US
Adventure
A Sci Fi original
2004

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Lest you think my cinema is hopelessly outdated, along comes Dragon Storm. Here's the billing from SciFi.com:

[Cue bass, dramatic music.]

Two Kings. Two sworn enemies. One evil will unite them...

[dah, dah, dah.....]

...or destroy a world.

Okay, did you guys in publicity actually watch this show? Perhaps they only had the original script to work with. It turns out that the best part of Dragon Storm is their plug.

I take that back. The best part were the dragons. Second best was John Rhys-Davis' acting. Third, the plug.

Reinventing a tired fantasy cliche, Dragon Storm starts with five meteors falling from the sky and crashing into a poor peasant's stable. (Cue severed cow head falling nearly on top of poor, doomed peasant.) Alas, these meteors pop open to reveal dragons with a pretty darn severe case of heartburn. As all good star-spawned dragons do, they immediately start ravaging the countryside.

When a hapless guard goes to warn the king (Davis) about dragons, he's nearly beheaded, thus setting the stage for Davis' character as the Evil Overlord in Training. Of course, the dragons quickly follow the ignored warning and the king flees his ruined kingdom.

The king seeks sanctuary in the home of his rival (played by Maxwell Caufeld). This rival king completely ignores the fact that his guest is a bloodthirsty Evil Overlord in Training and organizes a small band of would-be dragon slayers to go rid the land of the foul creatures. These warriors include an Intrepid Woodsman with a Really Bad Hair-Do, the Fair (but Feisty) Princess, a Spunky Old Scientist, the Clever Kung-Fu Easterner, the Vengeful Maiden with a Ballista and the Evil King's Henchman who must kill the Intrepid Woodsman (because the Intrepid Woodsman knows the Evil Overlord's plan).

By this time, I'm rooting for the dragons.

Suffice it to say that the merry band tromps off into the woods, kills a couple of dragons with the ballista, loose a couple of peasants to the dragon's spikes and wrath, discovers that one dragon has laid an egg (and recovers said egg), gets the ballista smashed, discovers the Evil Overlord's plot to steal the Good King's kingdom, race home with the dragon egg where the Good King has been haplessly imprisoned, free the Good King, trick the dragon into killing the Evil Overlord, then kill the dragon with a perfectly placed arrow to the throat which makes the dragon explode like a tanker full of fuel.

[Inhale.]

The only thing they missed was the Feisty Princess getting the Intrepid Woodsman. However, I wasn't paying so much attention by the end, so I may have missed that part.

The dragons were very good. They moved well, the CGI was nice, even if there was a bit too much money spent on their pyrotechnics. It's just a shame that they couldn't seem to put together a story that merited their dragons or John Rhys-Davis talent.

Something. Anything. Give me character development, a decent story that doesn't ignore the past thirty years of fantasy writing. Give me an Evil Overlord who's studied the Evil Overlord's list (specifically item number 6).

Getting something from the computer screen to the TV screen involves so many people, that I refuse to lay blame on any one person. Who knows what happened between the writer, director, or executives. But is it really too much to ask for an intelligent story? Is it?