Dungeons & Dragons: The Book of Vile Darkness (2012)

SPOILER WARNING!!! This post spoils movie Dungeons & Dragons: The Book of Vile Darkness (2012)

After two theme months full of movies I like it is time to go other side of the scale. I am an of scifi. In many places scifi and fantasy genres are combined. When I check what scifi is available I also see what fantasy is available. Sometime I watch fantasy movies out of curiosity. I often end up disappointed. If I get entertained it is because movies are so stupid that they are entertaining. As is case with this movie.

These movies usually have group of virtuous heroes fighting against forces of evil. This mixes the formula by putting clean and virtuous hero to group of evil people where he tries to keep his values and celibacy. Our hero is Grayson new knight of new sun. Grayson is disappointed because their fallos symbol didn't gave him powers. It hadn't given powers to anyone in 800 year. Knights of new sun are virtuous group that lives like monks and do virtuous things. Meaning celibacy, being merciful to enemies and helping weak. And so on. The usual goody goody stuff.

Group is attacked and Graysons father is taken away. Grayson is only survivor and he start to search for his father. First person he talks to in first village tells him exactly what he must do and buys him new gear. Her brother was knight of new sun and she wants to help Grayson revenge her brother. Grayson have to join evil gang because they are affiliated with Main Evil Guy who has Graysons father. He is not taken into gang before he kills someone. Lucky for him one of gang attack him and he can kill him as self defence. He is taken into gang and they go to a mission.

Group is quite hilarious gang of corrupted role-playing game characters. Every one tries to be as evil as possible. Strong rules and weak deserve to die. Grayson tries to help weak while in group. After mission and saving few villagers they go to village. Witch of the group forces Grayson to have sex with her. If he didn't have, group wouldn't take him to main evil guy. This is first oath Grayson has to break. His journey to dark side begins. While Grayson and Witch had sex rest of the gang rob the village and kill few guards. When they try to leave village villagers rise against them. Grayson manages to negotiate deal between villagers and gang. Gang can take half of villages treasure.

Disease Guy doesn't like this and kills leader of village. In following fight gang kills the whole village. Only few kids that Grayson saves survive. Grayson goes deeper to dark side when he start to kill gang members. The they come to undead girl who feeds on malice and don't like goodness. Undead girl doesn't detect goodness of Grayson because he has done evil things. Disease Guy tells Grayson that Undead girl didn't Grayson because he has killed gang members. Undead Girl detects that Witch loves Grayson and calls guardian to kill remaining gang members. Guardian kills Disease Guy before Grayson and Witch kill it.

Grayson and Witch are taken to Main Evil Guy in to city of sin. In city of sin Grayson finds his father: When Grayson and father escapes Witch realises that Grayson is not what he told her to be. Grayson and father get trapped in room. In room Fallos god gives power to Grayson because he is chosen one and all evil he did didn't matter after all. Disease Guy knocks Grayson down. He wasn't killed and all this has been his plan all along. Grayson is put in to machine that takes liquid pain from him. Liquid pain is needed for book that brings darkness over world or something like that.

Witch sees Grayson suffering. She gives amulet to Graysons. In Graysons hand amulet does exactly same thing to evil people that Ark did to nazis in Riders of Lost Ark. No epic final battle. Just light from amulet that kills evil people and good guys win. In end Witch asks Grayson to come with her but Grayson chooses virtuous life of knight of new sun.

This movie had potential but it was lost usual heroes are ultra good guys and bad guys are all evil. Gang members philosophy was simply that strong should take what they want and weak don't deserve to live. With more effort this could have been interesting ethical study. Grayson is good guy who wants to do good things like save the weak. There are times when letting weak die and strong survive better than letting all die. But this movie doesn't go to that road. That would have made gang members more interesting. Graysons point of view could have been that helping and saving the weak is good for most people and best way to act for that reason. Even the strong  could benefit for helping the weak. Story offered change for that but movie chose to pass that change.

Grayson went to dark side during movie but that journey is not used in anyway. It wouldn't have costed more to make this more intelligent. Main Evil Guys motivation in this movie was that he liked evil and sin. This is why I don't like fantasy genre. It is always virtuous journey against all evil and hero stays virtuous during whole movie. Evil is not given any motivations. There are no moral dilemmas. Story introduces great evil and young low lever hero starts his journey during which he grows up and levels up. In the end he is strong enough to win evil. These are almost always the same. This was little different by putting hero to evil gang and corrupting him little bit. But in the end hero turns out to be virtuous and all good.

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