Feb 15, 2020
I am legit mad over this bad movie. I was shocked going into this to see this movie didn't make its budget back in Japan. Dragon Quest is like a religion in Japan, how could it not be the biggest earning movie ever. Now I know why. It is because it's trash.
Obviously most of the time people are only driven to review something if they really enjoyed it or really hated it, and as stated I am the latter. In fact I am still riding the high of how disappointed I am so keep that in mind while reading.
I will start with good.
The art is
...
actually pretty good. I know a lot of people wanted the OG Toriyama style but it is still a pretty movie. The effects are probably hands down my favorite thing about the movie, they really hit it out of the park with the partical effects.
Music is classic DQ, so there is that. Even though the scene you first hear the overture in kind of ends with imagery that doesn't match the triumphant tune.
And that is all that I liked...
So the movie has bad pacing issues, which in all honesty I expected as a lot of adaptations have the same issue, especially anything trying to condense a story. I was able to deal with some of it, as I am used to that with a lot of anime adaptation films for tv series. I initially felt it would help if they didn't assume that everyone has played DQV, though I understand those are the people they assume will see it. (Also, in Japan it is probably safe to assume most people have some knowledge of it.) However, it is more than just rushing through the story. Their ability to set up a scene suffers from the pace they try to maintain the whole move. There are few if any establishing shots to give you a feel of an area or give any extra weight to a scene. We go from the Hero being kidnapped, to 10 years later in a prison camp, to them escaping a prison we barely see, through a city we never see again, to him returning home that we only saw for seconds in the beginning of the movie, where we have little to no connection to because the Hero himself barely reacts to being home after 10 years because the plot need to start up again.
The story suffers more than I thought it would after starting it. I figured they would give an abridged version of the first few hours of the game so we could get to the main story. What I didn't think they would do though is introduce characters vital to the story without an actual introduction. It reminded me of G1 Transformers. A character shows up and they are already established and have a connection to the Hero. Bianca gets your typical "Oh I haven't seen you since..." intro but she is the only one. Everyone else, they just start talking like they have always known one another for years and it takes half a conversation before you realize why the Hero knows them already. Not to mention when they just talk about dungeons and quests from the game as if we would have already seen them. Again it is assuming you have played the game but this time it assumes that you have an intimate knowledge if the game.
This is more of a nitpick but they had a few fourth wall moments and "in jokes" that took me out of the movie. Stuff like this always bugs me because it feels like either the screenplay writer or the director throws it in because they don't take the property they are working on seriously. One that really took me out was when the Hunter Mech/Killing Machines were introduced and a comment about robots being "a little random" was thrown in. (wording may be different from subs to actual spoken Japanese in the scene.) It just sucked me out because the Machine Family of monsters has been in this universe since the second game. That is maybe just me being to much of a nerd about it though.
I could have dealt with all that though and walked away with this as like a 6.5 or 7, HOWEVER, once the "twist" ending was revealed it all started to make sense and piss me off. The rushing through the intro to the game along with certain story segments, the stupid little jokes, the painful nods to the camera, and even some of the particle effects used. I tried not to spoil anything in case someone out there really wants to watch this and is reading reviews first, but this twist ending not only killed the whole movie for me but really has me questioning why fantasy as a genre is so stale in Japan right now and why they are so stuck on the big thing at the moment when it comes to "fantasy". Also, the whole idea that people need to grow up and let this story/game/video games in general go and just let them be a fond memory all while faking some kind of sincerity in delivering that message really pissed me off. I am sorry if you can figure out the twist with that, but maybe I saved you some time instead.
In the end, I was really hoping this movie would do good outside of Japan. It could get some more interest in Dragon Quest for new fans and ride the wave of positivity from DQXI. Then maybe we could have gotten a few more games that we never got here (DQX) or just more Dragon Quest stuff in general. That was apparently just me setting the bar WAY to high.
So yeah, I have strong nerd opinions on this one. Watch it if you are interested but I wouldn't recommend it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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