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Weirdhouse Cinema: Dungeons and Dragons (2000)

2025/4/18

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Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb. And I am Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema, we've reached a milestone. It is our 200th film selection. Rob did just have to correct me before we started here. I was going to say it was our 200th episode. It is not because we had a couple of films that went more than one episode or multiple films crammed into a single episode. But this is going to be our 200th one. And we're going to be talking about

we're keeping with a theme we established last week where we looked at a film for our 199th film selection. We did a film set in the year 1999. That was the cyber-slop movie Virtuosity starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. Today, we decided to stick with that and do a movie, I guess not set in the year 2000, but that came out in the year 2000 and that is

So the year 2000 in film in so many ways. And that is the movie Dungeons and Dragons, not the one from 2024, the old one, the one with Jeremy Irons, Thora Birch, Justin Whalen, Marlon Wayans and Bruce Payne. What a cosmic adventure into nostalgia and the mind this was. And we're not going to lie to you. It's not good, but it is a good time.

Yeah, I want to some of you may have follow up questions here. You might ask, well, how about some of those films that the listeners suggested for the 200th? We I think we'll get back to some of those suggestions in later episodes. But I don't know, for my part, I begin to just feel like, oh, man, it's so much pressure to figure out, like, what is like the weird movie to do for 200 and falling back on the idea of like 200, 2000 just felt a little it felt a little easier when it came to the decision making process. Yeah.

And another question you might be wondering, perhaps cowering a little bit in fear, are we going to do the next 25 episodes of Weird House Cinema related to the subsequent years? I'm going to say definitely not. I don't think we could keep that up. I mean, we'll see what happens next week, but it's definitely not going to be the next 25 episodes. Well, next week we could do 2001 A Space Odyssey and keep it going. Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

Though I don't know, I think that's more in our category of a reference text rather than subject text. But we did do a core episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind on 2001 A Space Odyssey. So there is some Space Odyssey in the vault.

Now, obviously, we're going to have a lot to say about Dungeons & Dragons as a movie, but I think we also need to appreciate right here at the top that, of course, it is an adaptation of the tabletop gaming system, Dungeons & Dragons. So, Rob, maybe we got to start just by talking about that. Like, a little bit of the short, short version of your personal history with D&D, because I know we could both go into a lot of detail here. So, yeah, first of all, just a reminder, Dungeons & Dragons dates back to the mid-1970s.

is a role-playing game. It is... I often try to explain it to people who aren't that familiar with it as kind of a communal storytelling game where you have a dungeon master running the game, you have players playing characters within that game, the dungeon master...

is running things and is the final say on the rules, but the players are also contributing creatively to it. They are not being told the story. Everyone is collaborating on the story together. And it's just a tremendous amount of fun. It is, if you've never played Dungeons & Dragons before or some similar role-playing game, I highly recommend it.

It is a great social, creative hobby and pastime that is also connected to any number of additional solo hobbies and pastimes. It's something that has brought a lot of joy into my life.

Collaborative storytelling is a good way to put it for people who aren't familiar. Imagine that essentially the dungeon master creates the setting and scenario and you create a character within that setting and scenario. You say what your character in particular does in reaction to that setting and scenario created by the dungeon master. They tell you what happens in return and you go back and forth. Yeah, yeah. So my...

I don't remember exactly when I first started getting into it. I definitely had watched the old 1983 cartoon at one point.

But that didn't really pull me in all the way. It wasn't until I was in Boy Scouts, and I observed some of the older scouts playing Dungeons & Dragons. The Dungeon Master kid was using his father's pre-Satanic Panic, like full demon monster supplements. And it looked like a lot of fun. So I started getting into it. And by the mid-90s, I was all into Forgotten.

Realms, Ravenloft, Kara Tour, Dark Sun, Spelljammer, all these different worlds and sub-settings within Dungeons & Dragons. I probably read more than I played, but it was still a blast. But then around the turn of the millennium, when this film comes out, I went to college and idiotically didn't do any non-video game D&D stuff for like more than a decade.

So today's movie drops at a time in which I was weirdly disinterested and out of touch with all things D&D. I think my main memory of the trailer was that, oh, it looks like it has Jeremy Irons in it. But at the same time, I was at least slightly disappointed that he appeared to not have a wizard beard or wizard hair.

That's true. You know, I was trying to, we'll talk more about this as we go on, but I was trying to class all the characters in the movie. I was saying, okay, what D and D class are you? Because when you play the game, you pick a character class that tells you like what kind of skills and powers you have. You could be a barbarian or a fighter or a cleric or a wizard. And I was like, man, Jeremy Irons doesn't feel like a wizard because he doesn't look like a wizard.

He looks, I don't know, he looks like a warlock maybe. What do you think? Yeah, yeah, maybe more of a warlock look. I mean, they never mention a pact patron or anything. Yeah, and I don't know 100% why it bugged me at the time because I'm not really bugged by it now. But I think a big part of it was, and I was having to like piece together where things fell in the timeline. Yeah.

I think part of it was that by April of 2000, today's movie came out in like December of 2000. By April of 2000, we already had a trailer featurette for Peter Jackson's Fellowship of the Ring, which would come out December 2001. So we already had a visual taste of what was possible with live action high fantasy. And...

even from the trailers, it was obvious that 2000's Dungeons and Dragons was quite obviously missing the mark. God, that contrast is crazy to imagine that this was almost like overlapping in time and that we're going to try not to just like be mean or rag on the movie the whole time. But yeah, the comparison is so funny. It's like imagining that trailers for The Matrix were already out when Lawnmower Man was in theaters, you know?

Yeah, I mean, it's really not fair because, again, we're talking about Lord of the Rings here, one of and arguably the most important texts in modern fantasy literature. It served as one of the primary inspirations for Dungeons & Dragons in general.

And furthermore, Peter Jackson's adaptations, no matter what your quibbles might be about the finished product, they were jaw-dropping cinematic spectacles that pushed the technological envelope, that energized fans, and generated mainstream popular and critical success. So it's unfair to compare this smaller picture that had, I think, when all was said and done, like half the budget. Yeah.

So but but not that small of a budget. You know, it is never going to live up to what Fellowship of the Ring was able to achieve. You know, something I was just thinking about recently with the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movies is I don't know if they often get enough credit for how good of a job they did simply from a writing point of view, adapting the material, being

we can have our complaints about like, oh, I wish Tom Bombadil had been in there. You know, I don't like that they didn't include this or that they made this moment like, you know, there were changes introduced and a lot of times purists can be upset by that. But I think they really did a kind of impossible task of cramming as much of the spirit of the story into film, into reality

reasonable, I mean, long, but still reasonable film runtimes as possible. It really, I think, is a marvelous achievement of adaptation writing.

Yeah, absolutely. Again, it's just unfair to compare virtually anything, especially this film, to Fellowship of the Rings and the subsequent Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings films. They just succeeded in so many ways. But while we're on the subject of the differences between Fellowship of the Ring and Dungeons and Dragons as movies from around the same time.

One big difference is that, of course, Fellowship of the Ring is an adaptation of a book. It's an adaptation of something that is already a fixed narrative, which is like a, you know, it's a more familiar way of making a movie from existing source material.

The Dungeons & Dragons movie had a very different kind of writing assignment, which is that it was to adapt a game system or sort of a world. There is no fixed narrative of Dungeons & Dragons. I think there are some pre-written campaigns that exist out there. Rob, you can probably shed more light on that. And there may be some commonly accepted sort of history things in the Dungeons & Dragons world that...

But there's no fixed narrative like there is in a book. Players make up their own stories. So what your job is, if you're adapting this into a movie, is you have to kind of make up a story that...

packs in a lot of details about what it's like to play the game and captures feelings of common experiences that players have when they're playing with their friends. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. You have to attempt to try and nail the vibe of the D&D world and the vibe of playing D&D at the same time, which, to be clear, are often in stark opposition to each other. You may have a really very serious and even dark...

set of events happening within the story of the game. But yet a gaming session of Dungeons & Dragons might be just full of goof-off moments and laughter and so forth. And yet they can still work together at the table in a way that might be more of a struggle thematically with a motion picture. I would argue that 2023's Dungeons & Dragons Honor Among Thieves, the most recent Dungeons & Dragons film,

did more of a commendable job of pulling this off. And watching today's movie, it'd be easier to momentarily put that aside if they didn't actually say honor among thieves multiple times in the dialogue. But they didn't know that was going to be the subtitle of the later movie. They didn't know, but it's impossible to avoid.

But no, you're right. It's like they're adapting a vibe. They're adapting IP, a world or multiple worlds and various creatures within that world. But they're not leaning on like a core text. Right.

But to be clear, even by 1990 and certainly by the year 2000, there were plenty of Dungeons & Dragons novelizations out there. I mean, there are like a million Dragonlance novels. So there was some material out there they could have leaned on, though, you know, I don't know. I haven't read most of those books. Not everything is...

you know, reasonable for adaptation and so forth. But, you know, there were and are plenty of Dungeons & Dragons stories one could go to for things like this. But one thing that makes those stories different is...

They're almost like they're reading a story that someone has created within the framework of the D&D world, but they're not canon for all like players of D&D. Right, right. Like any given person's favorite moment from Dungeons & Dragons is going to be a little different from everyone else's moment if you're just talking about the tabletop experience. Yeah.

Yeah. So as you said, this is something that the more recent D and D movie did a lot of, you could tell there were a lot of in jokes in the movie. And I, I still think the more recent movie works perfectly.

Pretty well. I mean, I don't know. I have played D and D, but I can imagine it still works pretty well as a film, even if you've never played it, but there are just a lot of little treats in there for players because it will have the characters in the movie getting into a situation that players commonly find themselves in. And it's funny to funny to recognize like, Oh, I cast speak with dead. And I still, I still have this many questions I can ask. And we're, we already got the information we need.

You know, and that sort of thing over and over. Yeah. And also, I think the other thing that the more recent film did well is that it had it did have canonical figures that one could leave the film and say, hey, I want to know about that lich guy. I want to know more about these red wizards. And there is material out there. You can read about them. They are part of of a setting.

Uh, this movie doesn't really, I think, do much of that. Um, you might say, Ooh, uh, that's a neat beholder. I just saw float by. I'd like to know more about those guys. Well, there's plenty more, uh, but, uh, it doesn't really do much with the beholders. Does it? You briefly see one as a purple blob that flies off screen. And then I'm like, Ooh, we're going to come back for a beholder fight. Nope. Nope. Nope.

They're basically screensavers. But anyway, as I was saying, the more recent D&D movie does a lot of that. I think this older movie does a little bit of that. There's a little bit of nodding towards kind of common player experiences, but a lot less. It feels more like they were just trying to create a story roughly within the D&D universe. Yeah. Yeah.

Now, I should say some nice things about this film, I think. Yeah, yeah. I think it has some excellent locations, including the Sedlick Ossoary in the Czech Republic. Also, I think the Czech Republic State Opera House is used as a location at one point and multiple other Czech locations that look really cool and they make good use of them.

Gorgeous interior locations, in fact, that are a quite ludicrous contrast to like it'll cut from there to a like CGI dungeon. It is just you could not imagine something more like uglier and more dingy looking.

Yes. The CGI is all horrendous. But I should also point out there are some nice practical sets as well. There's the eye room and the labyrinth. The evil lair is really nice. So there's also anything that's not CGI in this film has at least a reasonable shot at looking OK.

There is at one point, it's toward the end of the movie, I wish it had come earlier, a quite lovely hand-painted backdrop for like a matte effect when they go to like the Thomas Kinkade Lothlorien, you know? Yeah, yeah. But it's like very pretty. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean...

The practical stuff works pretty well for the most part. And then, of course, we have the performances. There are some definite duds in there, but there are some really fun performances to behold on top of everything. Yeah, we'll have to talk about that. And speaking of continuing themes from last week, A-list actors getting in a B-movie and just giving it everything they've got, or maybe more than they've got, actually. Yeah.

Well, so Rob, what's your elevator pitch for D&D? The main thing I came up with was complete a D&D movie before Y2K. Which, it comes out after Y2K, but, you know, they're filming it in 1999. And,

And also, it's the end of a long journey to make a Dungeons & Dragons motion picture. And I'll get into some of those details when we talk about the director. I think they had to roll a 12 or above to achieve that goal, and they rolled a 12. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, at one point I think they rolled a one and then they realized they did have inspiration and they were able to take that back. Nice. All right, let's listen to a little bit of the trailer audio here and hopefully you'll get to hear Jeremy Irons a little bit in there as well. Yeah.

In a far away world, all people deserve to be free and equal. The child is not fit to govern an empire. The forces of darkness. You can control dragons. With the dragon army at my command, I can crush the Empress. This has got to be some twisted magic experiment gone seriously wrong. Have threatened to conquer a kingdom. What can I do to stop Profion? If you can obtain the Rod of Savril, you could control red dragons.

I suggest we lay low, let the whole thing blow over, come back, rob everybody. There's one small problem. Problem? I kind of committed us to find it. I hate when you say that! Now is your time. Dungeons & Dragons. You want to play, do you?

All right now. The Empress has sent her dragons against us.

All right. If you want to watch Dungeons & Dragons for yourself, you can find this one in multiple formats, including some free streaming services. That's where I watched this film. You can find it on your Plex and your Tubies, if those are options for you. There also have been different DVD and Blu-ray releases, including Dungeons & Dragons 2 movie collection on Blu-ray. That's if you want... To be clear, you're not getting the more recent Dungeons & Dragons...

And there you're getting one of the crappy sequels to this film. So buy with caution. Did any actors from this movie come back in that one? Bruce Payne. Just him? Just Bruce Payne. He came back at least for the initial sequel. I don't know who of anyone came back for part three. I don't know if anyone's seen part three.

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So to be clear, there had been previous attempts to officially capitalize on D&D's popularity as a film going back to the early 80s. But nothing came together until around 1990. That is when then 19-year-old Courtney Solomon, with basically only a passion for Dungeons & Dragons, some family background, I think on his mother's side, in Canadian TV production, and also we should...

we should realize there's probably a natural 20 charisma role in here because he managed to convince TSR, the parent company of D&D at the time, to give him a shot at producing the thing. Had he made a movie at this point? No, he had not. As far as I can tell, no, nothing like that had occurred. So, yeah, we may rag on this film a little bit in this episode, but, man, that was roughly my age when this movie came out.

And looking back at myself, I was barely capable of any level of adulting, you know. Solomon, however, at 19 and in subsequent years, won over TSR and then traveled around the world seeking financial backers and scored one in Hong Kong business magnate Alan Zaman. And so by the mid-90s, the plan with Solomon as producer was to do this up as a $100 million production with a big director. What?

A hundred million dollars in the 90s? Yeah, like that. I mean, you know, you're talking about Fellowship of the Ring range in terms of your budget. But of course, that's, you know, years later. So, yeah, they were talking about having the likes of Francis Ford Coppola or James Cameron produced. I think Stan Winston was also attached at one point. But as often occurs in Hollywood, plans changed. Coming hot off of Pumpkinhead, I shall make the D&D movie. Wow.

Imagine what the effects would have looked like, though. You would have gotten a good beholder in that one. I want to see the Francis Ford Coppola version. Would it have had Al Pacino in it? Ooh, yeah. Oh, that would have been a different evil mage villain, wouldn't it? Oh, my Lord. Imagine wizard. Yes, evil wizard Al Pacino. He's like he is in heat, you know, with the...

We joke, but I don't know. There's there. I, I can see a version of this film that would have worked without Pacino, but I don't know. And we never got to have it. So, uh, plans changed. Hollywood producer, Joel Silver came on board. There was talk at one point of doing it as a TV series. Instead, this would, this was the natural one, uh, that I mentioned earlier. Uh, then, no, I guess the natural one was when they were considering doing a low budget direct to video project. Uh,

But they were able to push through and get things back up to a 30 to 35 million dollar budget. And at this point, it was clear Solomon himself was going to have to direct it. Again, this was his first directorial gig. But he did it. He pulled it off. It's like the artifact is attuned to you and you alone. You are the only one. You are the only one who can wield it. You are the chosen one.

And so he did. Now, as a director, he followed this up with 2005's An American Haunting and 2013's Getaway, but has mostly remained active as a producer on such films as 2009's Universal Soldier Regeneration, 2012's Universal Soldier Day of Reckoning, 2016's Mr. Church,

The Strangers Chapter One from recent years, and I think there's some sequels on the way. And he's listed as a producer on an upcoming Red Sonja film. Well, despite the criticisms I've already made, I do want to say this story makes it even more impressive that this film got made and is as fun as it is. I mean, it's bad, but you're not going to be bored, I think, when you watch this movie.

Um, so yeah, hats off to Courtney Solomon. And, and I do want to echo what you said earlier. We may rag on this film, but we rag with love. Yeah. Yeah. Like we've said before, it's a miracle that any film gets finished. Uh, and, and yeah, kudos to him for, for bringing this one home. Now the writing credits, uh, there are two credited writers, Topper Lillian and Carol Cartwright. Um, uh,

Lillian, screenwriter and director, also had a small part in the Conehead movie, 1993's Coneheads. And then Carol Cartwright was also one of the writers on 2022's Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, which was well-received and even earned her and her co-writers an Australian Writers Guild Award. Oh, cool. As for the Coneheads connection, I don't know how I knew, but I felt a little bit of Coneheads juice on this.

I don't think they were involved with writing it at all. They're credited as showing up as one of the pilots in the Conan. It could be an IMDb error, but I'm going to assume it's real.

Now, I think we're about to start discussing the cast and the characters. I mentioned at the top that D&D the game has character classes in it. So you can share, you know, your rogues, your rangers, your clerics and so forth. Should we take a stab at saying what actual D&D class the characters in this movie are supposed to be, if anything? Yeah, yeah, we should. Beginning with our chief antagonist, the

This is Profion, a high-level mage, I would assume. Now, Rob, you know the D&D lore better than I do. But the way I sort of understand it is that your main magic users in D&D are your sorcerers, your warlocks, and your wizards. The wizard is sort of the intellectual magician who learns their powers through study. The warlock is the sort of abominable,

bound to a demonic entity magician who gains their powers through this relationship with, you know, something that grants the power. And then finally, your sorcerer sort of has magic in their blood. They, you know, they like come from a magical background and they do it on instinct.

It's kind of hard to fit Jeremy Irons' character in this movie into any of the three. He fits the aesthetic of a warlock the most, but they never mention anything about a patron. So I'm going to say even though he feels more warlocky, he's got to be a wizard, right? Yeah, yeah. I think he's definitely a wizard. Yeah, he is the puppet master as opposed to the puppet or the conduit, as you would have in those other two classes.

Hmm. Okay. That being said, no beard. Uh, but not that a wizard has to have a beard, but, uh, again, at the time, uh, this bothered me. So, uh, Jeremy Irons born 1948. This is, I believe our first Jeremy Irons film. Um, uh,

He, I've read that he joined the film during its filming at the behest of Joel Silver. And according to Irons, out of a need to help pay for a castle he had just purchased. It reminds me of that quote from Michael Caine about Jaws the Revenge. Somebody asked him about it. He says, I haven't seen the film. I've heard it's quite terrible, but I have seen the house it built and it's lovely. Yeah.

So Irons has a long and ongoing career on the stage, TV, and the big screen, with credits going back to 1971. He really began to skyrocket with TV's Brideshead Revisited in 81, which earned him numerous nominations. And his 1986 was pretty stellar, seeing him play twin gynecologist and David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers, and also Father Gabriel and Roland Joffe's masterpiece The Mission.

And he then went on to win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Klaus von Bülow in Reversal of Fortune, opposite Glenn Close and Ron Silver. Subsequent notable credits include David Cronenberg's M. Butterfly from 93, The Lion King from 94, in which he voiced Scar. Now, that's also a very juicy voice role. And also, I think, the way that a lot of kids come to learn who Jeremy Irons is. Yeah.

You know, when I was like, I grew up watching The Lion King. And then when I was older and like learning about movies, I was like, why is this this weird guy? His voice is so familiar. Oh, it's Scar. Oh, OK. And so you make the connection that way. Yeah. Long live the king. I say, oh, he's back in 95 with Die Hard with a Vengeance, plays the villain in that. He's in 2002's The Time Machine playing like a super intelligent Morlock character.

uh he's in 2005's kingdom of heaven from ridley scott 2008's the color of magic that's a terry pratchett adaptation um tv's the the borgias uh the snyder dcu batman films uh tv's the watchman he's quite good in that and then 2020. yeah yeah and then 2021's house of gucci uh which i haven't seen but of course that was uh a lot of people like that as well so

So, of course, Jeremy Irons is a terrific actor and I love him in so many roles. One that stands out to me is a kind of kind of one of his unsung roles, but is really good. He plays a nasty financial CEO in the movie Margin Call. I don't know if you've seen. Oh, I haven't seen that one. Yeah.

He does in that a character that he often does very well, which is a deeply morally compromised and scummy but quite charismatic man. Yes. Scummy, charismatic aristocrat is a role that he plays very well. And I would say his performances, there's often a kind of quiet subtlety to them. He gets into higher energy zones. I don't want to make it sound like he's just...

you know, like just a certain energy level for the rest of his performances. But it's generally not high energy. Oh, my God. And certainly not like this film. I don't know if I've ever thought to describe a movie performance this way before. But what I realized is Jeremy Irons came into this film with the idea of

What if I were to approach acting with the goal of maximizing not quality, but quantity? So is this good acting from Jeremy Irons? I honestly don't even know how to answer that. But what I'm sure of is you cannot complain about the portions of acting. You will be taking leftovers home from D&D. Like his performance will leave you full and you cannot consume it all.

Yeah. If a normal Jeremy Irons performance is like a subtle knife, this one is a chainsaw. He's on full blast the whole time. It's glorious to behold. He's snarling. His skull is about to pop through his face. His presence absolutely...

Yeah.

Just chewing it up. Now, I'm not sure his performance really lifts everyone around him up in equal measure, which is which is something you sometimes see when you have a high caliber actor working with younger and less experienced talent. But I also have to acknowledge that maybe this film was not exactly the sort of workshop environment for that sort of thing.

Yeah, I don't mean this is a slight against the great Jeremy Irons, but I would say a lot of his scenes, they don't feel very collaborative. They feel more like he is a mad bull that has been unleashed on the set and they've started filming. Yeah. And everybody else is just kind of they've got to kind of deal with it. Yeah. Yeah, that's very much the vibe I get here, too. Now, behind every scene.

mad villain. There is a henchman and the hinching here is provided by Bruce Payne who plays Damodar who I guess he's a sword mage. I think the exact terminology changes from one edition of D&D to the next but it's a wizard, a magic user who also swings a sword around which I

I mean, it's definitely in the rules, but it always feels to me like, come on, dude, you can choose to be a fighter or a wizard. Why do you have to try and be both? Share the love with the table.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I was trying to place him as well as having trouble. He he's got big he's got big scary armor. OK, so and he's got a big sword and that does seem to place him in the kind of physical fighter class. But he's also, yeah, peripheral to a bunch of dark magic. Yeah. And when he shows up at one point, Richard O'Brien's character is like, get that mage out of here. No mages allowed. So I guess he's a mage.

But also that goes on something in the movie where it treats mage not as a character class in the game, but as an economic class, like in the world of this D and D movie, uh,

If you are a mage, that means you're rich. Right. The mages control everything, as we'll get into. But then this dude's like walking through portals. And granted, magical portals are really thrown around in this movie with reckless abandon. But I'm not entirely sure who's casting them. Is Damodar casting them? Or does he have like a travel wizard with him at all times? It's like they can cast Misty Step without being able to see where they're going. Yeah.

But Bruce Payne, yes. We've talked about Bruce Payne on the show before. Born in 1958, British actor, stage and screen. He was in Alan Clark's snooker musical, Billy the Kid and the Green Bay's Vampire. A glorious film and a fine supporting and singing performance by Payne as The One, a.k.a. T.O. He's great in that. And I'm to understand he's also really good in 1986's Absolute Beginners.

But, man, the 1990s Bruce Payne that I think most of us are familiar with, it's this Bruce Payne. It's like looming British villain Bruce Payne. Like he really found his niche, his Payne niche in the 1990s. Numerous films we can reference here in which he's playing some variation of this bad guy.

Sometimes feels in this movie like he's trying to match or compete with Jeremy Irons. Like they were literally like betting which one could overact more. Just stunningly inappropriate line deliveries taking four or five times longer than necessary to spit out function, just very functional lines like place.

guards at every gate. Yeah, exactly. Really drawn out. And the look of this character too, we have to, I mean, you mentioned the armor. He has some cool looking armor, neat cape, big sword, but he also has bright blue lips and

Electric blue. Yeah, like he just had some sort of like really bright slushy or something. Or that it is like just really bright blue lipstick. I kept expecting it to be explained one way or another. Like there's some sort of like mintat wine that he drinks. But I don't think they ever really make any sense of it. It's just a bizarre visual choice. He's one of those bald guys with blue lips. Yeah.

That's just part of what's in this world. And later, as he's infected by a bizarre CGI brain parasite, he also begins to boast increasingly inflamed ears. So most of the scenes you end up with have him like close in on his head, bright blue lips, big red ears. It's ridiculous. Yeah. The ears look painful. Yeah.

But he manages to push through all of this and make you believe in the character's cardboard villainy. You know, he's a cardboard villain, very much a henchman. But, you know, he does a commendable job here. He gets to do the classic, you know, the hero says, hey, you said if I gave you the artifact, you'd free my friends. What does he get to say? I lied. Yes.

Now, other Bruce Payne performances of the 1990s that I think cemented his place as a go-to villain. He does have a role in 1991's Howling the Freaks, in which he plays a hideous, dark Nosferatu character under a lot of makeup. I don't know if I would have ever recognized this as Bruce Payne. But then more to the point, he was in 1992's Passenger 57, in which he plays the villain opposite Wesley Snipes.

His subsequent credits included the likes of 93's Necronomicon, Book of the Dead, Tales from the Crypt, Warlock 3, The End of Innocence, taking over the part from Julian Sands, Highlander Endgame in 2000, and the 2005 D&D sequel that we referenced earlier, in which he was, I believe, the only cast member returning. Good to stay busy. Yes. Yes.

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So, this is one of those encounters where the Dungeon Master didn't really tell everyone that they needed certain roles. He didn't explain that somebody needs to be the cleric, because there's no cleric in the party. In fact, you have two rogues. Two rogues. Our main two characters are both rogues. That is imbalanced. Yeah.

Though, I don't know, anytime I'm dungeon mastering, I'm like, just play what you want to play. If we're all rogues, we'll roll with it. We'll find a way. But in general, you're supposed to sort of steer everyone towards a balanced party. So I guess our main rogue here, ultimately our lead character, our protagonist, is Ridley Freeborn, a generic rogue, I guess, played by Justin Whalen. My name is Maximus Protagonist. Yeah.

Oh, boy. Yeah, he's got such like hero kid energy in this. Yeah. Yeah, all of his scenes feel like they were directed by Uncle Baby Billy, you know, like major tingis energy here. It's not a character that I ever found myself liking or rooting for. Not that it's the actor's fault, but it's just like...

This is our hero? I don't know. Well, you didn't like the Dark Knight of the Soul scene in the late movie when he's like, why are bad things bad and good things... Yeah. Why do we have to fight evil? Yeah, at that point, I was more like, get on with it. Go to the scene where you fight the evil. Obviously, you're going to fight the evil, dude. Come on. Yeah.

So this actor, American actor who previously worked as a child actor on such films as 1988's The Deadpool, 1991's Child's Play 3, and various TV shows including The Wonder Years and Blossom. And he was active through, I believe, around 2009 when he retired from acting. Okay, but as we said, it's not just one rogue in the lead. It's a buddy rogue movie. Yes. So we got the other one played by Marlon Wayans. Yes.

Yes, Marlon Wayans of the Wayans brothers plays Snails. Snails is another generic rogue. I believe he uses the comedic sidekick specialization within the rogue archetype here. Arcane prankster. Essentially, but no magic. Yeah. Yeah.

So, born 1972, Wayans' brother, actor, writer, and comedian, who's best known for wildly over-the-top comedic performances in such films as the Scary Movie franchise, which he also co-wrote and co-produced, 2004's White Chicks, and 2006's Little Man. I haven't seen this one, but this is the one where he plays like a CGI face-assisted baby, like it's Marlon Wayans' face on a baby. Oh, no. Oh.

So, I mean, it's what put him on the map and people enjoyed these films that made him a success. And that is mostly the vibe we get in D&D. He is the comedic relief. He has one, maybe two scenes, but most likely one scene in this movie where he mostly plays it straight and

But for the most part, it's full scary movie mode for the rest of the picture. Yes, he's doing comedy, physical comedy and character comedy for most of the film, which makes it rather jarring. In the scene where he gets murdered by the villain, which is suddenly very serious, and all his friends are like, no, he's dead. And I kept thinking, well, surely he can't really be dead. That would be...

so totally weird especially given how just he's like joking all the time but no he's just dead they just killed him he he pulls such faces in scenes where he's not even talking that reminded me of some of the supporting performances by uh this particular vaudevillian actor in santa claus versus the martians like it's that level of just over the top intensity yes um

But the crazy thing for me, though, was I was like I was looking at his filmography and I realized, you know, the year 2000. That's also the year that Marlon Wayans appeared and was widely considered a really solid, serious, dramatic performance from him. And that's Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream. Oh, yeah. I had forgotten he was in that. But, yeah, he's great in that. This is around the same time. Unbelievable. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, the man has and had the tools. Yeah.

But, I mean, obviously there's a lot more money to be made in the comedy business. But, yeah, that's snails. More on snails in a bit. All right, the next character I think is obviously an NPC. I don't think she has any marketable skills other than she is the Empress. The Empress, Savina, played by Thora Birch.

Now, we're making a habit of having to say this as we talk about every actor playing a good character in this movie. But no offense to the actor here. No offense to Thora Birch. But yeah, there is not much going on with this character. Yeah, I think they were maybe going for a childlike Empress vibe here, you know, from The NeverEnding Story. Except what if we weighed her down with like two tons of chain mail? Because she just ends up looking uncomfortable in most of these scenes.

Well, but also force her to make speeches, like engage in political rhetoric, essentially. The Childlike Empress does not do that. Right. So born in 1982, she kicked things off as a child actor, and at this point had already appeared in such films as 1992's Patriot Games, 93's Hocus Pocus, 94's Clear and Present Danger, and very important, one episode of the 1990's Outer Limits. Oh.

But this film is also sandwiched between two of her most critically acclaimed films. I believe when they filmed Dungeons & Dragons, they'd already shot 1999's American Beauty. But then it comes out before D&D comes out, obviously. And then after American Beauty came out, of course, she received a lot of acclaim for that performance. And then she would go on to have a really solid performance in 2001's Ghost World opposite Scarlett Johansson and Steve Buscemi.

It's been a long time since I've seen either of those films, but I do remember her as being rather good in Ghost World. Yeah, I don't think I've seen either of those since the early 2000s, but yeah, same. I like Thor Birch. I like, like with much of the cast, I would be curious to hear her like thoughts and what she remembers about making this film. Yeah, because yeah, I, you know, again, solid actress, but this, this is not the picture. Yeah.

all right let's move back to the the the actual adventuring party um we also have marina uh pretensa she is a human mage and she is played by zoe mclean born 1974 american tv actress best known for this film i think and i have to say i i thought she was actually pretty good in this role despite the flat misogyny gags that were kind of shoehorned in there um

I don't know if she was more alive. Her character felt more alive and her performance therefore followed in ways that other characters did not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, another example of not a great, not a wonderfully written role, but she's doing what she can with it. Yeah. She she appeared on such TV shows as Star Trek Voyager, and I think she was main cast on Designated Survivor.

All right. Next up, we have Elwood Gutworthy. He is a dwarven fighter and he is played by Lee Arenberg, born 1962. A possibly under-celebrated American character actor. You might not know his name, but you'll instantly recognize him from such projects as the Pirates of the Caribbean movies in which he played. His character's name is Pintel or Pintel.

Is he one of the two sort of comedy pirates, the bad guy comedy pirates? Yeah, he's the bald one, the bald bearded comedy pirate. He also has appeared on TV shows like Friends and Seinfeld. But I think the first place I saw him was a 1990 Tales from the Crypt episode titled For Crying Out Loud, which co-starred Katie Sagal, Iggy Pop, and Sam Kinison as the voice in Orenberg's head.

Sam Kinison as the voice in his head? Yes. Wow. He also played the Eternal Flame in the 1993 cinematic Marvel Freaked. And you'll also find him in some other bits as well. Like he plays a hold-up man in Robocop 3.

Uh, as for his role in this movie, I mean, I hope you like seeing food in people's beards. That's a yuck, yuck. You know, they're, they're, they're going to go for that joke many times. Uh, and you will actually be quite impressed how much food they can fit in his beard. Yeah. They just kept saying, it's not funny enough. Let's add more chicken wings to the gag. More chicken. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, I remember being a little grumpy about the dwarf as comic relief elements in Jackson's Lord of the Rings. But Gutworthy here is 10,000 times worse than any of that. Like this film's vision for a dwarf is that of a kind of drunken, bearded Oompa Loompa whose main character traits are alcoholism, gluttony and poor hygiene. Yes, he drinks, he fights, he has chicken and beard.

Yeah. And that's that's pretty much it. It's kind of awful. And I think like he is painted orange or I don't like it's like he has like an orange beard, like a bright orange beard. And I think there's like orange paint on his face. It is. It's just everything is wrong about this presentation.

Okay, but no confusion about class here. This is our standard fighter. He's like got a battle axe. That's what he does. He specializes, though, in background fighting. Not like key villain fighting, but just background stuff. Doing a leg sweep. Well, I think he leg sweeps Damodar one time. Oh, well, he gets one hit. It's a team effort. Yeah, but mostly you're right. He's back there slamming around while our more prominent characters are in the foreground.

All right, up next we have Norda, an elven ranger, played by Kristen Wilson, born 1969. American actress best known for playing Lisa Doolittle in 1998's Dr. Doolittle and its 2001 sequel. Interestingly enough, she's married to makeup effects artist Martin Estles, who worked on Chronicles of Riddick and also worked on this film. So it's very possible that Dungeons & Dragons brought this couple together.

What better way to find true love? As for her performance, I mean, I think it seems fine. They have her wearing one of those ridiculous fantasy female breastplates. But that aside, you know, I totally bought her as a no-nonsense Elvin Ranger. She has a good funny moment when Snails is trying to flirt with her, and she's like, how old are you? And he says, 23. And she's like, I'm 235. Yeah.

That was pretty good. Yeah. All right. Next up, we have just really a couple of kind of fun cameos, little side characters that are encountered. The first, I already mentioned in passing, that Richard O'Brien shows up. And yes, Richard O'Brien shows up as Zilius, a master thief. Born 1942, this is, of course, the mastermind behind the Rocky Horror Picture Show, in which he also played Riff Raff.

He played Mr. Hand in 1998's Dark City. And we previously mentioned him in our episode on 1980's Flash Gordon, in which he played a character named Falco. We're going to come back to O'Brien in the future when we talk about a film in which he's more central. So, you know, I'll keep this brief and say that, yeah, he does bring his signature charisma to this small role, but he still manages to feel a bit out of place as well. I'd say once again, doing what he can. Yeah.

Ooh, but then Tom Baker shows up as Halvarth, an elven cleric, kind of late in the film. He attempts, but what, fails to resurrect Snails?

Who's he healing? He's healing Justin Welby. That's right. He's healing Ridley. He's like, he zaps him with yellow zippy zaps. That's right. Yeah. Snails is just all the way dead at this point. Snails is dead. Well, snails does resurrect at the end of the movie. Oh, okay. Remember they like, they put a thing, a jewel on his grave and then it suggests he's still alive somewhere else and they could go meet him, I think. Oh, okay. Well, all right. There's so there's some hope for snails.

Yeah. So, yeah. Okay. So he heals our main protagonist. Yes. He's not...

We've been saying about a lot of people, they do what they can. I don't know. Tom Baker feels like he's kind of sleepwalking through this. When he says his lines, it feels like he's saying them for the first time. Oh, I don't know. I mean, that may very well be the case, but maybe I just find Tom Baker captivating enough that that was enough for me where I'm like, hey, this guy's doing it. This guy knows what he's doing. Look at this. I mean, Tom Baker's Tom Baker. Yeah. So he brings more Doctor Who energy than Rasputin energy, I'd say here. Yes.

Yeah. So Tom Baker, if you're not familiar, born 1934. Still active, I believe. British actor of stage screen and TV, best known as the fourth and longest serving incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who from 1974 to 1981. And there have been so many great Doctors over the years, but I think Baker still stands out as one of the most iconic. And I think for me, he's like, this is my Doctor Who. If I'm ever...

If I'm ever in a room and there's a Doctor Who episode playing and it's Tom Baker, I'm just drawn in. I've got to see what he's going to do, what he's going to say. He's my go-to. Yeah, I think I know way less Doctor Who than you do, but I do think of him as the Doctor among many Doctors. Yeah. So, you know, he can play it all. He can be silly.

Obviously. He can also play malicious characters, such as in 73's The Vault of Horror and also The Golden Voyage of Sinbad from the same year. He can also play serious really well. And you mentioned his role as Rasputin in Nicholas and Alexandra from 1972, for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe. He is mesmerizing in that role. That's one I still need to see. I haven't seen that one. But I have seen The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.

Dude, that's a good one. It's got some great monsters in it. Mm-hmm.

All right. And finally, the composer for this film is Justin Cain Burnett, born 1973, American film and video game music composer who apparently worked under Hans Zimmer earlier in his career. And he's gone on to score numerous genre pictures such as 2005's An American Haunting and some fairly big TV projects as well, like The Patient, in addition to working in the musical department on some pretty big films by the likes of Michael Bay and Tony Scott and Ridley Scott. I

I don't think the music in this is bad though. Sometimes it's kind of a funny fit. Like the opening fanfare sounds to me a lot like the music from a sports movie. Yeah.

It sounds like, oh, you know, Johnny's running for the touchdown. You know, they finally put him in and he's going to save the save the team season. Yeah. Or it's just kind of like I mean, it's like I've said before, you know, sometimes a film's musical score needs to kind of feel invisible. It's just working in the background, doing its thing. And, you know, I guess that's basically what the score here does.

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All right, well, are you ready to talk about the plot? Oh, yes. Let's do it. So the movie starts with something that absolutely feels tacked on in post-production. It's some voiceover narration playing over a dismal gray screen with some wisps of CGI mist. And it's just an old man's voice. I don't know who's talking here. But it says, The Empire of Izmir has long been a divided land.

Ruled by the mages, an elite group of magic users, the lowly commoners, those without magic, are little more than slaves. Izmir's young Empress Savina wishes equality and prosperity for all, but the evil mage Profion has other intentions.

I have to admit, it's intriguing. Imagine if they'd shown us any of this. Yeah. So the horns start blasting. This is the part where it sounds like football. And then we zoom over a bunch of CGI. So we're zooming over bridges spanning a waterway with a mini-towered castle rising beyond.

And real question, when we get a look at this castle, I was genuinely wondering, is this CGI model based on the Disney castle image, the more elaborate one? Because it looks like it. We are like swooping in on it. It feels like it very much the same trajectory as we do the Disney castle and the opening Disney logo sequence. Feels a lot like it.

But then perhaps fittingly for the theme, does the camera fly into a window in one of the majestic lofty towers in the sky? No, it does not. Instead, we plunge down over the surface of the moat and then straight through the heavy iron bars of a gate leading into a dungeon.

It's fitting. We didn't really get into this, but it's called Dungeons and Dragons. So you can imagine producers are like, okay, there needs to be a dungeon and there needs to be a dragon. And really, if you could fit all of this into the first 10 minutes of the film, that would be great.

So the environments here, again, to emphasize are at this point CGI and the animation is murky and hideous. I was trying to describe what these environments look like. It's a little difficult, but like in nineties computer game terms, it's,

Imagine the CD-ROM game Mist, but make it fugly instead of mysterious. So it's like Mist, but with the drab, depressing color palette of the original Quake. Yes. So we fly through a tunnel in this dungeon into a room where a bunch of hooded occult servants are toiling in the dark. There are chains, ladders, gears, lanterns, and skulls. Lots of skulls just sitting around in random places, and

There's one thing that looks like a kind of a ramp or a gangway on top of a pipe that's pouring water into a big stone pool. And on the ramp, there's just a skull sitting right in the middle of it. Somebody's going to step on that. Like, oh, this one fell out. Just put it on top of the box. There's some kind of big machine being operated. So we've got cultists. They're pulling chains and working levers. There's a big cogwheel revolving around.

And then in the middle of the room, there is a three axis gimbal. So you might've seen these with like, I don't know, used for astronaut training, whereas the rings that spin within rings along the different axes. Uh, and, uh, what's in the middle is not an astronaut. It is a large black scepter fixed with a green jewel.

You know, I need to throw in here. I was able to get my kid to watch the first like 30 minutes of this film with me because they're about to turn 13 and they're already super into Dungeons and Dragons. You know, they've read the books. They're playing the game.

And so it was fun to watch part of this. I really didn't expect or demand that they watch all of this film with me. But at like this point, they were already like, oh, it looks like they're making a, uh, uh, making a magical item there. And they started spouting all the rules for how long it's going to take to make a magical weapon and so forth. Did this lead to frustration? No, no, no. They, they, they did quickly realize this is not a good film. Uh, but they, they didn't seem bored. Uh,

And I have to drive home. At this point, we are into the physical sets, practical sets, and it's a totally different vibe. Like, I'm buying this as a real place, and I'm intrigued by what's going on here. And then also, hey, so, yeah, we've come out of the CGI into the real sets, and we get our first glimpse of the main attraction, Jeremy Irons. Oh, what an entry. It's so good. Yeah.

Yeah.

And also off to the side, you've got Bruce Payne playing the henchman Damodar. And again, yeah, he's like bald and haughty with the muscle morph armor and the big sword and the electric blue lips. Yeah.

And then we get a closeup of, of profion, the mage here looking evil. And it's a closeup, like his face fills the entire frame and you can see all his pores. You can see that, uh, this must've been filmed in the afternoon because his mustache stubble is starting to come in and you can see the way someone appears to have combed his eyebrows so that the hairs all flare upward. And then the evil music swells and it's clear he wants that scepter. Um,

Uh, so he steps forward and he sticks his hand out and zaps the rod with force lightning. Also, you can see Rob, I've got a screenshot for you to look at here, but it's like, he has to step over some little moats, little, uh, like gutters on the floor in order to get to the thing. He's going to get his cloak wet. That's true. Yeah.

I mean, you've got to just expect to get your cloak muddy and bloody and wet in these scenarios. Yeah. So Profion starts chanting a magic spell. It's a bunch of nonsense words. And we see little CGI dragons flying around inside a kind of portal in the gimbal machine. And then Jeremy Irons keeps ratcheting up the intensity in his face bones. So it just goes in on him and he's going, oh, his face is getting weirder and crazier. Yeah.

And something finally works with his magic. The machine stops spinning and Profion can approach and remove the artifact and it's glowing green. It casts a sickly green light over his face. And oh my Lord, the expressions he is making here. Like he, he projects a...

a quivering, overtly sexual ecstasy as he takes hold of the magic scepter. So he like grabs the rod with this electric zapping effect and then he holds it up in the air screaming, yes! And,

And just like, folks, even if you don't want to watch the whole movie, I recommend you watch this scene at the beginning just to do like the Jeremy Irons face survey. You know, add little tasting notes at all the little moments where you get to see his teeth doing this, his tongue doing that. What's that sound he's making? Why is he going, yeah, yeah.

It is so good. Yeah. If you watch nothing else, watch the first 15 minutes because you will get so much of this performance. Yeah. It is just, oh, it is just a, like a stiff shot of absolutely like 120% Jeremy Irons ham.

Yeah. And of course it's, it's Bruce Payne approved. He's sitting there like with the, you know, this lips tight together, like, yep. Yep. That's my boss. Oh God. Those lips. Uh, so profion says, come Damodar. And they walk up the steps to a big door that has what can only be described as a dragon logo on it. Yeah. Yeah. It's like behind the store. It's dragons are us.

And, uh, profion calls out to his terrified hooded servants. He says, release him. So the guys in hoods, they're trembling with fear. They start cranking a bunch of wheels and levers and the door opens up to dragons are us. And what do you know? There's a dragon inside and it starts coming out. And what a dragon this is. Um,

As I've said many times now, we're trying not to just hate on the movie too much, but we've got to tell you straight. This is some of the worst CGI I can think of in any major motion picture.

Yes. Oh, my goodness. I mean, the dragon does not look good. I mean, the CGI is not good. And then it's just such a generic looking dragon as well. I mean, especially when you consider what's already come before practically. We talked about Vermithrax pejorative in Dragon Slayer. Yes.

on a previous episode of Weird House Cinema, like one of the greatest dragons ever brought to life on the screen. To go from something like that to something like this, it's just, it's a travesty. Now, it doesn't look quite so bad at the very first moment because it's farther away and partially hidden in darkness.

But then it lunges out and it starts spitting fire on all the hooded cult guys. And it roars into the camera. I think they were actually going for a callback to Jurassic Park. There are a couple of moments where it does... Where the CGI dragon does a...

kind of body motion or something almost exactly like a shot in Jurassic Park and it seems not accidental it is often sobering to realize how early Jurassic Park comes out in relation to some of these films with bad CGI monsters later on yeah

But yeah, so this dragon is not finished baking, but no more time. It's out of the oven. Yeah, we got to get this out before Y2K. Yeah. And so Profion commands the dragon to approach him and he starts gloating. He says, yes, I control dragons now. And Damodar is just dripping with obsequious flattery. He's like, you have the power of the immortals.

And Profion says, he's snarling, he says, with a dragon army at my command, I can crush the Empress. I can control what is rightfully ours. I guess I'm not going to keep trying to do the Jeremy Irons voice when I quote him.

Um, so he just keeps doing amazingly weird stuff with his face, voice and tongue here. Uh, Rob, this is the part where you were talking about his skull trying to escape. Um, and, uh, so he's, oh, and he also, he says things that are echoing kind of the emperor and return of the Jedi. He's like, I can use every ounce of your rage. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And,

And unfortunately, nothing gold can stay. There's a little pun because this is a gold dragon, apparently. Something goes wrong and Profion keeps... Do they say it's a gold dragon? They say that the Empress's dragons are gold dragons. Well, that's not right. I'm not going to get into it. I mean, that shouldn't be.

Gold dragons are special. They're in nobody's dungeon. Well, no, I think we do need to get into this later because also they bring up like red dragons in contrast to the gold dragons as if like, it was like, Oh, Oh, red dragons. That, that would be really, that's really something. Okay. I mean, in short, like gold dragons are good and red dragons are bad. Okay. So it's weird that we're dealing with a gold dragon like this.

Well, the gold dragon here, that makes sense because the gold dragon does not want to obey Profion. And so it like starts backing up into its cell. It's like, no, no, I'm not working with this guy. And then the door slams shut on it and like stabs it. And in a death recalling almost exactly in another callback to Return of the Jedi, the demise of the Rancor in Return of the Jedi. That's right. They Rancor it. Yeah.

And then we get to watch the dragon's CGI blood spill out and pool on the floor and then run down the stairs, which looks absolutely hilarious. And I have questions about shots like this in the movies. Like,

How expensive would it have been to actually just pour some red Cairo syrup blood down a staircase versus the cost of computer animating flowing blood in the year 2000? Why would this be done? Yeah, I mean, I guess we have to be at that tipping point here where the digital effect is cheaper than the practical effect, even though the digital does not look nearly as believable.

How could that even be, though? Like, how much does it cost to make a bucket of fake blood? And just I mean, I guess the cost of the labor to clean it up after you've spilled it like. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, maybe it's it's there in the budget sheet where they're like, we're already paying for these digital effects. Let's have them do the blood. I don't know. They can't afford some.

Some just good Kensington gore whipped up on the spot. Bizarre. Anyway, Jeremy Irons, he like groans with frustration. It's like, not again. And he puts his head in his hands. He's just foiled. So he says, this is the part where he says, we shall have to modify our plans. He says they're going to summon the High Council of Mages and that he's going to try to turn them against the Empress. And Damodar says, it will be done.

And then, oh, when the CGI blood hits the water below, the water catches fire and then the fire runs out of the dungeon into the moat all around the castle. So the whole city can see the fire and they gather around the moat to look at it. But they're not like super concerned. It's kind of like, oh, the river's on fire again. You know, it's just this happens. This is just the kind of ecological nightmare we're living in. It's the Cuyahoga. Yeah.

Yeah. So on the banks of the moat here, we meet our two protagonists. This is our pair of buddy rogues. This is Ridley and Snails, Justin Whalen and Marlon Wayans.

Uh, Ridley's first line commenting on the water catching fire. He says, I'm telling you, it's gotta be some twisted magic experiment gone seriously wrong. Uh, and you know, snails is less, uh, he's got less of a B in his bonnet about this. He he's just like, you know, Ridley, why are you always mad at the mages? And Ridley says, uh, I'd just love to find a way to give those mages some payback. Yeah.

So as I said earlier in this movie, mages seems to be an economic class. Mages are the rich, seemingly whether or not they're personally really like a wizard class.

And Ridley and Snails, on the other hand, are representatives of the common people. Ridley is a sort of idealistic class warrior who wants to fight for the poor and stick it to the mages. And Snails is less idealistic. The way he explains it, he's like, the world's never going to change. There are the haves, the have-nots, and the gotta-gets. And we two rogues, we are in the last group. We're the gotta-gets.

Uh, but Ridley comes up with an idea of what they should do to punish the mages for setting fire to the river. They're going to pull off a heist at the magic school, which is in the highest tower in the castle. Uh,

Uh, and also I'm not going to narrate all this as we go on throughout the movie, but just be aware that in every scene with Ridley and snails, there's a lot of what is supposed to be comedic banter and like, you know, comedic back and forth and zany character gags. Uh, and I'm trying to be generous, but most of it does not work very well. And it is rarely very funny. Yeah.

So they have decided that they are going to get their revenge by breaking into the stronghold of some of the most powerful and dangerous people on the planet. Okay. Yes. And they're going to steal from them. All right. Sounds good. Sounds like a good plan.

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Visit iBrands.com or call 1-844-9-iBrands for more information. So from here, we move on to a scene that looks like it was filmed in the opera house in Amadeus. It's like a beautiful interior location. But this is the Council of Mages, and it's got box seats full of old men in cloaks. And there appears to be a sort of floor debate going on between Profion and a guy who's sort of Empress Savina's ally named Asmath. So

So, uh, there are a lot of old men yelling in the background, but basically the gist of the scene is that Profion is saying the Empress is going to dissolve the council of mages and seize power for herself. He explains that she wants to do this because of her naive belief that she can bring justice and equality to all the people. And then as math tries to, to calm him down, he's like, Oh no, no, no. In time with our council, she will come to see why things cannot be changed. Um,

And then Profion says, maybe so, but is that a risk you are willing to take? Her revolutionary ideas have already taken root among the people. In time, her influence will grow. As the months go by, she will learn to master the powers of her scepter. And when she does, I have no doubt she will use it to enforce her changes upon us.

And so, you know, they're they're arguing about this political situation. But I feel like we need to go one step of we need to go one step back. What is the Council of Mages do? Like, what are its powers and agenda currently? Yeah. What are the checks and balances? Right.

Anyway, Profion urges the council to vote to remove the scepter from the Empress's control and destroy the threat of revolution forever. Is this supposed to be the scepter that he was already trying to use in the scene before? I think I become increasingly confused about scepters in this movie. It starts out so clear, like there's the scepter. It's got a green gem on it, trying to use it to control the dragons. But then there's talk of her scepter. Later on, there's a skeleton with a scepter.

That's the rod. Oh, that's the rod. That's the rod. Okay. But I found myself confused at multiple times, like rod, scepter, multiple scepters, multiple rods. I don't know. Only a fool would confuse a rod with a scepter.

And then also we get a scene where we meet the Empress somewhere else in the castle. So Thora Birch is, she's the Empress. She's kind of goth in this scene, but in a later scene, she's got some,

Are they cool? Yeah, I guess. Cool, cool, weird costumes in this movie. And this, this scene, she's kind of goth with like pins stuck in her hair. Later on, she'll be in like bizarre gold chain mail. She looks more comfortable here for sure. Yes. But this scene was actually shot in a very beautiful location. Once again, I think this must be some kind of cathedral or Basilica somewhere. This doesn't look like a movie set. Yeah.

Anyway, she's being advised by a kindly older mage named Vildan, and he explains that the mages are afraid of her because she believes in freedom and equality for all the people. And so they're trying to limit her power, and he's got a way for her to outsmart the mage council and get the upper hand, and that is to acquire the rod. You know, the rod. Oh, yeah, the rod.

It's the MacGuffin, the main MacGuffin of the movie. She's got to acquire the Rod of Savriel, which controls dragons. But unlike her scepter, it controls red dragons. Here's what I was talking about. In the scene, they don't explain it. Is this something that the audience is supposed to understand? Because it's just like, oh, red dragons. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah.

By the way, I want to add that it does kind of feel like every NPC we encounter has a name made up on the fly by the DM, where the DM's like, and then the mage introduces his name as Vildan. Vildan is his name. Let me write that down so I'll remember it later. The exact same thought. The naming game is not strong here. Vildan. Yes. Profion. Yeah.

Anyway, Profion overhears this conversation with the help of a little magical spy creature. Is this supposed to be a mephit, you think? Yes. I did not make this connection, but my kid did. They were like, oh, a mephit.

I think that could be right. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, so he's got a little like spy, a little gray spy demon that runs around peeping on things and then he knows immediately. So Jeremy Irons is like, I must have the rod of Savriel. He says with one wave of it, he's going to be able to topple the Empress and bring down that useless council of idiots with her. So...

He sends Damodar to the magic school to steal the scroll that shows the location of the Rod of Savriel from Vildan and then kill Vildan too.

So here's where our characters start kind of colliding with each other. So Ridley and Snails, they sneak into the magic school to steal things in the night. Of course, they're using rope and grappling hooks. You know, they're rogues. That's what you do. They make a lot of jokes about how Snails, I think, is afraid of heights, which is not great for a rogue. Yeah.

Well, you know, rogues can always go under or through. They don't have to go over. I guess that's true. And then there's some gags here with, like, big foam dragon teeth and magical boxes of illusions and stuff. Meanwhile, in the room next door, we meet another character. This is Vildan's assistant, Marina, who is a young mage in training. Yes, her name is Marina, like the place where boats go. And...

Marina is very intelligent, but she is also snobby and condescending to non-mages. So Vildan and Marina are looking for the scroll that says where the rod is because, you know, you got to get the rod. And eventually they find it, but they are interrupted when Marina catches Ridley and Snails in the middle of like loading up their loot sacks. She ties them up with a magical lasso, but then is interrupted once again when Damodar shows up to kill Vildan and take the scroll.

So, uh, Damodar kills Vildan and Marina escapes through a magical portal. The first of many, uh, with the scroll inadvertently pulling Ridley and snails along behind her with the lasso. This portal takes them out into the streets of the city below. Uh, and then while running through the streets pursued by the bad guys, our three young heroes bump into a dwarf warrior who I believe is sleeping in a big compost heap.

Yes, because according to this film, that's what dwarfs do. They drink, they eat, they don't brush their teeth, and they sleep on piles of garbage. On compost, yeah. So now our three heroes, and then now also the dwarf fighter who we will come to learn is named Elwood.

They all dive down into a drain pipe in the sewer to escape as Damodar closes in. So Elwood is just a member of the party now. It's that fast. They just bump into him in some garbage and now he's part of the party. That was his call to adventure was just somebody bumped into him. Now we're hanging out.

And here's where we get one of Bruce Payne's most unbelievable line deliveries. I wrote down exactly what it is. He says, post brigades at every sewer entrance and exit. I want them found now. But you would just not believe how he says that. He says it like it's his only line in the film. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, later, we learn that Marina has been framed for the murder of her teacher and the four heroes decide that they've got to work together. Yeah.

Oh, and then here's where we get that great ludicrous scene where Jeremy Irons punishes Bruce Payne for letting them escape. So he puts CGI snakes in Bruce Payne's ears. I don't know. How would you describe the parasite implantation scene? Yeah, I don't know. Weird CGI creature. I'm not sure how it gets in exactly. Like, does he shove it in his mouth? No.

I don't know. He's like zaps it into him somehow, but then we see it like running around underneath his skin and then it comes up to his ears and his ears get all swollen and then the snakes pop out of his ears and he looks unhappy. Yeah. As far as I

no, this is not something, maybe something in D&D. There are a lot of creatures in D&D, and this is not one I'm familiar with in any case. But, I mean, the CGI is not the best, but it's also not the worst, even by this movie's standards. And Payne does a good job selling the otherworldly pain of having this creature inside his head. And I have to say, you included a very nice

a screenshot here where Jeremy Irons is looming behind him and you have these like the ossuary structures like crowning his head like thought like horns of like skeletal horns it's it's really cool yeah oh yeah another actually great interior location here but yeah for a ridiculous scene and it's like he's being punished with a fate worse than death for like a minor screw up yeah yeah

Oh, we also learned here that the Empress's tracker Norda is in pursuit of the scroll as well. So this is how we're going to work what seems like a ranger character. And yeah, yeah, she's a ranger. And he's like, just follow her. This just got a lot easier. Also, that's that's why I put the snake in your head so we can follow the tracker.

Uh, so now we go to a bar, which is basically the Mos Eisley Cantina scene. Uh, we just see a lot of people, a lot of different kinds of creatures running around drinking, uh, you know, zany antics, people just dancing, just kind of dancing like they're at a club kind of, it doesn't necessarily look like the medieval aesthetic of a dance.

dance going on it's a weird scene because some of the creatures just look like dudes in face paint others look like like serious attempts to create something like goblins or orcs yeah and others look like they jumped off the page of the garden of earthly delights you know yes yeah yeah this is also the scene where they're trying to figure out how much chicken they can fit in elwood's beard yes and the answer is a lot

Yeah. So he's trying to tell stories while he's eating like a chicken hole. You know, that's the joke. Like you just take the whole chicken and shove it in your face. But they seem so our heroes seem to have arrived at a consensus that they can find the Rod of Savriel themselves and that they need to do this. And this appeals to Marina because she's going to be able to clear her name. And then the others are tempted by the idea of a financial reward from the Empress when they deliver it to her.

And there's a lot more banter and open mouth chewing related comedy. I was trying to think major takeaways from the scene are like there's class antagonism. Marina insults Ridley and snails for being criminals. And they try to explain to her the concept of honor among thieves. That's where this comes in. She's like, well, commoners really are common, it seems. And Elwood Elwood wants golden chicken and.

Uh, and so it becomes clear that, uh, Ridley has a crush on Marina. Uh, so they kind of, even though they argue, they, they don't part ways. They're kind of drawn together and they figure out how to do some kind of magic teleportation into, uh,

uh, inside the scroll. I don't remember exactly what's going on there. Uh, but also in the scene snails meets Norda, the Empress's ranger, you know, she's very, uh, very kind of stoic and keeps the cards close to the chest. Uh, but he, he goes up and tries to buy her some wine and like whispers to the bartender, like make it your cheapest wine. Um, but then, uh,

This scene is ended when Damodar and his soldiers show up. And this is going to be a pattern throughout the film where there's just like a scene that ends because Damodar arrives. That just happens over and over and over. Yes. I mean, it's not the worst structure to have, I guess, in a story. But yeah, it is definitely the pattern. Elwood cleverly covers their escape by flipping over a table and shouting, bar fight. Yeah. And everyone obeys. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, anyway, later Ridley and Marina, they teleport like back out of the scroll and now they know what the next leg of the quest is. Somehow they know that they've got to get into the temple of dragons so they can get the rod and to get into the temple of dragons, they've got to have a magic artifact called the eye of the dragon, which

which is held by Xylus, the boss of the thieves guild in a different city called Antaeus. You catch all that, you get in all these details. You're supposed to write this on the back of your character sheet and then you can refer back to it and then check them off as you get them. It's like, okay, first we got to get the eye. Then we need to get there. Okay. Yeah. So that's where they're going next. Um, and then they show like a couple of the nicest looking things in the movie are just random, like zoomed out location shots.

So there's one going into Antaeus that doesn't look too bad. It's kind of interesting. It's like showing these big kind of fortified castles up on these spires of rock rising above a valley with bridges spanning out to them. Yeah, it looks really cool. I don't really get the sense that the place we then go to is in fact this location. No, it doesn't look like it.

But would have been neat to go there. There's a lot of goofing around when our heroes arrive. They go to the marketplace and they just see weird people and creatures. And it's like, oh, I'm, you know, I'm getting distracted from our mission by various things. Yeah. Our mage momentarily looks at some jewelry that's being sold by a vendor. And the dwarf says, if I don't get to drink, you don't get to shop. Like, oh, my God. Oh, boy.

And eventually they talk their way into a meeting with Zylus at the Thieves Guild, played by Richard O'Brien. And Marina, when they go in, Marina says to Justin Whalen, she's like, so this is it, right? Everything a thief strives for? And Ridley says, yeah. So what a thief strives for is to live in like a Baroque salon room.

with purple walls, gold furniture, rugs and pillows everywhere, and lots of weird people lounging about in various states of dress, and also somebody to feed you grapes. Yeah, and he really, Richard O'Brien's character comes off more as like king of the circus as opposed to like prince of thieves. Yeah, yeah, I agree.

there is a showbiz element to him that doesn't quite feel like the Thieves Guild. Yeah, yeah. Everything feels a little off with this character and this presentation and this whole scene. Again, none of this is like Richard O'Brien's fault. It's just, I don't know, things didn't come together right. And then we also have that weird purple-headed guy. Yeah, with the third eye. With the third eye and also just like...

some very strong overacting under T-Salt had makeup that was just distracting. Every time he was on the screen, I was just trying to figure out what choices led us to this. So thoughts on Richard O'Brien's performance. He's not hamming it up with quite the rocket fuel intensity of Jeremy Irons, but I think he is having fun with this goofy role. He's sort of a

pale, greasy, human eel version of Jabba the Hutt. But he's got this wide, ingratiating smile. He does some casual sexual harassment of Marina. He's a little off. He makes some vaguely threatening comments at them. But then eventually a deal emerges. He's like, okay, there's a thing called the Antaeus Guild Maze. It's sort of a deadly obstacle course full of traps and

And if Ridley can make it through, he's going to get the dragon's eye. And OK, they make a deal. So I'm not going to narrate solving the maze. But anyway, Justin Whalen has to solve and avoid some Indiana Jones traps to get the prize at the end of the course.

And I was, I wonder if this, maybe British listeners can chime in on this. I wonder if this whole thing is a reference to the Crystal Maze game show that I know Richard O'Brien was one of the hosts of. Oh, I know nothing of that. I mean, it's certainly nothing I've ever seen, but I'm just familiar with it from being familiar with Richard O'Brien's work over the years.

Now, at the end of this whole sequence, Xylus tries to betray them. So it seems the prize that Justin Whalen retrieved from the end of the maze was the artifact that he wanted. And Xylus has never been able to get this out of the maze before. So he tries to steal it from Ridley, but they are interrupted by the arrival of Dominar once again, once again. And yet again, a big fight breaks out and our heroes, except for Marina, are able to escape because of the fight. Marina gets captured.

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Later, our heroes regroup in the woods and they are caught by Norda, the ranger, the tracker who works for the Empress. Here's where you get a good look at her armor. And it's funny. It's like very reflective. I don't know. It just looks like glinting even in the dark of the forest. Yeah, very form-fitting plate armor. If you've ever seen any...

fantasy illustration of a female woman in armor. You know exactly what they're going for here. So she's trying to arrest them and take them back, take them and the scroll back to the Empress. But in this encounter, instead, she learns of the treachery of Profion, and then she reports back to Thora Birch via a magical Zoom call. Yeah.

And the Empress commands Norda to instead work together with these people and seek out Damodar and acquire the rod. You must get the rod. Everybody wants the rod. So Norda is now on the same team as our heroes.

Now, Marina, of course, has been captured and there's like an interrogation scene where Bruce Payne comes in with his blue lips and he's like, you know, oh, I don't necessarily want to overthrow the Empress, but I have no choice. I've got ear snakes. And she's like, he's like, can you help me? And she says, no, I don't. I don't know how to help you.

And then he gets real mad and he says, he's like, well, I can suck the information I need out of your brain with my ear snakes. And then he does it. He gets the info he needs, which I think was basically like, where are you going? Yeah.

And then we're back with our heroes in Norda where they're continuing their journey. We eventually find out they're going to come rescue Marina. And this is where you get that exchange between Norda and Snails where it's like, how old are you? I'm 234. Yeah, reasonably good joke there. So it's time for a rescue. They get to the fortress where Marina's being held and Snails and Ridley sneak in with the grappling hooks. This is the part where they say, Ridley, look, beholders. Yeah.

And then there's just like a long shot with like, there are some vaguely purple looking things in the distance. Like what those, the purple blobs way far away. Yeah. I mean, it almost feels like, like the, the digital team was like, you know, we can, we can throw some beholders into one of these scenes and you can do some added voiceover about it. And they're like, yeah, let's do it. But it's,

if you're not familiar with them, listeners, these are hideous floating head like beings with numerous eyes on stalks and one central eye. Um, they're incredibly dangerous, uh,

creatures to run into in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. They're very evil. They're like super paranoid. They don't do grunt work guarding castles. There are some other like Beholder related creatures like spectators that I guess you could maybe have in that role. But Beholders are not doing that work.

Beholders are not going to just be casually encountered. And more to the point, there's like central Dungeons & Dragons IP. These are things that are almost instantly recognizable as Dungeons & Dragons creations. So it's kind of neat that they're included as an Easter egg here, I guess. But also just...

they totally don't make the most out of a beholder appearance. Yeah. Nobody fights one. They, they like throw a bone essentially to make one run off after it. And then they sneak in. Then, uh, then our two rogues split up, uh, snails goes into Damodar's room and he gets, he falls into like a, uh,

pit of quicksand disguised as a rug. Is this something from D&D? It may very well be. I did like the effect here because this is a practical effect. They did some sort of like a painting on top of like a movie quicksand situation and he sinks into it. So I did like this.

Yeah, I thought it looked good. He sinks into a bunch of oatmeal and is gross looking. And then, of course, Damodar comes in and attacks snails. He says something like, he's like, just like all thieves, always taking things that don't belong to you. Like, that's a really good dig against a thief. It's true. It's true, though. They're always doing it. Yeah.

And they fight and, you know, snails before he's always being cowardly. He actually gets some good slashes in on Damodar. And then he runs away. And then we see Damodar like pursuing him at a steady March, like Jason Voorhees. Meanwhile, Ridley rescues Marina from a dungeon. They fight their way out. And we get one of those scenes where so many movies in the nineties like this, a scene where the girl hits a guard with a stick and the boy says, nice. Nice.

you know? Uh, and then, uh, you gotta have that. And then Demodar, uh, corner snails at a dead end on the castle grounds and they fight and it's brutal. Demodar beats him up and like breaks his bones. We hear broke bones, cracking and crunching. And then Ridley and Marina show up to the rescue and,

And I was like, okay, okay, Snail's going to be okay. They're going to help him. And then, nope, he just gets murdered. Damodar kills him. Like, this is off tone. Something, I don't know, it didn't feel like that was supposed to happen. Yeah, yeah, the tone on this choice is a little off. But, yeah, kills him dead. And, you know, ending possibilities aside, like, he's super dead. He mostly stays dead.

Also, then Bruce Payne stabs Ridley with the sword. And just when he's about to finish him off, Marina saves the day by zapping Damodar with pink magic and then teleporting them away to somewhere else once again. Yes. So that encounters over R.I.P. snails. There's a brief interlude where we get to see the Empress giving a very wooden speech at the mages council about the people. Yeah.

about Profion's treachery. And she says, she says, Profion is trying to take all the power for himself. Profion accuses her of the same. They go back and forth. And it's weird energy because it's like Jeremy Irons frothing at the mouth versus an introverted teenager. Yeah, this, this scene just...

I mean, Jeremy Irons is super amusing as always. But yeah, I just felt bad for Thora Birch because like this, it just feels like like two completely different planets of acting going on here. And she does not look comfortable.

elsewhere, our heroes reach their destination. Uh, this is the part where I was saying it's one of the best looking things in the movie. Kind of like, I'm not sure exactly what this is, but it looks to me like a hand painted background. Uh, it's basically, you know, it's like a big drooping, uh, kind of giant tree with a bunch of glowing lights in it. Uh, it's a little bit Thomas Kinkade, Lothlorien, a little bit Ewok village on indoor, but with some dark magic, uh,

And it may be very pretty, but we are not ready to yub nub yet because the quest is not complete.

Now, when they arrive, there's an elf played by Tom Baker with short blonde hair who heals Ridley by zapping him. And then Tom Baker says a bunch of things. He says he's just kind of talking out of nowhere. I don't think this is prompted by anything. He's like, the elven peoples do not require spells to work with magic. You use magic. We are part of it, as are all living creatures, including dragons. Sadly, humans see only their destructive powers.

And then Ridley wakes up. He explains he had a bad dream where he saw a dragon being born. And then Tom Baker explains that magic is the life force of nature. It keeps everything around us alive. So if the dragons were to be destroyed, it would, that would destroy the fabric of magic and with it all life. And at this point I was like, wait, who is this guy? Do they even say who he is?

I was just so pleased that Tom Baker had finally shown up and there was some captivating acting happening on the screen. I was like, yeah, I trust you completely, whoever you are.

After this, so of course Ridley is healed. And then there's that dark night of the soul scene I mentioned earlier where like Ridley and Marina are, they're arguing about whether the Empress's plan to help the common people is worth putting faith in. And at one point Marina says that Ridley is what snails died for. But also Marina says that she now understands why the common people, why non mages are worth fighting for.

And then Justin Whalen's like, you know, for a mage, you're pretty smart. And then big old kiss. But of course, there's a little naked CGI demon looking on the methods there again. So we're gearing up for the final showdown. Our heroes are given some magical weapons. Ridley gets a silver sword. An elf says it will protect him.

Uh, I do kind of like these costumes we see. I don't know who these elves are. I guess they're like wood elves of some sort, but they look like Texas chainsaw elves. They've got Ed Gain masks on. Yeah. They, they look a little disturbing, don't they? Uh, it's weird that a lot of the best looking visual stuff, and I'm not saying it's that great, but the best stuff is like hidden away in the final third of the movie. Mm-hmm.

But we get a scene where Ridley has to go into a dungeon alone to retrieve the rod before Belloc, I mean, before Damodar gets it. And he's tempted by many treasures in the treasure room, but then he thinks better of it before removing anything. So he's like going to steal some gold, but then he's like, no, I shouldn't do this. He puts it back down and he says, sorry, snails. Like snails would have wanted me to steal this.

But he talks to a skeleton covered in cobwebs who identifies himself as Savriel, the creator of the rod. Oh, yeah. Now he says, be warned. Anyone who wields the power of the rod must suffer a horrible fate. And I think he says that the rod must be destroyed or its wielder will be destroyed.

And then like absolutely out of nowhere, we just like cut to Jeremy Irons back in the city, back in Sumdahl. And he's screeching, the Empress has called out her dragons upon us. We see the dragons flying through the sky and attacking the tower. He's like, destroy them.

So here we kind of go into action movie mode. A lot of the rest of the movie is just people fighting CGI dragons, uh, people shooting giant ballistas at them, zapping them with magic buildings, exploding with dragon fire and dragons versus dragons. Uh, there's like one part where a dragon gets zapped and it falls out of the sky and it gets impaled on a spire on top of a tower. The camera really lingers on this and it looks bad.

And then of course a bunch of people are fighting for control of the rod. So like Ridley brings it out of the dungeon. Then Damodar steals it from Ridley and company. Then Ridley escapes and his friends, they portal back to where Damodar is. And then they steal the rod back from Profion.

Now, is it just one point each time you acquire the rod, or how does the scoring work here? Very good question. Yeah, how does the experience—they're really racking up a lot of EXP at the very end here. And so there's a final fight that's like Ridley versus Profion, and there is a line where Jeremy Irons says, Not so talented, eh, Mr. Ridley? Yeah.

I think the movie, The Talented Mr. Ripley, had just come out like the year before. Yes, yep, 1999. Solid movie. Always a gamble to reference a better movie in your movie.

So Ridley is Ridley gets hold of the rod at one point and he's like, okay, now I'm going to use the rod. That's been the whole point of the story. We got to get the rod so we can use it against profion. But then he has a tempted by the ring moment. He like holds it up and you can see him grinning with all the power he has now. It's like flowing into him and he looks at the dragons and

And you see him realizing what's happening, that he's being tempted, and he turns away from the power of the ring or from the power of the rod, and he refuses it. He says, I won't become you, referring to Profion, and then he smashes the rod with his sword. Foolishly, I thought he was going to give in for a second there. And I was like, there's more to this kid than I thought. Maybe he's got it in him. No, he doesn't have it in him.

So anyway, he smashes it and then they're still fighting Profion. At one point, Profion summons a, I think like a ghost bone dragon to attack the Empress. It just kind of like climbs on her back and makes her squat down. Yeah.

But the Empress uses her gold scepter against Profion, and that, like, makes all the gold dragons that are flying around come and eat Profion. Like, one eats him like the T-Rex eats the guy off the toilet. And going back to our earlier discussion, yes, it does make sense that she would command gold dragons instead of red dragons, because gold dragons are good, red dragons are bad. But also, I mean, dragons in Dungeons & Dragons are not just, you know,

you know, beasts. They're highly intelligent. So, I don't know. There's a whole discussion we could have here. Yeah. They're treated more like beasts here. Like, you just kind of boss them around and they do what you say.

Um, and then the dragons fly away in the end and now it seems like, yeah, everything's good. You know, every, all the problems are fixed. Um, we get, we're like cutting away and then we see, we don't even see off screen. We hear the Empress in voiceover saying, this is a direct quote, people of Izmir. I do declare that you are now all equal. Let the celebration begin. Yeah.

That was so easy. And then they were good. Why didn't you say that from the beginning? Yeah. So here's a question. How many levels do you think these characters accrued during the run of the film here? Because they feel like they start off at level two and maybe cap it around level three. I don't feel like there's a tremendous amount of growth.

That's funny. I was going to say, I was going to say they spend most of the movie at level two. And then in the last 10 minutes, they go from level two to level nine. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, they get some some high powered magical weapons. That's for sure.

Do we ever see our magic users learning additional spells? I don't think so. Do we see them throw dust around? I mean, at least there are some spell components in the mix, but that's about all we see. I don't think we think we see any magical books, really. Do we see anybody reading from a tome of magic or a scroll? No.

Not that I recall. Certainly not to learn a spell. I mean, there is a library full of scrolls at the beginning, but... Yeah, I mean, it can be disappointing if the prop department can't really meet your needs on that. I mentioned The Color of Magic earlier in the picture, which has a great cast. And of course, I love the work of Terry Pratchett. But as memory serves, there's a magical book that shows up in that picture that...

They just didn't make it look believable enough for me to be like a tome of ancient magic. Like, it looks like they were really rushed creating it. So it's kind of a gamble there. The props department has to be able to meet you on any of these requests for sure. It's just a paperback of how to win friends and influence people. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, but we also alluded to this. There's some kind of code. There's some kind of happy coda where they go to snails as grave and then they like put the Ruby on it and it lights up. And then it's like, oh, snails is still alive if we go somewhere else. And then they turn into they turn into magic and fly away. I mean, it is true in Dungeons and Dragons. There's always a way to bring a character back.

You know, it's a multiverse. There are all sorts of resurrection spells. There's no reason that a fun character needs to stay dead forever. So Snails will return, but actually he won't.

but snails could return. You could all go home and roll up a snails and tell your dungeon master, Hey, I'm changing characters. Snails from two thousands, uh, dungeons and dragons is now entering our campaign. Our, our party is snails, uh, profion, um,

And I was going to say Elwood, but like, what's the funny twist on it? Like, what if Elwood became a vegetarian and he was always just getting seitan in his beard? Yeah. Yeah. Seitan and beets. Yeah. These are good choices to have. You know, you need choices like this for your character. It gives you some some shtick to fall back on during all the small moments of a campaign.

All right. Is that all we've got on Dungeons & Dragons 2000 for now? I mean, there's so much more we could say. Every scene with Jeremy Irons is like a masterclass in overacting and hamming it up. There are so many weird choices, digital effects that don't really come together. And yet at the same time, some admirable practical effects, some admirable sets, and certainly some really cool interior locations.

I would say it's, it's, it's, this is not a movie for everyone. I'm not encouraging everyone to go out and watch this movie in its entirety, but everyone must see the first 15 minutes. The emperor has decreed it.

All right. So that is 2000s Dungeons and Dragons. Hope you enjoyed it. I think it was a solid choice for our 200th film selection here on Weird House Cinema. So now we just have to chug on and eventually start thinking about the 300th film. We will not do the movie 300. We will not do 300. It's true.

All right. So we're going to go and close this episode out, but we'd love to hear from everyone out there. We know that there are multiple listeners who are Dungeons and Dragons enthusiasts, and you may have additional insight on what's happening and what's not happening in this film. Likewise, if you have thoughts on anything we've referenced in passing, different Dungeons and Dragons locations, Dungeons and Dragons novels, what are your favorites? Because I really haven't

Geez, I don't know that I've ever read one myself. I'm familiar with them, but I never picked one up. So if I were to pick one up, which one would it be? These questions and more, write in with your answers.

Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed on Thursdays and Tuesdays. And then on Wednesdays, we do a short-form episode. But on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film here on Weird House Cinema. If you want to see a list of all the films we've covered over the years, go to letterboxd.com. You'll find us there. Our username is Weird House. And we have a nice list of everything we've covered, all 200 film selections listed

And we're going to start looking ahead at the future. Sometimes you can peek ahead and see what's coming up the following week. Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com.

Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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Weirdhouse Cinema: Dungeons and Dragons (2000)

Stuff To Blow Your Mind

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Stuff To Blow Your Mind

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Weirdhouse Cinema: Dungeons and Dragons (2000)