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Dungeons and Dragons- Wrath of the Dragon God (Widescreen Edition)
Amazon.com Price:
$12.98buy now!This sequel to Dungeons & Dragons, based on the popular role-playing game, fills the screen with amazing visual effects of spectral ghouls, diabolical traps, thundering armies and huge winged dragons. The story follows five champions of Izmer who must perform prodigious feats of brain, brawn and sorcery.
DVD Features:
Audio Commentary
DVD ROM Features
Documentary:ROLLING THE DICE: Adopting the Game to the Screen
Interviews:Conversation with Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons & Dragons
Scourge of Worlds - A Dungeons & Dragons Adventure
Amazon.com Price:
$24.95buy now!Scourge of Worlds: A Dungeons and Dragons Adventure is not a film sequel to
Dungeons and Dragons (2000), but the DVD equivalent of an interactive role-playing novel. There are over 900 short digitally animated sequences, leading every so often to a choice to be made with the remote control, resulting after about 90 minutes in one of four possible endings. Just as the original D&D was inspired by
The Lord of the Rings, the scenarios here are Tolkien rehashed: a newly arisen darkness is seeking an ancient ultimate weapon, against which stand a human warrior, Regdar; a halfling, Lidda; and an elven wizard, Mialee. The CGI is closer to
Roughnecks: The Starship Troopers Chronicles than the pseudo-realism of
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, the electronic score is tiresome and the contemporary voice acting, using such expressions as "heads up" and "…or something," is laughable.
What of the interactive element? Essentially it offers two equally uninteresting paths at the end of every major scene--uninteresting because it's impossible to care what happens to the marionette-like stereotypes no matter what they do. While the adventure does offer plenty of well-choreographed cartoon-style action, interacting with Scourge of Worlds is ultimately about as much fun as watching someone else play a computer game--and that's just the first time through. --Gary S. Dalkin
Dungeons and Dragons- Wrath of the Dragon God (Widescreen Edition)
Amazon.com Price:
$12.98buy now!Wrath of the Dragon God, the sequel to the unfortunate 2000 theatrical release
Dungeons and Dragons, is a pleasant surprise in that it not only hews closer to the popular role-playing game that provides its source material, but it's also an enjoyable fantasy adventure with plenty of action and special effects. Longtime movie heel Bruce Payne, who played a second-string villain in the first film, returns here as the evil sorcerer Damodar, who uses a sinister magic orb to launch an attack against a kingdom; a brave but untested group of adventurers (all character types from the game) band together to fight Damodar and his legion of monsters. Gerry Lively, a veteran director of photography on numerous low-budget genre films, guides the proceedings with a capable hand, and the script wisely jettisons the aggravating humor of the previous film in favor of straightforward action and derring-do.
--Paul Gaita
Scourge of Worlds - A Dungeons & Dragons Adventure
Amazon.com Price:
$24.95buy now!Scourge of Worlds: A Dungeons and Dragons Adventure is not a film sequel to
Dungeons and Dragons (2000), but the DVD equivalent of an interactive role-playing novel. There are over 900 short digitally animated sequences, leading every so often to a choice to be made with the remote control, resulting after about 90 minutes in one of four possible endings. Just as the original D&D was inspired by
The Lord of the Rings, the scenarios here are Tolkien rehashed: a newly arisen darkness is seeking an ancient ultimate weapon, against which stand a human warrior, Regdar; a halfling, Lidda; and an elven wizard, Mialee. The CGI is closer to
Roughnecks: The Starship Troopers Chronicles than the pseudo-realism of
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, the electronic score is tiresome and the contemporary voice acting, using such expressions as "heads up" and "
or something," is laughable.
What of the interactive element? Essentially it offers two equally uninteresting paths at the end of every major scene--uninteresting because it's impossible to care what happens to the marionette-like stereotypes no matter what they do. While the adventure does offer plenty of well-choreographed cartoon-style action, interacting with Scourge of Worlds is ultimately about as much fun as watching someone else play a computer game--and that's just the first time through. --Gary S. Dalkin