Dragones: destino de fuego

Peru, my homeland, has been the first country in Latin America to produce full 3-D animated films. First movie to be released was "Piratas en el Callao", a really interesting story with not so interesting results as a movie. Then, the second movie to be made was this tittle.

Yes, it's a good thing to be the firsts in Latin America. Some aspects of the story are interesting, as well as the theme song by famous Peruvian pop singer Gian Marco (which also puts the voice for the main character). But that's it. There's not much to celebrate from this film.

But, the story, appreciated globally, is far from being original, having several copies (not elements, copies) from American animated films. Then, Peruvian actress Gianella Neyra is not even nice hearing, and perhaps is the worst decision of the director, maybe in a desperate attempt to gain fame. At the end, the result is very poor. A little disappointing since Peruvian film industry has given us good news among critics. Is not enough to be the firsts in Latin America, is necessary to be the bests.

This is certainly one of the uglier full-length CGI feature ever made and looks like a Windows 95 game cutscene from 1996. Actually it looks worse than that. I remember the opening of Wordcraft II at least looked somewhat epic, even if the movements of the models were a bit mechanical.

The story can be best described as an extremely simple rehash of Disney/Pixar plots. Some condors find a dragon's egg and raise it as their own (Jungle Book), dragon grows up thinking it's a condor but doesn't fit in (Hercules), eventually some female dragon comes to bring him back to his kingdom because he's a price and his kingdom is in trouble and he needs to save it (Lion King) because of some prophecy (most fairy tales).

It's basic, but it has such an immense volumes of tropes and cliches that it comes out being a passably unique pastiche. Surely something better than Lima National University's animation/computer science undergraduate students could come up for a school project.

The voices are competently done. Aside from the fugliness of the art style and graphics, the weakest element here is the character development. JohnJohn goes from being/acting like a baby dragon. He is teased in discriminated for his appearance and cowardly, even afraid of his own shadow. Female dragon comes in, turns him into an adult dragon immediately with fire, then he suddenly becomes a brave bully for no reason, eventually coming in him taking on some gigantic villains. What a drastic change. Must have been something in the fire.

JohnJohn is a really dumb name and both some firefly and the adult female dragon seem to develop a sexual attraction to JohnJohn, which is really weird considering just a few days prior to it he appears to have just been an infact.

Anyway, not worth discussing too deeply. It would be OK if it were an episode of a bad animation on TV, although I think people would be turned off by the ugliness of the animation.

Honourable Mentions: The Emperor's New Groove (2000). The creators REALLY wanted you to know this was a Peruvian production. They should have just plagiarized Groove, which is all about a llama. Neither production otherwise has anything to do with actual Peruvian culture, though.

I am commenting exclusively about the English language release of this title. This film had the lowest quality computer animation I have seen in some time. The voice talent was horrible and the script just as bad. It was painful to sit through. Absolutely pathetic. I really wanted to like it, but it's just awful. In the era of Pixar and the Dreamworks films, this item simply just does not cut it. It reminded me of a college (or high school)computer animation project. A C-minus one at that. While I appreciated the concept of a dragon being raised by condors, the writing was overwhelmingly simple and insipid. I pray my son doesn't want to watch it EVER again.

This film is a Peruvian success. Alpamayo is the company producing Dragones, and with this one have achieved a real little gem. The quality of the film is really improved compared to there previous production. actually this is there second one, and they have gone a real long way in the aspects of story and quality production. The little kids and the adults as well will enjoy this really moving and amazing story. Dragones can rival any major studio animation production, even though it was made with a quarter of the budget that major studios provide to their productions, and in less time. Way to go my friends, and keep up the good work.

The second Eduardo Schuldt-directed film, after 'Pirates in Callao', is after just viewing it the best of the four films of his seen (the others being 'Pirates in Callao', 'Fantastic Force', aka 'The Illusionauts', and 'The Dolphin: Story of a Dreamer'). With this being said, 'Dragons: Destiny of Fire' is still not very good and could have been much better.

'Dragons: Destiny of Fire' actually starts off very promisingly. The opening sequence is pretty epic while boasting the best visuals (actually in this scene pretty accomplished, one can see where most of the budget went) and particularly stirring music. One really wishes that the rest of the film was like that. The music has a lot of moments where it's stirring, whimsical and lush, there are some parts that are not that dynamic with what's going on (nowhere near as much as 'The Dolphin: Story of a Dreamer' though) but for low-budget animation, this was far from cheap-sounding music.

Some of the action has the right amount of thrills and things do pick up in the finale somewhat, awkward it may be but it's lively too and has a lot of good intent.

On the other hand, most of the animation, apart from the opening and some good attention to detail for the dragon underworld, is not great. The low budget does come through loud and clear and it was like a lot of time and money went into the opening and then they ran out of budget and realised the clock was ticking from that point on, because the animation and overall film quality declines drastically after the first five minutes. Cheap video games from the 90s look better and more refined, most of the colouring is flat and dull, the characters are plastic and look stiff and unnatural within their surroundings, the backgrounds are static and sparse in detail and the attention to detail is at best sloppy.

With 'Dragons: Destiny of Fire', the writing suffers from childish and barely amusing at best comedy and overused and patronising moralising and makes the mistake of over-utilising them both. The family lessons and values are cliché-ridden and their repetition strains beyond breaking point. The story never ignites fire and is erratically paced, the over-familiarity and blandness of the storytelling makes things feel very ho-hum and then from trying to cram too much in the story is very jumpy and rushed structurally.

Characters don't have enough to them to make one care for them, with an anti-thesis-of-likable protagonist who doesn't ever grow, annoying comedy relief and conflicts that lack any kind of urgency. The voice acting is ill-fitting for the characters and the worst of the actors are pretty amateurish.

In conclusion, doesn't have enough fire. 4/10 Bethany Cox