I watched this movie (Reign of Fire) last night. I didn’t know what it was about other than the fact that my friend who loaned it to me told me it was about dragons. That was really all the criteria that I needed to try it out; but I thought it would only be mildly entertaining.  I thought it would be a predictable medeival sort of man vs. dragon showdown.

I was pleasantly surprised.  The movie was set in the present (and not too distant future) and had to do with an outbreak of dragons who plague the earth, cause nuclear holocaust, and threaten to exterminate mankind.  And it also was a movie with a satisfying man vs. dragon showdown.

There were a lot of obvious things that happened in the movie and it was definitely an action/suspense type of deal, but it was well-done (without being Peter-Jackson -King Kong-over-the-top.)  I would definitely watch it again if given the opportunity.  Just goes to show you that you can often enjoy a film if you just lower your expectations…or better yet, don’t form any.  (Well, maybe that doesn’t always work.)
It’s a lot easier to withhold expectations here since we don’t get bombarded with previews.  The only previews we ever see are the ones that precede the movies we watch on DVD or the movie trailers we seek out online…but I digress.

I also thought the movie was interesting as an allegory for global terrorism, especially in light of how different countries have chosen to respond to it.  I am not sure that the creators intended this meaning in 2002 (i.e. pre-War in Iraq II) but I thought the parallels were intriguing.  The moral of the story would be that the UK should take the lead in a balanced and focused attack on global terrorism instead of us Yankees running onto the global scene with both bazookas a-blazing…

OK, so my allegory falls apart a bit under closer analysis.  At least the movie had cool dragons…  The trouble is that now I’ve given you something to expect and that automatically nullifies this whole concept.  Sorry.