executive Jon Berg had asked Johnson to develop a screenplay based on D&D, despite Warner Bros. It was named for and apparently based on the Chainmail miniatures wargame developed by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren that was a precursor to Dungeons & Dragons. How would the Mages enjoy life if the dragons burned down Izmer? These and other questions percolate during a great deal of swordplay, interrupted by shouted dire imprecations from Jeremy Irons, who has not had so much fun since Juliette Binoche decided she had to ravish him right then and there in " Damage.The story began with a screenplay called Chainmail, or Untitled Dungeons & Dragons Project, written by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick ( Wrath of the Titans) in 2011/2012.
What use they are in war is hard to figure. (Its blood flows into a river which begins to burn, just like the Cuyahoga before the cleanup.) The dragons apparently exist in order to materialize in the sky and flap ominously above Izmer until they are vaporized by magic. What, I asked myself, is their nature? Are they intelligent? Loyal? Obedient? Do they wait for eons in dungeons, until they are needed? Do they eat? Reproduce? At one point Profion releases one from its lair, but he hasn't fitted his scepter with the correct missing part, and so the dragon attacks and breathes fire and has to be skewered by a falling gate. Their archenemy is Damodar ( Bruce Payne), the sadistic shaven-headed enforcer for Profion, whose ears contain long snaky Roto-Rooter type things that spring out on flexible arms and suck out people's brains and stuff.Īnd then there are the dragons. These five bumble about in undistinguished settings and then occasionally venture into sets so hallucinatory in their medieval gothery that they look stolen from another movie. Soon they accumulate three sidekicks: Marina ( Zoe McLellan), who knows a lot of magic Elwood the dwarf ( Lee Arenberg), and Norda ( Kristen Wilson), whose breastplate is a metallic salute to the guns of Navarone. Ridley is a cross between action hero and mall rat Snails tilts more toward Stepin Fetchit ("Be careful!" Ridley is always telling Snails, and then he'll turn and bang his head on a beam). Meanwhile (there are a lot of meanwhiles in this film), enter two thieves, Ridley ( Justin Whalin) and Snails ( Marlon Wayans). Plugging the eye into the scepter will allow Profion to command the kingdom's dragons, overthrow the empress, and retain power for himself and his fellow Mages. This will involve obtaining a magic scepter, which I think (this is a little obscure) is powered by a gem known as the Dragon's Eye. She fights for equality, but a scheming Mage named Profion ( Jeremy Irons-yes, Jeremy Irons) wants to wrest power from her. The disconnects are so strange that with a little more effort, they could have become a style.Įmpress Savina ( Thora Birch) rules in a land where the Mages run everything and the commoners do all the work. Imagine arch, elevated Medievalese alternating with contemporary slang. Imagine some characters who seem ripped from the pages of action comics, and other characters who look like their readers.
Imagine a kingdom that looks half the time like a towering fantasy world of spires and turrets, castles and drawbridges-and the other half like everyone is standing around in the wooded area behind Sam's Club on the interstate. The plot does not defy description, but it discourages it.