Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

Dragon Nest: Warriors' Dawn Blu-ray Movie Review

If this is just the dawn, I don't want to be here for the rest of the day.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman March 13, 2024

Despite being a lifelong gamer, I have never heard of the Dragon Nest franchise. Dragon Quest, definitely, that's a staple within the genre, but Dragon Nest just didn't ring a bell, so I was surprised to find that Dragon Nest: Warriors' Dawn is indeed based on a video game world rather than a product of original origins. The film adaptation is a Chinese production, directed by Song Yuefeng and released in 2014. The film has not aged well, and I can say with some confidence that it was not at the top of its game in its release year, either, considering other digitally animated films released that year, like Big Hero 6 and How to Train Your Dragon 2, for example, two titans of the digital animation world and two of the finest examples of its possibilities, both of which are vastly superior not only from a technical perspective, but also narratively, too. Dragon Nest is a stuttering, repetitive, and bland genre film with precious little going for it, either narratively or aesthetically, feeling and playing as a grossly unoriginal film. Maybe the game was better.

The obligatory "3-D pop-out" moment.

Dragon Nest: Warriors’ Dawn is the story of a land at war. The plot follows the story of a young lad named Lambert (voiced by Charlie Schlatter), a human who devises and leads a band of freedom fighters, including the elves with which humans have been at odds, to battle against the forces of darkness which are aligned with the Black Dragon, corrupting his land, Altera, and which are poised to seize control of it. Key to his team is the elf Liya (Blythe Auffarth), whom Lambert is falling in love with.

I was never one entertained by the film, not even for a moment. In fact, I was bored. So very, very bored. It’s not that this is a poor movie, it’s just that it’s hopelessly generic. Even though it’s based on a video game, it feels patently unoriginal. The story, the visual design, the characters and their relationships, even the action: it’s all competent, but that’s hardly praise for a film. It runs full steam ahead on generic fantasy and adventure motifs, dumping one recycled shot, scene, sequence, narrative focus, character trait, production design element, and so on and so forth one on top of another that ultimately yields a film that merely serves to remind the audience that similar, but far better, films exist out there, be they animated or live action.

The film’s story never gains traction for all of those reasons, and even in the smaller moments it feels hopelessly derivative, such as during the scenes of the blossoming romance, the training, and even the humor. The film works in various “cutesy” side characters, mild slapstick, and goofy one-liners that all feel like they have been plucked from a textbook rather than written with any real sense of originality or creativity. It’s a manufactured film from start to finish, made of well-worn components that most moviegoers will instantly recognize. But hopefully they’ll be more engaged than I was.

Dragon Nest: Warriors' Dawn Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The 1080p 2-D presentation is fine but suffers some issues that appear to trace back to the source. For example, aliasing is commonplace and some of the elements can appear fuzzy, especially in motion or at a distance. Up close content looks good enough, with the Blu-ray proving well capable of transmitting the essentials of the digital source. Clairity to armor, terrain, and other complex materials appears to show just about all that the digital artists created for the movie. It's definitely up to snuff for a 1080p presentation that is limited only, really, by the source. Colors are not extraordinarily bold, but they satisfy for depth and clarity. The film transitions from colorful attire to the tired and dark gray-black-blue landscape, but the more vivid tones definitely shine bright, even if there is room for greater punch and vividness. Black levels are fine. The encode offers few, if any, problems of note.

It's been quite a while since I have reviewed a 3-D presentation and some time since I watched any 3-D content, period, but even a bit rusty with the format it's easy to tell that this a solid 3-D effort. There are certainly more than a few moments of largely unimpressive 3-D visuals where the image looks fairly flat with only cursory separation between elements and background depth at work, but the film was not made explicitly to be 3-D reference and "wow" material. It's a case where certain things have been designed to take advantage of the format, but just by any film's narrative nature there will be relatively "boring" 3-D shots at play. So, while some of the image falls flat, for lack of a better term, there are plenty of examples where elements are nicely offset one from another, such as terrain that appears to jut out here and there (including a waterfall that seems to extend from the front of the cliff face behind it) or when characters stand in a staggered sort of manner where it is clear how much space exists between them. Midway through the film, snow appears to fall beyond the front confines of the screen. Sprawling battle sequences give the viewer a fine sense of the scope of the battlefield and the volume of the combatants in it. These are a few examples of the more impressively dynamic 3-D images, and with a few obvious "pop-out" shots also at work (Lambert sticking his sword out of the screen for instance), the film more often than not satisfies, at worst, and delights, at best, for its 3-D content. In terms of detail and color, the 3-D image loses very little, of anything, next to the 2-D image.

Dragon Nest: Warriors' Dawn Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Universal releases Dragon Nest: Warriors' Dawn to Blu-ray with a potent DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack, a presentation which is the unequivocal highlight on the disc. For as dull as the movie may be and as average as the 2-D video presentation is, there is no denying this track's potency and abilities from the start. From the outset, the track exhibits fine surround usage, with arrows whooshing around an idyllic woodland area. As the film progresses, it proves that the opening movement was not one-off matter but rather a sign of things to come. The track makes regular use of swooshing surround movement, offering precise placement and exacting precision in its action elements to absolutely draw the listener in every time. And the excellence does not stop with surrounds. Bass is powerful as well. Listen to a dragon's emergence at the 53-minute mark. The sound stage is bombarded with high yield power and depth, meshed with the sound of cracking and falling rocks, pulling the lister right there into the moment. Music here is deep as well, and nicely engaged, and everything remains in perfect balance, even as an intense ground war commences in subsequent shots. There is a flip side, too. Pleasant ambience, like running water in a town square fountain heard around the 26-minute mark, is also finely integrated and perfectly presented to pull the listener into the film's more serene environments. Score, when more or less in isolation away from action, is also expertly defined, nicely spaced, and balanced between front and back. Dialogue is clear, centered, and well prioritized for the duration.

Dragon Nest: Warriors' Dawn Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of Dragon Nest: Warriors' Dawn contains a few brief extras. A digital copy code (expired now) is included with purchase. No DVD copy is included. The film does ship with an embossed slipcover.

• Interviews (1080p): Interviewees include The Director & Writer (4:44), Xujiao (Actress) (1:18), Hu Ge (Actor) (3:52), Jing Tian (Actress) (1:38), and The Senior Team (2:03). In Chinese with English subtitles (the final supplement has some English).
• Behind the Scenes (1080p, 8:41): A discussion following a critics' screening of the film. In Chinese with English subtitles.
• Deleted Scenes (1080p, 6:58): Several scenes, some finished and others in various stages of the animation process, that are not presented with any titles or other identifying markers.
• Gem of Love (Video Clip) (1080p, 3:45): A music video set to shots from the film.

Dragon Nest: Warriors' Dawn Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It would be unfair to call Dragon Nest: Warriors' Dawn a "poor" film, but it is definitely not teeming with reasons to watch. The animation is decent at best (even for its time), the story is generic, plot content and characterization are recycled, and it just never really clicks. It's competent, but that's about the highest praise I can offer. Universal's Blu-ray offers more than acceptable, but hardly perfect, video in the 2-D realm and a fairly enjoyable and reliable 3-D image. The audio is first-rate. Extras are not voluminous but satisfy the basic needs for a film of this caliber. For fans only.