Best known for his work on both the X-FILES movie and television series, director Rob Bowman returns to the big screen this week with REIGN OF FIRE, a tale of fire-breathing medieval dragons inadvertently awakened from their slumber in present-day London.
We've all seen dragons in movies, and there have certainly been innumerable stories of what a post-apocalyptic future world might be like. But we've never seen these two storylines converge and the possibilities between the two explored. And that is exactly what Bowman hopes will appeal to audiences and draw them into REIGN.
"It's never been done with this recipe before and that's what singularly caught my eye," says Bowman. "The idea of taking a medieval mystical creature and putting him into what I think of as a World War II environment a bombed-out London. And then stripping it of anything that would date it, because I really like classic movies and even if the actors are dead and it's in black and white, the stories still hold up. That's the kind of movie I want to make. A movie that people can watch in 20 years and still enjoy, as opposed to a film that is pop-oriented, and it works in the moment and it takes your money from you, but is disposable."
Bowman's resolve to helm a project that was unique and timeless also drove him to push the boundaries of audience expectations for summer genre fare.
"It was about putting everything on the screen," says Bowman. "It was about making sure that when the studio spends this kind of cash on a summer movie, that they get what they pay for. It's about saying to the audience, come and see something that you can only see on the screen during the summer months. I was trying to make a genre movie, but make it as an 'A' movie. I think that after RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, there was a new standard. And I think there needs to be an evolution to summer movies that goes beyond the '80s and the '90s. I think that DIE HARD was a defining film in terms of action movies because it was the first time that a Joe Regular was in a big summer movie that you rooted for."
REIGN OF FIRE
© 2002 Touchstone Pictures
While it seems almost unavoidable for comparisons to be made between REIGN OF FIRE and other post-apocalyptic stories, Bowman is aware of this and meets those comparisons head on.
"I'm indebted to MAD MAX," says Bowman. "Because it was the first time that they said, 'OK, this is a story about a man and a wife and they're normal people and they go camping and then something horrible happens and he's distilled down to vengeance.' And we go with him. He doesn't just show up as a hot rod-driving slayer. That was the first time that I saw a movie that fit my tastes because it was real, [with] real characters. If you're going to make a post-apocalyptic story, make it real. Don't make it aliens walking out of spaceships with laser beams. We did [this] to ourselves, and we're going to have to deal with it.
Aside from MAD MAX, there are certainly shades of ALIEN to be found in the tone of REIGN of FIRE's London.
"[It draws from ALIEN] in terms of atmosphere and apprehension and expectation and the probability of death," says Bowman. "That's what's happening when the dragons [are] on the screen. You have to create situations where people are in anticipation of the dragons showing up."
But the comparisons don't end there. REIGN OF FIRE also includes a play based on STAR WARS (there aren't any films in this world), though Bowman can't claim that one was his idea.
"No, I think it was [screenwriter] Matt Greenberg's," says Bowman. "But the reason for the scene is to show what Quinn's job [is]. He has to crack heads, he has to keep the place running, but he also has to keep the kids happy, because they don't get to go outdoors very much. They basically wake up, read and don't go out because [they are told] not to. It's very strict, so you have to keep them laughing. I'm showing the breadth of Quinn's life."
So, in the midst of all of these genre giants, how exactly does Bowman categorize his version of a dragon-infested post-apocalyptic world?
"I term it as a survival movie, but the stakes are such that you have to use artillery to fight it," says Bowman. "The dragons stand in for your least-favorite villain. I'm not making a statement about Nazis or anything else; I'm just making a movie with the worst possible villain I can think of. And these dragons aren't evil. They're just doing what they have to in order to survive. And people just happen to taste good."
Since dragons aren't the sort of creatures that you could go to your local zoo or wild animal park to visit and study, Bowman found his subject material somewhat elusive to pin down and describe. But that is the beauty of genre entertainment. You can use your imagination to create all sorts of creatures, and that is just what Bowman did with his dragons.
"I've always been a fan of dragons," says Bowman. "Not a crazy one, but I do have figurines up in my house. [First there are] conceptual designs and then bringing in a paleontologist, [who said], 'How do you want it to fly? Do you want it to beat its wings a lot or do you want it to glide? Is it like a pterodactyl?' I wanted it to be like the ultimate predator. I wanted it to be supreme and agile as a jet.
Rob Bowman at the Saturn Awards (Copyright 2002 Sue Schneider)
© 2002 Sue Schneider
"Then it comes down to color and texture and we watched a lot of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC," continues Bowman. "I wanted it to look as scary on the ground as it was in the air. I watched this one special with a leopard approaching prey. And it's going [along like normal] and then the shoulder blades come up, but the eyes are just laser beam-focused. I thought, 'That's the way I want my dragon to walk on the ground.' The breathing is a King Cobra. We went to Thailand and recorded a King Cobra in a trashcan. We would stick the microphone up to it and it would get mad and make all these sounds."
Once Bowman had an idea of how his dragons were going to move and look, he had one other problem to conquer: How they were going to breathe fire?
"Breathing fire [was a] problem," explains Bowman. "In every movie they breathe it out of their mouths, but I thought that would burn them, so from this same cobra video the thought occurred to me that it could spit fire the way that Cobras spit venom, out of its fangs. So it's all these little things, and details from biology that make it real."
Once the details of how the dragons were going to look and act were set, the project was given over to a team of illustrators who brought the dragons to life.
"Everything was done at [a] secret lab, [where] we had an army of illustrators and I would go over there," says Bowman. "The movie evolved so much during shooting, so the focus of the story changed, but those animatics still served as a touchstone. We had stacks and stacks of unused things, but that's OK because that's the way you experiment without wasting millions and millions of dollars."
Be sure to check back soon for part two of our interview with Rob Bowman.
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