The epic 'Dragonlance' quadrilogy along with its many future derivatives was Tolkien made hip for the teen generation. There was a more liberal leakage into RPG territory and as such was made easier to follow, more fantastical to imagine and let's be honest - far, far funnier than it had any right to be. Unlike Eragon/Stardust/whatever, it wasn't penned by some overenthused 15-year-old Star Wars fanboy, but jointly by two professional authors, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. With hindsight, it may have been a bit of a model kit assembled from greater works of fantasy, but it proceeded so briskly along a great story and without any delusions of grandeur that it was pretty hard not to get locked into the world of Krynn as a teen.
Having said that, the George Strayton (of Xena, *cringe*) penned and Will Meugniot (of... let's not go there) directed adaptation is the most mercilessly underwritten, underbudgeted and blemished film you will see this year. It was largely abandoned by studios to a most deserving fate of no marketing and with a youtube trailer that looked like my early aborted Windows Movie Maker projects. In the same visual vein, I have seen crisper animation in a 1990's Saturday morning cartoon. Toonz Animation India's very nature here of blending principal characters and backgrounds of 2D animation (does this even qualify as animation? Isn't it just... drawing?) with the bad guys -- dragons, draconians, etc -- of clunky 3D proportions meshes horribly where the resultant contrast in technique creates anachronistic and incongruous elements that move at different speeds, and it is just so ugly and flat you wish someone had drowned the poor thing at birth.
Storywise, a barbarian woman named Goldmoon (Lucy Lawless) seeks the help of a fellowship in protecting/escorting her as she carries a blue crystal healing staff awarded by the gods, as their very presence is hedged around by a war that is getting increasingly close to home. There is a marginal, half-hearted faith vs. secularism ploy operating recurringly in a few scenes, but to no discernible end. This is a far less recognisable element in the novel, and here Goldmoon the cleric clumsily comes across more as a bit of a crazed redneck with her "Faith is the answer" pearls of wisdom than the strong, proactive woman she is in the actual story on page. There are dozens more characters that in a misguided attempt to kick-start the story are introduced far too early and far too quickly. These are your dutiful fantasy heroes with their assigned quirks: a grumpy dwarf, a self-doubting hero, a beautiful bar-maiden and a mysterious wizard to name a few. The voice-over behind these characters are marred by contemporary American accents that invariably choke on silly exposition or sound downright uninspired as they plod along in the loose collection of sped-up scenes that comprise Strayton's puzzling screenplay.
The latter, I realise, I could spend all day picking apart and singling out elements and characters that did not correspond to my fangirl images of them from the books, but indeed this would be tiresome and I'm sure fans will all have their unique visions of characters that are now completely ridiculous. As an example, 'Tas', the sidekick kender, is in the book a creature more akin to someone like Gollum but here he looks completely human and purposely 'boyish'. So now hilarity stems from his appearance as an effeminate anime amalgamation. To their credit, I suppose, the rest of the characters don't look as 1980's high-haired and glossy as they did on the cover of my trilogy version, and generally the landscape is not too divorced from Weis' and Hickman's evocative descriptions. Although it is far too easy to criticize the outcome of personal preconceived notions like this, even new elements that I did not recognise or recall from the novel were pretty awful.
Lastly, I cannot help but wonder who the audience is here. Fans of the book might give it a watch when recovering from the shock that it is animated (or, "drawn"), but they are invariably going to hate it. Kids are clearly not the target here ultimately it is a little bit too dark and surprisingly rated the same as LOTR (Ha!). I don't know how exactly the film could have been improved, except in every way, but locking up Weta Digital's Randy Cook, Jim Rygiel, Brian Van't Hul and Christian Rivers in a room for a few months and not letting them out until they have created acceptable draconians could be an idea. Hopefully this film will do to Dragonlance what Ralph Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings (1978) did to Tolkien - giving it a Peter Jackson type treatment twenty years later, because this is simply unacceptable. What a fate to befall Dragonlance.
2 out of 10
Having said that, the George Strayton (of Xena, *cringe*) penned and Will Meugniot (of... let's not go there) directed adaptation is the most mercilessly underwritten, underbudgeted and blemished film you will see this year. It was largely abandoned by studios to a most deserving fate of no marketing and with a youtube trailer that looked like my early aborted Windows Movie Maker projects. In the same visual vein, I have seen crisper animation in a 1990's Saturday morning cartoon. Toonz Animation India's very nature here of blending principal characters and backgrounds of 2D animation (does this even qualify as animation? Isn't it just... drawing?) with the bad guys -- dragons, draconians, etc -- of clunky 3D proportions meshes horribly where the resultant contrast in technique creates anachronistic and incongruous elements that move at different speeds, and it is just so ugly and flat you wish someone had drowned the poor thing at birth.
Storywise, a barbarian woman named Goldmoon (Lucy Lawless) seeks the help of a fellowship in protecting/escorting her as she carries a blue crystal healing staff awarded by the gods, as their very presence is hedged around by a war that is getting increasingly close to home. There is a marginal, half-hearted faith vs. secularism ploy operating recurringly in a few scenes, but to no discernible end. This is a far less recognisable element in the novel, and here Goldmoon the cleric clumsily comes across more as a bit of a crazed redneck with her "Faith is the answer" pearls of wisdom than the strong, proactive woman she is in the actual story on page. There are dozens more characters that in a misguided attempt to kick-start the story are introduced far too early and far too quickly. These are your dutiful fantasy heroes with their assigned quirks: a grumpy dwarf, a self-doubting hero, a beautiful bar-maiden and a mysterious wizard to name a few. The voice-over behind these characters are marred by contemporary American accents that invariably choke on silly exposition or sound downright uninspired as they plod along in the loose collection of sped-up scenes that comprise Strayton's puzzling screenplay.
The latter, I realise, I could spend all day picking apart and singling out elements and characters that did not correspond to my fangirl images of them from the books, but indeed this would be tiresome and I'm sure fans will all have their unique visions of characters that are now completely ridiculous. As an example, 'Tas', the sidekick kender, is in the book a creature more akin to someone like Gollum but here he looks completely human and purposely 'boyish'. So now hilarity stems from his appearance as an effeminate anime amalgamation. To their credit, I suppose, the rest of the characters don't look as 1980's high-haired and glossy as they did on the cover of my trilogy version, and generally the landscape is not too divorced from Weis' and Hickman's evocative descriptions. Although it is far too easy to criticize the outcome of personal preconceived notions like this, even new elements that I did not recognise or recall from the novel were pretty awful.
Lastly, I cannot help but wonder who the audience is here. Fans of the book might give it a watch when recovering from the shock that it is animated (or, "drawn"), but they are invariably going to hate it. Kids are clearly not the target here ultimately it is a little bit too dark and surprisingly rated the same as LOTR (Ha!). I don't know how exactly the film could have been improved, except in every way, but locking up Weta Digital's Randy Cook, Jim Rygiel, Brian Van't Hul and Christian Rivers in a room for a few months and not letting them out until they have created acceptable draconians could be an idea. Hopefully this film will do to Dragonlance what Ralph Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings (1978) did to Tolkien - giving it a Peter Jackson type treatment twenty years later, because this is simply unacceptable. What a fate to befall Dragonlance.
2 out of 10