Friday, March 7, 2014

In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale

I love the first two Dungeon Siege games, so I was both curious and horrified when I saw that there was a film attached to it by Uwe Boll. I know a lot of people look at anything by him and instantly call it garbage, so before I watched this, I was convinced that it would be a train wreck; I mean, it's Uwe Boll. He's infamous for making horrible films that bomb to abuse a tax loop hole that by now is thankfully fixed. I had no hope at all, and watched it like a passing motorist watches the scene of a car crash. Upon seeing the film, I came to realize that at best it was a mediocre generic fantasy action film and at worst had nothing at all to do with Dungeon Siege.

Yeah, it kind of takes place in Ehb, yeah the main character uses the default name of Farmer... I could go on with the in name references, but when you get right down to it, this film has nothing to do with the first game. Change Farmer to Generic McFantasyMan and the Krug to Orcs and you have just another generic fantasy film set in some far away land in an undefined time setting. What's more, the film takes so many liberties with characters and setting to the point where it doesn't even resemble the most basic overview one could give of the first game. It ignores the back story, it ignores what little characterization the game gives and ultimately, the entire point of using the Dungeon Siege license was to lure in the fans who, like me, had a morbid desire just how horribly the film could mess up.

I cannot call the movie bad. It is not a horrible Dungeon Siege film due to the fact that it uses so little elements that you can simply change any name and make it fit into any setting you want (this could be the worlds cheapest Lord of the Rings film if you changed enough references), and overall the film is not horrible. It's not an amazing fantasy film by any stretch, the acting isn't award winning and the movie drags on for far too long because of the extended battle scenes between the humans and the Or- Krugs, but in all it wasn't painful to sit through, nor was I screaming at my monitor in anger.

All in all, as I said, a mediocre fantasy action film that just so happened to have the Dungeon Siege license and did nothing with it.

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