Dungeons and Dragons
dir. Courtney Solomon
New Line Cinema

When they were teenage, Dungeons & Dragons-playing geeks, Flak Magazine Editor James Norton and Managing Editor Eric Wittmershaus spent the time between saving throws dreaming of being narcissistic talking heads. Well, now that they’re all cool and grown up and help run an Internet magazine, that chance has finally arrived. And what better way to beta-test the whole bi-coastal Jim and Eric at the Movies format than the new Dungeons & Dragons movie, based on a game the pair once held near and dear to their hearts?

Note: We didn't have a whole lot of regard for this movie. So we kinda let some plot points slip.

Sub-note: Jim and Eric never played Dungeons & Dragons together, having long since given it up by the time they met that fateful day in 1996.

A Familiar Cantina

James Norton: Let’s talk about this movie. What’d you think about D&D;?

Eric Wittmershaus: How’d you like my review [in the Oakland Tribune]?

JN: I enjoyed it! You took the Star Wars thing a bit further that I would’ve, but you made valid points the whole way through. I definitely saw the cantina scene. That was pretty glaring and pretty embarrassing. It was also a pale imitation of the original.

EW: It was like “let’s see how many different freaks we can put in this one scene and have low lighting and make it be seedy.”

JN: I don’t know if they thought that by not having the band they thought they could get away with it. Essentially they took away the most interesting part of the Star Wars scene but it still looked like an exact rip-off.

EW: You forget the second most interesting part of that scene, which was “walrus man.”

JN: Nonono, you’re forgetting Greedo. Greedo could’ve cropped up and said, you know, “oota-goota, Wayans brother.”

EW: I think the highlight of the film for me was when they showed the very first dragon at the very beginning before the portcullis came crashing down on its neck like the Rancor beast in Return of the Jedi.

JN: That’s probably a decent highlight.

EW: That dragon was actually pretty cool. It was like Jurassic Park, only with dragons.

JN: [laughs] It seemed pretty sinister and out of control. I have to say my favorite part was Jeremy Irons near the end going so insane you had to bust out laughing. There’s no way around it. That was fun. He was completely off his nut. I don’t know if he was trying to fight his way back into critical acclaim, but it’s not going to work.

EW: He hasn’t had that much fun in years, obviously. Do you think he was drunk?

JN: I would imagine they probably had people get him drunk before he got on stage, yeah. It was probably part of the contract somewhere, to be honest.

EW: Interestingly enough, I watched the Decalogue 3 & 4 tonight, and I saw a lot of similarities between that and D&D.

JN: Really?

EW: No.

JN: Not even camerawork or stuff?

EW: No.

JN: Were there computer-animated dragons in Decalogue?

EW: Uh, no, not too many. It was formatted to fit my TV screen, so they might have just been hanging out around the edge.

JN: Very quiet dragons that don’t actually factor into the plot in any way.

EW: Hey, did you see Ebert’s review of Dungeons and Dragons?

JN: No. Did he say he “hated it, hated it, hated it?”

EW: No, but he said it was really funny ... he was talking about some of its contrasts, like how at times the special effects and lighting were really cool, and at times it was like it was embarrassingly low tech.

He said the sets seemed to alternate between wild, insane fantasy paintings and the wooded area behind Sam’s Club.

JN: I think what was really funny is when they were filming that outdoor scene in the castle where the Wayans brother gets offed ... that was just like the castle they used in the pornographic version of Hamlet I saw.

EW: Really?

JN: It may have been the same set. I’m not sure, I’ll have to rent the tape again.

JN: Okay, so here’s my point about the movie. So you’ve got this sexy librarian mage, which is fine — that's a good construct, I approve of that, she takes off her glasses, lets her hair down, etc. ... But at the beginning of the film she seems to demonstrate some competence. She casts a spell, it has an effect, the effect is useful and then for the rest of the film, she’s either getting knocked into a corner, or getting stuff sucked out of her brain, or hitting people with a torch.

EW: And then the one time she does use magic, it’s someone else’s pre-fab magic.

JN: Exactly. It's like Pillsbury poppin’ fresh magic. She unwraps it, and chucks it ... it’s terrible. It’s not even her own stuff. And I’m thinking — this film was supposed to be somehow accurate —

EW: — they never showed her memorizing spells —

JN: — Well, no ... here’s the thing, though. That thing at the beginning looked kind like Web ... that’s a 2nd level spell. That means she must’ve had two 1st level spells left ...

EW: Exactly, she had to be a 3rd level mage.

JN: — exactly, and if she had those two 1st level spells, are we expected to believe she cast them off-camera before the film?

EW: Maybe those were deleted scenes that’ll show up on the DVD.

JN: And let me say this, because this is an important thing to get across ... even though I’m doing it completely free of context because right now it’s burning in my brain like a cinder ... At the end there, it’s Ridley the thief versus Jeremy Irons, and Ridley’s sneaking up on Jeremy Irons, and he just yells: “Hey! Look at me! Fight me!” or something to that effect ... which is maybe something a retarded cavalier might do ...

EW: The one from the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon.

JN: Yeah, exactly. Like Eric. I think his name was Eric, actually.

EW: It was, unfortunately. I just want to say that when I was a kid, I was very upset that the character in the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon that had the same name as me’s only weapon was a shield.

JN: Yeah, he was really an annoying character. He basically just existed to irritate everybody, including the viewers.

EW: Actually I modeled my life on being exactly not like him.

JN: So, anyway, he’s behaving in a completely un-thieflike manner, and he pulls off his backstab by doing a completely asinine backflip ... it was just ... I was horrified by it.

EW: The only other review I read of this was The New York Times review by A.O. Scott and he had a really, really hard time following the plot of the movie, but I didn’t really find it that convoluted. I thought it was pretty standard.

JN: Here’s my problem with the film’s plot. So, at the end, Princess Amidala has the gold dragon rod thing, and she calls the gold dragons, and they essentially mill about at random in the sky ... they throw a couple of fireballs — which, by the way, gold dragons don’t breathe — at this mage tower, and then they’re essentially just lost, as far as I can tell. The dragons are confused. And then the red dragons come in, and basically everybody’s confused. There’s some skirmishing, there’s some hostility, some tension there, and then all the characters in the party throw themselves at Jeremy Irons, and the thief does his sort of ridiculous “hey look at me!” thing and then there’s a graveyard ... and it’s over.

I found that very confusing, and even if I worked at The New York Times I wouldn’t be able to figure it out.

EW: That wasn’t even the part he found confusing.

JN: Here’s my take on it. For the last 20 minutes of the film, whoever was writing it and/or directing it ... I don’t know if it was a slow day, or a really busy day, or something ... I think they just said: “Computer animators, this is basically your film from here on in — do whatever you need to, just wrap it up somehow ... ”

And the animators just sat down and said: “Well, we’ve got all these dragons rendered, let’s use ’em!”

“Oh yeah! A dragon hitting a spike! That’s great!”

EW: The only good thing about this movie was that it set a good blueprint for the Lord of the Rings movies in terms of how they portrayed dragons.

JN [impassioned]: No! I completely disagree with you on this one. Dragons, in my mind, are these huge, majestic, basically solitary ass-whomping, town-leveling intelligent beasts. These guys were like flying, firebreathing sheep!

EW: I just meant how they looked.

JN: So did I tell you we stole the D&D; banner?

EW: No, what’s the deal with that?

JN: It was this 21-square-foot vinyl thing with black and white dragons streaking across it ... so, two people, whose names I won’t reveal, who I happened to be going to the film with, basically saw it hanging over this theater’s balcony ... and Ari’s like: “We’ve got to get this, this is fantastic!” and Jon’s like: “Okay, who's got a penknife?”

Luckily, Jon’s roommate Carl had a girlfriend there, and the girlfriend had a penknife ...

EW: His girlfriend had a knife?

JN: I think she’s an MIT student.

EW: They’re a rough bunch.

JN: They’re totally rough. So they clipped its strings, and hilariously trundled it to the bathroom with three people looking at them with their eyes bugging out, and folded this gigantic banner up, and then Ari snuck out with it.

JN: If there’s an anti-Oscar, Jeremy Irons is going to win it for Best Supporting Actor. He was amazing.

EW: Thora Birch was pretty bad too, but she didn’t have a lot to work with.

JN: Someone told me she was supposed to be 12 or something.

EW: Really?

JN: She was chesty as hell. If she's 12, I feel really bad about myself.

EW: In real life she’s 12?

JN: No, in the film. I suppose I should check the website and check that out.

EW: I don’t want to look at the website.

JN: Eric, it’s got runes.

EW: Dude, what was the deal with the thing in Damodar’s head?

JN: I think someone saw Wrath of Khan before they banged the script out.

EW: They apparently also showed the videotape to Jeremy Irons. He over-enunciates like all get-out.

JR:Actually, between Wrath of Khan, The Phantom Menace and Star Wars Episode IV, that pretty much accounts for every scrap of scenery and/or action and/or dialogue in this film.

EW: But there’s the one shot when they’re in the elven village that’s stolen from Return of the Jedi.

JN: Oh yeah, you’re right.

EW: I do want to say that after I saw Requiem for A Dream, I had lot of respect for Marlon Wayans ... I was thinking if he could get out of doing these funny movies, or allegedly funny movies like Scary Movie, he could have a really good career, because he was really amazing in Requiem for A Dream.

JN: Really!

EW: Yeah. He was great. And then I saw him in this ... and first of all, I can see why he did Scary Movie — it wasn’t funny, but he had a lot of creative control. But what would possess you to take a role where you’re the black comedy relief character and you die halfway through the movie?

JN: Gold pieces, Eric. A big sack of gold pieces.

— Eric Wittmershaus (ericw at flakmag dot com) and

— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)