Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight
Tags: cult

Plot synopsis:
The film begins with the return of a group of friends consisting of Tanis Half-Elven, Sturm Brightblade, Caramon Majere, Raistlin Majere, Flint Fireforge, Tasslehoff Burrfoot. Kitiara Uth Matar, the half sister of the twins Caramon and Raistlin, was supposed to be there as well, but for reasons unexplained at the time could only send a mysterious note. The Companions had separated five years previously to pursue their own quests.
On the eve of their reunion, the Companions discover that Solace, the village where many of them made their home, is very different from the peaceful village they had left five years previous. Solace has been taken over by a religious order called the Seekers. They are collaborating with the Dragon Highlords who are preparing for the conquest of the continent of Ansalon. Solace is now an armed camp as hobgoblin soldiers patrol the once peaceful village. Tanis, Flint and Tasslehoff meet up outside of Solace, and as they enter the village, they are accosted by Fewmaaster Toede: a hobgoblin commander, and some of his minions. Forced to fight, the threesome kill Toede's minions, and continue to the Inn of the Last Home to meet up with their friends, and, as circumstance would have it, two barbarians, Riverwind and Goldmoon. Kitiara Uth Matar is absent, having sent a letter to Tanis saying that "her new lord is keeping her busy".
The Companions soon discover that the Seekers are searching for a Blue Crystal Staff. When Hederick, a Seeker, is accidentally burnt when Riverwind pushes him into the fireplace, Goldmoon heals him with her Blue Crystal Staff, a holy artifact of the goddess Mishakal which possesses healing powers. Upon seeing Goldmoon with the item he had been searching for, Hederick calls for the guards, causing the Companions to flee Solace. Unknown to them at the time, this pulls the Companions into a great struggle against the goddess Takhisis, the Queen of Darkness and leader of the enemy forces.
The companions cross a nearby lake by boat in their escape, and Raistlin notes that the constellations known as “The Valiant Warrior” and “The Queen of Darkness” (representations of the True Gods Paladine and Takhisis) are absent from the sky, which he claims means that the two gods, the heads of good and evil, respectively, have come to Krynn. The next day, the group is attacked by Draconians. These creatures are numerous among the Dark Queen's armies, and often serve as foot soldiers. The Companions are driven into the woods known as "Darken Wood" where they encounter undead warriors who, upon seeing the staff, make them go to the Forestmaster. The Forestmaster charges the group to go to the ruined city of Xak Tsaroth to retrieve the Disks of Mishakal, containing the teaching of the True Gods and instrumental for the restoration of the faith in the True Gods.
After a trip on the backs of pegasi, the companions enter Xak Tsaroth and eventually meet some gully dwarves, diminutive and stupid creatures. One of the dwarves, Bupu, leads them to the dragon Onyx, who is killed by the holy power of the Blue Crystal Staff. When this happens, Goldmoon is consumed by its flame and presumed dead. However, they find her later resting at the foot of a statue of Mishakal, which now bears the Blue Crystal Staff, having blessed Goldmoon with true clerical powers. The Companions leave with the Disks of Mishakal, and Bupu also gives an ancient spellbook (formerly belonging to the archmage, Fistandantilus) to Raistlin and then returns home to her fellow gully dwarves. After returning to Solace to look for someone who might be able to read the Disks, and finding it occupied, the Companions are captured by the evil armies and, along with an elf named Gilthanas, the son of the leader of the elven nation of Qualinesti, are captured and chained in a slave caravan.
En route to the fortress and mining site of Pax Tharkas, the group is freed by Gilthanas's brother Porthios. They escape to Qualinesti and decide to incite a rebellion in Pax Tharkas and free the slaves of Dragon Highlord Verminaard's control. The Companions journey through a secret passage underground to Pax Tharkas and devise a plan to free the slaves. They also heal Elistan, a dying Seeker, and the leader of the slaves. Trying to sneak women and children away from Pax Tharkas, the Dragonlord Verminaard and his dragon attack the Companions. However, his dragon is killed by another, insane, dragon. After his dark goddess Takhisis turns away from him in order to battle with Paladine, Verminaard is killed by Tanis and Sturm. Elistan is able to read the Disks, and Goldmoon and Riverwind are married.

Review: Actually, my great hope is that this is just the setting stage for a feature film that knows it's audience.I implore wizards of the coast to stop making things that suck for the sake of money.
The story works, but no thanks to the movie makers.I really like the books, Hickman and Weis write good fiction, the Dragonlance universe is nice.
Though, if Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman were to actually see this, I'm sure they'd want to be buried so they could start rolling over.All-in-all, I'd recommend sticking to the book and avoiding this "movie", else you run the risk of ruining a great story you once held in your mind.
Then again, due to the stiffness of the arted characters' animation, even if the voices had more spunk in them it would not have helped.It would be nice to see someone put some dollars into re-doing this movie as was spent on the artwork for the DVD jacket cover.
There were rumours of a Dragonlance film from almost the start of it being published with many fans submitting their preffered cast list.Having now seen the entire film (not just the rushed out trailer) I have to say even Dragonlance fan that i was a little disappointed in the effort put into this.With the quality of animation and CGI available today this could have been absolutely massive, with a worldwide fan base of the books to easily rival the Harry Potter franchise why do we get cartoon style graphics that weren't even as good as the '80s DUngeons & Dragons cartoons (which should have been given their final episode but thats another criticism for another day).The only highlights for me were the voice talents of Keifer Sutherland (though being a big Raistlin fan may have biased me).A below average attempt at a brilliant story but I don't expect them to follow it up..
Whilst the film does remain very faithful to the story and the events within, its severely limited by its 90 minute run-time, the characterisation other than Tanis is lacking, the story simplified and compressed to the degree where the characters hurtle from one event to another, without the breathing space and reflection of the book it becomes very convoluted.Furthermore the film makers decided to use a mixture of 2d and 3d animation , with the dragons and draconians represented by a dated 3d animation, that makes the fighting sequences look very poor and overall the 3d sections look very plastic.
The animation is of such poor quality it makes the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon series of the 80s look like Golden Age Disney by comparison.
This small screen adaptation of the timeless novel from Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman tells the story of Tanis Half-Elven and his cadre of friends in their quest to find the Disks of Mishakal and stop the Dark Goddess Takhisis from taking over the world of Krynn.Tanis Half-Elven, voiced by Michael Rosenbaum (Lex Luthor of Smallville fame), is a man trying to come to grips with being, as the book claimed it "half of two things, and all of nothing".
this sets forth a chain of events that remains remarkably faithful to the book, yet still compressed enough to remain within the 90 minute time span.Semi-decent animation and a few corny lines of dialogue as well as okay delivery are the only things separating this from being a 10.Dragons of Autumn Twilight - 9/10..
You know, fantasy fans already feel - to a greater or lesser degree - like dorks; I can remember reading the "Dragonlance" novels and trying to convince others that the writing was pretty entertaining.
1) Kiefer Sutherland as Raistlin 2) Some of the music was decent 3) They only took away useful scenes, at least they didn't add any new ones to make the movie worst.If they do decide to make Dragons of Winter Night, a new voice director, a new director, a better penned screenplay and don't bother with the 2D-3D mix, if it's going to look that awful then just stick with 2D animation.I feel bad for Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis, they've waited 20 years for something like this and DragonLance receives this 'adaption' At least Lord of the Rings bounced back...
drawing?) with the bad guys -- dragons, draconians, etc -- of clunky 3D proportions meshes horribly where the resultant contrast in technique creates anachronistic and incongruous elements that move at different speeds, and it is just so ugly and flat you wish someone had drowned the poor thing at birth.Storywise, a barbarian woman named Goldmoon (Lucy Lawless) seeks the help of a fellowship in protecting/escorting her as she carries a blue crystal healing staff awarded by the gods, as their very presence is hedged around by a war that is getting increasingly close to home.
The awkward mix of cell animation and CGI didn't always fit but all in all this really felt like the book and I actually quite enjoyed it.
The characterisation of several characters was cut down quite a bit but I think they were pretty much spot on with what they chose to omit and what they chose to leave in, after all they had to cram it all into 90 minutes.Kiefer Sutherland does quite a good job at portraying Raistlin (my favourite character) even if the movie doesn't quite go in to the ambiguous nature of his character as much as the book does although it does hint at future episodes and even Fistandantilus gets a mention.
This series would be some ambitious studios ideal response to the challenge that Lord of the Rings laid down so come on, which of you big movie players is game enough...It's been nearly 20 years since I read the book and this movie adaptation got enough right to give me warm feelings of nostalgia.It's not perfect by a long shot but it's all the Dragonlance we've got so far outside of the literary world (and to a lesser extent the gaming world).
Yes we all know the animation was something my pet monkey's monkey could make but the voices were over acted and the addition of some sort of second hand low resolution 16 color CGI for dragons was shameful.I will give it this: The characters were written as they were in the books and the story was for the most part accurate from what I can remember.I hope they don't create the other two parts, let this cartoon rest in peace (or pieces on the editing room floor)..
I am a fantasy lover, I love animations, I like Dragonlance saga, I love books by Weis and Hickman but this is just a piece of wood.
However, the cartoon series "Dungeons & Dragons" (maybe their target audience for the nostalgic dollar) was much better than this.As a fan I definitely had to watch the whole thing, and I admit that they were faithful to the storyline and dialogue.
OK, so this is a great story and the voice acting was rather good, that earns them some points but, unfortunately an audio tape of the book would probably be more interesting...
Seriously, I recently saw Akira from 1988 and that had better graphics I didn't expect them to hire a company in Japan to do the animation, but I think they didn't hire any animation specialists at all I recently wrote a small animation scene for a class in college and even that looked better Either they had no budget or didn't care about this movie and didn't care if it sold or was watched at all In this day and age of special effects you can't expect to sell a visual product with no visuals, studio executives should understand this and not use 20th century technology from 20 years agoIf you want a good well voiced story than you may enjoy this movie, if you expect this to go along with something interesting to see then you should probably avoid this as you will be disappointed.
I mean, to actually do all of that painstaking research on how not only to produce a pre-Disney animation of outstandingly shoddy quality in these days of digital genius but to completely and utterly destroy all respect that you once had for Kiefer Sutherland, the Dragonlance franchise itself and the entire movie business.
To see that someone made this movie and took something so beautifully and ingeniously written and turned it into this abomination is truly a shame.I'm not going to comment on the animation (ok it was terrible), but even though the movie contains most of the main plot from the book, but it misses everything that made the story great.
It has none of the intrigue, none of the character development, no back story to explain why the characters are interacting with each other the way they are, in fact none of the story makes any sense if you haven't read the books and can remember why things are happening.I won't go into detail with spoilers and such, but unless you're a huge fan of the series I would not touch this movie with a ten foot pole (and to be honest even if you are a fan you should consider not getting this movie anyway).
This disastrous production has animation quality that makes a low budget cartoon from the 80s, such as He-Man, look like an artistic masterpiece.
The movie made it seem like a Disney's version of it.The voice do not match the lip movements, the action (if any) was very stolid, the animation has no emotion of any kind, the humor is non- existent.I was just glad that they did not make the part 2 of the series!.
As a long time fan of the Dragonlance novels, I waited years for even the rumor of a movie to emerge.
The quality of the animation was pretty poor: the robotic movements of the characters as well as certain inconsistencies made me feel like I was watching an early 1990's children's cartoon.
I personally will keep my fingers crossed for a second movie, even if the quality is as bad as the first.Mr. Meugniot, Mr. Hickman, Ms. Weis, Dragonlance Fans: Better luck next time..
This is better than the two dungeons and dragons films by a long way but the animation is of a low quality (like old style cartoons) even so its about time that the dragonlance story was put onto the screen and for that alone it earns a few points.Follows the book quite well keeping the main points but missing a lot.
but then dungeons and dragons is now owned by toy makers so i don't think we will ever see that.Any true fantasy fan should watch this once just to see for yourself, the quality may not be great but everything else is just fine and if a bad quality cartoon can out do the d&d films there must be something seriously wrong with the people behind the scenes.make some adult dragonlance films for crying out loud and lets see blood death and dragons!.
I'm about halfway through this thing, and it's just too painful to watch anymore.This film looks like one of the mid to late 1980s after school offerings, where major US toy makers contracted with Japanese or Korean anime studios to crank out cheap fast cartoons to promote their products for market.
I mention that because that's what this thing needed in order to sell it.But again, like I say, the other issue here is that the source material isn't that good in the first place, so it is perhaps fitting that some Korean company took on the project and gave a quality animated film befitting Weiss and Hickman's novel.The reason my review here is so long is that I just can't help but shake my head as to how this stuff gets made.
Just ignore those negative posts, either those folks haven't even read the books or are hopeless in generally.I'm huge fan of series and enjoyed it a lot, luckily i don't put much weight on those negative "reviews".I liked small things what makers have added on movie and sure there was some corny stuff on it and some characters was just out of boxes but reason for that was probably that its only 90 mins long so just cant focus everyone.Give it a shot and you will enjoy it, hopefully we will see more of these since its huge universe!
Six Companions - a dwarf, half-elf, warrior, mage, knight and kender reunite amid rumours of war and growing evil, horrors that will either destroy them or forge them into heroes of the world of Krynn.Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight, directed by Will Meugniot is a standard affair especially given the voice talent involved, the CGI animation hampers the traditionally drawn cells.
Even the voice- acting talents of Kiefer Sutherland and Lucy Lawless can lift the mix of traditional 2D animation and computer-generated 3D elements It's a Dungeons & Dragons tale, even with the wealth of Dragonlance's source material that I know is out there from Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, George Strayton's screenplay is quite skimming.
It is utterly awful.The animation is so bad it reminds me of the cartoons I watched as a kid in the 1980's; with nowhere near enough cels being used so the movements of the characters are jerky and there are clearly very jumpy moments during many of the scenes.The voice actors did try, some of them way too much, to compensate for the badly penned script but in the end it's still just cringe-worthy for most of the animation.
Those who are giving this such bad reviews should watch the late 70's and early 80's Lord of the Rings animated movies.
But I felt they really kept the spirit of the characters and story alive, and the actors did a very good job with the characters they were give.No, the animation isn't like super up to date.
Plus, the dubbing was so poor that it sounded like the characters were reaching out from a different world:( All in all they have been faithful to the story-line, but I still cannot understand why it was produced as an animation rather than in flesh and blood, or why they bothered at all in shooting it in such an amateurish way..
I mean the book has been butchered, the animation is bad, the voice acting is bad, the best part of this movie is that it ends.There is nothing to redeem this production, it completely lacks in everything, it rather reminds me of 80's TV cartoons both in technical execution and plot, that is to say both are gone presumed dead.Terrible adaptation that doesn't do any justice to the book or it's characters, if you like the books do yourself a favor and don't ruin your life watching this.Avoid at all costs..
The disappointment is that the majority of films/animation do a poor job of bringing great novels to the screen.The Dragonlance series is a favorite among many fans, myself included, and the word of a feature animation was being made had me very excited.
With what is possible with todays technology it is a shame they choose to go with such poor animation.The writing itself was so out of place with the original story and paced so fast, that any true fan that has read the novel will be truly disappointed.
I enjoyed the Saturday morning cartoon feel to the movie and felt the music and voice acting was almost bang on, save Tasselhoff, who wasn't what I imagined from the book at all.
With a $20 million budget, Dragonlance fans have been handed a horribly animated short 'epic' that has only one saving grace, and that is the voice work.You've seen the trailer.
A fan of the original series myself, I found myself glad that the show had finally been made into a movie, but sad that this was created instead.Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight certainly stayed as faithful as it could to its material (given time restraints) and the voice actors were great, but the animation made this a monstrosity.
It was an amazing experience to be able to watch the companion's adventures no matter what it looked like.I agree with some of my fellow posters that the movie does feel a bit rushed and that the animation left much to be desired.
OK a few months ago i told fans of dragonlance to chill and give the movie a chance.i an so sorry to all.i was wrong.the movie was horrid.low budget no feeling and they change the story so much any fan can pick out what was changed at any given point in the movie.I've made better home movies.i understand that when you turn a book to a movie things get changed and cut but this was a hack job.i would be ashamed to put my name anywhere on this movie what was wizards of the coast thinking when they OK'd this dungheap.they need to redo it with real live actors and a better budget and please fire the people that wrote the script.implore all the fans of the books to write e-mail or call them and let them know what we want .that would be a better movie.one that would be worth 20 dollars..
As a big fan of the books for many years I was looking forward to seeing this movie.
I think if they'd done like say Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, it would have been a lot easier to watch, even though they did totally mess up the story.Of course it would have to have been more than one movie to satisfy those of us who hate seeing deviations from the original books.Added..
This review is coming from some who has never read the book but watched the movie.
The animation in this movie is worse than most 80s cartoons.Like most Dragonlance fans Raistlin is my favorite character.
Not counting the fact that there are some actors that are definitely rooted in the Anime style of screaming every ten seconds.But when you watch a movie like this, it's for the story, and everything in there is correct.
It did have the feel of the old D&D cartoon.If you are interested in re-living the story and don't have the time to read the book, I think this film is an acceptable substitute.