DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: WRATH OF THE DRAGON GOD (2005)
Maybe a little TOO well-intentioned?
This is not a good movie, but it's got its heart in the right place. Unlike 2000's first Dungeons & Dragons movie disaster, this second film (with few carryover elements) is a love letter to D&D all the way. And, unlike the 2000 film, this has no scenes of Marlon Wayans eating watermelon and fried chicken, washing it down with malt liquor on a throne of stolen hubcaps.

Now, it's been a long time since I played D&D, and it's been rewritten at least twice since then so if it sounds like I'm talking out of my ass about the game, it's probably because the game literally isn't what it used to be, and I don't know what it is now. Or, I'm just talking out of my ass.

Well-intentioned or no, it does fall victim to the two big traps of this sort of thing - the dorky quest-for-the-powerful-thing plot and thin characters about whom we usually find out exactly one thing. And effects...effects bad enough that you have to kind of cringe and pretend they're not as bad as they are in order to enjoy the movie - and for sure, there are moments when that can be done. (the white dragon, for example)

I mentioned that dorky plot, and that's really all there is to it - the powerful thing is this magic orb, which the evil Damodar (Bruce Payne, the only returnee from the first movie) wants to use to resurrect an undead dragon (his hilarious motivation: "I only ask to witness the destruction of Izmir and that I rule over its remains as your thrall!"). (bonus Damodar dialogue: "The orb of Faradul is mine! What chance does Izmir have against me now?" This dude's really pissed off at Izmir.) So the good guys have to get the orb back.

The good guys are led by retired adventurer and present-day quill pusher Berek (Mark Dymond), who assembles a crack team of four other adventurers, which represent the four big character classes from D&D. There's a sexy, Amazonian fighter (Ellie Chidzey), a quiet, meditative cleric (Steven Elder), a learned magic-user (Lucy Gaskell) who's so powerful I couldn't even tell what her first spell did, and a crafty thief (Tim Stern).

It is with these four characters that the movie misses its biggest opportunity. These four classes also represent their most necessary talents: the barbarian and her strength, the magic-user and her intelligence, the cleric and his wisdom, and the thief and his dexterity. This isn't just me complaining about what I wish the movie did differently - it's explicitly pointed out in the film that these attributes will be necessary in the quest, and it should have been followed through with. The barbarian gets to show off her strength plenty, with a couple of big fight scenes one time where she heaves whole logs with little apparent effort. But the other three? The thief spots and defuses a couple of traps, but when he's actually called upon to do some fancy footwork, he's the biggest clod of all of them. The magic-user casts a bunch of handy spells but doesn't actually do anything notably more intelligent than anyone else. And the cleric, all he does that could be passed off as wisdom is deliver a pep talk to the self-pitying campaign leader. Since the cleric doesn't cast spells (no Cure Light Wounds - these guys are dead meat!), which is actually a plot point, the only thing he does that nobody else does is turn some undead in one scene.

All that's too bad, because the actors playing them are all good, a bit of a rarity in the low-budget sword-and-sorcery field. It can't be easy, reciting all those made-up mystic-language incantations like you mean it. They all have some solid screen presence and all look and sound believable as their character classes, even if their relationships with each other aren't always so believable - Berek's hot woman back home (Clemency Burton-Hill) is more dismayed that Berek might be smitten by the barbarian woman than the possibility that he, say, might not come back alive. (and what's the magic-user, chopped liver?)

But the world in which this is set is totally, totally D&D all the way, and I think that's what fans were looking for more than well-fleshed-out character-class archetypes. There are lots of throwaway references (even to specific adventures), monsters as obscure as magmen, and the makers of this movie even understand how the teleportation spell works. It's obvious that this was a movie for fans, by fans.

Which doesn't always work in its favor. The first thing the party runs afoul of on their quest is a lich. A lich! The lich is like...it's like the scariest, most powerful undead creature in D&D. You could turn blue in the face listing off its scary powers. I know it's one of the few undead creatures that D&D can more or less claim as its own, but it seems a little early. I might even have saved him for a movie of his own. Screw Damodar, screw the giant undead dragon...it's the fuckin' lich you guys should be worrying about!

There's just enough gore to get an R rating, though it's curiously separated from the unrealistic violence and thus becomes pretty clinical. The (silly) story is presented with a very straight face, which is a nice change in the often tongue-in-cheek low-budget sword-and-sorcery field (I promise not to use those six words and two hyphens again). There are only a few intended laughs, one of which (involving a bird) is a gut-buster. Less intentionally, I got a good giggle out of a scene where I thought they were under attack from Piercers, easily the most ridiculous creature in D&D (and that's saying a lot), but it turns out they were something else.

Those effects are, at once, the only shortcoming of this movie I feel I shouldn't hold against it (after all, it would either have been made cheaply, and in Lithuania, or not at all) and the only shortcoming of this movie I usually couldn't ignore while I was watching it. You should know your own threshold of tolerance for this. Less excusable is some of the action and swordplay; one scene, where the barbarian woman holds off a herd of twenty or so angry hillbillies, is a directionless, aimless battle on the part of the attackers with no apparent objective as they handily come at her one at a time and make little effort toward the other, softer targets, all while many of them run past her, only to...what?

I can't help but think, what abominably shitty timing for both of these movies. I can't imagine what licensing headaches prevented them from getting off the ground in, say, 1984...how much money would've been lavished on them then? But maybe if these movies make some real money, further movies can reap the benefit, and if we're lucky, bring some stronger storytelling and fleshier characters. Like I've been saying; just because it's a genre movie doesn't give it an excuse.

(c) Brian J. Wright 2005

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