Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath Of The Dragon God
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DVD Review
Ratings And Purchasing Information
Review
Over 1,000 years ago, the powerful mages of Turan defied Falazure, the Dragon God of Decay and Undeath, and brought death and destruction to the land. After a great battle the mages finally defeated Falazure and imprisoned him in Hearth Mountain and they also sealed his powers in a black orb and then hid that in suspended animation to hold the dragon there forever.
Now Damodar, after wandering the Earth for over 100 years as an undead creature for failing his master Profion and now hungry for revenge on the realm of Ismir, has found and removed the Orb of Falazure from its protective suspended animation. In so doing he has triggered events that will lead to the release of Falazure from his prison and that will bring about a new reign of terror on the world.
So, the rulers of Ismir send forth a party of adventurers on a quest to recover the Orb from Damodar while the Council of Mages seeks to discover how to put it back where it came from and so avert the raising of the Dragon God. And so the quest begins…
Review
While you could say that this is a sequel to the somewhat ill-received Dungeons & Dragons, the story doesn't have much to link it to that other then using Damodar as the real bad guy this time round. The first movie tried to break into the vast fan base of Dungeons & Dragons and essentially failed for several reasons. Firstly, it offended the D&D purists and fans, who had expected so much more after waiting years for someone to translate their passion onto film, by giving them only a token gesture to the game world itself. Secondly, it had a second-rate script and hammy acting and there's no escaping that. I have to say I quite liked it for all it's failings and I even bought the DVD - besides it had good CGI dragons in and dragons are so cool.
This movie, isn't an awful lot better but it does adhere more to the world of Dungeons & Dragons with its very specific rules, character classes, spells, etc. Dungeons & Dragons, if you're unfamiliar with the term, is a role-playing game for groups of couch adventurers. Normally, it's played in the evening on a tabletop surrounded by a few guys from the office, maybe a few mates, a few token womenfolk or girlfriends, lots of pizza and some crates of beer. It makes for an entertaining enough night in and I've done my fair share of it in the past as both a Dungeon Master and a player way back in 80's and 90's. Think I've still got the books and my little lead character figure somewhere!
Anyway, enough of past failings and on to this movie, which was originally shot as a direct-to-cable piece for the Sci-Fi Channel. It was done on a lowish budget with a second-rate director, mostly unknown and inexperienced cast and very poor CGI effects and all of that shows. Directed by Gerry Lively, who progressed from cinematography on a range of second-rate B movies such as Lobster Man From Mars, Future Shock, Warlock: The Armageddon and Children Of The Corn III to directing yet more second-rate B movies doesn't do it any favours. The direction is clumsy and the movie just doesn't flow well at all - it plays like a poor episode of The Adventures Of Sinbad . I can't really fault the cast, they are all pretty inexperienced or have done mostly TV work but they did a reasonable job in the circumstances although Mark Dymond (Berek) did actually have a part in an episode of The Adventures Of Sinbad. However, Bruce Payne (Damodar) is actually worse here then in the original movie and that's saying something.
The plot is pretty straightforward D&D fayre. A quest has to be undertaken to prevent something dire happening and so a group is formed with a fighter, a cleric, a barbarian, a rogue and an Elven mage and each has their own character strengths and weaknesses to bring to the mix. Together they venture forth and solve puzzles, search dungeons, find treasure and do battle with monsters until they eventually come face to face with the bad guy and so on. The movie is full of accurate references to the game such as spells, monsters, magic items, Gods and even locations - The Ghost Tower Of Inverness is mentioned by the characters and I Dungeon Mastered that adventure myself.
The picture is presented in 1.85:1 (16*9) Anamorphic Widescreen and the video was reputedly shot for HDTV but they certainly didn't spend a lot of the budget on processing as it is a pretty poor transfer. Colours are good but noise and digital artifacts are pretty widespread and it's also a bit on the grainy side. As for the the CGI monster effects, they look like they've been designed for use on a console or computer game and then merged into the film with no thought of lighting or shadows affecting the scene they're in. Then there's the spell casting - you know it's magic 'cause the bottom third of the screen goes wobbly.
The sound is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 English and again it could have been so much better. The dialogue is clear enough and spread across the sound stage but the surrounds and bass are poorly used for effects. I mean, there are sword fights and dragons thumping around, fireballs blasting across the sky and eerie dungeons being sneaked around in but all with very little ambient support from the speakers. There is some but nothing like I’d have expected from such effects-centric subject matter.
I think they definitely rolled a one on the d20 (twenty-sided die) here - a guaranteed miss and if you're really unlucky, you've broken your magic sword as well!
Extras
Dungeons & Dragons Hero's Commentary - Wizards of the Coast Special Projects Manager Ed Stark, Dawn Akemi and John Frank Rosenblum all acting, somewhat worryingly, as D&D party characters. It's not the usual commentary on how the film was made or filled with technical details but it's this lots "in character" comments on the storyline and trying to be witty as well. It's like a bad day at amateur dramatics club - absolutely terrible and easily the worst commentary I've even listened to. Sorry but I couldn't listen to it all the way through, it was just so bad.
Rolling the Dice: Adapting the Game to the Screen - Writer Brian Rudnick, director Gerry Lively, Wizards of the Coast Special Projects Manager Ed Stark, Wizards of the Coast Entertainments Agent Cindy Rice and some of the cast talk about how the Dungeons & Dragons game was translated into the movie world. They go through casting, the locations in Lithuania, the quest, character classes, races, magic items and combat. Everyone is enthusiastic about the film as you'd expect and it is reasonably informative, even if only to spot that the writer and Wizards of the Coast guys are complete D&D geeks. Lasts for 22 minutes.
The Arc: A Conversation with Gary Gygax - Dungeons & Dragons creator Gary Gygax, a god to real D&D fans, talks about the quest and each of the characters - fighter, barbarian, rogue, cleric, wizard, wizard/cleric and of course, the villain. This is interwoven with clips and interview material with the actors playing them. It lasts for almost 17 minutes and again, it's quite informative for Dungeons & Dragons fans and we get a bit of character background thrown in as well.
DVD-ROM - As usual, this feature is non-Macintosh friendly and it uses the awful Interactual Player on PCs so I wouldn't recommend installing that either. Basically, ferreting through the folders on the disk led me to two things of interest in the common\win\game_demo folder…
- Game Demo - A demo of Baldur's Gate II for the PC.
- Servant Of Decay - A printable 1st-3rd Level Dungeon Adventure for the Dungeons & Dragons game and taken from Dungeon magazine. To quote the text directly - “Servant of Decay is a D&D adventure for four 1st-level characters, although many of the encounters here could easily challenge a party of four 2nd-level characters. This adventure takes explorers into the depths of one of the evil wizard Malek’s lost vaults, similar to the one depicted in the movie Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God. This adventure precedes the exploits in the film and allows characters to participate in integral, behind-the-scenes events."
Overall
Fans of the first movie, and there must be a few out there, will lap this stuff up. Fans and players of Dungeons & Dragons, starved of good role playing stuff and having nothing better since Peter Jackson's The Lord Of The Rings trilogy ended over a year ago, will no doubt give it an airing and it may even entertain them a bit as well.
The picture and sound package could have been so much better and the extras are aimed specifically at fans of the game and are pretty informative but they may not be of much interest to the general movie watching public. Unless you're a fan of the game, then it's only something to rent if there's nothing better on.
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