The Flight of Dragons is a movie by Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr., based on the novel of the same name by Peter Dickinson and The Dragon and the George by Gordon R. Dickson. It stars the voices of John Ritter, Harry Morgan, Victor Buono, James Gregory and James Earl Jones.
Plot:
Carolinus (Harry Morgan) is a wizard in a world where magic is slowly crowded out by technical advancement and science. He gets together with his three brothers to decide on a course to save the magical world, but one of them, Ommadon (James Earl Jones), wants to see humanity enslaved by its machinery and with that, he starts a war. Carolinus calls on Peter (John Ritter), a young scientist and dragon-afficionado from the future to help them save the world by going on a quest.
The Flight of Dragons is not the subtlest of films. It has one question it asks and explores, that of science vs. magic and it’s quite relentless in the pursuit of an answer and pretty obvious in its imagery. With all the focus on this, other things are a bit lost, such as a decent voice-acting cast or character development. In short, I’ve heard good things about the film but I don’t see its appeal.
“Science vs. Magic” is not a question that I ponder often. I have no problems with either in my fiction and for real life, I like the magic that’s in science and I’m pretty settled on that. So maybe that was the reason why the film couldn’t pull me in like it seems to have done for other people. Science, magic, who cares? Apparently not me. Apart from that, I just didn’t feel like the movie added anything to my thought processes.
But since the film concentrates almost entirely on that question, there’s not much else to get from it. The animation feels incredibly dated [even though The Last Unicorn* is from the same year and the same directors, it feels much more modern to me] and I just didn’t like the aesthetics very much (which is a question of taste).
The character development was pretty much non-existant, people kept falling in love with each other for no apparent reason other than “you’re a guy, I’m a girl, you’re here, I’m here” or “you’re a woman, I’m a man, that other woman is already in love with somebody else, so let’s do this” and the only character who gets to grow, at least a bit is Peter.
But the voice acting was the thing that was really jarring. With the exception of James Earl Jones, there was no acting involved, only reading. Seriously, it was like they just took the audio from the first rehearsal and decided not to bother with having anybody actually looking at the script more closely.
Summarising: Probably more a move for nostalgia than for discovery as an adult.
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*It’s so time for a Re-Watch. Just FYI.
kalafudra's Stuff 
Yeah, maybe. But there’s a lot to be said for nostalgia, and this movie was one of my childhood favourites and my husband’s too.
Plus – dragons flying around on flatulence? Come on!
Of course there’s a lot to be said for nostalgia – all the crap I love, it’s amazing. ;) It’s just hard to get there without actualyl having experienced it in childhood.
And dragons flying around on flatulence is a strong argument, you’re right.
the science vs. magic theme may be a bit over the top, but only from a worldview that readily understands science. this really got a number of religious people i know thinking – as the scene with the limestone demonstrates – that the world is explainable through natural causes. magic has its place in inspiration, not execution. some people are still baffled that they can have every song they’ve ever loved fit in their hand. others take it for granted.
i’m sure there’s some difficulty as the film was marketed towards children. at its heart – the subjects are a bit more mature. there’s no sex, but plenty of murder and violence – which were in a lot of kids movies back in the 80’s.
there’s a lot of good details in the movie – Sir Orin sings “Sing Kukoo” which is the oldest notated song on record. but yah, i do hear you that it follows some cliches. I disagree with you on the voice acting, but yeah, some of it is rough.
Sorry, took me a while to get back to your comment. :)
I keep forgetting that not everybody goes “SCIENCE! SHINY!” and that people aren’t as ready to accept it as I am. So if it gets people to see it that way, I’m all for it.
Some of the details of the film are certainly lost on me – I didn’t know about Sing Kuckoo, for example. That’s pretty cool.