I saw it opening day with my two daughters! We made a special trip to see it! And we were not disappointed. I’d raised the girls on MST3K reruns and Rocky Horror, so when the show sucked, we were up to the task of mocking it noisily. Since we were about the only ones in the theater, it didn’t matter.
It is still to laugh at in memory yet green!
That’s another thing! If they really wanted us to believe that this movie was based on D&D, they should have had an underground labyrinth featuring a 60-foot-long huge ancient red dragon stuffed into a 20-foot-by-20-foot room where the only entrance or exit from the room is a 10-foot-wide corridor! Now that’s D&D!
And 10,000,000 pieces of gold could be carried in 5 or 6 packs.
And there was flourescent lights on the ceiling!
I could forgive much, but distracting…a beholder…by throwing a rock…GAH!!! NO, YOU FOOLS! IT HAS 10 EYES! IT CAN STILL SEE YOU!
11 eyes, if you count that big eye in the middle that fires the anti-magic ray.
Have a thing for self-inflicted pain, do you?
Random Movie Fact: the scenes of Jeremy Irons’ laboratory were filmed on location in… urgh, I think the Czech republic. Early in the movie, you can see a chandelier built out of human bones. That’s not a prop: it’s in a cathedral and is made out of real humans. I’ve got a postcard from there that I can’t find right now…
Heh. I should have read the page better. That is the place
Yep, that’s the one. Just my Cliff Claven moment of the day.
Except for the part where I was factually correct, of course.
And what’s with the beholder working with humans? My god, those things are like CR 10 or something (just guessing; I don’t really know). That’s the only movie I’ve ever seen my husband fall asleep in. We walked out of there wondering of Jeremy Irons was actively trying to ruin the movie. He was so far the worst of the bunch (and that’s saying something with that Wayan brother in there) that I think I jumped in surprise when he’d suddenly yell out.
I’ll put in another vote for ‘it was so bad it was good’. One thing that struck me about the ending: I interpreted Our Intrepid Heroes touching the ruby and turning into streaks of light as returning to the real world: they were PCs.
It struck me that the whole movie was a commentary on how silly things would get if the (largely teenage) demographic that plays AD&D were to end up in a Fantasy world as their characters. I may be giving the movie too much credit when I suspect them of making fun of their own target audience, but this is just a bonus. The film was cheesy enough to be funny regardless.
Don’t forget to check out Johnny Angel’s Review of Dungeons & Dragons, right here on the SDMB.
I recall seeing a blurb in a local rag that Irons did the movie because he was trying to restore a castle in Ireland and needed all the dough he could get his hands on.
The scary thing, according to the director, is that everyone was signed to do two sequels. (scary to me. the director thought it was great. poor kid)
Being a Jeremy Irons fan from way back, I couldn’t believe I had missed someone saying he had taken a role simply for the money so I started looking around and found this
But I also found this
(emphasis mine)
Yeah, I had a problem with that… I remember thinking, “Hey, they just saved the day, the empire, the empress’s butt, and every gold piece she ever piled into a huge mountain of gold mountainousness… do ya think maybe she’ll spring for a lousy Raise Dead?”
And then the Elves pay for it themselves. What a cheap empress. She didn’t even pay these guys.
Damn hot elf, though.
I was also mad that the spellcasters were waving around magic pixie dust that cast spells, and they were conveniently whatever spells were needed. Their hold person spell didn’t even work the way it was supposed to.
“Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder. Unfortunately, the rest of the party is in the stomach of the Beholder.”
From Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Gaming
Seemed an appropriate quote somehow…
Normally, I’m a sucker for movies with dragons in them. Normally, seeing a good dragon could make any movie bearable (Even if it does nothing to make the movie good).
But no, nothing could save this movie. Even the dragons. After all these movies with high-quality CGI critters, those are probably the poorest-looking dragons I’ve seen. Neverminding that they took what are supposed to be some of the most intelligent and powerfull creatures in existance and made them dumb animals, and just pawns for the only-slightly-less-dumb main characters.
And was I reading that right? This is the same director that did Total Recal and Robocop? Did someone drug him before he worked on this movie?
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Solomon,%20Courtney
No, the director of the D&D movie was Courtney Solomon. I believe James Cameron did Total Recall and Paul Verhoevan.