At the end of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring I remember being awestruck for two reasons. One it was a cinematic experience to behold and I had just beheld it; it was refreshing and exhilarating. The second feeling was a pang of instantaneous remorse when the first name sprawled across the scene for the end credits.
“That’s it?! What?! No! More!”
I had just sat through a 3 hour film which had left me wanting more. I was not and am not an avid Tolkien fan and even resented the man slightly going in to the film. By the end, Peter Jackson had made us amiable acquaintances. That’s what a good film does, it draws you in to a new world, makes you feel and then spits you back out with little pieces of it still attached to your mind. Keep that in mind: I heartily admire Peter Jackson’s first installment in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Now, imagine if you can the poster for any of the Lord of the Rings films. Recall the font, the basic layout and how the characters are spaced (for best comparison with the DVD cover above use the poster for Return of the King). Now set it next to the DVD cover for Knights of Bloodsteel. Notice any similarities? Any exact duplication? Sadly, the blatant attempts at recreating Jackson’s visual style and cinematic panache carry on through the film. All three hours of it. Yes, that’s right 3 hours. Because if you truly want to copy someone else’s work, you best do it in a way that meets the time constraints as well…or so Knights of Bloodsteel would have you believe.
Middle Earth meet Mirabilis, your carbon-copy world for a cheaper, uglier you. It has a big bad villain named after the iconic giant fiery eye of Sauron (called Dragon-Eye here), it has an age-old conflict brewing between different races of humanoids and an eventual quest to seek out and destroy the villain once and for all.
Okay, okay. So we’ve established that it’s a cheap made-for-television miniseries knock-off with vastly inferior special effects, acting and storytelling – how does it measure up by television standards? Not well. Let’s talk about the acting. You know in those old-fashioned movies when a juicy tidbit of information or an intriguing question is posed to a large crowd and you can hear the extras repeating the question or phrase over and over?
Petulant boy: “The King is dead!”
Crowd: *whisper* King! *cough* *mumble* Dead? *whisper* King *whisper* Dead *whisper* king *mumble*
That happens maybe five or six times in the opening half-hour of the movie. It feels like people who would normally play extras in other movies got bumped up to lead status and they had their relatives fill in the parts they vacated. Accents come and go and when they’re here they’re awful. Actors fresh out of the Sunset Strips acclaimed “Academy for Akting” run out of the rental unit of a local U-Stor-It slip into meaty roles of enormous exposition pronounced with laborious annunciation.
The special effects? It sure is nice that the average person can make an impressive CGI display on their laptop, but that doesn’t mean their pet projects are ready for public digestion. At the forefront of the film’s CGI atrocities is a dragon which uses the same CGI loop numerous times to terrorize towns and countrysides.
The storytelling? A troupe of rogues, goblins, warriors and mercenaries are brought together to seek out Dragon-Eye and thwart him before he can get his hands on a huge stockpile of Bloodsteel, the most magical and valuable mineral in the land. Together, the dashing rogue (Christopher Jacot), the goblin (Dru Viergever), the warrior (Natassia Malthe) and the mercenary (David James Elliott) come together in under “prophetic” circumstances spoken by a pointy-haired Christopher Lloyd in rhyme. The bloodsteel would grant Dragon Eye (Mark Gibbon) unspeakable power and so he must be stopped – and so they do.
I’m giving this miniseries such a hard time because it really has done nothing on its own steam. Its very cover is designed to make you pick it up based on the merits of another man’s work. The three hour snooze of a story only falls further courtesy of a cast that can’t decide whether to play it with tongue in cheek or as Shakespearian thespians.
It’s a train wreck across the board. I can’t decide if Director Philip Spink or writer Sam Egan are more deserving of disrespect. Choose one and go from there.
DVD Bonus Features
Mercifully, none.
"Knights of Bloodsteel" is on sale September 15, 2009 and is rated NR. Adventure, Fantasy. Directed by Philip Spink. Written by Sam Egan. Starring Christopher Jacot, Christopher Lloyd, David James Elliott, Natassia Malthe, Dru Viergever.
