Christian Bale's Dragon Movie Infamously Lied To Audiences With Its Marketing

We here at /Film stan Rob Bowman's 2002 post-apocalyptic/fantasy mashup "Reign of Fire." The premise of the film is pretty wild B-movie gold. In the present, a young boy named Quinn witnesses a London Underground construction project unearth a long-hibernating dragon from deep in a cave. The dragon can breathe fire and attracts other dragons that begin to fill the skies. Fast-forward to the distant future of 2020, and dragons have essentially destroyed the surface of the planet with their fire breath and wiped out the bulk of the human population. Quinn, now played by Christian Bale, is hiding in caves, trying to keep the last surviving humans alive and hopeful. 

And hope may be on the horizon. Because the dragons have nothing left to burn, they have run out of food. Dragons eat ash, you see (!), and their fire-breath — produced by napalm glands in their mouths — is merely a means to "pre-digest" their food. Bale gives one of the best performances of his career in "Reign of Fire," merely because he manages to describe the dragons' physiology with a straight face. He also holds his own against a bug-eyed, full crazy-mode Matthew McConaughey as an American dragon hunter who teams up with Quinn to fight the dragons. 

The film is mostly a downbeat post-apocalyptic drama, which may explain why it bombed (on a $60 million budget, it only earned $82.2 million, which, by Hollywood accounting, is not a break-even). 

It also likely didn't help that the (admittedly silly) premise was misrepresented in the advertising. The previews seemed to promise more action than the film ultimately had. It also misrepresented the year in which the film is set (2084) and the movie's general plot. It wasn't about a mobilized military strike.

Cutting previews to make a movie look more exciting is a practice as old as the medium, of course, but with "Reign of Fire," it was especially egregious. In the preview, there is a scene of Denton Van Zan, Matthew McConaughey's character, talking about how he has discovered that London is the dragons' home base. There are then many shots of the military rolling out, presumably to confront the dragons. There are motorcycles, skydiving, and a lot of high-octane mayhem. The movie makes it look like it's mostly action, with the military wailing on a dragon populace in London. Some Redditors have registered their annoyance that no such scenes appeared in the movie. 

Some of the above did happen in the movie, but not exactly as seen in the preview. Denton does indeed scramble his well-armed mercs to travel to London to confront a dragon. But the movie as a whole actually stays in one location. Overall, "Reign of Fire" concerns Denton and Quinn teaming up to protect Quinn's base of operations from dragon attacks. 

The plot goes like this: humans eventually realize that all the dragons they've been fighting are female, and that there is only one male, hiding out in London, who has been busy impregnating his entire species. Denton does plan on going to London to confront the male, but his military envoy is ambushed by the male dragon from above not long after they leave their compound. They then flee back to the compound, and that's where the final confrontation takes place. Sorry, but there is no midair helicopter strike on a dragon. 

The poster for "Reign of Fire" was also misleading. It was an amber-hued landscape, a wide shot of London on fire. Westminster Palace and Big Ben are seen in flames, and a flock of dragons breathes fire from overhead. Through the smoke, one can see two helicopters approaching, likely ready to fire explosive weapons at one of the fire-breathing monsters. 

This scene was skipped over in the movie's narrative. The dragons awaken in the present day, and the action then fast-forwards to 2020, after the world has been ruined and the people are in hiding. The actual destruction of London was long over by the time we caught up with Quinn, and wasn't dramatized. 

To be fair, "Reign of Fire" has its share of mayhem. There is a violent confrontation with dragons, featuring Denton flying through the air, screaming, about to swing an axe. But the movie is not an action spectacular, focusing more on worldbuilding and character than 'splosions. It's possible that viewers felt hoodwinked by the preview and the poster and stayed away from the movie. 

Regardless, "Reign of Fire" has accrued a loving cult over the years, seen on Reddit and in other places where fans of B-movies congregate. Many admire the film's atmosphere, the performances of the two lead actors, and the recognizable supporting cast; Izabella Scorupco, Gerard Butler, Alexander Siddig, and Alice Krige all appear in the movie. It comes from a time in the '90s and early '00s when scaly monsters were common in movies (and even borrowed each other's VFX). It joined a range of beloved films like "Dragonheart," "Dinosaur," "Jurassic Park III," and "Lake Placid." "Reign of Fire" is a hoot.