History Film / DragonsAFantasyMadeReal

** The explanation for how dragons breathe fire seems needlessly complicated. Rather than eating platinum, igniting the gas with electrical organs similar to those of an electric eel seems like a more plausible method.

* DyingMomentOfAwesome: The mother mountain dragon manages to go out fighting and succeeds in taking out all of the knights which were sent to slay her before she accidentally [[InertialImpalement impales herself on a spear]].

* HowWeGotThere: The flashback storyline gradually progresses through the evolution of dragons, eventually culminating in story of the dragons found in the Romanian Mountains, and ending in a FinalBattle between the mother dragon and a group of mercenaries hired by local farmers to kill her.

* IntertialImpalement: [[spoiler:The mother dragon ultimately dies when she falls upon the last mercenary sent to kill her, impaling herself on his spear]].

* BritainIsOnlyLondon: In the full-length version, there is a scene showing Dr. Tanner examining the fossilised Skull of the T-Rex that fought the prehistoric dragon in a museum. While the location is said to be the [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_History_Museum,_London London Natural History Museum]], it was actually filmed at [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_University_Museum_of_Natural_History the Oxford Museum of Natural History]].
* TheCretaceousIsAlwaysDoomed: [[spoiler:The segment about the Prehistoric Dragon ends with them being wiped out along with the dinosaurs by the K-T extinction]].

* GreenAesop: Thankfully, a much more subtle one. The major reason dragons died off was human expansion, limiting their habitats combined with hunting them in medieval times forced them to extinction.

** The mother prehistoric dragon and a ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' inflict fatal wounds on each other in a fight.

** The mother dragon decides to raid human farms... [[spoiler: which makes the humans angry, leading to the death of her daughter and herself.]]
** However in fairness she was forced to raid farms because she didn’t have any alternatives and as an animal she wouldn’t fully understand the consequences of raiding farms.

* TheWorfEffect: The Chinese Dragon preys on ''[[PantheraAwesome tigers]]''. This is almost certainly a ShoutOut to Chinese mythology where [[TigerVersusDragon the two creatures are mortal enemies.]]

* TheWorfEffect: The Chinese Dragon preys on ''[[PantheraAwesome tigers]]''.

** The wings on the Prehistoric and Mountain dragons seem far too thin to be capable of generating lift. This is justified as the documentary also explains that the dragons require full “Gas Bladders” in order for them get off the ground, they have also to avoid using up their gas reserves mid-flight or they will be forced to land.
* ArtisticLicensePaleontology: 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 PteroSoarer 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.
** There's a bit of AnachronismStew thrown in as well; ''Pteranodon'' was featured at the time of the K-Pg event despite having already gone extinct twenty million years prior (though ''Tethydraco'' now suggests pteranodontids were alive at the end of the Cretaceous), and they have pot-bellied pigs existing almost forty thousand years before there were any kind of domestic pigs at all.

* KingOfTheDinosaurs: The ''T. rex'' is a rival predator of the Prehistoric Dragon. While it's no match for the dragon's fiery breath, its powerful jaws are enough to cripple the dragon into a slow death of infection and starvation.

** 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 StockDinosaurs. To be fair though, explaining the ''entire'' evolutionary history of dragons from start to finish would make the special too long and the Triassic dragon precursors would almost certainly be completely different from their later descendants.

* EverythingsBetterWithDinosaurs
** 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 StockDinosaurs. To be fair though, explaining the ''entire'' evolutionary history of dragons from start to finish would make the special too long and the Triassic dragon precursors would almost certainly be completely different from their later descendants.
** This trope is probably also the reason why the Prehistoric Dragon segment is the longest.

** The father mountain dragon, aware that male dragons often end up killing each other in territorial battles, attempts to cool the nest. Temperature determines the sex of the offspring, so more female dragons are likely a better chance at the species' survival...but he lets it drop so low that one of the eggs freezes to death. The mother dragon chances him off and desperately tries to keep her daughter alive afterward.

** There's also a "Desert Dragon" in the phylogenetic tree shown, but its never elaborated on.

* AtlantisIsBoring: The Marine Dragon segment of the documentary is much shorter than those of the 3 terrestrial dragons (Prehistoric, Forest, and Mountain). It was mostly shown to explain how dragons survived the KT event that killed the dinosaurs.

* DinosaursAreDragons: Subverted. Despite first popping up right alongside the dinos, dragons are stated to be highly derived ''crocodilians''.

* DyingMomentOfAwesome: The mother mountain dragon manages to go out fighting and succeeds in taking out all of the knights which were sent to slay her before she accidentally [[Inertial Impalement impales herself on a spear]].

* DyingMomentOfAwesome: The mother mountain dragon, goes out fighting as she manages to take out the all of the knights which were sent to slay her before she dies herself.

* DoingInTheWizard: The entire point of the whole documentary is to take the concept of dragons and their fantastical and supernatural elements (breathing fire, flying, etc.) see how they might look and act from a scientific standpoint. Even ''fire breath'' is given a (really cool) scientific explanation!

* DoingInTheWizard: The entire point of the whole documentary is to take the concept of dragons and see how they might look and act from a scientific standpoint. Even ''fire breath'' is given a (really cool) scientific explanation!

* DyingMomentOfAwesome: The mother mountain dragon to go out fighting as she manages to take out the all of the knights that were sent to slay her (''without'' her fire) before she dies herself when she is impaled by a spear.