“LET THEIR BLOOD RAIN FROM THE SKY!”
This is gonna be a good one, isn’t it?
Welcome back to D&D movies, a series in which
I take a look at films of questionable quality
that made use of the Dungeons and Dragons license.
Next up on our list is the 2000 film, simply
titled Dungeons and Dragons.
This is the big one, the grand daddy, the
one most notorious among D&D fans
and connoisseurs of bad movies alike.
The film so terrible that it ruined the reputation of 
D&D movies for the next 20 years after its release.
It earned itself scathing reviews, terrible
film scores, and inclusions on lists of the
worst movies of all time.
“Nice!”
Given that I’m doing this series on Dungeons & Dragons movies, there was no way I could skip over it.
"My.... DESTINY!"
I could probably make an hour long video 
just on this movie, but my doctor
warned me about my blood pressure,
so I’m restraining myself.
Besides, this movie’s been covered to death
on YouTube already, so I won’t be going
into too much detail here.
He says in a twenty minute video…
But trust me when I say that this film
is a tarrasque-sized pile of sh*t.
“Really? Show it to me!”
I hadn’t seen it in almost 20 years, but
I remember that even as an excited young nipper
who’d barely dipped his fingers into 2nd
Edition Advanced D&D, this movie was both
a massive letdown and a waste of the £2.99
I paid to rent it from Blockbuster.
Oh God, I feel old...
It’s notoriety means that it’s already
been thoroughly dissected and picked apart.
There’s so much to comment on that it’s
honestly hard to know where to begin.
Starting with the most basic stuff, the amount
of continuity errors and revealing mistakes
is utterly ridiculous.
I’ve seen first-time DM’s campaign notes
more consistent than this.
Just look at all the other examples that have
been catalogued on the IMDB page.
I mean, Christ! That is not a good sign.
Given how amateurish the production comes
off as, I was amazed to learn that the
budget was an estimated 35-45 million dollars.
What the hell did they spend the money on?
Certainly not the props, cheap and flimsy
as they are, like they bought them from a
local costume shop on the morning of the shoot.
Or the CGI, which is awful.
This came out five years after Dragonheart
and one year before Shrek.
This is embarrasing.
And when they use it for establishing shots,
these wouldn’t look out of place in a video
game from the same era.
But the script alone would be enough to condemn
it to the lowest of the Nine Hells.
The dialogue - where it isn’t hammy - is
stilted, inane and stupid.
It’s not funny where it wants to be, and
*is* funny where it wasn’t trying to be.
And whenever it gets serious,
you can’t take it seriously.
There aren’t as many tropes and
stock characters as Dragonlance,
but there’s still enough to be noticeable.
I will say though, that as terrible as the
film is, it does qualify as so-bad-it’s-good.
Much of that comes down to Jeremy Irons, 
whose performance as the evil wizard Profion,
single-handedly saves the movie.
“You don’t like that do you?! Good! I
can use every ounce of your rage!"
"EKEKEKEKEK!”
How can you not love it?
When he was asked why he did
this to himself, he replied,
"Are you kidding? I'd just bought a castle,
I had to pay for it somehow!"
I mean, fair play to him.
We all gotta do what we gotta do, you know?
Coming in at a close second is Bruce Payne,
who takes his role as Profion’s henchman
Damodar so seriously.
He tries way too hard to appear threatening,
and everything he does is so over the top
and melodramatic, it’s brilliant.
Although that lipstick is really distracting.
I kept thinking he was late for a rainbow party.
And can we just take a second to acknowledge
what a great name “Bruce Payne” would
be for an “adult performer”?
The other major characters and their actors
are far less redeemable.
The protagonist, Riddley, is boring and unlikeable.
I would say he wouldn’t be out of place
in a young adult/teen novel,
but that’d be insulting to the genre.
He’s a loveable devil-may-care thief
who isn’t lovable.
Imagine a rogue multi-classed with an idiot.
And then there’s Snails.
Oh boy...
Snails - who’s name is never explained - is what
happens when you make *everything* your dump stat.
“Is that all?”
“HAVE YOU LOST YOUR DAMN MIND?!”
Some people have complained that this black
sidekick is a callback to racist stereotypes of old,
and I can certainly see why they’d say that.
"I don't know about you, but this sound 
like a pretty bad idea to me!"
I expected him to start saying things like:
“Dayum! Shit! And “That is whack!”
“Dayum!”
Oh. Okay then.
But even if it wasn’t he’d
still be annoying as f*ck.
In some places, he was clearly trying to emulate
Chris Rock in The Fifth Element,
without realising that Ruby Rod was supposed
to be an irritating diva, whereas he’s meant
to be an endearing sidekick,
so it backfired and just made him more unlikeable.
“I hate when you say that. BZZZZ!”
Everything that comes out of his mouth makes
me feel like I’m suffering the effects of
Vicious Mockery.
*Annoying scream*
I’ve heard reports that people cheered in
the cinemas when he got killed off.
And I fully believe them.
“I’m Damodar!”
Is he in this… to appeal to the kids?
Kinda like Jar-Jar Binks was?
The similarities are disturbing.
Moving on,
Marina is an insufferable mage who exists
to get on my tits and to have a forced romance
with Riddley that fits as well as a round
fist in a square anus.
Thora Birch was perhaps the hardest done-by
in her role as the Empress.
On the back of an incredible performance in
the previous year’s American Beauty,
she’s reduced to a singularly dismal performance,
phoning it in while appearing to read off
cue cards with all the emotion of wet firewood.
“That you would find the wisdom to see that
the path I propose of Izmir is the right one.”
Maybe it was the lack of direction
or good material to go with,
or she just didn’t give a sh*t,
or maybe working with Kevin Spacey
was really that traumatic.
On the whole, the acting is not great, and
the delivery subpar, to put it charitably.
And aside from the name and some very 
superficial, underdeveloped elements,
the film has very little to do with
Dungeons and Dragons,
and hardcore fans of the game’s lore will be pretty pissed by some of what’s on display here.
Like I said, it has its moments, but for the
most part, it’s an insult to the license.
It seems like Dungeons and Dragons
was doomed from the start.
A legal battle between director Courtney Solomon
and Wizards of the Coast meant that production
of the film had to start abruptly.
Solomon, who owned the rights to the
film, didn’t even want to direct
and had never directed before,
but was forced to after Lorraine Williams, the
head of TSR, vetoed his choices of candidates,
which included - if you can believe it - Francis
Ford Coppola and James Cameron.
In a later interview, Solomon recounted that
at a meeting with James Cameron in 1993,
Williams folded her arms and asked him:
“What are your qualifications
to direct this film?”
At this point, Terminator 2
had been out for two years.
Oof.
“That’s a terrible way to do business.”
Given this background, it’s no wonder
the movie was such a clusterf*ck.
And now we’re gonna see how
much of a clusterf*ck it is.
“I SAID FOLLOW ME!”
The opening narration establishes the setting
as the Empire of Izmer,
in which the mages rule and 
peasants are kept in their place.
The Empress wants more equality, but 
Profion thinks that’s communism,
so he’s trying to gain the power to control
dragons so he can usurp her.
His efforts go about as well as the film does.
We’re then introduced to our protagonists.
Unfortunately.
The dragon’s blood sets the river on fire, and
wanting to give the mages some payback for it,
Riddley decides to break into the magic school,
which given the wide variety of nasty traps
and spells available to the mages,
would be where I as the DM say:
“Are you sure you want to do that?”
Profion shows up at the council, now wearing
white, because he’s pretending to be good,
you see?
It’s some very deep symbolism.
He’s trying to persuade the council to take
control of the Empress’s septre,
which she uses to control an army of dragons,
supposedly for the good of the realm.
The Empress woodenly tells her adviser about
her principles, something he’d already know,
so she’s really speaking to the audience,
which is annoying.
Her advisor tells her about the Rod of Savril,
which has the power to control red dragons.
If she had it, she could give up her own septre
without relinquishing her power.
One of Damodar’s imps overhears this, so
Profion sends him to the magic school to subject
the advisor to enhanced interrogation.
The advisor’s assistant Marina finds Riddley
and Snails trying to rob the place,
which was astonishingly easy to break into.
“She must have put some kind of holding 
spell on us with that brace-AH!”
“Yeah, must be the only way she can get 
guys to come home with her!”
“I’d have to put a feeblemind spell on 
myself to want to take you home.”
I’ll bet that joke sounded a lot better
on paper, where it should have stayed.
Her master gives her the scroll he was working
on just before Damodar kills him…
with a little push…
She escapes through a portal dragging
the thieves behind her.
Why doesn’t she let them go and thus lighten
her load and let her escape more easily?
Is she that determined not to
let them go unpunished?
This is what Lawful Stupid looks like.
Before they escape into the sewers, they 
run into a dwarf barbarian,
who decides to tag along with them for money.
His name is Elwood.
Not that we’d know that,
because they never tell us.
He’s stupid and angry, and like Macho Man
Randy Savage but without the charisma or deodorant.
He also complains about everything,
and hates elves, obviously.
AND he’s completely unnecessary.
He doesn’t do anything important and 
could easily have been written out.
Were they just trying to add some racial diversity?
“Post brigades at every sewer entrance and
exit. I want them found… now!”
That delivery though.
Profion’s pretty annoyed that he let them get away,
and so to prevent any more such failures,
he forces Damodar to get quite literally 
skullf*cked by a hentai reject.
Since the gang are now wanted for murder,
they decide that the intelligent course of action
would be to hang around in a crowded public
place for an obligatory tavern scene.
“You know, those red marks there look like the locks my father used to put on the plans of his carriages."
“Alanor Sala badara!”
“Well, at least I-”
So the pre-eminent scholar couldn’t decipher
the scroll, but Riddley is somehow able to
because his dad did something similar, apparently?
What?!
“With an elf? Oh, you gotta be kidding!”
“You gotta get yourself a nice
two-hundred and-fifty-pound dwarf, huh?!.”
“Hair on her chin you can hang on to! HUH! HUH!”
I take everything back. This film is amazing.
“Do not let them escape or you will suffer
a fate far worth than that which hath been
inflicted upon me!”
Could you say that a little slower?
Some of us are having trouble 
keeping us with all this genius.
The dwarf starts a tavern brawl - because
of course there’s a tavern brawl -
during which he and Snails easily escape because
Damodar decided to wait, for some reason.
Snails manages to get Riddley and
Marina out of the scroll,
after which they tell them that the wraith
who lived inside the scroll
- who I guess was cut out for budget reasons
- told them about the Rod of Savril,
and that in order to get it they have to obtain
the Eye of the Dragon from the Guildmaster
of a thieves guild in another city.
Riddley agrees to help Marina find the rod,
because he wants to smash.
And Snails objects pretty hard for a guy who *just* wanted to risk his life for some elven poontang.
But they all agree to go along for the ride
and set off to find the Eye, tracked by the
Elf from the tavern.
The boys want to steal, the dwarf wants to
drink, and Marina wants to go shopping.
Because she’s a woman.
It’s funny because woman like to go shopping.
It’s funny, you guys…
They follow Thanos’s aborted cousin
to the Thieves Guild,
where they’re taken to meet Guildmaster Xylas,
who’s definitely another highlight of the movie.
It’s Richard O’Brien parodying his role as 
presenter of the TV series The Crystal Maze.
I used to think The Crystal Maze was the 
absolute dogs bollocks as a kid,
so I was grinning like a
murderhobo at this point.
And he fits in so well with everything else
in terms of campiness and ridiculousness
that I can’t help but applaud
them for this decision.
“I NEVER JOKE WHEN MAGES
TRESPASS IN MY GUILD!”
Appropriately enough, the Eye is the reward
for getting through his maze, which noone
has so far attempted and lived.
But Riddley manages to get through, after
giving me some Tomb of Annihilation flashbacks.
The Guildmaster goes back on his word, but
Damodar crashes the party just in time.
“I don’t know who you are but be
prepared for a lesson in pain!”
“You must be joking.”
"WAKE ME UP!"
And so another fight breaks out.
WHA-?! HE MISSED IT?!
HE FUCKING MISSED IT! *LAUGH*
AND THEY USED THE TAKE! *LAUGH*
Marina gets captured, and when the others
try to find her, they get captured by elves,
led by the one from the tavern, who reveals
herself to be an agent of the Empress.
That is… not how that image should look!
Damodar interrogates Marina
with his noodly appendages.
If I showed you this scene out of context,
you’d think it was a parody, a porno, or both.
But no. It’s impossible to parody this.
And far from impossible to jerk off to it.
The gang track Damodar back to his castle.
SNAILS: “Riddley look: Beholders!”
Oh yeah. I’d started to forget that this
is meant to be a D&D movie.
This is also the only time they appear, 
which is a bit of a waste.
“Let’s go in!”
“We were not meant to enter this place. 
This task they must complete alone."
Uh, Why? Why must they complete it alone?
There’s not even some vague pre-established
prophecy. She says it based on absolutely nothing.
While Riddley finds Marina and escapes with
her, Snails messes around in Damodar’s quarters,
and falls into a trap.
“Just like you thieves. Always taking
things that don’t belong to you.”
Somebody unironically wrote that.
Just let that sink in.
*Sigh*
We’re barely over the half-way mark and I 
wanna cast Blindness/Deafness on myself.
Snails runs away while Damodar does the 
*Slow Dramatic Villain Walk*
because he’s a *Serious Villain.*
Snails finds himself in a dead end
and gets his ass kicked.
Oh, but they needed to do it
themselves, because reasons.
“NOOOOOOO!”
Pick up the scroll, you f*cking idiots!
Riddley gets badly wounded, but Marina manages
to get hold of spell components and saves him,
before escaping through another portal.
With neither of them having
picked up the scroll…
“Yes, I violate the law in defying the council. But if I were to give you this septre, my crime would be graver yet."
"For I would be defying my conscience, and our people."
She’s sounding remarkably like a tyrant.
I mean, Profion is clearly a villain and
acting for his own reasons,
but letting a sole individual have control
over dragons, however virtuous they may be,
is pretty risky.
She refuses to relinquish that power to Profion,
and he and his supporters don’t like the
idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat,
so the result is civil war.
The gang go to the Elven city, which of course
is in a giant tree, where Riddley gets healed.
Talk about a breastplate.
They get told that using the Rod of Savril
will upset the balance of nature.
They try to have a serious scene between Riddley
and Marina that addresses Snails’ death
and the socioeconomic divide
between the two of them,
but the acting is just not
good enough to carry it.
“Just because some mages does not
mean they all are. I’m not! I’M NOT!”
What the fuck? I think that scared my cat…
See look: she wants to escape.
Aww…
Oh f*ck off!
These two don’t have a single drop
of chemistry to justify this.
In their quest for the Rod,
they head into a dungeon.
Because we’ve had plenty of dragons,
but not many dungeons.
Oh man, I gotta tell you, as a little kid,
I was so hyped up when he said ‘dungeon’.
I was bouncing in my seat.
I was so looking forward to a bit of actual
dungeon crawling complete with loot,
bullsh*t instant death traps, and Mimics.
Which are also bullsh*t.
But there’s not much to it.
He goes in the cave alone, falls down a hole,
opens a door into a treasure room,
talks to a skeleton and retrieves the Rod.
While the other characters stand outside 
and their players go on Tinder.
Also, it’s somewhat weird that the Elven
leader would tell them that messing with the
Rod would threaten to unravel the fabric of nature,
but then just let them go find it without
any further arguments.
I guess he cared about as
much as the writers did.
The Empress summons an army of Gold Dragons
to attack Profion and his followers.
That seems like a drastic escalation.
Who’s supposed to be the bad guy here?
The greenscreens in this whole
section are very noticeable.
And I’ve seen PS1 games
with better special effects.
“What have I done?”
“YEAH!”
How can the Empress lose in this situation?
She’s got an army of dragons.
They have a couple of mages with Fireball
and some scorpions.
She could kill them all very easily.
But she loses *one* dragon and
suddenly decides to pull back?
How else was she expecting to win?
Riddley emerges with the Rod, only to discover
that Damodar has captured the others.
Predictably, he hands over the Rod in exchange
for his friends, and predictably, Damodar
says “F*ck you!”
Damodar teleports to Profion’s tower to
hand over the Rod, with Riddley following
just behind.
And they confront each other in an epic duel while
the two armies of dragons clash in the background.
You have to admire their ambition, I suppose.
With the help of his friends - who have somehow
been able to teleport to the same place,
let's not even ask…
Riddley takes the Rod from Profion and 
almost succumbs to the dark side,
before remembering that he wants to smash.
“It’s over, Profion!”
“The battle may be, Your Majesty.”
“BUT NOT THE WAAAAAAAAAAR!”
Oh God, I love it! I love it so much! I’ve
never been so conflicted about a film!
They all sit there doing nothing while Profion
brings about some impromptu necro-business.
I guess they thought it’d be
cooler to see him getting eaten.
And it would have been.
If it hadn’t looked so horrendous.
The Empress declares that everyone is equal,
whatever that means in socio-political terms,
which I’m sure will be agreed upon by everyone
and cause no further arguments or unrest.
And the ending is ambiguous and 
optimistically open-ending,
but it’s strongly hinting at the probability
of Snails still being alive in some form.
*laugh* They really know how to
give the audience what they wa-
Ah, fuck this movie!
This wasn’t the movie D&D fans were 
expecting, wanted, or deserved.
Pretty much nobody, even those who were directly
involved with it, holds it in high regard.
But the person I feel most sorry for in all
this is Courtney Solomon.
He’d been trying to get this
movie made for ten years,
having acquired the rights to a Dungeons and
Dragons movie when he was only 19,
and had intended only on producing it and
then using it to earn his big break in Hollywood,
not knowing the mountain of behind-the-scenes
issues he’d have to try to surmount.
I can’t help but feel bad for the guy.
And the film really is a testament
to what happens
when ambition and enthusiasm are 
humstrung by unpleasant realities.
In more experienced and talented hands,
perhaps this could have been responsible for
truly bringing D&D into the mainstream
and could have remained an iconic part of
its culture.
But what we got was the opposite,
ensuring that no other Dungeons & Dragons
movie would see a theatrical release for the
next two decades.
"WHAT HAVE YOU DOOOOOOONE!"
There would be further instalments in the
franchise, but low-profile and straight-to-DVD.
And next time, when we take a look at the
first of them, we’ll be greeted by a familiar face.
“You must be joking”
“Don’t hurt her!”
“Then give me the rod!”
*PAINEDGRUNTING*
“Oh, that is whack!”
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