2024 showed up on the scene with a thundering roar—literally. According to the Chinese zodiac, which features twelve different animals representing each year in rotation, 2024 is the year of the Wood Dragon. One of the luckiest and most powerful animals in the Chinese zodiac, those born in the year of the dragon are believed to be intelligent, brave, confident, and cunning. All the makings of a formidable leader!
As a powerful and mythical winged animal, dragons have always captivated the masses. It’s not much of a surprise considering a massive carnivorous serpent with sharp teeth that can fly and also breathe fire is, hands down, a terrifying concept. Due to their sheer power, dragons have often appeared as villains in pop culture, but not always. In honour of this Lunar New Year, let’s take a stroll down history to revisit some of the most famous dragons ever put to screen—the good and the evil.
Our Favourite Famous Dragons in Film and Television
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Smaug, The Hobbit
Starting off with arguably the most famous dragon on our list, Smaug is a villainous powerhouse. A traditional dragon who loves hoarding gold and killing everyone and everything who tries to stop him from doing just that, Smaug is the main antagonist in The Hobbit trilogy. His debut was the main attraction for the movie The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug back in 2013, voiced and motion-captured by Benedict Cumberbatch. Before Smaug, a dragon was never depicted quite as perfectly both visually and story-wise, so much so that we almost mourned his death in the third movie. Spoiler alert.
Drogon, Rhaegal, and Viserion, Game of Thrones
No one brought dragons back in style more than the iconic Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms, the Mother of Dragons, the Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, the Breaker of Chains. As the “mother” of her three fire-breathing “children”, she named them Drogon, Viserion, and Rhaegal after the three most important men in her life. Every Game of Thrones fan watched these famous dragons grow up from tiny hatchlings to massive killing machines, making their fates all the more heartbreaking.
The Hungarian Horntail, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
How typical is it that Harry Potter, aka the main character of his eponymous movie franchise picked the most terrifying dragon when drawing lots? In the fourth installment, Goblet of Fire, Harry was chosen as one of the four contestants in an ancient inter-school wizard tournament. One of the challenges in the event was to survive a dragon—an insane task for fourteen-year-old Harry, come to think of it. Although the spiky and vicious Hungarian Horntail put up a ferocious fight, the young wizard proved victorious in the end. Also typical.
Mushu, Mulan
We have made it to the animated dragons section of our list and there’s none more popular than Mulan’s hilarious Mushu. Voiced by comedian Eddie Murphy, Mushu has become quite controversial as Chinese audiences found that he wasn’t the best interpretation of the dragon in their culture. Disney made the right call by removing the character from the live-action Mulan adaptation in 2020. Nevertheless, insensitivity notwithstanding, we can’t deny that Mushu is a Disney icon, even though he’s pretty harmless for a dragon (but don’t tell him that).
Toothless, How to Train Your Dragon
When we think of famous dragons, we would naturally envision them to be shaped like Smaug with red, gold, or deep green scales. Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon throws all of that out the window by being a shade of midnight black and having a more huggable shape. Named Toothless by his rider Hiccup for having retractable teeth, he’s more like a sleek, oversized dog than a proper fire-breathing dragon. But don’t let that fool you; there’s a reason why he is the last of the Night Fury dragons. The bright blue flames Toothless breathes out pack quite a punch.
Haku, Spirited Away
The uniqueness of Haku or Nigihayami Kohakunushi from Spirited Away doesn’t end with having pale white scales and teal green mane. For starters, this particular dragon isn’t always a dragon; Haku can also transform into a 12-year-old boy. A Japanese river spirit, Haku plays a huge part in Spirited Away by helping main character Chihiro throughout her quest to return her parents to human form. After the movie’s bittersweet ending, we truly hope that the pair will meet again, as per Haku’s promise to Chihiro.
Maleficent, Sleeping Beauty
Don’t confuse our final entry with the live-adaptation movie of the same name, starring Angelina Jolie as Maleficent. Even though a dragon did appear in the 2014 movie, it’s not as impactful as the dragon wasn’t Maleficent—a deviation from the original 1959 Sleeping Beauty movie. Maleficent, one of the most famous dragons in media, is an evil fairy who cursed an infant just because she wasn’t invited to a party. She then turned into a black and violet dragon that spits green flames in the movie’s climax whilst trying to murder the hero. Now, that’s what we call making an impact.
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