What to think of Dungeons & Dragons? (2000)

A queen has a sceptre. A dark wizard wants to overthrow the queen by gaining another sceptre. There´s a thief involved (with his sidekick). And everything turns out right in the end.

This is the story in a nutshell. It’s a solid story that takes the viewer from A to Z. There´s space for more but, alas, the movie feels no need to elaborate.
Dungeons and Dragons is, overall, considered: a bad movie!

Dungeons and Dragons is right there on the pile of ‘bad’ movies like the sorts of White Chicks, The hottie and the nottie  and Norbit.
For a movie buff like me this brings a question: Why is this movie so bad? What went wrong?
The short answer: A lot of things!
But to explain this I need you –reader- to understand the  movie business and, more importantly: the time this movie was made in.

The premise of a lord...of the rings
When Dungeons and Dragons was made in 2000 there was a promise on the horizon. Deals were made and struck that promised a movie shot in the obscure country of New-Zealand called: The Lord of the rings. Now, as is common in Hollywood, competitive moviemakers tend to take a stab at a new genre before the competitor by quickly putting in a ‘toe in the pool’, as it were, and –if it works- maybe invest into it (and maybe the competitor ‘walks away). If it fails, then there’s another possibility: maybe, they’ve managed to lure the public interest away from this particular genre.
Moviemaking is a ‘cutthroat’ business!

Dungeons and Dragons crashed and burned at the box-office. People saw it. People disliked it. People forgot it. It’s the worst kind of scenario for any competitive moviemaker. There’s not even any backlash to the other studio.

So when The lord of the rings: the fellowship of the ring (2001) was released people –the world ‘round- had already forgotten all about Dungeons and Dragons and flocked to the cinemas.
And so, The lord of the rings could begin its victory tour across the world.

Intermezzo: The past haunts
Moviemakers (producers) don’t like to take chances. When Cutthroat Island (1995) failed miserably, the common consensus was that ‘pirate’ movies were dead. It was only when Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) came to be that studios dared to take a stab at the pirate genre again. But, and this is interesting: only on the TV-level of Black sails (2014).

This is important to keep in mind: moviemakers will ALWAYS consider TV-productions lesser than movies. TV here is the ‘try out field’.
Therefore it was quite the shock to moviemakers that Netflix simply merged TV and movies.

Bad casting
When you look at Dungeons and Dragons from an objective perspective a lot of things that went wrong are obvious. This movie had NO budget or capability to even come close to a, possible, threat to The lord of the Rings.
It’s truly like the moviemakers ‘somehow’ decided to make the weakest possible effort into the ‘swords and sorcery’-genre as they could.

Yet, somehow, I feel that there is enough ‘love for the material’ in this movie that makes me wonder (even more) what went wrong.

The actors, however, can’t be blamed.
This –I think- is important to emphasize!
This movie mainly cast TV actors like Justin Whalin, Marlon Wayans and Zoe McLellan. People of little consequence. If the movie failed only some ‘TV actors’ would get hurt. But for those actors, however, the ‘gamble’ was opposite: ‘If the movie succeeds: I’m in the BIG game!’

The moviemakers also casted BIG names for the crucial roles of the Queen and Villain parts. Why this was is interesting since it was obvious by now that the moviemakers didn’t dare to TRULY invest in this tale of Dungeons and Dragons.

To start with the villain. The moviemakers managed to get hold of Jeremy Irons (an actor trying desperately to find a, steady franchise – one he now got with being the new Alfred Pennyworth). He just got off the Die Hard-franchise and wanted to do more in ‘mainstream cinema’. So a British-sounding villain was right up his alley. He did Dungeons and Dragons, The Time Machine (2002) and  Eragon (2006) and then quickly changed his mind.

Even though Marvel made the idea of franchises more common today, the idea is far older.

I argue that the notion is as old as the ‘Studio system’ (1930-on).

Then there’s Thora Birch who after her star-turn in American Beauty (1999) could get any job she wanted (for a little while - it’s still Hollywood) and chose to do this ‘disaster flick’.

Gossip press quickly pointed out that her father (a wannabe actor) had a lot to do with her career.

And, most of all, that he might not have been the wisest person to be this little girl’s’ manager.

But how does one fire a father?

Sufficient to say all of the actors in Dungeons and Dragons had a different agenda: ‘Dad wanted me to’, ‘I want a steady job’, ‘I want to make it in movies’.
All this tells us that Dungeons and Dragons was a problematic movie to begin with. But it became worse.

Bad acting galore
Acting is a tricky subject. When you visit a stage-play you see what you get. It could be bad, it could be good. Since it’s theatre it is often overacted just so the people in the back row can get the gist. But in movies the acting performance is in the hands of the editor. A good editor can make the worst performance (cut-short) look good.

This doesn’t happen ‘one bit’ in Dungeons and Dragons. Actors scream in remorse from the top of their lungs and there isn’t an editor in the room to save them from ‘overacting’.

Truth be told most of the cast aren’t the most gifted actors to begin with; but to treat them so harshly is almost (to me) a willingness to let the movie fail.

Bad effects: because?
Which brings me to ‘Bad effects’!
I was young when I saw this movie. But even I couldn’t disregard the fact that the effects in this movie weren’t on par with the most basic Playstation™ CGI.

The moviemakers never invested. This much is clear by the casting and –now- the CGI; it is abysmal!
Truly. Even when one looks at the CGI through 2000-eyes it is a horror story to witness. The visually stunning Hollow man (2000) was just around the corner. Even the CGI of ‘reptile’ in Mortal Kombat (1995) looked more convincing than the dragon attack inDungeons and Dragons.

Truth be told, I did enjoy the idea behind it all: a massive dragon war in the sky. But without the capabilities (read: money invested in the CGI) to support it: it will fail miserably.

Script: it works!
Which brings me to the screenplay that, surprise, actually works a charm. It has all the things an adventure movie wants: set pieces, characters growing together and humour.
Moreover, the dialogue is actually rather withy and well written.
So why, then, does this movie fail so miserably as it does?


Dungeons and Dragons stands, to me, as a movie that had a million bits of potential but was somehow degraded to a TV-show special by ‘moviemakers’.

I keep using the term ‘moviemakers’ throughout this article because I simply don’t know who agreed on this mess.

Another word could be: producers. But as any movie-knower knows: ‘producers’ hardly know what’s going on half-of-the-time.

So I’ll keep it vague: ‘moviemakers’.

Somebody messed up ‘BIG time’ on this movie. I’ll call him: ‘moviemakers’.

A final downside before: love
Truth be told; first time director Courtney Solomon probably wasn’t the best choice in town to counter the rumours of The lord of the Rings.

Everything about this movie tells me that the moviemakers were ‘cheap-skating’ a chance: as I said above: ‘trying to make a buck of an upcoming movie’. But, contrary to our current yearly landslide of Asylum movies these moviemakers had the budget to make something that’s actually: Good!

Still...
Still...to be honest here....when you get ‘right down to it’...I still love this silly movie called Dungeons and Dragons.

It has everything to do with my personal life. I just saw this movie in the right time of my life (when I wasn’t very critical). When I saw Ridley Freeborn endeavour the trap-filled maze I was amazed about this clever setpiece. Seeing Jeremy Irons chew all kinds of scenery –delicious. A pre-Game of Thrones dragon fight: wonderful.

Objectively, however, Dungeons and Dragons isn’t a very good movie.
The movie currently stands at a 3.7 on the IMDB-scale and has, pretty much, destroyed the career of most of its main actors.
Still, to me, the movie remains special. It might be bad but I like it.