I read some of the Dragonlance books (Chronicles and Legends) for the first time as an adult, and I really enjoyed them. Sure, there are cheesy things that a kid might not catch, but it didn’t spoil my enjoyment. For instance, Tanis seems awfully emo to me, to the point of being funny sometimes, and how many times can they say Raistlin smells like “roses and death?” (About seven million, for those of you who haven’t read the books.)
Not sure why live action is the end-all and be-all of fantasy films. I, for one, would happily take a well done animated movie, if it were, well, well done.
Because in the West animation tends to be the dumping ground for stuff people didn’t want to bother doing right.
Not that live-action is necessarily better, but it sure seems to have a much better shot at it.
-Joe
I re-read the early stuff recently, and the biggest thing to me was that a lot of the writing itself didn’t really hold up that well compared to the stuff Weis and Hickman wrote together later on (and even at their best, they ain’t Shakespeare), but the stories held up excellently and it was still enjoyable. Actually, when you look at that pair as a career, they’re pretty consistently in the Good Fun Light Reading range, and there’s something to be said for that (as well as tons of books to be sold, I imagine).
As for the movie, I am cautiously excited. I’m very happy that it sounds like it’s being done in a more western-style instead of the anime that all fantasy seems to be in. I sort of wish they were going for more voice actors and less stars, but at the same time, the stars help raise the profile to the point where the critical mass of popularity to get more book-movies is more likely to come about. I’ll probably buy it, unless the word is that it really sucks (“sucks only a little” gets my business!).
There are more than normal productions. Only Sutherland (who is inspired casting) and Trachenberg are not voice actors, right?
Umm, no. The authors didn’t like D&D- and other than elves, didn’t care for humanoid races. Other than the “standard dwarves”, most races are silly charictures of the traditional D&D races: kenders are super obnoxious twerps who are constantly stealing and acting like little kids, gnomes are “tinker-Gnomes” and are “mad scientist” types, Gully-dwarves are grubbly slack-jawed morons, etc. There really aren’t any clerics, either. The series did have PLENTY of angst.
When it came out, it was certainly better than other FRP fiction, as the Characters had some depth to them- although angst and comedy relief aren’t really very deep. But since then, more and better FRP fiction has surpassed the original fragonlance novels, and they are painful reading to me.
I’d have to recheck the history in the praface of my Art of Dragonlance collection, but I’m certain that Weis & Hickman were closely related to TSR and the creation of the Dragonlance AD&D gaming modules prior to the novels being written.
Well, there’s Goldmoon, she was the first to revive the healer-cleric.
Happy Scrappy Hero Pup, those are really funny. And Keifer can do a menacing snarl like no one else.
I’d say other than switching Kender for gnome, Miller was pretty accurate.
How is DL not a standard fantasy setting? Elves, sword and sorcery, knights, dwarves, gods, dragons, spirits, ale, large breasted wenches.
It was fun, but it wasn’t exactly worthy of an “Um…” moment.
Well, Lucy Lawless as well. I think “Smallville” when I think of Rosenbaum, but he has a bunch of voice work too now that I look at his IMDB listing.
The only problem with Dragonlance is the backstory: I mean, they basically suggest that the Deity of Goodness and Niceness (and also probably the God of Neutrality for his part) is, well, a complete idiot. No wonder Takhisis keeps winning.
Spoiler about Raistlin:
What kind of moron archmages decided to teach him humility by ruining his health and make him miserable? Yeah, that’s gonna learn him a thing or two. It taught him that all the “good” guys were actually treacherous jerks. Raistlin was a brash, talented young mage. Of course he was a little proud. Trying to deliberately cripple and torture him is one of the most vile things imaginable.
Y’know, I never much liked the Dragonlance books…but you just insulted the hell out of them, putting them in that company. 
When I read this, I had a vision of such a movie. I nearly wept for it, because it can never come to be. Even if it were technically possible, such an overwhelming explosion of awesomeness would surely destroy the world.
Part of it was trying to show Caramon how ambitious and ruthless Raistlin was. If I remember the test correctly, Raistlin appears to see Caramon effortlessly cast a spell that Raistlin has been struggling with. The “real” Caramon then sees Raistlin destroy the fake Caramon in a rage.
I think they also see the seeds of destruction in Raistlin (War of the Twins was a nice trilogy sequel) and were trying to stop him.
I’d be happy about this, except for the respective bodies of work of the director and the screenwriter.
I really, really, really hope that this movie turns out to be good, or at least halfways-decent, but I also predict crap.
At least they aren’t trying this with the Forgotten Realms setting.
Bitch all you want, but that’s pretty classic godly behavior.
Wouldn’t it have been a whole lot less messy and a whole lot less effort if Paladine had just come down to Istar and said to the Kingpriest, “Look, stop it. I’m serious. I’ll blow you to fucking atoms if you don’t quit”?
Besides, wasn’t it Par Salin and the Council that wrecked Raistlin, not the Gods?
-Joe
Since I’m at home now, I’ll follow up on my “Origins of Dragonlance” tale, in very digested and paraphrased form, based on the preface of The Art of the Dragonlance saga
In early 1983, TSR did a survey and decided that its customers wanted more dragons in their products. So TSR decided to crate a dragon-themed line of modules. They took the new guys on staff, Tracy Hickman, and put him in charge of writing the modules. Hickman, and associate Harold Johnson, decided that they wanted more than a “Kill The Dragon of the Month” club and jointly devised the basic plot to the world and created ready-made archtype characters which players could use to jump right into the game: a cleric, fighter, ranger, thief, magic-user, etc. Margaret Weis joined the team late 1983 and was put in charge of starting to develop the novel which would go along with the modules and feature the same characters.
Note that that says “Novel”. TSR wasn’t sure that people would want to read about the adventures of Tanis, Tasslehoff, Rasitlin & Co after they had already played them in the modules. So Dragons of Autumn Twilight was intentionally written to have a definate ending (the defeat of Verminaard & the wedding) but be open ended enough to continue the saga. TSR was hedging their bets and didn’t want to be obligated to put out a second book if the first one bombed.
Anyway, the modules were first available at the August 1984 GenCon and the the novels came out towards the end of the year. And were, needless to say, a success. But the novels were always deeply tied into TSR and AD&D from the very start.
And now you know more about Dragonlance than you ever wanted to. 
Is that direct from the authors, or just your inference from reading the books?
The elves were pretty standard issue, as well. So were half-elves. I don’t recall if the “gnomes as technological innovators” meme originated with Dragonlance or not, but considering how little else they did that was new, I assume not. At any rate, the gnomes hardly factored into the original novels at all, as I recall. Kender were the closest they came to an original creation, which I suppose is an argument in favor of derivativeness. At any rate, I never got the impression from the books that Hickman and Weiss disliked non-human characters. The books might have been better if they did, though: they might have stuck a knife in Tasselhoff in the first book and spared us from his "comic
relief for the rest of the series, to say nothing of the countless spin-off novels where he (or his even-more-poorly-rendered kin) featured prominently.
more Raistlin spoilers:
Yes and no. The Council only cursed him with the hourglass eyes that made it so he saw how time affected all things. He saw things rotting, people aging and dying, etc…His ruined body and health, though, was actualyl a result of Raistlin, during the test, agreeing to take on the soul of Fistandantilus, knowing what it would do to him, in order to have more power.
I think the continent of Taladas would make for a very interesting setting for a movie, as opposed to the continent of Ansalon which is the default Dragonlance setting. Up in Taladas, you have mostly the same races, but they are vastly different. Life in general there is much more brutal. Kender are sly and crafty, not comic relief, and tend to be cruel rather than goodnatured. Elves are nomadic desert people, sort of a mix of Mongols and Fremen. Gnomes invent all sorts of steampunk devices that actually work, unlike their southern cousins. Minotaurs are honorable but also pretty ruthless, and are modeled after the Roman empire at its height.
sturmhauke, what books were those?