Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight (2008)

The traditional animation attempting to mesh with the very bad CGI is simply terrible to watch. It honestly looks like 80s-90s direct to TV... AT BEST...

This review is coming from some who has never read the book but watched the movie. But I can see why some fans are disappointed. I guess this movie is for people who have never read the books.From my perspective it is a decent movie for people who have not read the book but are still interested in Dragons, Goblins e.t.c The animation and voice actors were good. Especially since Micheal Roseabuam was in it. I am disappointed though that there won't be a sequel to this movie since there was more about to come and having a unsatisfying ending. But I wouldn't mind if Funimation or Bang Zoom make an anime of this series which might tell the full story. Overall its not a bad movie.

I'm about halfway through this thing, and it's just too painful to watch anymore.This film looks like one of the mid to late 1980s after school offerings, where major US toy makers contracted with Japanese or Korean anime studios to crank out cheap fast cartoons to promote their products for market. The kids watch the TV show, then buy the action figure and all of it's related toys in a marketing blitz against young impressionable minds.It's that bad.Truth be told the Dragonlance series, that is the novels by Weiss and Hickman, aren't great literature, and are more or less run in the mill pulp fantasy. Even then they aren't fun reads, much less "great reads". They're the kind of books you might like if you're new to the fantasy genre and haven't read anything else.However, "back in the day" (so to speak), TSR put out some very high quality game modules for their rules that really made Weiss and Hickman's mediocre and so-so books look like great fantasy fare. They were that well put together and presented.So seeing this thing makes a man furl his brow. I can't help but reflect back on Bakshi's "Lord of the Rings" effort from the 1970s. I don't like Bakshi and the cadre of social psychologists that have a lock on Hollywood, and think all of us regular people are closet Nazis waiting to unleash racist havoc on the US (even those of us whose ancestors fought under Washington), but as painful and condescending as some of his stuff was (and is), I'd much rather watch something like "Wizards" or "Fire and Ice" than this junk.Again, it's that bad. The truth of the matter is that animation is expensive. And unless you have a ton of cash, you either have to rub elbows with old guard Hollywood, or contract with someone outside the nation. Again, I don't like the Dragonlance books. I tried reading the first one and found the premise of the whole thing to be ridiculous (I seem to recall that steel is as valuable as gold ... and yet the people of this world fight with it instead of using wooden weapons), and not very well written. But TSR really made it shine, complete with maps, artwork and everything else. And so when this "movie" comes out, one is given to wonder what the heck happened.Still, I gave it a shot. And Disney it ain't. Which is too bad, because a company like Disney could have really made poor story material like this really stand out and shine, as is Disney's reputation and legacy of exceptional high quality benchmark / gold- standard animated feature films. I mention that because that's what this thing needed in order to sell it.But again, like I say, the other issue here is that the source material isn't that good in the first place, so it is perhaps fitting that some Korean company took on the project and gave a quality animated film befitting Weiss and Hickman's novel.The reason my review here is so long is that I just can't help but shake my head as to how this stuff gets made. I'm guessing the authors wanted their work in animated format that much that they were willing to compromise visual quality for the sake of cost effective expediency. Oh well.Don't say I didn't warn you.Watch at your own risk.

How they managed to line up that cast, and then utterly destroy the rest of the production, is beyond me.Animation 0.5/10. It gets the 0.5 because the pictures actually do change. Think the old He-Man show, but worse.Talent 4/10. Fantastic cast, but terribly directed. Flat and monotonous voices, far inferior to the talent levels present. An utter disappointment.Story 6/10. I only watched the first 10 minutes, I simply could not bear anymore. Those 10 minutes did, however, seem to be fairly loyal to the book, which, although excellent, was arguably the weakest of the trilogy, which itself was weaker than the second trilogy. For anyone put off by this cinematic abortion, please do yourselves a favor and read the books. You will not be disappointed.Direction 0/10. There are simply no redeeming qualities to speak of. The movie was horrendously kiddified. Even the books, which are arguably aimed at a teen-aged audience, had a degree of realism. This movie makes Sesame Street look like Pulp Fiction. Considering what the target should have been, given the book's demographic, this is unacceptable. Couple that with the terrible characterization, and I truly hope that the director, whose name I will not speak, finds a job more suited to his abilities, such as flipping burgers or cleaning toilets (he certainly has enough experience with effluent after this abomination).Production: 0/10. Terrible in all aspects. WoTC has made a serious blunder in allowing this film to be produced as it was. Worse still, their ability to procure such a fantastic cast will, after this, likely not reemerge. I cannot believe that Weiss and Hickmann signed off on this.This movie made me hate movies. The director should have a restraining order placed upon him, barring him from ever coming within 200 yards of a movie studio again. Utterly unacceptable.