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Just got finished watching this on SyFy, and it was mildly entertaining. As someone who did not stick with WotC during the shift to 4E, there was some stuff that I didn't quite get, but I still recognized plenty of rules-y goodness. Sorta.
Spoilers Abound
When they mentioned a shadar-kai character, I thought "ooh, neat. I'd like to see how they handle the makeup." She looked pretty much like the barbarian from the 2nd movie [Lux, I think], but with piercings. Like a normal human, really. Not pale, no plack eyes, nothing very 'fey' about her. Still a fetching gal, though.
I then proceeded to wonder what the heck the big guy was supposed to be. A goliath, maybe? Turns out, it was.
The assassin had to keep taking off his improperly-sized helm, and that made me chuckle. I wish they'd gone a bit more into his story, though. Kept going on about these 'rights of loyalty' and such. Nifty looking blades, though.
The vermin-y guy was a little confusing. Supposed to be a Disciple of Mammon, I think, but he had a lot of Vermin Lord flavor going on, too.
There were a few monsters that I enjoyed seeing; a red dragon is displayed in the trailers, and the fight with it is brief, but enjoyable. There was a Helmed Horror, too. Also making an appearance was an awesomely creepy critter; the Slaymate. Haven't seen one of those in-game in a while, and the onscreen version was pretty icky. Me gusta.
One thing that's been bugging me, though, is the contest that WotC ran in conjunction with the final bits of filming. For those who weren't aware of it, they ran a contest to create a magical merc-type character for an 'epic battle scene' that the winning entrant would actually get to play as a bit part in the final movie. I haven't been able to find any mention anywhere of just who won that contest, or which character they played in the movie. If anyone knows, I'd love to find out.
Anyway, if you aren't completely opposed to the concept of a direct-to-DVD Dungeons & Dragons movie, give this one a look.
I just saw the movie and I felt it was better than lots of other SYFY movies. The atmosphere was good they kept you in the fantasy realm of D&D, the characters were cool, the story was good, their should of been more monsters and action but what was on display was unique and cool. Also the commercials ate up most of the movie, and there was lots of reference to items and such from D&D. Overall I found the movie to be pretty good for a smaller tv budget film, and I hope they make more in the future. Of course a Lord of the Rings type budget would boost the film quality way up but for a free movie I can't complain, beats most of the other lame stale crud on regular TV.
Its a lot better then the first D&D but that do to budget cuts by the Studio we got what we got. The Second Film was far better and seemed like a natural progression of how the game was. This film felt even better as they added even more items from the game into the film as it felt like great session of D&D.
I was happy with the movie, for a TV movie. Better than most of what SyFy does. I was actually creepyed out a little with the zombie child. I'd give it a 3/5. Worth of a side watch while messing around on the forums.
I was happy with the movie, for a TV movie. Better than most of what SyFy does. I was actually creepyed out a little with the zombie child. I'd give it a 3/5. Worth of a side watch while messing around on the forums.
The SciFi channel puts out tongue-in-cheek bad movies that are regularly fun to watch.
That last D&D movie is meant to be taken seriously. In that, it succeeds, but it's just too bad to be considered to be anything else than a failure.
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The zombie-child was awesome. The helmed horror was OK, the young dragon was eh. Loved the use of mage hand and the name drops from various 3.x book titles (the magic shop was Adventurer's Armory, Also mentioned in passing were Lords of Madness and 2 of the races of ___ books). Also liked the the uses of mage hand. Changing the necklace of fireballs to what I'm guessing is forced based damage to bypass DR and lower the special effects budget was kinda cheesy...
It did leave me with some questions:
1) How in the hell did a small town like that rack up so much gold? That's well beyond it's available gold limit.
2) What happened to the children after the pally got them to the forest? He told them they were going to hide when they got there, wonder how long they sat there starving before they wandered away and what they got eaten by. (got up for a few minutes around this point so might have missed something)
Saw this on youtube. From the trailer I was expecting something truly terrible but surprsingly despite budget issues not bad and worth checking out. With a bit more money and some better talent (and a fight choreographer) could;ve been good. Liked how they essentially took the undercover cop story and put it in a fantasy milieu. And the Vermin Lord was delightfully evil and psycho.
Not great but much better than I had expected.