Review of Dungeons and Dragons
Welcome back to Bad D&D movies
a series in which I take a look at films of questionable quality that made use of the. Dungeons & Dragons license. Next up on our list is 2012’s straight-to-dvd…. Urr… “Das Buch Der Dunklen Schatten”. Umm…. Oh… that does not mean what I thought it meant…. This is what happens when you have to import your blu-rays from Germany! Anyway this is Dungeons and Dragons 3: The Book of Vile Darkness.
And despite that number, this is in fact NOT a sequel to the previous instalments, no longer taking place in the kingdom of Izmere, or Ishmere, whatever. The only links it has to its predecessors are that it shares the same director and writer as Wrath of the Dragon God, and our boy Courtney Solomon returns as an executive producer. I’ve been burned before, so my expectations were pretty low. But I was pleasantly surprised. It might actually be the *best* of the Dungeons and Dragons movies that I’ve covered…. BUUUUUT! There’s gonna be a lot of buts…. The Book of Vile Darkness is superior to Wrath of the Dragon God in two important respects. It is a better put together movie overall, but at the same time, it offers more flavour and more material to rip on than its comparatively bland precursor.
One key difference lies in its much darker tone, aiming for a much grittier or dare-I-say edgier narrative than we’ve seen from a D&D movie before. Although I can’t help but feel that this is what it looks like when you take LARP far too seriously. This shift away from a straightforward sword-and-sorcery quest to a story that involves more moral nuance, with the protagonist having to deal with internal conflict and being forced to do bad things for the sake of a greater good, although hardly original, is certainly refreshing in this series. And it gets pretty messed up at times. Although it does fall into the trap of thinking that being “mature” means including more violence, blood and gore, as well as many… big “tracts of land” fit for ploughing, and some other stuff that most DMs rightfully ban from their tables. That aside, the plot is certainly more interesting, and what starts out as a fairly conventional high fantasy Heroes Journey ends up taking some unexpected and unconventional twists and turns. BUT! There is still a lot of stuff that you could poke holes in or which doesn’t make sense. At least this time we actually get to witness character development, with multiple characters being fleshed out - if only in a shallow way - and experiencing growth and change to at least some extent.
Including an actual character arc for the protagonist - as opposed to this static plank, who may as well have had flesh-to-stone cast on him. BUT! The most you could say about the writing is that it’s serviceable, with the dialogue being passable at best, and stilted or laughable at worst. I can be more generous about the acting. For the most part, I do think these actors did a decent job with what they were given. There’s no Bruce Payne to keep us entertained this time, or any other portrayals that were overacted on the one hand or irritating on the other. This is played more straight-faced, and given the budget level we’re talking about here, the cast more than pull their weight. With that mention of money, let’s now consider the production value in general. Like I said, this is a competently-crafted movie.
BUT! The Book of Vile Darkness had a slightly lower budget than Wrath of the Dragon God, and while they’ve managed to do a lot with what they had, they couldn’t quite polish over all the cheapness. There are some nice scenery shots, but the cinematography and editing are nothing to write home about. I didn’t notice any glaring issues with them, and they do what they’re supposed to do.
And I would say that the combat
Scenes and fight choreography are *mostly better* exceptions notwithstanding….
And at least the weapons don’t look quite so obviously fake this time. Some of the costumes are good, BUT others are just godawful! A lot of the special effects have seen an improvement since Wrath of the Dragon God, BUT in other places they still aren’t quite up to scratch and computer generated objects still look out of place. The movie sh*ts the bed a bit harder with its makeup. While the tattoos don’t change position this time, it *does* look like they were drawn on with a sharpie.
“Are you mocking me?” “Yes!”. Wounds look like someone threw a tampon at the actor’s face. And one character’s face oozes with what I’m guessing is meant to be pus, but… tell me it doesn’t look like something else! The music is completely forgettable, in that I completely forgot that it was there. And as for the sound design, it’s fine, but I’d be very surprised if they did any of their own foley, and it seems that they took all their sound effects from a stock library. But how does it fare in terms of being a Dungeons and Dragons movie? Well, while Wrath of the Dragon God is a straightforward traditional party-focused adventure, the Book of Vile Darkness feels more like a solo-campaign in which a lawful good player character has to fall in with an party of evil NPCs in order to achieve his goal.
I could see this translating well to a article game, but not to a group experience on a tabletop. Otherwise, the film is faithful to its source material in that it includes references that will make knowledgeable players go “Oooooh!”. BU- I- You get the idea….
Some of what they do with the lore is a bit questionable. For example, the Book of Vile Darkness is both the name given to a supplementary sourcebook for 3rd edition D&D, and a powerful magic item in the game. The contents of this foul manuscript of ineffable wickedness are the meat and drink of those in evil’s thrall. No mortal was meant to know the secrets it contains, knowledge so horrid that to even glimpse the scrawled pages invites madness. Damn. Sounds like your kinda thing. But the Book of Vile Darkness in the film bears little resemblance to its tabletop counterpart, and there are more than a few other examples of stuff they got wrong that I’m sure at least one nerd has popped a blood vessel over it. So thus far, the Book of Vile Darkness is a very mixed bag to say the least.
And as is the usual practice here, the nature of that mixed bag will be more clearly demonstrated by giving it a closer look. The introduction makes use of animated sequences that look okay, but certainly more washed out and boring than those in Wrath of the Dragon God. And it goes on for WAY too long. Although the exposition of the opening narration is intersperced with the opening credits, five minutes is far too much time for what is essentially a slideshow. Long story short, two thousand years ago, a supreme asshole called Nhagruul the Foul, fearing his own death, had himself transformed into the Book of Vile Darkness so that his soul would live on. I mean, most powerful sorcerers would have turned themselves into an immortal lich. That seems like a much more convenient solution, all things considered! But having your skin flayed and made into pages of a book sounds metal enough to make up for it. Anyhow, the Book drove everybody around it insane and turned them evil, but eventually an order arose called The Knights of the New Sun, and Pelor, the God of Light, gave them the power they needed to defeat the followers of Nhagruul, who then disassembled the book into its pages, cover and ink, with only the ink later being discovered and destroyed.
And since that time, everyone forgot about the Book and the Knights pretty much gave up on themselves and became a joke. We then see the remnants of the Knights performing a ceremony to pledge their service to Pelor. And it’s here that we’re introduced to our protagonist Grayson, played by Jack Derges, who bears such a resemblance to Nicolas Hoult that once I saw it, that was all I could see. He’s hardly convincing in the lead role, and he always looks like he’s one good slap away from crying. Although his character has more of a personality to speak of than….
I’ve actually forgotten his name, wow…! With
His father leading the proceedings, he swears an oath to pelor, but the altar doesn’t bless him, as it hasn’t blessed any of the knights since time immemorial.
He laments the downfall of the order
And has a little winge about having his hopes dashed.
While his father tries to give him a pep talk, their camp is attacked by lightning-wielding mages and barbarians, and after some piss-poor LARP combat, Grayson and his dad rush back to help, and they do that ‘Fade to Black’ bullsh*t that’s become an unfortunate trope in fantasy stories.
Grayson wakes up - after being conveniently left alive - to find the rest of the order dead, and not seeing his father next to him, immediately assumes that he has been kidnapped, and sets off to find him. Passing by a completely necessary smoke machine on his way back to town. He strips off his WWE gear in an attempt to disguise himself. Despite leaving several symbols of Pelor very obviously visible, so what was the point?! He goes to visit the only person he can trust, which is apparently a local prostitute, to question her about the barbarians who seemingly just ran a train on her. You see what I mean about those “mature themes”? She gives him a lead that the barbarians were bragging about a valuable hostage, but before they go any further, they do what every new adventurer does and head straight to the magic items shop. Whose owner has clearly had enough of adventurer’s bullsh*t. “All prices are final, rock bottom!”. He buys a bag of holding - plus some other items - and pays with a pouch of plastic money that he looted from his dead comrades.
The hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold makes him buy a bottle of poison in case the barbarians capture him by which time it’s probably going to be a bit too late. She then tells him that a Shadar-Kai witch named Akordia and her crew have been hired by a certain Lord Shathrax, who also hired the barbarians who kidnapped his father. She suggests that he join Akordia’s crew to earn her trust and hopefully be led back to his father. As she now disappears from the movie, he goes into the Green Dragon Inn. [Merry & Pippin - ‘The Green Dragon Song’]. Whatever was in that ale, it must have been good enough to yeet that head wound into the shadow realm. He spies Akordia and her crew discussing their next job. The gang consists of Seith the assassin, Vimak the Goliath, Bezz - who they call the Vermin Lord for… reasons… and who regularly dispenses his soundbites of sardonic wisdom.
“Sometimes it is better to keep your mouth shut and have people think you are a fool, than open it and remove all doubt.”. And there’s this guy in a wig, who dies in a minute, so who cares. The Witch casts some scary-looking magic, but noone else in the inn seems to give a sh*t. Grayson goes over and they tell him “you can’t sit with us” and call him a boy-whore. And no, that’s not me making a joke. “They’re better suited for employment upstairs, with the other catamites.”. They demand that he kill one of them in order to join them, so he wisely picks the one with the worst fashion sense. Just another Tuesday night.
“The reward is five thousand gold. And one twelfth of all the treasure we acquire along the way.” “One twelfth? I only see six.” “And I only see half a man.” *Snorts* “I’m more than enough for you!”. They’re gonna bang, aren’t they? They set out on their mission to find an item in a dragon’s cave, only to find the Dragon terrorising the nearby town. So they decide to wait until the Dragon has finished gorging on the peasants and falls asleep. “No, why aren’t we attacking now before it eats and regains its strength?!” *Magic pimp slap* “You will speak only when spoken to!”. I can’t be the only one getting some serious femdom vibes from her, right? When they get to the dragon’s cave, Bezz does some freaky eye-magic, which is one of the legitimately best parts of the movie. But in doing so, he triggers a trap that alerts the Dragon. NECKBEARD VOICE: ‘Um ACKTUALLY, ACKTUALLY, it’s not a dragon, it’s a Wyvern, it’s wings are on it’s arms!'.
Yeah, okay, whatever.
After getting their asses handed to them
For a bit, they kill the *wyvern* with grayson delivering the coup de grace.
Rocks fall. Wyvern dies. After checking the Wyvern’s chest for traps - naturally - they find that it contains a horn, about which the assassin starts preaching a social-darwinist prophecy about how the strong will triumph over the weak, which everyone quickly gets sick of. Grayson finds some of the Wyvern’s prisoners are still alive, and the assassin wants to sacrifice them for being weaklings, but Grayson makes a persuasion roll to convince them to take the survivors back to the local town in exchange for a reward. They’re greeted by the mayor, played by Dominic Mafham, who portrayed Dr Petruger in Doom: Annihilation. What a weird connection.
The Goliath spends his money wisely, while Bezz uses a ring that he took off one of the wyvern’s victims to track down the man’s family. He gives the wife the ring, which shows her a vision of how her husband was brutally murdered! And then he infects the son’s teddy bear with an insect! This serves no purpose to the plot whatsoever. That’s Chaotic evil for you…. MEANWHILE, AT THE TAVERN some local floozy starts aggressively hitting on Grayson, but Akordia gets jealous and tells that thot to begone. Does this count as a tavern brawl? I think this counts as a tavern brawl. “Let’s get this over with!”. Wait, what?! I was joking! I didn’t think they’d actually do it! “You saved my life. By Shadar-Kai law, you’re entitled to my body.” “You may ravish me however you see fit.
Do you want me on the bed?”. I don’t remember this from the lore! This is their excuse to have these two characters smash together despite having no chemistry. He resists for a little while, but she goes all nice girl and threatens to destroy him if he rejects her. And while she was getting changed, he used the circlet through which she communicates telepathically with her employers, and sees that his father is still alive, so he decides that for the greater good, he needs to get in deeper. (hehehe). The assassin finds the town’s treasure vault and helps himself to all the loot, justifying this by saying “it’s what my character would do!”. But as they prepare to sneak away the next morning, the townsfolk intercept them. Akordia holds the mayor hostage with an explosive charm, but he gives approximately zero f*cks.
But Grayson succeeds on another persuasion roll to convince the mayor to let them walk away with half the treasure. "The calmer heads prevail. Take half the treasure." “Go in peace!” *Magic words*. I told you man. Chaotic evil So then they’re forced to slaughter the entire town. Grayson drops down a well, finds some children hiding down there, and leads them outside the city. although we never see what happens to them. “Then we'll run into the forest, okay? What’s your favourite forest creature?” “Zombies.”.
Well, that’s [laugh] that's an… interesting answer! After it’s all over, Bezz basically says: “I was just doing what my character would do, I’m jus- I’m just a better roleplayer than you!”. Before Akordia creates an exit. “FUS ROH DAH!” *Skyrim Theme* “Anyone foolish enough to pledge their life to a god that doesn’t give a damn deserves what they get!” “Thank you Pelor, you’ve opened my eyes.”.
They then go to split the treasure.
He gets given a vorpal sword, since
It was his idea to go to the town in the first place.
For that reason, he’s very reluctant to take it. Akordia says she’s going home, and that he can go with her if he wants, or go with the Assassin if he still wants to meet Shathrax. “You don’t have to decide now.
Let me convince you.”. But a nightmare about his father reminds him that bros are indeed before hoes. So wait, did they just f*ck out in the open where the others could see? That’s some next level powergaming! After the goliath offers a bit of backstory that reminds you that he is indeed a bad guy, Grayson poisons him with the vial he was given earlier, then stuffs his body and all the money into the bag of holding.
Which is pretty cool if I’m honest. Since the evidence points to the goliath f*cking off with the gold, Akordia agrees to carry on with their original mission, despite her suspicions about Grayson. They need the horn for the mission, but she refuses to hand it over to the assassin now that he has no gold to trade her for it. So he takes Grayson hostage. But Bezz stings him with a scorpion.
He begs for mercy - which is ironic - but Grayson refuses to grant it. And the three of them decide to carry on with their quest. They use the horn to activate some kind of evil arcane lock. This summons a creature which is never explicitly named, but is apparently a monster from 3.5 Edition called a Slaymate, an undead child that was betrayed in life by its guardians, or neglected or abused until it died, and now must feed off of negative energies. And that is as f*cked up as it sounds! Botchling levels of f*cked up…. Now, credit where it’s due, this was meant to make us feel weirded out. And tell me it didn’t succeed…! It feeds off the Vermin Lord, which you’d think would be enough for it considering how messed up this guy is, but it demands more. Plus it’s a test to prove that they’re evil enough to deserve the piece of the Book of Vile Darkness they’re after.
The bad sh*t that Grayson has done allows him to pass the test, but Akordia fails because she’s in *lurv* with Grayson. Which technically means that she’s in the friendzone right now. The enraged Slaymate summons a Helmed Horror that kills Bezz, but Grayson eventually manages to slay it with the vorpal sword. And they retrieve the cover of the Book of Vile Darkness from its body. Seems like an odd place to keep it, but okay. And so they get teleported directly to the temple of Lord Shathrax. Whose mouth is for some reason stitched closed as he speaks through two enslaved cheerleaders. The dubbed voices don’t match their mouth movements, and while I’m fairly sure this wasn’t deliberate, it certainly adds to the creepy, disorienting effect they were going for.
After being welcomed into Shathrax’s service, Grayson sneaks off and frees his father. Akordia walks in and realises the truth, so Grayson yeets her out of the room. Using the magic powers that he… now has, I guess…. They try to escape, but realise that they’re in the middle of the Shadowfell, with nowhere to go and no means of getting out. His father reveals that Shathrax is trying to reconstruct the Book of Vile Darkness, and they want to torture him so they can use his pain to make the ink. Which is a bit strange because doesn’t this mean that the pages are blank, and they'll have to re-write the whole thing from memory? What use is the book without its contents? And what about the pages? The ones made from Nhagruul’s flayed skin? I guess they must have found those as well, but they don’t really mention it.
But anyway, disappointed in his son for breaking all of his oaths, his father wants him to kill him so the bad guys can’t use him to make the ink.
That’s a- that’s not the appropriate face
For this situation! but grayson refuses to allow everything he did to be for nothing, and wants to fight to the death instead.
His courage causes the holy symbol to glow, and he uses its power to defeat the attackers. But Bezz, who is somehow still alive, paralyses him. And he decides that Grayson would make a better specimen for extraction, because he’s the first true knight of Pelor in 800 years. He wanted Grayson all along and used Akordia to help achieve this. The more we thing about that plotline, the less sense it makes, so let’s just go with it. So they hook Grayson up to some bondage gear and start torturing him so they can extract his liquid pain to use as ink for the Book. But in an ending that’s unfortunately anticlimactic, Akordia uses her mage hand powers to get Grayson his amulet back, then his faith activates its divine intervention powers and it kills all of the bad guys in one go! Really? Really?! Akordia offers to take Grayson to her home, but he refuses, having now completed his arc and become a knight of Pelor.
“And if our paths should cross again, would you try and kill me?” “In self defence.” “I can’t promise anything.
Farewell.”. And that’s it. That’s actually how it ends. Maybe they ran out of money or something, but this is one of the most rushed and abrupt endings I’ve ever seen. And I hope that portal has some instructions on it, or he’s going to be stuck in the Shadowfell for a long time! I don’t have that much to say in conclusion besides what I’ve already discussed, but I will re-iterate that The Book of Vile Darkness is the closest thing we’ve seen so far to a decent movie based on the Dungeons and Dragons license.
Despite it’s inevitable flaws, for the most part it does accomplish what it sets out to do. It was never going to be a masterpiece, but we have to temper our expectations to the level of resources available, and considering that level, it’s a fairly respectable effort. BUUUUU-.
Having said that, for me personally, this movie falls between the 2000 self-titled movie and Wrath of the Dragon God. It’s more funny-bad and therefore more enjoyable than latter, but the former still takes the cake in that regard. Because how could you ever top this? “LET THEIR BLOOD RAIN FROM THE SKYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!”. I can still recommend the 2000 movie as something you can get drunk and laugh at, but The Book of Vile Darkness is a hard sell to anyone that isn’t interested in the franchise. To sum up then, if we’re talking about quality, this is how I’d rank the D&D movies. But if we’re looking at fun factor, it would be more like this. And that’s all of the movies that were direct adaptations of the Dungeons & Dragons license. However! There were other movies that focused on D&D.