| [BACK]
REIGN OF FIRE by Tom McCurrie
If you think of your screenplay as a car, bumping over a series of plotholes can wreck your suspension -- your suspension of disbelief, that is. Confusing motivations, unexplained backstory and nonsensical plot points can turn your story into a real lemon. A perfect example? REIGN OF FIRE.
Written by Gregg Chabot, Kevin Peterka and Matt Greenberg, REIGN OF FIRE does at least have a nifty premise -- fire-breathing dragons running amok in contemporary England. But that's all it has, since the plothole-ridden screenplay destroys any goodwill we have towards the material.
(Warning: Spoilers Ahead!)
The story so far: British Rail is happily tunneling away under London...until it meets up with a real-live dragon.
First question -- where did this thing come from? We're told that the dragons ate up the dinosaurs, then died off themselves when they ran out of food. So who gave birth to this one? And what's it been feeding on all these years, fish and chips?
Once free to cruise for babes, this first dragon goes out to stud and produces a zillion more of his kind. Man gets mistaken for take-out food and soon gets taken out.
Cut to 2020 A.D. Pockets of survivors live in medieval outposts like a roadshow version of MAD MAX. Now it's up to the intrepid Quinn (Christian Bale) and a gung-ho Yank named Van Zan (Matthew McConaughey, giving a performance reminiscent of someone who's just won first prize at a glue-sniffing contest) to lead the UK back to Empire status by defeating the dragons.
How? By tracking down the only male (that very same first dragon) and blowing him up with C-4. Once this happens, the dragons will die off and man can go back to being the chief consumer on the planet.
Enough already -- there are so many plotholes the axles just broke off the screenplay. First we're supposed to believe that the dragons whipped our butts, even after we used nukes on 'em. This when we see dragons being taken down with arrows and high-explosives throughout the picture. I hate to tell you, guys, but lethal radiation and massive blast waves are not easier to handle than C-4.
And why don't the dragons ever attack the remaining humans en masse? Is it the spirit of fair play? Or the lack of a special effects budget?
Van Zan's strategy for killing the stud (still conveniently ensconced in London) is even more ludicrous. He plans to take his forces straight down the main road to the capital, otherwise known as Dragon Central. Why not wire ahead and tell them you're coming? After Van Zan's army is wiped out, Quinn says he knows another way to London. If they just hug the coast the dragons won't see their approach. Why didn't he say this sooner? Didn't he realize he was sending Van Zan (and some of his own people) straight to the ash can?
Worse yet is the way Quinn finally ices the dragon -- shooting C-4 down its gullet. Not only is this ridiculously easy, it's a total rip off of JAWS. I half-expected Roy Scheider to show up.
And once the male dies, why is everything suddenly OK? Wouldn't the now spinstered females go on a killing spree? They certainly wouldn't retire to their boudoirs, weeping with sexual frustration.
I know it sounds strange, but the wilder your premise, the more logical it needs to be. If you set up simple ground rules and stay within them, you'll get THE LORD OF THE RINGS. If you don't, you'll get the ill-conceived REIGN OF FIRE.
Responses, comments and general two-cents worth can be E-mailed to gillis662000@yahoo.com.
A graduate of USC's School of Cinema-Television, Tom McCurrie has worked as a development executive and a story analyst. He is currently a screenwriter living in Los Angeles.
|
