Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight movie review

In 2008, Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight (A Dungeons and Dragons Adventure Tale) is an animated feature film that was released straight to DVD. It was based on the novel of the same name by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman which was based on the Dragonlance D&D campaign setting. This movie tried to cover the first book in the expansive series, and featured some vocal talents by Kiefter Sutherland, Lucy Lawless, and Michael Rosenbaum. Also one of the highlights of this movie is the beautiful music. However the movie tries to rush through an epic story in a mere 90 minutes, what should have took 2-3 hours to adequately tell. The basic plot of the movie is that an evil god has returned to wreak havoc on the world and a group of adventures set off the save the world, I mean your pretty typical D&D campaign setting, and of course there are many side quests on the way, and an impressive amount of character building and back story information considering the movie's very brief running time. What this movie lacks however is time to actually tell the story, it is pretty much a rush from conflict to conflict, with very little time to breathe. It does stay true to some of the technical aspects of D&D with the spells and some of the terminology, but again it is so rushed that pretty much EVERYTHING is just rushed by. There is one very huge thing that this movie suffers from, that is almost unforgivable. That is the mix of animation styles. Don't get me wrong I love mixing animation styles, like what Raph Bakshi did in his classics Lord Of The Rings and Wizards for example, however Dragonlance mixes together a perfectly fine, almost great looking 2d animation with a very very terrible looking digital 3d animation. The styles don't flow, and they look like a mess. This digital animation makes the movie almost unwatchable, which is a shame because if they just stuck to the traditional 2d animation style it might have been a pretty decent movie, it had many things going for it, such as a great source material for the story, great voice talents, and a decent animation style that was true to the graphic novel illustrations. I get in this time period that digital animation was all the new rage, and it even still is, but digital animation is also the downfall of animated movies in my opinion. Many of today's animated movies and television shows are quite ugly and lack artistic value, unlike those of the 90s and before. I could go into a whole rant about the downfall of animation, but I won't, I will just leave it at, that this fucking terrible mix of CG and 2d illustration is ugly, it doesn't work, and it is the main reason I would never recommend this movie to anyone who is not a huge fan of Dungeon and Dragons, the rest of you are better to skip this one. I am not going to spend a lot of time on this one, and if you are a fan of this movie I apologize, just understand that I don't hate it, as a big fan of D&D I feel like I am almost cursed to carry the burden of liking this movie, because may the Gods help me, I do like this movie. This movie could easily be made better by simply two things, extend the length, or make it the first part of an expansive series, and stick to the traditional 2d animation, because really those are the only two things that this movie suffer from, however those things are damning enough to make this one a hard to watch movie. It would be a good movie to spark an interest in D&D to the younger audiences, but be cautioned that there are some adult themes that might even make that not the best of ideas. Honestly if you want an animated Dungeons and Dragons I might instead recommend the cartoon series from the 80s. This isn't a bad movie, it is a disappointing movie. Would I recommend this movie? Only to the most hardcore D&D fanatics, especially those who are fans of the Dragonlance campaign setting, but even then because it is a movie that references D&D, and not because it is true to the source material. I mean I am not sure who the damn target audience is for this film, non fans won't get into it, and fans will decry it for not sticking to the source material...so maybe I am the target market they are going for, since I am the sucker who has not only purchased it, but also watched it four or five times already, and I will watch it many more times in the future. So I don't recommend this movie, but if you choose to view it, do so knowing what you are getting, and maybe like myself you might just end up being able to enjoy it.