Merlin and the War of the Dragons

Strange to see tar Mac road running through the hills in the days of merlin😂😂

This is a movie which definitely left me pretty uninterested. Some of the main faults are the lack of proper character motivations, the villain's motives are especially weak and unconvincing. The movie is shot on video it appears giving it a very TV quality, this is made worse by the endless tight shots, there's no sense of scale and spectacular set pieces. The dragons are never really explained. Were they there during the roman occupation too? Its never explained. The movie is pretty bloodless despite a few skirmishes. There's only a couple of female characters and they don't really do all that much.

The costumes I guess were okay for what they were going for, I did laugh at the end a fair bit at the cheesiness of it all. These moments of unintentional comedy are few and far between though, its mostly just very slow and dull. The plot is muddled and its all very small scale. One death near the end is so fake its laughable, the classic prop sword under the armpit with no blood.... There's a few awkward moments of editing and some special effect shots which don't work. Some lines are also not delivered or recorded well or muffled by the music.

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 The "special" effects are outdated.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.

I liked it. It was not awful, and not the best film ever. But it was fun. Considering the usual fare on a lazy weekend, it's good enough. My wife writes fantasy and we watch plenty of films of this genre.

CRITICISMS: It didn't have huge surprises and the props and costumes needed a little help. The book, for example, was quite tattered on the outside, but the pages were a bit too clean, and the edges of them were perfect. Shouldn't they be dog-eared and worn with spots and smudges?

Costumes were TOO CLEAN - and in too good a condition. You would expect, particularly after battle, dirty clothes with rips and tears. And how does Merlin stay so clean shaven out in the field all day? And swords should be bloody after you run through a man with one. Small things like that.

Our biggest issue with the film-making was the sped-up parts of battle. That was - sorry for the word - cheesy. The special effects were not very special.

COMPLIMENTS: I think Info-11159 said it well in the "A good old fashioned - good VS evil fantasy film" comment. His (her?) point about needing a bigger budget and more time is really what was needed. We really enjoyed the horse scenes, but we're horse people. We always enjoy seeing beautiful horses handled by highly skilled equestrians. The riding was very good and a pleasure to watch.

The filming location was GREAT. I like seeing these kinds of stories in more authentic locations. Very beautiful countryside that contributed to the project. That's a sacrilege for me to say - we're in California and our son is a writer in Hollywood! But truly - filming in the UK was perfect for this.

The actors did well with what they were given and the story was just right for this genre.

Overall, I enjoyed the film. I do like the genre. I think to really enjoy it, you have to have the right expectations. Don't expect huge budget Hollywood fare - think of it as a fantasy B movie and just go with it.

If they do a sequel, I hope they use the same horse suppliers and riders - and don't speed it up. Those people were highly skilled and could handle the action just fine at the speed they would be performing at. Maybe get a little bit better CG software.

I would watch it again.

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.