Jester David
Hero
Watched this tonight. It's been available for a little while on Amazon UK and is on iTunes (kinda).
And it didn't suck.
The SFX were not that bad. TV quality, but not bad movie-of-the-week. Much better than some other Sci-Fi movies I've seen. The costumes weren't bad and the number of sets was impressive, putting it well above a fan film in quality. If you can sit through the SFX in Gamers: Dorkness Rising (or the acting in the first Gamers) this is a step up.
The acting had some rough spots but not as many as you'd expect and some of the actors were decent. The dialogue was terrible, but I wasn't expecting much.
This might be detrimental to the movie's success. It's not bad, which also means it isn't so bad it's good. There's less of a cheese factor adding to the entertainment value.
The plot is pretty unspectacular. The Book of Vile Darkness plays into it but is really a MacGuffin for the character journey. Yes, it's pretty much a character story. The Book could be replaced by any evil artifact and isn't really treated like the book in the game. Much like the second movie, there are the nods to D&D lore that don't feel entirely right, like a bad homebrew world. It can feel like someone is just layering Wotc-owned terms like "Gloomwrought", "Shadowfell", "Pelor" and the like over an otherwise generic fantasy script.
The trailer is unquestionably ten times worse than the actual movie. Really. Skip the trailer. Don't watch it again. It's full of spoilers anyway. It's a great example of making the movie look worse than it actually is. You'd be hard pressed to make a worse trailer.
At the end of the day, it's probably the least bad of the three movies. If you tolerated the second, this one is even easier to tolerate. And is even enjoyable at times. There are some fun scenes, if slightly dark and/or creepy.
It's worth a rental when it comes to North America (or sooner if you know how to monkey with your DNS settings and the like). Hopefully it'll hit Netflix before too much longer. And I don't imagine it will be too much longer for it to be available on Amazon - although those in the UK or with region-less DVD players can already watch.
And it didn't suck.
The SFX were not that bad. TV quality, but not bad movie-of-the-week. Much better than some other Sci-Fi movies I've seen. The costumes weren't bad and the number of sets was impressive, putting it well above a fan film in quality. If you can sit through the SFX in Gamers: Dorkness Rising (or the acting in the first Gamers) this is a step up.
The acting had some rough spots but not as many as you'd expect and some of the actors were decent. The dialogue was terrible, but I wasn't expecting much.
This might be detrimental to the movie's success. It's not bad, which also means it isn't so bad it's good. There's less of a cheese factor adding to the entertainment value.
The plot is pretty unspectacular. The Book of Vile Darkness plays into it but is really a MacGuffin for the character journey. Yes, it's pretty much a character story. The Book could be replaced by any evil artifact and isn't really treated like the book in the game. Much like the second movie, there are the nods to D&D lore that don't feel entirely right, like a bad homebrew world. It can feel like someone is just layering Wotc-owned terms like "Gloomwrought", "Shadowfell", "Pelor" and the like over an otherwise generic fantasy script.
The trailer is unquestionably ten times worse than the actual movie. Really. Skip the trailer. Don't watch it again. It's full of spoilers anyway. It's a great example of making the movie look worse than it actually is. You'd be hard pressed to make a worse trailer.
At the end of the day, it's probably the least bad of the three movies. If you tolerated the second, this one is even easier to tolerate. And is even enjoyable at times. There are some fun scenes, if slightly dark and/or creepy.
It's worth a rental when it comes to North America (or sooner if you know how to monkey with your DNS settings and the like). Hopefully it'll hit Netflix before too much longer. And I don't imagine it will be too much longer for it to be available on Amazon - although those in the UK or with region-less DVD players can already watch.
