Vermithrax Pejorative

Vermithrax Pejorative is the villain of the Disney/Paramount film Dragonslayer.

Vermithrax Pejorative is a 400 year old androgynous dragon that has threatened the post-Roman kingdom of Urland for years. Translated from Latin, her name means "The Wyrm of Thrace that makes things Worse".

She is the mother of three dragon hatchlings, all of whom were killed by the sorcerer's apprentice Galen Bradwarden, and was herself destroyed by Bradwarden and his master Ulrich.

Behind the Scenes
Twenty-five percent of the film's budget went into the special effects to bring the dragon to life. Graphic artist David Bunnet was assigned to design the look of the dragon, and was fed ideas on the mechanics on how the dragon would move, and then rendered the concepts on paper. It was decided early on in production that as the film's most important sequence would have been the final battle, it was deemed necessary to design a dragon with an emphasis on its flying abilities. Bunnet also designed the dragon to have a degree of personality, deliberately trying to avoid creating something like the titular creature from Alien, which he believed was "too hideous to look at".

After Bunnet handed his storyboard panels to the film crew, it was decided that the dragon would have to be realized with a wide variety of techniques: the resulting dragon on film is a composite of several different models. Phil Tippett of Industrial Light & Magic finalized the dragon's design, and sculpted a reference model which Danny Lee of Disney Studios closely followed in constructing the larger dragon props for closeup shots. Two months later, Lee's team finished building a sixteen-foot head and neck assembly, a twenty-foot tail, thighs and legs, claws capable of grabbing a man, and a 30 ft wing section. The parts were flown to Pinewood Studios outside London in the cargo hold of a Boeing 747.

Brian Johnson was hired to supervise the special effects, and began planning both on and off-set effects with various special effects specialists. Dennis Muren, the effects cameraman, stated, "We knew the dragon had a lot more importance to this film than some of the incidental things that appeared in only a few shots in Star Wars or The Empire Strikes Back. The dragon had to be presented in a way that the audience would be absolutely stunned."

After the completion of principal shooting, a special effects team of eighty people at ILM studios in northern California worked eight months in producing 160 composite shots of the dragon. Chris Walas sculpted and operated the dragon head used for close-up shots. The model was animated by a combination of radio controls, cable controls, air bladders, levers and by hand, thus giving the illusion of a fully coordinated face with a wide range of expression.

Phil Tippett built a model for the scenes in which the dragon would be required to walk. Tippett did not want to use standard stop motion animation techniques, and had his team build a dragon model which would move during each exposure rather than in between as was once the standard. This process, named "go motion" by Tippett, recorded the creature's movements in motion as a real animal would move, and removed the jerkiness common in prior stop motion films.

Ken Ralston was assigned to the flying scenes. He built a model with an articulated aluminium skeleton in order to give it a wide range of motion. Ralston shot films of birds flying in order to incorporate their movements into the model. As with the walking dragon, the flying model was filmed using go-motion techniques. The camera was programmed to tilt and move at various angles in order to convey the sensation of flight.

Dragonslayer
Born 400 years prior to the events in Dragonslayer, Vermithrax left her homeland of Thrace after humans there wiped out the deer herds she fed on and nearly exterminated her kind.

She migrated to Urland, where King Gaiseric attempted to kill her. He was never seen alive again and, in retaliation, Vermithrax attacked Urland until she was placated by Gaiseric's younger brother Casiodorus, who offered her virgin sacrifices through a lottery twice a year in exchange for peace. Rumors soon began to grow that rich and powerful men were keeping their daughters out of the lottery, and soon help was sent to get the last wizard alive, Ulrich, to defeat the creature. After Ulrich was seemingly killed by Tyrian, it was up to his apprentice, Galen, to destroy the ravenous killer.

Thinking he buried the monster under an entire mountain via magical powers, Galen was soon proven wrong. Enraged, Vermithrax attacked the village with relentless hate. Spewing flames and making several swipes, she almost burnt the entire community to the ground.

Once again the lottery was underway, and this time the princess, now knowing her father was keeping her from being sacrificed, purposely rigged it so that she would be. Despite the king’s eagerness for a do over, she was readied to be sacrificed, and Galen, now armed with a dragon slayer spear and shield made of its own scales, was ready to fight back!

After defeating Tyrian and killing the dragon’s three babies, Galen attacked Vermithrax, stabbing his magical blade into its neck. As the wyvern thrashed, the handle snapped, leaving Galen weaponless. Hiding behind his shield as it unleashed Hell, Galen somehow escaped, making Vermithrax go on another one of its frightening rampages.

Death would soon come to the fiend, however. Now realizing why Ulrich allowed himself to be killed, Galen revived his old master with the use of his ashes. As the dragon flew around, the sorcerer told Galen to destroy the amulet he was residing in when the time was right.

Standing on top a mountain and luring the dragon, the wizard used lightening to strike the creature, but still it refused to die. Spitting fountains of flames from its jaws, the dragon snatched the wizard in its talons and began to fly away. On the ground below, Galen smashed the amulet, making the wizard turn into a fiery blast that not even Vermithrax could withstand. Her flesh was ripped from its bones and she fell from the sky dead, leaving a freed country side breathing sighs of relief.

Trivia

 * Vermithrax is Guillermo del Toro's favorite movie dragon alongside Dragon Maleficent.
 * Vermithrax is also G.R.R. Martin's favorite movie dragon.
 * Vermithrax is one of the first Dragons to be a Wyvern like Dragon, along with Golden Man/Dragon from Beowulf, Lord Maliss Dragon Form, and The Great Animal from Swan Princess.