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Thursday, January 24, 2008
Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight
Well Cassandra and I stopped by blockbuster to see if anything was worth renting. I saw the Dragonlance animated movie on the shelf. Now I hadn't heard anything about the movie because I don't hang out in Dragonlance fan places online. When I saw that Kiefer Sutherland & Lucy Lawless starred in it, I thought "Wow! Let's give this a try."
For those of you not familiar with the Dragonlance books, it is a fantasy setting similar to a Lord of the Rings world. You have humans, elves, dwarves, a bunch of mythical creatures like dragons, knights and wizards, etc. The world has a polytheistic mythology, like greek or norse myths where the gods are readily involved in the events of mortals. Now what makes this story different is 300 years ago an evil deity tried to take over the world, the people prayed to the good gods, and the good deities saved the day by defeating the evil god. Well the people thought the gods were so handy they asked for their divine intervention for every little thing and one day their selfish ungratefulness made the good gods stop answering their prayers.
So the people turn away from their religions and fall into centuries of hopeless atheism which leads to wars and extreme xenophobia. Well the evil deity, that was vanquished 300 years ago, comes back to find a world ripe for the picking. There are no alliances between the good people and everyone is convinced that the good gods have abandoned them so they are easily overrun with despair.
The main characters are these heroes that went separate was 5 year ago to go on a quest searching for evidence that the good gods are still around. The heroes are very archetypal. They have great dialogue between one another which help you learn their personalities, their back stories, and shows the friendship and almost a family like bound between them.
They have just finished talking about how they didn't find anything when this girl shows up with a staff that miraculously heals people. She explains it's from the gods and they are back but the only people that even try to listen to her are the heroes. So they all join forces to find out about the staff and hope that they will learn more about of the good gods.
The story turns into this epic struggle between good and evil. But to my surprise the story becomes more about holding on to religious faith even in the face of overwhelming odds and/or certain death. I've never read the books so I don't know how much the books emphasis the faith aspect but it did it very much in the film.
There are some intense violence scenes. The film is registered PG13 and I think that is very appropriate. If you watch it please tell me what you think! Below is the trailer for your pleasure.
Dragonlance Trailer
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