[Movie] Dragon Wars / D-Wars

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Q99
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[Movie] Dragon Wars / D-Wars

Post by Q99 »

I just watched this movie. I went in thinking it'd be a Korean giant monster movie about two giant snakes/dragons fighting. And, judging by reviews, a pretty bad one.

Instead, I got a fantasy army attacks the modern world movie (with one giant snake for almost all the action, not two. Where's the good Imoogi in all this?? Evil Imoogi can just do whatever, it seems like), and mostly set in the US. And yea, it was pretty bad.


But, good-bad! MST-able bad.

It's a joint Korean-US production and the 500-year-ago Korean flashback is pretty cool with martial arts and stuff. Then everyone gets reincarnated into a US production and a white kid gets to be the new guardian of important girl, as Mentor guy passes on (Mentor Guy also gets cool powers. Dunno why he's not the guardian!). I don't know why they didn't just make it purely Korean, I think that'd have been better.

I'm not sure if we ever learned the bad snake's main henchdude's name. He was reasonably menacing, wish we found out more of his deal.

Main 'guardian' dude is pretty useless, though, in either incarnation ^^ He spends most of the movie traveling with the girl who has the magic thing the snakes want (good end supposed to be sacrificing her so good snake can rise to heaven, bad end, bad snake does so. Neither get it, repeats in 500 years. So, spoilers, first dude totally blew things. I think their attempt to ride off in the sunset rather than sacrifice for good bought them, like, five minutes together). Only the baddies are a lot better at chasing than they are at escaping, so they keep having to rely on lucky rescues while an increasingly wide swath of destruction happens, including the Gungan army from Phantom Menace showing up (ok, not really, but similar animal-things). And main dude really has, like, no plan. It is a *good* thing LA is just chalk full of people willing to lend a hand, give rides, open doors - heck, bad henchman even helps him out once early on, when they're both still searching for important girl.

In the finale we do finally get our snake vs snake fight, though alas, not in the city.


Was this movie bad? Yea. But! A lot of stuff happened, the characters are paper thin and run around a lot, side characters come to a lot of inexplicable decisions when it'd help the plot, we see apaches vs monsters in LA, and there's giant snake-dragons and one cool Korean flashback.


Should you see it? Maybe! Mostly for cheese afficionatos.

I rate it a B if you like cheesy movies, D+ otherwise. There's definitely worse out there, but to enjoy it you gotta have fun with it.
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Tsyroc
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Re: [Movie] Dragon Wars / D-Wars

Post by Tsyroc »

It was pretty cringe worthy bad. The American actors were terrible.

I did like the last "snake vs snake" battle.
Spoiler
It was cool when the good imoogi turned in an Eastern style dragon and put the beatdown on the bad guy. That part was awesome, and it was nice to see an Eastern style dragon in a movie. I tend to like the European style more but this was a pleasant change.
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SolarpunkFan
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Re: [Movie] Dragon Wars / D-Wars

Post by SolarpunkFan »

So, like a "bad Michael Bay film" bad?

Eh, considering the unrelenting horror I felt while watching Armageddon, I think I'll pass. :P
Seeing current events as they are is wrecking me emotionally. So I say 'farewell' to this forum. For anyone who wonders.
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Sea Skimmer
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Re: [Movie] Dragon Wars / D-Wars

Post by Sea Skimmer »

No its just bad, and very badly made, which is no surprise since it cost I think four or five times what any previous South Korean production had. I can't imagine anyone thinking the dragon snakes or action were any good either, they looked bad when it was new and certainly wouldn't age well.
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Q99
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Re: [Movie] Dragon Wars / D-Wars

Post by Q99 »

SolarpunkFan wrote:So, like a "bad Michael Bay film" bad?

Eh, considering the unrelenting horror I felt while watching Armageddon, I think I'll pass. :P
Not quite that flavor, it's a bit more all over the place. It reminds me in some respects of an 80s fantasy movie. It starts with a kid in a magic shop, goes to a pretty cool Korean fantasy flashback segment, comes to the modern day parts for evil snake searching for girl/characters running from snake and it's army.

It is very Mystery Science Theater worthy.
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