by Mary Ratliff

Created on: May 27, 2008

Dragons of Autumn Twilight is a movie that was a long time coming. Fans of the books have been waiting decades to see the characters brought to life on the big screen. Now, they have to settle for a direct to DVD animation.

Sadly, they are simply settling for a sub-par adaptation. The animation is bad, the fight sequences especially show off how little they paid their animators. But the worst part is the character design, which is to say that there was none. The characters are exactly as they appeared on the first book covers, no alterations whatsoever. In the case of Raistlin this is good, his original incarnation was perfect. But in the case of Goldmoon, it was a serious misstep. The character designs are all very dated, and after the success of other current fantasy franchises, it was times to really take a new look at the dwarves, kender, and elves.

The dragons are animated with 3-D, which seems woefully out of place among the rest of the traditional cel animation. Instead of seeming more realistic, they seem cheesy and ridiculous. The final battle scenes are laughable at times, and Takhisis certainly doesn't strike fear through her appearance.

The most terrible part of this is that the script is actually not bad. While it probably makes little to no sense to someone who hasn't read the books, at the same time they did a good job at keeping the important scenes and glossing over the ones that were unnecessary. Adapting a long novel into a successful short film is not an easy task, and Dragons of Autumn Twilight manages quite well on that score.

The voice acting is also notable, because of the bigger names who were among the cast. Keifer Sutherland is very adept as Raistlin, and Lucy Lawless performs admirably as Goldmoon. Others were not so well suited to their roles, Michelle Trachtenberg is okay in her performance as Tiki, but I wouldn't go so far as to say she did well.

As usual with any Dragonlance project, Raistlin is probably the one the filmmakers were most adamant to do well, and they do succeed on that score. But sadly if you are a fan of some of the lesser characters, they are thrown by the wayside. Sturm is mostly ignored, as usual.

The film would probably be an interesting diversion for people who love the book series, but it is not a good way to introduce people to Dragonlance, it isn't likely to convince them to pick up the books.

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