20150522: Adventure Review--Tales of an Ancient Empire

Abelar: Tales of an Ancient Empire

1. Fundamentals.
1. Original Title: Tales of an Ancient Empire
2. IMDb: Users rated this 3.1/10 (1,276 votes)
3. Rotten Tomatoes:
   critics rating not found number of reviews too low
   4% of users liked it from 169 recorded ratings
   Critics Consensus: none formed yet


4. Status: Rumored
5. Release date: 2010-07-31
6. Production Companies: New Tales
7. Tagline: No tagline found.


8. Budget:  1 million USD (source: IMDb)
9. Revenue: Revenue figures not available at review time.
10. Runtime: 89 minutes.
11. Genres: Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Horror, Science Fiction, Thriller


12. Directed by: Albert Pyun.  Written by: Cynthia Curnan.


13. Starring: Whitney Able as Xia, Kevin Sorbo as Aedan, Ralf Möller as General Hafez, Jennifer Siebel Newsom as Queen Ma'at, Michael Paré as Oda, Melissa Ordway as Princess Tanis, Matthew Willig as Giant Iberian, Sarah Ann Schultz as Malia, Lee Horsley as Talon, Scott Paulin as Tou-Bou Bardo, Olivier Gruner as Corsair Duguay, Sasha Mitchell as Rodrigo, Norbert Weisser as Xuxia, Victoria Maurette as Kara, Janelle Marra as Rajan, Inbar Lavi as Alana, Cazzy Golomb as Hekate.  Christopher Lambert as x?


14. TMDb overview: A princess is on a quest to unite the five greatest warriors to save her kingdom from a demon sorceress.


2. Setup and Plot


1. We start with a good 10 minutes of overview and backstory by Hekate, granddaughter of Ma'at, Queen of Abelar.  The granddaughter was portrayed as having some sort of speech impediment, or else the actress was just very badly miked.  I needed the closed captions.  This segment was largely done in sepia cartoons.  Artsy cartoons, perhaps, but still.  In any case, Ma'at's mother hired mercenaries to put down Sorcerer Xuxia and his vampire daughter Xia, before Xuxia opens a portal to the netherworld.  Duguay, Rodrigo, and Oda manage just that, but Oda introduces complications instead of completely finishing the job.


2. Twenty years later, Princess Tanis becomes the centre of the light side, and Xia, the risen Vampire Queen, the leader of the dark side.  The real core character, though, is warrior mercenary Oda, who slew the sorcerer Xuxia, reduced Xia to dust for 20 years, and fathered Princess Tanis, the mercenary Aedon, imperial assassin Rajan, and their sister Malia.  Rajan had daughter Alana, whom she trained as an assassin.  Besides those four, Oda fathered Kara by Xia, who gave birth before Oda, ah, dusted her off.


3. At the final command of Ma'at, Tanis finds her siblings.  The group goes off to find their wayward and fertile father, then put down Xia and keep the door to the netherworld closed.


4. What could possibly go wrong?


3. Conclusions
1. If the sowing wild oats aspect had been better written, the film would have been helped.  I thought it was quite humorous, but I suspect most will not appreciate the father-issue dialog.


2. One line summary: Swords and sorcery, wretched visuals, and a poor script.


3. One of ten; two black holes for cinematography and acting.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 0/10 I hate sepia.  I hate similar filtration setups that essentially crush any visual richness and natural tones.  The CGI varied between bad and very bad.  The fake vampire teeth were obviously fake and caused the Xia character to have muddled speech.


2. Sound: 5/10 I could discern words of most of the actors, but I relied watching on Netflix with captions turned on to get the dialog.  The vampire fouling of speech was prevalent.  The music in the credits was good, but was out of context with a period piece such as this.


3. Acting: 5/10 The cast includes actors whose work I enjoyed in the past: Michael Pare, Lee Horsley, Olivier Gruner, Sasha Mitchell, Christopher Lambert, and Kevin Sorbo.  Gruner, Mitchell, and Horsley were OK in very short parts.  Michael Pare looked like he was at a first read-through Monday morning after a disastrous weekend, rather than in final take.  I was on the look-out for Mr Lambert, but I failed to see him.  Kevin Sorbo, at least, convinced me he knew he was on camera, and was delivering his lines while understanding the character's motivations.  I'm not saying this was Oscar level work, merely that he was present in the professional sense.  Mr Willig was good, but his part was also short.----The women characters were central to the film, much more important than the male characters.   The actresses, though, were either inexperienced or just off.


4. Screenplay: 2/10 Sigh.  This was another under capitalised project.  It shows.  The number of dead-end plot threads was too high.  Also, too much time was devoted to dreary conversations, then Hekate would narrate what should have been long action sequences in a matter of a few seconds.