DRAGONHEART 3 (2015)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *good* 

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical, psychological, sociological*

There’s no shortage of film-fans who prize franchise-sequels—BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, TERMINATOR 2-- equal to or better than the film that started the franchise. I’m not aware, though, of many “second sequel” films that have earned such accolades.

DRAGONHEART 3 isn’t any sort of bold new re-thinking of the premises of the previous two films, and its story would’ve been difficult to envision without the previous stories in the series. It’s just a good formula-film that executes its premise better than the first two entries. As I noted in my review of the other films, the first DRAGONHEART suffers from a clumsy sort of humor, loosely modeled on the 1971 film SKIN GAME, while the first sequel proves overly juvenile in tone.

Both of those films took place in a vague period of medieval England. Director Colin Teague and writer Matthew Feitshans anchor their prequel of the franchise in ninth-century Britain, some centuries after Roman rule. Though the Romans are gone, they’ve left behind such markers as Hadrian’s Wall, a dividing-point between the northerly lands of the savage Pict tribes and the lands to the immediate south, inhabited by more outwardly sophisticated Britons. In addition to the southerners having been schooled in the ways of the Romans and of the knightly traditions of Arthur’s Camelot, this fantasy-history includes a race of intelligent dragons from the stars. Rather than being opposed to humankind as one sees in most archaic knight-tales, these star-dragons acted as tutelary spirits to Arthurian knights, even instilling in the early warriors the code of honor.

Main hero Gareth, an orphan of low estate comparable to Geoff in the second film, has labored for years in service as a knight’s squire, hoping to attain the status of valorous knighthood. But the code of knighthood has fallen on hard times, and the warriors that man the wall against the hostile Picts consider it their due to extort huge sums from the humble peasants. Though Gareth dearly wants to become a knight, he protests this inequity. The garrison’s cruel commander casts Gareth out of the compound into the northern wilderness, challenging the young squire to come back with some treasure to prove his worth.

While Gareth forages in the wilderness, a meteor crashes to Earth. Out of the meteor springs a huge dragon, and Gareth observes that within the remnants of the meteor are nine eggs of gold. A troop of Picts show up and attack the dragon, and Gareth briefly considers harvesting an egg for his own purposes. A Pict shoots Gareth with an arrow, but the dragon thinks that the young knight has protected the egg. The dragon, later named Drago, resuscitates Gareth by transferring a portion of Drago’s heart into the youth’s chest.

However, the Pict tribe has a sorcerer, Brude. He casts a spell that nullifies Drago’s power, except when the moon is high, at which point Brude can force Drago to serve him in destroying the southern Britons and their wall. Drago’s primary concern is to protect the eggs of the unborn dragons, and because of the sympathy between him and the knight, Gareth agrees to help Drago protect the eggs. The knight receives further aid from two friends he makes in the northern wilds: Pictish warrior-princess Rhonu, who bears a grudge against Brude, and aspiring Druid magician Lorne, who provides some of the comedy-relief (though, to be fair, Gareth is sometimes the butt of Drago’s humor).

There are some fuzzy parts in the script. It’s not that clear as to why Drago came to Earth with his brood, since he and his kind haven’t been there for centuries, nor why he possesses the ability to teach Gareth a skill called “shadow-jumping,” which involves teleportation from one shadowed area to another. Still, the story is admirably consistent to its theme: that Gareth must find some middle way between the unreasoning aggression of both northerners and southerners. Naturally, meeting a comely Pictish warrior-woman does a lot to humanize Gareth’s beliefs about the Picts, though the script doesn’t overplay the romance at the expense of the main plot. And though the theme is mostly about humans getting along, Drago had a much more interesting personality than either of his predecessors, perhaps because he mirrors the ideals of knighthood to which Gareth aspires.

The film’s only flaw is that, like a lot of second sequels, the budget doesn’t allow for heavy FX, so Drago doesn’t actually do all that much, even in the climactic battle.