Unfortunately, though DRAGONHEART: BATTLE FOR THE HEARTFIRE is set in the same prequel-era, creative lightning did not strike a second time for writer Matthew Feitshans, nor for the new director or the new cast of characters.
Two generations have ensued since Gareth and his wife Rhonu united the northern and southern kingdoms of their corner of Great Britain. With the assistance of Drago—the dragon to whom Gareth bonded in the previous film, now voiced by Patrick Stewart—the king and queen have managed to bring about the rebirth of dragons. Not much is said about the restoration of an Arthurian knightly code, and one never sees any other dragons but Drago. However, the bonding of human and dragon is still fraught with peril. At the film’s statt, Rhonu has perished years ago after her dragon died, and now Gareth is at death’s door. Drago expects to perish when Gareth does, and is surprised when the king dies and he Drago yet survives.
Drago realizes that he still has a bond with a human; one of Gareth’s grandchildren. Gareth and Rhonu had a son, Walter, who fled court life and chose to live the life of a peasant. He married some unknown woman, who bore him twins, male Edric and female Meghan. Neither twin is aware of their kinship with Gareth, but both have a smattering of scales on their bodies, as well as unusual powers—Edric is as strong as four men, and Meghan can control (but not create) any form of fire. After Walter’s death, the siblings separated. Drago uses the bond to locate Edric, and though Edric repudiates the bond, he doesn’t reject the revelation that he’s now the king of this part of England.
Meghan, living in the lands of the Vikings, hears about her brother’s good fortune and invades England with a small army, led by Thorgrim. (Dina de Laurentis, daughter of the more famous Dino and sister of HEARTFIRE’s producer Raffaela, has a small part as one of the Vikings.) Meghan asserts that as Gareth’s granddaughter she has equal claim to the throne, and when she first meets Drago, she steals from him the Heartfire. In contrast to the exchange of hearts seen in the other films, this theft robs Drago of his flame-powers, and imperils his survival as well. Meghan’s enhanced power allows her to take over and to exile Edric. She then begins her rule, attempting, among other things, to empower women legally and martially.
After various complications, Edric sneaks back into the kingdom, hoping to save Drago’s life by stealing back the Heartfire. The siblings fight, and the Vikings turn against Meghan. Drago swoops in and saves the twins from death, but he, now acting as reluctant parent to the duo, becomes aggravated by their constant squabbling. He sets them down in the forest and challenges them to fight it out. It’s not much of a fight despite their respective super-powers, since despite their enmity neither one really wants to hurt the other one. Some family secrets are revealed, and the two youths at last join forces to kick out the Vikings and rule the kingdom wisely—though during the conflict Drago meets his maker.
The previous entry in the series took strength from being based in the history, however fictionalized, of conflicts between two tribes of Britons. This time, the kingdom is just a backdrop, and the invading Vikings could be Mongolians for all their identity matters to the story. DRAGONHEART 3 was about Gareth and Rhonu bringing their ethnic identities together in order to forge a stronger England. Edric and Meghan are never more than bickering siblings, weakly characterized and given a patchwork backstory.
Writer Feitshans might have done something better. Since he wanted the bonding to skip a generation, apparently he decided to expend as little effort as possible upon Gareth’s son Walter. The script gives him no solid reason for fleeing the lap of luxury to live as a peasant; the viewer is only told that he didn’t like the kingly life. Feitshans might’ve crafted a situation in which he rejected the world of kingship and dragon-magic specifically because the dragon’s death killed Rhonu’s mother. But this avenue remains closed.
One hears nothing of the mother of Edric and Meghan; she’s just the vehicle to bring the siblings into the world. Clearly the scripter got rid of the mother quickly, in order to focus on Walter, even though he remains a vague character at best. He’s appalled by the twins’ strange powers and becomes something of a tyrant to them, which leads to a clumsy “family secret”—Edric thinks Meghan killed their father with her powers, but someone else is the guilty party. Even this bit of melodrama is botched, since the characters of the siblings are so flat and uninvolving. The best I can say of the two lead actors is that they fit the bland characters perfectly. Whether the franchise can come back from this low point is anyone’s guess.
No comments:
Post a Comment