MadCap's Reel Thoughts - "Dungeons & Dragons" (2000)

Ahhhh, here we are in the firm grasp of sword and sorcery bullshit!

This film is ironically brought to us by the same production company that would bring us The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies. This film, is un-ironically, not as good as even The Battle of Five Armies. By 2000, the sword and sorcery craze of the 1980's was a distant memory with only smoldering embers stoked by Harry Potter (yes, I know Harry Potter isn't technically sword and sorcery, don't @ me) and direct to video releases before being later brought back to life by the aforementioned opus of one Peter Jackson.

This film, however, is an enigma. It's an enigma primarily because of why anyone thought that any of this was remotely a good idea. The best way to describe it, as given to me by EpicApathy (that handsome devil) is that it is a movie of improbabilities. Every single thing that could have been a bad choice was made, and it inevitably all went horribly, horribly wrong. It was as if someone had set a train wreck on fire, and the train was filled with glitter...and feces.

I know I don't post as much of it as often as I used to (MadCap's Tabletop Tales will be making a return at some point in the future, by the way), but I am actually a fan of table top RPGing and of Dungeons & Dragons in particular. Needless to say, a Dungeons & Dragons movie would be an exciting thing for me. Would be.

Wooooooooooooooooould be.

They fucked up.

They fucked up hard.

MadCap's Reel Thoughts - "The Beastmaster" (1982)

My name is Madcap! I come from the low swamps!

...okay, got that out of the way.

The Beastmaster is a cult classic sword and sorcery film from the bygone age of the 1980's. Ironically, however, it didn't start out that way. The Beast Master was originally a novel written by novelist Andre Norton, details a Navajo man with the ability to communicate with animals who gets a job herding them on a distant alien planet and tries to avenge his father's murder.

So, naturally, The Beastmaster was destined to be a sword and sorcery epic.

What If...the Empire of the Wolf began in Tooth and Claw? (Part 4)

Last time, Jack Harkness and the Doctor managed to escape the insidious force of Torchwood, but not without some damage to the TARDIS in the process. With an emergency landing, they found themselves in a field...somewhere...in 2006 and with a mysterious statue standing nearby. Meanwhile, we saw the reveal of the true leader of the Torchwood task force and the servant of the Wolf Emperor - Rose Tyler. Time is starting to unravel. Will the Doctor and Jack be able to save the day?

MadCap's Reel Thoughts - "Conan the Barbarian" (1982)

"Between the time when game reviews had no editing and the rise of the Beat Sabers, there was an age undreamed of. And onto this, MadCap, destined to wear the metaphysical crown of Z-List Internet Celebrity status upon a troubled brow! It is I, his editor, who alone can tell you of his story. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!"

Conan the Barbarian was originally a pulp sword and sorcery character as written by writer Robert E. Howard.  Hailing from the pre/early history (and fictional) Hyborian Age, Conan of Cimmeria was many things in his time - a warrior, a thief, a gladiator, and a king. By using influences from the real world in terms of society and technology, Howard was able to craft a world similar to the historical one we know here on Earth, but without needing to spend a lot of time explaining anything and allowing for anachronisms (such as, say, Krull). It's pretty genius and lends itself to us caring more about the story than we do the minutiae.

Which brings us to 1982's Conan the Barbarian. One of the first feature films of the future Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger, it is set in that world of low fantasy, high adventure. It's considered a cult classic and has made an obscene amount of profit every time it's been released on home media. However, here's the question of the hour...is it good?

Well, yeah. I figured that'd be obvious.

What if...the Empire of the Wolf began in Tooth and Claw? (Part 3)

Last time, Captain Jack Harkness found himself on the run from the werewolf legions of the Torchwood Institute. As he makes his way to the Torchwood House, Jack experiences the strange appearances and disappearances of various creatures. Time is beginning to unravel as he makes his way into the house to find...the TARDIS, and a very familiar individual within it, the Doctor.

Just not the Doctor he was expecting to find.

MadCap's Reel Thoughts - "Krull" (1983)

"This, it was given to me to know...that many worlds have been enslaved by the Beast and his army, the Slayers. And this, too, was given me to know...that the Beast would come to our world, the world of Krull, and his Black Fortress would be seen in the land. That the smoke of burning villages would darken the sky, and the cries of the dying echo through deserted valleys. But one thing I cannot know, whether the prophecy be true, that a girl of ancient name shall become queen, that she shall choose a king, and that together they shall rule our world, and that their son shall rule the galaxy."

Thus begins the epic of Krull, one of the many many films made in the wake of the success of Star Wars and trying to invoke the same feel without nearly as much of the set up. If, in particular, you decided to TL;DR that quote from the film, then I'm afraid to tell you you better get used to much, much more of it.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love this movie. It just never bothers to explain anything about the background information. What background information we are given is as follows: on a planet named Krull, an entity known as the Beast has arrived to conquer everything. Two rival kingdoms seek to form an alliance by marriage, Prince Colwyn and Princess Lyssa will wed. As the prophecy says, a girl of ancient name will become Queen, she will choose a king, and together they shall rule the world of Krull.

Needless to say, the Beast has more than a few reservations about this and, without one, decides to crash the wedding.

MadCap's Mad Rantings - "Doctor...Who?"

Okay, so The Fugitive of the Judoon just happened and if you don't want spoilers on it, then I highly suggest that you give this a miss until you've seen it. You may also want to miss out on this until you see Spyfall as well, which I will also touch upon for background. If you have, then feel free to continue. As always, spoilers will begin below the cut.

Like many critics out there that don't have their head firmly up the rear ends of Chris Chibnall and the BBC, I've been very critical of the current run of Doctor Who that began when both Steven Moffat and Peter Capaldi left the show back in 2017. Chibnall started his run by making the controversial decision to cast a woman in the role of the Doctor, specifically Jodie Whitaker.

I -like many - scoffed at what was very clear pandering, but I was willing to give it a shot on the grounds that cross-sex regeneration had already been established in Moffat's era and had been hinted as being possible at least as far back as the Tom Baker era (both in and out of universe, Tom Baker apparently teased to the press that his replacement when he left in 1981 could be a woman). Whitaker is a talented actress, and I am of the belief that there is no bad actor who has ever played the Doctor regardless of their genitals.

Chibnall had written one of my favorite of the Matt Smith era episodes (Dinosaurs on a Spaceship) and is still very much acclaimed for the work he did with Russell T. Davies on Torchwood. So, I thought we'd see a bit of the Russell T. Davies era with all the crap thrown out and, perhaps, an interesting Doctor in spite of a grab bag of iffy episodes.

...and then Series 11 happened.

For the record, I don't blame Series 11 on Whitaker or actually any of the cast. Whitaker does well with what she's given, as do her companions. Unfortunately, what she's given is crap and she has too many companions. The writing, and the sentiment behind it, ruined what could have been some really good episodes.

The Woman Who Fell To Earth did a good job of setting up everyone in the new cast, Kerblam! had a decent episode marred with a somewhat muddied message in the end, It Takes You Away had potential up until the very end, and Resolution managed to make the Daleks terrifying up until it climbed into a steampunk Dalek casing. And then it became hilarious.

...and yes, I will be getting to all of those episodes (and the rest) when I review Series 11 at...some point...in my From Madcap's Couch series. Unless you're reading this at some point in the future after I've already done so, in which case - hi, future people! Did we manage to survive the Coronavirus?

Horribly dating myself aside, pretty much every other episode in Series 11 was either merely okay or really bad and it seemed that audiences agreed. Critics loved them, but then they seemed to care more about the social messages pushed or mocking the fans for thinking things were ridiculous than they cared about the actual content itself.

Whether or not that was a deciding factor, Chibnall and the BBC took a gap year. This was both a good idea and a bad idea. It was a good idea in that it would give him time to rework his approach and maybe glean something from the critics and maybe get a-

Oh...oh, well that's very unfortunate there, Chris ol' boy...