The Dragons are the antagonists in the live action movie Reign of Fire (especially the sole male of their kind). Initially dismissed by mankind as a myth, these flying monsters turned out real, as they were awakened by construction workers that unintentionally unearthed the male Dragon. Once awakened, more of them awakened as well, and proceed to seek to dominate the world and kill off humanity that they view as food. They are believed to be from the Mesozoic era, the time of the Dinosaurs.
History
Past and Prehistoric Era
The Dragons (or possibly their ancestors) first appeared on Earth in prehistoric times in the Mesozoic and lived alongside Dinosaurs for a long time, but they eventually killed them all by burning them in an event come to be known as the K-T extinction. Afterwards, the Dragons went into hibernation, waiting for the Earth to replenishes all life that has been destroyed by them. Their deadly capabilities also something that caused the Ice Ages in the past as well.
Though being hidden for millenia, modern man would encountered the hibernating Dragons around the Viking Age and the Middle Ages as many were slaughtered by Vikings and Knights. These events inspired mankind for myths that involves Dragons and their infamous reputation, unaware that they only knew little of them and the number of slaughtered Dragons were only a tiny fragment of the portion of their overall population on Earth.
Events in the Movie
The male Dragon was uncovered during a dig in New York and killed all the humans who had found them. One man named Quinn, a boy at the time, survived the Dragon ambush and feared them. He held together some survivors and the Dragons managed to kill off humanity and rule Earth, hunting any human survivors.
Some of Quinn's survivors get rebellious against his rule and they go out illegally at night to pick apples and steal the crop. They are ambushed by a Dragon who eats one of them. Later they meet an American survivor called Zann who claims to be a Dragon killer. There, it turns out that the Dragons has only one male in the colony, as most of the Dragons are females. Quinn realizes that the male was the Dragon that kill his mother, and if he can kill the male, the others will be unable to reproduce. Quinn goes to the nesting place of the Dragons alongside Jensen and Zan. He fights the male Dragon and eventually, Quinn throws a bomb down its mouth in retribution for the death of his mother and mankind's death.
The remaining Dragons apparently begin to dwindle afterwards with the Male's death; they are at any rate not seen or heard of. Quinn doubts their another possible resurgence; but remains prepared and says he will fight if they do return, claiming that "They'll burn, we'll build".
Personality
Dragons, especially the sole male of their kind, are extremely aggressive and genocidal. They have no qualm in killing any humans and other lifeforms that they encounter, whether simply to feed on their charred mass as food or enemies.
Reasons why dragons wind up nearly pushed humanity into the brink of extinction was due to them view humanity as rival species and constant battle between them resulting in the dragons become genocidal and will not stop in eradicating all life until them become the most dominant species on earth. Unfortunately, this also contribute their own presumed extinction as by eradicating non-human lifeforms that they encounter, they wind up causing potential preys become scarce, and thus survivors of their kind resorted to cannibalism.
Physical appearance
The Dragons are highly similar with the mythical Dragons, as both Dragons and their mythical counterparts are massive, scaly, winged-reptillian creature. But the Dragons in the movie lacks forelegs, making them more like Wyverns than actual Dragons (A typical trait in live-action movie Dragons as portrayals as Wyvern more famous than regular, six-limbed dragons.) They possesses two separate glands within their mouth cavity that enable them to breathe fire.
The female Dragon is considerably smaller than the huge Dragon male. This is an unusual trait in nature, because females are often much larger than the males in any species. The male Dragon is gigantic in comparison to the females. The facial differences of both sexes are minimal but still very significant. While the female's somewhat shorter upper horns are rather straight, the male's longer upper horns are more curved. The male's lower horns are considerably shorter than that of the female. The female's mouth and nose is longer in comparison with the male's.
The egg of a dragon has a arther red/orange transparent colour and is about the size of 1.5x0.7 feet.
Powers and Abilities
For such large creatures, the Dragons possess a devastating ability to remain hidden until it is almost too late. The Dragon that ambushed the crop raiders remained hidden until the last minute, emerging out of fire, which seems to be their ambush tactic. The Dragons can breathe fire and do brutish damage with their vast bulk and claws, fangs and horns. The speed of the Dragons make it almost impossible for humans to escape. A code exists among the survivors "Look to the skies, keep digging, and never look back" upon what to do if Dragons are seen. Inspiring fear amongst all humans, the Dragons are very powerful enemies and can only be challenged by the most cunning or strong humans. And can only be destroyed by the heaviest weaponry ever - Zann used his tank to kill Dragons.
At the climax of the film, it's revealed that they had another weaknesses, which serve as their achilles heels: the glands that enable them to breathe fire inside their mouth and their vision. Had these glands attacked with volatile weapons (like Quinn's explosive bolts for example), the chemical mixtures inside the glands would ignites and resulting violent, fiery explosion that would resulting the near decapitation. However, this also the most difficult weakness to inflict upon as they tend to breathe their flames on their foes before they had a chance. The only one that succesfully perform such feat is Quinn himself. Their vision on the other hand, which nearly same with humans, was not very good in area that emit extreme heat: They cannot see well should extreme heat sources like fire was put between them and what they see as their perception would be blurred. This was unknowingly inflicted by Quinn to the male dragon as when flames happened to between him and the dragon, the dragon can't see him well and hestitate to breathe fire on him, resulting his death..
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