Flat Iron Film Company / 2011 / 90 mins / NR

THE SERIES:
Felicia Day is one talented and hard working geek girl. She is destined to go down in the history books as one of The pioneering and driving forces of web-based entertainment thanks to her award winning and internationally successful web series THE GUILD and now the ambitious fantasy mini-epic DRAGON AGE: REDEMPTION. A lover and self professed hard-core gamers, Ms. Day took her passion of gaming and desire to be an actress and turned it into a very successful career. With the help of friends she created, wrote and stars as Cyd Sherman (aka Codex) in the low budget web series smash THE GUILD, a hysterical and very witty series about gamers and their adventures dealing with each other. With DRAGON AGE: REDEMPTION, she takes webisodes to a new level. Instead of chronicling the people who play the games, she is attempting to bring the epic sized landscapes they play in to life.

DRAGON AGE is a phenomenally popular dark fantasy role playing video game from BioWare. The world of Dragon Age has been expanded to novels, physical games (ala Dungeons and Dragons), anime episodes, comic books and now a webseries. Ms. Day is a huge fan of the game and thanks to her partnering with BioWare for this series, her character, Tallis, was incorporated in the actual game franchise in DRAGON AGE II. However, Ms. Day may be a little too close to the material on this one as the movie requires you to know the game. Really well.

The story is simple enough: Elven assassin Tallis (Day) reluctantly teams up with rogue Templar Knight Cairn (Adam Rayner) to stop the evil mage Saarebas (Doug Jones) from performing a blood ritual which will allow him to conquer the world. There is a little more to it (a few more characters) but basically, that’s the story. Should be easy enough to follow, right? Well, it is and it isn’t.

Day wrote the script and is clearly extremely well versed in the nuances, titles, names, relationships, backstories, and general lore of the Dragon Age world. One of her biggest goals (as is stated several times in the supplements) was to make the film and characters as true to the source material as she possibly could. From the look of the characters down to popular fight moves and killing blows, her DRAGON AGE movie would be authentic. Not having played the game before, I have a strong feeling she succeeded because 90% of what the characters say and reference are completely foreign to me. All through DRAGON AGE: REDEMPTION I knew what the characters were doing, I sorta kept up their relationships but had practically no idea what they were ever talking about. With THE GUILD, Day has been and continues to keep the world of hard core gamers accessible to us non-gamers. In this film, she doesn’t quite succeed. She is playing to the people who know and love the game. Period.

Taking a step back though, DRAGON AGE: REDEMPTION is a marvel at what filmmakers can accomplish with very little money today. Costumes, sets, the CGI effects, everything looks really well done. This is a far more polished production than THE GUILD and truly raises the bar on how sharp a low budget web-based series can look. While this may not be a far reaching success on par with, say, DR. HORRIBLE’S SING-A-LONG BLOG, DRAGON AGE: REDEMPTION is a huge step forward in web-based entertainment.

THE DISC:
The anamorphic 1.78 transfer is uneven. Close ups offer excellent clarity and fine detail but long and medium shots come through murky and blocky at best. It doesn’t look like Flat Iron was given a strong print of the series to work with, possibly having to use mid-grade digital files. Regardless, the final product suffers when it should shine.

The Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo mix fares better but its low budget roots are obvious. Dialogue is clear and S. Peace Nistades’ fun score is presented well enough, but for the most part the sound is a bit tinny and weak. An immersive soundscape is not really to be found. Granted this is a very low budgeted, web based series and what they accomplished is to be commended and applauded. Just keep that in mind when viewing.

THE EXTRAS:
As with all of Ms. Day’s web based endeavors on disc, the supplements are plentiful and rich:

We kick off with commentary tracks for all six episodes with Day and director Peter Winther. The pair offers loads of fun stories from the set and original intentions that couldn’t quite be accomplished with their time and budget.

The entirety of the rest of the supplements can all be watched as one giant documentary/promotion thanks to a very handy “Play All” function:

“Bringing The Game To Life,” “Characters,” “Costumes,” and “Stunts” comprise the main behind the scenes featurettes and together deliver a very satisfying documentary on the making of this ground breaking project.

The “Blooper Reel” is mildly amusing but nothing to write home about.

“Dragon Age Origins,” “Dragon Age II,” “Dragon Age II: Legacy DLC,” “Dragon Age II: Mark of the Assassin DLC” are all promos and promotional videos for the various games.

Three segments of the “Bioware TV series” leading up to the launch of the web series are here: “Interview with Creative Director Mike Laidlaw (2 parts)” and “Interview with Felicia Day.”

The Script is also on the disc as a PDF file.

MY SAY:
While it certainly has its problems, DRAGON AGE: REDEMPTION is a milestone in web-based entertainment. Die hard fans of the game should really enjoy it. The rest of us will wonder what the characters are talking about but still marvel at just how much was accomplished with so little. Recommended!

Reviewed by Jeff Allen