Critical response
At the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an 84% score based on 38 reviews, with an average rating of 6.8/10. The site's critic consensus reads, "Dragonslayer puts a realistic spin — and some impressive special effects — on a familiar tale." At Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 68 out of 100 based on 13 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.
The book Flights of Fancy: The Great Fantasy Film says: "Dragonslayer is a compelling and often brilliant fantasy film [... but] it seeks, as well, to impose modern sensibilities on its medieval characters and plot—20th-century political, sociological, and religious sensibilities, which only serve to dilute its particular strengths."
Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert both gave the film three stars out of four in their respective print reviews. Siskel praised the "dazzling special effects" and the "convincing portrait by Ralph Richardson of the aged magician Ulrich", and Ebert called the scenes involving the dragon "first-rate".
Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called Vermithrax "the greatest dragon yet", and praised the film for its effective evocation of the Dark Ages.
David Denby of New York praised Dragonslayer's special effects and lauded the film as being much better than Excalibur and Raiders of the Lost Ark.
David Sterritt of The Christian Science Monitor praised the sets and pacing of the film, but criticized it for lack of originality, stressing that MacNicol and Richardson's characters bore too many similarities to the heroes of Star Wars. A similar critique was given by John Coleman of the New Statesman, who called the film a "turgid sword-and-sorcery fable, with Ralph Richardson in a backdated kind of Star Wars of Alec Guinness role".
Tim Pulleine of the Monthly Film Bulletin criticized the film's lack of narrative drive and clarity to supplement the special effects. Upon the film's first television broadcast, Gannett News Service columnist Mike Hughes called the story "slight" and "slow-paced", but admired a "lyrical beauty to the setting and mood". Nonetheless, he warned: "In movie theaters, that came across wonderfully; on a little TV screen, this may be strictly for specialized tastes."
Alex Keneas of Newsday criticized the focus on superstition, and for being "bereft of any sense of medieval time, place and society".
Larry DiTillio reviewed Dragonslayer for Different Worlds magazine and stated, "Much imagination went into the recreation of this world and fans will revel in it when they see it."
Christopher John reviewed Dragonslayer in Ares magazine and commented, "Though the dialogue is occasionally stiff, there is a believable reality. When the people and setting of a fantasy are as carefully wrought as they are here, it is easy to get an audience to accept as small and wonderful a thing as a dragon."
C. J. Henderson reviewed Dragonslayer for Pegasus magazine and stated that "So, what happened? Basically, special effects aside, it was a terrible film. The acting (outside of Ralph Richardson) was pedestrian, the story was skimpy and fairly bothersome, and the characters did not come across as fully real. The third century was not the time of women's lib. When the best performance in a film is given by the technical staff and not the actors, the film is usually in trouble."
Dirk Libbey of CinemaBlend describes that Dragonslayer "tends to get overlooked. Even if you do remember it, there's a decent chance you had no idea it was technically a Disney movie, as it was a far cry from their normal output in the early '80s and thus the Disney name was largely left off the film."
Guillermo del Toro has stated that along with Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty, Vermithrax is his favorite cinematic dragon. He further stated that: "One of the best and one of the strongest landmarks [of dragon movies] that almost nobody can overcome is Dragonslayer. The design of Vermithrax Pejorative is perhaps one of the most perfect creature designs ever made."
A Song of Ice and Fire author George R. R. Martin once ranked it the fifth-best fantasy film of all time, and called Vermithrax "the best dragon ever put on film [with] the coolest dragon name". Vermithrax is mentioned as an Easter egg in a list of dragons' names in the fourth episode of that book series adaptation, Game of Thrones. Fantasy author Alex Bledsoe stated: "...everyone has a 'first dragon', the one that awoke their sense of wonder about the creatures. For many it's Anne McCaffrey's elaborate world of Pern, where genetically engineered intelligent dragons bond with their riders; for others, it's Smaug in The Hobbit, guarding his hoard deep in a cave. But for me, it was the awesome Vermithrax from the 1981 film, Dragonslayer."
During filming of Return of the Jedi, in which Ian McDiarmid, who portrays minor character Brother Jacopus in Dragonslayer, stars as the film's main antagonist, Emperor Palpatine, the ILM crew jokingly placed a model of Vermithrax in the arms of the Rancor model and took a picture. The picture was included in the book Star Wars: Chronicles. A creature based on the appearance of this dragon appears in one of Jabba the Hutt's creature pens in Inside the Worlds of Star Wars Trilogy.
