The Legacy of Saradomin (Part 1)

The Legacy of Saradomin (Part 1) · 03:15 AM

The moment after watching this could be compared to waking from a magical dream. The way you kind of sit there dwelling on it as much as possible before returning to reality.

Slade does a great job at building atmosphere in this film. Each place the characters end up has it's own potent feel to it. Each world has it's own architecture, it's own characters, and it's own music style, it all comes together to breathe life into the world this movie takes place in. I especially love Cadfael, I've always been into that kind of design with the village in the trees immersed in nature. Cadfael also has more effort put into the scenery than the other locations.

The best thing about this film is the direction. At no point was I bored, or wondering what was going on with the characters. It was well paced, with perfectly chosen music in the right spots to give you whatever feeling he intended. He switches storylines just as you start to wonder about it. And this is an epic movie we're talking about. It's got several side stories, and at least 50 unique characters. He pulled it off flawlessly. This is something I can say that I would fail at miserably.

Writing was basic for the most part. I can excuse that based on what I'm used to with 3dmm standards. Some scenes were above average, some below. I didn't really understand the part when they were in the dungeon and the guy start talking about being an optimist. Their reaction to it, followed by his reaction to them were all foreign to me. And though Slade did a decent job of giving each character a distinct personality, there were still some parts that were easy to tell that their lines came from the same mind.

Also, I didn't like the re occuring theme of people supressing their emotions, and others constantly trying to prying. The one with the princess went on for way too long.

Voice acting was good. There weren't any mind blowing performances that I can think of, but there also weren't any terrible ones. The voice actor for azule needs a better mic. And, this is just a personal pet peeve, but I always feel a little wierd when watching a movie with a man playing the part of a woman. It's not a homophobic thing, it just fucks with my imagination a bit when I can obviously tell it's a man.

Music and sound effects were great. Well in the fixed version I watched at least. I'd like to see a track listing of the songs used so that I could put them in my ipod. Most of this music is stuff that I've never heard before. But it totally set the right mood to the film.
Sound effects were great overall. There were few questionable sounds (like the spashing in water sound effect as blood was filling up the cracks after the fight).

The fight scenes were my second favorite thing about this. Slade created somewhat of a unique directing style when it came to fighting. It seemed to cut between very flat two dimentional scenes, to amazingly directed shots with great angles and camera movement. At first I wasn't sure if I liked it, but it grew on me. The last battle scene against the demon skeleton guy with metal arms was INTENSE. All of the fights were great, but this one took it to a whole new level. There was a bit of a slowdown when the entered one of the scenes, but other than that, It was perfect. They way he moved with those arms, and phased through walls made him creepy as fuck. And them eventually ending up in a church was just a great final touch.

I really hope a sequel gets made.

Slade · 09-27-2008, 10:08 PM