REIGN OF FIRE (2002): THE TRUE COVID-19 "SHELTER-IN-PLACE" FILM, ... LEMME EXPLAIN! - by CEJ

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VAULTED TREASURES: MOVIES YOU NEVER KNEW ABOUT, YOU FORGOT, 

... OR YOU FORGOT TO LOVE MORE THE FIRST TIME AROUND!

REIGN OF FIRE 

Dir. by - Rob Bowman 

Prod. by - Richard D. Zanuck, Lili Fini Zanuck, 
Roger Birnbaum, 
Gary Barber,  
Screenplay - Matt Greenberg, 
Gregg Chabot, Kevin Peterka 

Director of Photography - 

Adrian Biddle

Edited by - Declan McGrath, Thom Noble 

Production Design - 
Wolf Kroeger

Music - Edward Shearmur
Run Time: 102 mins.  

Release: 7/12/2002

Production Companies - Touchstone, Spyglass Entertainment, The Zanuck Co.

Dist. by - Buena Vista Pictures

GullCottage rating

(**** on a scale of 1-5)

_______ "Knowledge is the only weapon we've got left. 
In the beginning it was ignorance which destroyed us" _______ 

     In recent days countless millions around the globe forced to “shelter in place” at home due to the spreading coronavirus have not only found themselves rediscovering old fave pleasures like family meal times, reading, and tossing the ball around the backyard with the kids, but also, perhaps unsurprisingly, enjoying one which in less restrictive times might have been considered a lazy and irresponsible betrayal of adulthood, ... or at the very least the last Jay & Silent Bob-like refuge of the perenially "blunted"  - bingeing on movies for days at a time. Who’d a thunk it, huh? And among the most popular filmic subjects have been (no drum roll because ultimately it's “No duh!”, right?) those dealing with pandemics and global disasters. Netflix recently reported that on Friday March 20, 2020 alone the docu-series PANDEMIC: HOW TO PREVENT AN OUTBREAK, the CW mini-series CONTAINMENT, and the feature films OUTBREAK (1995) and CONTAGION (2011) topped it’s charts, with flicks like 2012 and WORLD WAR Z following closely behind.

Margaret Atwood / Rod Serling

     “No duh?” because this is not only what art does, but (more importantly) this is what art / the arts were always intended to do. It is the very reason for art's existence in all of it's facets. Yes, including the one-legged, buck-toothed, "bastard son of a thousand maniacs" offshoot of the family - film. Former Smithsonian / Renwick Gallery director Elizabeth Broun once oh-so-accurately stated that “Art is not always about pretty things; it’s about who we are, what happened to us, and how are lives are affected”. Rod Serling famously acknowledged that “… with THE TWILIGHT ZONE I knew I could get away with Martians saying things Republicans and Democrats couldn’t”, and in a 2018 interview with The Guardian, THE HANDMAID’S TALE author Margaret Atwood - commenting on the eerie contemporary prescience of her 1985 novel in conjunction with the rising #MeToo movement - set things very straight, stating …

     “I’m not a prophet, let’s get rid of that idea right now. ‘Prophecies’ are really about now. In science fiction it’s always about now. What else could it be about? There is no future. There are many possibilities, but we do not know which one we are going to have". And about THE HANDMAID'S TALE in particular she added, "Sorry to have been so right”. OUCH!

     Speaking as a writer / screenwriter myself (and I believe for others too), we often stare out the window wondering what makes something genuinely scary, funny, sexy or whatever. And the answer to that question is usually what happens to be occurring outside that window on any given day. It’s all about context: how what was once not considered scary or “effective”, “deep” or “pertinent”, and what may have previously been written off as little more than “fanciful” or any number of other dismissive terms, can - in one instant / with one event - suddenly find itself pivoting on the dime into the exact opposite; and, not unlike Atwood’s HANDMAID‘S TALE, becoming “prophetic“, “observant“ or “perceptive“. Of course the “vice versa“ version of that holds true as well. And forgive one more example, but it’s the best of ‘em of all - a personal one Stephen King relates in his sprawling 1981 non-fiction look at culture, pop culture and more (it’s also perceptively funny as f**k too!) DANSE MACABRE.

Stephen King

     In one reminiscence the Maestro Of Horror relates how at age ten he and a group of friends eagerly piled into a local theater to see Ray Harryhausen’s EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS. And they were enjoying the hell out of it’s escapist thrills - what with those awesome-to-this-day stop motion animated flying saucers descending from the clouds to obliterate Washington, D.C. - something to which Roland Emmerich’s INDEPENDENCE DAY would tip it’s hat in far more grand fashion forty years later.

     Anyway, it was simple escapist fun until smack dab in the middle of said great death ray obliteration the film stopped, the house lights came up, and the manager took the stage with a grim look on his face, gulped and - feeling it was of the utmost importance and duty to do so - informed everyone that the Russians had just launched Sputnik into orbit, beating America into space, and that the satellite was most likely passing over the U.S. at that very moment. After the announcement the lights went back down, the film resumed, … and suddenly the idea of America being attacked from space was no longer innocent escapist “fun”. For little Stephen and his posse of Saturday afternoon movie hommies, in an instant EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS had morphed from a fanciful sci fi flick into a wholly unintended yet now very effective horror film. And it was all based upon context - on what was going on outside the proverbial window at that particular moment. 

TOP: Sputnik 1 launches (Oct. 4, 1957);
BOTTOM: EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS debuts (June 13, 1956) 

     Now, with that understood, I’ve never felt (and especially in the last few weeks) that films like OUTBREAK or CONTAGION, … or even earlier techno thrillers like 1971’s THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN or 1965’s THE SATAN BUG were the most accurate “pandemic” films. Don't get me wrong, they’re all phenomenal. But they tend to focus more on the inanimate “outbreak” itself; and this is fine. But I’ve always found to be more prescient, engrossing, perceptive or “spot on” (choose your term) the less obvious film examinations. Those which - like Rod Serling’s Martians - create a timeless “McGuffin”-esque stand-in. Those which don’t focus on the “pandemic” as the antagonist per se as much as on how the pandemic merely serves as a catalyst to the real contagion which is the reaction of the populace (large or small / microcosmic or macrocosmic) to the introduction of that strain, bio-invader, etc.

     As such, films I find to now be the most accurate, and by extension perhaps more "COVID-19 cathartic" in the sense of allowing us to exorcise certain unspoken (not just medical and scientific, but socially interactive) anxieties, are those such as John Carpenter’s THE THING, Frank Darabont’s THE MIST, Ridley Scott’s ALIEN, and perhaps one of the most underrated, somewhat forgotten and, in retrospect, most eerily spot-on-the-money - Rob Bowman’s 2002 (what wiki amusingly categorizes as) “post apocalyptic science fantasy film” REIGN OF FIRE.

_______ "The only thing worse than a dragon ... . Americans!" _______

     If for the sake of arguing you want to talk non-genre films which effectively mine the "group psychology reaction to a pandemic or crisis" theme, you can very much toss those close-quartered Agatha Christie whodunnits into the pot - among them MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, DEATH ON THE NILE and TEN LITTLE INDIANS - where the unknown mystery murderer is the "pathogen". And you can surely superimpose John Ford’s FORT APACHE, and especially Ed Zwick’s 1998, pre 9/11 drama THE SIEGE (both where so-called / so believed socio-ethnic "outsiders" become the inciting catalyst for group paranoia and an examination of self) onto the paradigm as well.

     Hell, just substitute today‘s “forced to shelter-in-place” edict and a spreading virus scenario in place of APACHE’s “Little Bighorn”-inspired attack; and do the same for THE SIEGE’s inciting terrorist incidents in the Big Apple, and you've plainly got within these "old movies" versions of everything “today" and fascinatingly "up-to-the-minute reactionary” - from Donald Trump’s daily press conferences, to civilians rushing to horde goods, to a populace perhaps more keen on finding a scapegoat than a solution, and even the singling out of one ethnic group upon which to unleash a larger collective’s sense of fear, paranoia and pent-up hostility.

     It’s as surely evident in those aforementioned non-genre films as is Atwood’s “theocratic HANDMAID'S TALE nightmare” coming to all-too-accurate near fruition every night on our evening news. And, hey, recognizing these (I don’t think I risk disagreement from anyone in calling them) "societal warts" isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Not if we can observe and - as the arts allows us to do - study and learn more about ourselves from our cinematic avatars / alter egos under those filmic “lab”-like conditions in the hope of avoiding the mistakes the fictional versions of ourselves make. Ultimately it is those mistakes which we alternately find dramatic, scary, funny and more. At any rate, in regards to their genre counterparts ...

     I’ve always felt science fiction, fantasy and horror to be an even more accurate representation / barometer of contemporary social anxieties because by the very nature of genre - wherein a larger-than-life and often surreal scenario is created in order to not necessarily address those anxieties directly - they ironically allow for both a more sub-consciously honest discussion of those anxieties by the film makers, and a more sub-consciously honest (though usually unspoken) response to them by the audience. In a certain way audiences and individuals are able to enter into a sub-conscious cinematic “dream state” where fears, hang-ups and non-verbalized trauma can be parsed out, sifted through and dealt with. This whereas a more direct addressing of those same traumas, et al can - and frequently is - met with an insistent denial that the trauma even actually exists.

     For support / proof of this notion refer to the various forms of present day art therapy - the roots of which can be traced back to aspects of Freud’s THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS. And note how said therapy today is consistently and successfully used in the treatment and recovery of those suffering from war induced PTSD, sexual assault posttraumatic stress disorder and other deep psychological traumas. If that's all just a bit too heavy, okay. Then consider a more user friendly “simply cool-assed movie” example of the same, ... though on a national scale. Think back on the films of late 2001 and early '02, and of the dwindling box office in the days after 9/11 when many in the U.S. stayed home in fear; this fear and uncertainty not only driving an icy cold economic dagger into the heart of the film industry, but into that of the American consumer economy in general as well.

September 11, 2001

     Then think of one film in particular, Sam Raimi’s original SPIDER-MAN - the first major studio post 9/11 release (in May 2002) which featured a New York City under siege by a terroristic entity (here in the form of the Green Goblin), but which in the end - with the help of a masked representative of the common man and woman - emerges as a city which survives, overcomes and triumphs. This not unlike the film itself which became the top box-office grosser of the year, financially besting even the eagerly anticipated STAR WARS: ATTACK OF THE CLONES until later that Christmas when nudged from the #1 spot by the second HARRY POTTER and LORD OF THE RINGS entries. That first SPIDER-MAN film also rewrote the concept of the modern day summer blockbuster.

SPIDER-MAN (2002)

     It’s always been my belief that Raimi’s SPIDER-MAN provided an “eager to deal with the trauma” American public a masked (no pun intended) means of parsing out arguably it's most deeply ceded nationally traumatic nightmare since the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was a mass scale emotional catharsis which more direct “terrorism on domestic soil” films (and damned good ones too!) like Andrew Davis’ COLLATERAL DAMAGE (released Feb. ’02) and the Tom Clancy adaptation THE SUM OF ALL FEARS (May ’02) didn’t allow because the public just wasn’t yet ready to deal directly and specifically with that subject. All of which brings us to REIGN OF FIRE. 

_______ "We can do this easy, ... or we can do this real easy" _______

     I’ve always loved REIGN OF FIRE, but admittedly originally it was more in that Stephen King-like EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS / “10-yr.-old-boy-who’ll-never-grow-up”-gee-whiz!-I-love-the-smashing-together-of-genres-in-this-bad-assed-manner" sort of way.  Also not unlike the "Stephen King / EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS thing", however, my perception of the film changed (though with me over the years as opposed to a few moments caused by Sputnik) as I came to discover it's more (let’s call it) ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE / PLANET OF THE APES / TWILIGHT ZONE-like ability to cleverly, wittily (and now even disturbingly) exemplify a socio-political subtext which may have always been there, but which never had the catalyst applied (the “just add water” element if you will) which would make that subtext more obviously pronounced. I love when a film does this, ... and when we allow a film to do this, ... rather than placing it in a forever impenetrable and immovable bottle of preconceived, narrow-minded opinion.

REIGN OF FIRE dir. Rob Bowman

     Written by Gregg Chabot, Kevin Peterka and Matt Greenberg, and directed by Rob Bowman (best known at the time for multiple episodes of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, X-FILES and CASTLE, as well as the feature film X-FILES: FIGHT THE FUTURE), 2002’s REIGN OF FIRE opens in (then) contemporary London where, during a renovation project deep within the bowels of the city’s Underground rail system, an ancient cave is breached and a dragon in uber hibernation is awakened and loosed upon the world.

     Yeah, this is straight-ahead pulp-type material of the QUATERMASS sort if there ever was. But, as with the best pulp material, it sets up a wonderful tabula rasa onto which any number of subtextual elements can be emblazoned.

     A montage of images, clippings and narration fills us in on later discovered facts: namely how long ago the dragon's kind, after exterminating dinosaurs on earth and thereby exhausting their food source, went into hibernation until a new source arose - mankind. Then, after that London Underground incident, and being unleashed once again upon the earth, they expanded from continent to continent like a rapidly growing viral plague and repopulated the planet. By 2020 when the rest of the film takes place (interesting date, huh?) - aided and abetted by mankind nearly wiping itself off the globe by using nuclear weapons in it’s war against the creatures - the dragons became the dominant species while small pockets of humanity learned to shelter-in-place in hidden communities, fearful and adhering to strict quarantines and martial law policies which if breached run the chance of exposing the remaining survivors to the plague that is the hungry hunter dragons.

     Responsible for such a hidden community in a retrofitted Northumberland castle is Quinn Abercromby (THE DARK KNIGHT’s Christian Bale) - who as a child watched his mother die in that Underground construction site that fateful day, and his trusted brother-like companion Creedy (300’s Gerard Butler). Within that quarantined community all is far from well, however, as a philosophical conflict has been growing over the years between those who feel the safest and wisest continued course of action is to remain in place, while others - mostly a younger generation tired of seclusion - seeks to break containment. Early in the narrative a small group of “containment breakers” rebelliously leave camp, and in so doing tragically gives away the position of the castle. The dragons, aware of a new and plentiful food source, then launch a series of nocturnal attacks on the increasingly beleaguered Northumberland battlements.

     But as if that weren't enough, the philosophical conflict between the Brits becomes worse - turning into a clash of national cultures when a small military unit of Americans who call themselves the “Kentucky Irregulars”, lead by the half-mad Denton Van Zan (Matthew McConaughey) and his second in command Alex Jensen (GOLDENEYE’s Izabella Scorupco), arrive with a tank, helicopters and a Lockheed Galaxy battle cruiser aircraft, claiming that they’ve killed dragons around the world, and have now tracked the species Queen to her layer in London. Van Zan seeks to recruit Quinn’s people for what he believes will be the final battle between man and dragon. This while Quinn resists, ... and as Creedy finds himself emotionally and philosophically torn between the two leaders and their diametrically opposed courses of action.

     To call this a wild and woolly yarn is an understatement.

     Perhaps REIGN OF FIRE was a bit too wild and woolly for the box office. Not a financial success upon initial release, it wasn't helped by mixed reviews from critics - most of whom comfortably settled upon the notion that it was “well wrought yet mindless fun” and little else. But I’ve always disagreed. Perhaps not to the same degree, but in similar fashion to how long before the Columbine and other school mass shootings occurred I’d always interpreted Stephen King’s CARRIE as a thinly veiled (genre safe?) examination of the uncomfortable (and mostly then un-discussed) topics of school bullying and resultant exponential school violence, so had I always seen and interpreted Bowman’s “military vs. dragons” yarn as trafficking in that same "group psychology during a siege" territory as had the earlier mentioned John Carpenter’s THE THING, King’s THE MIST, and Scott’s ALIEN - all where a “pathogen” of some kind is introduced into a small community, and it’s presence causes the unleashing of long repressed and unacknowledged fears, prejudices and more within that community where it's residents had previously been (for the most part) “peacefully” coexisting within the boundaries of polite society and law.

Sheltering in Place - Top to bottom: THE THING (1982) / THE MIST (2007) /
TWILIGHT ZONE "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street" (1960)

     Bringing Rod Serling back into the mix, if there's anything the three aforementioned films all have in common ... . If there's a similar substance running through their thematic central nervous systems, it's a very pronounced  "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street" aspect. Their narrative, character and thematic DNA all harken back to the now iconic Serling-scripted 1960 TWILIGHT ZONE episode wherein, after the introduction of an alien "pathogen" element into the OZZIE & HARRIET-like suburban hamlet of Maple Street, trust and law becomes supplanted by fear, a so-called survival of the fittest mindset, paranoia, mistrust and a questioning (for better and for worse) of long-held beliefs. This same narrative-thematic virus (sorry, couldn't help it!) runs through the platelets of Bowman's great big, hairy-chested, dragon-ized, rip roaring pulp yarn cum social allegory. And it's never been as pronounced till now. Till glancing out the window, then viewing it yet again in light of the current "shelter-in-place" COVID-19 crisis where it almost becomes an entirely new film.

     Hmmm? Am I reading more into REIGN OF FIRE than is actually there? To be fair, and in the interest of full disclosure, I guess I have to acknowledge that it's possible. But I’ve been doing this for a long time now, and I honestly don’t think I’m giving the film more cred than it deserves. There’s a good way to find out for sure, though. Judge for yourself. During the coming weeks - or however long the “shelter-in-place” edict continues to exists in many areas here and abroad ... . Y'know, during one of those movie binge days, evenings or weekends, rustle up REIGN OF FIRE On Demand or via any one of the many streaming outlets where it’s readily available. I've even seen DVD copies in various department store cheapie bins for three or so bucks. And, hey, over the years it has managed to attain a rather fervent cult following.

     Give it a look-see, or if you've seen it before ... another look-see in light of recent events. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at just how clever, canny and (especially nowadays) how human-nature-perceptive it genuinely is.

     Stay safe all.

     “Ooh Rah!”

                                                                                                              CEJ

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