Reign of Fire. Where to begin?! Is this the best post apocalyptic hellscape dragon vs man survival movie ever made? Short answer: yes.

I’m told that when I exited the theater after making my smokeshow of a boyfriend take me to this movie on opening day in 2002, I loudly told the entire parking lot, “That was fucking awesome!” Because of course I did. This is exactly how I handle everything if no one is fast enough to stop me.

We don’t waste any time getting to the action. Young Quinn (Christian Bale) is roaming around his mother’s construction site and runs headlong into a den of sleeping dragons, disturbing and releasing a bunch them of upon the planet. Note to any would-be parents out there, letting your child run around a construction site largely unattended is actually dangerous and possibly world ending, but it was a different time back then.

Cut to years later, in the shit year of 2020 in any timeline. The world is in ruins. Quinn and a group of other survivors are holed up in a castle in the countryside, which is exactly what I would do. Not because stone doesn’t burn easily – also good – but because castles are rad.

Things seem dangerous but somewhat survivable until a bunch of roided out Americans led by Denton Van Zan (Matthew McConaughey) arrive on scene with a crazy plan that I guess has worked before, whereby they yeet themselves out of helicopters at dragons to, I guess, do a stabby flyby at them, but usually just end up getting skewered with something within 17 seconds because obviously this is kind of a stupid idea. And that’s not even how the big dragon male dies in the end. It dies on the ground with an explosive arrow to the mouth because that makes sense and is pretty much dragon killing canon in tone at this point.

Yeah, yeah, but they killed the other dragon didn’t they? How many men are left in the world that we go about throwing them out of helicopters (and where the hell are we getting all of this equipment?!) to certainly die? Seems a little hasty.

But die it does, not before Matthew McConaughey in, no arguing here, the best scene of this entire movie, takes a flying shirtless leap from atop the castle swinging a battle axe, whereupon he is immediately swallowed whole by that dragon. It’s really peak McConaughey.

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*FACTS
This is technically a Wyvern not a dragon. Two legs not four. *hairflip*