MovieChat Forums > DragonHeart (1996) Discussion > Such a mix of great and garbage...

Such a mix of great and garbage...

posted 10 years ago by Bernnard_Black
3 replies | jump to latest

This film is one of the best examples I can think of where it has really fantastic elements, and really crappy ones that end up making it just average.

Great:

1: The score. Should have won the Oscar that year.

2: The dragon effects. In a time before motion capture, they did a hell of a job making the dragon look like Connery. It gave him so much more character than he might have had.

3: Story. The story is really quite good, and has a neat "twist".

Terrible:

1: The acting. When you have film veterans like Thewlis, Postlewaithe and Isaacs and you STILL get terrible acting, there's a problem.

2: Dennis Quaid. A hit or miss actor anyway, and with that stupid-ass voice, he was just awful. To think they could have had Liam Neeson, but didn't think anyone would buy him as an action hero. Oh, what could have been...

3: Whiny bad guy. Einon was pretty whiny, so much so that I didn't hate him as a bad guy as much as I hated him for just being whiny.

Here's to the health of Cardinal Puff.

[–] Random Terrain 8 years ago

I'm 24 minutes into it and so far it looks like it was filmed as a comedy and they changed their minds in editing.

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[–] aleaa-96413 8 years ago

After reading the IGN interview with Patrick Read Johnson and Charles Edward Pogue's novelization of the film, DragonHeart really could have been a lot better if Universal hadn't butted in with their bad ideas like casting American actors in a film set in Medieval Europe (like no one would notice), and dumbing down the screenplay just to make the movie family-friendly. It was written to be a mature film, and the people at Universal messed it up just to be more "hip and current."

The novelization goes in-depth with the characters, fleshes out the story, and goes at a better pace than the film, which feels a tad rushed and should have had a longer running time.

Made a petition for a remake to help resolve these problems - http://www.thepetitionsite.com/919/037/836/remake-dragonheart/

[–] annedoe 8 years ago

I haven't seen the movie yet but 3 actors will later be in the HP series