Dragonheart: Battle for the Heartfire

Having watched all the Dragonheart movies so far, the ranking for me goes like this now: 1. Dragonheart 2. Dragonheart 3: The Sorcerer's Curse 3. Dragonheart (4): Battle for the Heartfire 4. Dragonheart (2): A New Beginning 5. Dragonheart (5): Vengeance.

The CGI is fantastic in this movie and trumps the first even. (Alright it's fantastic by Dragonheart standards). I was genuinely surprised by how good the dragon and various spells and effects looked, heartfire and all. The dragon gets a lot of screen time in this movie too, which is very welcome.

This also means a lot of the budget went on said CGI. But I'm glad for that. The set pieces and costumes were also good, but scale was often a bit out, sometimes a town looks massive and there seem to be maybe 15 inhabitants in total. They should've used the CGI for extra people maybe.. -1 star

The story, at its core, is quite engaging. A tale of twins marked at birth, unbeknownst to the dragon they're bonded to.

The writing, on the other hand is very unpredictable in quality. It actually has very good moments, then suddenly just becomes below-average for a time, then peaks again. No joke, there are some good lines in this movie. But then the writers take a couple days off. -1 star

The dragon, Drago, is written well and Patrick Stewart's voice is just great. The second best dragon in the series I'd say. Now the writers did have trouble keeping Drago a dragon. There are points in the movie where you'd think he was a man from how clumsy he is or how he loses a fight. It's very weird... but thankfully like the rest of the story, he has his strong moments to make up for it. -1 star

The feminism half-way through the movie slows it to a crawl and feels like it does make some form of sense with the story, so maybe if it was done with a bit more humour and wasn't so baked into the main story, it could've worked. -1 star.

The music is alright. It's pretty sparse and suddenly appears out of nowhere here and there, but it's good enough.

Overall, an enjoyable movie for Dragonheart fans, for others, it depends on whether or not you can stomach some bad dialogue here and there. There are good moments to be had.

I can see that most of the male contributors hated the movie and most of the female contributors loved it. This could be happening because the movie revolves more around psychological and emotional aspects of both dragons and humans insted of bloody wars and fights as you would see in, for example, game of thrones.

I think Rafaella de Laurentis is giving her fans something that is almost non-existant in the movie market. Yes, the plot is extremelly weak, as have been all of the Dragonheart plots after the first movie. The dragons and the effects are probably not the best in Hollywood either. But these movies keep coming out despite their poor economic revenues, and that's something dragon fans should be greatful for.

NOT EVERYBODY likes beastly, evil, brainless, pet dragons as those of games of thrones. When I picture a dragon, I picture a wise, elder creature, just as these movies present them. If I want to see a winged dinosaur out of control, Hollywood is full of them.

I am more than willing to sacrifice CGI perfection just to see dragons as those from the DragonHeart franchise. I've fallen in love with every one of them. The plot, however, should be improved. The first DragonHeart had an awesome plot and I'm sure they can go back to that.

This film was a pleasant surprise! I found this one enjoyable. I liked this one much better than the 2nd in the series. I like this one quite a bit.

6.5/10.

Solid low budget film. The acting isn't too bad. The fight scenes are pretty good, cgi dragon very realistic. If you go in with reasonable expectations I think you can really enjoy the film.

Fun family Bmovie flick that's going to suffer from a few various trends

-the hatred for Dragonheart sequels.

-the current anti-PC culture that starts screeching about their hatred for feminism when a woman shows any sign of strength.

All by all unwarranted negatives, this movie was surprisingly entertaining and well made. If you like medieval stories with dragons that aren't into burning humanity to the ground, it's certainly worth checking it out.

And no, for the love of it, you do NOT need to see Dragonheart 3 to understand what's going on. In fact, if you have seen DH1 then I suggest skipping 2 and 3 entirely and go straight to 4.