Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real (aka The Last Dragon and Dragon's World) is a 2004 British-American mockumentary describing the finding of an actual dragon carcass frozen in the mountains of Romania, its study and subsequent explanations (via CGI re-creations a la Walking With Dinosaurs) of the anatomy, ecology and evolutionary history of these mythical creatures, ending with their final extinction in the 15th century. Or did it?Patrick Stewart narrates the U.S. version and Ian Holm the British version.Notable for leading many viewers to think that everything told in the documentary was truth, and therefore dragons actually existed. This might have been fueled by some format similarities with Impossible Pictures Walking with... series and the fact that it was aired on educational TV stations like Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel.
Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real provides examples of:
All Myths Are True: Well, not all myths, but at least some of the dragon myths are implied to be stylized accounts of encounters with real dragons.
Atlantis Is Boring: The Marine dragon segment of the documentary is much shorter than those of the 3 terrestrial dragons (Prehistoric, Forest, and Mountain).
In fact, this troper thinks the only reason they even showed it at all is as a justification for how dragons managed to survive the KT event.
Dinosaurs Are Dragons - Subverted. Despite first popping up right alongside the dinos, dragons are stated to be highly derived crocodilians.
Dragon Hoard: Dragons are naturally attracted to shiny objects, and may collect hoards of such items, more or less valuable, to allure potential mates.
Everything's Better with Dinosaurs - The show states that dragons have been around since the early Triassic. Why do the prehistoric scenes have to take place in the very late Cretaceous? Because everything's better with Stock Dinosaurs.
This trope is probably also the reason why the Prehistoric Dragon segment is the longest.
Meanwhile, in the Future: The show alternates between depicting the lives of the various dragon species in the past, and showing Dr. Tanner and his team in the present-day searching for evidence and speculating about the biology of these animals.
Played straight later with the mother raiding human farms. The locals thought she was just a bitch who liked killing livestock, but it turns out that she was simply trying to feed her daughter.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The mother dragon decides to raid human farms... which makes the humans angry, leading to the death of her daughter and herself
Only Six Faces / Palette Swap - Apart from the "Prehistoric Dragon", all of the other dragons look almost identical apart from a few small changes in wing size.
Our Dragons Are Different - Four different species are shown: The Prehistoric Dragon (similar to a Wyvern), the Sea Dragon, the Chinese Forest Dragon and the European Mountain Dragon.
There's also a "Desert Dragon" in the phylogenetic tree shown, but its never elaborated on.
The Precursors - Humans learned the values of cooking from dragons. No joke.
Pyrrhic Victory: The mother Prehistoric Dragon managed to drive off the Tyrannosaurus rex and save her son at the cost of her own life.
Reluctant Monster: Dragons only raid human farms because they have no choice
Sea Monster - The Sea Dragon is used to explain legends about sea serpents and other aquatic monsters.
Shoot the Shaggy Dog - The story of the Prehistoric Dragon seems to be this. The young dragon lost his mother to a T-Rex. He barely avoids death at the hands of an older dragon. Later he grew up and then he managed to defeat another dragon. With that he managed to gain his own territory and his own mate. But then theK-T Extinction Eventhappens.
Possibly a subversion, since it is never stated exactly how long before the K.T. event the young dragon lived, so the segment could just as easily have fast-forward a few hundred thousand years after the events of the dragon's life to show the infamous extinction event.
Shown Their Work - The premise of the documentary is to show how giant six-legged, flying lizards that breathe fire could exist. And it mostly succeeds.
Somewhere a Paleontologist Is Crying: It seems the creators were so preoccupied with making their dragons authentic that they didn't bother to check if their other prehistoric creatures were accurate. The T-Rex has pronated hands that are slightly too long, the pterosaurs are of the standard Ptero Soarer variety (not to mention that they are clearly supposed to be Pteranodons, despite living inland and being shown as scavengers), and the humans in the Forest Dragon segment clearly have European features, despite this segment taking place in prehistoric China.
Stock Footage - You'll be seeing that shot of the mountain dragon's head entering the frame, then turning to face something a lot. Sometimes it's flipped so she's looking the other way. Along with several other shots recycled several times (curiously, only the mountain dragon segment has this reuse of footage).
Together in Death: In the end, the mother dragon and the daughter dragon that was discovered and studied was put in a museum exhibit together.
Too Dumb to Live: The human hunters in the mountain dragon segment, one of whom thought it was a good idea to charge straight into the path of a rhinoceros-sized flying predator that breathes fire and presumably killed tens of other hunters who made the same mistake.
Vertebrate with Extra Limbs - Most species shown have six (four legs and two wings). The "Prehistoric Dragon" they presumably descend from has four (two wings and two legs) and the extra legs came to be via a later, somewhat massive mutation that affected the Homeobox genes that regulate growth and development in animals.
Maybe a proto-dragon with a parasitic twin was actually two haploid animals combined at conception, having two legs on its back.
Actually, the prehistoric dragon was stated to have vanished with the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous and left no descendants. Whereas the six-limbed species (the mountain and forest dragons) both descended from the marine dragon (which survived the extinction by virtue of being aquatic), so it was presumably just the marine dragon's branch that developed the extra set of legs.
The Tyrannosaurus almost killed the young dragon, the mother only wanted it gone, and used her fire only after the T. rex had grabbed and broken her wing, dooming her as well. So the fight was pretty much a draw.
The also prehistoric, but much more recent, Chinese Dragon preys on tigers.
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