Review: Dragon Age – Dawn of the Seeker (2012)

Review by Disgruntled Monkey

Director: Fumihiko Sori

Starring: Miranda Raison, Brina Palencia and Christopher Sabat

Writer: Jeffrey Scott

After viewing Dead Space Downfall, a friend told me that –supposedly- it was the best out of the three EA animated movies. He hadn’t seen the Mass Effect movie, however he assured me that Dragon Age was a far worse film. I didn’t believe him. Nevertheless my curiosity was ignited and I had to see for myself. I really should have heeded the warnings.

Right off the bat what we have is animation that’s just horrible. It’s mostly CGI with some cell shading which often times can work. The problem here though is the CGI makes all the characters very doll-like in appearance and the cell shading adds nothing to the film overall, proving to be more of a distraction than anything else. What’s worse is that the bloodshed looks really out of place, like it belongs in another movie.

In the beginning the film dumps a lot of exposition on the audience and if you’re not a fan of the games it’s a very high entry point. I could definitely see this turning people away. The plot itself is pretty simple; in fact it’s very transparent. If you’ve watched a million and ten fantasy movies then you know where it’s going. But then with the surrounding mythos being so dense, all the names, places and factions can be confusing. So would that make it confusingly simple or simply confusing?

Things look like they are about to get ugly.........er.

Voice work ranges from boring to absolutely puzzling. Characters’ accents swap nationalities in a blink of an eye. In fact I couldn’t place where the Revered Mother was from but from what I could puzzle out it seemed to be a mix of Italian, Russian, Japanese and Dracula. At another point in the story we are introduced to a character with the smarmiest British accent I’ve ever heard. This of course marks him as the turncoat (didn’t you know all British people are evil?) the problem being though this is the only time he has this smarmy British accent.

Inconsistency seems to be the motto of this movie. Several scenes had me scratching my head at how contrived they were. The movie even has the gall to end on a ‘to be continued’ note. I’m not sure if that was a threat to the audience but it did frighten me. Yet again this movie just stinks of cash grab. Avoid at all costs.