In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2008)

Overrated and overhyped

Memorable, crazy movie

Excellent adaptation.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Wow, this was something. From the action sequences to the dialogue, this film will make you laugh. Character motivations often seem confused, the krugs look like fat guys coated in dried mud, many of the special effects look ridiculous, and the overall cinematography makes it feel like the director had no idea what they were doing*. So bad it's good, put it on with a group of friends and alcohol, and roast it!Having seen some of the director's other work, this does seem to be the case.

How do you produce a movie with Jason Statham, Ron Pearlman, Burt Reynolds, and Ray Liotta, to name a few-- and have it turn out this bad???I don't know. Ask Urine Bowles, or whatever the name of the director is.Basically, a dude called "Farmer"(how lame can you get?) goes to avenge his family and save the kingdom of Crapville, or whatever place they supposedly live in. You never feel like you are in a movie-- just a stage behind K-Mart, or in a wooded area outside the local school.Plastic swords, hammy acting, anachronistic speeches/people/objects, and cheesy nonsense abound. Ray Liotta flies around shooting magic power rays at the farmer, and laughing like Dr. Evil. They keep showing the same cut scenes for different events or battles, constantly. The army of bad guys are low-budget orcs that couldn't get hired by Sauromon, apparently, and have no real reason for doing anything-- they are just manufactured to harass and kill humans by Ray Liotta, for some generic or unknown reason. Even LOTR was stupid in this regard-- you never really understand why they kill or harm humans-- they just want to. They don't rape the women, or need human blood, or want the land for development-- in all these stories, they just want to destroy the world of men or some farmers because they are "evil" or bored or something. Well, LOTR uses this too, but it had a budget and awesome battle scenes, etc. This movie has nothing, but some big name actors who will look back with embarrassment at what they did to draw a check that year...

After seeing Uwe Boll whine about not getting his kickstarter money and what a prick he is, I looked him up and came here. I never heard of him or his movies prior to today. I really wanted to hate this movie. I was going to do a whole "forensic accounting" style review talking about how he vaporized 60 million. Oh how I wanted to hate him. Oh, how I loved the comments. The one about how Scooby Doo should have a cameo, and all the ones complaining about every single thing in the movie. I loved the Japanese guy: "I think {Uwe Boll} should get some education from whatever school he goes too and learns and relearns directing techniques to keep people interested in his movies." Oh god, I laughed until I needed oxygen, all that home-spun Japanese decency. I was ready to pile on, and then, get this, I watched the movie.What I saw was a 120-million dollar movie delivered for 60-million. I was amazed. There were some shadows crossing actor's faces, but the cinematography was so good otherwise, I have to believe this was hip and intentional. How neo-postmodern. Decent score, decent acting, good audio, all around pretty good, plot not so hot.I know this movie was a flop. It barely moved the needle the first week, and fell off a cliff the second week. I know that Uwe must have offended some gamer Asperger sensibility, but I'll be darned if I can figure it out. Perhaps he respected women too much. Was he too socially adept? Viewers sure hate him for something. Yeah, it was goofy in places, but I liked it way better than any of the Lord of Rings movies, none of which I have been able to watch beginning-to-end. I try again every few years, maybe its time.Perhaps it was not goofy enough, I mean, maybe with this genre you do have to go full retard and have walking talking trees and flaming hemorrhoids in the sky, like Lord of the Rings. This movie was pretty mild, some particle effects, I thought rather well done. So maybe you have to have wildly implausible things to get a true following, like Scientology or Mormonism. Gosh knows it works for Lord of the Rings, talk about stupid stuff going on. That movie makes gold plates and personal planets look sane.As you can surmise, I am not too fond of this type of movie, so rather than push it into full retard mode, I would scale it back. You have to realize the demographic is not the 13-to-16 year old Howard Stern demo. Its the 8-to-12 Caucasian boy demo. Its a little tougher.Since mom and dad may well be at the theater, lets just take out Ray Liotta. I liked him, despite it looking like he just had a Botox enema, but all this mystic debbel crap will just get the parents looking at each other and going "huh?" Sad fact is that the antagonist goes from the hyena people at the beginning to Liotta at the end. So half the money shots are with Ray. Too bad, now we're in rewrite.Just as well, since the other problem is that 8-year-old Caucasian kids might idolize their brothers, and they still remember momma's breast feeding, but they really don't want to root for dad. So both Burt Reynolds and Statham are father figures in a movie trying to appeal to a demographic that is starting to resent and hate their fathers.OK, easy fix. The weaselly slightly effeminate son of the king--Lillard-- that is the guy the kids want to identify with, not Burt. So switch those two roles. Now the weaselly kid can be the boy regent hero, and Burt can be the evil vizier, like in Aladdin. Now we are right back to Boogey Nights and Burt is in his element. Leave Burt in it, or replace him with Statham, to get mom and dad into the movie. For Statham's character, same deal, instead of his son getting killed by the hyena people, let Statham get killed and have the son be avenger. Now the 8-year-old boy has a reason to watch, and to watch the endless sequels as well. I surf the web while I played the movie so a lot of it made no sense. It seemed like there were the hyena people so it started out like 7 Samuri/Magnificent 7. Then it went kind of Bronson/Walking Tall, which is just fine. But keep it with the hyena people, not Ray Liotta at the end, its too confusing for me, much less 8-year-olds. I loved the Tarzan Girls that dropped out of the trees. I was struck by how artistic and visual it was, while still being dirt cheap to film. Remember, they are not sex-objects to an 8-year-old, so give them bigger breasts to serve as momma reminders.That Ironboy.... ahhh...jethead---- ahhn no, Hellboy, that Hellboy guy was in the movie and he is always great. Not sure who he was or what he was doing, but keep him in for sure. With Liotta out, that should get the time closer to 90 minutes, that is another key thing to fix this.The mom character was way too old-- this is for 8-year-olds so she should be 25 tops. Wasn't the mom in the Stargate franchise? Gosh I love her from there, but sorry, ya gotta work the demo.So, switch Reynolds and Lillard's roles. Switch Statham and Ford's roles. Write out Liotta. Substitute any teen vampire fluff babe for Claire Forlani. (I now realize she is not the Stargate girl, Claudia Black, sorry ladies.) One kid dies from an arrow, the other kid saves his mom and the kingdom, 85 million domestic gross, but the action figures will haul in 40 million easy. Hellboy can be the kid's new daddy, how cool is that?

I honestly cannot see why this movie merits a score of only 3.8. It seems to me that there must be a horde of Boll-trolls who delight in marking down this particular director. OK, Lord of the Rings it isn't, though it borrows heavily from that trilogy. It has a strong cast who make the best of a somewhat clunky script. The battle sequences are rather good, with a bit more in the way of tactical movement than a lot of similar movies. Jason Statham is, well, Jason Statham up to his usual action tricks. Claire Forlani is excellent and well supported by Ron Perlman. Matthew Lillard is gloriously over-the-top as the villainous nephew of the king. All in all I found it an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours, with my brain in neutral.