Well the much anticipated release of Dragonlance – Dragons of Autumn Twilight was On Jan 15th. I have finally had a chance to see it. Here is my review of the film (no spoilers).
Casting – The major members of the party are the only ones that I will be rating.
Michael Rosenbaum – Tanthalas ‘Tanis’ Half-Elven (voice) Rating – 3/5
Kiefer Sutherland – Raistlin Majere (voice) – Rating 5/5
Lucy Lawless – Goldmoon (voice) – Rating 4/5
Fred Tatasciore – Flint Fireforge / Fewmaster Toede (voice) Flint Rating 1/5 Fewmaster Rating 4/5
Michelle Trachtenberg – Tika (voice) – Rating 3/5
Rino Romano – Caramon Majere (voice) – Rating 0/5 WTF Someone had a brain fart here.
Jason Marsden – Tasslehoff Burrfoot (voice) – Rating 3/5
Neil Ross – Fizban The Fabulous (voice) – Rating 2/5
Marc Worden – Sturm Brightblade (voice) – Rating 2/5
Phil LaMarr – Riverwind / Gilthanas (voice) – Rating 3/5
The Good
Finally there is a release of a movie based on a book that kept so true to the story. The unfortunate thing with this movie is that the rest of the production did not live up to the potential of the story. Here are the reasons for the previous statement.
The Bad
- Poor blend of 3D and traditional animation styles. This is a tricky method of producing a film and this one was just not done right. The stylized characters did not match the CG Draconians and Dragons in the film.
- Awkward animation, very jerky and not fluid. With todays technology including motion-capture and photo realistic rendering It’s disappointing that a story with such potential ended up looking the way this production did. It looked like animation from the 80’s reminiscent of the original LOTR Cartoon.
- Poor camera work and angles. This stems back to the poor blend of 2D and 3D animation techniques. With 3D techniques there is no limit to the work with the camera. Why this production did not make use of the available technology today is beyond me.
- Poor selection of music for the score, not much else I can say about that.
- Acting, with the list of actors in the movie I would have expected better voice acting. It seemed like the actors had no emotional bond with the characters. Very much like reading from a script and not living the part.
Overall I have to fail this movie considering the era of its release. If released in the 80’s this movie might have been acceptable but as an animator and artist myself I am extremely disappointed in the production quality of the film. I was hoping for so much more 🙁
Sadly, I must agree. I’m very disappointed with this film.
It seems as though there are many people that feel the same way about this film. It could have been the next LOTR with even more potential for sequels and prequels with the huge selection of books Marget Weis and Tracy Hickman have written.
Well maybe it can be done again buy a bigger company with more resources or they can redeem themselves with the second one and go back and re make this one at some point.
Heck, I wouldn’t mind someone taking the audio track of this one and creating new animation for it. I’ve seen better animatics than some of the crap in this movie. Did you see Tracy Hickman’s Amazon review? Even he mentioned the lackluster animation.
http://www.amazon.com/review/RM4Y3XOS4R6S3/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
I am a CG artist myself and have read all of the Dragonlance Series. If only I had been on the preliminary crew planning and producing this series.
It is beyond me how ‘professionals’ in the industry can try and pass off this quality as a ‘Feature film’ production. Someone drag the art and animation Director out and well you know what 🙂
Tracy does not seem as critical of the production as I do. I did not feel that the voice acting was all the good either. Maybe if the visuals more closely matched the audio I would have been more impressed but the awkwardness of the whole thing made it difficult to watch for me.
It almost looks like it was it rushed, although I can’t imagine why. It must have had one tiny budget. I just watched Family Guy – Blue Harvest, which was the remake of Star Wars and it blended CGI with hand drawn animation and it was terrific.
Well…at least seeing the Dragonlance movie has inspired me to go back and re-read the original books.
Blue Harvest was great that was so well done, Titan AE is another one that was wel done as a blend.
Even the character design and the style was off. Should have stayed with a slightly more realistic approach to it. Or completely stylized CG similar to Dragons – Fire & Ice but a little more realistic than that.
Pretty much every Disney move since Aladdin has combined CGI with traditional animation and done a great job.
I watched the extras in Blue Harvest and the one guy said they will be doing Empire and Jedi too! I can’t wait!
I thought the music was great! I have the soundtrack and listen to it all the time. I rented the movie and I am very glad I did. Was not good at all.