Dragon Wars struck me as something SciFi Channel Original Pictures would make if they had the money. The story is bad - a girl is born with some Heavenly MacGuffin in her, the chosen one must protect her until she comes of age at which point she is to sacrificed, only the two fall in love and their reincarnations get to try again 500 years later - and about half of the dialog is prefaced by some variation on "You're going to think I'm crazy, but." And neither the LAPD nor the FBI is capable of tracking a 200m long serpent as it rampages through downtown LA. No one believes the night watchman and thinks his story about the serpent eating all the elephants in the zoo makes him insane, prompting me to wonder how he's the only one who noticed that the elephants weren't there anymore.
So where did the budget go, if the story and script are abysmal? Quite simply, Dragon Wars is special effects porn. A scene devoted to showing off an immense battle for downtown between the evil serpent with it's army of dragons, dinosaurs, giant toadlike creatures, and faceless minions and the US military lasts around 10 minutes. It does absolutely nothing to advance the plot, but is a lot more fun to watch, so I've got no complaints about it taking up more than 10% of the total runtime.
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