Dragonheart


Dragonheart is a 1996 fantasy adventure film directed by Rob Cohen and written by Charles Edward Pogue, based on a story created by him and Patrick Read Johnson. The film stars Dennis Quaid, David Thewlis, Pete Postlethwaite, Dina Meyer, and Sean Connery as the voice of Draco the Dragon.
It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and various other awards in 1996 and 1997. The film received mixed reviews, with critics praising the premise, visual effects, and character development but panning the script as confusing and clichéd. It was a box-office success, earning $115 million worldwide. It was dedicated to the memory of Steve Price and Irwin Cohen.

Plot

In 984 A.D., the knight Sir Bowen mentors Saxon Prince Einon. While suppressing a peasant rebellion, Einon's father, Freyne, is killed by the rebels, and peasant girl Kara accidentally wounds Einon's heart. Einon's Celtic mother, Aislinn, asks a dragon to save his life. The dragon makes Einon promise to be a just ruler and replaces Einon's wounded heart with half of his own. Einon, however, proves oppressive, enslaving the former rebels that killed Freyne and forcing them to rebuild a castle. Einon also has Kara's father, who led the insurgents, blinded. Believing that the dragon's heart has corrupted Einon, Bowen swears vengeance on him, and all dragons, by hunting them down.
Twelve years later, Bowen has become a skilled dragonslayer, but has lost his faith in moral and chivalric principles. Monk Brother Gilbert witnesses Bowen's prowess and follows him to record his exploits. Meanwhile, Kara asks Einon to free her father after years of slavery; Einon accepts, and kills him in order to "free" him.
Bowen stalks a dragon to its cave, not knowing that it is the one who saved Einon. The confrontation ends in a stalemate, during which the dragon states that he is the last of his kind; they agree not to kill each other and instead form a partnership to defraud villagers with staged dragon "slayings". Bowen later names the dragon after the Draco constellation, unaware of Draco and Einon's connection, through which they feel each other's pain.
Kara, seeking revenge on Einon, is imprisoned after a failed assassination attempt. Realizing that she is responsible for his near-death, Einon tries seducing Kara and making her his queen. Despising what Einon has become, Aislinn helps Kara escape the castle. Kara tries to rally her village against Einon, but they sacrifice her to Draco instead. After Draco takes Kara to his lair, Einon arrives to recapture her and fights Bowen. He nearly kills Bowen, but Draco intervenes and reveals his half-heart to Einon, making him flee in fear. Kara asks Bowen to help overthrow Einon, but the disillusioned knight refuses.
Bowen reunites with Gilbert at another village while Kara tries exposing Bowen and Draco, appalled by their actions. The villagers do not believe her until after the staged slaying while Draco plays dead. He bolts when the villagers decide to carve him up for meat, revealing the scam. They then surround Bowen, Kara, and Gilbert, wanting to eat them instead; Draco rescues the trio and takes them to Avalon, where they take shelter among the tombs of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
Draco reveals that he hoped to change Einon's nature by saving him, reuniting the races of Man and Dragon, and earning a place in the constellation—the Dragon's Heaven. Draco fears that his choice has cost him his soul, and that his spirit is doomed to disappear upon death like he never existed. After hearing that Kara and even Gilbert intend to oppose Einon, Draco agrees to help. When a vision of Arthur reminds him of his knightly honor, Bowen also agrees.
Bowen, Kara, Gilbert, and Draco organize and train the villagers into an army. They are nearly victorious against Einon's forces when Gilbert strikes Einon in the heart with an arrow, but Draco, feeling Einon's pain, falls from the sky and is captured. Realizing that he is immortal as long as Draco lives, Einon is determined to keep Draco imprisoned. Knowing their connection, Aislinn attempts to kill Draco at his request, but Einon intercepts and kills her.
The rebels invade Einon's castle to save Draco. Bowen throws Einon from atop a tower in the ensuing fight. He then tries freeing Draco, who begs Bowen to kill him and end Einon's reign. Einon rises and charges towards them, forcing a reluctant Bowen to throw an axe into Draco's exposed half-heart, killing him and Einon.
Draco's body dissipates as his soul joins his fellow dragons to become a new star in the constellation. Bowen and Kara go on to lead the kingdom into an era of justice and peace, with Draco's star shining brighter than ever in troubled times.

Cast

  • Dennis Quaid as Sir Bowen, a knight who becomes a dragonslayer and then allies with Draco. Director Rob Cohen was impressed with Quaid, telling producer Raffaella De Laurentiis " is a knight of the old code". Cohen called Quaid "obviously intelligent and fun to work with" and said that he "really he was Bowen". Quaid underwent rigorous training for the role, mostly practicing sword fighting. Quaid and Cohen both wanted Bowen's sword technique to have an "Eastern flavor", so Quaid trained with Japanese sword master Kiyoshi Yamasaki.
  • Sean Connery as the voice of Draco, the last remaining dragon. Cohen felt it was "very important that personality be derived from the actor who was going to play the voice" and said that Connery was the only actor he had in mind for the role. He described Connery's voice as "unique" and "instantly recognizable", but said that it was "what stood for in life as an actor and as a man that most related to what I wanted for Draco". Connery did the voice recording for Draco in three sessions. To help animate Draco's facial expressions, Cohen and the ILM animators took close-up shots of Connery from his previous films, categorized the clips according to what emotion he was expressing, and put them in separate tapes for easy reference.
  • David Thewlis as King Einon, a tyrant who shares part of Draco's heart. Cohen cast Thewlis based on his performance in Naked, stating, "what makes a villain scary is the brain, not the brawn".
  • * Lee Oakes as young Einon
  • Dina Meyer as Kara, a peasant girl who seeks revenge on Einon for killing her father. Meyer was the second actress Cohen interviewed for the role. Cohen said that he needed an actress who was "strong and someone who could, in the end, handle herself with these double viking axes and look believable". Sandra Kovacikova plays Kara as a child.
  • Pete Postlethwaite as Brother Gilbert of Glockenspur, a monk and aspiring poet who joins Bowen and Draco in the revolt against Einon. Cohen wanted Postlethwaite for the role based on his performance in In the Name of the Father, feeling that "anyone who was assured in a dramatic role could take Brother Gilbert and make it real and charmingly funny".
  • Jason Isaacs as Lord Felton, Einon's second in command. He hires Bowen to slay a dragon running rampant around his village but refuses to pay after learning more of Bowen.
  • Julie Christie as Queen Aislinn, Einon's mother. Cohen found Christie through David Thewlis' casting agent.
  • Peter Hric as King Freyne, Einon's father and Aislinn's husband.
  • Brian Thompson as Brok, Einon's knight who served alongside Einon's father when he was king.
  • Terry O'Neill as Redbeard, Kara's father.
  • Wolf Christian as Hewe, a one-eyed villager who is part of the peasant rebellion.
  • John Gielgud as the uncredited voice of King Arthur, who speaks to Bowen during his visit to Avalon.

    Production

Writing

In 1988, Patrick Read Johnson came up with the idea for Dragonheart and pitched it to producer Raffaella De Laurentiis a year later. Johnson proposed the film's concept to De Laurentiis, describing it as "The Skin Game with a dragon in it...or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Dragon". He wanted "the idea of a dragon and a knight conning villages for money" because he thought the concept was "not only funny, but kind of sweet". According to Johnson, before the film was ever called Dragonheart and had the element of the shared heart, it began with the premise of
Johnson's manager Melinda Jason also managed screenplay writer Charles Edward Pogue, who previously wrote for David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly and was working on adapting A Princess of Mars for Disney. When meeting for drinks in Bora Bora, Johnson pitched the idea for Dragonheart to Pogue, and he agreed to work on the film. Johnson already had the story's beginning and end in mind but not much of the middle, so he and Pogue collaborated on the script, developing the characters and the Old Code while working the Arthurian myth into the story. Pogue described the story's themes as "a disillusioned man's struggle to recapture his idealism" and "the attempt to maintain one's passion in the cesspool of the world". Creating the backstory of the dragon culture and spiritual afterlife proved challenging for Pogue; he had to think of Draco's motivations and why he clings to life rather than letting Bowen kill him and end his despair. Pogue solved the issue by making Draco fear going to Hell without a soul for sharing his heart with Einon. Then Bowen re-enters Draco's life, and he sees hope and a chance for redemption through Bowen, with Draco unaware that the fateful decision he's been avoiding for years is now closer than he knows. According to Pogue, the screenplay for Dragonheart is among his best work, and it moved countless people to tears; he completed the first draft in only two months. After he, Johnson, and De Laurentiis made revisions, Pogue finished the script in 1990. They submitted it to Universal Pictures on a Friday. Two days later, on Monday morning, Universal gave Johnson the green light to start making the film as the script produced a strong emotional response from studio executives.