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Special: Of Dragons and Wyverns – Part 2
The Hungarian Horntail in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
The overall idea we now have of the so-called “Western” dragon is the result of a stratified conflation of different traditions, and this process culminated in the Middle Ages, wherein traditional dragons, due to their innate serpentine quality, as well as common traits with the Leviathan of the Book of Job, began to be associated with the Biblical serpent — the one that tempted Eve to engage in the Original Sin.
Lo and Behold, dragons acquired some traits we now recognize them for, all associated with the iconography of the Devil: horns and bat-like wings, as well as the infamous dragon-fire, which is both an association to hell itself and an inheritance from the Biblical Leviathan.
Special: Of Dragons and Wyverns – Part 1
Here be Dragons.
When a dragon in a fantasy work — be it a novel, a film, or a videogame — is depicted as having just two wings (often also locomotory limbs) and two legs, the argument is often made that “it is not a dragon; it has two wings and two legs, therefore it is a wyvern, and should not be called a dragon“. This belief of an absolute dragon-wyvern dichotomy is held by surprisingly many as a sort of dogmatic truth — one that is radically false, in the face of actual data, history, literature and classical art saying otherwise. Of course, in no way a completely arbitrary classification reflects the plasticity of the word dragon, as well as the concept(s) of dragon.
Allow me thus to take you readers into a flying journey through the fantastic and languages, and explain why dragons can have as many limbs and wings as they please and still be called dragons.
Sovereigns of Fire
What do we do when we see them?
Dig hard, dig deep, go for shelter, and never look back.
In early 1996, writing duo Gregg Chabot and Kevin Peterka conceived a post-apocalyptic story depicting the last stand of humanity against monstrous dragons; aptly titled Reign of Fire, the script would have to wait several years before becoming a motion picture. Although this first draft would later evolve upon acquisition by Spyglass pictures, the driving force behind the project remained consistently the same: the desire to create the ultimate cinematic dragons — fast and formidable. “There was [an] agreement between Roger Birnbaum, my producer, and me,” said Rob Bowman, director of the film, “that ‘let’s not set up to do this if we don’t make a new benchmark for dragons’, and I was gonna make sure they were going to be as realistic as I could make them.” The duty to give life to about 130 shots of the fire-breathing reptiles was given to The Secret Lab, Disney’s in-house visual effects company — which was disbanded shortly after production of Reign of Fire was completed.
Monster Legacy 