Age of the Dragons

I thought the basic idea to remake Moby Dick in a slightly steam-punk version with dragons was intriguing enough. Sure, this is probably not gonna be a film for the ages, but it could be entertaining for ninety minutes.

But it's just horrible. Oh so horrible. The acting is some of the worst I have ever seen, if I account for the fact that they did indeed use professional actors. Danny Glover and Vinnie Jones have never been praised for their craft when playing the shallow roles they've played before. Here now, they are cast in character roles and that is a disaster. Jones tries to summon some gravitas by constantly suckling on this wee pipe of his and it looked ridiculous. The other male actors are underwhelming at best. They seem to have been selected because they all resemble other (more talented) actors.

The female lead was clearly cast based on "Who was the hottest chick that showed up?" Her acting is the worst.

The screenplay is just clown shoes. But the real highlight of this thing is the "ship". It looks like a carrack without sails, but wheels instead. It moves forward by means of ... erm, nobody knows. At the very least, they should have lamp-shaded it. But no.

This thing is only a 2/10 because the dragon special effects are somewhat decent. Somewhat. Otherwise it would be a 1/10.

I don't understand all the hate and the 1/10 for this movie. Sure it won't be my movie of the year, or i can't say i was amaze by it, but i was sure entertained. The special effect are better than what i expected for a movie i came across randomly without any theatre release. The chicks is hot and i like her character just like Ishmael. People complain about the acting, maybe its cause i watched the movie in french(dubbed) but it was very correct, nothing to complain on this...

Basically i watched this at late night whitout expecting much and i was entertain and liked it. I saw way worse movie with bigger budget, and even winning Oscars...(ahem... hurtlocker...)

It started out fine, the Camera work, Animation and all the effort put into the visual aspect of the movie was GREAT, in fact at times seemed FANTASTIC !, but the Acting was a DOGs Breakfast, brought down the whole plot !. As i watched this visually pleasing movie, I only prayed the acting would get better and well it didn't, all i could think of was how they tried to implement "BOOK" dialog into a MOVIE, almost WORD FOR WORD, WHAT WERE THEY THINKING ???, The funniest part is when some of them don't know how to express their emotions, I mean the whole plot was confusing to say the least, how did that thing even move for days...?, a 4x4 under the hood ?, no smoke or wind or horse driven, then how the hell does it move, show us something..., this thing is a JOKE !

This adaption of Moby Dick was terrible! I love SciFi and watched the whole thing anyway. Basically, it's dragons in stead of whales and a white dragon in stead of a white whale. It features a crazy land-ship that's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside; it sleeps eight people in separate quarters, kitchen/dining/storage and office in a vehicle the size of a bus. Propulsion of the ship left me scratching my head too - no sails, no horses pulling it, no steam engine, it just rolls on wooden wheels in an age of harpoons and cross bows - I didn't get it. The effects were reasonably good. I liked most of the actors. But the premise, story line and dialog were so bad that it took down the entire movie to a (1) "awful".

Despite the very low rating this movie had received here on IMDb, I still decided to give it a go. Why? Well because it was a movie with dragons, and I do like fantasy movies and dragons as well, and also because I have been playing Dungeons & Dragons for some odd 25 years or so by now, so anything that just remotely smells like something in that genre does spark an interest in me.

I am puzzled at why the movie have scored such a low rating. I found the movie to be rather good. It had a good story, and yeah, it is basically just a re-make of the "Moby Dick" story. But so what? Hollywood have pumped out re-makes of old movies by the dozens these last couple of years, so why not also another re-make of "Moby Dick"? (One that wasn't as bad as the "2010: Moby Dick" movie!) In "Age of the Dragons" you just change the white whale out with a white dragon, and set the story into a fantasy-medieval setting. I found it interesting enough. And also, there was a very great feeling to the environment, as they had really managed to capture the essence of what I believe a fantasy-medieval setting (with dragons) would actually be like (of course, I am leaning much on my Dungeons & Dragons experience here).

The effects in "Age of the Dragons" were great. The dragons looked real and believable, as did the wyverns. However, one thing did jab a thorn in my side. As an avid role-player of the Dungeons & Dragons game, I am accustomed to white dragons breathing intense cold, not fire. So that was sort of something that didn't sit well with me. But of course, I am familiar with the stereotypical mythological approach that all dragons breathe fire, so it was alright. Just would have been cooler (no pun intended) had it been a breath of deadly cold instead.

As for the acting in "Age of the Dragons", well I though people did good jobs, and they had managed to put together a rather good ensemble of actors and actresses actually. The role of Ahab was played by Danny Glover, and I think he actually pulled this off quite nicely. But also, Vinnie Jones (playing Stubb), Corey Sevier (playing Ishmael), Sofia Pernas (playing Rachel), Larry Bagby (playing Flask) and Kepa Kruse (playing Queequeg) did great jobs. I especially enjoyed Kepa Kruse's performance and his somewhat odd character, that really brought some flavor to the movie.

"Age of the Dragons" was also a movie full of visual treats. The town was nice to look at, and it really had that unique touch to it, making it believable as if you were there in fantasy-medieval times. But the scenery once the group ventured out into the wilderness in search of the great white dragon, that was just breathtakingly beautiful. I do love the scenery of snow and snow-clad majestic mountains.

I was a little bit puzzled by Ahab vessel. A huge metallic boat-like vehicle? Alright, sure, great enough idea. But just how was the vessel propelled? What forced the wheels to go round, there was no sign of any type of engine, mechanical or alchemical of any sorts. And also, the vessel looked rather small when seen outside, but inside it seemed to easily fit the entire crew and then some. So in my opinion there was a matter of questionable reason in the dimensions of this odd vessel.

But aside from that, then I found "Age of the Dragons" to be rather interesting and entertaining. And if you do like fantasy movies, then I definitely would recommend this movie, despite it being a re-make of "Moby Dick".