Product Code Database
Dragonheart (stylized as DragonHeart) is a 1996 Fantasy film adventure film directed by Rob Cohen and written by Charles Edward Pogue, based on a story created by him and Patrick Read Johnson. The film stars Dennis Quaid, David Thewlis, Pete Postlethwaite, Dina Meyer, and Sean Connery as the voice of Draco the Dragon.
It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and various other awards in 1996 and 1997. The film received mixed reviews, with critics praising the premise, visual effects, and character development but panning the script as confusing and clichéd. It was a box-office success, earning $115 million worldwide. It was dedicated to the memory of Steve Price and Irwin Cohen.
Twelve years later, Bowen has become a skilled dragonslayer, but has lost his faith in moral and chivalric principles. Monk Brother Gilbert witnesses Bowen's prowess and follows him to record his exploits. Meanwhile, Kara asks Einon to free her father after years of slavery; Einon accepts, and kills him in order to "free" him.
Bowen stalks a dragon to its cave, not knowing that it is the one who saved Einon. The confrontation ends in a stalemate, during which the dragon states that he is the Endling; they agree not to kill each other and instead form a partnership to defraud villagers with staged dragon "slayings". Bowen later names the dragon after the Draco constellation, unaware of Draco and Einon's connection, through which they feel each other's pain.
Kara, seeking revenge on Einon, is imprisoned after a failed assassination attempt. Realizing that she is responsible for his near-death, Einon tries seducing Kara and making her his queen. Despising what Einon has become, Aislinn helps Kara escape the castle. Kara tries to rally her village against Einon, but they sacrifice her to Draco instead. After Draco takes Kara to his lair, Einon arrives to recapture her and fights Bowen. He nearly kills Bowen, but Draco intervenes and reveals his half-heart to Einon, making him flee in fear. Kara asks Bowen to help overthrow Einon, but the disillusioned knight refuses.
Bowen reunites with Gilbert at another village while Kara tries exposing Bowen and Draco, appalled by their actions. The villagers do not believe her until after the staged slaying while Draco plays dead. He bolts when the villagers decide to carve him up for meat, revealing the scam. They then surround Bowen, Kara, and Gilbert, wanting to eat them instead; Draco rescues the trio and takes them to Avalon, where they take shelter among the tombs of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
Draco reveals that he hoped to change Einon's nature by saving him, reuniting the races of Man and Dragon, and earning a place in the constellation—the Dragon's Heaven. Draco fears that his choice has cost him his soul, and that his spirit is doomed to disappear upon death like he never existed. After hearing that Kara and even Gilbert intend to oppose Einon, Draco agrees to help. When a vision of Arthur reminds him of his knightly honor, Bowen also agrees.
Bowen, Kara, Gilbert, and Draco organize and train the villagers into an army. They are nearly victorious against Einon's forces when Gilbert strikes Einon in the heart with an arrow, but Draco, feeling Einon's pain, falls from the sky and is captured. Realizing that he is immortal as long as Draco lives, Einon is determined to keep Draco imprisoned. Knowing their connection, Aislinn attempts to kill Draco at his request, but Einon intercepts and kills her.
The rebels invade Einon's castle to save Draco. Bowen throws Einon from atop a tower in the ensuing fight. He then tries freeing Draco, who begs Bowen to kill him and end Einon's reign. Einon rises and charges towards them, forcing a reluctant Bowen to throw an axe into Draco's exposed half-heart, killing him and Einon.
Draco's body dissipates as his soul joins his fellow dragons to become a new star in the constellation. Bowen and Kara go on to lead the kingdom into an era of justice and peace, with Draco's star shining brighter than ever in troubled times.
Johnson's manager Melinda Jason also managed screenplay writer Charles Edward Pogue, who previously wrote for David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly and was working on adapting A Princess of Mars for Disney. When meeting for drinks in Bora Bora, Johnson pitched the idea for Dragonheart to Pogue, and he agreed to work on the film. Johnson already had the story's beginning and end in mind but not much of the middle, so he and Pogue collaborated on the script, developing the characters and the Old Code while working the Arthurian myth into the story. Pogue described the story's themes as "a disillusioned man's struggle to recapture his idealism" and "the attempt to maintain one's passion in the cesspool of the world". Creating the backstory of the dragon culture and spiritual afterlife proved challenging for Pogue; he had to think of Draco's motivations and why he clings to life rather than letting Bowen kill him and end his despair. Pogue solved the issue by making Draco fear going to Hell without a soul for sharing his heart with Einon. Then Bowen re-enters Draco's life, and he sees hope and a chance for redemption through Bowen, with Draco unaware that the fateful decision he's been avoiding for years is now closer than he knows. According to Pogue, the screenplay for Dragonheart is among his best work, and it moved countless people to tears; he completed the first draft in only two months. After he, Johnson, and De Laurentiis made revisions, Pogue finished the script in 1990. They submitted it to Universal Pictures on a Friday. Two days later, on Monday morning, Universal gave Johnson the green light to start making the film as the script produced a strong emotional response from studio executives.
After completing location scouting, CAA sent numerous English and Irish actors to meet with Johnson for the Bowen role, including Gabriel Byrne, Timothy Dalton, and Pierce Brosnan. English actresses sent for the part of Kara included Elizabeth Hurley and Patsy Kensit. Johnson then met the then-up-and-coming Liam Neeson, and the two hit it off, with Johnson noting how Neeson could be both brooding and funny, but much to Johnson's chagrin, the studio refused to believe Neeson could pull off the action hero role since he had just completed Darkman. Wanting a big-name lead actor for the film, Universal sent the script to actors like Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, and Arnold Schwarzenegger as potential Bowen candidates. The studio even suggested that Whoopi Goldberg voice Draco instead of Connery. Other actors considered to replace Neeson included Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, and Patrick Swayze, Cohen's first choice for Bowen before Dennis Quaid accepted the role. With the castings of Quaid as Bowen and Meyer as Kara, Johnson said:
Johnson also claimed that Cohen shooting the scenes with Lee Oakes as young Einon first greatly hindered David Thewlis's performance; Oakes spoke with a thick Northern English accent, forcing Thewlis to mimic the child actor's accent.
As the Creature Shop did tests for Draco, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) did CGI tests for Jurassic Park. Universal believed waiting would be better as the CGI technology could benefit Dragonheart. Additionally, according to Johnson, Universal saw the Creature Shop test footage as the pretext for the final film's quality. The studio went behind his back, trying to remove him from the project and give it to an A-list director since Johnson only had one film to his name at the time. Raffaella De Laurentiis tried to negotiate the budget to one the studio would accept at around $21 million. Still, Universal wouldn't take an amount lower than $23 million and would ironically end up spending roughly triple the amount on the film. When Universal ended his contract, Johnson was only paid and given credit for writing the story and acting as executive producer. For his desired direction for the film, Johnson said:
Then Richard Donner was approached as Universal sought a replacement director. Donner spent roughly six months working on the film before moving on to other projects. The studio declined Kenneth Branagh after deciding the amount he asked to star in and direct the film was too expensive. De Laurentiis hoped to make John Badham, Rob Cohen's then-partner, interested in handling Dragonheart and sent him the script; according to Cohen, Badham "didn't respond" to the material. After working with De Laurentiis on in 1993, Rob Cohen agreed to take over as director, and Universal announced his attachment to the film in January 1994.
According to Pogue, the film production became troublesome after Rob Cohen's hiring; Pogue felt Cohen "had neither the poetry in his soul nor the panache to bring Dragonheart to the screen". One of Cohen's first changes to the film was setting it during the 10th century Dark Ages rather than the sophisticated "Robin Hood-era" 12th century Middle Ages. He felt the possibility of dragons existing during the mostly unrecorded period would be more believable and appropriate for his grittier vision. While streamlining the script with Pogue, they removed one of Bowen and Draco's scams as Cohen felt that doing three would be too expensive and reduced the number of battles. Other changes to the script under Cohen's direction include:
Also removed were scenes showing the developing love story between Bowen and Kara, which the final film only alludes to without proper resolution. For example, Kara and Bowen declare their love for each other, during which Bowen asks Kara for her "lady's favor". Kara reveals Einon raped her and therefore has nothing to give Bowen, so Bowen kneels and gives her a chaste Hand-kissing. Cohen reportedly removed the scene because he felt Kara should be more of an action-oriented character swinging axes around and didn't believe she would make "sappy speeches". Pogue however said that Cohen cut the scene because he couldn't get the desired performance, which involved having Kara and Bowen in an intimate embrace instead of the hand kiss, and conflicted with Dina Meyer. This issue also made Cohen cut a scene with the peasant army gifting Bowen a suit of armor they make for him, overwhelming Bowen with emotion, which Pogue considered Dennis Quaid's best scene. Then Cohen's desire to showcase Draco as the film's main attraction caused the deletion of vital "Film transition" scenes, making the film feel inconsistent and rushed. Pogue also said the film suffered because Universal aimed to turn Dragonheart into a kids' movie as the dark and weighty elements were either removed or Dumbing down. As Johnson said: "They messed with the script and started adding things like, 'Ready or not here I come! It's Draco!' I mean, we never had that stuff in our script! All this cheesy crap that just juvenilized the picture".
Another change Cohen made to the script that was a bone of contention to Pogue was the lack of logic in adding the pigs to the swamp village scene. In Johnson's words:
Pogue explains that Draco uses the scams he and Bowen do to "pick at Bowen's conscience and test his morality". Each village they go to is more poverty-stricken than the last. This point would come to a head and serve Bowen's character arc in the swamp village; its people are beyond impoverished, and Bowen feels he can no longer justify the scams as a way to be a thorn in Einon's side. When Cohen added the pigs to the scene, Pogue told De Laurentiis it would make everyone look stupid since the villagers were supposed to be starving. They are trying to eat a seemingly dead Draco for an easy meal before turning on Bowen, Kara, and Gilbert for being the victims of a cruel joke, yet the pigs surrounding the villagers would've sustained them. Pogue and De Laurentiis brought the illogical nature of adding the pigs to Cohen's attention, but he forcibly dismissed their concerns. The pigs stayed in the film, and the elements that would serve Bowen's arc became pointless.
According to Johnson, the script changes also damaged Einon; Johnson envisioned Kenneth Branagh or a similar actor in the role as a quiet and confident villain with a sense of unpredictability who'd go crazy upon realizing his and Draco's fates are connected. To Johnson, the script revisions turned Einon into a continuously shouting brat and a character stripped of potential development.
In the "Making of Dragonheart" featurette on DVD, Cohen says he was aware of the project for years before getting the directing job and that Johnson was merely involved with the script. Johnson said that he harbored no ill will for Cohen taking over the project, but that changed when he "started hearing the horror stories about how Chuck Pogue was being treated, and then I started seeing Rob taking credit for things that weren't his to take credit for". Cohen also took credit for Draco's design and Sean Connery being Draco's voice actor. Johnson cites an article from Cinescape magazine, "where Rob is again asked about the origin of the project and he basically tries to sell the idea that I was some film student that somehow got attached to this great project that somehow pre-existed my involvement".
After Jurassic Park
Rob Cohen hired Phil Tippett, a visual effects producer specializing in creature design and character animation, to animate Draco for Dragonheart. Tippett states that his studio's responsibilities for Dragonheart differed from what they did for Jurassic Park since Draco would have more screen time (23 minutes for Draco instead of six and a half for the dinosaurs). They were primarily responsible for Draco's actual look and design, storyboards, blocking, and action sequence timing. Tippett worked closely with sculptor Peter Konig in designing Draco. Konig crafted between 20 and 30 before Cohen approved the final design. Konig improved the ones Cohen said "felt right", adding forearms as Cohen wanted Draco to use his hands. Cohen's ideas for Draco's design stemmed from the traditional Chinese guardian lion, which Cohen describes as having "a lion-like elegance, a fierceness", and that it is "ultimately a proud...visually powerful creature". As Draco had to emote, Tippett infused human features into Draco's face to make it mammalian rather than reptilian; his muzzle was designed to be a mixture of a highland gorilla and a human mouth to accommodate his dialogue. Draco's face was designed to resemble Sean Connery's after his casting. Cohen also drew ideas from nature, such as the boa constrictor's jaw structure, horses' musculature, and retractable teeth. Tippett also considered how Cohen would frame the scenes involving Draco, the size difference between Draco and the human actors, and what he would do throughout the film. Tippett and his crew created a five-foot model of Draco for lighting reference and an articulated model used as a reference for Draco's poses.
It took five months for four modelers to make Draco's digital model with ILM's Alias software. Originally, Draco's scales and wings would have an Iridescence quality; it is visible in some scenes but mostly not. His wingspan was initially calculated as 125 ft to support his body but halved to 72 ft to be practical enough to fit on the sets. His eyes were also more detailed and dilated. Those were some of the design elements dropped because of software issues, running out of time, and wanting to make Draco as realistic as possible and not too fantastical. To aid animators so that Draco's performance resembled Connery as much as possible, Cohen made an extensive library of reference footage with hundreds of Connery images from his filmography up to that point, categorized by his displayed emotion.
Dragonheart is the first film to use ILM's Caricature software, developed to help lip-sync Draco's animation to Sean Connery's voiceover work; programmer Cary Phillips received the Academy Scientific and Technical Achievement Award for creating the software. The film is notable for having the first realistic CG dragon in film, and Draco is the first dragon ILM made capable of human speech.
While filming the scenes involving Draco in flight, the crew used a microlight for reference and edited the footage to "put Draco over the top of that and remove any traces of the aircraft".
Although Draco is fully CGI-rendered, some scenes use full-sized models of some of his body parts. One of them was Draco's foot, used to pin Bowen to the ground, and the other was Draco's jaw during the scene where Bowen gets trapped inside it. While the foot was a non-moving prop, the jaw had moving parts, and a puppeteer operated it.
In January 1995, editor Peter Amundsen delivered the film's first cut to Cohen with a length of 2 hours and 18 minutes. After going through the reels, they shortened the film to two hours and seven minutes. In mid-March, they completed the final cut with 182 CG shots. According to Cohen, they spent an additional 13 months working on the film after making the final cut. He was in Rome to shoot Daylight on-location during this period and had to review animation sequences with ILM, giving them his comments and instructions through a satellite hookup.
Randy Edelman composed the score, beginning in the late fall of 1995 and finishing by the start of 1996. The main theme song, "The World of the Heart", and its companion track, "To the Stars", Trailer music in many film trailers such as Two Brothers, Mulan, Anna and the King, , The Young Black Stallion, and Seven Years in Tibet, among others. Clip montages at the Academy Awards feature the Dragonheart theme, as do the closing credits of the U.S. broadcasts of the Olympic Games, making it a well-known film score. MCA Records released the film's soundtrack album on May 28, 1996, containing 15 music tracks.
Kenner Products released a toy line based on the main characters and additional dragons that weren't shown or mentioned in the film. Revell (under their Promodeler line) produced and released only 5000 units of a limited edition vinyl model kit of Draco and Bowen, sculpted by John Dennett. In 1996, Topps released trading cards for the film, and the Topps Comics published a two-issue comic adaptation.
Based on his original screenplay, with "several new inspirations that weren't in any of the various drafts", it is faithful to his vision of Dragonheart as the transcendent film it should have been. It was released in several languages and five editions in the U.S. to widespread critical acclaim. Readers praised Pogue's writing and how the book develops the story, setting, and characters more than the film, noting its darker and more serious tone than the film's.
In 1999, Adriana Gabriel adapted the film into a junior novelization.
Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars: "While no reasonable person over the age of 12 would presumably be able to take it seriously, it nevertheless has a lighthearted joy, a cheerfulness, an insouciance, that recalls the days when movies were content to be fun. Add that to the impressive technical achievement that went into creating the dragon, and you have something to acknowledge here. It isn't great cinema, but I'm glad I saw it". Jami Bernard of New York Daily News described the film as "a movie for people young enough to keep dragons in the menageries of their imaginations" and said that "the dragon is the most believable part of the whole movie". Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a positive review, but criticized the fact that Sean Connery provided Draco's voice, saying that "if only Sean Connery didn't have such a wonderfully distinctive voice, Draco might live and breathe as his own creature".
Despite the lukewarm reception, Rob Cohen is very fond of the film: " Dragonheart pointed the way. There would be no Lord of the Rings without Dragonheart. We were the first to do a full CG acting character. But it's been very interesting. There's a great love for that film among a certain audience. And I get a lot of reactions from very unexpected quarters to that film, with people who saw it when they were young, or kids or teenagers, or women who are now of an advanced age that love it, and New Age people who found the spirituality in it very moving. I'm very proud of it".
| Academy Awards | Best Effects, Visual Effects | Scott Squires, Phil Tippett, James Straus, and Kit West | |
| Saturn Awards | Best Fantasy Film | Universal Pictures | |
| Best Costumes | Thomas Casterline and Anna B. Sheppard | ||
| Best Music | Randy Edelman | ||
| Best Special Effects | Scott Squires, Phil Tippett, James Straus, and Kit West | ||
| Hollywood Film Awards | Hollywood Digital Award | Scott Squires | |
| Satellite Awards | Outstanding Visual Effects | Scott Squires | |
| Sitges Film Festival | Best Film | Rob Cohen | |
| Online Film & Television Association | Best Voice-Over Performance | Sean Connery | |
| Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror Picture | Raffaella De Laurentiis | ||
| Best Visual Effects | Scott Squires, Phil Tippett, James Straus, Kit West | ||
| Annie Awards | Best Individual Achievement: Voice Acting | Sean Connery | |
| Best Individual Achievement: Animation | Rob Coleman |
|
|
