Sure, there’s HBO’s House of the Dragon and Prime Video’s The Rings of Power these days, but such big-screen franchises didn’t exactly exist back in the 1980s. Back in 1981, Paramount and Disney teamed up for the release of Dragonslayer, which is now newly restored in eye-popping 4K Ultra HD under the supervision of director/co-writer Matthew Robbins. The fan-favorite classic was just re-released on Blu-ray DVD, as well as 4K Ultra HD and in a Limited Edition Collector’s SteelBook from Paramount Home Entertainment.
A timeless cinematic adventure with Oscar-nominated visual effects, Dragonslayer has been restored with exceptional picture and sound to bring the spectacular fantasy to life for a new generation. The film continues to win over fans more than 40 years after its initial release, including Academy Award winner Guillermo del Toro, who joins director and longtime collaborator Robbins for an entertaining and illuminating new commentary. The 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray releases also include more than an hour of additional new special features.
Set in sixth-century England, Dragonslayer focuses on an ill-tempered, fire-breathing creature — ominously known as Vermithrax Pejorative — that terrorizes its citizens until a young sorcerer’s apprentice named Galen (Peter MacNicol) is reluctantly tasked with confronting the beast. For Galen to succeed, it will take more than magic to defeat the dragon.
We recently caught up with director Robbins, who dished on bringing a unique story to life at a time when such fantastical themes weren’t exactly mainstream on film. He also discussed his extensive work with Toro.
Bringing Dragons to Life in the ’80s
MovieWeb: As co-writer and director of Dragonslayer, how did you guys come up with such a cool concept for a film?
Matthew Robbins: It all started because there was a kind of confluence of disparate elements. They were not particular and specific to us then, but in retrospect, I can identify them. And one of the main elements was that we were around when George [Lucas] was creating [Industrial Light & Magic]… and I personally knew of Dennis Muren, Phil Tippett and Ken Ralston, and we were there spectating and very much present as they were flying their spaceships around those star fields. And we thought, “Why not find a way to put all that technical horsepower onto another bit of fantasy?” It was like a new car — “why just drive it on the around the track? Why not take it over here?”
The second thing is that Hal [Barwood] was a ferocious devotee of Tolkien books, The Lord of the Rings. He got me to read them. I thought they were great… And then, there was the fact that the two of us were both very beguiled by Fantasia, and Mickey and the Sorcerer… so we put these sort of elements and shook them up in a sack, and we cooked up this story. And one of the guiding principles behind the story was, “What would happen if you had a very real gritty world, and you injected only one fantastic element into it… what would that really be like, without overdoing the magic, and you keep things very muddy and tough?” So we employed that principle, and when we were writing, we became aware of the fact that it would be most interesting if, given those circumstances, what if it is the end of that era, and the rise of the Christian era were happening? And that became, from a dramatic, thematic standpoint, one of the guiding principles as well. So you put all those elements together, and that’s how we cooked up this story.
MW: In taking that darker approach with the storyline, did that pose any challenges for you guys at the time to get the project greenlit?
Robbins: In those days, we did not pitch, we just wrote it. We got excited, and we wrote it on spec. And we didn’t know what we were in for, in terms of a marketplace. And our agent came back and said that there were two studios that expressed interest, Paramount and Disney, and it became a co-production. Paramount took the U.S. and Canada, Disney the rest of the world. And we learned when we met on that first meeting with the head of Paramount in those days, Michael Eisner, he told us that they had in fact been trying to develop a dragon movie based on the fact that the game Dungeons and Dragons was being played all over the country. But they weren’t satisfied with anything that had been produced. And here we come… this thing arrived from nowhere, and they liked it. But Disney was interested as well. And Walt Disney, of course, had died, and they were trying to find a new direction. I guess they were ready to take a gamble with us. I don’t think they were prepared at Disney to see something as gritty, as tough in a way, as what we produced.
Working with Guillermo del Toro
MW: What’s it like working with Guillermo del Toro on projects like Pinocchio and others?
Robbins: As you can see, he’s immensely knowledgeable, charming, enthusiastic. We’ve written many, many, many screenplays together, most of which are unproduced… With Pinocchio, I wrote my draft while he was in New Zealand. I went to Wellington twice to work with him there. And the draft that I wrote is very much the spirit of what he wound up with. I couldn’t be more delighted… because back in the day, when we went out with my draft of the screenplay, everybody turned it down. It was too expensive at $43 million, stop-motion, and it was dark. And it was all a lot of disturbing elements were there, and [Pinocchio] does not become a real boy.
It doesn’t happen, so I really set it aside. You can’t really sit by the phone and wait for good news endlessly. And nothing ever happened for all these years, so the fact that it not only got made beautifully and that it won the Oscar, it’s a big surprise… Some good things can happen in this industry every now and then, and that was one of them. And working with him is just great fun. It’s just a lot of excitement. It’s the best.
The best part of moviemaking, in my opinion, is the creation of a fresh story with somebody with that kind of originality, talent and security. It’s a thriving relationship.