghost), Michael Clarke Duncan (The Green Mile, Daredevil), Piper Perabo (Coyote Ugly, The Prestige) and er...James Purefoy. (best known for Resident Evil, A Knights Tale)

The narration instantly had me thinking that this movie was going to be a full on serious affair, much like the style of Lord Of The Rings, but I was quick to learn that it was actually quite light-hearted, the initial scenes proving to be an odd mix of humour and drama.

Luckily, after some un-necessary 12th century skateboarding sequence, you soon get your first full on sight of the dragon:

The movie soon settles into its stride and the playful tone is firmly established with a slapstick-esque fight sequence, the likes of which feature frequently throughout the movie.

First up is a “I didn’t see that coming” moment featuring an un-credited Val Kilmer (Top Gun, Batman Forever) having a sword fight against Michael Clarke Duncan. Why wasn’t this sequence in the trailers and why wasn’t Val Kilmer credited? It made for a great surprise but this is usually the kind of film that needs all the box office it can get. Adding Kilmer’s name to the credits surely would have helped, anyhoo, the plot carries on and we soon learn a few pivotal things.

George doesn’t believe in dragons (he soon will) and Perabo’s princess is kidnapped. The late Patrick Swayze plays a great sleazeball prince on the hunt for the princess, whilst MCD and George are friends and MCD can kick some ass with a sword.

So with MCD and Kilmer busy having a fun blind folded sword fight it is up to Swayze to try and find Perabo’s captured princess. In the meantime George is learning that dragons might actually exist and is given a horn made from a real dragon’s claw. Great stuff. Apparently this claw can be heard by any living dragon when blown, but we’re guessing it’s just by those within the vicinity.

George goes for a pint and meets the BBC wildlife presenter Bill Oddie!? Who advises George of the captured princess, but of course, George just wants his land and isn’t interested. (He soon will be)

After meeting up with Swayze’s prince they soon have a word with the King who twists George’s arm and gets him to join up with the hunt for the princess. But where can she be?

The dragon makes another brief appearance, keeping an eye on Perabo’s captured princess.

It must be said that the fight scenes, set design and costume design in this film are pretty good. After another well choreographed fight scene, riddled with tongue-in-cheek dialogue, “Axe and you shall receive” shouts Purefoy, tossing Swayze an axe, it is soon established that it isn’t just the dragon and the princess that they need to worry about. A bunch of mercenaries lead by the bucket headed black knight from Monty Python (at least it looks like him) are also after the princess too, and they’re willing to put on some great looking sword fights and horseback riding to get her!

George continues the hunt for the princess, on his way to discovering her in a cave he has his very own Jurassic Park moment with a large piece of poo. Is it dragon poo? (yes.) But George still isn’t sure...after smelling his fingers he does know however that it is at least 10 days old , maybe even two weeks! Crikey!

After washing his hands George soon finds out that the captured princess isn’t actually captured at all, she’s guarding a dragon egg, maybe the last ever dragon egg.

So far, so not true to the classic tale of George and the Dragon. But, well, who cares? It’s actually a nice twist. So the princess is good looking and feisty and the chemistry between Perabo and Purefoy is actually quite nice.

George comes out with another zinger, “It’s a big problem, It’s a small dragon!”

Up to this point, George was wearing something akin to Robin Hood’s tunic. Fortunately though this gets ruined (in another bit of fun with a dragon egg) and a Nun with a classic red cross motif hooks him up so he at least looks like George should look like. It’s a start.

The film is really quite entertaining and has some nice twists and turns to keep you interested over the course of the 88 minute running time. Swayze puts in a great performance as the jealous prince and competition for the princess’s affections. MCD does a cracking Darth Vader impression (black helmet included) and the story of George and the Dragon is completely turned on its head whilst still maintaining the legend of ‘George the Dragon Slayer’ that any true dragon fan should at least be vaguely aware of.

Kissing opportunity very much ruined...

Considering the budget was mostly spent on assembling the cast, it is no great surprise to find that there was little left in the pot to produce some decent special effects for the few scenes that actually feature dragons. Surprisingly though, this doesn’t seem to affect the overall quality of the film. Despite the fact that it was released a good 8 years after the pioneering dragon CGI in DragonHeart, this 2004 movie of George and the Dragon can’t compete on a technical basis.

The design of the dragon is nice, but the action scenes actually involving dragons are very slim on the ground. For dragon fans this movie is definitely worth a watch, but it will be the sword fights, character driven performances and twisty turny plot that will interest you more than the dragon action.

Rare on screen dragon time!

Final Score: Overall I’ll rate this dragon movie as 6/10.

It's cheesy fun, with a good twist on the classic tale of George and the Dragon. The acting is good, and watchable and the cast assembled are great. The film, however, loses points as it is lacking on dragon action. And that's what we're after! So, considering we're not rating these movies as we would a normal movie, it has to lose points for the minimal dragon screen time.

Next week, I'll be watching Dragon Chronicles: Fire & Ice

If you live in the UK, you can purchase the DVD of George and the Dragon from our preferred DVD retailer, Play.com, at the link here

Alternatively, you can enter our raffle to win all 52 DVD's used in the making of this blog. All DVD's will be second hand (as i've watched them) and mostly region 2.

If you want a chance to grab ALL 52 Dragon Movie DVDs that I've used in completing this challenge you can!

All donations to Dragon Zoo through PayPal will get automatically added to our raffle!

At the end of the year we'll pick out one email address that has donated to Dragon Zoo on PayPal and the winner gets all 52 Dragon Movies!! How cool is that?

DZ CREW - Jack 7.0 - The Cave

2011-03-14T13:15:00.001-07:00

I stood at the foot of the snow covered hill and soon realised that it was a pretty foolish description. It was more like a mountain. I’d began searching the area at the base of the rock, there was no use climbing up it, and was soon onto a massive lead. Not only had I found a series of footprints in many varying sizes, but I’d also discovered where they led...into a cave. The hulk of rock must have protected the prints nearest the cave from being covered in the snowstorm! This had to be them, the rest of the DZ team would have to be in the mountain range somewhere. Thinking about it, where better for a bunch of lizards to hide and where better to shelter from the snow storm? I checked my pack and found my head-torch, placing it on top of my hat instead of the snow goggles. Relieved that the batteries were still in working order (I’d completely forgotten to check since Brazil and the Fish Hunters) I began to explore the cave entrance.

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DZ CREW - Jack 6.0 - The Storm

2011-03-08T11:04:00.000-08:00

“We’re here!” It was Lewis’ voice and he was shouting over the sound of the storm from somewhere ahead of me. The sudden interruption to the rhythmical, dream-like shuffling through the white landscape had come as a surprise. I looked up and was instantly alarmed when I couldn’t see anyone. The storm had got worse. Snow was flying horizontally; giant flakes spun madly on the ferocious wind, filling my entire vision with white. It was like static on TV when your aerial broke, the only thing I could see that wasn’t white was the thick misty grey of snow clouds and blurred distant rocks.

There was no sign of the team anywhere.

“Hello?” my shout seemed strangely muffled and in-effective against the wind and storm that raged about me. It had closed in fast.

“Hello?!” again I shouted, as loud as I could. Then it dawned on me, if the last thing I had heard was “we’re here” from Lewis, then surely this meant that were Lizards close by? Maybe shouting wasn’t a good idea.

I walked steadily forwards, leaning with great effort into the wind that had changed randomly from blowing me sideways to now blowing right down my throat. It was hard to make progress, there was still no sign of anyone and there was no bleeping of the sensor and no voices. What was going on? How had this situation so quickly got out of control?

I stopped again to listen, lifting a corner of my two layered hats from my ear so I might be able to hear properly. I didn’t know what to do. Should I shout again or would I be putting myself at risk? How would I find the others if I didn’t try and let them know my whereabouts. I bent down and drew a quick X in the snow in front of me before spinning a slow 360 degrees, listening with all my might, straining to discern the un-natural electric bleeping noise or any voices from the natural rage of the wind and snow. Nothing. No-one. No bleeping.

If anyone get’s separated, just make your way back to the boat.

At least that was what Harrison had said over two hours previously. Unfortunately as I spun in a circle again I realised that I wouldn’t know exactly which way was back to the boat. This was bad. My heart was beginning to beat faster and there was that annoying sick feeling that started creeping into my stomach, the same feeling when you can’t find your wallet or from when you were little and you lost your Mum in the supermarket. What was I going to do? My emotions swung almost as quickly as the weather from panic to annoyance. Why didn’t all of us get a motion detector? Why was Lewis the only one member of the team to have one? Then I remembered. Bob! Of course. Contact Bob for satellite support!

Dr. Walker was our resident genius for the Dragon Zoo security team. Although she rarely left the zoo she was always on hand to provide remote support for our expeditions. But did that extend to Antartica? I grabbed the satellite phone from my back pack and pushed the massive power button on the side. It blinked into life, but the signal bar did not. I looked up at the skies as if by doing so I might conjure a satellite to pass overhead, all there was to see was grey and an unimaginable amount of white flakes spiralling at speed towards the ground. Crap.

Plan B. Keep walking and keep listening. That would have to do. If I stayed still much longer I would freeze regardless, so walking seemed like as good a plan as any. So much for remote support! So much for working as a team! It was me, on my own, with nothing but a couple of gas grenades and my handgun.

It seemed like hours but was probably only about thirty aimless minutes of wandering around in the snow storm. I hadn’t heard a single sound for any clue or had any sort of lead as to the whereabouts of where either the team or any of the lizards might be. At least fifty percent of this was good news. As I’d continued my search the storm had gradually started to abate, the snow flakes had begun to reduce in size and the wind had gone as quickly as it had appeared. With the increase in visibility came an increase in purpose and direction. I was actually able to see more than a metre ahead of me, enough to spot something on the horizon that wasn’t just flat and white. It looked to be either a large mound of snow or a bunch of rocks that had been covered by the storm. Either way it was a feature, and there was nothing else to aim for on the horizon.

Foolishly, as I walked I found myself looking for footprints. Even with the lighter snowfall and the brighter skies the snowfall was still substantial enough to mask my trail of footprints almost as quickly as I had left them. There was nothing I could think of that would be more useful or more sensible than what I was doing, looking for landmarks, looking for likely places that could accommodate either the team or the lizards. I pressed on.

The walk hadn’t taken long and upon closer inspection I discovered it was just a closely huddled bunch of rocks. This place was strange, almost alien. Especially seeing as I was alone, in complete isolation. It was like Hoth from Star Wars or something. But where could I head now? What would Han Solo do? I eased my goggles off my face to clear the build up of mist on the inside of the lenses again. As I did so I looked about me. With the added clarity of vision I spotted a definite place to head for, a small snow covered hill, but behind it was a large rock face, I could see the grey weathered texture just visible in patches where some of the snow hadn’t manage to mask. I put the goggles back over my eyes with new determination, the disappointment of the useless huddle of rocks I'd just discovered was soon behind me as I had a new target to head towards.

My awkward shuffling walk had increased to somewhere near a jog, this was the most promising thing I’d laid my eyes upon since I’d originally lost the guys ages ago. As I approached, more of the rock face behind the mound of snow began to become visible, it was actually a series of rock faces built up into a series of small hills. Because I had approached it from directly in front of it, I had missed the exciting fact that the hill was much larger than it first appeared. It was definitely worth exploring.

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DZ CREW - Jack 5.0 - The Ice

2011-03-05T10:25:00.000-08:00

Once we were down and onto the small boat, the sea was surprisingly not calm at all. It felt like we were on a very turbulent flight, the boat shaking and rolling involuntarily. We had only gone about ten metres from the main ship when I caught something rising in my throat. It wasn’t good. Luckily I managed to hold it, trying desperately not to appear to be on the verge of vomiting to the rest of the crew.

The small boat we were on was powered by a rear off board motor, I didn’t really know much about boats and stuff, all I knew was it looked like the type of thing you see SAS teams in wielding harpoon guns and combating Somali pirates! We were all crammed into the raft, clinging onto the sides to stay onboard. Me, Lewis and Lex were in the centre, with Gray at the front and Harrison steering the boat at the back. Lewis sat just in front of me, and had one arm hooked through a thick strap to avoid bouncing out of the raft, with his other hand clinging to his motion sensor.

“We need to keep going north! The signals from the mainland are still too faint.” Lewis shouted over the noise of the motor and the suddenly woken sea that was splashing angrily against the boat. Harrison grimaced and continued to make adjustments on the rudder to stay on course.

The journey was taking too long. It seemed like our destination was a lot further than had originally been planned. My wrist was sore from the wet rope that I had wrapped tightly around it but thankfully it was doing its job, keeping me on the dry side of the boat! I couldn’t take it much longer. No one was talking, we were all getting wet from the spray, and this only accentuated just how cold it was. I couldn’t wait to get back inside, and we’d only just started our mission. It wasn’t looking too good.

Lewis was still fixated on the soaked display of his motion sensor, over his shoulder I could see the screen, and a series of red dots had begun to focus on an otherwise green background. We must be getting close. I looked up ahead of us and saw the mainland that Harrison was now headed for. There was no easy way of getting from the boat to the shore, no jetty, no harbour, just a wall of ice and rock. I turned around to look at Harrison, I was about to barrage him with a torrent of panicked questions but before I could he held up his hand like a stop sign straight at me, his eyes never left the rock face looming ahead of us.

“Everyone hold on!” Harrison shouted as he cut the engine. The boat was coasting toward the rock face, the swell rocking us backwards and forwards but not enough to stop the onward momentum. As I looked up, the face of the rock blipped the sun out of the sky, we were directly next to the ice now. Gray was at the front of the boat when the side knocked into the ice wall, he was ready. In his hands was a grappling hook, the likes of which I’ve only ever seen Batman use before. He pulled the trigger on the handheld device and the hook disappeared over the edge above us.

“The thickness of this ice will be enough to take out weight no problem.” Gray was shouting over his shoulder, presumably to Harrison, at least it was he who answered.

“Ok, climb up first. You’re the biggest apart from me.”

Gray smirked before pulling heavily on the rope. It held, and he began to climb up.

It took only ten minutes for the entire team to scale the ice wall. Unfortunately, I felt like I was solely responsible for about eight of those minutes. The trickiest part had been the jump up onto the rope from the rolling unstable boat. The gap between the edge of the boat and the rope had kept changing constantly and it was difficult to tell when would be the best time to jump. Once I had made the leap of faith over the freezing water I then needed to cling on and brace for the natural result of colliding with the icy land mass. With a combination of spiked boots and hard work I managed to struggle up the rope and eventually reach the surface. Lewis was on hand to spare vital seconds away from his motion sensor monitor to give me a sarcastic wink, Lex looked sort of embarrassed for me.

Back down below Harrison had anchored the boat against the ice at three points, he’d left it bobbing harmlessly up and down, awaiting our return. Within seconds he had scaled the rope and had turned his attentions to his next task. Before we set off he wanted to make sure that we would be safe on our downwards climb back to the boat.

He carved a trench out of the ice that was about three inches deep and then wrapped the top end of the climbing rope around a steel pole. This pole was then placed into the trench so that it was securely fixed. Harrison spotted at how attentive I was being. I was trying to take in what he was doing in the hope that it might prove to be a useful technique at some point in the future. He smiled up at me,

“This is in case we need to make a quick getaway. Can’t have the rope giving way if we’re all trying to escape down it at once. Then again...” Harrison stood up and looked down over the edge dramatically at our little raft bobbing up and down on the icy waves, “...you can always jump.”

He gave the rope one last tug – the steel bar not moving an inch in its trench – and jogged on ahead to catch up with the others. Lewis was leading the way with Lex close behind. His eyes were never off that stupid motion sensor. It had now started to emit a highly irritating bleeping noise, approximately once a second, apparently this meant we were getting closer. As I trenched along the ice trying to regain some feeling in my finger tips I had started to have my own ideas that any lizards we were hoping to find out here would surely be out of here at the first sound of that annoying bleeping.

We walked for a long time. It was easily about three miles and must have taken at least an hour in the conditions. The thing with Antarctica is it can all change so quickly. The blue skies and calm, mill-pond, seas can swiftly turn into a black shadowy storm cloud filled sky and angry waves. The wind had picked up and it had started to snow quite heavily. Amazingly, snow fall meant that the temperature had actually risen a few degrees, but it certainly didn’t feel like it. I had my spiked snow boots on, thermal unders, water proofs over the top, gloves, thermal under hat, woolly hat over that, my hood was up on my jacket and my goggles shielded my eyes. I was certainly well protected from the cold, but the goggles were clouding over with my perspiration. The combination of the misty goggles and the snow storm outside made it difficult to see. All I knew was that regardless of what I could see, as long as I kept following that bleeping I would keep on track.

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DZ CREW - Jack - 4.0 - Sailing to danger

2011-02-07T12:46:00.000-08:00

We left behind the rows of huddled portacabins on King George Island and we were now sailing further south, to even more unfamiliar territory. It was hard to maintain focus on the foreboding task ahead. Normally it was all I could do to stop my mind running through the potential dangers we faced again and again, like an annoying skipping DVD playing images of savage dragon attacks. But right now there was nothing but distractions, massive sculpted frozen distractions, everywhere.

The boat was carving its way through a field of floating ice. It was moving steadily through a thin peninsula and was taking us extremely close to some truly spectacular sights. The weather was obviously cold, but for the moment it was clear. Uncharacteristically the sea was completely calm, allowing the boat, and the countless islands of ice that surrounded it, to float serenely in the frozen landscape.

I was lost in a thoughtless glaze; my brain was just concentrating on looking at the surreal blue colour of a passing iceberg, its shape perfectly reflected in the inky black water, when Harrison threw me out of my serenity.

“We’re almost there.”

His deep voice had almost made me jump but luckily I’d managed to maintain control of my reflex action by gripping slighter tighter on the cold steel rail of the deck. He looked at me as if in two minds, seemingly unsure if he should say something. I quickly found myself wishing he’d just leave me be, let the team do the work and leave me on the ship to just take pictures of the scenery. How much easier my life would be if I could be a photographer for a travel magazine or National Geographic.

Harrison’s voice broke my from my thoughts again, “Jack, we need to head down to the bow to grab our gear. We’re not headed onwards with the rest of the ship. Lewis says we need to make an early exit.”

Lewis’ name almost instantly made me wince. Fortunately I’d managed to avoid him most of the morning since waking up in that horrible, crammed, smelly science hut. Once we had all escaped onto the boat I’d headed straight for the deck and had a much better journey for it. Despite the cold it was always a relief to remove myself from the rest of the crew once in a while. My thoughts returned to what Harrison had just said. I looked up at him and he too seemed to be lost in wonder at the passing ice capped mountains and icebergs.

“Early exit? Where? How?”

Harrison’s expression soon changed from one of amazement to disappointment, even anger, as he returned his attention back to me.

“Gray has experience with boats; we’re taking an off-board motored speedboat to the coast where Lewis has detected a lot of movement on his sensors. He says it’s a good 25 miles further north than where the dragons were originally sighted. But as we know from past experience, that’s not too unusual.”

He collected a thick layer of frost from the frozen railing with a gloved finger, before flicking it casually over the side. “Despite the lizards staying hidden the majority of the time, they have been known to move long distances in short spaces of time. Especially here where there’s no one to hide from.”

I nodded in agreement, that pack of South American Fish Hunters had travelled almost 60 miles further up the Amazon by the time we were able to catch up with them. What a trip that was!

Harrison continued, “So, considering this is Antarctica we’re lucky they haven’t travelled even further than that. It’s been 6 days since the report came in on the website. Seems a little strange actually. You’d think a human stumbling into the herd would make them get well away from the area if they had no limitations on movement.”

I thought about this for a second, somewhat stupidly trying to put myself in the shoes of a dragon. They didn’t even wear shoes!

“Maybe they’ve got something they don’t want to leave behind? Like a home? Or an igloo?”

Harrison didn’t laugh. And neither did Gray as he appeared out of nowhere and stood beside him.

“Igloos are in the Arctic kid.” Gray said it without humour before turning to Harrison, “We need to leave now while the sea’s still calm. It’s not getting off the ship that’ll be tricky if it gets rough, it’ll be getting from the speedboat onto the ice that’ll cause us issues.”

Harrison hit my arm, “Right you heard him, lets move.”

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DZ CREW - Jack 3.0 - Antarctic Prep

2011-01-23T05:08:00.001-08:00

We stepped off the plane and onto a desperately deep 6 feet of snow. The only areas that weren’t white were the sides of the buildings and the runway itself. We made our way slowly to the nearest building, it was little more than a small wooden port-a-cabin. The grimace on Gray’s face suggested that he already knew this would be our accommodation for the night. The shelter provided by stepping inside the small hut did little to raise my body temperature – in fact, it seemed colder in the hut than outside.

I looked about me, there were no other rooms, just one central area with a long low sofa against one wall, a TV set in the corner and a small kitchenette area with a gas stove and a much used steel tea pot. Lex already had the gas on the stove and was filling the tea pot with water. I was surprised that water even made it out of the tap, by all accounts it should have been frozen solid.

“Right, this is it for the night.” Harrison spoke, his expression was determined as he sat his backpack on the floor. “Lewis, make sure you have all the kit we need ready. The motion detector etc. Lex, once you’ve done the brews you can get our ammo and weaponry ready. He turned and fixed his gaze on me. Jack, you just stay quiet and out of trouble. Maybe get some sleep.”

It wasn’t a question or a polite suggestion, it was an instruction. I looked about me in the small room. Gray had already filled most of the available space on the sofa and Lewis quickly took a seat next to him when he spotted my intentions. I sighed and set about sorting my roll mat and sleeping bag out. The floor space in this miniscule building could hardly contain the five of us. I resisted the temptation to point out that fact.

Once I’d laid claim to my little area – furthest area away from any draughty doors and windows – I got my diary out and began to catch up on the day’s events and the travels. I always tried to keep up to date with my thoughts and experiences, lately though I never had a chance to read any back, but in such strange and new times I felt that cataloguing our experiences with the dragons would be important.

I stopped writing and looked up, smiling when I noticed Lex holding out a cup of tea for me. I took it off her eagerly and sipped the warm liquid. It was vile.

“Yuck! What’s this? Where’s the sugar!” I complained noisily, breaking the relative quiet of the cabin.

“Jack, in case you haven’t noticed, there doesn’t seem to be much sugar cane growing out there.” Lex pointed to the desolate landscape outside. It was getting dark and there was a continuous stream of silent snowflakes settling on every available surface. I noticed that the footprints of five people tromping in the snow outside of the cabin had already been covered with snow. Tracking this lizard was going to be nigh on impossible.

Morning soon came and Gray and Harrison were already up and dressed when I slowly managed to focus my eyes. I looked around me, Lex had the tea pot boiling again and Lewis was still asleep in a huddle by the door. Around him were strewn bits of wire and plastic as well as many different sizes of screwdrivers, one was jabbing dangerously close to his crotch area. He must have been working most of the night. I smiled to myself, not guilty in the slightest in the wave of pleasure I felt at Lewis’ suffering. He was getting on my nerves lately.

I quickly got up and went to the toilet. By the time I was back Lewis had returned to consciousness and was groggily clearing away the electronics. I made short work of returning my sleeping bag and roll mat back to the back pack. I had my boots on and tea drunk and was ready to go. I checked the sidearm that Lex handed me. My gas pellet handgun was many of the non-lethal weapons that had been custom designed with the combined intellect of Lewis and Dr. Bob. This gun was an absolute beast. I could fire pellets over 200 metres with deadly accuracy, dealing a blast of gas with a radius of over 25 metres. This simple small handgun could have us all sleeping like babies for a week if I let it off in this room. I unintentionally laughed aloud at the thought which made Lex give me a very weird look. She thought I was a freak I was sure of it. I’d soon show her wrong.

Lex was very gung-ho. She ran around the place often putting herself in needless danger, blasting marauding dragons with the combination of her sound emitting vortex ring gun and her tranquiliser dart pistol. She’d certainly saved our hides a few times and I was desperate to prove my worth and even the score. More often than not I just felt like I was a nuisance. In any case they must keep me around for some reason. Despite the fact Harrison did little more than tell me what to do he must see some potential in me. Maybe it will be this Antarctic trek that I finally get to prove myself? I clicked the safety on the gas pellet gun and holstered it carefully into my belt. Our boat was waiting.

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DZ Crew - Jack 2.0 - Getting closer to the Antarctic dragon sighting

2011-01-22T02:20:00.001-08:00

When I opened my eyes I was surprised to find that I was still in the cramped confines of the aircraft. I’d been dreaming while I slept, dreaming of a blazing snow storm that had completely surrounded us. As the snow and wind whipped around us I just managed to look up in time to see clear blue skies before I awoke.

My dreams were always more vivid before going on an expedition, or a mission as Harrison calls them. I guess they’re some sort of mental preparation, a way of making me less nervous. I was just grateful that it relieved some of the pressure on my conscious thought.

I looked around me, the entire team were here, deep in their own thoughts. I was unfortunately wedged between the two giant frames of Harrison and Gray. I’m sure it was deliberate. I often think they try and keep me away from Lex. I looked over, her purple hair was in a ponytail and she was listening to her IPod with her eyes closed. Her head was resting against Lewis’ shoulder. Lewis looked up from the motion detector he was playing with and threw me a wink. I looked away with instant annoyance. He knew he shouldn’t be messing with electronic equipment on the flight, the pilot had even warned against it before takeoff. I tried to convince myself that his constant meddling with gadgets was the source of my sudden mood.

I was shaken from my thoughts as plane hit down hard on the runway. Bits of kit that Lewis hadn’t properly secured rained down from above him onto his head. The inner walls of the fuselage were covered in bright orange netting that was swinging around wildly as the plane hurtled down the runway. We bumped along at speed for some distance before the pilot finally brought the plane’s speed down to begin taxiing.
The plane had landed but we weren’t there yet. It had touched down at one of the research stations on an island off the main continent. We still had a boat journey that would take us to the mainland and close to the source of the dragon activity.

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DZ Crew Update - Jack 1.0 - Dragon Sightings

2011-01-20T12:20:00.000-08:00

These damn dragon sightings were beginning to get me down. It seemed like every week we were being asked to go somewhere else.

"It's the reputation of Dragon Zoo that's on the line if we don't"

"What if someone is attacked?"

"What if someone blames the zoo for the dragon on the loose?"

The problem was, whenever we responded to these sightings, there was always nothing there.

For one, it takes us at least 24 hours from the reported dragon sighting until we get to actually show up at the location. And secondly, it's a dragon. It doesn't hang about.

Well, it was with another large slice of my belligerent attitude that I finally got on the C130 Hercules aircraft that would take us to Antarctica.

We’d flown to the end of Chile via conventional airline but now it was time for something a little more robust, a little more military to take us to the extremes of the planet. Even if we didn’t catch a glimpse of anything whilst we were there, even we didn’t even see a single footprint, it wouldn’t matter. The excitement of going somewhere as cool as Antarctica had completely re-charged my batteries, completely made me forgive the last ten wasted trips.

As the plane took off I knew that funny rumbling feeling in my stomach wasn’t just because of the wheels bumping down the runway at 80mph, I knew it was excitement. I couldn’t wait to get there. But I HATED flying. This job in the DZ Crew often made me face my greatest fears and flying was definitely one of them. Unfortunately since these episodes of dragon sightings there’s been nothing but flying for me. I didn’t think I would ever be able to get anywhere in an aircraft without the feeling of nausea.

Despite my fears of flying, as a kid I always dreamt of going into space, visiting different planets like the ones you see in Star Wars movies. Deserts and Snow covered landscapes. Extremes. Well unless someone from NASA reports a dragon sighting on the moon I guess that’s one dream that’s not gonna happen. But Antarctica? That is as close as you can get to an alien landscape for me without leaving Earth.

I closed my eyes and sat still. I couldn’t wait for the flight to be over and the adventure to begin.

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Captain Lesley Harrison - Log 2.0

2010-10-25T06:32:00.000-07:00

It’s taking a lot less time than I thought it would for the crew to lighten up to the idea of dragons. I mean it’s one thing to tell someone or to read about it but when you're working with them day in day out then I guess it sinks in pretty fast that these things are real and they're not going away. The only one who seems to be having any trouble at all is Lewis. I think because he is so sure in what he knows and so sure that they didn't exist that he was always going to have some trouble. But the Doc is helping him along.

I think she's really been looking for someone of a similar intellect to talk to. Not that any of the crew is what you would call stupid. Even Jack is a lot more intelligent than anyone would believe after looking at him. Or talking to him. Or in fact spending any kind of significant time with him. But it’s just the fact that Doctor Bob can sometimes find it hard talking in layman terms that it’s good to have someone who does understand a lot of the specifics involved in our work. And the fact that she can explain the specifics means that a lot more of it is sinking into Lewis's brain.

We had a tour around the zoo planned for the crew so I had gathered them in the cafeteria which is pretty much our HQ. No one complains though as I think everyone enjoys the cooking from the Flames Restaurant. It’s not exactly hi-tech in there but it has tables and chairs which is all we need. Gray complained once. Well I think he did. As always he talks in riddles:

'Zere was once a chair in a bar. Zee chair was broken and would fall whenever someone were to place zemselves upon it. But the chair was kept in the bar none zee less as the people zere knew of it and found it amusing to watch others fall. But soon zee chair became so broken and torn zat everyone seeing it would not sit on it and so zere was no more laughter at zee bar. Zis is why we need new chairs in zee cafeteria.'

Anyway he seems to put up with it just like he puts up with everything. He was not the least surprised about the dragons in the zoo. I think about all the secrets he has in his past and I get the feeling he may have dealt with things more surprising then dragons. I would quiz him on it but no doubt he would give me a riddle or just shrug and say “Boff.”. He can be very unapproachable when he wants to be.

I had the team assemble and explained how we were going to be shown around by Lucy Arnold. She arrived late and apologised, but Jack had to throw out a sarky remark. It’s his way of testing the water whenever he meets a new girl but a quick slap round the head and a Look managed to shut him up as I have no intention of him trying anything with this girl. He has managed to form a friendship with Alexis and I would be happy if he were to form one with the Arnold girl too. The information she has on the dragons seems to be equal to that of even the Doc so if any of that knowledge rubs off on the crew then we would all be better for it.

She started by showing us around the pens for the lizards. All the lizards are kept behind flame and shatter proof glass to protect the viewing public from flames and any physical attacks which apparently are not so common now they are used to their surroundings. The Welshies were first to be visited and were in a large enclosure which had a lot of tall trees. They were together in a group and seemed very friendly. Lucy told us that though they look friendly they can be just as vicious when they want to be and remarked how the one brought out to show the crew was actually the runt of the litter and a lot more docile then his big brothers and sisters. While we were there a loud WHOOOMPH noise and a flash of orange caused us all to spin round away from Lucy and just in time to see a small melting circle on a patch of scrub near the group. Gray of course had not moved and continued smoking while staring at Lucy. I could see that he was making her uneasy as he does most people so I asked her about their habits.

She told us how though they can produce very hot flames they learn to control them soon after hatching. This allows for the habitat to be mostly woodland, like their original setting in the Welsh hills. Occasionally the odd play-fight will get out of control but they have managed to never set off a full scale forest fire. They are excellent flyers and will happily zoom around the enclosure most of the day playing and firing off short bursts of fire at each other. It’s no wonder that they are the crowd favourites at the zoo and the symbol of the zoo itself.

Next up was the water arena. This area was the home to the Scottish Sea Dragons though we didn’t get to see any on our visit. Lewis seemed extremely disappointed on the no-show as Doctor Bob had spent some time describing the research on them. As they have not been viewed flaming they were the dragons that were considered the least lethal and therefore various behavioural tests had been performed with them. Jack and Alexis were trying to wind him up teasing him about his obvious disappointment but the Doc butted in to defend him. Even though I didn’t say it at the time, the look on Jacks face made me feel happy inside. To him it was like Bob was picking Lewis over him and this is something he cannot even comprehend, let alone stand so it’s always good to see him feeling rejected once in a while. He needs his ego kept in check.

When we made it to the so called English Myths Zone there was a bit of commotion. It was feeding time and a group of the zoo officials and Pen Keepers were gathered to watch. The English Tyrant has a bit of a reputation within the zoo as being the one to watch yourself around. They are fast and ferocious when it comes to anything entering their territory as the Arnolds found out when they tried to keep two in the same enclosure. Lucy was the one who found what was left of the smaller lizard.

This is when Lewis decided that he wanted to feed the tyrant. I don’t know whether he wanted to make himself look more macho in Jack and Lex's eyes or in the Docs eyes or both but he insisted that he could and would do it. No one really knew what to say and I realised that everyone was looking to me for approval. I always say the best way to learn is to do so I told him, “Be my guest.”

The pen keepers kitted him out with a flame proof chain mail. This was actually necessary and not just some English Myth gimmick. The tyrant has a powerful bite as well as flames and has been known to go for the arms or legs of anyone who is stupid enough to turn their back on it. Once he had his flame retardant headgear, gloves and boots on Lewis was handed a large bucket of beef and pork joints and wandered into the pen.

The Myths Zone is mostly rocky as the tyrant originates from caves in the Lake District up north. When Lewis made it through the gates and into the enclosure there was noticeable movement up in the cave where the remaining lizard had formed its den. The doc called to Lewis and asked for him to be careful, to keep his eyes open and once he saw the dragon to never let it out of his sight. Lex was pressed up against the glass like a child grinning with anticipation while Jack took the opportunity to put an arm around Bob and tell her not to worry and he was there to look after her should anything happen to her sidekick. She shrugged him off and kept her eyes on Lewis.

Suddenly the tyrant appeared as if fired out of a bloody rocket from the cave. I’d been told how they can propel themselves into instant flight with their phenomenally strong hind legs but I’d never seen it in action. There was a grey streak through the air above Lewis who was holding out a large chunk of meat at arm’s length. He seemed determined to prove that he could work outside of his safe little workstation. The grey streak was still circling overhead. Lucy said that this was while it was scoping out for food as it would have already picked up the scent. She also mentioned that the Pen Keepers normally leave the meat on the floor rather then hold it out for the dragon...

The tyrant’s flight path dropped and it came down fast towards Lewis before speeding past him and shooting back into the air. The steak was gone from Lewis's hand. As were three of his fingers.

Lewis immediately turned and ran back to the gates holding his wrist in his good hand as blood dripped out of the glove where his fingers should have been. Jack and Alexis were almost on the floor laughing as the doc ran to the gate to help Lewis through. He was biting his lip to stop from screaming and was rushed off, along with the doc, to the onsite hospital. I had to wait a full 10 minutes for the kids to stop laughing and one of the keepers brought them over some tissue to wipe away the tears. During the entire episode Gray hadn’t taken his eyes off the lizard. He was stood watching it now. The bucket of meat had been knocked over and the tyrant was hungrily tearing off hunks from the big pieces of meat that now lay around. Gray was staring at it, watching closely how it was behaving as he took another long drag on his cigarette. It would be my guess that he already knows more about these animals then anyone.

After that Lucy brought us round to the jungle zone which had only recently been prepared for a new dragon, the South American Fish Hunter. This species was a lot larger than the other three already at the zoo, standing at around 10 foot but was relatively quiet when compared to the likes of the Tyrant. We would be needed when it arrived next week as part of security to ensure everything went smoothly. I had already talked to Bob and Lewis about firepower and they had assured us that they had a few new weapons up their sleeves to help tranquillise the lizard should we need to. From what I've heard from other reports, this dragon would still only be a baby compared with some of the other dragons out there. Only that morning I'd received word from Stephen Arnold that there have been sightings of a monstrous dragon in New Zealand with a 30 foot wingspan. Chances are that we would all be taking a trip down to try and capture it ourselves. Finally I would be able to test the team out in the field.

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Captain Lesley Harrison - Log 1.0

2010-07-20T09:21:00.000-07:00

Today was the day I picked up the final member of our team, Lewis Luttwidge Dodgson. Cocky little geek he is but I have a feeling that the team will help him to loosen up a bit. Should be great as an understudy for Doc Walker and from what I've heard he excels in engineering which is good cos we need someone who can sort us out with some proper gear. He'll be the only one of the team I didn't specifically seek out myself as he applied for the job through the zoo. I guessed that he would have had a better knowledge of what actually goes on here than the others but I was wrong. The Arnold's had told him just enough to get him on board before dumping him on my doorstep at the crews' HQ. It looked like it was up to me to have to explain the job description to everyone. I knew that Gray would take it in his stride but I was less sure on the kids and even less enthusiastic about what this new lad was going to think of things once he knew the whole deal. Luckily I had Doctor Bob on hand to help me out.

The thing about Doctor Bob Walker is that... well... she's a girl see. Not many people know this as she publishes most of her scientific work online and doesn't like too much in the way of publicity. This didn't bother any of us though as no one was actually familiar with any of her work before I started gathering us together 6 months ago and there's no chance of any sexism happening with Alexis being half of the muscle in the team! In fact the only one who was bothered by the Doc being a girl was the only one who had heard anything about her before this, the newbie, Lewis. His face was a right picture when I introduced her! She was less than impressed with his bumbling efforts of apology but eventually saw the funny side when the rest of us started laughing.

All except Gray of course. He just sat there smoking those foul smelling cigarettes that he always seems to have. One of the many little vices he has that we have to put up with but he's worth it in the end. I wouldn't want anyone else on this job with me. And I think even the kids are lighting up to him. Alexis couldn't not like anyone anyway and I think some of that's rubbing off on Jack. Those two seem to spend so much time together that they're gonna end up acting the same, which is all good news for me. If they're going to be watching my back when things get physical then I want them in tune with each other. And it’s good to see Jack talking to a girl without talking to her wink wink as well. Boy does he love the ladies! I know the Doc for one is starting to get annoyed by his continuous leering. All he needs is a good slap now and then to keep him in line, he's a good lad after all.

Once all the introductions were out the way though I finally got on to why they were all here. I tried to break it to them easily about what it was we were actually guarding. Gray had always suspected that is wasn't an ordinary zoo because why would I need him if it was? I’m perfectly able to handle animals and manage a small team as I had shown in my Kenya years on the games reserves. He knew that this would be something different. Why else would I be calling on someone like him? Someone who does what he does? The kids aint stupid either. Jacks been hounding me since the day I brought him on board to tell him what the deal was. That was until he got his first smack round the head. He still pushes it though, little bugger that he is. Alexis was on the edge of her seat as always, hugging her knees and fidgeting. Damn kid can’t sit still for 2 minutes! Only time she's totally still is when she has her eye to the scope of a rifle. Sometimes scares me how much that girl changes when she has her hands on a tranquilliser gun. I’m just happy she didn't have one when the Doc brought out the dragon.

It was only a small one but enough to send Lewis falling backwards off his chair. A juvenile Welsh Inferno it was, still in his cage so couldn't do no harm to anyone even if he wanted to, which he wouldn't. The Welshies are the softies of the zoo, never flaming anyone unless they're severely threatened and even then they're much more in the 'Flight over Fight' camp.

The Doc tried to explain things but she's always been a little too scientific about things for the crew to fully understand, Jack in particular, so I took over. I explained things as simply as I could.

The zoo was made for dragons.

So far there were a total of 9 dragons at the zoo with 3 different species. 5 of the Welshies which seem to live in groups, 3 of the water loving Scottish Sea Dragons and just one of the English Tyrants. There used to be two of them but, well... they're an aggressive bunch and don't seem to get on well with others. The Arnold's found that out the hard way. Just like Jack found out that dragons are hot! The Doc tried to warn him of course but he likes to show off just a little too much.

As soon as I mentioned that this particular breed was, to all intents and purposes, completely harmless, he was up off his seat and wandering over for a closer look. I knew he would try touching it, he has to touch everything, but I've also come to learn that the best way to make Jack remember things is to let him mess up once. That way he rarely messes up again.

So that's why I let him stroke the dragon.

Now the Welshie is one of the hotter dragons we have. The hottest in fact. Hot to the point where you don't even want to touch them without the fireman's gloves we have to hand. Let’s just say that we had to have Gray have a good look at Jack’s hand afterwards. It was quite a mess.

The crew had a lot of questions but luckily Doctor Bob had all the answers, and a handy leaflet that the Arnold girl had written, as for some reason that girl seems to be one of the leading authorities on the lizards, to the point even where we've been told to stop calling them lizards because they're something new altogether. As different to modern lizards as modern lizards are to dinosaurs.
Everyone seemed to be pretty excited by the whole thing except for Gray who, as always, took it in his stride. As he put it “Does the camel get excited for chocolate?” I swear I don't understand half of what he says.

That evening, after we had eventually gotten Jack and Alexis to calm down and stop playing 'dragons', I told the group about their activities within and outside of the park. We are the Dragon Zoo Crew. We are here to make sure the lizards stay under control and to guarantee everything is as safe as it should be, attending to all security measures within the park. I had also been told by the Arnold's that we would be required to go off site to oversee the acquisition and retrieval of any new specimens that the park had been authorised to capture. What I didn't tell them is that as there was no real authority on dragons then we would be setting out to capture any dragon we could. After all, we aint going to be the only ones after them...

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The Dragon Zoo Crew - Pictures

2010-07-20T09:12:00.000-07:00

Right,

over at DZ we got the artist to knock up some charactures of us lot here in the DZ Crew.

This is us.

As we carry on with this blog you're gonna find out a lot about at us so I aint gonna waste by breath (or my words) here. Just put names to faces.

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Dragon/ Lizard

2010-07-16T12:02:00.000-07:00

Dragon Zoo. They got dragons but we call them lizards. Filthy stinking fire breathing lizards. People complain that what we're doing is animal cruelty, it aint. If there's a dangerous serial killer on the loose shedding blood where ever he goes what do you do? Yeah. You lock him up.

So Dragon Zoo aint cruel but we are kind. I know some people in this country would rather they were free and flying about "as nature intended," that's about as likely as Osama Bin Laden coming out of his cave and turning himself in after being the worlds greatest hide and seek champion since 2001. SO, where does that leave us? Me and my team do what we gotta do, we capture the ones that we find and we give them a good home in a controlled environment. In an environment where no one gets hurt, especially if I do my job properly. If we didn't? If we just left all those reported sightings uninvestigated? I'll wager that there'll be hell on earth.

Welcome to the blog of the DZ Crew.

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