Product Details

• Actors: Paul Hilton, Katrine Bach, Aidan Woodward, Tom Chadbon, Niccolo Cioni
• Directors: Justin Hardy
• Writers: Aidan Woodward, Justin Hardy, Charlie Foley, David McNab, Kevin Tao Mohs
• Producers: Alice Keens-Soper, Ceri Barnes, Charlie Foley, David McNab, John Smithson
• Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Subtitles: English, French
• Region: Region 1 encoding (US and Canada only)
  PLEASE NOTE: Some Region 1 DVDs may contain Regional Coding Enhancement (RCE). Some, but not all, of our international customers have had problems playing these enhanced discs on what are called "region-free" DVD players. For more information on RCE, click here.
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
• DVD Release Date: April 5, 2005
• Run Time: 99 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0007MAO0W
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #67,745 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Dragon's World: A Fantasy Made Real" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Fantasy enthusiasts and animal documentary aficionados alike are sure to get a kick from this imaginative blend of adventure and nature special that purports to investigate the discovery of a dragon’s corpse in modern-day Romania. Director Justin Hardy skillfully balances the framing story of a British scientific team that attempts to understand the creature’s unique capabilities (flight, fire breathing) with documentary-style "re-creations" (narrated by The Lord of the Rings’ Ian Holm) that explain how dragons evolved since prehistoric times. Stunning CGI effects (members of the visual effects team worked previously on the Walking with Dinosaurs series and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets) help make these flashbacks as realistic as possible, but what really sells the premise is the script by Hardy and Charlie Foley (with assistance from acclaimed fantasy author Neil Gaiman), which uses real animal biology and history to present a compelling and plausible case for the existence of these mythological animals. --Paul Gaita

Product Description

Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 01/27/2009 Run time: 99 minutes Rating: Pg

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable, Even If It Isn't Real, April 29, 2005

By 

K. Fontenot "Prairie Cajun Lives!" (Louisiana) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dragon's World: A Fantasy Made Real (DVD)

To produce a scientific study of a creature that never existed, then place it in a format that makes it seem credible, should be considered a sci-fi/fantasy flick, right? Nope, the good folks over at Animal Planet took the time to create an entire biological and environmental make-up for dragons, and then presented it in a format similar to all of those dinosaur documentaries such as "Walking With Dinosaurs."

By doing this, we are asked to believe in the "what if" factor. The documentary, scattered with recreations of T-Rex and dragon fights, mating rituals, hunting, and other day-to-day happenings in a dragon's life, follows the work of a small British scientific team who research a creature found in Romania. There mission is to prove or disprove a hoax.

The team, headed by a very enthusiastic rookie, begins to explain how dragons might have been able to fly, survive the K/T incident, adapt to colder climates and, most importantly, breathe fire. They explain how this precious fire gives them an edge on all of the other animals that inhabited their world until man comes along.

Though some of the science is sketchy and hard to swallow, you have to let your mind go and "pretend" that dragons actually could have roamed the earth. The acting in the flick is pretty good, though the lead scientist seemed to be forcing his emotions. The special effects are wonderful for a documentary. They are right up there with "Walking With Dinosaurs" and easily outperform any flicks put on by the SciFi channel.

Overall, an enjoyable flick that gives hope to those who have always wondered if dragons really existed. Perhaps Animal Planet will do more show like this explaining the science of creatures like Bigfoot, Chupacabra, griffins, etc.

Highly recommended for the whole family. There is just a little bit of violence, and it is all handled very well.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Legend, science and nature mixed together., May 28, 2005

By 

Michael Valdivielso (Alexandria, VA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Dragon's World: A Fantasy Made Real (DVD)

There is the story of how a legend became a real living animal. Or how it might be if there were such a thing as dragons and a body of one was found. A mixture of documentary and fantasy, of computer animation and live action, of natural science and wild imagination. A behind the scenes feature and additional scenes make this disc a perfect part of any collection. Slightly different from the TV version I saw, it seems to be better put together into an over-all story (and a tad longer). Narrated by Ian Holm, it's just pure fun.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars One of the best docudramas I've seen, September 4, 2005

By 

A. Burchfield (Conway, Missouri USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dragon's World: A Fantasy Made Real (DVD)

The way this program is set up if you miss the title and one sentence or so at the beginning you might almost think it was a real documentary on Dragons.
It starts out with a young scientist at the London Museum of Natural Sciences (a real museum was used but only the Oxford Museum of Natural History is listed in the credits) examining the skull of a T-Rex (only the third complete one ever found) and pronouncing apparent burn and claw marks to be evidence of an unknown lifeform- Dragons.
His reputation is trashed until a discovery is made in Romania and he is part of a team sent to check it out. What they find rewrites the books and is told in beautiful detail as we are shown the remains and examination of a dragon and the bodies of the men who apparently killed it back in the 15th century. The story has all the detail of a real documentary, showing the scientists and their examinations of the bodies, and includes flashbacks of past dragon life and evolution (including the story of that T-Rex encounter and how the dragon species managed to survive when the dinosaurs didn't) as well as believeable details on just how they were able to achieve flight and breathe fire. Towards the end of the story a second dragon body is found.
There's a lot of computer animation work done by the same people who worked on "Walking with Dinosaurs" and "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" (Amazon says, the packaging says Potter & "Prisoner of Azkaban"), it almost always looks very real, possibly the best I've seen done.
The story ends with the scientist's reputation now restored and the implication that there are still dragons somewhere in the world- alive.
There's a featurette on how the story was developed and produced, it is worth watching but isn't closed captioned or subtitled which may be a hindrance to those with a loss of hearing.