All the way back in episode 4 we had our first "bad" movie review. If you haven't listened to our podcast (you should because it's cool and available wherever you get your podcasts, like Spotify), we do a movie review on the last Thursday of each month. Typically, we select a movie based on something we love that maybe didn't live up to our expectations. Our one exception to this is of course The Batman, which we both heavily enjoyed regardless of our prior feelings towards Rob Pat (it wasn't his fault, really).
So when the idea came around to do this, I (Kendra) was very excited. I had listened to a Patreon episode of Not Another D&D Podcast (which if you haven't checked out, what are you even doing here - go look!) where they discussed the film and had very mixed feelings about it. I paused the episode before finishing it and watched it right away. I then resumed the episode and grappled with how I felt. What the hell had I just watched? Was it for real? Was it good? But the big question - was this something I should force my friends to watch? Hell yes.
This movie is undeniably not good. However, before we get into that, let's talk a little bit about the movie itself (with as much non-bias as possible) and the history of its creation.
Dungeons & Dragons is a 2000 movie directed by Courtney Solomon (who has produced several movies/shows, but this is the last one he directed...), but what's interesting here is that Solomon began writing a screenplay and discussing a movie with TSR in the early 1990s at the young age of 20. In fact, when Solomon first contact TSR with this idea, he was posing as an economics student asking questions about production/costs, etc. And having grown up playing D&D himself, it's safe to say that Solomon was very much invested and passionate about creating this film.
Something that we didn't know when recording our episode on this, is that Gygax had tried to get a film created in the 80s. If you want to learn about the early history of Dungeons and Dragons (the game), you can check out our episodes on it as it will help set some context on its development and where this falls as far as the timeline: Original Dungeon & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons and Dragon (2E). The important thing to know here is that D&D was released in 1974 and had a surge of popularity in 1979 (due to a false claim that a college student had been exploring tunnels under his university and became lost - we talk about this in Episode 10 when we discuss Mazes and Monsters, the movie based on the event), which is what drove Gygax to attempt to create a film. The film that TSR had hoped to create would have been written by award-winning screenwriter, James Goldman. The plans for a movie fell through because TSR believed that the studios they had been negotiating with wouldn't create the movie they felt D&D and its fans deserved. Having seen this film and it's sequel Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God (which we are discussing in this week's episode), I have to say their choice was most likely wise as it seems the more modern attempts at a movie flopped.
The screenplay that Solomon was shopping around, written by Carroll Cartwright and Topper Lilien received positive reviews and attention from those in Hollywood, but TSR failed to negotiate the deals that possibly would have given us a better movie. Solomon ended up directed the film for this reason. The budget for the film was $45 million, but the film only grossed $15 million in the United States. Now that we've got that out of the way, let's talk about what caused this movie to lose $30 million dollars (yikes).
First, here's a trailer just in case you haven't seen the film. It sets the scene for what we're about to discuss:
The Cast: while the movie itself doesn't feature a lot of well-known actors, it does include several who have played roles in things we love. Most notable on this list is Jeremy Irons, who plays Profian - the BBG. Irons is the voice of Scar, which means I was afraid of him as a child, but we're good now. Bruce Payne is another fairly well-known name who also happens to appear in the sequel movie. And of course, we have Marlon Wayans playing Snails (who happens to be my favorite character by far). Wayans has appeared in a lot of movies we love such as Scary Movie and White Chicks (which is honestly just a classic).
The storyline for this film overall isn't hard to follow: Profian wants to disrupt a peaceful kingdom by overtaking it and gaining control of the gold dragons. In his attempt to do this, he convinces a council of mages that the Empress is too young and naive to be in control because she wants to give rights to non-mages. The Empress hopes to find the Rod of Savrille, which will allow her to control red dragons. Ridley and Snails (our first two heroes) end up in the midst of the search for this and eventually Profian finds out and wants it for himself. However, there are a lot of plot holes and things that just generally don't make sense in the film. Characters are over-exaggerated to the point where we couldn't tell if they were being cheesy on purpose or if the acting/writing was just that bad. One example of this is the dwarf the group meets, Elwood, is likely the most stereotypical character of all. The characters are flat and we don't get a lot of context/backstory on them other than that Ridley (Justin Whalin) and Snails (Marlon Wayans) are thieves who know each other.
What distracts from the plot and aids in disrupting the film, is the cheap looking costumes and horrible CGI, especially for a movie having a $45 million budget (which we know is relatively small), but especially in comparison to other movies that came out the same year (X-Men) or just after (The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring - 2001). A notable moment of bad CGI is towards the beginning when blood is shown trailing down some stairs and then the water separating the "slums" from the kingdom is on fire. It is just bad. So are magical affects, the dragons don't look great-essentially anything that should be "cool" and add to the world falls flat. Ridley and Marina are sucked into a map, very Blues Clues style and some of these moments just don't make sense or we don't have the information or context that we need for them to make sense. Also, we can't forget Damodar's blue lipstick, which does not make him look intimidating and reminds me of Joey's Ichiban commercial:
For me, the most annoying part of the movie was when Snails dies (and early on, like it's not even at the end of the big battle, though it is heroic). Snails was by far there for comedic relief, and the movie is lacking without him. While it's unlikely for all characters in a fantasy movie to make it out alive, this moment just seemed to fall flat in the way that it was carried out.
The final battle could have been cool; it could have been very cool. Our heroes (Ridley and Marina have the most focus here) are fighting on the top of a mage tower, trying to protect the Empress and destroy Profian and Damodar (who is thrown off the tower to his death... or at least that's what we think until the sequel comes out). The dragons are summoned and gold dragons take on red dragons. But again, the CGI and general execution of the movie are so lacking that this scene is just not as good as it could have been. However, the good guys come out on top and the movie ends with Ridley and his friends visiting the grave of Snails. After placing a gem on the grave, Snails' name disappears and the heroes are transported to another world where they will see their friend again. BUT again, none of this is explained, and it quite honestly doesn't make a lot of sense.
Scott was much harsher towards this movie than I was. He rated it a 1.5/10, which is far below the 3.6/10 average on IMDB. I have my own movie rating scale, so I rated it an 8/10; this is strictly because it's so bad that it's good/enjoyable to watch. I knew going in that it was not considered great, so I let myself have fun while watching it. If I were to really rate it, I'd give it a 4/10. While it's clear they tried, the execution was just not there, and for something that is supposed to be a D&D movie, it is lacking a lot of aspects that would tie it to the game. Instead, it ends up being a poorly executed fantasy film with only the name relating to the game we love.
Because tomorrow's episode on the sequel, Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God, I'll also be writing a review on that. This post will be updated with links shortly.
Let us know in the comments what rating you'd give this movie if you've seen it, and you can check out our episodes (linked above) for a more detailed and in-depth review.
Sources:
The movie's page on IMDB.
"A Long-Running Game of 'D&D;'" by Todd Martens
"Inside the Lost 1980s Dungeons & Dragons Movie Gary Gygax Loved" by Jon Peterson