The Last Dragon (2004 film)

***The Last Dragon*** (known as ***Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real*** in the United States, and ***Dragon's World*** in other countries) is a British docufiction film produced by Darlow Smithson Productions for Channel Four and Animal Planet. It posits a speculative evolution of dragons from the Cretaceous Period up to the 15th century, and suppositions about dragon life and behavior might have been like if they really existed, using the ubiquity of dragons in world mythology to suggest that they could have, and presenting them as a feasible species of reptile that could have existed. It originally aired on December 1, 2004 in Germany before airing on Channel Four in the United Kingdom with narration by Ian Holm on March 5, 2005.

## Plot

Jack Tanner is an American paleontologist working for the Natural History Museum in London. He suggests that the skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex was killed by a dragon, causing him to believe that the legends are more than a myth. This ruins Tanner's reputation.

A flashback reveals Tanner's story to be true. In the Late Cretaceous period, a Tyrannosaurus rex is driven to the edge of its territory and confronts a creature which turns out to be a juvenile prehistoric dragon. Driven by hunger, the Tyrannosaurus prepares to attack. The young dragon attempts to ward off the Tyrannosaurus, extending its wings to make itself look bigger and uttering a piercing shriek which hurts the dinosaur's sensitive ears; the Tyrannosaurus refuses to back down and continues to charge when the dragon's mother appears and claws the T. rex's skull with her talons. The T. rex bites down on the dragon's wing, crushing it, but is mortally wounded when the dragon blasts fire into its face, forcing it to retreat. Two weeks later, the mother dragon dies of her own wounds, forcing her son to survive on his own. An aggressive male dragon seeking a fresh meal appears and pursues him, but the juvenile escapes by flying for the first time. This is aided by bacteria that produce hydrogen, aiding buoyancy. Years later, the young dragon has reached adulthood and challenges a rival male in a sky duel for access to territory and the local female, in which he proves triumphant.

The museum is contacted by Romanian authorities who discovered the alleged corpse of a dragon in the Carpathian Mountains, along with two carbonized bodies of 15th century humans. Tanner and two colleagues are sent to examine the bodies, which have been moved to a warehouse. The scientists are baffled by the corpse, discovering that despite weighing 900 pounds (410 kg), it was capable of both flight and breathing fire by storing bacteria and hydrogen inside its body.

The prehistoric dragon was a victim of the KG extinction event which wiped out the dinosaurs. However, a close relative, a marine dragon, survived and evolved into other species such as the Chinese forest dragon, able to glide on its smaller wings and capable of camouflaging itself. The forest dragon hunts wild boar and the South China tiger, but her survival is threatened by the arrival of humans.

By analyzing the dead dragon's reproductive system, Tanner concludes that the corpse is of an infant, killed by humans. The scientists travel to the mountains to explore the caves where the corpse was found. Tanner discovers a preserved egg in the cave.

In 1475, a female mountain dragon on the verge of extinction lives in the Carpathian Mountains, looking for a mate. A male arrives from the Atlas Mountains and they perform an airborne courtship ritual, where they grasp each other's talons and plummet out of the sky, breaking off at the last limit and flying off together, leaving scorch marks on the rocks below. Later, the pair have had a clutch of eggs surrounded by a cluster of rocks where they are kept warm for preservation. The male is negligent in guarding the nest, letting one of the eggs die, and is chased away by the female. Sometime later, the mother has had a daughter, and, with the lack of food in the mountains, begins hunting sheep from local farmers. A hunter and his squire, hired by the farmers, raid the nest and kill the young female, but are in turn killed by the mother. Later, several more hunters approach the cave to confront the mother, and all die in the ensuing fight.

Tanner discovers more human corpses and then that of the mother dragon, twice the size of the infant. Tanner and his team take the dragons back to the museum, reuniting mother and daughter. A year later, Tanner receives information on a new discovery and sets out to investigate.

## Broadcast

The film premiered the United States, under the title *Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real*, on Animal Planet on March 20, 2005. It was narrated by Patrick Stewart and its premiere kicked off the network's Whoa! Sunday lineup. For this version, more focus was placed on the dragon segments of the film, with scenes of Tanner being trimmed down to make room for commercial breaks.

The film made a rating of 2.8 million viewers, becoming the network's highest-rated program until it was surpassed by *Mermaids: The New Evidence* in 2013.

## Home media

Main article: *The Last Dragon (Home video)*