Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dykstrav" data-source="post: 5660947" data-attributes="member: 40522">Glad I saw it in the theatre, although I still think the 1982 version was better.I really liked the production design--it looked like and felt like the Hyborian age. I got the sense that civilization exists in pockets and that wilderness (and the "rule of nature, red in tooth and claw") rules most of the world. You can look at the people and immediately say, "That's a Pict, that's a Zingaran," and so forth. Spot-on visuals for portraying the world and its inhabitants. Speaking from a tabletop RPG perspective, I'd gladly point players at the film to get an idea of how sword-and-sorcery settings should look and feel.That being said, I feel that the weakest element is the story itself. It's a basic action/adventure revenge-fantasy plot that never tries to go beyond justifying the violence of the protagonist. It's basically an excuse for action or fight scenes and makes no pretense of being anything more substantial. You could take the meat of the story and transport it into any other genre and have it work with minimal changes, so I'd properly classify it as an action movie with Hyborian window dressing. That was pretty disappointing.Of course, I saw it with people that I gamed with and we went out for coffee after the movie. One thing we were semi-amused at was how closely we could map the plot and events of the movie to 4E. We could all pick out where action points, second winds, encounter and daily powers were used and when short rests were taken and so forth. That can be sort of amusing if you're a gamer nerd, I suppose.Overall, I give the movie two stars. It's just another action movie at heart, but it's watchable the first time through. I'm not particularly interested in seeing it again though. If you really dig the Hyborian Age stuff and enjoy sword-and-sorcery scenery like I do, I'd go so far as to give it three stars on the strength of its production design, wardrobe, and the like. Even so, three stars feels generous. I'm not disappointed that I went to see it, but there is certainly a lot of room for improvement.</blockquote>

Verification