Dragonheart: Battle for the Heartfire (2017)

Very well executed

Sadly Over-hyped

Fresh and Exciting

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

In the days of Knights and Dragons, Twins are born. The girl Meghan (Bliss-Bell) and the boy Edric (Harries) and both are born with dragon skin on their bodies and both have Dragon-like powers, but not the same ones. Edric sends Meghan away so the villagers cannot kill her for being a witch as she has a talent for manipulating fire. After the king dies Drago (voice of Patrick Stewart) must find the one with whom his heart is bonded with. He finds Edric. Meghan returns with a horde of Vikings and wants to be Queen as she has the right of the first born. Drago, a friendly Dragon, must find a way for these two to end their rivalry. I enjoyed much of this but I felt many scenes were cut too short and we weren't really given a chance to embrace the times. I thought the main Viking bad guy Thorgrim (Andre Eriksen) would have more of an impact but Queen Meghan (and the script) kept him in place for the most part. The main plot has Meghan stealing Drago's Heartfire and that left Drago ineffective and this affected the whole story. The key to all was how to get the Heartfire away from Meghan. Hmmmm……The CGI was very good but not for the fights when the Vikings rebel and try to overthrow Meghan. Here we saw the camera speed things up to make it look like really fierce fighting, but looking closer we saw that was not the case. These fight scenes were kind of lame. Newcomers Tom Rhys Harries and Jessamine-Bliss Bell were outstanding in their roles and we will see more of them in future movies. The acting all around is very good. At times, some humor was injected into the dialogues, but not enough to suit me. Patrick Stewart as Drago should have been given more lines of humor, and this would have endeared us much more to the whole story. Didn't happen.All in all a fairly good tale, but short on realism in that everything was safe and nothing was harsh or brutal as it should have been. This gave this movie an " Oh, Hum" atmosphere. (5/10)Violence: Yes. Sex: No. Nudity: No. Language: No.

Absolute sludge. This movie though it does not deserve to be called as such, is an unrelenting war on the senses and intelligence of the viewer. The effects of the film are baffling in its own incompetence, with horrific CG dragons and hilariously bad fire being all over the place. If you had told me this movie had come out in 2017 i would've called you a liar. The plot is boring and predictable, the characters are frustratingly incompetent and the visuals being a balance between drab and really bad CG.

Big fan of the first movie and went into this movie with no expectations having never heard of it. The Good; the CGI was respectable, the acting was god, Patrick Stewart is always a win; and root story was decent and had one decent plot twist. The Bad; it felt like the movie was in slow motion in the story telling much of the time. On one hand they needed to spend more time with the development of the early story, but the mid story dragged. The Ugly, too many plot holes and things the director and writers did to just move the story on without explanation. The Other, had they pursued more of the angle with (Slight Spoiler) the female lead character emboldening the women and wanting to be a good queen, I believe they could have made a much more rewarding ending. The ending, as is, was just ho-hum so what; predictable, leaving many questions from the final battle unanswered.

This movie was very touching. It was more character driven then your average Dragon Fantasy. You feel for these characters.A few quibbles: the revisionist Feminism did not make sense. There was a lot of Game of Thrones. Especially the Brother-Sister "close" relationship. Some of the supporting characters were throw away.On the other hand, for a low budget movie the special effects were pretty good. Patrick Stewart is a worthy successor to Sean Connery.All in all I enjoyed this movie.