I'm Getting Really Tired of This Destiny Crap: Dragon Wars

Recognize that director? That's right, Hyung-rae Shim was the director who brought us the reboot of Yonggary. He's learned a couple of lessons from his Yonggary reboot, but I fear, not a lot.



I don't normally include dragons as kaiju. Dragons are a known quanity, and have very different themes that kaiju. Kaiju were created for film, and are presented there best. Kaiju films, after running out of science fiction trappings, have turned to more fantastic elements. Godzilla, Mothra King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All Out Attack recasts Godzilla not as a freak result of the nuclear testing, but as the physical embodiment of the rage of the dead returned to punish Japan. The Gamera series toys with Muvian superscience which is indistinguishable from magic. Pulgasari was animated through the will and suffering of good people. But here, we're dealing with straight-up fantasy elements intruding on the modern world. But dragons aren't kaiju, and neither are giant whatevers, which is why I'm including neither Reign of Fire nor Big Ass Spider.



Unfortunately, Dragon Wars takes just about every fantasy cliche you could come up with in a minute. Ancient Prophecy? Check. Luke Skywalker who was really just born to be awesome? Check. Romeo and Juliet reincarnated into the Destny Couple? Check. Suspiciously Nazgûl-like evil overlord who lives in a dark brooding castle just a plane-shift away? Check. Magical Mystical talisman? Check. Evil overlord with a massive army against the forces of good who supply just two dudes? Check. Creepy prophetic dreams? Check.



The fated girl is the carrier of the Yuy Yi Joo, (Korean for MacGuffin) and she must give up her life in order to let the Imoogi tranform into a celestial dragon. So heaven's kind of a dick, here, and women are mere incubators for power which they cannot use themselves. Way to make me like your film, Shim.



Unfortunately, the film follows some of the same beats as Yonggary. The military gets involved, and although it's not quite as embarrassing as men with jetpacks and lasers, the board meetings are similar, with infighting and disbelief among the senior government officials. There are paralells to both 1998 Godzilla and Q the Winged Serpent in that the evil Imoogi, once unleashed, periodically vanishes. Given that its head is the size of house, I have no idea how you could possibly lose track of it.



Like Gamera vs The Legion, the Imoogi has help in the form os a swarm of smaller creatures. When the Imoogi is having trouble with attack helicopters, the smaller troops fly in and swarm them. Sadly, this is what causes the majority of the damage to Los Angeles: the military and the Army of Darkness. Which has explosives that can take out a modern tank in a single shot.

Again similar to 1998 Godzilla, a trope that goes as far back as King Kong: the evil Imoogi has climbed the Library Tower in Los Angeles, and the military gets some attack helicopters into the action. Of course, the snake can lunge far enough to take out the copters, because what's the point of standing off evern a hundred yeards where the snake can't strike? Which is again part of the problem with the film. It seems like a lot of the scenes were staged because they're cool or lead to explosions.



After being knocked out, our bland hero is tied to a post in front of Bara-Dur, and his medallion activates. This destroys the Army of Darkness and knocks the Imoogi senseless. Did he do anything? No, it was the medallion. Heroic agency of zero. He might as well have just given them to her, and accompanied the Big Evil to the sacrifice. Why couldn't the medallion have activated when the Army of Darkness was trashing LA?



Left face to face with the Imoogi, he is saved by... the Good Imoogi. The two snakes fight, and the girl sacrifices herself. Meaning our hero has done nothing, and hasn't even come back with the girl. The Good Imoogi becomes a dragon, trashes the bad one, and all our protagonist did was witness what happened. Of course, she didn't to a heck of a lot, either.



The end echoes Elliott and Rossio's Godzilla script: The Celestial Dragon breathes fire, which goes down Bad Imoogi's throat. Handled better in thew 2014 Godzilla, but many things were. The Celestial Dragon then runs off, leaving our protagonist in the barren planes before the broken towers of Bara Dur. How's he going to get home?



Ultimately, Dragon Wars is a hollow experience. There's not a lot of meat, and the monster destruction scenes are surprisingly uninteresting. They're quickly cut, and there isn't a sense that any of it really matters. It doesn't help that the main characters feel flat and do nothing other than watching the plot unfold. The CG is generally good, but as with the many action films, I am unmoved if I don't care about the characters or the plot. It was apparently not my destiny to care if these kids get eaten a gigantic snake or not.



Hyung-rae Shim states in the extras that this is his dream film. It made a fair amount of money, and he is shooting the sequel this year, so we can expect to see Dragon Wars 2 out sometime. Let's hope he's learned more than he did between 1999 and 2007.

The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree: Yonggary 1999

Several production companies saw the success of the 1998 Godzilla, and smelled money. A few went through ther back catalogues to see if they had any monster franchises to mine. Daniel Pink was rumored to be working on a remake of Reptilicus before his death in 2002.

South Korea looked at its 1967 Yonggary, and decided it was time for a remake. In 1999, enormously popular comedy director Hyung-rae Shim released Yonggary in South Korea. It was not as popular as hoped, and he subsequently reworked (According to Wikipedia, approximately 60% of the film was changed for the 2001 release) it for release in foreign markets. I do not have access to the 1999 version, and like the original Yonggary, it's possible that the original version does not exist. So I'm working with the 2001 version, in the timeline of the 1999 version. Like its inspiration, the 1999 Yonggary creature bears very little resemblance to the previous feature, making it the progenty of 1998 Godzilla that is most like its' parent. The new Yonggary is more human, muscular in build, with spiky pauldrons on its shoulders. The head now has three horns,and the nose horn is practically vestigial.



In order to appeal to a more international audience, the director chose Caucasian actors, and shot the film in English. The plot proceeds that an underground expedition is exploring some caves, and come across a boneyard of giant creatures. Oddly, this feels like it was the inspiration for Gareth Edwards Godzilla, which features a similar scene of the protagonists discovering a gigantic skeleton.



They come to what they've been seeking, a glowing red rock, and take a swing at it. Cue fiery holocaust.



And then we're in space. Hey, there's going to be aliens in this movie!



The film's major failing is its dialog, delivered by actors that are middleweight, at best. The human side of the story is utterly uncompelling, and the director spends waaaaaay too much time with the tyrannical director of the dig, and the crazy guy who knows about the prophecy that Yonggary will come back and destroy the world. Which means that we're mixing our ancient prophecies with our alien invasion, shades of Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla. The film functions in very broad cliches, really not bringing any new ideas to the genre. The prophecy is not actually from anywhere. Just a prophecy our crazy and government-hunted paleontologist happens to be aware of. This is the sort of paper-thin justification that makes a script sink, similar to Kraa and Zarkorr. And when a general stands on front of a United Nations Defense Agency sign and shouts that he takes orders from the President, it undermines the credibility of the script.



The aliens proceed with their reanimation program, and Yonggary's fossil come back to life. Again like Godzilla 1998, Yonggary is entirely CG, and from the perspective of 15 years on, it's not good CG. It also doesn't look like the original Yonggary. Wasn't aliens reanimating the dead is a major plot point from Plan 9 From Outer Space. When the military is deployed, they consistently miss Yonggary, and destroy buildings instead. Which is to be expected, since they're namechecking Sidewinder and AMRAM air-to-air missiles, rather than an air-to-ground missile. Maybe it would be better to attack kaiju with tank busters or the hellfire missile. Research isn't that difficult, people!



The script has enough background in kaiju film to give us the footprint trope, though.



Throughout the film, the military insists that Yonggary is going to desroy the world. And I have to wonder about that. It's just one monster. It's got some teleporting, but it will clearly take decades to destroy every major city in the world. Imagine it, even at gigantic walking speed. How long would it take for a kaiju to walk to every city of more than a million people on earth? In 2005, 335 cities worldwide had a population of more than a million. That's a lot of cities for one monster to knock down.



There is also a air jump with experimental weapons to the urban area Yonggary is trashing, yet another scene repeated (albeit with a vastly superior script) in the Gareth Edwards Godzilla. Of course, here the soldiers have experiemental laser weapons and jet packs. And it looks very silly.



Once they have been deployed, the lead soldier says "Compared to this guy, Godzilla is a pussy." This sort of trash-talk seems to infest kaiju films that are insecure about their status in comparison to other films. We've seen this sort of interfranchise sniping in Gamera, Super Monster, Kraa the Sea Monster, and we will see it again in Godzilla: Final Wars. Trash talk does not make the film look smart or brave, just desperate to look better than something else.



It turns out that Yonggary, like virtually every incantation of Ghidorah, is being controlled by the aliens. And in a very specific reference to Destroy All Monsters, it's being controlled by an implant. This means the implant, like Yonggary, is some two hundred million years old, but apparently, alien technology is built to last.



There's a threat of a nuke being used to get rid of Yonggary, but deployed on a F-117 fighter-bomber, which to my surprise can handle the B61 nuclear bomb. B ut then the control diamond is destroyed, and Yonggary is no longer under the control of the aliens. And it abruptly turns into a heroic monster, of the late Showa Godzilla sort. It immediately demonstrates its niceness by holding up a crumbling building, allowing the humans below to escape.



The aliens then deploy Cycor, their own monster. Cycor has four legs and two forward-projecting claws, an armored back, and a long tail with a club at the end. Cycor is a lot more spikey than Yonggary, letting us know it is both aggressive and the bad guy. It also has fire breath, but this is more of the fireball, rather than Yonggary's heat ray, and projects a lightning-like energy discharge from its tail.



The end of the film is the battle of Cycor and Yonggary, Yonggary having suddenly become our hero. As with a lot of the Showa-era Gamera films, characters cheer on Yonggary, so we know we're supposed to be rooting for him. This was goofy and annoying when children were involved, and it's doubly so when military officers sit helplessly and cheer on the monster they were trying to destroy not fifteen minutes ago.



Yonggary manages to burn a limb off Cycor, but it grows back as long, whippy tentacles that grab Yonggary. Another blast takes off the head, from which more tentagles grow. And then Yonggary fires its breath weapon down Cycor's neck stump, and the monster explodes. This is similar to Godzilla unleashing its atomic ray directly into Biollante's throat. Godzilla doees the same in Godzilla 2000, and Godzilla 2014. Although this film came out the same year as Godzilla 2000, Cycor and the aliens were added for the 2001 release, so it's quite possible G2K was in influence here.



The very end has Yonggary trussed up, being flown to an island where it can adjust to the 20^th century. The masses of helicopters may have given Del Toro the idea for how to transport the jaegers inPacific Rim.



I would be interested in watching the original 1999 Yonggary, but only once. The film is weighted down with terrible dialog, scenes that go nowhere, manufactured conflict, and paper thin character development. Even the monster destruction is unsatisfying, lacking any sort of emotional grip on the audience because we don't care who is getting stomped on.

That said, next week is going to be a weird one, as Greek food becomes the gigantic city-destroying monster. And I don't understand Greek, and I can't read the French subtitles.