TV Review and Recommendation -- Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King

[athelind]

Those of you who watch The SciFi Channel may have seen advertisements for a "SciFi Original Miniseries" called Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King. Some of the ads have said things along the lines of, "Before The Lord of the Rings... before Narnia...", which certainly raised an eyebrow or two on my couch.

Given the dismal record SciFi has for both "SciFi Originals" and my general dissapointment in most "Fantasy", we didn't expect much. We'd seen more than a few ads that were just intriguing enough for us to tune in to something unwatchably bad. Given the cryptic "Before Tolkien" tagline, though, and of course the fact that we have to at least glance at any movie with a dragon in it, we made sure the DVR was going to catch both parts.

Part I aired last night.

It's the tale of Seigfried.

It has Brunehilde, Albrecht, and, of course, the Dragon, Fafnir, who is very well done indeed. There are, as always, liberties taken -- Brunehilde isn't a Valkyrie, for one, but has an equally-significant social standing -- but nothing as egregious as the recent SciFi retelling of the Theseus and the Minotaur that managed to completely leave out any semblance of Greek mythology, or the abomination that was Earthsea.

It has so far proved entirely watchable, and not bad at all.

They're re-running Part I tonight, just before Part II, and have reruns scheduled throughout the upcoming week, so all of you out there in LiveJournal land have plenty of opportunities to catch it. And it's worth the effort.

Comments

[preitas.livejournal.com]

I fell asleep :( But the begining was to much like the story behind the book skystone for me (though I admit I didn't see that much). I will deffinately have to catch the re-runs!

[twentythoughts.livejournal.com]

That reminds me of a DVD that got out here semi-recently. It's called "The Curse of the Ring", and it uses a font nearly identical to the LotR titles, and a very similar color scheme overall... And then when you look at the back of the cover, it turns out to be the story of Siegfried.

... Actually, looking at imdb, I think it's the same movie. Its working title was "The Ring", and it wouldn't be the first time a movie's been re-titled in English for a Norwegian release. They just altered the title to have "... of the Ring" in it, to lure in Tolkien-hungry movie-renters.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Heh. When you've just got a DVD cover on the shelf, you can try the Cheap Knock-Off Title scam. When you actually have to make a commercial describing the film, it gets real thin, and the only way you could really pull it off is to romp merrily across the border into False Advertising Land.

Whereas SciFi knows its audience is full of people who'll tune into ANYTHING with "Dragon" in the title.

[waywind.livejournal.com]

Siegfried's story in "The Ring of the Nibelung" was one of the inspirations for Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings." It was part of what he used to give it the feel of an authentic European mythology, while still being original.

[taral.livejournal.com]

I wasn't expecting a tragedy. Part I was kinda garbage, but Part II was good.