Reign of Fire used dragons to spark an apocalypse in the UK, making it one of the wildest movies of the 21st century. Reign of Fire merges the fantasy and post-apocalyptic genres by featuring several tropes of each, with a small group of survivors living a bleak existence that gets threatened every so often by enormous dragons. Its unusual approach to the fantasy genre makes Reign of Fire one of the best dragon movies of all time. However, despite its interesting premise and star-packed cast, the movie did not impress critics.
Reign of Fire has a 41% positive critical score on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics generally saw the movie as a clashing mess of ideas, but it was more popular with audiences as it had excellent visual effects and performances from its lead characters. Reign of Fire is one of Matthew McConaughey's best movies, with the actor appearing as a muscle-bound American dragon hunter, with his reluctant collaborator, a survivor from the original dragon attack, being one of Christian Bale's best-underrated characters.
Reign Of Fire Stars Two Future Oscar Winners
Gerard Butler Also Has A Major Role In Reign Of Fire
The plot of Reign of Fire sounds like a B-movie but it has a surprisingly famous cast. Christian Bale plays Quinn, who witnessed the dragon's awakening. He manages a group of survivors who are growing more desperate by the day until an armored convoy of dragon hunters arrives. Denton Van Zan, played by Matthew McConaughey, is their larger-than-life leader, who might have the answer to ending the apocalypse. Bale and McConaughey both won Academy Awards later, with Bale winning Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Fighter, and McConaughey winning Best Actor for Dallas Buyers Club.
Among all the well-known faces,
Reign of Fire
even features Jack Gleeson (
Game of Thrones
's Joffrey) in a brief and uncredited role.
Gerard Butler is still best known for his standout role as King Leonidas in 300, but the multi-award-winning actor has appeared in many more action films. Butler plays Quinn's best friend and fellow survivor, Creedy, in Reign of Fire. The two manage the failing survivor encampment together while putting on two-man productions of famous movies for the children living there. Reign of Fire is still one of Gerard Butler's best action movies, and this relatively early role showcased Butler's acting skills in some unexpectedly emotional moments.
Reign Of Fire's Dramatic Potential Is More Impressive Than You Realize
A Reign Of Fire Reboot Might Finally Do It Justice
Reign of Fire might be over-the-top, but there are some unexpectedly emotional moments throughout the movie. Quinn and Creedy's growing desperation informs their characters and explains much of Quinn's hostility to Van Zan. While Van Zan appears to be more of a caricature when he first arrives, the character is developed, emphasizing the fact that Van Zan has seen similar horrors to Quinn. The scenes that the two characters share are often very serious and resemble typical moments found in war movies rather than a story about a dragon apocalypse. This juxtaposition makes Reign of Fire unintentionally hilarious at times.
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Reign of Fire might have several genres and ideas packed into one movie, but it is never boring. The movie is a wild and unpredictable ride from beginning to end, with plenty of ideas that could be explored. Mixing genres is now a fairly regular occurrence in the movie world, and a reboot of Reign of Fire could lean into one or more elements from the original movie. Considering the success of many recent movie and TV franchises which are compelling because they incorporate several different genres, Reign of Fire might simply have been ahead of its time.
Reign Of Fire Has Since Become A Cult Classic (Despite Its Box Office Failure)
Home Video Changed Everything
At the time of its release in 2002, Reign of Fire was just seen as a big, dumb action movie. While there were tentpoles, the post-MCU era of huge franchises that popularized wild fantasy with big, cheesy swings was still years away. X-Men had only come out two years prior; Sam Raimi's first Spider-Man movie only a few months before. Game of Thrones wouldn't hit TV screens and make dragons mainstream for another nine years. Reign of Fire's box office certainly reflected the zeitgeist: it badly underperformed at the box office, earning just $82 million against a budget of $60 million.
Despite that, Reign of Fire became a cult classic in the years after, another reason it deserves a reboot. As with so many flops that deserved a better reception than they got, once Reign of Fire hit home video, it was quickly embraced by those who had missed it in theaters to become a bona fide cult hit. It continued to add to its fanbase in the years after as Bale, McConaughey, and Butler went on to have big careers and their fans went back through their filmography to discover the 2002 action flick.
What A Reign Of Fire Reboot Could Look Like
The Original Movie Left A Lot Of Story To Tell
A Reign of Fire reboot could be a great deal of fun. While it still looks pretty great for a 2002 movie that used heavy CGI, today's VFX technology could make it look even more incredible, and it wouldn't be surprising if it were to borrow the same VFX house that brought Game of Thrones' and House of the Dragons' dragons to life. A scene from a flying dragon's point-of-view could be a standout, and with modern tech, it would be possible.
A scene from a flying dragon's point-of-view could be a standout, and with modern tech, it would be possible.
Beyond that, Reign of Fire left the door open for a future story. If the movie isn't rebooted entirely, a legacy sequel could serve as a narrative extension by picking up the threads from the ending of the movie. By Reign of Fire's end, it seemed as though the dragons had all been eradicated, but it would be easy enough for one or two to have survived to rebirth a new dragon scourge. If Bale and other actors whose characters survived wanted to return for a sequel, Reign of Fire 2 could pick up with them having rebuilt civilization only to watch the dragons try to tear it all down again. However it's handled, there's more than enough story for a great sequel, and it's overdue.
In present-day London, 12-year-old Quinn Abercromby witnesses the awakening of a hibernating dragon from a centuries-long slumber, the result of a construction dig supervised by his mother and an incident for which Quinn feels partially responsible. 20 years later, the adult Quinn (Christian Bale) is the fire chief of a refortified castle community, responsible for dousing the blazes lit by the dragon's prodigious number of flame-spewing offspring, airborne juggernauts that have wreaked havoc across the globe, torching civilization and turning humans into an endangered species. Hope arrives in the form of Denton "Dragon Slayer" Van Zan (Matthew McConaughey), an American known to be the only man to ever kill one of the dragons, and Alex (Izabella Scorupco), a scientist/pilot who's a member of Van Zan's army, a zealous fighting force that includes a secret weapon: the Archangels, paratroopers using themselves as bait to attract and then dispatch the deadly beasts.
English (US) ·