Clearly my compatriots have a better grasp on this “blogging” thing than I do, considering our comparative output, and also the fact that their posts are interesting.
So, what I can I do that’s interesting? I mean, to me, lots of things are interesting. Most of them are very highfalutin. But trivial passions exist as well.
The trivial passion for today, though, is not trivial at all. It is in fact “EPIC” if you’ll pardon an old phrase. It’s hot outside. It’s summer, of course it’s hot. But heat got me thinking. Heat. Fire. Fire. Fire-breath. Fire-breathing. Logical conclusion...
Top 10 DRAGONS (Rarrr)
See my thought process there? Yeah, I’m smart.
I love dragons. I’ve always loved dragons. From those couched in annals of nerdy literary canon, to those that soar out of kingdoms of glossy, terrifying special effects. Dragons are always in style. So, here, for your enjoyment – a list, of the best.
1. Draco: I’ve never been good at mixing drinks. I always make really foofy orders whenever I have the opportunity, and when someone says “Hey, this has one part grenadine,” I think of the mounted grenadiers of King Frederick of Prussia. But let me break this down for you. One part Dragon + One Part Ahead-of-it’s-Time CGI + Two Parts Schmaltzy Dialogue + ALL PARTS Sean Fucking Connery = The Best Drink You Have Ever Had. Draco is the eponymous dragon from the 1996 fantasy classic Dragonheart. Yes, Sean Connery voices a dragon. A benevolent, kickass dragon, who eventually helps out a rebel army defeat the landed gentry. It’s like a mind-boggling rewrite of the October Revolution, but with a dragon. Sean Connery’s portrayal of Draco is, in reality, both clever and touching. I won’t ruin the ending, but let’s just say the end of Dragonheart made me cry like a little girl when I was 8. And today, I at least get a little misty. I’m not kidding, really. The movie is a great popcorn fantasy romp, replete with David Thewlis (Harry Potter) as a disturbing quasi-psycho king, the immortal Julie Christie as his mother, and…um, Dennis Quaid. But Connery-Draco steals the show. Best. Dragon. Ever.
2. Smaug the Magnificent: An obvious choice, but no Dragon Compendium is complete without the great-grand-daddy of literary dragons. Appearing in J. R. R. Tolkein’s The Hobbit, many of us fell in love with Smaug at a young age. Like a Disney villain, you can’t help but be sucked in by (a) his suave, cruel demeanor, (b) his sexy, hypnotic voice, and (b) the fact that he’s a goddamn dragon. Smaug can talk, and probably sounds like Jeremy Irons when he’s angry, and Alan Rickman when he’s languid. In his spare time, he kills humans for no reason, reads from the Torah, and sings “Be Prepared” from The Lion King, voicing all the parts. In the not-too-shabby underrated Rankin/Bass Hobbit animated film, he was voiced sultrily by Richard Boone, who I know from some 50s classics like The Alamo and the original Ocean’s Eleven. In the upcoming Hobbit movie of Guillermo del Toro and P. Jackson, the voice actor is yet unknown. I’m holding out for Alan Rickman, personally. I happen to think Jeff Bridges would do a good job too, but I want that to happen just for the jokes. “Hey, man, that hoard really tied the room together.”
3. Smrgol, Gorbash, and Bryagh: The characters from Flight of Dragons, a classic Rankin/Bass animated film from 1982. Based on a “speculative natural history book,” the movie follows the adventures of Peter Dickinson, who is thrown into a world of magic and, well, dragons, because he is destined to save it. However, there’s a twist. On his way in, a backfiring spell causes his mind to jump into a dragon’s body (Gorbash). What’s amazing about the movie is how, instead of just reveling in being a dragon, Dickinson uses being inside one to figure out how dragons work scientifically. This leads to hilarious scenes of him, as a dragon, diagramming draconian diaphragms (say that three times fast) on a quarry wall. In dragon form, Dickisnson, and his mentor-dragon Smrgol, go off to fight James Earl Jones…I mean Ommadon, The Red Wizard, and his pet dragon, a Smaug ripoff name of Bryagh. Anyway, the movie’s great, and the dragons are better. Flight of Dragons makes dragons out to be normal, human-like creatures with traditions, habits, and adaptations which make them look like something off a Discovery Channel Special. And, when they fight, they kick tremendous animated ass, culminating in a sequence where hundreds of dragons fly through the sky to wreak havoc on everything. See this movie.
4. Trogdor the Burninator: One of the best things to come out of the internet; Trogdor is a majestic beast, a beautiful animal of unparalleled win, a legendary possessor of draconian unstoppability. He is, in a word: TROG. And also DOR. He is TROGDOR. Much like Tsarist Russia, he carelessly decimates the population of the proletariat, using his S-shaped body and consummate Vs. Though he was once a man, he has since isolated himself from mannish society to become less of a man, and more of a dragon.
5. The Great Red Dragon: For artistic purposes only. This one’s not funny, or really likeable, just terrifying. Whether or not you are Christian, and actually believe in some Satan-figure (personally, I’m not, and don’t, but that’s all for another time), you can’t help but be filled with awe and horror by the Great Red Dragon – I’m referring specifically to a series of paintings, composed in the 1800s by the tortured poet-artist, William Blake (author of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, or perhaps more famously, that cute poem Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright which is quoted in Watchmen at some point). Maybe it’s just me, but I think The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun is just a stunningly scary painting. Mister Blake, congratulations on being so very, very screwed-up.
6. AKU: Did you ever watch Samurai Jack? Well, I did. And it was awesome. Genndy Tartakovsky was the genius behind Dexter’s Laboratory, one of the best cartoons around when I was a kid. He also masterminded Star Wars: The Clone Wars – not the really really crappy 3D movie that came out recently, but the tremendously underrated Cartoon Network miniseries that came out before Revenge of the Sith, in which Yoda single-handedly destroyed a droid army, and General Grievous went on a merciless, lethal, horrific rampage on a childrens’ TV channel. It was great. Anyway, Tartakovsky’s greatest work was Samurai Jack, the cartoon series which netted FOUR Emmy Nominations it was so good. If you haven’t seen, I won’t go into it too much – a samurai from, well, the time of samurai, fights an evil god and, as he’s about to win, gets sent into the distant future. The nameless, Yojimbo-like samurai allows himself to be named Jack and hunts the dark god, who, in the future, is the emperor of everything. The god is also a dragon. A giant. Shapeshifting. Japanese. Empire-controlling. Dragon. Who’s name just means “Evil.”*
*Notes: Three Things that make Aku awesome.
A. In a prequel, full-length special, Birth of Evil, we see Aku’s backstory in a stunning, Emmy-Award-winning mostly sans-dialogue movie. We find that, apparently, Aku is older than the universe, born of a ball of pure evil which threatened to consume the cosmos until VISHNU, ODIN, and RA, the most powerful deities in the universe at the time. They alone can defeat him. Kickass. Also, he is responsible for driving the Dinosaurs to extinction. (watch the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RJVzDMd5ac&feature=PlayList&p=DCB4E9425D64F3E6&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=24)
B. Aku has the following abilities: Pyrokinesis, shapeshifting, teleportation, necromancy, healing, the ability to create portals through space and time, ultrasonic screams, and he can turn himself into a space-ship. Kick. Ass.
C. Aku is voiced by the late, great Mako Iwamatsu, arguably the best, most famous Japanese-American actor south of Pat Morita. He won an Oscar, appeared in both Conan the Barbarian movies, as well as Seven Years in Tibet, sung for Stephen Sondheim in Pacific Overtures, and is just awesome. Take that, all other voice actors ever.
D. He has FLAMING EYEBROWS.
E. At one point, to make himself look better in the eyes of Public Opinion, he gathers every child I the universe into one giant room and tells them fairy tales, with himself as the hero. He also outsources Santa Claus.
F. He has an army of robo-insects who bleed oil and resemble the Third Reich.
G. Time portals. Time. Portals.
Moving on…
7. Jormungandr, or The Midgard Serpent: You can’t have a list of dragons and not include something from classical mythology. I say, you can’t have a list of dragons and not include this guy. Jormungandr, better known in Nordic myths as “The Midgard Serpent” is a leviathan-esque dragon-snake-serpent-sea-monster-thing SO HUGE that he in fact encircles the entire planet Earth. This fact alone makes him epic. He is so heavy that a god can’t lift him.
8. Albi the Racist Dragon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00uaB51ivXU. That is all.
9. Devon and Cornwall: Mostly for the benefit of my associate, Miss Rossetti, who I know has a soft spot in her heart for the Don Bluth not-classic “Quest for Camelot.” Frankly, it’s not a very good movie, but the voice actors alone put this two-headed, non-fire-breathing, non-flying dragon on this list – Don Rickles and Eric Idle. I mean, c’mon – a hilariously vulgar comedian who was in Casino, and a Monty Python nut responsible for Spamalot? As a dragon? What’s not to love? Besides the shoddy dialogue, weak plot, and bad jokes. But stiiiiilllll. Number 9.
10. Verimathrax Pejorative: Okay, I admit it. This one is mostly for the name. There is no better name for a dragon on this list than “Verimathrax Pejorative.” Anything with “Pejorative.” Especially because you could interpret that name as being “Nonsenseword Ethnicslur” which is even more hilarious. If I ever have a dragon, I’m naming it “Xabraxis Euphemism” or something. Anyway, Verimathrax is the dragon from Dragonslayer, a great 80s fantasy film in the vein of Willow or something like that. Called “the wyrm of Thrace who makes things worse,” Verimathrax is a she-dragon who demands virgin princess sacrifice. She is also really frightening. And the movie’s pretty good. That’s about it.
So, there you have it. Dragons. There are tons more I could’ve mentioned, which I love. Having Smaug on the list cancelled out Eustace Scrubb’s escapades as a dragon in The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Honorable mentions go to Haku (not Aku), the dragon from Miyazaki Miyao’s Spirited Away and the dragons from Naomi Novik’s Temeraire novels, in which dragons provide the air force for the Napoleonic Wars.
On that fire-breathing note;
Very Like a Whale, signing off
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