D-War, or how to sell a movie with no plot
Published by Mary Jane September 25th, 2007 in previews
Dragons haven’t been this cool since Jane Yolen’s Dragon’s Blood. Queue gritty voiceover. “It began as a LEGEND!” … a whole bunch of mindless adjectives… “will turn our world into a BATTLEFIELD!” The timeless threat? Dragons. That’s right, some ancient Korean legend manages to rip a hole in the fabric of space to dump an ugly sea of flying, slithering, stomping reptiles into present day Los Angeles. Apparently there’s a whole story about a young woman who must sacrifice herself to one of the dragons in order to satiate destiny and allow it to ascend to heaven with a full stomach. In actuality, as you can plainly see in the trailer, it’s about attack choppers and tanks trying to fend off a magically undead dragon army. (They’re not actually undead, but it certainly sounds better.) D-War has amassed a paltry $5 million. If you hurry, you may still be able to catch it in theaters.
5 Comments to “D-War, or how to sell a movie with no plot”
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Are dragons still considered evil? I recall that they were when I was a kid, what with the princes always having to slay them and all, but now kids have lots of examples of happy, cuddly dragons, like the sexed-up dragon from Shrek, or these ones in a PBS show called Dragon Tales: http://pbskids.org/dragontales/index_sw.html (seriously, follow the link, it’s a funny juxtaposition with the D-War trailer!). It seems like kids are introduced to animals, both mythical and real animals that are fictionally represented, as beings with individual moralities. Take the lions in the Lion King, for example: you’ve got your good lions and your bad (ahem-gay–ahem) lions. It’s all about attitude. I guess that was also true as far back as Robin Hood with King Richard the good lion and Prince John the bad lion. Okay, so maybe it’s not so much a contemporary thing. Maybe it’s a CGI thing? The dragons in D-War just look like dinosaurs or big lizards. Is the definition of evil: anything that’s bigger and more powerful than us? It’s pretty sad to see them falling over after taking a bazooka hit. The dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were higher up on the food chain and they didn’t have to be evil, they were just hungry and “big boned.” Of course, there’s the Godzilla empire where the creature is considered evil, but that’s different because it is the product of man’s evil destructive technology that threatens to take out humanity with the click of a button. Maybe I’m just less afraid of the dragons in this trailer because the mindlessly violent, cavalier, fear-mongering giant waste of time and effort presented is far scarier.
ps–Thanks for citing one of the classic female sf/f writers, even if you’re kind of bagging on her.
Pfffft. I am so not bagging on Jane Yolen. I loved those books. I am a sap. A sap for huge, fire-breathing lizards. Her Web site, however, is fair game. Hello 1998.
Omg, I hadn’t clicked on the link the first time here. That would indeed be one outdated website.