Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 3: we've reached a milestone. It is our two hundredth film selection.
Speaker 3: Rob did just have to correct me before we started here.
Speaker 3: I was going to say it was a two hundredth episode.
Speaker 3: It is not, because we had a couple of films
Speaker 3: that went more than one episode, or multiple films crammed
Speaker 3: into a single episode. But this is going to be
Speaker 3: our two hundredth one, and we're keeping with a theme
Speaker 3: we established last week where we looked at a film
Speaker 3: for our one hundred and ninety ninth film selection. We
Speaker 3: did a film set in the year nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 3: That was the cyberslop movie Virtuosity, starring Denzel Washington and
Speaker 3: Russell Crowe. Today we decided to stick with that into
Speaker 3: a movie I guess not set in the year two
Speaker 3: two thousand, but that came out in the year two
Speaker 3: thousand and that is so the year two thousand in
Speaker 3: film in so many ways. And that is the movie
Speaker 3: Dungeons and Dragons not the one from twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: the old one, the one with Jeremy Irons, Thora Birch,
Speaker 3: Justin Whalen, Marlon Wayans, and Bruce Payne. What a cosmic
Speaker 3: adventure into nostalgia and the mind this was. And we're
Speaker 3: not gonna lie to you. It's not good, but it
Speaker 3: is a good time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to Some of you may have follow
Speaker 2: up questions too. You might ask, well, how about some
Speaker 2: of those films that the listeners suggested for the two
Speaker 2: hundred we I think we'll get back to some of
Speaker 2: those suggestions in later episodes, but I don't know. For
Speaker 2: my part, I begin to just feel like, oh man,
Speaker 2: it's so much pressure to figure out, like what is
Speaker 2: like the weird movie to do for two hundred, and
Speaker 2: falling back on the idea of like two hundred two
Speaker 2: thousand just felt a little It felt a little easier
Speaker 2: when it came to the decision making process. And another
Speaker 2: question you might be wondering, perhaps cowering a little bit
Speaker 2: in fear, are we going to do the next twenty
Speaker 2: five episodes of Weird House Cinema related to the subsequent years.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna say definitely not. I don't think we could
Speaker 2: keep that up. I mean, we'll see what happens next week,
Speaker 2: but it's definitely not going to be the next twenty
Speaker 2: five episodes.
Speaker 3: Well next week we could do two thousand and one
Speaker 3: of Space Odyssey and keep going.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh that's true. Yeah, though I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think that's more in our category of a reference
Speaker 3: text rather than subject text.
Speaker 2: But we did do a core episode of stuff to
Speaker 2: blow your mind on two thousand and one of Space Odyssey,
Speaker 2: so there is some Space Odyssey in the vault.
Speaker 3: Now, obviously we're gonna have a lot to say about
Speaker 3: Dungeons and Dragons as a movie, but I think we
Speaker 3: also need to appreciate right here at the top that,
Speaker 3: of course it is an adaptation of the tabletop gaming
Speaker 3: system Dungeons and Dragons. So Rob, maybe we got to
Speaker 3: start just by talking about that, like you're a little
Speaker 3: bit of the short, short version of your personal history
Speaker 3: with D and D, because I know we could both
Speaker 3: go into a lot of detail here.
Speaker 2: So yeah, first of all, just a remind Dungeons and Dragons,
Speaker 2: which dates back to the mid nineteen seventies, is a
Speaker 2: role playing game. It is I often try to explain
Speaker 2: it to people who aren't that familiar with it as
Speaker 2: kind of a communal storytelling game where you have a
Speaker 2: dungeon master running the game, you have players playing characters
Speaker 2: within that game. The dungeon master is running things and
Speaker 2: is the final say on the rules, but the players
Speaker 2: are also contributing creatively to it. They are not being
Speaker 2: told a story. Everyone is collaborating on the story together,
Speaker 2: and it's just a tremendous amount of fun. If you've
Speaker 2: never played Dungeons and Dragons before, or some similar role
Speaker 2: playing game, I highly recommend it. It is a great social,
Speaker 2: creative hobby and pastime that is also connected to any
Speaker 2: number of additional solo hobbies and past times. It's something
Speaker 2: that has brought a lot of joy into my life.
Speaker 3: Collaborative storytelling is a good way to put it for
Speaker 3: people who aren't familiar. Imagine that essentially, the engine master
Speaker 3: creates the setting in scenario, and you create a character
Speaker 3: within that setting in scenario. You say what your character
Speaker 3: in particular does in reaction to that setting and scenario
Speaker 3: created by the dungeon master. They tell you what happens
Speaker 3: in return, and you go back and forth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so my don't I don't remember exactly when
Speaker 2: I first started getting into it. I definitely had watched
Speaker 2: the old nineteen eighty three cartoon at one point, but
Speaker 2: that didn't like really pull me in all the way.
Speaker 2: It wasn't until I was in Boy Scouts and I
Speaker 2: observed some of the older Scouts playing Dungeons and Dragons.
Speaker 2: The Dungeon Master kid was using his father's like pre
Speaker 2: Satanic panic, like full demon monster supplements, and it was
Speaker 2: just it looked like a lot of fun. So I
Speaker 2: started getting into it, and I by the you know,
Speaker 2: by the mid nineties, I was all into Forgotten Realms,
Speaker 2: Raven loved Kara Tour, Dark Sun, Spell Jammer, all these
Speaker 2: different worlds and subsettings within Dungeons and Dragons. I probably
Speaker 2: read more than I played, but it was still a blast.
Speaker 2: But then around the turn of the millennium, when this
Speaker 2: film comes out, I went to college and for idiotically
Speaker 2: didn't do any non video game D and D stuff
Speaker 2: for more than a decade. So today's movie drops at
Speaker 2: a time in which I was weirdly disinterested and out
Speaker 2: of touch with all things D and D. I think
Speaker 2: my main memory of the trailer was that, oh, it
Speaker 2: looks like it has Jeremy Irons in it, but at
Speaker 2: the same time I was at least slightly disappointed that
Speaker 2: he appeared to not have a wizard beard or wizard hair.
Speaker 3: That's true, you know. I was trying to We'll talk
Speaker 3: more about this as we go on, but I was
Speaker 3: trying to class all the characters in the movie. I
Speaker 3: was saying, Okay, what D and D class are you?
Speaker 3: Because when you play the game, you pick a character
Speaker 3: class that tells you, like what kind of skills and
Speaker 3: powers you have. You could be a barbarian or a fighter,
Speaker 3: or a cleric or a wizard. And I was like, man,
Speaker 3: Jeremy Irons doesn't feel like a wizard because he doesn't
Speaker 3: look like a wizard. He looks it looks like a warlock.
Speaker 3: Maybe what do you think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, maybe more of a warlock.
Speaker 3: Look, I mean they never mentioned a packed patron or anything.
Speaker 2: But yeah, And I don't know one I don't know
Speaker 2: one hundred percent why it bugged me at the time,
Speaker 2: because I'm not really bugged by it now. But I
Speaker 2: think a big part of it was and I was
Speaker 2: having to like piece together where things fell in the timeline.
Speaker 2: I think part of it was that by April of
Speaker 2: two thousand. Today's movie came out in like December of
Speaker 2: two thousand. By April of two thousand, we already had
Speaker 2: a trailer featurette for Peter Jackson's Fellowship of the Ring,
Speaker 2: which would come out December two thousand and one, so
Speaker 2: we already had a visual taste of what was possible
Speaker 2: with live action high fantasy, and even from the trailers,
Speaker 2: it was obvious that two thousands Dungeons and Dragons was
Speaker 2: quite obviously missing the mark God.
Speaker 3: That contrast is crazy to imagine that this was almost
Speaker 3: like overlapping in time and that we're gonna try not
Speaker 3: to just like be mean or rag on the movie
Speaker 3: the whole time. But yeah, the comparison is so funny.
Speaker 3: It's like imagining that trailers for The Matrix were already
Speaker 3: out when lawnmower Man was in theaters.
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, I mean, it's it's really not fair
Speaker 2: because we're again we're talking about Lord of the Rings here,
Speaker 2: one of and arguably the most important texts in modern
Speaker 2: fantasy literature. It served as one of the one of
Speaker 2: the primary inspirations for Dungeons and Dragons in general, and furthermore,
Speaker 2: Peter Jackson's adaptations. No matter what your quipples might be
Speaker 2: about the finished product, they were jaw dropping cinematic spectacles
Speaker 2: that pushed the technological envelope, that energized fans and generated mainstream,
Speaker 2: popular and critical success. So it's unfair to compare this
Speaker 2: smaller picture that had I think, when all was said
Speaker 2: and done, like half the budget. So but not that
Speaker 2: small of a budget. You know, it is never going
Speaker 2: to live up to what Fellowship of the Ring was
Speaker 2: able to achieve.
Speaker 3: You know, something I was just thinking about recently with
Speaker 3: the Peter's Jackson Lord of the Rings movies is I
Speaker 3: don't know if they often get enough credit for how
Speaker 3: good of a job they did simply from a writing
Speaker 3: point of view adapting the material. We can have our
Speaker 3: complaints about, like oh, I wish Tom Bombadill had been
Speaker 3: in there. You know, I don't like that they didn't
Speaker 3: include this, or that they made this moment like, you know,
Speaker 3: there were changes introduced, and a lot of times purists
Speaker 3: can be upset by that. But I think they really
Speaker 3: did a kind of impossible task of cramming as much
Speaker 3: of the spirit of the story into film into reasonable
Speaker 3: I mean long but still reasonable film. Run times as possible.
Speaker 3: It really, I think, is a marvelous achievement of adaptation writing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Again, it's just unfair to compare virtually anything, especially
Speaker 2: this film, to Fellowship of the Rings and the subsequent
Speaker 2: Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings films. They just succeeded
Speaker 2: in so many ways.
Speaker 3: But while we're on the subject of the differences between
Speaker 3: Fellowship with the Ring and Dungeons and Dragons as movies
Speaker 3: from around the same time, one big difference is that,
Speaker 3: of course, Fellowship of the Ring is an adaptation of
Speaker 3: a book. It's an adaptation of something that is already
Speaker 3: a fixed narrative, which is like a you know, it's
Speaker 3: a more familiar way of making a movie from existing
Speaker 3: source material. The Dungeons and Dragons movie had a very
Speaker 3: different kind of writing assignment, which is that it was
Speaker 3: to adapt a game system or sort of a world.
Speaker 3: There is no fixed narrative of Dungeons Dungeons and Dragons.
Speaker 3: I think there are some like you know, pre written
Speaker 3: campaigns that exist out there. Rob you can probably shed
Speaker 3: more light on that, and there may be some like common,
Speaker 3: commonly accepted sort of history things in the Dungeons and
Speaker 3: Dragons world, But there's no fixed narrative like there is
Speaker 3: in a book. Players make up their own stories. So
Speaker 3: what your job is if you're adapting this into a
Speaker 3: movie is you have to kind of make up a
Speaker 3: story that packs in a lot of details about what
Speaker 3: it's like to play the game and captures feelings of
Speaker 3: common experiences that players have when they're playing with their friends.
Speaker 2: Does that make sense, Yeah, yeah, try it. You have
Speaker 2: to attempt to try and nail the vibe of the
Speaker 2: D and D world and the vibe of playing D
Speaker 2: and D at the same time, which, to be clear,
Speaker 2: are often in stark opposition to each other. You may
Speaker 2: have like a really like very serious and even dark
Speaker 2: set of events happening within the story of the game,
Speaker 2: but yet a gaming session of Dungeons and Dragons might
Speaker 2: be just full of goof off moments and laughter and
Speaker 2: so forth, and yet they can still work together at
Speaker 2: the table in a way that might be more of
Speaker 2: a struggle thematically with a motion picture. I would argue
Speaker 2: that twenty twenty three's Dungeons and Dragons Honor among Thieves,
Speaker 2: the most recent Dungeons and Dragons film, did more of
Speaker 2: a commendable job of pulling this off and watching today's movie,
Speaker 2: it'd be easier to momentarily put that aside if they
Speaker 2: didn't actually say honor among thieves multiple times in the dialogue.
Speaker 3: But they didn't know that was gonna sub title of
Speaker 3: the later movie.
Speaker 2: They didn't know, but it's impossible to avoid. But but no,
Speaker 2: you're right, it's like they're they're adapting a vibe. They're
Speaker 2: adapting ip a world or multiple worlds and various creatures
Speaker 2: within that world, but they're not leaning on like a
Speaker 2: core text. But to be clear, even by nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: and certainly by the year two thousand, there were plenty
Speaker 2: of Dungeons and Dragons novelizations out there. I mean, they're
Speaker 2: like a million Dragon Lance novels, So there was some
Speaker 2: material out there that could have leaned on, though you know,
Speaker 2: I don't I don't know, I haven't read most of
Speaker 2: those books. Not everything is you know, reasonable for adaptation
Speaker 2: and so forth, But you know, there were, there were,
Speaker 2: and are plenty of Dungeons and Dragons stories one could
Speaker 2: could go to for things like this.
Speaker 3: But one thing that makes those stories different is they're
Speaker 3: almost like they're reading a story that someone has created
Speaker 3: within the framework of the D and D world, but
Speaker 3: they're not cannon for all players of D.
Speaker 2: And D, right, right, Like any given person's favorite moment
Speaker 2: from Dungeons and Dragons is going to be a little
Speaker 2: different from everyone else's moment if you're just talking about
Speaker 2: the tabletop experience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, as you said, this is something that the
Speaker 3: more recent D and D movie did a lot of.
Speaker 3: You could tell there were a lot of in jokes
Speaker 3: in the movie. And I still think the more recent
Speaker 3: movie works pretty well. I mean, I don't know, I
Speaker 3: have played D and D, but I can imagine it
Speaker 3: still works pretty well as a film even if you've
Speaker 3: never played it. But there are just a lot of
Speaker 3: little treats in there for players because it will have
Speaker 3: the characters in the movie getting into a situation that
Speaker 3: players commonly find themselves in. And it's funny, too funny
Speaker 3: to recognize, like, oh, I can't speak with dead and
Speaker 3: I still have this many questions I can ask and
Speaker 3: we've already got the information we need, you know, and
Speaker 3: that sort of thing over and over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And also I think the other thing that the
Speaker 2: more recent film did well is that it had it
Speaker 2: did have canonical figures that one could leave the film
Speaker 2: and say, hey, I want to know about about that
Speaker 2: Lich guy. I want to know more about these Red Wizards,
Speaker 2: and there is material out there you can read about them.
Speaker 2: They are part of a setting. This movie doesn't really,
Speaker 2: I think, do much of that. You might say, oh,
Speaker 2: that's a neat beholder I just saw float by. I'd
Speaker 2: like to know more about those guys. Well, there's plenty more.
Speaker 3: But it doesn't really do much with the beholders. Doesn't
Speaker 3: You briefly see one as a purple blob that flies
Speaker 3: off screen and then I'm like, Oh, we're gonna come
Speaker 3: back for a beholder fight.
Speaker 2: Nope, Nope, nope. They're basically screen savers.
Speaker 3: But anyway, as I was saying, the more recent D
Speaker 3: and D movie does a lot of that, I think
Speaker 3: this older movie does a little bit of that. There's
Speaker 3: a little bit of nodding towards kind of common player experiences,
Speaker 3: but a lot less. It feels more like they were
Speaker 3: just trying to create a story roughly within the D
Speaker 3: and D universe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now I should say some nice things about this film,
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, yeah, I think it has some excellent locations,
Speaker 2: including the sedl Ossuary in the Czech Republic. Also, I
Speaker 2: think that the Czech Republic State Opera House is used
Speaker 2: as a location at one point, and multiple other Czech
Speaker 2: locations that look really cool, and they make good use
Speaker 2: of them.
Speaker 3: Gorgeous interior locations in fact, that are a quite ludicrous
Speaker 3: contrast to like it'll cut from there to a like
Speaker 3: CGI dungeon. It is just you could not imagine something
Speaker 3: more like uglier and more dingy looking.
Speaker 2: Yes, the CGI is all horrendous, but I should also
Speaker 2: point out there are some nice practical sets as well.
Speaker 2: There's that the Eye Room and the labyrinth. The Evil
Speaker 2: Layer is really nice. So there's also like anything that's
Speaker 2: not CGI in this film has at least a reasonable
Speaker 2: shot at looking okay.
Speaker 3: There there is at one point, it's toward the end
Speaker 3: of the movie. I wish it had come earlier, a
Speaker 3: quite lovely hand painted backdrop for like a like a
Speaker 3: mad effect when they go to when they go to
Speaker 3: like the Thomas Kincaid Lothlaurian you know, yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 3: it's it's like very pretty yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: So, I mean, the practical stuff works pretty well for
Speaker 2: the most part, and then of course we have the performances.
Speaker 2: There are some definite duds in there, but who there
Speaker 2: are some there are some really fun performances to be
Speaker 2: hold on top of everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll have to talk about that. And speaking of
Speaker 3: continuing themes from last week, a list actors getting in
Speaker 3: a B movie and just giving it everything they've got
Speaker 3: or maybe more than they've got actually, So, Rob, what's
Speaker 3: your elevator pitch? First?
Speaker 2: D The main thing I came up with complete a
Speaker 2: D and D movie before Y two K. Wh Yeah,
Speaker 2: it comes out after Y two K, but you know
Speaker 2: they're filming it in nineteen ninety nine, and and also
Speaker 2: it comes at it's the end of a long journey
Speaker 2: to make a Dungeons and Dragons motion picture. And I'll
Speaker 2: get into some of those details when we talk about
Speaker 2: the director.
Speaker 3: I think they had to roll a twelve or above
Speaker 3: to achieve that goal, and they rolled a twelve.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, at one point I think they rolled one
Speaker 2: and then they realized they did have inspiration and they
Speaker 2: were able to take that back nice. All right, let's
Speaker 2: listen to a little bit of the Trayler audio here,
Speaker 2: and hopefully you'll get to hear Jeremy Irons a little
Speaker 2: bit in there as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in a faraway world.
Speaker 2: All people deserve to be free and equal.
Speaker 4: The child is not fit to govern an empire.
Speaker 3: The forces of darkness.
Speaker 4: You can control dragons for the dragon arm in my command.
Speaker 4: I can crush the empress. This has gotta be some
Speaker 4: twisted magic experiment. Seriously wrong. Have threatened to conquer a kingdom?
Speaker 2: What can I do to stop porfire? If you could
Speaker 2: obtained a rod of Chevrial, you could control read dragons.
Speaker 3: I just we lay low that the whole thing blow.
Speaker 4: Come back, rob everybody.
Speaker 3: There's one small problem problem. I kind of committed us
Speaker 3: to find it. Trust me.
Speaker 4: When you say that, now it's your time to die.
Speaker 4: Dungeons and Dragons.
Speaker 3: You want to do? You?
Speaker 2: All right? Now? Dragons against us? All right? If you
Speaker 2: want to watch Dungeons and Dragons for yourself, you can
Speaker 2: find this one in multiple formats, including some free streaming services.
Speaker 2: That's where I watched this film. You can find it
Speaker 2: on your your Plex and your two b's if those
Speaker 2: are options for you.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: There also there also have been different DVD and Blu
Speaker 2: Ray releases, including Dungeons and Dragons two movie collection on
Speaker 2: Blu Ray. That's if you want to be clear, you're
Speaker 2: not getting the more recent Dungeons and Dragons adaptation in there,
Speaker 2: you're getting one of the crappy sequels to this film,
Speaker 2: So bye with caution.
Speaker 3: Did any actors from this movie come back in that one?
Speaker 2: Bruce Payne, just Bruce Payne. He came back at least
Speaker 2: for the initial sequel. I don't know who if anyone
Speaker 2: came back for part three. I don't know if anyone's
Speaker 2: seen Part three.
Speaker 3: All right, let's talk about the connections.
Speaker 2: All right. We're going to start at the top with
Speaker 2: director producer Courtney Solomon born nineteen seventy. So to be clear,
Speaker 2: there had been previous attempts to officially capitalize on D
Speaker 2: and D's popularity as a film going back to the
Speaker 2: early eighties, but nothing came together until around nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2: That is when then nineteen year old Courtney Solomon with
Speaker 2: basically only a passion for Dungeons and Dragons, some family
Speaker 2: background I think on his on mother's side in Canadian
Speaker 2: TV production, and also we should we should, we should
Speaker 2: realize there's probably a natural twenty charisma role in here.
Speaker 2: Because he managed to convince TSR, the parent company of
Speaker 2: dn DA at the time, to give him a shot
Speaker 2: at producing the thing.
Speaker 3: Had he made a movie at this point.
Speaker 2: No, he had not, as far as I can tell, No,
Speaker 2: nothing like that had occurred. So yeah, we may rag
Speaker 2: on this film a little bit in this episode, but man,
Speaker 2: that was roughly my age when this movie came out,
Speaker 2: and looking back at myself, I was barely capable of
Speaker 2: any level of adulting, you know. Solomon, however, at nineteen
Speaker 2: and in subsequent years, won over TSR and then traveled
Speaker 2: around the world seeking financial backers and scored one in
Speaker 2: Hong Kong business magnate Alan Zamon. And so by the
Speaker 2: mid nineties, the plan, with Solomon as producer was to
Speaker 2: do this up as one hundred million dollar production with
Speaker 2: a big director.
Speaker 3: One hundred million dollars in the in the nineties.
Speaker 2: Yeah like that. I mean, you know, you're talking about
Speaker 2: Fellowship of the Ring range in terms of your budget.
Speaker 2: But of course that's you know, years later. So yeah,
Speaker 2: they were talking about having the likes of Francis Ford
Speaker 2: Coppola or James Cameron produced. I think Stan Winston was
Speaker 2: also attached at one point, but as often occurs in Hollywood,
Speaker 2: plans changed.
Speaker 3: Coming hot off of pump Head, I shall make the
Speaker 3: D and D movie.
Speaker 2: Wow, imagine what the effects would have looked like though there.
Speaker 2: You would have gotten a good beholder in that one.
Speaker 3: I want to see that Francis Ford Coppola version. Would
Speaker 3: it have had al Pacino in it?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, Oh that would have been a different That
Speaker 2: would have been a different evil Mage villain, wouldn't it.
Speaker 3: Oh, my lord, imagine wizard, Yes, evil wizard al Pacino.
Speaker 3: He's like like he is in heat, you know with the.
Speaker 2: We joked, But I don't know, there's there. I can
Speaker 2: see a version of this film that would have worked
Speaker 2: with al Pacino, but I don't know, and we never
Speaker 2: got to have it, so, uh, plans changed. Hollywood producer
Speaker 2: Joel Silver came on board. There was talk at one
Speaker 2: point of doing it as a TV series instead. This
Speaker 2: was the natural one that I mentioned earlier. Then, No,
Speaker 2: I guess the natural one was when they were considering
Speaker 2: doing a low budget direct a video project. But they
Speaker 2: were able to push through and get things back up
Speaker 2: to a thirty to thirty five million dollar budget, and
Speaker 2: at this point was clear Solomon himself was going to
Speaker 2: have to direct it again. This was his first directorial gig,
Speaker 2: but he did it. He pulled it off.
Speaker 3: It's like the artifact has attuned to you and you alone.
Speaker 3: You're the only one.
Speaker 2: You are the only one who can wield it. You
Speaker 2: were the chosen one, and so he did. Now as
Speaker 2: a director, he followed this up with two thousand and
Speaker 2: fives in American Haunting and twenty thirteen's get Away, but
Speaker 2: It's mostly remained active as a producer on such films
Speaker 2: as two thousand and nine's Universal Soldier Regeneration, twenty twelve's
Speaker 2: Universal Soldier Day of Reckoning, twenty sixteen's Mister Church the
Speaker 2: Strangers Chapter one from recent years, and I think there's
Speaker 2: some sequels on the way, and he's listed as a
Speaker 2: producer on an upcoming red Sonja film.
Speaker 3: Well, despite the criticisms I've already made, I do want
Speaker 3: to say this story makes it even more impressive that
Speaker 3: this film got made and is as fun as it is.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's bad, but you're not going to be bored,
Speaker 3: I think when you watch this movie. So yeah, hats
Speaker 3: offt Courtney Solomon, and I do want to echo what
Speaker 3: you said earlier. We may rag on this film, but
Speaker 3: we rag with love.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, we've said before it's a miracle that any
Speaker 2: film gets finished, and you know, kudos to him for
Speaker 2: bringing this one home. Now the writing credits, there are
Speaker 2: two credited writers Topper, Lillian and Carol Cartwright. Lillian screenwriter
Speaker 2: and director who also had a small part in the
Speaker 2: Conehead movie nineteen ninety three's Coneheads, and then Carol Cartwright
Speaker 2: was also one of the writers on twenty twenty two's
Speaker 2: Missus Harris Goes to Paris, which was well received and
Speaker 2: even earned her and her co writers an Australian Writers
Speaker 2: Guild Award. Oh cool.
Speaker 3: As for the Coneheads connection, I don't know how I knew,
Speaker 3: but I felt a little bit of Conehead's juice on.
Speaker 2: This, Like, I don't think they were involved with writing
Speaker 2: it at all, but they showed. They're credited as showing
Speaker 2: up as one of the pilots in the code, and
Speaker 2: it could be an IMDb error, but I'm going to
Speaker 2: assume it's real.
Speaker 3: Now, I think we're about to start discussing the cast
Speaker 3: and the characters. I mentioned at the top that D
Speaker 3: and D the game has character classes in it so
Speaker 3: you can cheer you know, your rogues, your rangers, your
Speaker 3: your clerics, and so forth. Should we take a stab
Speaker 3: At saying what actual D and D class the characters
Speaker 3: in this movie are supposed to be? If anything?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we should beginning with our chief antagonist. This
Speaker 2: is Profion, a high level mage, I would assume, now, Rob.
Speaker 3: You know the D and D lore better than I do.
Speaker 3: But the way I sort of understand it is that
Speaker 3: your main magic user is in D and D are
Speaker 3: your sorcerers, your warlocks, and your wizards. The wizard is
Speaker 3: sort of the intellectual magician who learns their powers through study.
Speaker 3: The warlock is the sort of bound to a demonic
Speaker 3: entity magician who gains their powers through this relationship with
Speaker 3: you know, something that grants the power. And then finally,
Speaker 3: your sorcerer sort of has magic in their blood. They
Speaker 3: you know, they come from a magical background and they
Speaker 3: do it on instinct. It's kind of hard to fit
Speaker 3: Jeremy Iron's character in this movie into any of the three.
Speaker 3: He fits the esthetic of a warlock the most, but
Speaker 3: they never mention anything about a patron. So I'm gonna say,
Speaker 3: even though he feels more warlocky, he's got to be
Speaker 3: a wizard, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I think he's definitely a wizard. Yeah, he
Speaker 2: is the puppet master as opposed to the puppet or
Speaker 2: the conduit as you would have in those other two classes.
Speaker 2: M okay, that being said, no beard, and not that
Speaker 2: a wizard has to have a beard. But again, at
Speaker 2: the time this spotted me. So Jeremy Irons born nineteen
Speaker 2: forty eight. This is I believe our first Jeremy Irons film.
Speaker 2: I've read that he joined the film during its filming
Speaker 2: at the behest of Joel Silver and according to Irons,
Speaker 2: out of a need to help pay for a castle
Speaker 2: he had just purchased.
Speaker 3: Amazing. It reminds me of that a quote from Michael
Speaker 3: Caine about Jaws the Revenge. Somebody asked him about it,
Speaker 3: he says, I haven't seen the film. I've heard it's
Speaker 3: quite terrible, but I have seen the house it built
Speaker 3: and it's lovely.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, Irons has a long and ongoing career on
Speaker 2: the stage, TV and the big screen, with credits going
Speaker 2: back to nineteen seventy one. He really began to skyrocket
Speaker 2: with TV's Brideshead Revisited in eighty one, which earned him
Speaker 2: numerous nominations, and his nineteen eighty six was pretty stellar,
Speaker 2: seeing him play twin gynecologist and David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers
Speaker 2: and also Father Gabriel and Roland Jeffy's masterpiece The Mission,
Speaker 2: and he then went on to win the Academy Award
Speaker 2: for Best Actor for his portrayal of Klos von Buloh
Speaker 2: in Reversal of Fortune, opposite Glenn Close and Ron Silver.
Speaker 2: Subsequent notable credits include David Cronenberg's m Butterfly from ninety three,
Speaker 2: The Lion King from ninety four, in which he voiced Scar.
Speaker 2: Now that's also a very juicy voice role.
Speaker 3: And also, I think the way that a lot of
Speaker 3: kids come to learn who Jeremy Irons is. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: when I was like, I grew up watching The Lion King,
Speaker 3: and then when I was older and like learning about movies,
Speaker 3: I was like, why is this this weird guy? His
Speaker 3: voice is so familiar? Oh it's Scar Oh okay, And
Speaker 3: so you make the connection that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, long Live the King, I'll say always back in
Speaker 2: ninety five with Diehard with a Vengeance plays the villain
Speaker 2: in that he's in two thousand and two is the
Speaker 2: time Machine, playing like a super intelligent morlock. He's in
Speaker 2: two thousand and five's Kingdom of Heaven from Ridley Scott
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight's The Color of Magic. That's a
Speaker 2: Terry Pratchett adaptation, TV's The Borgias, the Snyder DCU Batman films,
Speaker 2: TV's The Watchman. He's quite good in that, and then yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and then twenty twenty one's House of Gucci, which I
Speaker 2: haven't seen, but of course that was a lot of
Speaker 2: people like that as well.
Speaker 3: So of course Jeremy Irons is a terrific actor and
Speaker 3: I love him in so many roles. One that stands
Speaker 3: out to me is a kind of kind of one
Speaker 3: of his unsung roles, but is really good. He plays
Speaker 3: a a nasty financial CEO in the movie Margin Call.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you've seen it.
Speaker 2: Oh, I haven't seen that one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he doesn't. That a character that he often does
Speaker 3: very well, which is a deeply morally compromised and scummy
Speaker 3: but quite charismatic man.
Speaker 2: Yes, scummy charismatic aristocrat is a role that he plays
Speaker 2: very well. And I would say his performances there's often
Speaker 2: a kind of quiet subtlety to them, like he gets
Speaker 2: into higher energy zones. I don't want to, you know,
Speaker 2: make it sound like he's just you know, like just
Speaker 2: a certain energy level for the rest of his performances,
Speaker 2: but it's generally not high energy and certainly not like
Speaker 2: this film.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I've ever thought to describe a
Speaker 3: movie performance this way before, But what I realized is
Speaker 3: Jeremy Irons came into this film with the idea, what
Speaker 3: if I were to approach acting with the goal of
Speaker 3: maximizing not quality, but quantity. So is this good acting
Speaker 3: from Jeremy Irons? I honestly don't even know how to
Speaker 3: answer that, But what I am sure of is you
Speaker 3: cannot complain about the portions of acting. You will be
Speaker 3: taking leftovers home from D and D like. His performance
Speaker 3: will leave you full and you cannot consume it all.
Speaker 2: Yeah. If a normal Jeremy Iron's performance is like a
Speaker 2: subtle knife, this one is a chainsaw. He's on full
Speaker 2: blast the whole time. It's glorious to behold. He's snarling,
Speaker 2: his skull is about to pop through his face. His
Speaker 2: presence absolutely makes this film more watchable than it would
Speaker 2: have been otherwise, And so I think the energy level
Speaker 2: is absolutely the right choice for this film. I honestly
Speaker 2: don't know if this was Jeremy Iron's choice or if
Speaker 2: this was the director's choice or some compromise between the two.
Speaker 2: But I cannot imagine this film without it.
Speaker 3: We shall have to modify our plans. Yeah, just chewing now.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure his performance really lifts everyone around him
Speaker 2: up in equal measure, which is something you sometimes see
Speaker 2: when you have a high caliber actor working with younger
Speaker 2: and less experienced talent. But I also have to acknowledge
Speaker 2: that maybe this film was not exactly the sort of
Speaker 2: workshop environment for that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't mean this as a slight against the
Speaker 3: great Jeremy Irons, but I would say a lot of
Speaker 3: his scenes they don't feel very collaborative. They feel more
Speaker 3: like he is a mad bull that has been unleashed
Speaker 3: on the set and they've started filming. Yeah, and everybody
Speaker 3: else is just kind of they've got to kind of
Speaker 3: deal with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's very much the vibe I get here too. Now,
Speaker 2: behind every mad villain there is a henchman, and the
Speaker 2: hinching here is provided by Bruce Payne, who plays Damadar,
Speaker 2: who I guess he's a sword made. I think the
Speaker 2: exact terminology changes from one edition of D and D
Speaker 2: to the next, but it's like a wizard a magic
Speaker 2: user who also swings a sword around, which I mean,
Speaker 2: it's definitely in the rules, but it always feels to
Speaker 2: me like, come on, dude, you can choose to be
Speaker 2: a fighter or a wizard. Why do you have to
Speaker 2: try and be both share the love with the table.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was trying to place him as well. I was
Speaker 3: having trouble. He's got big he's got big scary armor. Okay, so,
Speaker 3: and he's got a big sword, and that does seem
Speaker 3: to place him in the kind of physical fighter class,
Speaker 3: but he's also yeah, peripheral to a bunch of dark magic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and when he shows up at one point, Richard
Speaker 2: O'Brien's character is like, get that mage out of here.
Speaker 2: No mage is allowed, So I guess he's a mage.
Speaker 3: But also that goes on something in the movie where
Speaker 3: it treats mage not as a character class in the game,
Speaker 3: but as an economic class. Like in the world of
Speaker 3: this D and D movie, if you are a mage,
Speaker 3: that means you're rich.
Speaker 2: Right. The mages control everything, as we'll get into. But
Speaker 2: then this duds like walking through portals and granted, magical
Speaker 2: portals are really thrown around in this movie with reckless abandons.
Speaker 2: But I'm not entirely sure who's casting them. Is Damadar
Speaker 2: casting them or does he have like a travel wizard
Speaker 2: with him at all times.
Speaker 3: It's like they can cast misty step without being able
Speaker 3: to see where they're going.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But Bruce Payne, Yes, we've talked about Bruce Payne
Speaker 2: on the show before. Born nineteen fifty eight, British actor,
Speaker 2: stage and screen. He was in Alan Clark's snooker musical
Speaker 2: Billy the Kid and the Green Bays Vampire, a glorious
Speaker 2: film and a fine supporting and singing performance by Pain
Speaker 2: as the one akat O. He's great in that, and
Speaker 2: I'm to understand he's also really good in nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: six is absolute beginners. But man, the nineteen nineties Bruce
Speaker 2: Payne that I think most of us are familiar with
Speaker 2: are it's this Bruce Payne. It's like looming British villain.
Speaker 2: Bruce Payne, like he really found his niche niche in
Speaker 2: the nineteen nineties. Numerous films we can reference here in
Speaker 2: which he's playing some variation of this bad guy.
Speaker 3: Sometimes feels in this movie like he's trying to match
Speaker 3: or compete with Jeremy irons, like they were literally like
Speaker 3: betting which one could overact more just stunningly inappropriate line
Speaker 3: deliveries taking four or five times longer than necessary to
Speaker 3: spit out function just very functional lines like placecards at
Speaker 3: every gate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, like really drawn out. And the look of
Speaker 2: this character too, we have to I mean you mentioned
Speaker 2: the armor he has. He has some cool looking armor,
Speaker 2: you know, neat cape, big sword, but he also has
Speaker 2: bright blue lips electric blue. Yeah, like like he just
Speaker 2: had some sort of like really bright slushie or something
Speaker 2: or that. It is like just really bright blue lipstick
Speaker 2: that I kept expecting it to be explained one way
Speaker 2: or another or another, Like there's some sort of like
Speaker 2: mintat wine that he drinks, but I don't think they
Speaker 2: ever really make any sense of it. It's just a
Speaker 2: bizarre visual choice.
Speaker 3: He's one of those bald guys with blue lips.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then a later part of What's in This
Speaker 2: World and later as he's infected by a bizarre CGI
Speaker 2: brain parasite, he also begins to boast increasingly inflamed ears.
Speaker 2: So most of the scenes you end up with having
Speaker 2: like close in on his head bright blue lips, big
Speaker 2: red ears. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the ears look painful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he manages to push through all this and
Speaker 2: make you believe in the character's cardboard villainy. You know,
Speaker 2: he's a cardboard villain, very much a henchman. But you
Speaker 2: know he does a commendable job here.
Speaker 3: He gets to do the classic. You know, the hero says, hey,
Speaker 3: you said if I gave you the artifact, you'd free
Speaker 3: my friends. What does he get to say? I lie?
Speaker 2: Now. Other Bruce Payne performances the nineteen nineties that I
Speaker 2: think cemented his place as a go to villain. He
Speaker 2: does have a role in nineteen ninety one's Howling the Freaks,
Speaker 2: in which he plays a hideous dart Nosferatu character under
Speaker 2: a lot of makeup. I don't know if I would
Speaker 2: have ever recognized this as Bruce Payne. But then, more
Speaker 2: to the point, he was in nineteen ninety two's Passenger
Speaker 2: fifty seven, in which he plays the villain opposite Wesley Snipes.
Speaker 2: His subsequent credits included the likes of ninety three's Necronomicon
Speaker 2: Book of the Dead, Tales from the Crypt, Warlock three,
Speaker 2: The End of Innocence, taking over the part from Julian
Speaker 2: Sands Highlander endgame in two thousand and the two thousand
Speaker 2: and five D and D sequel that we referenced earlier,
Speaker 2: in which he was I believe the only cast member returning.
Speaker 3: Good to stay busy.
Speaker 2: Yes, all right, so those are our chief antagonist and
Speaker 2: the henchman. Let's get into the actual adventuring party here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, our heroes.
Speaker 2: So this is one of those encounters where the dungeon
Speaker 2: master didn't really tell everyone that they needed certain roles.
Speaker 2: They didn't. He didn't explain that somebody needs to be
Speaker 2: the cleric because there's no cleric in the party.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 3: In fact, you have two rogues, two rogues. Our main
Speaker 3: two characters are both rogues. That is imbalanced.
Speaker 2: Imbalanced though I don't know. Anytime i'm dungeon mastering, I'm like,
Speaker 2: just play what you want to play. If we're all rogues,
Speaker 2: we'll roll with it. We'll find a way. But in
Speaker 2: general you're supposed to sort of steer everyone towards a
Speaker 2: balanced party. So I guess our main rogue here are
Speaker 2: ultimately our lead character. Our protagonist is Ridley Freeborn and
Speaker 2: a generic rogue I guess played by Justin Whalen.
Speaker 3: My name is Maximus Protagonist. Oh boy, Yeah, he's got
Speaker 3: such like hero kid energy in this Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all of his scenes feel like they were directed
Speaker 2: by uncle baby Billy, you know, like major Tinges energy here.
Speaker 2: It's not a character that I ever found myself liking
Speaker 2: or rooting for. Not that it's the actor's fault, but
Speaker 2: it's just like, this is our hero. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Boy, you didn't like the Dark Knight of the Soul
Speaker 3: scene in the late movie when he's like, why are
Speaker 3: bad things bad? And yeah, well, why do we have
Speaker 3: to fight evil?
Speaker 2: Yeah? At that point I was more like, get on
Speaker 2: with it to the scene where you fight the evil.
Speaker 2: Obviously you're going to fight the evil, dude. Come on.
Speaker 2: So this actor American actor who previously worked as a
Speaker 2: child actor on such films as nineteen eighty eight's The Deadpool,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety one's Child's Play three, and various TV shows
Speaker 2: including The Wonder Years and Blossom, and he was active
Speaker 2: through I believe around two thousand and nine when he
Speaker 2: retired from acting.
Speaker 3: Okay, but as we said, it's it's not just one
Speaker 3: rogue in the lead. It's a bloody rogue movie. Yes,
Speaker 3: so we got the other one, played by Marlon Wayans.
Speaker 2: Yes, Marlon Wayans of the Wayans Brothers plays Snails. Snails
Speaker 2: is another generic rogue. I believe he uses the comedic
Speaker 2: sidekick specialization within the rogue.
Speaker 3: Archetype here arcane prankster.
Speaker 2: Essentially, but no magic. Yeah yeah so. Born nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 2: Wayn's brother, actor, writer, and comedian who's best known for
Speaker 2: wildly over the top comedic performances in such films as
Speaker 2: The Scary Movie Franchise, which he also co wrote and
Speaker 2: co produced two thousand and four's White Chicks and two
Speaker 2: thousand and six Little Man. And I haven't seen this one,
Speaker 2: but this is the one where he plays like a
Speaker 2: CGI face assisted baby, Like it's Marlon Wayans face on
Speaker 2: a baby. Oh no, So, I mean it's what put
Speaker 2: him on the map and people enjoyed the films that
Speaker 2: made him a success, And that is mostly the vibe
Speaker 2: we get in D and D. He is the comedic relief.
Speaker 2: He has one, maybe two scenes but most likely one
Speaker 2: scene in this movie where he mostly plays it straight,
Speaker 2: but for the most part it's full scary movie mode
Speaker 2: for the rest of the picture.
Speaker 3: Yes, He's doing comedy, physical comedy and character comedy for
Speaker 3: most of the film, which makes it rather jaring. In
Speaker 3: the scene where he gets murdered by the villain, which
Speaker 3: is suddenly very serious, and all his friends are like, no, dead,
Speaker 3: and I kept thinking, well, surely he can't really be dead.
Speaker 3: That would be so tonally weird, especially given how just
Speaker 3: he's like joking all the time. But no, he's just dead.
Speaker 3: They just killed him.
Speaker 2: He pulls such faces in scenes where he's not even
Speaker 2: talking that reminded me of some of the supporting performances
Speaker 2: by this particular vaudevillian actor in Santa Claus versus the Martians.
Speaker 2: Like it's that level of just over the top intens yes.
Speaker 2: But the crazy thing for me though, was I was like,
Speaker 2: I was looking at his filmography and I realized, you know,
Speaker 2: the year two thousand, that's also the year that Marlon
Speaker 2: Wayans appeared and was widely considered a really solid, serious,
Speaker 2: dramatic performance from him. And that's Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for
Speaker 2: a Dream.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I had forgotten he was in that, but yeah,
Speaker 3: he's great in that. This is around the same time. Unbelievable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I mean you know, the man has and
Speaker 2: had the tools. But I mean, obviously there's a lot
Speaker 2: more money to be made in the comedy business. But yeah,
Speaker 2: that's snails, more on snails than in a bit, all right.
Speaker 2: The next character I think is obviously an NPC. I
Speaker 2: don't think she has any marketable skills other than she
Speaker 2: is the Empress, the Empress Savina played by Thora Birch.
Speaker 3: Now we're gonna we're making a habit of having to
Speaker 3: say this as we talk about every actor playing a
Speaker 3: good character in this movie. But no offense to the
Speaker 3: actor here, no offense to Thora Birch. But yeah, there
Speaker 3: is not much going on with this character.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think they were maybe going for a childlike
Speaker 2: empress vibe here from the never ending story, except what
Speaker 2: if we weighed her down with like two tons of chainmail,
Speaker 2: because she just ends up looking uncomfortable in most of
Speaker 2: these scenes.
Speaker 3: Well, but also forced her to make speeches like engage
Speaker 3: in political rhetoric. Essentially, the childlike empress does not do.
Speaker 2: That, right. So, born in nineteen eighty two, she kicked
Speaker 2: things off as a child actor and at this point
Speaker 2: had already appeared in such films as nineteen ninety two's
Speaker 2: Patriot Games. Ninety three's hocus Pocus ninety four is clear
Speaker 2: and present danger and very important one episode of the
Speaker 2: nineteen nineties Outer Limits. But this film is also sandwich
Speaker 2: between two of her most critically acclaimed films. I believe
Speaker 2: when they filmed Dungeons and Dragons, they'd already shot nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety nine's American Beauty, but then it comes out before
Speaker 2: D and D comes out, obviously, and then after American
Speaker 2: Beauty came out, of course, she received a lot of
Speaker 2: acclaim for that performance, and then she would go on
Speaker 2: to have a really solid performance in two thousand and
Speaker 2: one Ghost World opposite Scarlett Johansson and Steve USIMMI It's
Speaker 2: been a long time since I've seen either of those films,
Speaker 2: but I do remember her as being rather good in
Speaker 2: Ghost World.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think I've seen either of those since
Speaker 3: the early two thousands, but yeah, same like thor Birch,
Speaker 3: I like with much of the cast. I would be
Speaker 3: curious to hear her thoughts and what she remembers about
Speaker 3: making this film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because yeah, I you know, again, solid actress, but
Speaker 2: this is not the picture, all right, Let's move back
Speaker 2: to the actual adventuring party. We also have Marina Pretensa.
Speaker 2: She is a human mage and she is played by
Speaker 2: Zoe mcleland born nineteen seventy four, American TV actress best
Speaker 2: known for this film I think, and I have to say,
Speaker 2: I thought she was actually pretty good in this role,
Speaker 2: despite the flat misogyny gags that were kind of shoehorned
Speaker 2: in there, I don't know. She was more alive, Her
Speaker 2: character felt more alive, and her performance therefore followed in
Speaker 2: ways that other characters did not.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, Well another example of not a great,
Speaker 3: not a wonderfully written role, but she's doing what she
Speaker 3: can with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she as. She appeared on such TV shows as
Speaker 2: Star Trek Voyager, and I think she was main cast
Speaker 2: on Designated Survivor. All right. Next up, we have Ellwood Gutworthy.
Speaker 2: He is a dwarven fighter and he is played by
Speaker 2: Lee Arenberg born nineteen sixty two, possibly under celebrated American
Speaker 2: character actor. You might not know his name, but you'll
Speaker 2: instantly recognize him from such projects as the Pirates of
Speaker 2: the Caribbean movies, which he played. This character's name is
Speaker 2: Pintel or Pentel.
Speaker 3: See one of the two sort of comedy Pirates, The
Speaker 3: bad Guy Comedy Pirates.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's the bald one, the bald bearded comedy Pirate.
Speaker 2: He also has appeared on TV shows like Friends and Seinfeld,
Speaker 2: But I think the first place I saw him was
Speaker 2: a nineteen ninety Tales from the Crypt episode titled for
Speaker 2: Crying Out Loud, which co starred Katie Segal, Iggy Pop
Speaker 2: and Sam Kennison as the voice in Arenberg's head.
Speaker 3: Sam Kinnison as the voice in his head.
Speaker 2: Yes. Wow. He also played the Eternal Flame in the
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three cinematic Marvel Freaked, and you'll also find
Speaker 2: him in some other bits as well, like he plays
Speaker 2: a hold up man in RoboCop three.
Speaker 3: As for his role in this movie, I mean, I
Speaker 3: hope you like seeing food in people's beard's that's the
Speaker 3: yuck yuck. You know they're gonna go for that joke
Speaker 3: many times, and you will actually be quite impressed how
Speaker 3: much food they can fit in his beard.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They just kept saying it's not funny enough. Let's
Speaker 2: add more chicken wings to the gag.
Speaker 3: More chicken Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I remember being a little grumpy about
Speaker 2: the dwarf as comic relief elements in Jackson's Lord of
Speaker 2: the Rings, but gut Worthy here is ten thousand times
Speaker 2: worse than any of that. Like, this film's vision for
Speaker 2: a dwarf is that of a kind of drunken, bearded
Speaker 2: umpah lumpa whose main character traits are alcoholism, gluttony, and
Speaker 2: poor hygiene.
Speaker 3: Yes, he drinks, he fights, He has chicken and beard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's that's pretty much. Yet it's kind of awful.
Speaker 2: And I think like he is painted orange or I
Speaker 2: don't like it's like he has like an orange beard,
Speaker 2: like a bright orange beard, and I think there's like
Speaker 2: orange pain on his face. It is. It's just everything
Speaker 2: is wrong about this presentation.
Speaker 3: Okay, But no confusion about class here. This is our
Speaker 3: standard fighter. He's like got a battle axe, that's what
Speaker 3: he does.
Speaker 2: He specializes though, in background fighting, not like key villain fighting,
Speaker 2: but just background stuff.
Speaker 3: Doing it doing a leg sweep and uh, well, I
Speaker 3: think he legs sweeps damodar one time.
Speaker 2: Oh pretty, I guess you know. It's a team effort.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but mostly you're right. He's back there slamming around
Speaker 3: while our more prominent characters are in the foreground.
Speaker 2: All right, up next we have Norda, an Elvin ranger
Speaker 2: played by Kristin Wilson born nineteen sixty nine, American actress,
Speaker 2: best known for playing Lisa Doolittle in nineteen ninety eight's
Speaker 2: Doctor Doolittle and It's two thousand and one sequel. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 2: she's married to makeup affects artist Martin Estells, who worked
Speaker 2: on Chronicles of Riddick and also worked on this film.
Speaker 2: So it's very possible that dungeons and dragons brought this
Speaker 2: couple together.
Speaker 3: What better way to find true love.
Speaker 2: As for her performance, I mean, I think it seems fine.
Speaker 2: They have her wearing one of those ridiculous fantasy female breastplates,
Speaker 2: but that aside. You know, I totally bought her as
Speaker 2: a no nonsense Elvin Ranger.
Speaker 3: She has a good funny moment when Snails is trying
Speaker 3: to flirt with her and she's like, how old are you?
Speaker 3: And he says twenty three and she's like, I'm two
Speaker 3: hundred and thirty five.
Speaker 2: That was pretty good. Yeah, all right. Next up, we
Speaker 2: have just really a couple of kind of fun cameos,
Speaker 2: a little side characters that are encountered. The first I
Speaker 2: already mentioned in passing that Richard O'Brien shows up, and yes,
Speaker 2: Richard O'Brien shows up as Zilious, a master thief born
Speaker 2: nineteen forty two. This is, of course the mastermind behind
Speaker 2: the Rocky Horror Picture Show, in which he also played
Speaker 2: riff Raff. He played He played Mister Hand in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety eight s Dark City, and we previously mentioned him
Speaker 2: in our episode on nineteen eighty's Flash Gordon, in which
Speaker 2: he played a character named Falco. We're going to come
Speaker 2: back to O'Brien in the future when we talk about
Speaker 2: a film in which he's more central, So you know,
Speaker 2: I'll keep this brief and say that, yeah, he does
Speaker 2: bring his signature charisma to this small role, but he
Speaker 2: still manages to feel a bit out of place as well.
Speaker 3: I'd say, once again doing what he can.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, but then Tom Baker shows up as hal
Speaker 2: varth An Elvin Kleric kind of late in the film.
Speaker 2: He attempts, but what fails to resurrect Snails. Who's he healing?
Speaker 3: He's healing justin well, he's he's healing Ridley. He's like
Speaker 3: he's apps him with yellow Zippy's apps.
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, Snails is just all the way down
Speaker 2: at this point.
Speaker 3: He Snails is dead. Well, Snails does resurrect at the
Speaker 3: end of the movie. Oh okay, remember they like they
Speaker 3: put a thing a jewel on his grave, and then
Speaker 3: it suggests he's still alive somewhere else and they could
Speaker 3: go meet him.
Speaker 2: I think, oh, okay, well, all right, there's so there's
Speaker 2: some hope for Snails. Yeah. So yeah, okay, so he
Speaker 2: heals our main protagonist.
Speaker 3: Yes, uh, he's not. We've been saying about a lot
Speaker 3: of people. They do what they can. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Tom Baker feels like he's kind of sleep walking through this.
Speaker 3: When he says his lines, it feels like he's saying
Speaker 3: him for the first time.
Speaker 2: Oh I don't know. I mean that may very well
Speaker 2: be the case, but maybe I just find tom Baker
Speaker 2: captivating enough that that was enough for me where I'm like, hey,
Speaker 2: he's this guy's doing it. This guy knows what he's doing.
Speaker 2: Look at that.
Speaker 3: I mean tom Baker's Don Baker. Yeah he so he
Speaker 3: brings more doctor Who energy than rasputant energy.
Speaker 2: I'd say here, Yeah, so, Tom Baker, if you're not
Speaker 2: from here born nineteen thirty four, still active, I Believe,
Speaker 2: a British actor of stage, screen and TV, best known
Speaker 2: as the fourth and longest serving incarnation of the Doctor
Speaker 2: in Doctor Who from nineteen seventy four to nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 2: And there have been so many great doctors over the years,
Speaker 2: but I think Baker still stands out as one of
Speaker 2: the most iconic. And I think for me, he's like,
Speaker 2: this is my Doctor Who. If I'm ever if I
Speaker 2: remember in a room and there's a Doctor Who episode
Speaker 2: playing and it's Tom Baker, I'm just drawn in. I've
Speaker 2: got to see what he's gonna do. What's he's gonna says?
Speaker 2: He's my go to.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, I think I know way less Doctor Who
Speaker 3: than you do, but I do think of them. I
Speaker 3: do think of him as the doctor among many doctors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know he's he can play it all.
Speaker 2: He can be sick, obviously. He can also play malicious characters,
Speaker 2: such as in seventy three's The Vault of Horror and
Speaker 2: also The Golden Voyage of Sinbad from the same year.
Speaker 2: He can also play serious really well. And you mentioned
Speaker 2: his role as Resputant and Nicholas and Alexandra from nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy two, for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe.
Speaker 3: He is mesmerizing in that role.
Speaker 2: That's one I still need to see. I haven't seen
Speaker 2: that one, but I have seen The Golden Voyage of
Speaker 2: sindbad D.
Speaker 3: That's a good one. It's got some great monsters in it.
Speaker 2: All right. And finally, the composer for this film is
Speaker 2: Justin Cain Burnett born nineteen seventy three, American film and
Speaker 2: video game music composer who apparently worked under Hans Zimmer
Speaker 2: early in his career, and he's gone on to score
Speaker 2: numerous genre pictures such as two thousand and fives in
Speaker 2: American Haunting and some fairly big TV projects as well,
Speaker 2: like The Patient, in addition to working in the musical
Speaker 2: department on some pretty big films by the likes of
Speaker 2: Michael Bay and Tony Scott and Ridley Scott.
Speaker 3: I don't think the music and this is bad, though
Speaker 3: sometimes it's kind of a funny fit. Like the opening
Speaker 3: fanfare sounds to me a lot like the music from
Speaker 3: a sports movie. It sounds like, oh, you know, Johnny's
Speaker 3: running for the touchdown. You know they finally put him
Speaker 3: in and he's gonna save the team season.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or it's just kind of like I mean, it's
Speaker 2: like I've said before. You know, sometimes the film's musical
Speaker 2: score needs to kind of feel invisible. It's just working
Speaker 2: in the background doing its thing. And you know, I
Speaker 2: guess that's basically what the score here does.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, are you ready to talk about the plot?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yes, let's do it.
Speaker 3: So the movie starts with something that absolutely feels tacked
Speaker 3: on in post production. It's some voiceover narration playing over
Speaker 3: a dismal gray screen with some wisps of CGI missed,
Speaker 3: and it's just an old man's voice. I don't know
Speaker 3: who's talking here, but it says the Empire of Ismir
Speaker 3: has long been a divided land ruled by the Mages,
Speaker 3: an elite group of magic users. The lowly commoners those
Speaker 3: without magic, are little more than slaves. Izmir's young Empress,
Speaker 3: Savina wishes equality and prosperity for all, but the evil
Speaker 3: mage Profion has other intentions.
Speaker 2: No, I have to admit it's intriguing. Imagine if they've
Speaker 2: shown us any of this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the horns start blasting. This is the part
Speaker 3: where it sounds like football, and then we zoom over
Speaker 3: a bunch of CGI. So we're zooming over bridges spanning
Speaker 3: a waterway with a mini towered castle rising beyond, and
Speaker 3: real question when we get a look at this castle,
Speaker 3: I was genuinely wondering, is this CGI model based on
Speaker 3: the Disney Castle image, the more elaborate one, because it
Speaker 3: looks like it.
Speaker 2: We are like swooping in on it. It feels like
Speaker 2: it very much the same trajectory as we do the
Speaker 2: Disney Castle, and the opening Disney logo sequence feels a
Speaker 2: lot like it.
Speaker 3: But then, perhaps fittingly for the theme, does the camera
Speaker 3: fly into a window in one of the majestic, lofty
Speaker 3: towers in the sky. No, it does not. Instead, we
Speaker 3: plunge down over the surface of the moat and then
Speaker 3: straight through the heavy iron bars of a gate leading
Speaker 3: into a dungeon.
Speaker 2: It's fitting. It's you know, we didn't really get into this,
Speaker 2: but it's called dungeons and dragons, so you can imagine
Speaker 2: producers are like, Okay, there needs to be a dungeon,
Speaker 2: and there needs to be a dragon, and really, if
Speaker 2: you could fit all of this into the first ten
Speaker 2: minutes of the film, that would be great.
Speaker 3: So the environments here, again to emphasize, are at this
Speaker 3: point CGI, and the animation is murky and hideous. It
Speaker 3: was trying to describe what these environments look like. It's
Speaker 3: a little difficult, but like in nineties computer game terms,
Speaker 3: imagine the CD ROM game Missed, but make it fugly
Speaker 3: instead of mysterious. So it's like mist but with the drab,
Speaker 3: depressing color palette of the original quake. Yes, so we
Speaker 3: fly through a tunnel in this dungeon into a room
Speaker 3: where a bunch of hooded occult servants are toiling in
Speaker 3: the dark. There are chains, ladders, gears, lanterns, and skulls.
Speaker 3: Lots of skulls just sitting around in random places. There's
Speaker 3: one thing that looks like a kind of a ramp
Speaker 3: or a gangway on top of a pipe that's pouring
Speaker 3: water into a big stone pool. And on the ramp
Speaker 3: there's just a skull sitting right in the middle of it.
Speaker 3: Somebody's gonna step on that.
Speaker 2: Like, oh, this one fell out, just put it on
Speaker 2: top of the box.
Speaker 3: There's some kind of big machine being operated, so we've
Speaker 3: got cultists. They're pulling chains and working levers. There's a
Speaker 3: big cog wheel revolving, and then in the middle of
Speaker 3: the room there is a three axis gimbal. So you
Speaker 3: might have seen these with like I don't know, used
Speaker 3: for astronaut training, where it's the rings that spin within
Speaker 3: rings along the different axes. And what's in the the
Speaker 3: middle is not an astronaut. It is a large black
Speaker 3: scepter fixed with a green jewel.
Speaker 2: You know, I need to throw in here. I was
Speaker 2: able to get my kid to watch the first like
Speaker 2: thirty minutes of this film with me because they're about
Speaker 2: to turn thirteen and they're already super into dungeons and dragons.
Speaker 2: You know, they've read the books, they're playing the game,
Speaker 2: and so it was fun to watch part of this.
Speaker 2: I really didn't expect or demand that they watch all
Speaker 2: of this film with me, but at like this point,
Speaker 2: they were already like, oh, it looks like they're making
Speaker 2: a making a magical item there, and they started spouting
Speaker 2: all the rules for how long it's going to take
Speaker 2: to make a magical weapon and so forth.
Speaker 3: Did this lead to frustration.
Speaker 2: That they did quickly realize this is not a good film,
Speaker 2: but they didn't seem bored. And I have to drive home.
Speaker 2: At this point, we are into the physical sets, practical sets,
Speaker 2: and it's a totally different vibe, like, yeah, I'm buying
Speaker 2: this as a real place and I'm intrigued what's going
Speaker 2: on here?
Speaker 3: And then also, hey, so, yeah, we've come out of
Speaker 3: the CGI into the real sets and we get our
Speaker 3: first glimpse of the main attraction, Jeremy Irons.
Speaker 2: Oh what an entry. It's so good. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So he's like an evil mage dressed in black, wearing
Speaker 3: a burgundy cloak, and from the very first second he appears,
Speaker 3: he is just squealing with raw ham energy. He comes
Speaker 3: waltzing down the dungeon stairs towards the scepter machine, and
Speaker 3: he's got his arms stretched out to the sides like
Speaker 3: he's doing ballet. And also off to the side, you've
Speaker 3: got Bruce Payne playing the henchman Damnadar, and again yeah,
Speaker 3: he's like bald and haughty with the with the muscle
Speaker 3: morph armor and the big sword and the electric blue lips.
Speaker 3: And then we get a close up of Profyon the
Speaker 3: mage here looking evil, and it's a close up like
Speaker 3: his face fills the entire frame and you can see
Speaker 3: all his pores. You can see that this must have
Speaker 3: been filmed in the afternoon because his mustache stubble is
Speaker 3: starting to come in, and you can see the way
Speaker 3: someone appears to have combed his eyebrows so that the
Speaker 3: hairs all flare upward. And then the evil music swells
Speaker 3: and it's clear he wants that scepter, so he steps
Speaker 3: forward and he sticks his hand out and zaps the
Speaker 3: rod with force lightning. Also you can see rob I've
Speaker 3: got a screenshot for you to look at here, But
Speaker 3: it's like he has to step over some little moats,
Speaker 3: little like gutters on the floor in order to get
Speaker 3: to the thing. He's gonna get his cloak wet.
Speaker 2: That's true. I mean you've got to just expect to
Speaker 2: get your cloak muddy and bloody and wet in these scenarios.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Profion starts chanting a magic spell. It's a
Speaker 3: bunch of nonsense words, and we see the little Cgi
Speaker 3: dragons flying around inside a kind of portal in the
Speaker 3: gimbal machine. And then Jeremy Irons keeps ratcheting up the
Speaker 3: intensity and his face bones so it just goes in
Speaker 3: on him and he's going off. His face is getting
Speaker 3: weirder crazier, and something finally works with his magic. The
Speaker 3: machine stops spinning and Profion can approach and remove the artifact,
Speaker 3: and it's glowing green. It casts a sickly green light
Speaker 3: over his face. And oh, my lord, the expressions he
Speaker 3: is making here, Like he projects a quivering, overtly sexual
Speaker 3: ecstasy as he takes hold of the magic scepter. So
Speaker 3: he like grabs the rod with this electric zapping effect
Speaker 3: and then he holds it up in the air screaming
Speaker 3: yes and just like Folks, even if you don't want
Speaker 3: to watch the whole movie, I recommend you watch this
Speaker 3: scene at the beginning, just to do like the Jeremy
Speaker 3: Iron's Face survey, you know, add little tasting notes at all,
Speaker 3: the little moments where you get to see his teeth
Speaker 3: doing this, his tongue doing that. What's that sound he's making?
Speaker 3: Why is he going bad?
Speaker 2: It is so good. Yeah, if you watch nothing else,
Speaker 2: watch the fifteen minutes because you will get so much
Speaker 2: of this performance. Yeah. It is just oh, it is
Speaker 2: just a like a stiff shot of absolutely like one
Speaker 2: twenty percent to Jeremy irons Ham.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and of course it's it's Bruce Payne approved. He's
Speaker 3: sitting there like the you know, his lips tight together
Speaker 3: like yep, yep, that's my boss.
Speaker 2: Oh god, those lips.
Speaker 3: So Profion says, come Damadar, and they walk up the
Speaker 3: steps to a big door that has what can only
Speaker 3: be described as a dragon logo on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's like.
Speaker 3: Behind this door it's dragons are us. And Profion calls
Speaker 3: out to his terrified hooded servants. He says, release him.
Speaker 3: So the guys in hoods they're trembling with fear. They
Speaker 3: start cranking a bunch of wheels and levers and the
Speaker 3: door opens up to dragons r us and what do
Speaker 3: you know, there's a dragon inside and it starts coming out,
Speaker 3: and what a dragon this is. As I've said many
Speaker 3: times now, we're trying not to just hate on the
Speaker 3: movie too much, but we've got to tell you straight
Speaker 3: that this is some of the worst CGI I can
Speaker 3: think of in any major motion picture.
Speaker 2: Yes, oh my goodness. I mean, the dragon does not
Speaker 2: look good. I mean, the CGI is not good. And
Speaker 2: then just it's just such a generic looking dragon as well.
Speaker 2: I mean, especially when you consider what's already come before.
Speaker 2: Practically we talked about Verma Thrack's pejorative in The Dragon
Speaker 2: Slayer on a previous episode of Weird House cinema, like
Speaker 2: one of the greatest dragons ever brought to life on
Speaker 2: the screen. To go from something like that to something
Speaker 2: like this, it's just it's a travesty.
Speaker 3: Now. It doesn't look quite so bad at the very
Speaker 3: first moment because it's farther away and partially hidden in darkness.
Speaker 3: But then it like lunges out and it starts spitting
Speaker 3: fire on all the hooded cult guys and it roars
Speaker 3: into the camera. I think they were actually going for
Speaker 3: a callback to Jurassic Park. There are a couple of
Speaker 3: moments where it does where the CGI Dragon does a
Speaker 3: kind of body motion or something almost exactly like a
Speaker 3: shot in Jurassic Park, and it seems not accidental.
Speaker 2: It is often sobering to realize how early Jurassic Park
Speaker 2: comes out in relation to some of these films with
Speaker 2: bad CJI monsters. Later on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, so this dragon is not finished baking,
Speaker 3: but no more time, it's out of the oven.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we gotta keet this out before Y two k.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so Profion commands the dragon to approach him
Speaker 3: and he starts gloating. He says, yes, I control dragons now,
Speaker 3: and Damodar is just dripping with obsequious flattery. He's like,
Speaker 3: you have the power of the immortals, and Profion says
Speaker 3: he's snarling. He says, with a dragon army at my command,
Speaker 3: I can crush the impress I can control what is
Speaker 3: rightfully ours. I'm not gonna keep trying to do the
Speaker 3: Jeremy Iron's voice when I quote him. So he just
Speaker 3: keeps doing amazingly weird stuff with his face, voice and tongue. Here, Rob,
Speaker 3: this is the part where you were talking about his
Speaker 3: skull trying to escape, and so he's oh, and he
Speaker 3: also he says things that are echoing kind of the
Speaker 3: Emperor in Return of the Jedi. He's like, I can
Speaker 3: use every ounce of your rage. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: yeah yeah yeah. And unfortunately nothing gold can stay. There's
Speaker 3: a little pun because this is a gold dragon. Apparently
Speaker 3: something goes wrong and Profion.
Speaker 2: Keeps do they say it's a gold dragon?
Speaker 3: They say, they say that the impresses dragons are gold dragons.
Speaker 2: Well that's not right. I'm not going to get into it.
Speaker 2: That's that's I mean, that shouldn't be gold dragons are special.
Speaker 2: They're nobody's dungeon.
Speaker 3: Well, no, I think we do need to get into
Speaker 3: this later because also they bring up like red dragons
Speaker 3: in contrast to the gold dragons, as if like it
Speaker 3: was like, oh, oh red dragons, that that would be really,
Speaker 3: that's really something, okay.
Speaker 2: I mean in short, like gold ragonagons are good and
Speaker 2: red dragons are bad. Okay, So it's weird that we're
Speaker 2: dealing with a gold dragon.
Speaker 3: Like this, well the gold dragon here. That makes sense
Speaker 3: because the gold dragon does not want to obey profion
Speaker 3: and so it starts backing up into it cell. It's like, no, no,
Speaker 3: I'm not working with this guy. And then the door
Speaker 3: slams shut on it and like stabs it and a
Speaker 3: death recalling almost exactly in another callback to Return of
Speaker 3: the Jedi, the Demise of the Rank or in Return
Speaker 3: of the Jedi. That's right, they rank or it, And
Speaker 3: then we get to watch the dragons cgi blood spill
Speaker 3: out and pool on the floor and then run down
Speaker 3: the stairs, which looks absolutely hilarious. And I have questions
Speaker 3: about shots like this in the movies, like how expensive
Speaker 3: would it have been to actually just pour some red
Speaker 3: krosyrup blood down a staircase versus the cost of computer
Speaker 3: animating flowing blood in the year two thousand. Why would
Speaker 3: this be done?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess we have to be at
Speaker 2: that tipping point here where the digital effect is cheaper
Speaker 2: than the practical effect, even though the digital does not
Speaker 2: look nearly as believable.
Speaker 3: How could that even be? Though? Like how much does
Speaker 3: it cost to make a bucket of fake blood? And
Speaker 3: just I mean, I guess the cost of the labor
Speaker 3: to clean it up after you've spilled it?
Speaker 2: Like yeah, I don't know. I mean maybe it's it's
Speaker 2: there in the budget cheek where they're like, we're already
Speaker 2: paying for these digital effects, let's have them do the blood.
Speaker 2: I don't know, they can't afford some just good Kensington
Speaker 2: Gore whip stuff on the spot.
Speaker 3: Bizarre anyway, Jeremy Ironsy like groans with frustration. It's like
Speaker 3: not again, and he puts his head in his hands.
Speaker 3: He just foiled. So he says, this is the part
Speaker 3: where he says, we shall have to modify our plans.
Speaker 3: He says they're going to summon the High Council of
Speaker 3: Mages and that he's going to try to turn them
Speaker 3: against the Impress, and Damadar says it will be done.
Speaker 3: And then oh, when the cgi blood hits the water below,
Speaker 3: the water catches fire, and then the fire runs out
Speaker 3: of the dungeon into the moat. All aroun on the castle.
Speaker 3: So the whole city can see the fire, and they
Speaker 3: gather around the moat to look at it.
Speaker 2: But they're not like super concerned. It's kind of like, oh,
Speaker 2: the river's on fire again. You know, It's just this happens.
Speaker 2: This is just the kind of ecological nightmare we're living in.
Speaker 3: It's the Cuyahoga. Yeah. So on the banks of the
Speaker 3: moat here we meet our two protagonists. This is our
Speaker 3: pair of buddy rogues. This is Ridley and Snails, Justin
Speaker 3: Whalen and Marlon Wayans. Ridley's first line commenting on the
Speaker 3: water catching fire, he says, I'm telling you it's got
Speaker 3: to be some twisted magic experiment gone seriously wrong. And
Speaker 3: you know, Snails is less He's got less of a
Speaker 3: bee in his bondet about this. He's just like, you know, Ridley,
Speaker 3: why are you always mad at the Mages? And Ridley says,
Speaker 3: I'd just love to find a way to give those
Speaker 3: mages some payback. So, as I said earlier in this movie,
Speaker 3: Mages seems to be an economic class are the rich,
Speaker 3: seemingly whether or not they're personally really like a wizard.
Speaker 3: And Ridley and Snails, on the other hand, are representatives
Speaker 3: of the common people. Ridley is a sort of idealistic
Speaker 3: class warrior who wants to fight for the poor and
Speaker 3: stick it to the mages, and Snails is less idealistic.
Speaker 3: The way he explains it, he's like, the world's never
Speaker 3: going to change. There are the haves, the have nots,
Speaker 3: and the gotta gets and we two rogues. We are
Speaker 3: in the last group where the gotta gets. But Ridley
Speaker 3: comes up with an idea of what they should do
Speaker 3: to punish the mages for setting fire to the river.
Speaker 3: They're going to pull off a heist at the magic school,
Speaker 3: which is in the highest tower in the castle. And also,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to narrate all this as we go
Speaker 3: on throughout the movie, but just be aware that in
Speaker 3: every scene with Ridley and Snails, there's a lot of
Speaker 3: what is supposed to be comedic banter and like you know,
Speaker 3: comedic back and forth and zany character gags, and I'm
Speaker 3: trying to be generous, but most of it does not
Speaker 3: work very well, and it is rarely very funny.
Speaker 2: So they have decided that they are going to get
Speaker 2: their revenge by breaking into the stronghold of some of
Speaker 2: the most powerful and dangerous people on the planet.
Speaker 3: Okay, yes, and they're gonna steal from them, all right.
Speaker 2: Sounds good, sounds like a good plant.
Speaker 3: So from here we move on to a scene that
Speaker 3: looks like it was filmed in the opera house in Amadeas.
Speaker 3: It's like a beautiful interior location, but this is the
Speaker 3: Council of Mages, and it's got box seats full of
Speaker 3: old men and cloaks, and there appears to be a
Speaker 3: sort of floor debate going on between Profion and a
Speaker 3: guy who's sort of Impress Savena's ally named Asmath. So
Speaker 3: there are a lot of old men yelling in the background,
Speaker 3: but basically the gist of the scene is that Profion
Speaker 3: is saying the Empress is going to dissolve the Council
Speaker 3: of Mages and seize power for herself. He explains that
Speaker 3: she wants to do this because of her naive belief
Speaker 3: that she can bring justice and equality to all the people,
Speaker 3: and then as Math tries to calm him down, he's like,
Speaker 3: oh no, no, no. In time with our council, she
Speaker 3: will come to see why things cannot be changed. And
Speaker 3: then Profion says, maybe so, but is that a risk
Speaker 3: you are willing to take? Her revolutionary ideas have already
Speaker 3: taken root among the people. In time, her influence will
Speaker 3: grow as the months go by. She will learn to
Speaker 3: master the powers of her scepter, and when she does,
Speaker 3: I have no doubt she will use it to enforce
Speaker 3: her changes upon us. And so, you know, they're arguing
Speaker 3: about this political situation, but I feel like we need
Speaker 3: to go one step of we need to go one
Speaker 3: step back. What does the Council of Mages do?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 3: What are its powers and agenda currently?
Speaker 2: Yeah? What are the checks and balances? Right?
Speaker 3: Anyway? Profion urges the council to vote to remove the
Speaker 3: scepter from the Empress's control and destroy the threat of
Speaker 3: revolution forever. Is this supposed to be the scepter that
Speaker 3: he was already trying to use in the scene before.
Speaker 2: I think I become increasingly confused about scepters in this movie.
Speaker 2: It starts out so clear, like there's the scepter, it's
Speaker 2: got a you know, a green gem on it, trying
Speaker 2: to use it to control the dragons. But then there's
Speaker 2: talk of her scepter. Later on, there's a skeleton with
Speaker 2: a scepter. Are these a rod? Are they? Oh? That's
Speaker 2: the rod, that's the row rod. Okay, but I found
Speaker 2: myself confused at multiple times, like rod, scepter, multiple scepters,
Speaker 2: multiple rods. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Only a fool would confuse a rod with a sceptor.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And then also we get a scene where we meet
Speaker 3: the Empress somewhere else in the castle. So thora Birch
Speaker 3: is she's the Impress. She's she's kind of goth in
Speaker 3: this scene, but in a later scene she's got some
Speaker 3: are they cool?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I guess cool cool weird costumes in this movie. And
Speaker 3: this this scene she's kind of goth with like pins
Speaker 3: stuck in her Later on she'll be in like bizarre
Speaker 3: gold chain mail.
Speaker 2: She looks more comfortable here for sure.
Speaker 3: Yes, But this scene was actually shot in a very
Speaker 3: beautiful location. Once again, I think this must be some
Speaker 3: kind of cathedral or basilica somewhere. This doesn't look like
Speaker 3: a movie set anyway. She's being advised by a kindly
Speaker 3: older mage named Vilden, and he explains that the mages
Speaker 3: are afraid of her because she believes in freedom and
Speaker 3: equality for all the people, and so they're trying to
Speaker 3: limit her power. And he's got a way for her
Speaker 3: to outsmart the mage counsel and get the upper hand,
Speaker 3: and that is to acquire the rod. You know the rod. Yes,
Speaker 3: it's the mcguffin, the main mcguffin of the movie. She's
Speaker 3: got to acquire the Rod of Savriel, which controls dragons,
Speaker 3: but unlike her scepter, it controls red dragons. Here's what
Speaker 3: I was talking about. And in the scene they don't
Speaker 3: explain it. Is this something that the audience is supposed
Speaker 3: to understand because it's just like, oh, red dragons. Oh wow. Okay.
Speaker 2: By the way, I want to add that it does
Speaker 2: kind of feel like every NPC we encounter has a
Speaker 2: name made up on the fly by the DM where
Speaker 2: the game's like. And then the mage introduces his name
Speaker 2: as Vilden. Wilden is his name, and let me write
Speaker 2: that down, so remember.
Speaker 3: The exact same thought. The naming game is not strong
Speaker 3: here Wilden yes, a Profion Yeah, anyway, Profion overhears this
Speaker 3: conversation with the help of a little magical spy creature
Speaker 3: is where is this supposed to be a mefit?
Speaker 2: You think, yes, I did not make this connection, but
Speaker 2: my kid did. They were like, oh the method.
Speaker 3: I think that could be right. Yeah, okay. Anyway, so
Speaker 3: he's got a little like spy, a little gray spy
Speaker 3: demon that runs around peeping on things, and then he
Speaker 3: and then he knows immediately. So Jeremy Irons is like,
Speaker 3: I must have the Rod of zaff Reel. He says,
Speaker 3: with one wave of it, he's going to be able
Speaker 3: to hop all the Empress and bring down that useless
Speaker 3: Council of idiots with her. So he sends Damodar to
Speaker 3: the Magic School to steal the scroll that shows the
Speaker 3: location of the Rod of Savriel from Vilden and then
Speaker 3: kill Vilden too. So here's where our characters start kind
Speaker 3: of colliding with each other. So Ridley and Snails they
Speaker 3: sneak into the Magic School to steal things in the night.
Speaker 3: Of course, they're using rope and grappling hooks. You know,
Speaker 3: they're rogues, that's what you do. They make a lot
Speaker 3: of jokes about how Snails, I think is afraid of heights,
Speaker 3: which is not great for a rogue.
Speaker 2: But rogues can always go under or through, they don't
Speaker 2: have to go over.
Speaker 3: I guess that's true. And then there's some gags here
Speaker 3: with like big foam dragon teeth and magical boxes of
Speaker 3: illusions and stuff. Meanwhile, in the room next door we
Speaker 3: meet another character. This is Vilden's assistant, Marina, who is
Speaker 3: a young mage in training. Yes, her name is Marina
Speaker 3: like the place where boats go and Marina is. It's
Speaker 3: very intelligent, but she is also snobby and condescending to
Speaker 3: non mages. So Vilden and Marina are looking for the
Speaker 3: scroll that says where the rod is, because you know,
Speaker 3: you got to get the rod, and eventually they find it,
Speaker 3: but they are interrupted when Marina catches Ridley and Snails
Speaker 3: in the middle of like loading up their lutesacks. She
Speaker 3: ties them up with a magical lasso, but then is
Speaker 3: interrupted once again when Damodar shows up to kill Vildan
Speaker 3: and take the scroll. So Damodar kills Vilden and Marina
Speaker 3: escapes through a magical portal, the first of many, with
Speaker 3: the scroll, inadvertently pulling Ridley and Snails along behind her
Speaker 3: with the lasso. This portal takes them out into the
Speaker 3: streets of the city below. And then while running through
Speaker 3: the streets pursued by the bad guys, our three young
Speaker 3: heroes bump into a dwarf warrior who I believe is
Speaker 3: sleeping in a big compost heap.
Speaker 2: Yes, because according to this film, that's what dwarfs do.
Speaker 2: They drink, they eat, they don't brush their teeth, and
Speaker 2: they sleep on piles.
Speaker 3: Of garbage on compost. Yeah. So now our three heroes,
Speaker 3: and then now also the dwarf fighter, who we will
Speaker 3: come to learn is named Elwood. They all dive down
Speaker 3: into a drain pipe in the sewer to escape as
Speaker 3: Damodar closes in. So Elwood is just a member of
Speaker 3: the party. Now, it's that fast. They just bump into
Speaker 3: him in some garbage, and now he's part of the party.
Speaker 2: That was his call to adventure. It was just somebody
Speaker 2: bumped into him. Now we're hanging out.
Speaker 3: And here's where we get one of Bruce Payne's most
Speaker 3: unbelievable line deliveries. I wrote down exactly what it is.
Speaker 3: He says, post brigades at every sewer entrance and exit.
Speaker 3: I want them found now. But you will just not
Speaker 3: believe how he says that.
Speaker 2: He says it like it's his only line in the film.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, later we learned that Marina has been
Speaker 3: framed for the murder of her teacher, and the four
Speaker 3: heroes decide that they've got to work together. Ooh, and
Speaker 3: then here's where we get that great ludicrous scene where
Speaker 3: Jeremy Irons punishes Bruce pain for letting them escape, so
Speaker 3: he puts CGI snakes in Bruce Payne's ears. I don't know,
Speaker 3: how would you describe the parasite implantation scene?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. Weird CGI creature. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: how it gets in exactly, Like does he shove it
Speaker 2: in his mouth?
Speaker 3: He's like zaps it into him somehow. But then we
Speaker 3: see it like running around underneath his skin, and then
Speaker 3: it comes up to his ears and his ears get
Speaker 3: all swollen, and then the snakes pop out of his
Speaker 3: ears and he looks unhappy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as far as I know, this is not something.
Speaker 2: It may be something in D and D. There are
Speaker 2: a lot of creatures in D and D, and this
Speaker 2: is not what I'm familiar with it in any case,
Speaker 2: But I mean, the CGI is not the best, but
Speaker 2: it's also not the worst, even by this movie's standards
Speaker 2: it and pain does a good job selling like the
Speaker 2: otherworldly pain of having this creature inside his head. And
Speaker 2: I have to say you included a very nice screenshot
Speaker 2: here where Jeremy Irons is looming behind him and you
Speaker 2: have these like the osuary con structures like crowning his head,
Speaker 2: like horns of like skeletal horns. It's it's really cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh yeah, another actually great interior location here, but yeah,
Speaker 3: for a ridiculous scene.
Speaker 2: And it's like he's being punished with a fate worse
Speaker 2: than death for like a minor screw. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 3: We also learned here that the Impress's tracker, Norda, is
Speaker 3: in pursuit of the scroll as well. So this is
Speaker 3: how we're gonna work what seems like a ranger character.
Speaker 2: In Yeah, yeah, she's a ranger and he's like, just
Speaker 2: follow her. This just got a lot easier. Also, that's
Speaker 2: that's the why I put the snake in your head,
Speaker 2: so we can follow the tracker.
Speaker 3: So now we go to a bar, which is basically
Speaker 3: the most icly canteena scene. We just see a lot
Speaker 3: of people, a lot of different kinds of creatures running
Speaker 3: around drinking, you know, any antics. People just dancing, just
Speaker 3: kind of dancing like they're at a club kind of.
Speaker 3: It doesn't necessarily look like the medieval aesthetic of a
Speaker 3: dance dance going on.
Speaker 2: It's a weird scene because some of the creatures just
Speaker 2: look like dudes and face paint. Others look like like
Speaker 2: serious attempts to create something like goblins or orcs. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and others look like they jumped off the page of
Speaker 2: the Garden of Earthly Delights, you know.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, yeah. This is also the scene where they're
Speaker 3: trying to figure out how much chicken they can fit
Speaker 3: in Ellwood's.
Speaker 2: Beard, yes, and Dancer is a.
Speaker 3: Lot yeah, so he's trying to tell stories while he's
Speaker 3: eating like a chicken hole. You know, that's a joke,
Speaker 3: like you just take the whole chicken and shove it
Speaker 3: in your face. But they seem so our heroes seem
Speaker 3: to have arrived at a consensus that they can find
Speaker 3: the Rod of Savril themselves and that they need to
Speaker 3: do this. And this appeals to Marina because she's going
Speaker 3: to be able to clear her name, And then the
Speaker 3: others are tempted by the idea of a fine antial
Speaker 3: reward from the Empress when they deliver it to her,
Speaker 3: and there's a lot more banter and open mouth chewing
Speaker 3: related comedy. I was trying to think. Major takeaways from
Speaker 3: the scene are, like, there's class antagonism. Marina insults Ridley
Speaker 3: and Snails for being criminals, and they try to explain
Speaker 3: to her the concept of honor among thieves. That's where
Speaker 3: this comes in. She's like, well, commoners really are common
Speaker 3: it seems, and Elwood wants gold and chicken, and so
Speaker 3: it becomes clear that Ridley has a crush on Marina.
Speaker 3: Uh oh, So they kind of even though they argue,
Speaker 3: they don't part ways, they're kind of drawn together and
Speaker 3: they figure out how to do some kind of magic
Speaker 3: teleportation into inside the scroll. I don't remember exactly what's
Speaker 3: going on there. But also in the scene, Snails meets Norda,
Speaker 3: the Empress's ranger. You know, she's very very kind of stoic,
Speaker 3: keeps the cards close to the chest, but he goes
Speaker 3: up and tries to buy her some wine and like
Speaker 3: whispers to the bartender, like make it your cheapest wine.
Speaker 3: But then this scene is ended when Damadar and his
Speaker 3: soldiers show up, and this is going to be a
Speaker 3: pattern throughout the film where there's just like a scene
Speaker 3: that ends because Damodar arrives. That just happens over and
Speaker 3: over and over.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean it's not the worst structure to have,
Speaker 2: I guess in a story, but but yeah, it is
Speaker 2: definitely the pattern.
Speaker 3: Elwood cleverly covers their escape by flipping over a table
Speaker 3: and shouting bar fight yeah, which and everyone obeys.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, later, Ridley and Marina they teleport like back out
Speaker 3: of the scroll, and now they know what the next
Speaker 3: leg of the quest is. Somehow they know that they've
Speaker 3: got to get into the Temple of Dragons so they
Speaker 3: can get the rod. And to get into the Temple
Speaker 3: of Dragons, they've got to have a magic artifact called
Speaker 3: the Eye of the Dragon, which is held by Zilas,
Speaker 3: the boss of the Thieves Guild in a different city
Speaker 3: called Antius. You catch all that, you're getting all these details.
Speaker 2: You supposed to write this on the back of your
Speaker 2: character sheet and then you can refer back to it
Speaker 2: and then check them off as you get them. It's like, okay,
Speaker 2: first we got to get the one and we need
Speaker 2: to get.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's where they're going next. And then they
Speaker 3: show like a couple of the nicest looking things in
Speaker 3: the movie are just random, like zoomed out location shots.
Speaker 3: So there's one going into going into Antius that doesn't
Speaker 3: look too bad. It's like, it's kind of interesting. It's
Speaker 3: like showing these big kind of castle fortified castles up
Speaker 3: on these spires of rock rising above a valley with
Speaker 3: bridges spanning out to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks really cool. I don't really get the
Speaker 2: sense that the place we then go to is in
Speaker 2: fact this location. No, it doesn't look like it, but
Speaker 2: would have been neat to go there.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of goofing around when our heroes arrive.
Speaker 3: They go to the marketplace and they just see weird
Speaker 3: people and creatures and it's like, oh, I'm you know,
Speaker 3: I'm getting distracted from our mission by various things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, our mage momentarily looks at some jewelry that's being
Speaker 2: sold by a vendor, and the Dwarf says, if I
Speaker 2: don't get to drink, you don't get to shop. And
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh my god.
Speaker 3: Oh boy. And eventually they talk their way into a
Speaker 3: meeting with Zilas at the Thieves Guild played by Richard
Speaker 3: O'Brien and Marina when they go in, Marina says to
Speaker 3: Justin Whalan, She's like, so, this is it, right, everything
Speaker 3: a thief strives for? And Ridley says, yeah, so what
Speaker 3: a thief strives for is to live in like a
Speaker 3: baroque salon with purple walls, gold furniture, rugs and pillows everywhere,
Speaker 3: and lots of weird people lounging about in various states
Speaker 3: of dress, and also somebody to feed you grapes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he really Richard O'Brien's character comes off more
Speaker 2: as like King of the Circus as opposed to like
Speaker 2: Prince of Thiefs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I agree, there is a showbiz element to
Speaker 3: him that doesn't quite feel like the thieves Guild.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, everything feels a little off with this character
Speaker 2: and this presentation and this whole scene. Again, none of
Speaker 2: this is like Richard O'Brien's fault. It's just I don't know,
Speaker 2: things didn't come together right. And then we also have
Speaker 2: that weird purple headed guy, yeah, and with the third eye,
Speaker 2: with the third eye, and also just like some very
Speaker 2: like strong overacting undertaeth, all that makeup that was just
Speaker 2: distracting every time he was on the screen, I was
Speaker 2: just trying to figure out what choices led us to this.
Speaker 3: So thoughts on Richard O'Brien's performance. He's not hamming it
Speaker 3: up with quite the rocket fuel intensity of Jeremy Irons,
Speaker 3: but I think he is having fun with this goofy role.
Speaker 3: He's sort of a pale, greasy human eel version of
Speaker 3: Job of the Hut. But he's got, you know this
Speaker 3: like wide ingratiating smile. He does some casual sexual harassment
Speaker 3: of Marina. He's a little off and he makes some
Speaker 3: vaguely threatening comments at them, but then eventually a deal emerges.
Speaker 3: He's like, Okay, there's a thing called the Antius Guild Maze.
Speaker 3: It's sort of a deadly obstacle course full of traps,
Speaker 3: and if Ridley can make it through, he's going to
Speaker 3: get the Dragon's Eye. And okay, they make a deal.
Speaker 3: So I'm not going to narrate solving the maze, but anyway,
Speaker 3: Justin Whalen has to solve and avoid some Indiana Jones
Speaker 3: traps to get the prize at the end of the course.
Speaker 2: And I wonder if this maybe British listeners can chime
Speaker 2: in on this I wonder if this whole thing is
Speaker 2: a reference to the Crystal Mays game show that I know.
Speaker 2: Richard O'Brien was one of the hosts of.
Speaker 3: Oh I know nothing of that.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's certainly nothing I've ever seen, but I'm
Speaker 2: just familiar with it from being familiar with Richard O'Brien's
Speaker 2: work over the years.
Speaker 3: Now, at the end of this whole sequence, Zilas tries
Speaker 3: to betray them. So it seems the prize that Justin
Speaker 3: Whalen retrieved from the end of the maze was the
Speaker 3: artifact that he wanted, and Xilas has never been able
Speaker 3: to get this out of the maze before, so he
Speaker 3: tries to steal it from Ridley, but they are interrupted
Speaker 3: by the arrival of Damadar once again, once again, and
Speaker 3: yet again. A big fight breaks out and our heroes
Speaker 3: except for Marina, are able to escape because of the fight,
Speaker 3: and Marina gets captured. Later, our heroes regroup in the
Speaker 3: woods and they are caught by Norda, the ranger, the
Speaker 3: tracker who works for the Impress. Here's where you get
Speaker 3: a good look at her armor and it's funny, it's
Speaker 3: like very reflective. I don't know it's like glinting even
Speaker 3: in the dark of the forest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very form fitting plate armor. And if you've ever
Speaker 2: seen any fantasy illustration of a female woman in armor,
Speaker 2: you know exactly what they're going for here.
Speaker 3: So she's trying to arrest them and take them back,
Speaker 3: take them and the scroll back to the Empress. But
Speaker 3: in this encounter instead she learns of the treachery of Profion,
Speaker 3: and then she reports back to thora Birch via a
Speaker 3: magical zoom call, and the Empress commands Noorda to instead
Speaker 3: work together with these people and seek out Damodar and
Speaker 3: acquire the rod. You must get the rod. Everybody wants
Speaker 3: the rod. So Noorda is now on the same team
Speaker 3: as our heroes. Now Marina, of course, has been captured,
Speaker 3: and there's like an interrogation scene where Bruce Payne comes
Speaker 3: in with his blue lips and he's like, you know, ooh,
Speaker 3: I don't necessarily want to overthrow the Empress, but I
Speaker 3: have no choice. I've got ear snakes. And she's like,
Speaker 3: He's like, can you help me, and she says, no,
Speaker 3: I don't know how to help you. And then he
Speaker 3: gets real mad and he says he's like, well, I
Speaker 3: can suck the information I need out of your brain
Speaker 3: with my ear snakes, and then he does it. He
Speaker 3: gets the info he needs, which I think was basically
Speaker 3: like where are you going? And then we're back with
Speaker 3: our heroes in Noorda where they're continuing their journey. We
Speaker 3: eventually find out they're going to come rescue Marina, and
Speaker 3: this is where you get that exchange between Norda and
Speaker 3: Snails where it's like, how old are you? I'm two
Speaker 3: hundred and thirty four?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, reasonably good joke there.
Speaker 3: So it's time for rescue. They get to the fortress
Speaker 3: where Marina is being held and Snails and Ridley sneak
Speaker 3: in with the grappling hooks. This is the part where
Speaker 3: they say Ridley, look beholders, and then there's just like
Speaker 3: a long shot with like there are some vaguely purple
Speaker 3: looking things in the distance, like what those the purple
Speaker 3: blobs way far away?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it almost feels like like the digital
Speaker 2: team was like, you know, we can throw some beholders
Speaker 2: into one of these scenes and you can do some
Speaker 2: added voiceover about it, and they're like, yeah, let's do it,
Speaker 2: but it's beholders. If you're not familiar with them listeners.
Speaker 2: These are hideous, floating head like beings with numerous eyes
Speaker 2: on stalks and one central eye. They're incredibly dangerous creatures
Speaker 2: to run into in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. They're
Speaker 2: they're very evil. They're like super paranoid. They don't do
Speaker 2: grunt work guarding castles. There are some other like beholder
Speaker 2: related creatures, like spectators that I guess you could maybe
Speaker 2: have in that role, but Beholders are not doing that work.
Speaker 2: Beholders are not going to just be casually encountered. And
Speaker 2: more to the point, they're like there's like central Dungeons
Speaker 2: and Dragons, ip, like, these are things that that that
Speaker 2: they're almost instantly recognizable as Dungeons and Dragons creations. So
Speaker 2: kind of I mean, it's kind of neat that they're
Speaker 2: included as a as an Easter egg here, I guess,
Speaker 2: But also just they totally don't make the most out
Speaker 2: of a Beholder appearance.
Speaker 3: Yeah, nobody fights one. They like throw a bone essentially
Speaker 3: to make one run off after it, and they and
Speaker 3: then they sneak in. Then the then our two rogues
Speaker 3: split up. Snails goes into Damodar's room and he gets
Speaker 3: he falls into like a pit of quicksand disguised as
Speaker 3: a rug. Is this something from D and D.
Speaker 2: It may very well be. I did like the effect here,
Speaker 2: because oh yeah, this is a practical effect. They did
Speaker 2: some sort of like a painting on top of a
Speaker 2: like a movie quicksand situation, and he sinks into it.
Speaker 3: So I did like this, Yeah, I thought it looked good.
Speaker 3: He sinks into a bunch of oatmeal and his gross
Speaker 3: looking and then of course Damadar comes in and attacks Snails.
Speaker 3: He says something like he's like just like all thieves,
Speaker 3: always taking things that don't belong to you, Like that's
Speaker 3: a really good dig against a thief.
Speaker 2: It's true. It's true though they're always doing it.
Speaker 3: And they fight, and you know, Snails before he's always
Speaker 3: being cowardly. He actually gets some good slashes in on
Speaker 3: Damadar and then he runs away, and then we see
Speaker 3: Damadar like pursuing him at a steady march like Jason Vorhees. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Ridley rescues Marina from a dungeon. They fight their way out.
Speaker 3: We get one of those scenes where so many movies
Speaker 3: in the nineties like this, a scene where the girl
Speaker 3: hits cigar with a stick and the boy says nice,
Speaker 3: you know, and then you gotta have that. And then
Speaker 3: Demodar corners Snails at a dead end on the castle
Speaker 3: grounds and they fight and it is brutal. Demadar beats
Speaker 3: him up and like breaks his bones. We hear bones
Speaker 3: cracking and crunching, and then Ridley and Marina show up
Speaker 3: to the rescue and I was like, okay, okay, Snail's
Speaker 3: gonna be okay, They're gonna help him, and then nope,
Speaker 3: he just gets murdered. Damadar kills him. Like this is
Speaker 3: off tone something I don't know. It didn't feel like
Speaker 3: that was supposed to happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the tone on this choice is a little off,
Speaker 2: but yeah, kills him dead and you know, ending possibilities
Speaker 2: aside like he's super dead, he mostly stays dead.
Speaker 3: Also. Then then Bruce Payne stabs Ridley with the sword,
Speaker 3: and just when he's about to finish him off, Marina
Speaker 3: saves the day by zapping Damodar with pink magic and
Speaker 3: then teleporting them away to somewhere else once again. Yes,
Speaker 3: so that encounters over rip Snails. There's a brief interlude
Speaker 3: where we get to see the Empress giving a very
Speaker 3: wooden speech at the Mage's Council about the people and
Speaker 3: about Profion's treachery, and she says, she says Profion is
Speaker 3: trying to take all the power for himself. Profion accuses
Speaker 3: her of the same. They go back and forth, and
Speaker 3: it's weird energy because it's like Jeremy Iron's frothing at
Speaker 3: the mouth versus an introverted teenager.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this scene just I mean, Jeremy Irons is super
Speaker 2: amusing as always, but yeah, I just felt bad for
Speaker 2: thora Birch because like this, it just feels like like
Speaker 2: two completely different planets of acting going on here, and
Speaker 2: she does don't look.
Speaker 3: Comfortable elsewhere our heroes reach their destination. This is the
Speaker 3: part where I'm saying it's one of the best looking
Speaker 3: things in the movie. Kind of I'm not sure exactly
Speaker 3: what this is, but it looks to me like a
Speaker 3: hand painted background. It's basically, you know, it's like a big,
Speaker 3: drooping kind of giant tree with a bunch of glowing
Speaker 3: lights in it. It's a little bit Thomas Kinkaidloathlauri and
Speaker 3: a little bit Ewok village on indoor, but with some
Speaker 3: dark magic, and it may be very pretty, but we
Speaker 3: are not ready to yub nub yet because the quest
Speaker 3: is not complete. Now. When they arrive, there's an elf
Speaker 3: played by Tom Baker with short blonde hair, who heals
Speaker 3: Ridley by zapan him, and then Tom Baker says a
Speaker 3: bunch of things. He says, he's just kind of talking
Speaker 3: out of nowhere. I don't think this is prompted by anything.
Speaker 3: He's like, the Elvin peoples do not require spells to
Speaker 3: work with magic. You use magic. We are part of it,
Speaker 3: as are all living creatures, including dragons. Sadly, humans see
Speaker 3: only their destructive powers. And then Ridley wakes up. He
Speaker 3: explains he had a bad dream where he saw a
Speaker 3: dragon being born, and then Tom Baker explains that magic
Speaker 3: is the life force of nature. He keeps everything around
Speaker 3: us alive. So if the dragons were to be it
Speaker 3: would that would destroy the fabric of magic and with it,
Speaker 3: all life. And at this point I was like, wait,
Speaker 3: who is this guy? Do they even say who he is?
Speaker 2: I was just so pleased that Tom Baker had finally
Speaker 2: shown up and there was some captivating acting happening on
Speaker 2: the screen. I was like, yeah, I trust you completely.
Speaker 3: Whoever you are after this, So of course Ridley is healed.
Speaker 3: And then there's that dark Knight of the Soul scene
Speaker 3: I mentioned earlier, where like Ridley and Marina are. They're
Speaker 3: arguing about whether the Impress's plan to help the common
Speaker 3: people is worth putting faith in, and at one point
Speaker 3: Marina says that Ridley is what Snails died for. But
Speaker 3: also Marina says that she now understands why the common people,
Speaker 3: why non mages are worth fighting for, and then justin
Speaker 3: Whalen's like, you know, for a mage, you're pretty smart,
Speaker 3: and then big old kiss. But of course there's a
Speaker 3: little naked cgi demon looking on the methods there again.
Speaker 3: So we're gearing up for the final showdown. Our heroes
Speaker 3: are given some magical weapons. Ridley gets a silver sword
Speaker 3: and Elf says it will protect him. I do kind
Speaker 3: of like these costumes we see. I don't know who
Speaker 3: these elves are. I guess they're like wood elves of
Speaker 3: some sort, but they look like Texas chainsaw elves. They've
Speaker 3: got ed gain masks on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they look a little disturbing, don't they.
Speaker 3: This is it's weird that a lot of the best
Speaker 3: looking visual stuff and I'm not saying it's that great,
Speaker 3: but the best stuff is like hidden away in the
Speaker 3: final third of the movie, but we get a scene
Speaker 3: where Ridley has to go into a dungeon alone to
Speaker 3: retrieve the rod before Belloc, I mean before Damadhar gets it.
Speaker 3: And he's tempted by many treasures in the treasure room,
Speaker 3: but then he thinks better of it before removing anything.
Speaker 3: So he's like gonna steal some gold, but then he's like, no,
Speaker 3: I shouldn't do this. He puts it back down and
Speaker 3: he says, sorry, snails, like snails would have wanted me
Speaker 3: to steal this. But he talks to a skeleton covereding
Speaker 3: cobwebs who identifies himself as sav Reel, the creator of
Speaker 3: the Rod. Oh yeah, now he says, be warned, anyone
Speaker 3: who wields the power of the Rod must suffer a
Speaker 3: horrible fate. And I think he says that the rod
Speaker 3: must be destroyed or it's wielder will be destroyed. And
Speaker 3: then like absolutely out of nowhere, we just like cut
Speaker 3: to Jeremy Irons back in the city, back in some
Speaker 3: doll and he's screeching. The Impress has called out to
Speaker 3: dragons upon us. We see the dragons flying through the
Speaker 3: sky and attacking the tower. He's like, destroy them. So
Speaker 3: here we kind of go into action movie mode. A
Speaker 3: lot of the rest of the movie is just people
Speaker 3: fighting cgi dragons, people shooting giant ballistas at them, zapping
Speaker 3: them with magic, buildings exploding with dragonfire, and dragons versus dragons.
Speaker 3: There's like one part where a dragon gets zapped and
Speaker 3: it falls out of the sky and it gets impaled
Speaker 3: on a spire on top of a tower. The camera
Speaker 3: really lingers on this and it looks bad. And then
Speaker 3: of course a bunch of people are fighting for control
Speaker 3: of the rod. So like Ridley brings it out of
Speaker 3: the dungeon, then Damodar steals it from Ridley and company.
Speaker 3: Then Ridley escapes and his friends they portal back to
Speaker 3: where Damodar is and then they steal the rod back
Speaker 3: from Profion.
Speaker 2: Now, is it just one point each time you acquire
Speaker 2: the rod or how does the scoring work? Here?
Speaker 3: Very good question, Yeah, how does the experience? They're really
Speaker 3: racking up a lot of XP at the very end here.
Speaker 3: And so there's a final fight that's like Ridley versus Profion,
Speaker 3: And there is a line where Jeremy Irons says, not
Speaker 3: so talented. Hey, mister Ridley, I think the movie The
Speaker 3: Talented Mister Ripley had just come out like the year before.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, nineteen ninety nine. Yeah, solid movie. Always always
Speaker 2: a gamble to reference a better movie in your movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Ridley is. Ridley gets hold of the rod
Speaker 3: at one point and he's like, Okay, now I'm going
Speaker 3: to use the rod. That's been the whole point of
Speaker 3: the story. We got to get the rod so we
Speaker 3: can use it against Profion. But then he has a
Speaker 3: tempted by the ring moment. He like holds it up
Speaker 3: and you can see him grinning with all the power
Speaker 3: he has. Now it's like flowing into him and he
Speaker 3: looks at the dragons and you see him realizing what's happening,
Speaker 3: that he's being tempted, and he turns away from the
Speaker 3: power of the ring, or from the power of the rod,
Speaker 3: and he refuses it. He says, I won't become you,
Speaker 3: referring to Profion, and then he smashes the rod with
Speaker 3: his sword.
Speaker 2: Foolishly, I thought he was going to give in for
Speaker 2: a second there, and I was like this, then, there's
Speaker 2: more to this kid than I thought. Maybe he's got
Speaker 2: it in him. No, he doesn't have it in him.
Speaker 3: So anyway, he smashes it and then they're still fighting Profyon.
Speaker 3: At one point, Profion summons a I think like a
Speaker 3: ghost bone dragon to attack the Empress.
Speaker 2: It just kind of like climbs on her back and
Speaker 2: makes a squat down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but the Empress uses her gold scepter against Profion,
Speaker 3: and that like makes all the gold dragons that are
Speaker 3: flying around to come and eat Profeon, like one eats him,
Speaker 3: like the t rex eats the guy off the toilet.
Speaker 2: And going back to our earlier discussion, yes, it does
Speaker 2: make sense that she would command gold dragons instead of
Speaker 2: red dragons, because gold dragons are good, red dragons are bad.
Speaker 2: But also, I mean dragons and dungeons. Dragons are not
Speaker 2: just you know, you know, beasts, they're highly intelligent. So
Speaker 2: there's a whole discussion we could have here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're treated more like beasts here, like you just
Speaker 3: kind of bossom around and they do what you say,
Speaker 3: and then the dragons fly away in the end, and
Speaker 3: now it seems like, yeah, everything's good, you know, every
Speaker 3: all the problems are fixed. We get we're like cutting
Speaker 3: away and then we see we don't even see off screen.
Speaker 3: We hear the Empress in voiceover saying, this is a
Speaker 3: direct quote people of ismir, I do declare that you
Speaker 3: are now all equal. Let the celebration begin.
Speaker 2: That was always easy. Yeah, and then they were good.
Speaker 3: Why didn't you say that from the beginning?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So here's a question. How many levels do you
Speaker 2: think these characters accrued during the during the run of
Speaker 2: the film here, because they feel like they start off
Speaker 2: at like level two and maybe cap it around level three.
Speaker 2: I don't feel like there's a tremendous amount of growth.
Speaker 3: That's funny. I was gonna say. I was going to
Speaker 3: say they spend most of the movie at level two
Speaker 3: and then in the last ten minutes they go from
Speaker 3: level two to level nine.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well, I mean they get some high power
Speaker 2: magical weapons, that's for sure.
Speaker 3: Do we ever see our magic users learning additional spells?
Speaker 3: I don't think so.
Speaker 2: Do we see them throw dust around? Yeah? They play.
Speaker 2: I mean at least there's some spell components in the mix,
Speaker 2: but that's about all we see. I don't think we
Speaker 2: think we see any magical books. Really, do we see
Speaker 2: anybody reading from a tome of magic or a scroll.
Speaker 3: Not that I recall, and certainly not to learn a spell.
Speaker 3: I mean there is a library full of scrolls at
Speaker 3: the beginning.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean it can be disappointing if the
Speaker 2: prop department can't really meet your needs on that. I
Speaker 2: mentioned the color of Magic earlier in the picture, which
Speaker 2: has a great cast, and of course I love the
Speaker 2: work of Terry Pratchett. But as memory serves, there's a
Speaker 2: magical book that shows up in that picture that they
Speaker 2: just didn't make it look believable enough for me to
Speaker 2: be like a tome of ancient magic. Like it looks
Speaker 2: like they were really rushed creating it. So it's kind
Speaker 2: of a gamble there. You got. The props department has
Speaker 2: to be able to meet you on any of these requests.
Speaker 2: For sure.
Speaker 3: It's just a paperback of how to win friends and
Speaker 3: influence people.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh, but we also alluded to this. There's some kind
Speaker 3: of code. There's some kind of happy coda where they
Speaker 3: go to snails as grave and then they like put
Speaker 3: the ruby on it and it lights up and then
Speaker 3: it's like, oh, snails is still alive if we go
Speaker 3: somewhere else, and then they turn into they turn into
Speaker 3: magic and fly away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it is true. In Dungeons and Dragons,
Speaker 2: there's always a way to bring a character back. You know,
Speaker 2: it's a multiverse. There are all sorts of resurrection spells.
Speaker 2: There's no reason that a fun character needs to stay
Speaker 2: dead forever. So Snails will return, but actually he won't.
Speaker 2: But Snails could return. You could all go home and
Speaker 2: roll up a Snails and tell your dungeon master, Hey,
Speaker 2: I'm changing characters. Snails from two thousands Dungeons and Dragons
Speaker 2: is now Injuring our campaign.
Speaker 3: Our party is Snails Profion. And I was gonna say
Speaker 3: l would, but like, what's the funny twist on it?
Speaker 3: Like what if Elwood became a vegetarian and he was
Speaker 3: always just getting say ten in his beard?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, say tan and beats. Yeah. These are good
Speaker 2: choices to have. You know, you need choices like this
Speaker 2: for your character. It gives you some stick to fall
Speaker 2: back on during all the small moments of a campaign.
Speaker 3: All right, Is that all we've got on Dungeons and
Speaker 3: Dragons two thousand for now?
Speaker 2: I mean there's so much more we could say. Every
Speaker 2: scene with Jeremy Irons is like a masterclass in overacting
Speaker 2: and hamming it up. There are so many weird choices,
Speaker 2: digital effects that don't really come together, and yet at
Speaker 2: the same time some admirable practical effects, some admirable sets,
Speaker 2: and certainly some really cool interior locations. I would says
Speaker 2: this is not a movie for everyone. I'm not encouraging
Speaker 2: everyone to go out and watch this movie in its entirety,
Speaker 2: but everyone must see the first fifteen minutes. The Emperor
Speaker 2: has decreed, all right. So that is two thousands Dungeons
Speaker 2: and Dragon. I hope you enjoyed it. I think it
Speaker 2: was a solid choice for our two hundred film selection
Speaker 2: here on Weird House Cinema. So now we just have
Speaker 2: to chug on and eventually start thinking about the three
Speaker 2: hundredth film.
Speaker 3: We will not do the movie three hundreds.
Speaker 2: We will not do three hundred. It's true, all right.
Speaker 2: So we're going to go and close this episode out,
Speaker 2: but we'd love to hear from everyone out there. We
Speaker 2: know that there are multiple listeners who are Dungeons and
Speaker 2: Dragons enthusiasts, and you may have additional insight on what's
Speaker 2: happening and what's not happening in this film. Likewise, if
Speaker 2: you have thoughts on anything we've referenced in passing different
Speaker 2: Dungeons and Dragons locations, Dungeons and Dragons novels. What are
Speaker 2: your favorites? Because I really haven't geez, I don't know
Speaker 2: that I've ever read one myself. I'm familiar with them,
Speaker 2: but I never picked one up. So if I were
Speaker 2: to pick one up, which one would it be? These
Speaker 2: questions and more write in with your answers. Just a
Speaker 2: reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a
Speaker 2: sign and culture podcast, with core episodes in the Stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind podcast feed on Thursdays and Tuesdays,
Speaker 2: and then on Wednesdays we do a short form episode,
Speaker 2: but on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
Speaker 2: just talk about a weird film here on weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: If you want to see a list of all the
Speaker 2: films we've covered over the years, go to letterboxed dot com.
Speaker 2: You'll find us there. Our username is weird house and
Speaker 2: we have a nice list of everything. We've covered all
Speaker 2: two hundred film selections, and we're going to start looking
Speaker 2: ahead at the future. Sometimes you can peek ahead and
Speaker 2: see what's coming up the following week.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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