Dragonlance

Yesterday I was surfing through Wikipedia, just thinking up random topics and looking them up. Man, I love this site. Somehow I decided to look up "Dragonlance" (surfing this site is like surfing through IMDB, one thing leads to another, next thing you know you've spent 20 minutes on there)

Now, for those of you not familiar with Dragonlance, it is a series of fantasty novels that are part of the TSR/ (now Wizards of the Coast) Dungeons and Dragons series of RPGs. There are novels, D&D campaign sets, comic books, even videogames (although very crappy ones at that) based on the Dragonlance series. Pretty popular among us fantasty fans, but at the same time obscure to those not in our "club".

I am a HUGE Dragonlance fan. My user name of "Tanis" is taken right out of the novels. I have read over 20 books based on this world. I've played the AD&D campaign in high school with friends (yes, I was a D&D geek, and proud of it). I read my first DL novel at the age of 13 and have been hooked ever since. The first book in the series, "Dragons of Autumn Twilight" is the first full legnth novel I remember reading and to this day is my favorite book of all time. I have read it five times.

During all this time, my ultimate dream has been to see a full-length Dragonlance movie on the screen. Many movie rumors have come and gone, all just being a big tease. I've directed this movie in my head many times. I've contemplated writing the sript (just for shits and giggles). In the perfect scenario, I would be given 300 million dollars by some crazy movie studio and told to go ahead and create this Draginlance movie. Yep, a whopping 300 million is what it would have taken for this movie to be made the way I want it, because in order for it to be done right, no expense could be spared. I want top of the line effects, prostetics, sets, I want to film as much as I can on location, and it was going to be a 3 hour epic. Ah yes, it would have been great, but I knew it was never going to get done.

But then I got the Lord of the Rings trilogy and my appetite for a polished, high-quality fantasty epic was quenched. Or was it? Actually, seeing Peter Jackson's masterpiece on the big screen only made my longing for a Dragonlance movie worse. Dragonlance shares many similarities to LotRs, and like all fantasty works, owes its very creation to J.R.R. Tolkien's opus. Without The Hobbit, there would be no Dungeons and Dragons. Being the rabid DL fan that I am, I would have gladly traded Frodo and his adventures to see Tanis and his companions up on that screen instead, and their quest to stop the Dark Queen from taking over Krynn.

But I digress. So, I come upon Wikipedia's entry on Dragonlance . . . and what do I see? Not only are there plans to make a Dragonlance movie, but it has already been cast, has a director, and is in pre-production!

Holy hell how did I miss that?!

After my initial jubilation, I take a step back and looked at the situation. The film is not my 300 million dollar blockbuster, it is an animated film based on the first novel. Now, this is actually not a bad thing. I always said if the film could not have a huge budget, I would much rather have it be animated. I definitely would not want something like the Dungeons and Dragons movie as a result of trying too much with limited resources.

So, animated is good . . . but what kind of animation? From what I read it will use a mix of 2D and 3D effects. That sounds great . . . but how big is the budget? Keifer Sutherland has been cast as the voice of Raistlin . . . that could work. Is it going to look like a quality production, or some cheap straight to video cartoon? What's the rating? It has to be PG-13 right? It is not going to be 70 minutes long is it? That is not enough time to cover the plot!

See? That's my problem. I love Dragonlance too much to see it get massacred on the big screen. I'm dying for this movie to be made, yet dreading it at the same time. I have a clear vision in my head of what these characters and world looks like, how will I react when the director's vision doesn't match my own? Is any Dragonlance movie better than none at all?

Too early to tell at this point, but I have my eye on this. It could be one of the best movie going experiences of my life (remember, huge fan here) or the worse. I'm hoping for the former.