'Reign of Fire' Deserves to Burn

Some movies should never be made. Touchstone Pictures' "Reign of Fire" is one of these films. A movie that's so ridiculous, so boring and so absurd, "Reign of Fire" is the perfect example of a film that's not only a complete waste of the audience's time and money, but Hollywood's as well.

The year is 2084. A young (nevermind the fact he was 12 at the beginning of the film during "present day London") fireman named Quinn (you'll never know he's a fireman unless you read this) waits in a castle with what he thinks are the last remaining humans alive for hordes of deadly dragons to die out. For the past 20 years (the writer and director obviously can't do math), a centuries-old dragon has been reproducing and destroying everything in site, killing off humans left and right as he torches the world. Quinn and his group of survivors are the only ones left (so they think) to keep the human population from going extinct, so it's important that they stay out of harm's way.

Cue the bald, muscular dragon slayer-- a.k.a. Denton Van Zan (Matthew McConaughey)-- and his group of "archangels," who stumble upon Quinn's humble quarters and share with him some shocking news: Turns out the unstoppable dragons are really hundreds of smaller, female dragons and one big, bad-ass male, whom without the dragon population would cease to exist since he's the only one able to fertilize the many dragon eggs. Convenient, no? Anyway (as though you can't see where this is going), in order for the humans to survive and live a life without fear, Denton and Quinn must team up to slay the beast and live happily ever after (nevermind the fact there would still be hundreds of female dragons living for another 60-some years, but hey, it's Hollywood). So off they go to "kill the beast," with slow-mo action sequences and everything.

Yawn.

As if the premise to "Reign of Fire" isn't ridiculous enough, the execution by director Rob Bowman ("The X-Files" movie) is simply horrendous. The film not only makes no sense to begin with, but numerous plot points within the film that seem so important when they occur fail to pay off in the end. One wonders why these scenes weren't simply cut out of the film, but then again if all the scenes that made no sense in "Reign of Fire" ended up on the cutting room floor the movie would only be 20 minutes long.

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