Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight

In November of 2006, I began reading a battered, second-hand copy of the book "Dragons of Autumn Twilight." It was the first book in the vast Dragonlance series. Since then, I've been hooked on this amazing world created by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.

Last 15 January 2007, Paramount Pictures released the Dragons of Autumn Twilight animated feature film on DVD. I admit I've been waiting for this film ever since I heard of it's production early last year. After viewing the film I am more than glad to share my insights on the production.

Story
Unlike other novels that were turned to film, Dragons of Autumn Twilight was quite true to the book. For a thick book to be compressed into a 90-minute film, a lot of scened had to be cut off. Despite that, the storyline was intact. I was also glad that they were able to present the stories of the gods of Kryn and the fall of Istar.

Character Design
At first glance, the character seemed like they belonged to those cartoons shown during the 1980's like "Masters of the Universe" or something. But I guess that had a bit of charm (to me, at least). The characters were quite different from what I've conjured up in my head when I was reading the novel. It does tend to grow on you, though.

The elves, who were described as youthful, beautiful, with sharp features were drawn quite differently in the film.

On a positive note, I found that they did justice to their design of Goldmoon, Tika, and Laurana. Even Bupu fit the part.

Animation (2D)
The animation style used for Dragons of Autumn Twilight was a mix of traditional 2-dimensional animation and computer-generated 3-Dimentsional animation. The 2D animation in itself was not too bad. It was quite rough when it came to the character movements. However, it was fairly tolerable if not acceptable.

Animation (3D)
The 3-dimensional animation, which consisted mostly of dragons and draconians, was quite alright. My big complaint there was that in one scene where there was a large number of draconians assembled, the draconians looked like they have all been copied and pasted off one model. All of them moved the exact same way.

Animation (Overall)
The overall animation disappointed me very much. Individually, the 2d and 3d animations were alright. Combined, it was a disaster. The 2 animation styled were not blended very well. Even during the fight scenes where the 3D draconians were interacting with the 2D heroes, it seemed like 2 different films being forced together.

The animation was done by a company from India. Hm... Could this be a reflection of Indian outsourcing quality in terms of animation? I hope not.

Music
The music was the only element in the film I truly liked. The opening theme and the Qualinesti hymn were personal favorites. Based on featurettes shown in the movie website, I could see that the composition and recording of the music was not compromised. The result was fantastic!

Dubbing
To give life to the characters, they made sure to use some big names for the voice actors. Kieffer Sutherland plays the dark-souled mage, Raistlin; Lucy Lawless plays Goldmoon; and Michael Rosenbaum plays Tanis Half-Elven. I admire them for their sense to use these big names. Lucy Lawless did a wonderful job with Goldmoon. Michael Rosnbaum was not so bad as Tanis.

My problem when it came to the dubbing was that their accent was too 'American.' Nothing against the American accent. I just felt like a world with such a diversity or creatures should have a range or accents just as diverse. Besides, it was almost painful to hear Kiefer Sutherland pronounce Raistlins' spells.

The elves should also have had a much thicker accent.

Overall
Overall, I would only rate the film 2 out of 5. So many things disappointed me and I know that they could have done a better job.