Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on January 4, 2008, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
Those who skipped the Korean-produced Dragon Wars (a.k.a. D-War) when it played nationwide last fall missed a chance to return to the glorious days of yesteryear, when giant Asian monsters rampaged across big screens on a semiregular basis. These days, the destructive behemoths need to carry along a bunch of sociopolitical significance (à la The Host) to avoid a direct-to-video fate; even the presence of cult figure Ryuhei Kitamura behind the camera of the last entry couldn’t get Toho’s Godzilla sequels of the 2000s anything other than festival play. When a piece of overproduced, under-thought-out dreck like Transformers can be a blockbuster hit, surely there’s a place in American theaters for Far East giant-creature features as well.
Of course, there’s the pesky matter of the foreign language to deal with, which Dragon Wars’ writer/director Shim Hyung-rae avoided by shooting his film in English with a largely American cast. The resulting dialogue, however, is as clunky as the worst dubbing from a vintage kaiju flick; it plays like it was translated from Korean to English to Spanish to Urdu and then back to English again. Shim’s script, the details of which don’t really bear recounting, is both derivative and overstuffed with exposition, and the actors, including bland leads Jason Behr and Amanda Brooks and a what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here Robert Forster, were clearly left to their own devices. Shim’s attempts at humor are as ancient as his centuries-old monsters; there’s actually a scene in which a guy in a mental hospital who claims to have seen the beasts is about to be released, then spots one through a window—but it moves away just before his doctor turns to look, and she orders him put back in his straitjacket. I don’t think anyone’s done that gag since the heyday of Bugs Bunny and Abbott & Costello.
Shim’s greater concern was obviously spectacle, and Dragon Wars inarguably delivers on that level. Giant serpents called Imoogi and their reptilian kin fly and charge and slither through both period flashbacks and modern-day LA, battling each other and the forces of the U.S. military in eye-popping FX orgies that will delight monster-loving kids of all ages, and make this movie a guilty pleasure for kaiju devotees. Like Transformers, it pretty much ignores the human collateral damage no doubt resulting from all its urban destruction, but the air of unreality hanging over the proceedings helps take that curse off.
Some might bemoan the fact that the beloved performers-in-suits technique still practiced by Toho has been superseded by CGI in Shim’s film, but it must be said that the computerized critters are pretty darn impressive, and the digital work holds together well in the 2.40:1 transfer on Sony Pictures’ DVD. While the colors are sometimes a bit pasty, the picture is otherwise sharp and vivid, with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound that has unearthly roars and weapons fire coming at you from all directions.
It’s easy to believe it when the disc’s 5,000 Years in the Making featurette begins by calling Dragon Wars “the most expensive, elaborate and anticipated film in Korean history,” and thus a little incongruous when Shim and others, seen in footage from press conferences and promo events, keep discussing it as if it was an underdog production. Though it cost a reported $70 million, sound designer Mark Mangini refers to Dragon Wars as “a low-budget film,” and Shim claims “We didn’t have much” money to pay for Steve Jablonsky’s music. (Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Jablonsky is no doubt well-remunerated for his work, but it’s unlikely that, as the director claims, he gets $5 million per score!) Shim’s humility and graciousness toward both his collaborators and fans is ingratiating, though it’s a shame the 20-minute segment only provides brief glimpses of both the behind-the-scenes creature development and the filming of tanks and other hardware on downtown LA streets.
It’s also too bad that the 10 minutes or so cut from Dragon Wars’ original Korean version aren’t included, either reinstated or as deleted scenes. The only other extras are an impressive concept art gallery and a Storyboard Comparison feature that actually presents three points of view at once: the illustrated boards and both early (with rough CGI) and completed versions of the scenes, playing in separate panels. With the shots not always matching up and the panels even blinking in and out of the picture at times, this supplement is more trouble to watch than it’s worth.
