A montage of movie dragons, as interpreted by fantasy artist Anthony Wallis (© Anthony Wallis)
Today here on Shuker In MovieLand, I thought I'd try something a little different for a change. So instead of reviewing a single movie, or even a couple, I'm presenting a survey of a single very specific movie subgenre – namely, dragon movies!
With the coming of the movies, the visual arts – and dragons – came alive! For the world of the cinema is also one of dragons, threatening to burst forth from the big screen into the real world at any moment, especially with new advances in 3-D cinematography! Thankfully, however, they never quite succeed.
Instead, we can experience from the safety of our own armchair or the cinema seat the vicarious thrill of modern-day knights confronting their deadly reptilian foes, masterfully engendered by the imagination and artistry of animators or the technical wizardry of live-action and CGI adepts. Their skills enable us to enter realms of fantasy and virtual reality that at least for the running time of the film are no less vital than our own world – and sometimes are even more so. Here, anything is possible - even dragons.
DISNEY DRAGONS AND OTHER BIG-SCREEN CARTOON VERSIONS
Given the limitless possibilities of expression available in animation, the dragon was always going to be a popular subject for film-makers to bring to life via the cartoon medium – but none can surpass Walt Disney Studios founded by Walt Disney himself for the sheer genius and cinematographic sorcery of its best productions.
The first dragon conjured up by Disney was Kenneth Grahame's rather fey specimen from his short story 'The Reluctant Dragon'. A 20-minute cartoon that remained relatively faithful to Grahame's tale (though St George was replaced in the cartoon by St Giles) was part of a full-length feature film also entitled The Reluctant Dragon (click here to read my review of it on Shuker In MovieLand). Released in 1941, this film centres around a live-action tour of the Disney studios by American wit and radio comedian Robert Benchley, where he is shown various complete cartoon shorts, ideas for future animated features, art and animation classes, plus much else. Although the film itself was never re-released in cinemas in its full-length version, its 'Reluctant Dragon' segment was later released separately as a 'mini-classic' cartoon.
Originally, there were plans for the Jabberwock to appear in Disney's animated film Alice in Wonderland (1951), but its sequence was deleted before the film's release, together with its song, 'Beware the Jabberwock'. Illustrations taken from this unused sequence, however, later appeared in a Disney-published illustrated book of Lewis Carroll's poem 'Jabberwocky' – and, very incongruously, the supposedly ferocious dragon in question was depicted wearing a purple sweater!
In 1959, Disney's next major dragon set the big screen aflame, metaphorically if not literally. This was due to the spectacular animation featured in Sleeping Beauty, vividly portraying the transformation of the evil fairy Maleficent into a huge, fire-breathing dragon ablaze with incandescent, bat-winged fury, seeking to incinerate Prince Philip as he bravely strives to rescue Princess Aurora, the Sleeping Beauty of this film's title.
A much more comical, purple-haired dragon, yet just as eager to gobble up its antagonist - in this instance a somewhat scatter-brained Merlin the magician - is one of many forms assumed by the decidedly deranged witch Madam Mim in Disney's zany adaptation of T.H. White's popular Arthurian novel for children, The Sword in the Stone (1938). Disney's animated version was released in 1963.
The biggest dragon star from the Disney studios, however, was Elliott, from the live-action/animated musical feature film Pete's Dragon, first released in 1977. Elliott is a huge pot-bellied green dragon with a shock of pink hair and a pair of unfeasibly small wings (yet which nevertheless enable him somehow to become airborne should he need to be). However, he is generally visible only to his young owner, a small orphan boy named Pete. Elliott accompanies Pete, as his friend and protector, to the coastal fishing town of Passamaquoddy in Maine, USA, where the boy has fled in order to get away from his abusive adoptive hillbilly family, and the two soon become embroiled in all manner of amusing slapstick scrapes and general chaos. In 2016, a Disney remake of Pete's Dragon was released, in which Elliott looks very different indeed – no longer a huge pot-bellied cartoon dragon with tiny wings, he is dramatically reinvented as a smaller and much sleeker, decidedly mammalian dragon, complete with green fur instead of scales and proportionately much larger wings.
One UK-released DVD edition of the original Pete's Dragon movie included as an extra feature a little-known Disney documentary entitled Man, Monsters and Mysteries (1974). This included a delightful animated segment featuring Nessie, the Loch Ness monster – considered by some to be a bona fide water dragon. Far removed from the dark, sleek, mysterious entity of cryptozoological fame, however, Disney's version is an affable multi-coloured beastie adorned with red polka-dots and voiced by Sterling Holloway. In 2011, Disney released a new cartoon short, The Ballad of Nessie, featuring a green and rather more dragonesque monster.
Just as Disney's celebrated animated film Fantasia (1940) consisted of a series of cartoon representations of famous pieces of classical music, Musicana was planned to be a comparable film showcasing via cartoons a series of folktales from around the world, backed once again by classical music. Sadly, this potentially spectacular film, whose development began during 1982-1983, was never produced. However, preparatory drawings and other preliminary artwork created for it still exist, giving a tantalising glimpse of what might have been. One particularly striking series of full-colour pastel artwork is from a sequence by artist Mel Shaw designed to illustrate Meso-American folklore, and includes beautiful renditions of Quetzalcoatl, the Mexican plumed serpent.
In 1997, the Disney animated feature film Hercules was released, and, befitting a movie based (albeit loosely) upon tales from Greek mythology, it included an epic battle between the young demi-god hero and the Lernaean hydra. This multi-headed dragon has been summoned by Hades to destroy Hercules, but when he successfully kills it by causing a landslide, our hero finds himself elevated to celebrity status among the general public.
A year after Hercules, Disney released Mulan, a full-length animated musical that retold the Chinese legend of Hua Mulan, the daughter of elderly warrior Fa Zhou, who disguises herself as a male warrior in order to take her ailing father's place and battle an invading Hun army. Assisting Mulan in her endeavours is a small red Chinese dragon, Mushu, ostensibly her guardian but not overly brave. Voiced by American actor/comedian Eddie Murphy, Mushu is the film's principal comic-relief character, and reappears in the direct-to-video sequel, Mulan II (2004). Sadly, however, he does not appear in the live-action/CGI Disney remake of Mulan.
Dragons have appeared in big-screen cartoons made by other film production companies too, all over the world, but especially (as might be expected) in the Far East. For example, Little Nezha Conquers The Dragon King (1979) was a sumptuously-produced Chinese animated film that drew upon ancient Chinese mythology and followed the exploits of young warrior-deity Nezha. Thanks to his training by the immortal teacher and reincarnated Shang emperor Taiyi Zhenren, and after many trials and tribulations along the way, Nezha successfully defeats Ao Guang, the mighty Dragon King of the East Sea, thereby bringing peace to the Zhou Dynasty.
In 2002, the Academy Award (Oscar) Best Animated Feature was won by Spirited Away, a remarkable Japanese fantasy film produced by the celebrated Studio Ghibli, and both written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, in which a young girl, Chihiro Ogino, becomes trapped in a bizarre alternate reality populated by spirits and monsters while seeking her parents. One of the principal characters is Haku, a river spirit, who sometimes assumes the form of a young boy, but for much of the time appears as an enormous white Oriental dragon, who can fly without wings in the manner of many such dragons from the Far East.
In 1972, Australia released its first home-grown animated film musical, Marco Polo Junior Versus The Red Dragon. Voiced by American singer and former teen idol Bobby Rydell, Marco Polo Junior is the fourteenth heir of the famous Italian traveller whose name he shares, and journeys to the legendary Chinese kingdom of Xanadu to unite the two halves of a mystical medallion. While there, he rescues the beautiful Princess Shining Moon from a forced marriage, outwits a pair of bumbling spies, encounters a hypochondriac dinosaur, and confronts Xanadu's comically despotic ruler, the Red Dragon.
Vera Chapman's Arthurian novel The King's Damosel (1976) was the basis of an animated film entitled Quest For Camelot, produced by Warner Brothers and released in 1998. Telling the story of the quest for King Arthur's legendary sword Excalibur by reclusive blind youth Garrett and plucky teenage girl Kayley (whose bold ambition is to become a Round Table knight), it features for comic relief an amusing two-headed dragon called Cornwall (the uncouth head) and Devon (the sophisticated head). Voiced by Don Rickles and Eric Idle, its two heads ostensibly dislike each another, but ultimately come to realise that they are happier together than apart.
More recently, a female dragon with a passion for Donkey (hilariously voiced by Eddie Murphy) appears in the Shrek series of animated movies released by DreamWorks, their eventual romantic liaison resulting in a flock of winged donkey foals; a diverse series of dragons including the black-scaled Toothless, the multi-horned Stormfly, and the sparkly-white Light Fury feature in the How To Train Your Dragon movie franchise; and Therru the mighty Black Dragon embodying everlasting life in the 2006 Studio Ghibli masterpiece Tales From Earthsea (based upon the famous quadrilogy of Earthsea novels by Ursula LeGuin).
A number of 'made for television' cartoon films have featured dragons, but the most significant of these is The Flight of Dragons (1982), produced by Rankin/Bass. It was primarily inspired by Gordon R. Dickson's novel The Dragon and the George (1976) and its various 'Dragon Knight' sequels, but was also influenced by Peter Dickinson's speculative natural history book The Flight of Dragons (1979) and its evocative illustrations by Wayne Anderson. The central theme of this very vivid, colourful film, filled with warring wizards as well as spectacular dragons of several different types and behaviour, is whether the worlds of magic and science can co-exist or whether one is destined to supplant the other.
LIVE-ACTION AND CGI MOVIE DRAGONS
Creating a realistic live-action dragon on screen is clearly a more difficult task than simply drawing one for an animated film, but thanks to stop-motion special effects and the marvels of modern-day CGI (computer-generated imagery), some truly breathtaking successes have been achieved, which include the following examples.
The undisputed master of special effects achieved via the use of expertly-constructed models in conjunction with painstaking stop-motion animation was the late Ray Harryhausen (1920-2013), who personally developed an extremely effective, advanced version known as Dynamation. His meticulous work in this field turned films such as The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953), the Sinbad trilogy (1958, 1974, 1977), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), One Million Years B.C. (1966), The Valley of Gwangi (1969), and Clash of the Titans (1981) into cinematic masterpieces of fantasy and science fiction.
In April 2018, I was fortunate enough to visit a special exhibition held at Valence House in Dagenham, Essex, England, in which a sizeable number of the original models that appeared in various of his movies were on display. Entitled 'Dinosaurs, Harryhausen and Me', it was staged by expert model-maker Alan Friswell, a longstanding friend of mine, who had been officially commissioned by Ray and his estate to repair certain of his models that over time had become damaged due to their fragile nature, so he had unrivalled access to and knowledge about these iconic creations by Ray. Click here to access on my ShukerNature a detailed, fully-illustrated account of my very enjoyable visit to this exhibition.
Many famous mythological beasts featured in Ray's fantasy films, such as a roc, griffin, centaur, harpies, cyclops, winged homunculus, and snake woman, as well as two different dragons. One of these latter was a guardian dragon that appeared in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958). A typical wingless classical dragon that breathes fire, it is sent to kill Sinbad and his men by a villainous wizard called Sokurah. Fortunately, they are able to slay it using an enormous crossbow-like ballista, and as it falls, mortally wounded, it crushes Sokurah to death beneath its huge body – two enemies duly dispatched for the price of one!
In Jason and the Argonauts (1963), the Golden Fleece sought by Jason and his men is guarded by the Colchis dragon. Although this is usually depicted as a winged classical dragon, for maximum visual appeal Harryhausen represented it in the film as a multi-headed hydra-like version instead. It kills one of Jason's men, the treacherous Acastus, before being slain by Jason himself, who is then able to steal the Golden Fleece, and later returns with it in triumph to Thessaly.
There is no absolute consensus as to whether Godzilla (aka Gojira) is meant to be a radioactivity-engendered mutant dinosaur, a giant amphibious lizard, a modern-day dragon, or a combination of all three, but there is no doubt that its arch-enemy King Ghidorah is a dragon – a limbless, two-winged, twin-tailed, triple-headed, golden-scaled, fire-vomiting, laser-spewing dragon, to be precise! Ever since Godzilla debuted in the 1954 Japanese film of the same name, he has faced a daunting array of monstrous antagonists, but King Ghidorah is the most impressive, and has appeared in five Godzilla films so far. The first was Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964), in which it reaches Earth inside a meteorite from Outer Space, and proceeds to decimate Japan until finally sent packing by Godzilla, Rodan (a mutant pterosaur), and Mothra (a giant moth).
Dragons on the silver screen took an enormous step – or wingbeat – forward in 1981, with the release of Dragonslayer, a co-production between Walt Disney Studios and Paramount Pictures, which featured what was then the most realistic and visually stunning dragon ever seen in the movies. Bearing in mind that a quarter of the film's entire budget was spent upon designing and breathing life into its reptilian star attraction - a fire-breathing winged classical dragon called Vermithrax Pejorative who is appeased only by being fed two virgin maidens each year until sorcerer's apprentice Galen sets out to destroy it and its nest of rapacious dragonets – it is little wonder that the results were so eye-popping. Several highly complex, multi-part models were created, including one of its head for close-ups, a flying model, and a walking model, thereby eliminating the need for stop-motion cinematography by using a new technique called go-motion, in which the model was moved slightly while the camera was filming (rather than the camera filming a frame after the model had been moved).
One of the quirkiest dragon films ever released was director Larry Cohen's Q – The Winged Serpent (1982), in which a cult in New York City successfully resurrect the ancient flying serpent deity of Aztec mythology, who proceeds to swoop down from Manhattan's skies and skyscrapers to seize, dismember, and devour unwary city dwellers. In appearance, this odd-looking entity is not serpentine at all, instead resembling a rather gangly, long-necked quadrupedal dragon with wings, but its smooth skin seems devoid of typical reptilian scales or spines, and does not sport any feathers either (despite the original Quetzalcoatl being a plumed sky serpent).
Very different but no less memorable is Falkor the luck dragon, represented on screen as an Oriental-looking example with an inordinately lengthy body, an extremely large, heavy head, and a curiously canine face. He features in The NeverEnding Story (1984), based loosely upon the first half of the eponymous 1979 novel by Michael Ende, and also in its two sequel movies. The first of these sequels, The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter (1990), loosely covers the novel's second half, but the second one, The NeverEnding Story III: Return to Fantasia [aka Escape From Fantasia] (1994), features an entirely original story, though it does include characters from the novel.
By the mid-1990s, on-screen dragons had begun to go digital, as evinced by the CGI-created specimen voiced by Sean Connery in Dragonheart (1996). When Draco, the world's last dragon, encounters Bowen (played by Dennis Quaid), the world's last dragon-slayer, it initially appears that only one of them will survive their meeting. Happily, however, some enlightening conversation convinces them to join forces instead, and the scene is set for a dynamic confrontation with the evil King Einon.
Perhaps the epitome of the modern-day dragon film, however, is Reign of Fire (2002), directed by Rob Bowman, and starring Christian Bale and Matthew McConaughey. Set in the year 2020, this post-apocalyptic film reveals the devastation that has resulted after a sleeping dragon was inadvertently chanced upon and woken in an underground cave during some construction work on the London Underground shortly after the beginning of the new millennium. The dragon forced its way to the surface, swiftly multiplied, and within a dozen years humanity was virtually wiped out by a worldwide plague of flying fire-breathing dragons. Finally, however, a brave survivor, Quinn Abercromby (played by Bale), and his isolated community hiding out in a Northumberland castle reluctantly join forces with a band of American fighters led by Denton Van Zan (McConaughey) to bring to a decisive end the dragons' literal reign of fire. Although the story's premise seemed decidedly far-fetched, the special effects were truly astonishing.
The same is true of Dragon Wars (2007), a South Korean film released in the West. In it, a benevolent imoogi and a malevolent imoogi (Korean serpent dragons) battle for supremacy, the latter employing an army of Western dragons, humanoid warriors, and dinosaurian monsters, and razing much of Los Angeles in the process.
An intriguing update of a classic story is the premise of the 2011 film Age of the Dragons. Here, Herman Melville's timeless novel Moby Dick is reinvented as a search by an alternate-world Captain Ahab (played by Danny Glover) and his crew not for a great white whale, but rather for a great white dragon.
So far, the dragons and dragon-riders of the planet Pern, chronicled in the extensive series of novels by Anne McCaffrey, have not been portrayed on the big screen. However, an equally outstanding set of space dragons that have been portrayed are those of Pandora - a lush verdant moon orbiting an enormous gas giant planet, Polyphemus, in James Cameron's blockbuster film Avatar (2009).
One of the most dramatic Pandoran species is the ikran or mountain banshee. Somewhat pterodactylian in superficial appearance, this is a huge mountain-dwelling aerial carnivore with two pairs of leathery wings (larger fore and smaller aft, boasting an average wingspan of 45.5 ft for its fore pair). It can be ridden by only the bravest Na'vi warriors (the Na'vi are the 9-10-ft-tall blue-skinned humanoids native to Pandora). A smaller relative is the ikranay or forest banshee, inhabiting rainforests and sporting a 23-ft wingspan. Most spectacular of all, however, is the closely-related toruk or great leonopteryx, a brightly-coloured iridescent behemoth of the skies, which is the apex aerial predator of Pandora. Possessing a stupendous 75-ft-plus wingspan, it has even attacked human aircraft, believing them to be competing predators invading its territory. At the opposite end of the size scale is the riti or stingbat, a butterfly-like dragon indigenous to the rainforest canopy, with a wingspan of just 4 ft, and of only very limited intelligence. Although very aggressive and armed with lethal tail spines, these small creatures are treated almost as pets by some Na'vi, who feed them fruit by hand.
A rich variety of dragons have also featured in the 21st-Century screen versions of J.K. Rowling's 'Harry Potter' novels and her newer 'Fantastic Beasts' movie series, Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the three-part The Hobbit (all directed by Peter Jackson), and Christopher Paolini's Eragon in his 'Inheritance Cycle' series.
Even more recently, a veritable phalanx of CGI-driven dragon movies have appeared on DVD, some directly, others following either a cinematic or a TV release. My own DVD collection includes such examples as The Adventures of a Dragon Hunter, The Christmas Dragon, Dragon, The Dragon Chronicles, Dragon Crusaders, Dragon Hunter, Dragon Mountain, Dragon Quest, Dragon Soldiers, Dragon Storm, Dragon World, Dragonheart: A New Beginning, Dragons Rage, Dungeons and Dragons: The Movie, Dungeons and Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God, George and the Dragon, and I Am Dragon, to mention but a few!
All in all, there is every reason to believe that the age of the dragon will live on and attain even greater heights of awe-inspiring wonder in future generations of films on the big screen.
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This Shuker In MovieLand multi-movie review is an expanded, updated excerpt from my book Dragons In Zoology, Cryptozoology, and Culture.
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