DUNGEONS & DRAGONS (THE MOVIE)
Hello, and welcome to the column! Everybody’s buddy, Oddcube, here saying boy, am I glad you showed up! Cuz I have a sneaky suspicion this is gonna be a long one, and the sooner I start on this one the sooner it’ll be done!
First off, some need-to-know stuff for the newbies about what goes on in these articles: See, I try to find stuff to talk about that doesn’t get enough attention here and now. Maybe it’s something completely outdated and out-of-print or off-the-air. Maybe it’s something out right now, but hasn’t made it big enough to get the attention it deserves. Maybe it’s just something weird that I like personally, and am trying to spread the word so it’ll get more popular, and continue ever-on, so I can continue to enjoy it! Yes, I am the sort of person that would promote his own agenda like that, but at least I’m honest about it!
Then, to fortify the flimsy façade of this being an actual-factual review column, I assign a rating number to everything I talk about by using a laboriously contemplated highly scientific method…and a pair of randomly rolled D&D percentage dice. But, more on that later.
Now, this is gonna be sorta unusual for my regular readers (yup, both of you will be surprised!) because I usually try to talk about cool stuff…but not this time. See, my Beloved Editor ™ has observed that in nearly all of my articles thus far I try to talk positively about things, and has suggested I do a negative review! I don’t know, it must be the internet equivalent of sweeps week, or something… Anyway, after giving this much thought, I finally conceded that it would be a sort of public service to tell you about something that should be avoided like the plague! …Okay, it may be a belated public service message, but it ought to count for something just the same!
And speaking of avoiding something like the plague, this month I’m gonna rant with unembarrassed anger and unrestrained ire on that time-wasting travesty of a teleplay called Dungeons and Dragons.
Now, just in case one of the two people in the whole wide world don’t know it just happens to read this, I shall point out that this movie is based on the world-famous grand-daddy of all role-playing games, coincidently also called “Dungeons and Dragons”. It’s a fantasy role-playing game, which involves graph paper, pencils, funny-shaped dice, and offers several different game worlds each with a variation on the fantasy theme, each one supported by enough sourcebooks to give Conan a hernia. This game has inspired enough novels (set in their established game worlds) to fill a whole section of a library; plus had its own comic book, supporting magazines, and even a Saturday morning cartoon show (which, by the way, is better than the movie!).
The movie was produced and directed by Courtney Solomon, who supposedly bought the movie rights when he was only nineteen. He is primarily a film producer, but he did go on to eventually direct “An American Haunting”…which also seems to be a bad movie from what I’ve found online. It was written (and I use the term loosely) by Carroll Cartwright and Topper Lilien. I notice on IMDB that they have very short credit lists, and only one of them has one credit after this film.
Now it’s time to tell you about the cast. There are only four people in this movie that I knew who they were…and two of them didn’t impress me. I’ll point them out as I get to them. At the time this movie came out, I had never heard of anyone else in it. …And now that I think about it, this movie is still the only thing I know them from. Wow. What a terrible way to be remembered.
The movie stars Justin Whalin, who I had never heard of before. Apparently he used to play Jimmy Olsen on a TV show that I didn’t watch called “Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman”. LOL. He’s Jimmy Olsen? You know, when I was growing up, the big joke about Jimmy Olsen was that three pages into the issue or about ten minutes into the film, he was tied to a chair and trying to call for help by dialing the phone with his nose! Now he’s supposed to go up against evil wizards and fire-breathing dragons! Oy vey! This movie has jumped the shark already! I’m glad I didn’t know that at the time! It’s bad enough that with his hairstyle and dopey grin he reminded me of Keanu Reeves in “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”! I kept waiting for him to tell the bad guys to just “be excellent!”
It gets worse! His sidekick is a very annoying Marlon Wayons. Of course, he was in “In Living Color” with, like, his entire family and apparently carved out a pretty steady career for himself. More recently, he appeared in “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra”, which wasn’t as bad as I was afraid it was gonna be, but also wasn’t as good as it should have been. His performance is usually cited as one of the major contributing factors as to why this movie sucked so bad. I’m not sure how fair that is. I mean, yeah, he was annoying most of the time, but on the other hand, he was the only good-guy with any personality at all.
The bad guy is an evil wizard played by Jeremy Irons, and is the only part of the movie worth watching! Everybody says bad things about Irons in this movie, and I don’t know why. Ok, it’s not the best performance he’s ever given. It’s also not the best character he’s ever played. He’s a fun-to-watch villain. Some villains are cool, some are scary, some are clever, and some are just plain fun-to-watch!
Rounding out the cast (and I use that term loosely) are Thora Birch (from “American Beauty”) as the young Empress; Zoe McLellan as the hero’s reluctant-but-eventual love interest; Kristen Wilson (from the “Doctor Dolittle” movies) as the boring Vulcan, I mean, Elven tracker; Lee Arenberg (from “Pirates of the Caribbean”, yay!) as a Dwarf who gets to do nothing, but is thrown in cuz it’s supposed to be a fantasy movie; and Bruce Payne as the villain’s chief lackey who gets used and abused, has blue lips, and seriously needs to get a new boss. Also noteworthy are special guest star cameo appearances by cult favorites Richard O’Brien (who played Riff Raff in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”) and the incredible Tom Baker (who played the fourth incarnation of “Doctor Who”, you know, the one with the long scarf)! …I can only guess their careers were at a particularly low point at the time.
So, why does the movie suck so bad? First and foremost, I say “Bad Writing”. Only two, well, two-and-a-half characters in the film have any actual personality at all. The story isn’t very plausible. See, in this fantasy empire ruled by mages, the young idealistic Empress wants to give equality to everyone, whether they cast spells or not. …Um, why? If the place is ruled by mages, isn’t she a mage? If she’s a mage, wasn’t she raised to think that this is the way it’s supposed to be? The evil wizard played by Jeremy Irons wants to keep things the way they are, and tries to manipulate the Council of Mages to take away the Empress’ political power. …Oh really? Now, if you were an Emperor or Empress would you have ANY political body capable of taking away your power? I thought that was the point of being the Emperor or Empress! I mean, every Emperor in every movie ever has been a dictatorial tyrant! Plus, you name a fantasy cliché, and it’s been worked into the movie somewhere!
Now that’s why it sucks as a regular sword-n-sorcery movie. But this was supposed to be a Dungeons and Dragons movie. Good thing it’s the title or you really wouldn’t be able to tell. They mention—but do not use—one specific D&D spell, and use a couple of other spells that may be the ones from game…but might not be. In the game, you go through old ruins or caves and fight monsters. Well, nobody in the movie actually fights monsters. There is some weird monster guy with, like, purple skin and three eyes that I’ve never seen in the Monster Manual! Worse yet, they throw in some Beholders, clever and dangerous monsters from the game, but in the movie they’re used as watchdogs by villains minions! On the up side, they only have about forty-eight seconds of total screen time.
So, if producer/director Courtney Solomon is such a D&D fan, you would think he’d want to celebrate the property by making a good movie, right? So what the heck happened? Well, on an interview on CHUD.com, he explains why it wasn’t his fault. First off, he explains that you don’t get into the movie business to make money; you get into it because of “the passion”. …Yeah, I can see two sides to that argument, so I’ll let that slide. He says he liked D&D and wanted to make a movie, so he bought the rights. But, he was young and dumb and gave up certain decision-making rights to the person in charge of TSR. He knows now what a big mistake that was. Nothing screws up the creative process worse than a corporate mindset. This CEO person, who knew nothing about the movie biz, had final say on the script, the director, and I don’t know what else.
After screwing around with her for a few years, she lost TSR (apparently she didn’t know too much about that business, either), and it was purchased by Wizards of the Coast. Inexplicably, Wizards did not seem to want the movie made. They wanted to buy back the movie rights, but Solomon wouldn’t sell. Even though the movie project was based on what was now their property, they wanted the movie to fail. (Of course, seeing what Wizards of the Coast has since done to Dungeons and Dragons, I have no trouble in believing this.) So they “made” him use an older, poorer incarnation of the script instead of the one he wanted to use. And so he went along with that, instead of selling back the rights. But, you know, it wasn’t his fault.
I don’t know, as a fan, I would think having NO movie based on the property I am a fan of would be better than having a VERY BAD movie based on it. Not to mention a VERY BAD movie that would be a blemish on my career! Oh well, what do I know? I’m just an idiot posting his unwarranted and questionably-informed opinions on the internet! I’ll tell you, though; if the title hadn’t been “Dungeons and Dragons” I don’t think this movie would’ve stayed in theaters more than one weekend!
As it turns out, there are enough D&D fans that the movie did make some money. I think it was still a terrible flop the way Hollywood reckons things, but it made some money. In fact, it made enough that a sort-of sequel was made. It’s called “Dungeons and Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God”, and went directly to DVD and the SciFi channel. This sequel is much better! For starters, it’s just plain watchable! It’s got more flavor, more personality, better characters, and a better-constructed plot than the first one! Plus, it has some sly references to actual D&D material! And just so you don’t think he’s a total schlub, I’ll point out that Courtney Solomon is one of the producers.
Well, I can’t really think of anything else to say, except that all concerned with this movie (and I use that term loosely) should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for helping to deliver this piece of crap to all those trusting fans. I guess they need more stories about D&D players who go nuts and kill people so they’ll be afraid to release something this bad ever again.
And now, as the final insult, I’m gonna use my handy-dandy D&D percentage dice to randomly determine a particularly low rating for this turkey! In case ya don’t know, percentage dice are just a pair of ten-sided dice used to roll a number between 01 (I’d rather get a root canal every day for the rest of my life) to double-0, which means 100, or in this case, that somebody slipped me loaded dice when I wasn’t looking! But I’ll just give them a roll, like that…
Hello, and welcome to the column! Everybody’s buddy, Oddcube, here saying boy, am I glad you showed up! Cuz I have a sneaky suspicion this is gonna be a long one, and the sooner I start on this one the sooner it’ll be done!
First off, some need-to-know stuff for the newbies about what goes on in these articles: See, I try to find stuff to talk about that doesn’t get enough attention here and now. Maybe it’s something completely outdated and out-of-print or off-the-air. Maybe it’s something out right now, but hasn’t made it big enough to get the attention it deserves. Maybe it’s just something weird that I like personally, and am trying to spread the word so it’ll get more popular, and continue ever-on, so I can continue to enjoy it! Yes, I am the sort of person that would promote his own agenda like that, but at least I’m honest about it!
Then, to fortify the flimsy façade of this being an actual-factual review column, I assign a rating number to everything I talk about by using a laboriously contemplated highly scientific method…and a pair of randomly rolled D&D percentage dice. But, more on that later.
Now, this is gonna be sorta unusual for my regular readers (yup, both of you will be surprised!) because I usually try to talk about cool stuff…but not this time. See, my Beloved Editor ™ has observed that in nearly all of my articles thus far I try to talk positively about things, and has suggested I do a negative review! I don’t know, it must be the internet equivalent of sweeps week, or something… Anyway, after giving this much thought, I finally conceded that it would be a sort of public service to tell you about something that should be avoided like the plague! …Okay, it may be a belated public service message, but it ought to count for something just the same!
And speaking of avoiding something like the plague, this month I’m gonna rant with unembarrassed anger and unrestrained ire on that time-wasting travesty of a teleplay called Dungeons and Dragons.
Now, just in case one of the two people in the whole wide world don’t know it just happens to read this, I shall point out that this movie is based on the world-famous grand-daddy of all role-playing games, coincidently also called “Dungeons and Dragons”. It’s a fantasy role-playing game, which involves graph paper, pencils, funny-shaped dice, and offers several different game worlds each with a variation on the fantasy theme, each one supported by enough sourcebooks to give Conan a hernia. This game has inspired enough novels (set in their established game worlds) to fill a whole section of a library; plus had its own comic book, supporting magazines, and even a Saturday morning cartoon show (which, by the way, is better than the movie!).
The movie was produced and directed by Courtney Solomon, who supposedly bought the movie rights when he was only nineteen. He is primarily a film producer, but he did go on to eventually direct “An American Haunting”…which also seems to be a bad movie from what I’ve found online. It was written (and I use the term loosely) by Carroll Cartwright and Topper Lilien. I notice on IMDB that they have very short credit lists, and only one of them has one credit after this film.
Now it’s time to tell you about the cast. There are only four people in this movie that I knew who they were…and two of them didn’t impress me. I’ll point them out as I get to them. At the time this movie came out, I had never heard of anyone else in it. …And now that I think about it, this movie is still the only thing I know them from. Wow. What a terrible way to be remembered.
The movie stars Justin Whalin, who I had never heard of before. Apparently he used to play Jimmy Olsen on a TV show that I didn’t watch called “Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman”. LOL. He’s Jimmy Olsen? You know, when I was growing up, the big joke about Jimmy Olsen was that three pages into the issue or about ten minutes into the film, he was tied to a chair and trying to call for help by dialing the phone with his nose! Now he’s supposed to go up against evil wizards and fire-breathing dragons! Oy vey! This movie has jumped the shark already! I’m glad I didn’t know that at the time! It’s bad enough that with his hairstyle and dopey grin he reminded me of Keanu Reeves in “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”! I kept waiting for him to tell the bad guys to just “be excellent!”
It gets worse! His sidekick is a very annoying Marlon Wayons. Of course, he was in “In Living Color” with, like, his entire family and apparently carved out a pretty steady career for himself. More recently, he appeared in “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra”, which wasn’t as bad as I was afraid it was gonna be, but also wasn’t as good as it should have been. His performance is usually cited as one of the major contributing factors as to why this movie sucked so bad. I’m not sure how fair that is. I mean, yeah, he was annoying most of the time, but on the other hand, he was the only good-guy with any personality at all.
The bad guy is an evil wizard played by Jeremy Irons, and is the only part of the movie worth watching! Everybody says bad things about Irons in this movie, and I don’t know why. Ok, it’s not the best performance he’s ever given. It’s also not the best character he’s ever played. He’s a fun-to-watch villain. Some villains are cool, some are scary, some are clever, and some are just plain fun-to-watch!
Rounding out the cast (and I use that term loosely) are Thora Birch (from “American Beauty”) as the young Empress; Zoe McLellan as the hero’s reluctant-but-eventual love interest; Kristen Wilson (from the “Doctor Dolittle” movies) as the boring Vulcan, I mean, Elven tracker; Lee Arenberg (from “Pirates of the Caribbean”, yay!) as a Dwarf who gets to do nothing, but is thrown in cuz it’s supposed to be a fantasy movie; and Bruce Payne as the villain’s chief lackey who gets used and abused, has blue lips, and seriously needs to get a new boss. Also noteworthy are special guest star cameo appearances by cult favorites Richard O’Brien (who played Riff Raff in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”) and the incredible Tom Baker (who played the fourth incarnation of “Doctor Who”, you know, the one with the long scarf)! …I can only guess their careers were at a particularly low point at the time.
So, why does the movie suck so bad? First and foremost, I say “Bad Writing”. Only two, well, two-and-a-half characters in the film have any actual personality at all. The story isn’t very plausible. See, in this fantasy empire ruled by mages, the young idealistic Empress wants to give equality to everyone, whether they cast spells or not. …Um, why? If the place is ruled by mages, isn’t she a mage? If she’s a mage, wasn’t she raised to think that this is the way it’s supposed to be? The evil wizard played by Jeremy Irons wants to keep things the way they are, and tries to manipulate the Council of Mages to take away the Empress’ political power. …Oh really? Now, if you were an Emperor or Empress would you have ANY political body capable of taking away your power? I thought that was the point of being the Emperor or Empress! I mean, every Emperor in every movie ever has been a dictatorial tyrant! Plus, you name a fantasy cliché, and it’s been worked into the movie somewhere!
Now that’s why it sucks as a regular sword-n-sorcery movie. But this was supposed to be a Dungeons and Dragons movie. Good thing it’s the title or you really wouldn’t be able to tell. They mention—but do not use—one specific D&D spell, and use a couple of other spells that may be the ones from game…but might not be. In the game, you go through old ruins or caves and fight monsters. Well, nobody in the movie actually fights monsters. There is some weird monster guy with, like, purple skin and three eyes that I’ve never seen in the Monster Manual! Worse yet, they throw in some Beholders, clever and dangerous monsters from the game, but in the movie they’re used as watchdogs by villains minions! On the up side, they only have about forty-eight seconds of total screen time.
So, if producer/director Courtney Solomon is such a D&D fan, you would think he’d want to celebrate the property by making a good movie, right? So what the heck happened? Well, on an interview on CHUD.com, he explains why it wasn’t his fault. First off, he explains that you don’t get into the movie business to make money; you get into it because of “the passion”. …Yeah, I can see two sides to that argument, so I’ll let that slide. He says he liked D&D and wanted to make a movie, so he bought the rights. But, he was young and dumb and gave up certain decision-making rights to the person in charge of TSR. He knows now what a big mistake that was. Nothing screws up the creative process worse than a corporate mindset. This CEO person, who knew nothing about the movie biz, had final say on the script, the director, and I don’t know what else.
After screwing around with her for a few years, she lost TSR (apparently she didn’t know too much about that business, either), and it was purchased by Wizards of the Coast. Inexplicably, Wizards did not seem to want the movie made. They wanted to buy back the movie rights, but Solomon wouldn’t sell. Even though the movie project was based on what was now their property, they wanted the movie to fail. (Of course, seeing what Wizards of the Coast has since done to Dungeons and Dragons, I have no trouble in believing this.) So they “made” him use an older, poorer incarnation of the script instead of the one he wanted to use. And so he went along with that, instead of selling back the rights. But, you know, it wasn’t his fault.
I don’t know, as a fan, I would think having NO movie based on the property I am a fan of would be better than having a VERY BAD movie based on it. Not to mention a VERY BAD movie that would be a blemish on my career! Oh well, what do I know? I’m just an idiot posting his unwarranted and questionably-informed opinions on the internet! I’ll tell you, though; if the title hadn’t been “Dungeons and Dragons” I don’t think this movie would’ve stayed in theaters more than one weekend!
As it turns out, there are enough D&D fans that the movie did make some money. I think it was still a terrible flop the way Hollywood reckons things, but it made some money. In fact, it made enough that a sort-of sequel was made. It’s called “Dungeons and Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God”, and went directly to DVD and the SciFi channel. This sequel is much better! For starters, it’s just plain watchable! It’s got more flavor, more personality, better characters, and a better-constructed plot than the first one! Plus, it has some sly references to actual D&D material! And just so you don’t think he’s a total schlub, I’ll point out that Courtney Solomon is one of the producers.
Well, I can’t really think of anything else to say, except that all concerned with this movie (and I use that term loosely) should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for helping to deliver this piece of crap to all those trusting fans. I guess they need more stories about D&D players who go nuts and kill people so they’ll be afraid to release something this bad ever again.
And now, as the final insult, I’m gonna use my handy-dandy D&D percentage dice to randomly determine a particularly low rating for this turkey! In case ya don’t know, percentage dice are just a pair of ten-sided dice used to roll a number between 01 (I’d rather get a root canal every day for the rest of my life) to double-0, which means 100, or in this case, that somebody slipped me loaded dice when I wasn’t looking! But I’ll just give them a roll, like that…
and roll a 23, which is far more than it deserves!
But, hey, that’s just one idiot’s opinion! If you’re a glutton for punishment, you can rent the movie from Netflix, or even buy from Amazon…or the discount rack in the grocery store! But my advice to you is: DON’T!
And that’s all I have for now, folks! Thanks for listening, I feel a little better now! It’s not good to keep that stuff bottled up, but at least you know I only get worked up over important stuff! Anyway, come on back here next month when I’ll talk about… well I don’t know what! Gee, I guess I’ll have to tune in, too, to find out! See ya then!
-----Your Buddy, Oddcube
Buy books. Mention this post when ordering any book from a Cyberwizard Productions imprint, and receive 10% off your next order.
But, hey, that’s just one idiot’s opinion! If you’re a glutton for punishment, you can rent the movie from Netflix, or even buy from Amazon…or the discount rack in the grocery store! But my advice to you is: DON’T!
And that’s all I have for now, folks! Thanks for listening, I feel a little better now! It’s not good to keep that stuff bottled up, but at least you know I only get worked up over important stuff! Anyway, come on back here next month when I’ll talk about… well I don’t know what! Gee, I guess I’ll have to tune in, too, to find out! See ya then!
-----Your Buddy, Oddcube
Buy books. Mention this post when ordering any book from a Cyberwizard Productions imprint, and receive 10% off your next order.
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