Trailer
Plot summary
In 984 A.D., the knight Sir Bowen mentors Saxon Prince Einon in the Old Code, hoping the boy will grow into a just ruler. When a peasant rebellion kills Einon's father, King Freyne, the wounded prince is saved by a dragon, which makes Einon swear to rule justly and replaces his damaged heart with half of its own. The new king turns crueler than his father, and Bowen, believing the dragon's heart corrupted him, vows to hunt down every dragon. Twelve years later Bowen is a dragonslayer who has lost his faith, followed by Brother Gilbert, a monk who wants to record his deeds. He tracks a dragon to its cave, and the confrontation ends in a stalemate when the dragon says he is the last of his kind.
Cast
- Peter Hricas King Freyne
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about DragonHeart (1996)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Liam Neeson hit it off with the film's creator and seemed right for knight Bowen, but Universal refused to believe he could play an action hero since he had just finished Darkman.
- Universal sent the Bowen script to Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon and Arnold Schwarzenegger, considered Whoopi Goldberg to voice the dragon instead of Sean Connery, and Patrick Swayze was director Rob Cohen's first choice for Bowen before Dennis Quaid.
- Producer Raffaella De Laurentiis tried to talk Universal down to a $21 million budget, but the studio held out for $23 million and then wound up spending roughly three times that amount making the film.
- Sculptor Peter Konig built between 20 and 30 physical maquettes of the dragon Draco before director Rob Cohen approved a final design, then added forearms because Cohen wanted the dragon to use his hands.
- To let Draco emote convincingly, animator Phil Tippett gave the dragon a mammalian rather than reptilian face, shaping its muzzle as a mix of a highland gorilla's and a human mouth so it could form dialogue.
- Draco's wingspan was first calculated at 125 feet to physically support his body, then cut in half to 72 feet so the animated dragon could realistically fit within the film's sets.
- Dragonheart was the first film built around ILM's new Caricature software for lip-syncing computer animation to an actor's voice, and Draco became the first fully CG dragon designed to speak like a human.
