January 21, 2008

Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight movie review

Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight movie

Jan 21, 2008 by Steve
Dragonlance - Dragons Of The Autumn Twilight

3 out of 5 stars

I purchased the DVD and finally watched it today, trying to not keep expectations high. I figured that at least Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis were involved with the making of the movie, so that would prevent any kind of major disaster.

The movie did a pretty good job sticking with the story and moved at a good pace. A time of 90 minutes is a bit too short for the movie, however, as I think viewers unfamiliar with the book will get lost in a couple of places. I also missed the bits of interaction that Raistlin and Fizban had in the book. What bothered me the most, however, was the leaving out of a part that I thought was pretty vital to character development - Riverwind getting blasted by Oynx. Especially since Riverwind and Goldmoon go from "I am a princess and cannot be with a shepherd, no matter what my feelings may be" to dropping all such pretenses by the end of the movie, showing no such change in them between.

The animation was fine, but not the best I have seen. I did not care for how most of the elves looked - too many lines in their faces is the best description I can come up with for what bugged me. I think I caught one part where Tanis had weapons when he was not supposed to, but it flashed by pretty quickly. I wish better detail could have been done with Raistlin's eyes. While the golden hourglasses are there, they are rather plain.

The music was good, but I was hoping for a bit more with the sound, especially since it was using Dolby 5.1. I was hoping for some surround sound aspects, but was disappointed there.

While the voices for the characters did not match what voices I have in my head while reading the story, the voice acting was a closer match than I expected. I was worried about Lucy Lawless doing the voice of Goldmoon, but she did a good job. Raistlin was not as mean as I expected him to be, but I blame that more on the script. There was only one part where that could come through, and it was done well.

I am hoping that the movie does well enough to make the other two books into movies and hopefully encourages someone to make live action movies at some point. On the animation side, it would be interesting if some anime artists did their own rendition of Dragonlance.

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