How did they shoot this in 1996?

For the movie Dragonheart (1996), VFX studio @ILMVFX pushed the envelope of what CGI was capable of back in the day to create one of the main characters of the movie, a dragon voiced by Sean Connery. To work around the many limitations CGi still had in the mid-90s, they came up with a very smart mix of practical and CG solutions for a key shot in the movie, in which the dragon interacts with the main character, Bowen, played by Dennis Quaid. Do you think the shot still holds up today?