Thursday 15 October 2015

Double Cosplay: Dragon Crusaders and Dragons of Camelot

Dragons of Camelot

What happens -after- King Arthur dies.

The death of Camelot's king (and that most of his knights have been disbanded) provides Morgana the prime opportunity to summon dragons and take the place by force. While the dragons are pretty cool CGI wise and the locations for filming are pretty great there are a lot of things that bring this movie down, and for me the number one reason being the quality of props. Yes, that hurts more than the subpar acting!

In short, it looks like a cosplayer fair with mismatching armor and all too clean attire and both the "knights" of Camelot (very loosely used here) and Morgana's troops have no uniforms what-so-ever. Also, if you have an archer type character it might pay to actually have that person know at least some archery - like, oh I don't know... being able to properly draw the bowstring back to at least their chin?

No one is impressed by your archery.

I was also mildly amused by a clear stand in for Morgana in one of the opening scenes where the editor did everything to not show her face, splicing her (solo) closeup footage in later which is ridiculous because she's in a completely different room. My favorite character is one of her evil captains though, who gets the pranciest white horse of all time. He is tasked with pursuing the good guys but is very careful to not actually catch up with them at any point. Alas, as good (I'm being generous) as the dragons are there's not much reason to watch this and I can only give it one cosplayer out of five.

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Dragon Crusaders

Featuring dragons, crusaders, gargoyles and pirates!

If you watched Dragons of Camelot then you will notice right away a lot of the cool locations reused here. Also, while it is still possibly the same cosplayer group used in this picture they are more believable with the dirty attire and better acting. The bow guy in particular is pretty cool though some of his archery is questionable (not as bad as archer in the previous movie). There's also a short, kick-ass chick who definitely brings the fight choreo up a notch and is perhaps a good example of a standard D&D halfling fighter. Some fight scenes make use of oddly cut segments though, which doesn't do this film any favours.

Dirt = Authenticity.

The CGI is not as good as the other movie, but it is passable enough and props to them for using gargoyles too. Where this film falls over bad is the story itself. A band of knights being chased by an unseen army (seriously) decide to try help some random people being attacked by pirates. In the process they get cursed by a peasant (LOL) and can only be freed by some bad wizard who happens to control a bunch of dragons, and possibly is one of the dragons himself. He also is a pretty decent swordsman, archer and cavalier. What? Also the pirate speak in this film comprises entirely of grunts and yelling incomprehensibly. Awesome.

Pity, it's like if you took the good aspects of the two films you might actually get something more worth while, but ultimately this too has nothing much going for it and I give it one cosplayer out of five.

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