Beast mode: The 16 best big-screen dragons, ranked
From The Great Protector to Maleficent to Vermithrax Pejorative, these are our favorite cinematic dragons
Film Features Eddie Murphy
Even before Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves arrives in theaters this weekend, it seems like dragons are everywhere you look in pop culture these days. They’re on TV, in games and books, and especially in films. In that spirit we’ve put together a list of our favorite dragons from the big screen (sorry Game Of Thrones fans, we’re just looking at movies this time). Here you’ll find traditionally animated dragons as well as CGI versions, friendly ones, angry ones, and greedy ones, both male and female. Some of them talk, while others just fly around and burn things. They’re often defined by their relationships to humans, or one human in particular. Many of them are the last of their kind. This isn’t a comprehensive list of all the cinematic dragons ever created, it’s just a rundown of the ones we especially enjoy based on their personalities, designs, or a combination of both.
80 Comments
Much as I enjoy the How to Drain your Python movies, Number one is obviously Vermithrax Pejorative. The one dragon that actually gets the girl, if you take my meaning.Smaug would have been a contender, except those Hobbit films are a disaster and should be forgotten.
Smaug himself was great (cap tip to Benedict Cumberbatch) but yeah that series should have been a third the length. It could still have been two, 2-hour films; the trek through the Misty Mountains and Mirkwood in the first, then the Laketown/Lonely Mountain/Battle of Five Armies in the second. The damn book is less than 300 pages long.
Benedict got the perfect sneering inflection of a dragon whose ego apparently dwarfed his already massive size. I have re-read the Hobbit since then and now his voice occupies that place in my head with its smirking declarations.
I thought the Smaug design was kind of workman-like and serviceable. It just kind of looked like a basic, standard dragon which is… fine.
I really like the weird, feline design of the Rankin-Bass Hobbit – I’m sure mostly because it’s what I grew up with, but also because it just looks so unlike other dragons. It was like a hybrid between Chinese and European dragons!
But like everything else in the Jackson Hobbit, Smaug is just so long-winded! Any mystique Smaug may have had got eroded down after 30 minutes of soliloquy.
Smaug and Bilbo’s dialogue is literally the most famous and most important scene in the entire book. He should be long-winded, it’s kind of his thing.
The riddling with Smaug and Smaug’s epic boasting is famous and important (“My scales are shields, my teeth are swords, etc…) and are still the strongest part of the scene. But then they take a long stroll through the caverns talking about the Arkenstone and whether or not Thorin and Bilbo are REALLY besties or whether that dwarf is just USING you, etc, etc. All that was definitely less necessary.
No, the (revised) Bilbo/Gollum scene is, but the Smaug encounter was great too. I appreciate how it feels genuinely dangerous, despite the somewhat light tone Bilbo and the dragon use with each other. Smaug fully plans to kill Bilbo and eat him at the first opportunity and they both know it. The film entirely diminishes this by dragging the scene out far too long and then it just gets ridiculous with the Dwarves.
The problem wasn’t the runtime, the problem was the staggering amount of bullshit that PJ+co made up in place of any of the actual material from the books.
That sure as hell didn’t help. I don’t know why he felt the need to turn a whirlwind adventure into LOTR Parts IV – VI.
That sure as hell didn’t help. I don’t know why he felt the need to turn a whirlwind adventure into LOTR Parts IV – VI.The blame for that falls to the production company, not Peter Jackson. He only took the directing job out of obligation after Guillermo Del Toro’s vision was deemed too weird, he hadn’t planned on doing the whole thing in the first place and didn’t have much control over the script.
I highly recommend the Rankin and Bass animated version of the Hobbit. Much shorter (1h 30m) and Smaug is even better! Voiced by Richard Boone, it’s a voice you will never forget. The Bilbo/Smaug interaction is just as exciting as the Jackson movie version.
Also Vermithrax Pejorative is the first on screen dragon with only 4 limbs including wings. This was copied by Reign of Fire with CG. Plus its one of the only films to recognize that a human sized weapon, even a magic one is just too damn small to do anything to a big goddamn dragon.
Also Vermithrax Pejorative is the first on screen dragon with only 4 limbs including wings. Which makes him a wyvern, not a dragon, dammit! [/D&D Nerd]
D&D is not the final arbiter of mythical creature taxonomy.
Here’s a great link about her creation. And yes, other people pointed that out too. https://monsterlegacy.net/2013/04/14/vermithrax-pejorative-dragonslayer/
Wyvern is just a subtype of dragon. Some mythological dragons have no limbs at all, or crazy numbers of heads, tails and/or limbs. Even in D&D it’s not the number of limbs that makes the difference, wyverns are also smaller, dumber, non-magical and possess a venomous stinger in D&D properties.
i don’t feel it’s fair to ding Smaug based on the rest of the movie(s). the scene with Smaug and Bilbo was one of those things they knew they HAD to nail, and they did it perfectly well.
The scene with her babies having lunch did a number on 10-year-old me in the theater. The PG rating covered a lot of ground back then.
If you have kids I would recommend the “how to train your dragon” book series. It is great for a certain age kid. Also in the books toothless is VERY different. https://www.lbyr.com/landing-page/how-to-train-your-dragon-books-in-order/
It’s pretty much accepted wisdom at this point that the most glorious cinema dragon has always been and always will be Vermithrax Pejorative.
How are you going to top that name?? It wins on that alone.
It’s a good one, but I’m partial to “Ancalagon the Black” myself. Not likely to ever see him in a movie though.
No one ever talks about his kinder brother, Thermivrax Lauditory.
It does my heart good to see so many people in the comments correctly naming Vermithrax of Dragonslayer as the best cinematic dragon of all time.Obviously.
Yeah I’m honestly kind of shocked, give some of the, ahem, oversights around here lately that she was mentioned at all in the list, let alone making it to top 3.
Kids today!
I would have accepted Malificent for being that badass in a Disney movie, but yeah, there’s really no question. Like most of these lists, I suspect they intentionally bumped the real #1 to spur more comments.
The Pete’s Dragon remake was an unexpected masterpiece. I don’t know how it didn’t get more attention then, or doesn’t seem to be much remembered just seven years later. It’s superior to the original in every single possible way.
We recently rewatched it with the kids and it’s a real good movie. I think it’s overall tone is a bit melancholy which turns people off
I guess I could see that. It’s for slightly more mature audiences than the original. Definitely a movie that could make a five year-old cry.
I guess I’ll give it a look one of these days. I wasn’t a big fan of the original, because dragons are supposed to be massive, fearsome, wicked awesome-looking creatures, not whatever that stupid cartoon was.
This one is kind of like the Neverending Story dragon, with fur and a more canine face. It gets to ball out some towards the end but is mostly like a 50-foot golden retriever.
I never realized The Neverending Story creature was a dragon. I thought it was some kind of flying ferret.
I have to say I greatly prefer the original. The remake more or less turns Elliot into a giant dog. In what would become a trend with Disney live-action remakes, all the personality that comes from an animated character is lost in the new translation.
Pete’s Dragon was (and still is) a favorite of mine. I’ve been hesitant to watch the remake. I guess I’ll have to check it out now
Vermithrax still looks great, and that 4K of ‘Dragonslayer’ is sweet. Smaug, on the other hand, looks just as phony as all of the other effects in those bloated snoozefests.
Too much kiddie stuff here. I’ll go with the 80s b-movie glory of Q terrorizing David Carradine and NYC.
No King Ghidorah…..?
Came here to say the same thing. This bullshit.
Who would’ve thought it wasn’t really about a dragon, huh?
Any list without Vermithrax Pejorative at #1 is obviously just silly contrarianism.
Falkor is #1
I saw somewhere that Vermithrax Pejorative translates as “The Worm from Thrace that Makes Everything Worse.” Correct or not, that’s a pretty sweet name for a dragon. And, yes, it should be #1.
Another Dragonslayer love thread. On top of how great Vermithrax—dragon and name—are, it’s just a really good forgotten gem of a movie. I showed it to my daughter and wife a few years ago and was self-conscious about it maybe being dated but they both loved it and were shocked by some of the turns it took. Part of Disney’s “fuck you, children” era, it’s bone-deep cynical and subversive, undermining the Hero’s Journey narrative at almost every turn. If George RR Martin didn’t have a hand in writing it he was surely influenced by it.
one of my better experiences as an uncle is to try with my nephews and nieces which movies worked for them that I loved from the 80s, and generally the most outrageous the fantasy the better: Dragonslayer, Krull and Labyrinth as the better received ones.
Yeah Labyrinth went over particularly well with my daughter. The Goblin King especially for some reason. Hmm . . .
Just rewatched Dragonslayer over the weekend. Just as good as I remember it.
Eustace Scrubb reminds me of the Sonic the Hedgehog movie before its panicked redesign. Why would you give human eyes to a creature that shouldn’t have human eyes?
Sorry, y’all need a new number one:
If you want to enter the dragon, I’m sure there is a subset of fan fiction just for you!
I’m good with #1.Carry on.
Did I miss something or is there not a single memorable dragon from either Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon – the latter having the subject right there in the title?
“Big Screen” means theatrical cinema.
I don’t watch HoD, but in GoT, the dragons themselves weren’t really characters. They were basically like horses who breathed fire.
“the dragons themselves weren’t really characters. They were basically like horses who breathed fire.”You callous bastard. You take that back!
I can’t. I shan’t.
The article was best MOVIE dragons ranked. TV, prestige or otherwise, need not apply. I realize the distinction is increasingly irrelevant, but that was the route AV Club chose to go here.
You missed the word “movie” in the title of the post.
Whenever I need a pick me up I look up a Benedict Cumberbatch gif of him in mo-cap for Smaug and just think how much fun the crew had giggling behind his back while telling him they were definitely going to use this
We have to give a nod to special effects master Phil Tippett and his dragon in 1981’s Dragonslayer. At the time he used a new revolutionary process of stop motion called Go-Motion. He uses practical effects for some shots of the Dragon as well. By combining those two, Phil Tippett brought to life a terrifying dragon. The special effects don’t always up by today’s standards, but as a kid this movie both terrified and delighted me. The look and atmosphere of the Dragon’s lair is very D&D. It’s magical fantasy to me. I still love it!
3 and 4 was great and the total opposite reaction to people.Draco made me tear up in 96 and I was fucking 23 years old!In 1981 I was scared to death of Vermithrax at age 7 in the theater!Good list but those are my 1 and 2!
I remember thinking the Dragonheart dragon looked a little silly with its giant moving mouth creating a regular, human-sized voice (otherwise it was a pretty impressive FX step forward in 1996), but by the time I saw the telepathy dragon in Eragon which just stares at you, I figured Dragonheart got it right.
“The story follows a wizard’s apprentice (Peter MacNicol) who is enlisted by a shady king to deal with the dragon after a series of maiden sacrifices don’t do the trick.”
Well… I mean… that’s not really it, technically. And the details really aren’t important here, in context. The main thing is how this is the best dragon ever to appear on the silver screen.
However!
The maiden-sacrifice thing absolutely has been doing the trick; the shady king doesn’t have a problem with that. It’s the villagers that come up with the idea of hiring a sorcerer (Sir Ralph Richardson) to take care of the dragon, because they’re tired of the aforesaid maiden sacrifices. Sir Ralph gets stabbed in the chest (Disney movie, remember!) by the king’s chief goon, so MacNicol volunteers to take his place despite not knowing WTF he’s doing. He causes a landslide that buries the dragon’s cave, thus totally disrupting the maiden-sacrifice industry. What with one thing and another, it’s not long before Vermithrax digs her way out and starts breathing fire on everything. It’s only when the king’s daughter is about to be sacrificed that the king, having no other option, enlists MacNicol to deal with it.
Vermithrax Pejorative is a million times better than Smaug, sorry.
Also,
the list is missing the coolest, gnarliest dragon on film prior to
Vermithrax, namely Sakura’s Dragon from “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad”
(1958) one of Ray Harryhausen’s genius creations.
Sleeping Beauty’s dragon Maleficent was also Don Bluth.
What about the dragons from G.O.T
What? No wicked queen from Enchanted? How could you miss out Susan Sarandon having a good old chew of the furniture!
I quote Mushu regularly. DISHONOR ON YOUR COW!
So I realise this list is just about movies, but I love the dragons in ‘Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’. They’re so huge and ethereal. I think I legitimately gasped when I first saw one in the game.
Y’all missed one:
Pretty solid list, even if Malicefant should be higher. Forgot how great that Whole sequence is!
Serious question: is Godzilla a dragon?+ breathes fire, kind of
+ is lizard
+ smarter than a regular animal
+ according to the 90s movies, is psychic, which is kind of like magic
+ supernaturally hard to kill
+ turns into bones when killed, which are cursed
+ in 1 installment, is actually made out of the souls of angry war dead
– no wings, cannot fly except that one time
– no interest in treasure or maidens
– in most cases, is a mundane creature like a dinosaur or reptile that is mutated by man’s hubris
– biologically distinct from other creatures in the same universe that are clearly actual dragons
The only reason Figment doesn’t top the list is because Disney lacks the vision to make a film around him.
I think a Figment/Dreamfinder film would be incredible!
Smaug was worthy, but they still managed to bungle even that.
I mean what’s that point of having a character who speaks one of the most badass boasts ever written (“My armor is like tenfold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath death!”) if you’re not going to actually use it?
You want to know how awesome a dragon name “Vermithrax Pejorative” actually is? It literally translates to “The Wyrm From Thrace That Makes Things Worse”.
I thought that John Hurt’s performance as Kilgharrah, aka ‘The Great Dragon’, in Merlin (2008-2012) was very good with decent CGI on a TV budget. At least worthy of an honorable mention.
If we run their names through the Wu Tang Clan name generator:16-Amateur Desperado
15-Lazy-Assed Destroyer
14-B-Loved Worlock
13-Amazing Lover
12-Shriekin? Ninja
11-Unlucky Commander
10-The Criminal
9-Profound Dreamer
8-Dynamic Mastermind
7-Mad Lover
6-Bittah Pupil
5-Midnight Worlock
4-Unlucky Lover
3-Wicked HUnter
2-Phantom Beggar
1-Arrogant Warrior
First of all, who knew there were that many movies featuring dragons? Secondly, why isn’t Cockzilla on the list? That fucker is huge!