Dungeons and Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God

The non-anticipated sequel debuted Saturday. How good could it be? Tune in to find out.

Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God

Cast & Crew

Directed by Steven Lisberger
Story by Steven Lisberger and Bonnie MacBird

Starring
Mark Dymond as Berek
Clemency Burton-Hill as Melora
Bruce Payne as Damodar
Ellie Chidzley as Lux
Steven Elder as Dorian
Lucy Gaskell as Ormaline
Roy Marsden as Oberon
Tim Stern as Nim

Full IMDB Listing

Release Dates

Sci-Fi Channel: October 8, 2005
DVD: November 8, 2005

Preorder from Amazon.comPreorder from Amazon.ca

Summary

Based on the successful role-playing game, Dungeons &amp Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God takes you deeper into the dark and fantastical world of this fantasy epic. When the evil sorcerer Damodar braves a perilous whirlwind vortex to steal the elemental black orb he declares a sinister plan of vengeance against the kingdom of Ismir. Berek, a decorated warrior, and Melora, an amateur sorceress join four heroes representing Intelligence, Wisdom, Honor and Strength to battle against Damodar’s growing army of gruesome creatures, flying harpies and an ice dragon to reach a vault room holding the orb. Together, they build their own army to retrieve the orb using elemental forces to defeat Damodar before he summons the sleeping black dragon whose omnipotent evil powers could lay waste to the entire kingdom.

Review

OK. I fully intended to thrash this movie six ways from Sunday today, but I just can’t do it. No, the film isn’t Shakespeare, but it is fun. And when compared to the original film or any of the crap Sci-Fi channel churns out every 72 hours, it’s a lot better.

For good or ill, it’s written around the game, using creatures, spells, and classes that you’ll instantly recognize from the books.

High Point

  • Monsters! In spades! They pulled out some obscure, but fitting monsters from the books.

Low Point

  • Some of the special effects are just flat and some make-up effects are just bad (the Lich).

The Scores

Originality: Adventures set off to save the world. Not original, but very D&D. 3

Effects: A mixed bag from good (White dragon) to bad (Night dragon). 4

Story: A basic story that is, nonetheless, entertaining and fun. 4

Acting: Everyone’s an unknown save for Bruce Payne, but they all pull off a pretty good performance. 4

Emotional Response: There is some unpredictability that keep it interesting, but the overall flow of the film is fairly predictable. 3

Production: Nothing spectacular, in fact Ismir looked a lot more polished in the first film. Maybe the kingdom’s fallen on hard times in the last 100 years. 3

Overall: A good fantasy flick, but a great version of D&D. 5

Total: 26 out of 42

Links

5 replies on “Dungeons and Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God”

  1. .
    Well that doesn’t sound too bad, the first image is pretty cool – hopefully the DvD cover?

    • Re: .

      Well that doesn’t sound too bad, the first image is pretty cool – hopefully the DvD cover?

      It is the cover. Note the “official” logo on this one.

  2. Images blocked?
    When I view the page using Firefox the images from Beyond Hollywood don’t show up, but when I do View Image from the context menu it does. This suggests that the images are being blocked because they’re coming from a different location. You might want to grab some from elsewhere and host them locally.

    Damien

  3. It _HAD_ to be better than the first one.
    A friend of mine & I saw the first one. My gods, was that an atrocious movie. Glad to see the made-for-cable sequel was better.

    SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLS!

    • Re: It _HAD_ to be better than the first one.

      SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLS!

      Sadly, Snails was the only thing I ended up liking about the first movie. That surprised me, since the wacky comic relief was what I expected to hate most, but he was actually entertaining compared to the rest of the cast. Granted, it wasn’t hard to outshine the rest of them, especially Jeremy Irons’ phoned-in performance. It’s actually worth renting the DVD to watch one of the behind-the-scenes shots, where you can see Jeremy Irons stalk off the set after a take, clearly bitter about the cruel fate that landed him that role.

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