Reign of Fire (film)
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| Reign of Fire | |
|---|---|
 Reign of Fire film poster |
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| Directed by | Rob Bowman |
| Produced by | Richard Zanick Lillieni Zanick Roger Birnbaum Gary Barber |
| Written by | Gregg Chabot Kevin Peterka (story and screenplay) Matt Greenberg (screenplay only) |
| Starring | Christian Bale Alice Krige Matthew McConaughey Izabella Scorupco Gerard Butler |
| Music by | Mad at Gravity Ed Shearmur Brad Wagner |
| Cinematography | Adrian Biddle |
| Editing by | Declan McGrath Thom Noble |
| Distributed by | Touchstone Pictures Spyglass Entertainment (some markets) |
| Release date(s) | July 12, 2002 |
| Running time | 102 minutes |
| Country | UK/Ireland |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $60 million |
| IMDb profile | |
Reign of Fire is a 2002 action/fantasy movie directed by Rob Bowman.
Tagline: Fight fire with fire.
[edit] Plot
During underground construction in London around the year 2002, a huge, hibernating dragon is discovered and springs to life, instantly incinerating all construction workers with its fiery breath. The only survivor is the 12-year-old Quinn Abercromby, whose mother was chief of the construction crew. The dragon escapes and soon thousands of them work their way through Europe and eventually the rest of the world, burning everything, feeding on the ashes, and multiplying at an exponential rate. The world powers use even the most powerful weapons in their aresenal, but this only aids the dragons in their destruction of the planet.
In 2020, the adult Quinn (played by Christian Bale) runs a medieval stone castle in England, a lonely bastion of mankind, afraid of the sky and the dragons that could attack any time. Their only faint hope is to outlast the dragons, wait until they die out again (as they presumably did several times before) and go into hibernation.
Then Denton Van Zan (Matthew McConaughey) arrives, leader of a US army unit from Kentucky, bringing a Chieftain tank and a helicopter, piloted by Alex (played by Izabella Scorupco). Mistrusting but needing each other, the two leaders Quinn and Van Zan work together and eventually manage to kill one of the dragons.
Afterwards Van Zan and Alex tells Quinn that all dragons his unit have encountered so far are female. Their theory is that they are like fish and the females would lay their eggs, then the male would come along and fertilize them, so this makes the assumption that there is only a single male within the whole dragon population world-wide, who fertilizes the eggs the females lay, which explains the extreme growth rate of the population. They suspect that the male dragon lives in London, and they are on a mission to kill it and thus the species.
When Van Zan starts recruiting for his mission among the castle's population, a fight breaks out between him and Quinn, who still prefers to outlast the dragons. Van Zan and his unit go to London to find a road block in their way, Van Zan then sends Alex to backtrack and find a new way around. The male dragon soon thereafter arrives, but keeps hidden until a certain moment and annihilates the entire army. When Alex arrives with the helicopter, she finds Van Zan sitting near one of the tanks, he then makes the statement that "the dragon had to only pass over once." Soon Alex and Van Zan realize that the dragon would be heading for the castle next. As they leave, they pick up one of the remaining soldiers. The male dragon backtracks their route to the castle and destroys it. The castle inhabitants are however saved by hiding in an underground shelter, but Quinn's dear friend is killed, as he tries to go save more survivors in the castle.
Defeated, Van Zan returns to the castle, and asks Quinn to lead the operation to London, on the condition that only the three of them go. They use the helicopter to land outside the city, unnoticed, where they learn that the dragons are beginning to starve and are resorting to cannibalism, as they see the male dragon eating a female. Quinn leads them through an underground tunnel network to reach the heart of the city, they then move to a rail car and plan the way to defeat the dragon. After Van Zan makes his way to a tower to end it all, he fires an explosive arrow too soon while the dragon breathes its fire, but this in the end saves Quinn from being burnt, and in his last attempt, Van Zan jumps from the tower with an axe, but is instantly killed. All alone, Quinn and Alex must look for an arrow dropped by Quinn to kill the male. Quinn soon finds the arrow, but is unable to get it ready to fire, but thanks to a diversion made by Alex, Quinn manages to kill the dragon by shooting an explosive into its mouth just as it attempted to breathe fire for the last time.
At least three months after the male dragon is slain, Quinn and Alex are seen erecting a radio tower and receive a transmission from another group of survivors in France. They remark how they have not seen another dragon for three months and express optimism for the future.
[edit] Trivia
- There is a scene in which two of the adults (Quinn and Creedy) entertain the children by acting out a play based on the Luke Skywalker/Darth Vader "I am your father" confrontation scene from The Empire Strikes Back. When one of the children asks whether Quinn made the story up, Quinn replies, "Of course I did."
- ABC had scheduled a broadcast of this movie on July 7, 2005, but because of the terrorist attack on London that day, it was replaced with a different movie.
- The movie was made into a game released on several different gaming platforms. The game was notably critisised and recognised for its extremely long loading times.
- The title of the Japanese version is Salamander.
- In 2006, Michael J. Nelson and Kevin Murphy of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fame released a humorous audio commentary for the film on their RiffTrax service.
- Reign of Fire won an award for Best Visual Effects at the Sitges - Catalonian Film Festival.
- The film contained a trailer for Kingdom Hearts, one of the few films (if not the only one) to contain a trailer for the game.
