Dragon Wars!

Updated on September 9, 2007 By Ken Begg 12 Comments

I just saw a commercial (during The Simpsons!) for this long delayed Korean giant monster movie.  Hard to believe it’s getting a theatrical release, especially since unlike The Host, it isn’t getting very good reviews.  (And yet it will probably play in art houses. Go figure.)

Anyway, I assume it will be hitting Chicago at some point.  I certainly hope so, anyway.

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  • Hasimir Fenring

    I don’t see why its reviews are worse. It isn’t any worse than The Host and is about 50 bajillion times better than Transformers. All the complaints I made about that piece of trash don’t apply to D-War. It has no boring subplots. The love story is perfunctory and gets almost no screen time, just like it oought to be. The film gets down to the nitty-gritty giant snake action quickly, and once the giant snake shows up, you’re never left long with the boring old humans waiting for it to show up again.

    The biggest problem is that it rips off Lord of the Rings something fierce. But even that’s not so bad, since it’s more entertaining in any of those films was.

    The best films are smart. The next best are dumb but know they’re dumb and don’t pretend they’re anything else. The worst are dumb and think they’re smart.

    Transformers is the third. D-War is the second.

  • The Rev. D.D.

    Well, if there’s one thing I’m a sucker for, it’s a giant monster movie. I’m going to have to drag the lady to this.
    Actually, she was pretty hyped to see The Host with me (thanks to the positive reviews), and liked it a lot, so no dragging may be necessary. Unless she gets wind of the bad reviews, that is…
    I just hope they don’t ramp up the volume at the theater it’ll likely play at here, like they did with The Host. I don’t know if we accidentally caught the “hard of hearing” showing or what, but my enjoyment of the film was marred a bit by the constant wiping away of blood from my ears.

  • Ed Richardson

    Hasimir,

    Who cares what Michael Bay thinks about his movies? Movies don’t “think” they’re this or that, rather it’s the director’s vision that supplies that. Like other art, it can’t help but reflect its creator.

    Having said that, how does Michael Bay “think” his movie is “smart” whereas you say it’s “dumb?” It looks like nothing more than garden-variety summer popcorn special effects action to me. Don’t you think Bay thinks as much? This guy is a formula director and knows he’s not a Kubrick (who, incidentally, was called pretentious numerous times by some very famous movie critics).

    I think Bay’s Transformers looks at itself in the mirror and sees nothing more than a massive opening weekend, lots of kids having fun, and a sponsorship deal with McDonald’s and a toy company, possibly a video game.

  • Given that DRAGON WARS is reportedly getting released this Friday in somewhere between 1500-2000 theaters, odds are it will be playing at one near you. This is not like THE HOST where it’s just getting an art house release.

    Also, be sure to get their in time for the previews. I hear there’s also going to be a new trailer for Uwe Boll’s DUNGEON SIEGE trailer before the film. Same distribution company set to give it a wide release in January.

  • fish eye no miko

    Heh… I just bought _The Host_ (yeah it’s out on DVD!),and am going to see _Dragon Wars_ when my sister wants to go (my schedule’s a lot freer than hers, so I defer to her about things like that).

    Hasimir’s comments are heartening; I like my giant monster movies with lots of giant monster action, thank you I mean, that’s why I’m watching the movie in the first place! Occasionally you find one with an interesting enough human story that you don’t mind the lack of the monster (_Gojira_, for one, and yes, _The Host_), but 95% of the time, you find yourself wishing they’d cut away from the human characters and show the monster stomping on things, already.

  • Hasimir Fenring

    Thanks, fish eye, for answering for me. That’s basically all I’d say: Bay thinks his human characters are so fascinating that he pushes aside the Transformers to show us endless boring and outrageously badly written ‘scenes’ involving these ‘characters’.

  • Ed Richardson

    Well, as giant things in moviedom go, what was your favorite scene (READ: the least painful) and what was your worst one in Transformers, if I may ask?

    And I’m not a rep for the movie. I just liked it is all. Cheese and UNBELIEVABLE action sequences by the crew that handled the fantasy bit of things (ILM).

  • Ed Richardson

    Also…and pay attention grasshoppers…

    I think things clicked in Transformers. Bay got it right, the ILM people REALLY got it right, the actors were worthy.

    Bingo – Cool summer movie. Or whatever, go so Spiderman III run way too long and look hokey.

  • I have to say, I thought Transformers was pretty decent. (Although I say it in a big theater in a literal private screening, which was pretty cool.) I never saw the Transformers cartoon, so I don’t know if that helped or hurt.

  • Probably helped, Ken. The people who complained least about the human characters (Roger Ebert among them) seem to be the ones who didn’t watch the cartoons as children.

    Of course, I watched the cartoons and I didn’t mind Shia LeBeouf and company either. I thought it added to the story, in fact.

  • “Spiderman III run way too long and look hokey.”

    As much as I agree with both of those sentiments, I really don’t see how someone who’s talking up Transformers can possibly argue that another movie, like Spider-Man 3 in this case, was too hokey for them. Seriously now… Spider-Man 3 wasn’t the movie where in the middle of a battle with the Sandman Spidey found himself arguing with a foriegn phone operator over making a collect call. I don’t think there was anything hokier than that on movie screens this past summer.

  • Verbatim

    For those within road trip distance of Central Florida, D-Wars is playing this week at the Silver Moon Drive-In on a double bill with DOA: Dead or Alive.