Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight

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.

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.

Coming on the tail-end of 2007 and the start of 2008, one would expect a decent amount of increase in quality in animated movies, especially considering the detail and flow of Anime that comes from across the pond, in Japan.

The first 10 seconds had me cringing and praying that the opening Dragonflight was just a basic crappy title-scene. Unfortunately, it was a horrid foreshadowing of what was to be a 90 minute flashback to TV's 1994 "animated" series, "Reboot".

The animation itself was choppy and poorly drawn. It made me believe that we haven't improved anything since the days of Thundercats and He-Man. And then someone had the bright idea to include poorly done CGI into this cesspool of Technicolor Regurgitation! What brain-child thought THIS idea would be cool, nifty, and grand is completely beyond me.

Well, at least I could fall back on the stellar voice acting of Kiefer Sutherland, Michael Rosenbaum, Lucy Lawless, and Michelle Trachtenberg, right? I mean, stars from such shows as 24, Smallville, Xena, and Buffy!! Apparently, these actors must not be able to get into character unless they can actually physically fill the roles of the character they are portraying. The voice acting was lackluster at best. The fight scenes and heated arguments were strained, as if they were trying to yell at themselves in a mirror, and just as equally unbelievable.

The story itself, if you can suffer your eyes and mental capacity long enough to watch it, remains somewhat true to form to the book. Though, if Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman were to actually see this, I'm sure they'd want to be buried so they could start rolling over.

All-in-all, I'd recommend sticking to the book and avoiding this "movie", else you run the risk of ruining a great story you once held in your mind. Pretty much the same way that Lost Boys was totally and completely awesome when I was 13, but watching it 2 weeks ago opened my eyes to how campy and crappy it really is. What a way to ruin my remembrance of two completely awesome titles.

Anyways, I'd have had more enjoyment if someone locked me into a circular room and told me to find a corner to pee in.

I have been a DragonLance fan since the Chronicles Trilogy was released (I know it's a quadrilogy now). At one time I owned over 30 DragonLance novels and other books. I also went to school for animation and digital creation.

The animation is reminiscent of an early 1980's cartoon mixed with cheap CGI. The plot is lacking. They skipped and/or cut out many parts of the story and then rewrote it to fill in the gaps (poor job at that too). I cannot believe this was released as is. The scope of the original Chronicles is massive enough where they could have gotten away with making it a live action movie along the lines of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. A big waste of money, it could have been so much better.

I give it a 3/10 only because of some excellent voice acting. The rest is garbage.

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.