This is another in a long line of films that I can only recommend as background noise, or entertainment that one can laugh at more than take to seriousness. Dragon Storm really tries more than the other productions Sci-Fi has aired, but too hard. The acting is really forced, and the only performance worth highlighting is John Rhys-Davis, as his portrayal as the treacherous king is given such Shakespearean bravado that it's actually quite good. The special effects, for what they were worth, are okay, though they use the same templates over and over again to exhaustion. To touch the tip of the iceberg, those are the few good things of this film.
What worked was the film as a whole: it had good pacing, and even for a guilty pleasure as it is, it is very easy to watch without getting impatient. It's such a ridiculous film that it succeeds in keeping the audience pulled in to continue.
What didn't work was the film's overall lackluster appeal. The costume designs seem very lazy, and the hunter's wig will provide a lot of laughs to how feminine it makes this grungy guy look. Another flaw would have to be the aforementioned lame acting. The scene with the teenagers wandering through the forest (drunk on mead, and with two girls) was so hilariously awful, that how the director thought that that was a worthy cut to include in the film is beyond me.
The characters are not very original, and are the clichés that must fill the inevitable team of slayers. The recruitment scene (with the hunter and "scientist") was slightly funny, but the slow-motion to make the China-man's karate see more effective was hilarious in its poorness. The final flaw would have to be the ending; none of our characters get real conclusions befitting them -- and beforehand, the deaths of some of the main people were ridiculous and did nothing for the story.
All in all, there were a lot of poor decisions with this film, and the director should never get to make another film -- unless it was meant to be this bad. Not a lot works in this film, and I can only recommend it to people who, like me, get a kick out of watching bad movies.
What worked was the film as a whole: it had good pacing, and even for a guilty pleasure as it is, it is very easy to watch without getting impatient. It's such a ridiculous film that it succeeds in keeping the audience pulled in to continue.
What didn't work was the film's overall lackluster appeal. The costume designs seem very lazy, and the hunter's wig will provide a lot of laughs to how feminine it makes this grungy guy look. Another flaw would have to be the aforementioned lame acting. The scene with the teenagers wandering through the forest (drunk on mead, and with two girls) was so hilariously awful, that how the director thought that that was a worthy cut to include in the film is beyond me.
The characters are not very original, and are the clichés that must fill the inevitable team of slayers. The recruitment scene (with the hunter and "scientist") was slightly funny, but the slow-motion to make the China-man's karate see more effective was hilarious in its poorness. The final flaw would have to be the ending; none of our characters get real conclusions befitting them -- and beforehand, the deaths of some of the main people were ridiculous and did nothing for the story.
All in all, there were a lot of poor decisions with this film, and the director should never get to make another film -- unless it was meant to be this bad. Not a lot works in this film, and I can only recommend it to people who, like me, get a kick out of watching bad movies.