Just watched Dragonlance.
The tone: it's not funny enough. Fizban is not NEARLY batshit enough, and Tasslehoff is entirely lacking in a Cockney accent.
Dragons are not scary enough. It is never properly established that nobody's seen one in hundreds of years and they're now considered old wives' tales, and most importantly, the notion of dragonfear, that everyone should just be completely fucking paralyzed on seeing one, is never even mentioned. It's more like, "Oh shit, there's a dragon, now let's talk loudly and steal her shit."
The visuals: you like CG mixing in with your cel animation? Of course you don't. But for some reason somebody thought it was a good idea here. Far and away the worst example of it is the fights between the cel Companions and the CG Draconians; it is incredibly jarring.
Oh, and scene for scene it's pretty much a straight-up ripoff of Lord of the Rings at every turn. I know that's to be expected, but it didn't have to be so flagrant.
The dialogue: everyone speaks entirely in overblown, stilted exposition, and yet somehow they go ninety minutes without bothering to explain why Raistlin has hourglass eyes, or that kender are immune to fear.
The final "Tanis, destroy the bad guy with YOUR FAITH IN GOD!" battle is so overbearing that it makes Narnia look downright subtle by comparison.
The characters: Kiefer Sutherland actually makes a damn fine Raistlin, and steals the show, as Raistlin should. He's not quite mean enough for my tastes.
Michael Rosenbaum just seems OFF as Tanis. The fact that I keep picturing Lex Luthor every time he opens his mouth doesn't help, of course.
There's very little Laurana, but she comes across as an annoying valley-girl type. Which actually might be okay, as we're SUPPOSED to see her grow from an immature child to a battle-hardened general over the course of the trilogy.
The rest are pretty good. No real standouts. Phil LaMarr is in everything.
The pace: decently brisk. A little too much so in places, but they do a pretty good job of keeping the important material. I missed the wicker dragon, but can't think of anything important that was missing offhand (Riverwind's "death", I guess). Bear in mind, of course, that it's been about a decade since I read the book.
Not enough time spent on Bupu. She's not really important as a character, but Raistlin's kindness to her when he's an utter bastard to everyone else is crucial to his character later on down the line.
They TOTALLY abuse fade-in-fade-out scene transitions, to the point that the whole thing winds up feeling pretty disjointed. There's a definite "okay, now we gotta get to the NEXT part" vibe going on.
As I mentioned earlier, several important details (Raistlin's eyes, dragonfear, kender fearlessness) are left out, while a couple of plot twists that cropped up in later books show up here (Fizban's true nature, and what Kitiara's up to).
All in all: a thoroughly meh adaptation. Not really BAD, but not especially good either.
