The in name only sequel that nobody asked for and a film that dropped Dungeon Siege
completely... only to make it much worse. This film makes the first look
like the Lord of the Rings in both quality and scope. Let's not mince words
here; whatever strained connections the first film made to Ehb would
have been welcome in this cheap piece of garbage. I am literally
convinced that they went to a Canadian RenFaire in the middle of winter to film
the fort scenes, then took whoever was willing to LARP in the woods and
made them into "actors" for the combat scenes.
For a film that supposedly cost 4.5 million USD to make, I cannot see
the quality. As I said, everything reeked of being at a RenFaire, and
not a good one at that. The sort of thing put on by community theater
folks on their off days in the hopes of being better tavern wenches in
whatever small gigs come their way. Actually no, the acting in this film
is below even community theater; I really do think this was the first
actual acting role that a lot of these people had. And if there is any
justice, it will be their last.
Dolph Lundgren, who was about 54 at the time of release looked about 65
years in the role; I was honestly waiting for him to turn into a pile of
dust at some point. From what I've read, his character is supposed to
be an Iraq war (the most recent) vet, which makes me wonder if this
is some kind of underhanded stab at the US military for being so
undermanned that they needed to use a man who looked like he would
explode into a fine powder the moment somebody so much as touched him.
Being the main character in a fantasy film is not something he's made
for; any role in which he talks is an iffy affair, and any role that has
him trying to emote is basically doomed to failure. Yet I got to watch
him try to cry and have survivors guilt over members of his team
having died.
Now, let's talk about the setting of the film for a moment. I mentioned
RenFaire. I mentioned Iraq. This is a mostly in name only sequel to a
fantasy film. How does this all work? Time travel.
No, really. Time travel. Instead of being two different worlds, it is
time travel. Via magic. You know, that supernatural force that we don't
have in real life, yet in this film about a character from the real,
modern world, he gets whisked away via magic time travel to the past
where magic is very real. This also brings the tenuous connection to the
first film into question, because that too featured magic and the Krug,
who were basically Orc like beasts in a landmass that has never existed
in reality at any point, in a kingdom that has never once existed.
It only gets worse when the dragon shows up. Yeah, dragon. Dolph
Lundgren runs into a dragon, yet sadly doesn't fight it. And this is
where I think most of the money went... well, other than the amount of
drugs and hookers needed to make this film not seem like the worst
possible idea to even the most starving, desperate for any kind of work
"actor" that was in this film. The dragon was CG and it didn't look that
bad; it was actually one of the better CG dragons that I have seen.
Really, in what little screen time it had, the CG dragon worked well
with the backgrounds and the people it interacted with. When it attacked
the cardboard fort, it looked more like a real dragon than the fort
looked like a real fort, to the point where I would honestly believe that
dragons are real in this world while forts are some kind of fiction.
The story itself is pretty horrible, and in one sense totally reuses a
plot point from the first film. But let's get to the end, because god knows besides the dragon, it might be the best part of the movie. The ending has Dolph "fighting" the
bad guy, who was named Raven. A fat guy named Raven who was LARPing a
king. Now, I hope I'm not rocking your world world when I say that the fat Raven is killed, because any man who comes
up against Dolph, even if he looks 70, who isn't Rocky Balboa who makes
the most cornball of speeches ever, has to die. But after the fact, I sat there and wondered
just how he's going to explain the corpse to the cops.
I mean, he can't tell them the truth; to do so would just make him look like a madman. Even in his 50s, I don't think
they would have bought self defense against this pudgy looking LARPer
who seemed to be fresh out of a basement. But I very much like to imagine that after
the credits he goes to jail on murder charges, and upon telling the truth, he's committed
to an insane asylum for the rest of his days... and that gives me more
enjoyment than the entire film ever did.
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