Holy God, Batman, Dragon Wars is awful. D-War, Dragon Wars, Vaginal Douche, whatever the hell you want to call it, this movie is the biggest piece of shit in years. This is a movie where, I’m assuming, the director had no idea how to speak English and decided to have a mentally handicapped third grader write the script’s first draft, and then have a mentally handicapped first grader do a quick rewrite. This is a movie where dragons body slam each other. This is a movie where all black characters are sassy, listen to generic rap, and, if given the chance before they are abruptly killed, would most likely bob their had and raise their pointer finger at the attacking dragons. This is a movie where English speaking people have Korean dreams subtitled in English. This is a movie where flashbacks have fucking flashbacks.
Dragon Wars, or D-War (no “s” here, kids!), is about some good dragons, who can shape shift into people, who pass on their power to other people to guard their dragon artifacts, who in turn, must thwart evil dragons who shape shift into humans who only come out every 500 years and then who gives a fucking shit. This movie essentially tries to take all the good aspects from American Movies™ and tries to meld them into some sort of cinematic abortion, while having a star studded cast of 2 “I know that guy” actors and a bunch of wood blocks carved into actors, who apparently can read off of cue cards. The movie’s script, plotting, setting(s), and characters are inept on so many levels, it’s astonishing that anyone would allow this crap to go into production; apparently, Korea could pour millions of bucks (or whatever the hell currency they have) into a CG fest, but couldn’t find something other than an 8th grader’s fanfic to turn into a story.
To the movie’s credit, the CG is decent in places, but I honestly couldn’t give two shits about what was happening. Apparently, there have been major advances in Dragon technology, so they are now born with turret shoulders. Oh, and they wear helmets. Yes, folks, 100 foot long, quadrupedal dragons wear helmets. Thanks, Korea. The dragons look like something Tolkien would diarrhea.
You know, I’m really trying to find something positive to say about this movie. It almost works on a so-bad-it’s-good level, but when you’re paying 30 bucks for a Blu-ray, it’s better to just watch Sc-fi Channel. Oh, some guy got hit by a car twice in the span of about 45 seconds. That was pretty funny. And, uh… oh, my roommate told me a joke he heard a couple of days ago while I was watching this. It was a pretty good one.
So honestly, if you’re looking for a good monster movie, don’t watch this. Don’t watch this at all, unless you can find the Blu-ray for about 10 bucks. If you’ve got a hankering for some monster-attacking-city stuff, go buy The Host. It’s infinitely better than this.
The video for this is fairly decent. There aren’t any real problems with the transfer; detail is sharp throughout and colors seem to be accurately represented. It doesn’t have that “pop” that the best HD transfers are known for. There really isn’t much to say for the video on this one; it’s well done, which is more than this movie deserves. This is the best dog shit will ever look.
The audio somewhat subpar. Delivered in a Dolby TrueHD track, the sound is decent, but much less than what is expected from an action movie such as this. Dialogue is clear, but the surround sound isnt handled very well, with very few rear channel effects. Also included is a French TrueHD track, but I assume it’s the same as the English. Except, you know, in French.
Extras are somewhat meager. There no director’s commentary to be found, so I’m assuming he either didn’t want to talk about his epic or, and more likely, doesn’t speak a word of English.
What is included is an 18 minute featurette called 5,000 Years in the Making. This is mostly in Korean, and goes over the making of the movie. It has a few interesting bits, and gets a bit funny when the director talks about how great the movie is, but this is fairly standard stuff. Note, this is not in HD.
Also included is a 11 minute storyboard comparison that is presented in HD, but uses SD clips. Not really that interesting.
The Concept Art shows a fair amount of sketches, and show how the movie may have been good.
Conclusion:
What is there to say? This movie is garbage. Everything in this movie is pretty terrible, and this is coming from someone who loves a good bad movie. There are little to no redeeming qualities in this movie. If you want to save 30 bucks, go google horse shit. Stare at the first image that comes up for 30 minutes. There. I saved you an hour and 30 bucks.
Movie: 3.5 out of 10
Picture: 7.5 out of 10
Audio: 6 out of 10
Bonus Features: 3.5 out of 10
Overall: 4.5 out of 10
Written by: AtomicPopcorn on Fri, Jan 11, 2008