Does anyone share my belief that the dragon babies were a little too different from their parent?
When I first saw the movie I thought they were just randomly made flesh eating toads. I didnt realize they were dragons as well until vermithrax cried.
Actually, it sounded more like Vermithrax screamed in rage when she saw her young slain by Galen. *g*
Anyway, I think the babies being different looking from the parent was on purpose. You will find many different species of animals have offspring that, as infants, look nothing like they will as adults. This was probably along the lines ILM was thinking. Plus, I would also guess they wanted to show something visually related to the dragon, but not quite the same as Vermithrax herself.
I really felt sorry for Vermithrax. She was the last of her race and her offspring were the key to the species survival. Not only that but she must have been so lonely and those babies were all she had. Also as Ulric pointed out, she must have been quite old therefore bieng unable to hunt properly, she turned to Cassiodorus Rex to feed her and her children. Galen was such a ponce.
I've learned this much. Take what you can, when you can- Jenner
I totally agree. The few virgins sacrified were no great loss, but to loose the LAST dragon is TERRIBLE!! I would have liked this movie much more if the dragon had won and kept her babies ("dragonettes"?) alive.
shareI saw it tonight for the first time (and yes, I actually was alive and a teen in the 80s), and I thought "finally someone figured out the demonic potential of your common bulldog". Or boxer, or pitbulll... I'm no good with dogs. Fierce, slobbery dogs anyway. The kind the owners of which will always say things like "oh he wouldn't hurt a fly... only wants to play".
Dogs are sons of bitches.
Rumrunner. Period.
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Question - how come Vermithrax had babies? Where's the Daddy? Either that or dragons have one heck of a gestation period.
Also the whole virgin sacrifice thing made no sense to me, I mean if only a virgin can be sacrificed surely there are <ahem> ways around that if you're the girl in question? But then it is a Disney film.
Incidentally, when I looked up Caitlin Clarke's filmography I was sorry to see that she died of cancer just a few weeks ago, I thought she was gorgeous.
I share you sadness at the loss of Caitlin. My thoughts are with her family and friends.
The thought about the virgins occured to my dirty little mind too. It IS a curable condition!
And as to the baby dragons, am I the only person who thought they were way too SMALL given the size of their parent?
Elvis is DEAD
I believe dragons can have extremely long gestation periods. The eggs stay in the mother's body until she secures a good food supply for her brood;namely sweet delicious virgin.
shareI never understood the whole "dragons only eat virgins" thing in the stories. One--are dragons really so particular about their meat? It's all charbroiled anyway, can they really taste whether the person in question was a virgin or not (does sex somehow "taint" the meat)? Two--where does is say that all virgins are female? Quite often the story will only say a virgin needs to be sacrificed, but doesn't say anything about the gender of that virgin sacrifice. Virgins do come in both. And three--it's usually only one virgin at a time being sacrificed (in Dragonslayer it's one virgin twice a year), surely with the size of the dragons they'd need much more than the meat from only one person to survive on for an entire year, even just a few months in between feedings seems too long.
Then there was a star danced and under that was I born.
I loved this movie! The whole virgin sacrifice thing, if you let it slip through your mind and not actually think about it, is fine...but when you stop to think about it, it is a little upsetting that only girls are sacrificed. As if girls are useless and unworthy of life in some way. Until I see a man push a 8 pound human being out of his penis I am thinking they should sacrifice male virgins too. LOL. That female virgin sacrice rule was a little dumb-but, I guess it would make sense for the time period and also for the plot-since audiences generally would feel more tension witnessing a helpless young woman being charbroiled alive by a dragon than seeing a man charbroiled alive by a dragon. I know that when the first virgin sacrifice is killed I was always very traumatized when I first saw that part of the movie-but I was only about 8 years old when I first saw this movie. The baby dragons did seem a little too small to me...but I'm sure the writers and creators did think about it and there is some reasoning behind there size. I did wonder where the other parent to the offspring was though?
shareAlso, during those times, women were sadly only looked at as breeding machines to give birth to sons. It is a very dumb thought process and thank God we live in a time where women have rights...but in those times, a woman was pretty much just there to have children. Even if you look in the bible, women were rarely mentioned unless it was stating how many sons they had given birth to for all of the various biblical men.
shareActually, before Christianity took hold, there were many places where women were revered...and sometimes they were the special link to the gods (like priestesses). In many cultures, to be chosen as the 'virgin sacrifice' was considered an especially high honor (although, I'm not sure -I- would want to be eat by a dragon!) The ability to have children was considered a gift (the ability to bring for life) and that's why the Earth is refered to as "Mother Earth".
There were also some very important women in the Bible. The lowering of the status of women actually came after the creation of Christianity, when authors, such as Paul (who spent his early years boozing and womenizing) decided to 'turn over a new leaf' and go the extreme opposite direction (women = evil). Even early Roman women had 'power'...for instance, Roman names were matriarchial (sp?) in origin. There were (and still are) some cultures where the women did the hunting and the men stayed with the children.
Of course with the spreading of Christianity and it's ideals and the advent of the 'Middle Ages' (and the increase in illiteracy) the status of women took a real beating. The Church had a great hold on every day life and there was no separation of Church and State. The 'Virgin Mary' created an unrealistic ideal of the perfect women that was hard to live up to, but at the same time limited women on on how they would be allowed to live their lives. Mary was pious (follow the Church), submissive (husband and or male figure in control), and obedient...this allowed for a male dominated society, women controled by men who were then controlled by the Church. And it lasted for at least 1000 years. And still occurs today in certain cultures.
So there's my $.02. :D
I'm sure the idea of sacrificing a virgin to a dragon does have its roots in the virgin sacrifices of various sects or consecrating a virgins to the temples to a life of service there. But again, it's not just women who are virgins--isn't it convenient how that's overlooked when choosing a victim to send out? I'm sure it does get the audience's sympathy more to send out a woman (and not just for this movie, but as a device in any of the stories like this), given our ingrained stereotypes. I'm sure if it were a man standing there the audience would be yelling at him for not finding a way to think or fight his way out--whereas it's more normal for the audience to see a woman helpless and unable to escape from the situation herself (moreso at the time this film came out anyway). So the audience would probably feel more sympathy for a woman whom they'd perceive as innately more fragile and helpless, rather than a man whom they'd perceive as someone who should be tough and strong and able to rescue himself.
Anyway, no matter where the roots of why it needs to be a virgin sacrifice came from, I still don't think it makes a whole lot of sense when it's a dragon she's being sacrificed to--unless your idea of dragons is the highly intelligent, humanlike (in that they have human emotions) kind who can speak or use telepathy to indicate their preference and who have very definite opinions in taste.
Cry Havoc.
Are you seriously arguing that Paul was a "boozer and womanizer"? On what do you base your claim?
Hmm...Before Christianity women were revered as a link to the gods but afterwards it all went into the patriarchal soup? Tell me what you think the last (and one of the most conservative) popes was saying on his deathbed? I'll give you a hint. It begins: "Hail Mary, full of grace..."
If you have an axe to grind, by all means do so. But let's make sure there are facts to back it all up.
If dragons need a regular supply of virgin females (hormones might make a difference in some nutritional ways for dragons) then it's no wonder that dragons are extinct.
It all seems to make soms sense now.. ;)
---http://spacehamster.com----------------------->;
Dragons are asexual, and the babies get along fine by themselves if no mage comes along and slaughters them.
There I just answered your questions in 1 line.
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Hi! I remember reading the novelization that came out with the film-it had more background...Vermithrax("the worm of Thrace") was believed to be the oldest living dragon and all known dragons had different colors or color combinations-there was a rhyme in the book version naming the dragons and colors,and it ended with,Only Vermithrax has a coat of black etc. Vermithrax was therefore an ancient GREEK dragon who has migrated into Europe in the story. The wizard thought Vermithrax was long dead before the peasants told him the color and then he began to worry a LOT,because Vermithrax has defeated all swordsmen and mages for thousands of years.
In the novelization,the gestation period was hundreds of years and being pregnant and having the eggs HURT the dragon like hell...the wizard even mentions that at Vermithrax' age that all she would know was pain whenever she moved. The baby dragons were distinctly in the book as a way of showing that the King's policies were ensuring that Dragons were going to be in the kingdom for a long time...Vermithrax even notes in the book that she was finally able to lay eggs because she was eating high quality meat regularly at long last. So she was incredible incensed about the babies and their demise because of all the pain she went through to have them after centuries. The babies also disposed of the Princess,who is very idealistic in the book too but who has a famous menagerie of albino animals that the King has scoured the earth for and is quite out of touch. Always hated her death,because she at least tried to be just about the sacrifices.
it is completely logical that they would sacrifice female virgins. look up on your history.
back then women were in second place and men wrote all the rules. here's how it would have gone down:
"ok, this dragon is a real problem, and everyone in the kingdom and surrounding villages is living in fear. how are we going to deal with this? let's give the dragon a regular sacrifice! that should ease the problem considerably. so, who should we sacrifice? hmm, how about you jack? no? what about you, fred? no? well its not going to be bloody me! ok, we'll make it the women, and we'll make them virgins to add some sellable purity to the deal. the commoners will buy that."
in the dark ages they were forever burning women at the stake for being witches. this is pretty similar.
and the dragon? he wouldn't have cared if the king himself was tied up. free food is free food.
It's a pretty good policy...
Sacrifice the virgins...Keep the sluts!
"She doesn't put out? Throw her to the Dragon!"
"...For every man who has ever lived, in this universe, there shines a star."
-Arthur C. Clarke
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