This time on Direct to DVD Dissection, we look at a movie that features vampires going after people with swords, a sequel to “The Sword and the Sorcerer” in “Tales of an Ancient Empire”
Released January 23rd, 2012
The Story
The Kingdom of Albelar is in trouble after the return of a vampire sorceress seeking vengeance against those that stopped her before. the Princess of the kingdom, Tanis, seeks out a mercenary, Oda and his crew to stop them.
The Cast
Kevin Sorbo as Aedon , the first of the men that Princess Tanis finds, a mercenary who is known for an attitude. Sorbo is best known for his roles in the fantasy series “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys” and “Andromeda”. He’s currently been focused on the direct to DVD market.
Michael Paré plays Oda, a mercenary leader who is leading the group as they take on the sorceress. He has appeared in several movies and shows, and seems to appear in a lot of Uwe Boll’s work, including the Bloodrayne trilogy and Postal.
Melissa Ordway as Tanis, the princess sent out by the queen to defeat the Sorceress and finds herself in the middle of a “family squabble” because of it. She’s appeared in a number of recent movies like “In Time” and “Harold and Kumar 3D”.
Whitney Able as Xia, the demon sorceress who is looking for revenge. She was one of the main cast members in the 2010 film, “Monsters”.
The Dissection
There really should be a rule in the movie industry that a movie needs to have a plot that is not overshadows by its exposition. In the 90 minutes this movie is part of, 10 minutes is devoted to the opening credits, 20 to the ending credits, and a big sum of the remaining hour is made up of exposition of things from the past.
This comes from director Albery Pyun, who is known for his movies like the 1990 “Captain America” movie, the 1982 and previous movie of this “series”, “Sword and the Sorcerer” and the Van Damme movie “Cyborg”. Most of those movie weren’t considered good, by the by. This movie really isn’t that different.
Aedon (Kevin Sorbo) in the middle of a drunken bar fight that involves him trying to beat a guy with a chicken leg. That sadly doesn't happen.
Once you get past all the build up and the exposition, the real issue of the movie is that there is practically nothing to interest the viewer. The plot is so intertwined with telling us the backstory of these people that it kind of forgets to get the plot going until well into the 3rd act.
As for the acting, Sorbo at least works well with what he’s given, though it doesn’t help after his short run on screen is over. Most of the other cast feel really hampered by the dialog, trying to sound authentic to older times, but ending up making it feel awkward to hear the dialog when it appears.
The movie is low budget, and you can tell it by a lot of things. During the long scenes of backstory, it goes from drawn images to shots of the person talking. This is suppose to look as if they were talking from the parchment where the story was written, but it’s shot so cheaply that it looks badly green screened and belonging more in a bad Skinemax movie. The special effects themselves are nothing to write home about either.
Aedon and Princess Tanis (Melissa Ordway) with a bit of a disagreement upon meeting.
As said, the main issue really is the plot, or lack of one, that focuses more on telling exposition rather than what is happening at the moment. The movie really makes it hard to enjoy cause of this, and any kind of enjoyment you might get is ruined right at the end of the movie at an attempt to both draw out a sequel and also to swerve you into a different view of what you just saw.
Extras wise, you only get English language, but you get English and Spanish subtitles. There’s also some behind the scenes footage and trailers.
The Verdict
Not worth the time and effort to see it, or even to think about getting it. Pass.