Merlin and the War of the Dragons

I consider myself a fan of dragons which is what attracted me to watching this film in the beginning. But from almost the beginning it was clear that the special effects were completely unrealistic. The dragons well i cannot find a word strong enough to explain how poor they look and how unbelievable unreal.

Not only were the special effects poor but the acting is as well. The whole movie just screams low budget. The battle scenes are terrible you see people getting cut with swords but at no point do you actually see any blood. At one point after a battle everyone basically gets up and runs away. Its over dramatic at all the wrong points and some of the backing music is really played at the wrong times.

I do not consider myself to be harsh i have honestly never been so disappointed in a film. I will not be recommending it to anyone and i feel the need to in fact warn people before they waste time or heaven forbid money actually watching it

I had the misfortune of buying this DVD from Play.com thinking it would be half decent to watch. What a mistake that was, as other reviewers have said this is quite bad, actors who can't act etc. etc., but worst of all there is no COLOUR to the film, no green grass, no flesh tones, nothing actually, I know it is supposed to be the Dark ages but the director Mark Atkins is also a cinematographer but he well and truly "cocked" this film up big time. What Jurgen Prochnow was doing appearing in this film is anybodies guess, the story isn't that bad with better direction and a bigger budget from money saved by hiring totally unknown actors except Jurgen who knows. A POOR EFFORT, not a very good advert for the British film industry.

I hope this films budget was so low they could not even pay their actors. There is absolutely nothing good with this film. The actors cannot act and most of them seriously needs some tweezing. The "special" effects are outdated. The plot is more predictable then an episode of Murder she wrote. This film could have been entertaining if the people making it at least would know they were producing something so bad it dos not even warrant a straight-to-DVD release. But doing slow motion fight scenes to hide the lack of choreography and blurring the screen when the dragons are shown to hide your lack of a special effects budget is just really pathetic. If you want to watch a decent Merlin film, get the mini-series from 1998. Not only has it a better plot and actors, but it seems that special effects were better 10 years ago.

If they make this into a trilogy I will resign from mankind and go live with the two horrible, but kind of cute, Lady of the lake actors in their cave.

Likes :

* The CGI dragons are great - very mythical and more appropriate than a more Hollywood/Spielberg style would have been

* The location - totally fitting moody Welsh landscapes

* Some of the acting was good

* The music was a bit overblown but quite professional

Dislikes :

* The acting direction was non-existent so despite the individual actors doing a reasonable job there was no sense of interaction or timing.

* The camera work was atrocious. Most of the film is shot in close up with occasional distant shots where you cant actually see whats going on. Ironically although most shots are static (i.e. no dolly or tracking)the degree of camera shake tells you its hand held.

* Editing was poor and uninspired. Some of the conversational sequences were obviously pieced together from shots taken at different times.

Even low budget films can be successful if well directed - this one unfortunately wasn't. There are so many bizarre mistakes - hand held cameras that don't actually move; gorgeous open Welsh landscapes that you cant see because the camera work is too tight, good enthusiastic actors that end up sounding like a school play through lack of direction.

This movie was pretty bad. The best thing that it has going for it is the scenery. The acting is horrible with few exceptions, the special effects are VERY bad, almost like there was no effort put forth. Merlins character looks like McLovin from Superbad, and the antagonist looks like someone who got beat up everyday in high school. I don't remember his name, but one of the warriors gives a really cheesy motivational speech to his army of 15 people that was ripped off from braveheart. The massive armies that are battling it out are comprised of about 30 ugly actors and occasionally some poor CG. Half of the actors couldn't control there horses. I wouldn't recommend watching this movie. Sorry of my review is a little disjointed.