Dust off the lances and saddle up your trusty steed, because The Flight of Dragons is the Greatest Movie EVER!
Click on the DVD cover or the movie title above to download our review of the film, featuring guest co-host Chad “Winter” Clayton.
Review in a Nutshell: With a narrative borrowed from several different sources, The Flight of Dragons gets by more on its weird visual aesthetic than on the strength of its story. This film is another Rankin / Bass related emotional scar on my childhood.
This movie contains:
Evil Dragons.
Scary Wizards.
Everybody Dies.
The Greatest Movie EVER! Podcast 
Right now, my conspiracy theory is that you’re reviewing this because you want to throw a big fat loogie in “How to Train your Dragon’s” eye.
BTW, I was gonna send you an e-mail, but I might as well say it here. I IMPLORE you to review “I Know Who Killed Me” Recently I heard that it was made intentionally to be horrible, but I don’t believe it. I need another opinion on it.
I haven’t been paying attention to what goes on in the movie theaters much recently, so I’m only vaguely aware of “How to Train Your Dragon”, which I’ve heard positive reviews about but have honestly no interest in seeing.
“I Know Who Killed Me” is another film that doesn’t even show up on my radar. I remember seeing a trailer for it once and deciding that it wasn’t something that interested me. I doubt it’s worth watching, let alone podcasting about.
Well no one thought that “I know Who Killed Me” was worth seeing. It’s a tremendous bomb, but at least to me, it’s a fascinating curiosity, especially how the “plot” was resolved.
The movie is a strange beast, yes, and not exactly subtle but still an interesting watch nonetheless. It’s one of those films that stumbles a bit, as far as technical merits go, yet manages to be pretty entertaining and occasionally disturbing.
Logic wins, sure, but the message is that it’s okay for magic to exist somewhere as a source for creative inspiration or something along those lines. That’s fine by me. As muddled as this may seem, you didn’t really have too many animated movies dealing with that kind of subject matter at the time.
The Dragon and the George series were some of my favorite books growing up.
I think I caught the end of this movie on cable once and thought I dreamed it. So thanks as always for an excellent and informative review .
BTW, the theme of the hero actually suffering consequence does happen in How to Train Your Dragon. That in itself is a spoiler for the film, so I wont go further. I have not seen it, but I heard about it in a review.
Oh man, I’d totally forgotten about this movie. I can just barely drudge up some memories of the very end, and that’s about it.
Until I pay off my credit card debt, I’m not allowed to look at the Warner Archive. I know there’s more than a few movies in there I want. They calls me…they calls me, they does…
I also barely remember this movie. I didn’t remember it at all until about ten minutes into the review, and even now I can only dredge up a few scenes. I remember the books better, though they’re hardly my favorites.
I remember the books best because they took a more realistic slant about what it meant to give up living in the modern world and moving to a Medieval one. For example, a sequence that always really stood out in my mind is the hero’s wife, who’d stayed with him in the Medieval world, blowing up at her husband because while he was gallivanting around being the hero she was stuck alone at their castle dealing with things like ordering the whipping and execution of serfs for what, to her modern eyes, were minor offenses. And later him realizing that if he died on one of his quests she would be left alone in a medieval world that didn’t value women that highly.
The books just felt like they took a surprisingly real tone compared to other fantasy novels I was reading at the time.
@vichussmith in regards to “suffering” in “How to Train Your Dragon…”
There are consequences for what the hero does but maybe because adults think kids can’t handle suffering it’s never explored… quite the opposite happens and it’s immediately turned into something that makes the hero’s life cooler.
It was a entertaining to watch but it’s another one of those, “the adults don’t know anything kids have to show ’em the way” films.
BACK ON TOPIC: I’m very interested in checking out this film now.
@Gin:
I think the suffering was addressed pretty skillfully at the end of “Dragon.” It was a small and subtle moment, but I think the movie was stronger for it, because it seemed more genuine. It definitely seemed more genuine than his subsequent good cheer, because it happened at a time when he was alone with one of the few characters that could understand his pain.
Check out the Worst Movie Ever! Podcast
http://www.lucky9studios.com/worstmovieever/
@steve I agree that the consequence did make the film strong… I think we’re more or less saying the same thing… what follows isn’t genuine and the effect of that kind of says, “oh well at least FUN TIMES YEAH.”
So this is why I don’t think there’s “suffering.” 😉
You should really do a podcast over Doc Savage, He is my idol. You should also look into the Hellraiser series.