I watched the three DnD movie 'preamble' with my girlfriend to lead into the opening day of the new DnD movie and this was the last of the three movies that came out out between 2000 and 2012.
The general plot is that one of the worst evil artifacts in the DnD game, the Book of Vile Darkness, is being re-assembled from three parts, centuries after having been broken up and hidden to keep it safe.
The bad guys have one of the three pieces (the pages) already, but in the intervening centuries, the ink for the book has been found and destroyed, so new ink must be created. Due to the nature of the book, it must come in the form of the anguished blood of a truly honorable man. The protagonist's father, a Knight of the New Sun, a knightly order devoted to the God of the Sun, Pelor, is that man. He is kidnapped early in the movie, destined to be drained dry by the forces of evil.
His son attempts to find him and reach him, in order to effect a rescue, but in order to do so, he must join with a band of evil mercenaries, who have been recruited to make an attempt for the third piece of the book, the cover. The movie follows him as he attempts to join the group and pass himself off as evil, in order to follow them to where his father is being held.
The acting isn't fantastic and there's some mild over emoting by most of the core cast, but the writing was actually better than the Hollywood average these days, surprisingly. The ethos and motives of each of the four evil mercenaries is explored, and you can see why they do what they do. Competent acting and decent writing make a better than expected tale, and what it really lacked was money for better costuming and effects, and some decent promotion.
Barry Aird as Bezz, a Vermin Lord wizard that's one of the four evil mercenaries, is a bit of a treat, and steals a lot of the scenes he's in with his pithy commentary about life and reality. You can sense that he's operating on another level than the rest of the cast.
Generally speaking, there's more here for fans of DnD (and in particular The Forgotten Realms setting) than general fans of fantasy, though there's so much overlap in that Venn diagram that most fantasy fans will probably find themselves at least somewhat entertained.
Shame it's so hard to find! With is being direct to DVD in the first place, only distributed in Europe, and the distributor going under in 2018, that I could even find a copy via the Internet Archive is amazing.
The general plot is that one of the worst evil artifacts in the DnD game, the Book of Vile Darkness, is being re-assembled from three parts, centuries after having been broken up and hidden to keep it safe.
The bad guys have one of the three pieces (the pages) already, but in the intervening centuries, the ink for the book has been found and destroyed, so new ink must be created. Due to the nature of the book, it must come in the form of the anguished blood of a truly honorable man. The protagonist's father, a Knight of the New Sun, a knightly order devoted to the God of the Sun, Pelor, is that man. He is kidnapped early in the movie, destined to be drained dry by the forces of evil.
His son attempts to find him and reach him, in order to effect a rescue, but in order to do so, he must join with a band of evil mercenaries, who have been recruited to make an attempt for the third piece of the book, the cover. The movie follows him as he attempts to join the group and pass himself off as evil, in order to follow them to where his father is being held.
The acting isn't fantastic and there's some mild over emoting by most of the core cast, but the writing was actually better than the Hollywood average these days, surprisingly. The ethos and motives of each of the four evil mercenaries is explored, and you can see why they do what they do. Competent acting and decent writing make a better than expected tale, and what it really lacked was money for better costuming and effects, and some decent promotion.
Barry Aird as Bezz, a Vermin Lord wizard that's one of the four evil mercenaries, is a bit of a treat, and steals a lot of the scenes he's in with his pithy commentary about life and reality. You can sense that he's operating on another level than the rest of the cast.
Generally speaking, there's more here for fans of DnD (and in particular The Forgotten Realms setting) than general fans of fantasy, though there's so much overlap in that Venn diagram that most fantasy fans will probably find themselves at least somewhat entertained.
Shame it's so hard to find! With is being direct to DVD in the first place, only distributed in Europe, and the distributor going under in 2018, that I could even find a copy via the Internet Archive is amazing.