Firebreather

Firebreather can be said that a good animation. But it's not a great one. Mostly because of a fact that doesn't make sense. A child born with a dragon? I can understand that they wanted to create a character with the ability to produce fire, but it's not the perfect way to do it. If you think carefully, its not possible. How can a woman can have a child with a dragon? It entirely doesn't make any sense.

Except for this fact, Firebreather is kind of a good animation. If they could do something that makes sense, it'd be better than this.

Stumbled upon this flick by accident while reading reviews of other animations in a similar genre. I'll make this short and sweet. The pros of the movie is the CG graphics, the cons also include a super simplified and sometime barely evident history of each character and the under-developing of pretty much everything.

This is a good Saturday morning time killer or in general a snack for those who want some action vs. elongated dialogs between villains and heroes. Think of this analogy; Watching Firebreather is like playing Need For Speed Underground vs. Gran Turismo.

The common denominator I would say is the young superhero and the giant monsters. Fans of teen hero series such as Teen Titans, Young Justice and Batman beyond, as well as appreciators of the classics such as King Kong, Ultra Man, and (dare I say) the Power rangers may also enjoy this animation.

Nothing special but overall fun to watch.

Not being one to turn away from animated movies, I sat down to watch "Firebreather" with no particular expectations, as I had no idea what the story was or who did the voice acting.

My initial impression of the movie is that the graphics were fairly "sterile", in lack of better words. The animators had skipped on minute details, and there was a sense of work in progress to the background most of the time. Now, that being said, I am not saying that the movie wasn't nicely made, because the graphics did look cool, I just personally could have used more details in the backgrounds and scenery.

The story is about Duncan, who stands out in a crown because of his orange-tinted skin and scale-like texture on his skin, trying to fit into the new school and community where he just moved with his mother. Upon being bullied at school, Duncan discovers that he is able to breath forth fire, and that sets things into escalation, and Duncan finds out the truth about who his father really is.

There is a lot of action in "Firebreather", but the story is also nice in the aspect of having to find your place even when standing out in a crowd, plus there was also a side story of love and friendship. However, the main storyline, or at least what they put the most effort into, was the situation between humans and the Kaju. The subplots were skimmed only, not really given the proper attention to flesh them out in a satisfying manner.

Personally, I wasn't overly impressed with "Firebreather", as there are far better animated and far better story-driven animations available. But I am sure that "Firebreather" will appeal greatly to boys in the age 6 to 12.

You can tell this movie, most likely, got its expected budget cut several times. For a movie, the animation is sub par. The voice actors were amazing, the only highlight of this film. Story was amazing but dialog was weak. It developed normal enough I think the story board was probably rushed. All in all I just would not bother. Had way to many political garbage for an animated movie. I am an ARIES. It is very hard to make a movie about fire, or fire related things that I would not be into. Who you think you iz, freedom toons? Just skip to the next one on the list. This one is just not worth the time!

Entertaining, fast and effective, Firebreather turns out to be a Incredible's wanna-be for all of us who enjoyed the great superhero family-saga, as we are desperately waiting for a sequel. Though Firebreather isn't that sequel, it gives a taste of what could be. Of course there is the budget question, The Incredibles were made with some 92M$ for the big screen, what the little descendant took on expenses we can only assume...maybe 5-8 M$ ?

Well, it doesn't look cheap, on the contrary, the last 7 years in computer progress enabled CGI artists to produce good-looking 3d animations for a fraction of their previous cost. And this movie is an impressive showcase for decent Cartoon Networks's production abilities. If this is what we have to expect in the future, I appreciate that.

What Firebreather lacks, compared with the big predecessor, is story innovation and likable characters, its a mixture of the Movies mentioned in my Headline:

The Incredibles for some kind of family issues, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs for some CGI gymnastics and the town environment, How to Train your dragon for the father/son relationship and action movements, and Godzilla for the size and speed of the monsters.

Of all comics out there - and there are many good comics - I would not expect Firebreather to manage coming to cinematic life, and the second lack is that this Comic is not exactly well-known all over the world, so it left me a bit alone puzzling about the world it takes action in. It's a bit like these Manga stories which are about a future not too far, but far enough from us for energy weapons and other gadgets, and near enough to show a very current non-changed school system. People in this world are actually afraid of those huge Kajin Dragons, but not so much that they would talk about them all the time, so, maybe they became familiar with those violent beasts.

OK, one day, 16 years ago during a war between dragons and humans, our Hero's Mother rescued a complete town by facing the King of the Kaju (not exactly Japanese, but likely) Dragons, and while she faced him, they fell both in love and the result is their son, Duncan. It seems that the 300 ft father was not really the family guy type of a father, so he may have been disappeared for political reasons, and left the mother with their son alone. Only to come 16 years later and to ruin his son's poor attempts to find a place in his new high school. It turns out that the father has some plans for his half bread descendant, and Duncan has to fight against his father's will, his nature, other Kajun and, important enough, Highschool ignorance.

These are the provisions, and the movies tries hard to add some humor and to be be all things to everyone, but in some cases it fails. For example, when a 300 ft Dragon mates with a 5 ft woman, what's like it ? - There's a little funny dialog, where Duncan's mother does want to reveal details about that, but Duncan disagrees about the necessity. So we don't hear anything about intercourse between Dragon and humans, let alone DNA compatibility. It remains a magic secret.

Besides the few minor glitches the movie is absolutely watchable, full of amazingly nice rendered action and never boring, it tries even to bring in some new insights, like killing your enemies may not be the wisest decision. All things considered - well done.