PeteByrdie
Privateer in the service of Princess Frideswide
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2014
- Messages
- 3,217
This is being a little unfair to filmmakers. Successful filmmakers are rarely characterised as being lazy. Most are noted for their energy and dedication to detail. The only job they have to perform when designing their dragons is of making them look cool, a task fulfilled in the two bipedal examples that spring immediately to mind, Peter Jackson's Smaug and that one from Dragonslayer. Filmmakers have no duty to adhere to an imagined taxonomy for mythical beasts, when it's unclear to what extent even those who believed in the creatures centuries ago were aware of such distinctions. To be honest, I've pointed out to people in a self-satisfied tone that a supposed dragon is actuality a wyvern, but when I was in my teens. Strict taxonomy and morphology for draconids is for those designing role-playing games, in my opinion.A true dragon has four legs and two wings. The wyvern only has two legs and two wings. Dragons were gigantic with some said to run into hundreds of feet, wyverns much smaller, 30-40 feet. Lazy film makers are forever fobbing us off with wyverns instead of dragons, the worst culprit being peter Jackson's bastardization of Smaug in his bastardization of the Hobbit.
Edited a little to put right the typos of a work distracted brain