Movie Review: Dragon Wars
Published September 17, 2007
Wow. Where to begin? This film was nearly incomprehensible. Dragon Wars is so bad it's funny. Seriously, this is perfect fodder for Mystery Science Theater 3000-style commentary. I sat in the darkened theater on opening night, and only three other brave souls joined me. That is not a good sign, but it was still more than the number who went to see DOA: Dead or Alive on opening night.
Dragon Wars is a Korean import which sports the largest budget ever for a Korean production at around $30 million. I am wondering where the budget went. As far as I can guess, it was all spent on the effects, which were not all that great (although I am willing to overlook that). Here is the short of it: see this if you are looking for a movie that is so bad it's funny; wait for DVD if you are curious and like dragon movies; do not see this if you want to retain all brain cells and are hoping for a good movie.
As I sat there, shaking my head in dismay, I tried to think just where this project might have gone so wrong. Was it in the editing bay? Could there be a lot more footage that would flesh out the story and characters that was left on the cutting room floor? I know something was. There is a listing for the version that played in Europe that is 107 minutes long, a good twenty minutes longer than the American release. I do not know what the running time in Korea was.
The next place it could have gone wrong was in the translation. It is a Korean film, so I am assuming that it was written in Korean. However, the film does star American actors and was shot primarily in English. Perhaps there was something lost in translation. I find that to be unlikely, but I am sure it is a possibility.
We could also go all the way back to when writer/director Hyung-rae Shim was writing the screenplay. If the basis is flawed, it stands to reason that the final product will be flawed. When you are directing your own script, there is one more skipped layer of checks and balances. One less person to read the script and say: "This is awful." The more I watched, the more I got the sense that there was an Ed Wood-like attitude at work. Wood was not a good filmmaker, but he was in love with the art of it all. Shim may be like that, in love with what he put on the page and what was appearing in the dailies. Love will put blinders on you, keeping you from seeing how poor the product really is.
Christopher Beaumont spends much of his time writing about entertainment when he isn't sitting in a movie theater. He is known around the office as the "Movie Guy" and is always ready to talk about his favorite form of entertainment and offer up recommendations. Interests include science fiction, horror, and metal music. His writings can be found at Draven99's Musings and Draven99's Media Center. 
- Movie Review: Dragon Wars
- Published: September 17, 2007
- Type: Review
- Section: Video
- Filed Under: Video: Action, Video: Fantasy, Video: Foreign Language
- Writer: Chris Beaumont
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okay okay, so i made a mistake of watching the movie, I thought it was this big battle of fire breathing dragons vs. humans. What a plot eh? Boy was i wrong, the part where the "father of the boy" left him in the hands of a creepy guy because he could get 1k dollars for his stupid dagger left me with a sour taste in my mouth. I almost want to scream "run kid its MJ" Then robert foster started talking about imoogi. "i honestly thought he was talking about food" Instead of focusing in the romance storyline, i found myself laughing the whole time at the ROBOTIC CGI's and how actors just kept popping in the screen with no provocations. Also why do they keep leaving the cameraman/"token black guy" with the enemies. They did it twice and for some reason he manages to survive and go to work the next morning. It is a highly laughable and it doesn't emulate any real attachment to the storyline. I found that the only thing to keep your sanity while watching this movie is to laugh at the story. One last thing, why oh why is there about half a second pause when the bad guys sword would come out of its hilt, its like they want you to see that the sword is actually extending? In the end this movie is reminiscent of a bad martial arts movie with weird dialog and somewhat bad dubbing. I feel bad for jason behr and robert foster. I hope they read the script before they actually agree'd to the movie. Over all this movie ranks 2nd to the lowest in my list, GIGLI being first. I still wonder if i can get a refund and i could get the 90 minutes of my life back.
This review and the comments thus far are so on the money. I almost became crosseyed when the old guy started talking to the kid about imoogi-this and imoogi-that. I was thinking the hole time (and I mean "hole" because watching this movie can leave a hole in your brain, it is simply that dumb), "what the eff is he talking about man?". And what was that stuff about "the will of heaven".
This thing was totally incomprehensible. And that's putting it kindly. And I thought of Corman also. Somewhere in the pic, I learned over to my friend and said "this reminds me of Plan 9 from Outer Space".
Wow. I'm really glad I didn't pay money to see that. Being that it was free, there WERE worse things I could have done with my time. And I've seen worse. I was mildly entertained.
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Your review was right on the money. Mr. Shim felt his script was perfect and made NO CHANGES to his first draft.
He has a huge ego and the mindset of a fifth grader. He has no clue as to what has been happening with the fantasy genre since he was ten years old. (And hey, Godzilla had an anti-nuclear energy message, but I'm sure Shim didn't know that.)
I assisted one of the producers on the earlyy stages of this film. There were more inaccuracies, like a reference to the American Minister of Defense. We DON'T HAVE A MINISTER OF DEFENSE.
The actors tried to correct what they could but there was one error I wished they left in.
Originally the Imoogi destroyed Inglewood, not Silverlake.
I thought this would be unintentionally hilarious, but they didn't want that line to be funny.
Tony Young