Chaotek Thoughts

Announced today, Remo Williams will return to the screen. I’ve always been a fan of the cult classic, and its great to see that it may get another chance!

What the hell were they thinking? For decades now, fans and the authors have been dreaming of making a feature film of the Dragonlance Chronicles. So they go out, get an accredited cast, then turn out such a lame, cheap movie. With the exception of the insane fan boys out there, who could possibly believe that this is a good movie…

SCRIPT: I will admit that the script followed the plot pretty well. Of course, some things had to be dropped. Other things were added to try and flesh out the story for non-fan viewers. While there were some flaws, like Paladine fighting Takhisis at the end–which made no sense, but they were few in number. The key story and concepts were all there as well as key character attributes. Overall, the script was satisfactory.

ACTING: With such a talented cast, include Kiefer Sutherland, Lucy Lawless, and Michael Rosenbaum, you’d think that the voice acting was going to be excellent. The problem was the voices were good, but there was absolutely no emotion in the voice. It’s like they were given one line at a time, without any context, to record. Given the talent of the actors, it’s tough to say where to place the blame. Was the director, well, not directing? Or were the actors just going through the motions to get a paycheck? While I wasn’t initially sure on some of the choices for the voices, by mid-way through the movie I had grown accustomed enough to not let it bother me anymore.

2-D ANIMATION: I have a theory that this movie was actually animated by an amateur fan about 30 years ago, because that’s what it looked like. It really reminded me of He-Man and the old Dungeons and Dragons cartoons in the 80s. Considering that anime like Dragonball Z are like 20 years old and still look great, why didn’t they do a better job. Maybe they pissed away their whole budget on the voice talent and didn’t have the cash to get the animation completed. The latest 2-D animation is almost photo-realistic, so why couldn’t they take some tips from the anime? There were many cases where the animation was very jerky, like they left out frames. Overall, it just comes across as cheap given the state of animation today.

3-D ANIMATION: Why bother? Its kind of like seeing the Superman Returns movie in IMAX 3D, it made it worse than seeing it all blended naturally together. Some of it wasn’t too bad, but it mostly seemed like a rough cut rather than a final draft. Once again, it just came across like they ran out of money and threw together what they had.

FINAL ANALYSIS: If you’re a fan of the books, then it’s worth renting. There’s no sense in buying it. The special features are a waste of time and the overall quality is pretty lousy. I think that this movie actually lowers the chance of getting a live-action film made. For one, it took about 30 years for the live action to get made after the lousy late-70s era cartoons. I also think this is going to sell so poorly because of the low quality that any studio will look down on its success. The whole film just seems cheap, like they ran out of cash. I have to believe this, because if someone at the maker of this film actually believes that they made a good movie they should be blacklisted from the industry. Same with the guy that green-lighted Tremors the Series on Sci-Fi.

Rating: (if you’re a fan of the novel)
Rating:  (if you’re not a fan of the novel)