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.

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".

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".

This adaption of Melville's Moby Dick is neither great nor terrible, it's OK. It's set in a medieval like world, where people hunt dragons for their vitriol (fire juice?) that helps run its machines and lamps. CGI dragons, boats that run on roads, and the usual crappy script. The acting is OK (Glover was a little over the top, Vinnie Jones was surprisingly OK), the story was predictable, the pace was slow at times but not too bad. All in all, a mediocre movie about dragons. Not as thrilling as Reign of Fire, but not as horrible as Dungeons and Dragons. I would say it's slightly worse than Eragon, if that's any indication. You won't claw your eyes out at the end, but you won't watch this again. Strictly for dragon lovers.

Summary: The movie was bad. Don't watch it unless you really are desperate.

Details: This is a steampunk version of Moby Dick where they follow the dragons in a huge wagon across snow covered mountains to chase and lance dragons.

People love to complain about the special effects in SyFy channel movies. I found it adequate, better than older Science Fiction classics like Forbidden Planet. The acting was not great but that wasn't what killed the movie. It was the script. It was horrible, rank even by SyFy channel's low standards.

You don't need a huge budget to make a wonderful Science Fiction movie if you have a good script. The Man From Earth is an outstanding example. A cast of eleven and no special effects, yet it was marvelous. This had a comparatively huge budget with costumes, sets, scenes, special effects explosions, everything except a decent script.

We all know that SyFy loves to inflict bad movies on its audience. Why it only chooses such rank scripts, I have no idea. But this one should have been rejected even by them. You can't take a classic story that has been done so well by so many and just do a plot less, trash version without being laughed at.