IMDb RATING
3.5/10
1.4K
YOUR RATING
An army of dragons invade the crippled English countryside and the apprentice wizard Merlin must confront the fire-breathing beasts.An army of dragons invade the crippled English countryside and the apprentice wizard Merlin must confront the fire-breathing beasts.An army of dragons invade the crippled English countryside and the apprentice wizard Merlin must confront the fire-breathing beasts.
Iwan Benneyworth
- Beneforth
- (as Iwan James Benneyworth)
Ruthie Gwilym Thomas
- Midwife
- (as Ruthie Gwilym)
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
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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 The "special" effects are outdated.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.
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.
Debatable if worth the time to watch it, but has its good sides. Starting with the bad ones. Low budget in everything. While not a crime by itself, one is left to wonder if scenes of murdering someone by sticking a sword under his armpit are best left out. Constant impression that the whole acting crew is maybe 20 people... Which for supposed massive battle scenes with little cg and minimalistic make up looks odd if nothing else. Script is simple and straightforward. One may chuckle at "Mage" being the mage's name... On the good side - actors are very enthusiastic and so very Welsh, which is a good thing as it is refreshing and unusual. Minimalism and ascetic cg/sfx actually convey almost theatrical impression, at the same time evoking a kind of an 'old school' atmosphere (or maybe it is just me). To sum it up - an OK for fantasy fans, not OK for action/cg/massive/budget fans, a sure yes for welsh and legends of round table fans. I'd love it if actors from this movie got big enough to surface in other ones. While acting is often crude, they have their own charm and look different.
Massive blunders in the every domain of film making, starting from pound for pound worst special effects on this list. So woeful that it's actually funny.
Did you know
- GoofsAs the first soldier who drinks the dragon's blood does so, his hood is lowered. However, as he is shown transforming, it is suddenly raised.
Details
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- Also known as
- Merlin and the War of the Dragon Empire
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