I dislike writers who think it's the coolest thing in the world to write some sort of 'Rant Article' where they're entirely pissed at something AND THE PUBLIC MUST KNOW. Because, ooh, anger is so artsy. Also, they use the word 'Fuck' a lot, because it's rebellious and shit. They also say 'shit.' Specifically, 11 times for 'shit' and 14 times for 'fuck' or 'fucking.' And they call the readers 'fuckheads.'

Number one: this is about terrorism. An enemy comes from the underground and destroys the great Western metropolises. Their motives are unclear, their tactics wily. More to point, they fly through the air, full of fuel, leveling skyscrapers. Ahem, do you get it? The movie makes sure you do. Jerk. By the way, it turns out that there's only one male dragon (oops, spoiler! Sorry!) that fertilizes all the female eggs, and if they can just kill that one dragon, they can restore the world order to its proper balance. Do we have to name names? Is it clear what this is about? Okay, good.

Does REview have any Editors with a basic understanding of the movie industry? This movie was not written in the aftermath of September 11th; movies have a development time of at least two years, especially when they're special effects heavy Summer flicks. The script for this was written in August of 2000! I just had to read 200 words criticizing a movie for a subtext that exists only within the writer's own (angry) head. No, wait, 400 words! He spend the paragraph prior preparing the reader for his brilliant realization that this movie is another part of the War On Terror.

There's other ways to look at this movie. As a heavy shitty movie, it wants badly for you to understand the symbols it throws your way. As young intellectuals we are trained to see material in terms of symbology: the author uses this to say this, this thing means this idea, blah blah blah. Good authors and directors never bother with that shit. It's simplistic—logical rather than expressive. No decent director would ever constrain themselves to the symbol game. They play games of tone, of errata, of mystery. But "Reign of Fire" is a shitty movie with boring ambitions, and so it is quite happy to blast bullshit your way and let you, you stupid fuck, be all, "oh yes, I understand this, I'm very very smart."

What is there to say about such a major factual screwup like this? Ask REview to run a correction? Watch 'Reign of Fire' in way of apology for silly, pretentious Daily Cal writers? What to do?



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