Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight

There's so much to say, I'm not sure where to begin. I wont bore you by stating the obvious as I know most Dragonlance fans are going to see it anyway. AND I think Wizards of the Coast knows that too. Actually, my great hope is that this is just the setting stage for a feature film that knows it's audience.

I implore wizards of the coast to stop making things that suck for the sake of money. Creating things of quality will expand your customer base so you wont need to bleed us faithful fans who came over from TSR with little kicking and screaming. So, stop f*cking with sh*t. I'm beginning to question your alignment.

Oh, and as for the review, I will say that I believe that it was directed by Fewmaster Toede, manned by a crew of gully dwarfs, and written by otyughs.

There were rumours of a Dragonlance film from almost the start of it being published with many fans submitting their preffered cast list.

Having now seen the entire film (not just the rushed out trailer) I have to say even Dragonlance fan that i was a little disappointed in the effort put into this.

With the quality of animation and CGI available today this could have been absolutely massive, with a worldwide fan base of the books to easily rival the Harry Potter franchise why do we get cartoon style graphics that weren't even as good as the '80s DUngeons & Dragons cartoons (which should have been given their final episode but thats another criticism for another day).

The only highlights for me were the voice talents of Keifer Sutherland (though being a big Raistlin fan may have biased me).

A below average attempt at a brilliant story but I don't expect them to follow it up.

Alright, a down and dirty(hopefully not bitter) review of Dragonlance DoAT.

Let's start with the Pro's. The story was actually good. I keep hearing faithful thrown around, but what novel did these people read. I did like how they did change it though. Cutting such a rich story down to 90 minutes could not have been easy. If you had not read the books you would not know that 2/3 the book was gutted. That's actually a compliment. Everything made sense with just enough exposition. I also liked the acting. This would have made one heck of an audio book(even better if it were straight from the novel). Tanis didn't seem as haggard as I imagined but I got used to it. I have heard enough of Michael Rosenbaum's work to know this wasn't all his fault. He still does a good job with the voice he uses. The score was also well done. I don't think I would have been nearly as excited in some scenes without the musical uplift. It reminded me a little of Farscape, one of my favorite series, so I may be biased.

Now for the Con's. I feel for the technicians who worked on this. As a props person for the stage I know that these people often toil away thanklessly. They probably worked 70 hour weeks during the SLOW times. This movie was made with blood, sweat, and tears. Unfortunately, it is a soggy mess. The animation is BAD, across the board. I have seen better 2D in TV shows. Consistently jerky or over zoomed. Looks like they filmed some scenes at only 10 frames per second. The 3D was also dated. Someone mentioned Reboot(1994) but I disagree. Reboot was better. Even the few times it did look good(not great), it only served to make the 2D look worse than it already was. Furthermore, some of the blocking(acting term) just didn't match the voice. Some scenes were like watching a high school play, again, stiff and jerky. Also, for a film released solely on DVD, they should have done a better job on the encode. At least the copy I watched had problems with interlacing. And just when you think I am being overly harsh the ultimate example of shoddy workmanship arrives. In the end credits when the characters are shown, THEY MISSPELL ROSENBAUM. Rosenbaun. Who screwed that up?!? They got it right in the scrolling credits but come on, have a little pride in your work.

One final note on the PG-13 rating. Both a Pro and a Con. They took a grown up view of death and violence. Nothing gratuitous and yet nothing spared. Innocents were killed, something not always seen. Refreshing. They did, however, squander the PG-13 rating on the sexual front. Aside from a site-gag with Tika in the beginning, sexual innuendo was curbed big time. Sexual situations were constrained to kissing that got no further than a grade school level. Not that the book had anything way out there but it coincides with my next point to show immaturity. As someone who enjoys anime women, I was disappointed by the flagrant, gratuitous semi-nudity of the female prisoners with tattered clothing. Come on guys. Just put up a sign reading "shameless attempt to woo adolescent boys".

Conclusion: For all my bluster, I still recommend this film. They got the important parts right. Story and voice acting. The rest is just window dressing. How many visually stunning blockbusters have been real stinkers because of a hack story and ham acting. Is it as good as the book? No, but what movie is? Ever? I will fan boy nit pick on the message boards but this was the closest I could come to an objective review.

I remembered these books fondly from reading them as a child several years ago, and couldn't pass up the opportunity to see the film version, and it was for me a mixed bag. Whilst the film does remain very faithful to the story and the events within, its severely limited by its 90 minute run-time, the characterisation other than Tanis is lacking, the story simplified and compressed to the degree where the characters hurtle from one event to another, without the breathing space and reflection of the book it becomes very convoluted.

Furthermore the film makers decided to use a mixture of 2d and 3d animation , with the dragons and draconians represented by a dated 3d animation, that makes the fighting sequences look very poor and overall the 3d sections look very plastic. The 2d animation is not much better, moving often jerkily, though some of the characters are drawn quite nicely.

Overall i wasn't very impressed, but since its only 90 minutes its hardly as though its a massive chunk of my life has been lost to it. Id recommend to fans of the books, for a little nostalgia trip and for Kiefer Sutherlands (underused) performance as Raistlin.

I rented this movie today and was looking forward to watching it ... big disappointment. It really is sad, too, because the story was decent enough but the rest of the production was dreadful.

Not only was the animation stiff and "cheap," but the voices were, also, with no emotion or enthusiasm. It was as if the voices were just reading their lines deadpan. Then again, due to the stiffness of the arted characters' animation, even if the voices had more spunk in them it would not have helped.

It would be nice to see someone put some dollars into re-doing this movie as was spent on the artwork for the DVD jacket cover. The jacket cover is about the only good thing I can say about this movie.

Avoid renting or buying this one .. truly one of the worst animations I have seen in years, if not THE worst.