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Kiefer Sutherland Headlines Dragonlance Movie
Pre-production on the animated Dragonlance film is continuing apace, and the voice casting for the Companions has been completed. Kiefer Sutherland will be headlining as the voice of Raistlin Majere. Other case members will include Michael Rosenbaum (Justice League's Flash) as Tanis Half-Elven, Lucy Lawless as Goldmoon, Michelle Trachtenberg at Tika Waylan, and Jason Marsden as Tasslehoff Burrfoot. From the site: "The film is based on the first book in the Chronicles series, "Dragons of Autumn Twilight". The director is comics and TV animation veteran, Will Meugniot, and the screenplay has been adapted by George Strayton with plenty of involvement from Margaret and Tracy."
How am I supposed to ogle an animated Lucy Lawless?
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
He's also Smallville's Lex Luthor! It's a much bigger role.
I have a lot of trouble putting Sutherland and Raistlan together. It's probably just the whole Jack Bower thing, but Keifer Sutherland has built such a tough-as-nails, show no mercy personna around himself thanks to 24 that I'm having a lot of trouble picturing him as the sickly, yet sinister Raistlan. Granted it's a voice acting gig, so hopefully that will help with any potential suspension of disbelief issues some may have with this casting choice. :\
Not one of those names is replete with the required f'antasy punc'tuation.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
It's my understanding that the book was basically an edited transcript of a Dungeons and Dragons game run by the authors. Is that in fact the case? Regardless (and this is of course just my opinion) it made me never want to read a book based on a game ever again. I can't think of a single thing I liked about it. If D&D really was the instrument of Satan then the guy has remarkably questionable taste.
I have always been a fan of the Dragonlance books. For a year or so I even sat on the Whitestone council who does the new 3rd Edition D&D books for Dragonlance. Went to GenCon met Margaret and Tracy got recognized at the Dragonlance Author Reception etc... was great. Now I am slightly... well I don't like the idea of an animated Dragonlance film. Its something that can do JUST as well at the box office as LOTR did... and I just have a feeling that this MIGHT just MIGHT destroy it for me. I want to see a live action version of the movie.
Also what happened to Aron Eisenberg playing Tasslehoff? He volunteered to play it years ago and hes being pushed off? WTF? (BTW Aron is Nog on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine for those of you who don't know.)
I am going to take this with a gain of salt for now I suppose. It has potential... but I don't like the idea of animated movies from a book. I didn't even like the animated version of LOTR. Can't connect with it as much. Ah well.
-- Josh
"Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" - Pete Conrad
Raistlin is a subtle, quiet-spoken, calm, cold and calculating character. Kiefer could not be more different. Based on his antics in 24 and other roles, he does everything over-the-top. His gestures and voice are always exaggerated and phoney. As silly as it may seem, Sir Ian McKellen, speaking softly might do it (I honestly do not mean to type-cast him, but the man is could be perfectly suited for this). (And damn, there is another actor I am thinking of who would be just as good, but I cannot remember the name at the moment.)
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How do I know? In browsing their website I found these two little nuggets:
Who's written the script for the film?
The script for the film has been adapted from "Dragons of Autumn Twilight" by George Strayton. Strayon has penned several episodes of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and was a key staff writer on Xena: Warrior Princess.
What will be the running time for the film?
The movie is an animated feature film and will have a running time of approximately 90-100 minutes.
So it's written by a guy whose best work is absolute tripe. The dialogue of Xena and Hercules is one of the worst parts of those shows. And 90-100 minutes is not "feature length" for a book adaptation like this. 120 minutes would be a bare minimum, and 150 would make me feel a lot more comfortable. I would love to think this movie is going to be decent, but right now it looks like a disaster.
Yeah, but think about the breathy, nervous scientist in Dark City. I think he'll definitely be goot as ol' Raist.
The future isn't here until I can type "car keys" into Google and have it say "You left them in your pants last night."
What all these have in common is that they would be based on original novels, rather than, say, spinoff novels based on a particular campaign setting based on a particular Role Playing Game based loosely on The Lord of the Rings. Really, do we need a movie based on Dragonlance anymore than we need, say, a novelization of the video game Doom? (You've got to hand it to Linaweaver and ab Hugh for written four books based on a game who's actual description would be "He ran. He ran. He shot the monster. He ran. He shot the monster. He flipped a switch. He shot the monster. He got a bigger gun. He shot the monster...")
How about making a movie based on the best speculative fiction has to offer? Sure, 9 times out of 10 Hollywood is going to screw it up. But that's true of anything Hollywood touches. Why not at least reach for greatness?
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
It's that, every so often, you guys make me feel like less of a dork, if only by comparison.
Canthros
Why bother with Keifer and Lucy at all? Why not hire some real voice actors to bring some personality to the characters? That way we could become involved in the story and the characters without having to think of Xena at all.
Billy West is right... this is a strange trend of animating characters around who you want to do the voice rather than the other way round.
I was just scrolling through /. this morning, and I was like "Oh.. Inflatable space station, huh? That sounds kind of interesting, future of mankind and all that.. I'll check that out.. OMG DRAGONLANCE MOVIE FTW!"
I haven't even read Dragonlance for over a decade, but I'm stoked. Even if the movie is terrible, its like tasting some forgotten candy you haven't had since you were a kid, even if you found the candy in the couch.
My name is Raistlin Majere, and this is the longest day of my life.
Feeling a bit scared? Afraid? That's just death lurking around.
His lines are all going to be:
1) Dammit!
2) We are running out of time!
3) Dammit, we are running out of time!
4) DAMMIT!
If making this movie is anything like the books, I would half expect the recording studio to explode after the actors leave the building.
It drove me nuts in Margaret Weiss' books. Every friggen place blows up the instant the heroes leave. Even if they win it blows up. "Yahoo, we just defeated the 'more baddest creature yet', for good measure, lets set it on fire, taking out everything in a 30 mile radius as well. Also, I peed in the well. Before we go, lets stab this guy trying to build a road."
Don't use the latrine, it is rigged with C-4. Maybe thats why they needed Jack Bauer?
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Bupu, the gully dwarf, also was spawned from their sessions.
To claim it was a transcript, however, is a bit of a reach. The ideas came from the sessions, and the basic outline of the plot was based on the modules, but most of it was their own.
And the Legends series, AFAIK, was completely independent of the modules. I consider that series to be fantastic, much better than Chronicles. But both were fantastic. Fizban rules.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
i'm curious as to why they chose to do it in CG...
I don't believe it is in CG. Unless I missed something on the site, the director's entire body of work is Saturday-morning style children's cheap TV animation. On the bright side, Larry Elmore, who did the book covers, is listed as Lead Artist on the project.