The Dragons Have Taken Flight, The Long Wait Is At An End

Snow White And The Huntsman (2012)

Snow White And The Huntsman is the classic tale of Snow White given the full-on Lord Of The Rings treatment.

Director Rupert Sanders was clearly taking lessons from Peter Jackson with his presentation of a fully-developed fantasy world.

Unfortunately, for all its sumptuous production values, the script by Evan Daugherty, John Lee Hancock and Hossein Amini is quite flawed - the pacing is rather measured, to put it politely (most would call it slow), the magic mirror (a key element of the story and a great special effect) is forgotten about a third of the way into the story, and the central characters of the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) and Snow's childhood sweetheart, William (Sam Claflin) both serve the same role in the movie. This duplication of roles is further highlighted by the script's failure to resolve either character's personal journey.

And all that brings us to Snow White herself. Kristen Stewart may have the whole Twilight thing under her belt and is reasonably easy on the eye, but she is totally devoid of charisma in this movie - this is never more evident than in her "rousing speech" to her father's subjects hiding out in the castle of Duke Hammond (Vincent Regan).

She is supposedly whipping them up into a frenzy of rebellion against the evil queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron), but totally fails to sell it. I couldn't imagine an army following her to the supermarket let alone into battle against a powerful, magical foe.

That said, the film gave us a well thought-out back story of how the witch Ravenna usurped Snow White's father and took over the kingdom - even if we are supposed to believe that for the decade (or longer) that Snow was kept imprisoned, the lone rebel Duke Hammond - father of William - was able to hold out against the queen and her mastery of the dark arts.

When Snow comes of age (and thus the queen is no longer "the fairest in the land"), she escapes captivity and flees into the well-realised Dark Forest.

Ravenna summons The Huntsman to track Snow down, on the promise that she will bring his dead wife back to life if he delivers. Realising that the queen's offer is an empty one, the Huntsman instead helps Snow to escape the forest and head towards Duke Hammond's castle.

On the way they are captured by the seven dwarf bandits - who count a number of famous faces amongst them: such as Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone, Nick Frost and Toby Jones.

And the dwarves are another strength of the film. Once you get over the initial shock of seeing such well-known faces on the bodies of little people, they are wholly convincing and wouldn't look out of place around the table at Bag End when Thorin and co pay a visit to Bilbo Baggins.

The dwarves then escort Snow and the Huntsman to their final destination, and play an integral part in the princess's scheme to get her kingdom back and avenge her father's death.

But of course the stand-out performance of the piece is Charlize Theron as the evil queen, who not only acts Kristen Stewart out of the picture but looks every inch the majestic evil sovereign, whatever make-up effects are piled on her to show the ageing cost of her magic.

There are even, early on, strong suggestions of an incestuous, Game Of Thrones-style relationship between Ravenna and her (twin?) brother Finn (Sam Spruell), but this, ultimately, being a children's movie that particular sub-plot also goes nowhere - although there is definitely a link of some kind between them as demonstrated when the Huntsman slays Finn.

Stylistically Snow White And The Huntsman is a visually impressive retelling of Snow White story, but the script has serious, basic issues that really should have been picked up during the film's development.

Sleeping Beauty (2014)

Years before they became a byword for cheap, blockbuster cash-ins (i.e. mockbusters), the first movie I discovered by The Asylum was a fantasy film (simply called Dragon, I believe) in the discount aisle of Woolworths in Tonbridge (which shows just how long ago it was).

Since then I have remained firm in my belief that although they're not exactly known for quality productions, The Asylum is at its best when working in the fantasy genre.

That said, Sleeping Beauty isn't up to the pulpy, B-movie calibre of, say, an Arrowstorm film, but it still has its moments.

Directed by Casper Van Dien, who also appears as King David alongside his wife, Catherine Oxenberg as Queen Violet and his daughter Grace Van Dien as Princess Dawn aka Sleeping Beauty, the film is a liberal reworking of the fairy tale that starts in Disney territory then caroms off into its own little world.

To complete the family atmosphere on set, Maya Van Dien (daughter of both Casper Van Dien and Catherine Oxenberg) appears as a totally random addition to the story - a young girl called Newt (Aliens, much?) who has survived inside the enchanted castle and gives aid to Princess Dawn's rescuers.

Events initially unfold as they do in Disney's Sleeping Beauty cartoon, with the Three Good Fairies bestowing gifts upon the newborn Princess Dawn (although the guards' ill-fitting helmets and the treasure chests that look like cardboard boxes give away that this isn't the Disney version).

But then busty, yummy-mummy, evil witch queen Tambria (Olivia d'Abo) - whose invite got lost in the post - turns up and zaps Dawn with the familiar curse, then proceeds to blow up the good fairies.

In The Asylum's version, Dawn is raised alone in a castle tower, educated by her parents, and kept away from spinning wheel needles (several on-the-nose double entendres involving the word 'prick' got my hopes up this was going to be a wittily-scripted comedy; it's not), until just before her 16th birthday. And what do you know? She only gets tricked by Tambria into pricking her finger and falling asleep (taking the whole kingdom down with her).

A century passes and in a neighbouring kingdom, a servant called Barrow (Game Of Thrones' Finn Jones) discovers fragments of a map and a message leading to the cursed castle. Now, I'm not sure exactly who wrote this as Princess Dawn (as is suggested) is, of course, in a magical sleep.

I presumed it was actually an elaborate trap set out by Tambria - who has also been trapped inside the castle and unable to harm her slumbering nemesis - but this is never made clear.

Barrow's master is the obnoxious, privileged, bullying Tory-boy Prince Jayson (Edward Lewis French), who, learning of Barrow's discovery, decides to lead his coterie of yobbish mates on a jolly wheeze to rescue the treasure in Sleeping Beauty's castle and claim that kingdom for his own.

Again, it's never exactly clear how much this neighbouring territory knows about the curse on King David's land or the power of the wicked sorceress Tambria who now rules (kind of) there.

Given that it's just "over the mountain" from Jayson's realm, the general knowledge of the whole "asleep for a century" scenario seems rather vague.

Of course, Tambria isn't going to make things easy and throws a scaly pliosaur, a giant lizardman, a legion of shadowy wraiths and a never-ending army of zombies at the adventuring party that's coming for the treasure (and maybe the chance to snog a sleeping 115-year-old princess).

A particularly wonderful aspect about Jayson's loathsome cronies is, given that they are supposed to be trained fighters, just how cowardly they are. Their go-to tactic when confronted by any monster is "run away, run away".

The only one who shows the slightest bit of decency towards Barrow, and some backbone, is Gruner (Gil Kolirin) - who may be a commander or captain or something in Jayson's army, again it's not very clear.

The adventuring party gradually gets whittled down as they wander, seemingly aimlessly, around the same sections of castle and overgrown garden, until the final confrontation with Tambria.

By this time, Jayson has switched sides (or is he bluffing?), Newt has popped up and disappeared in a cloud of cryptic warnings several times, and Gruner and Barrow have bonded.

I'm not entirely sure who Sleeping Beauty is aimed at as there's some gore (Tambria pulling the head off of someone and dragging out their spine comes to mind) and an uncomfortable, rape-threat moment where a couple of brothers in Jayson's gang discover a magically sleeping servant woman in the castle kitchens. Thankfully Barrow steps in before that goes too far.

There's certainly an attempt at a Dungeons & Dragons vibe in the latter stages of this movie (torch-lit exploration, traps etc), but despite constant references to Barrow's map, there's never any real feeling that the adventurers are navigating a convincing, contiguous environment.

One minute they are stuck on one side of a lake, the next there's a bridge; they talk about going to certain places, but are next seen elsewhere.

This also isn't some hallucinogenic, dreamscape either, but simply a combination of poor directing, editing and scriptwriting.

The low-budget monsters aren't too bad though; the giant lizardman (despite being a cheap CGI creation) is quite interesting and the various undead have the added bonus that Tambria keeps resurrecting them every time they get nobbled.

As well as the many, many plot holes in the story (some of which I've alluded to above), more often than not the dialogue is delivered in quite mannered ways; now I'm not sure if this is director Van Dien trying to create a "fantasy Medieval" ambience but it doesn't really work.

Budgetary limitations abound in this version of Sleeping Beauty (there's no big dragon showdown at the end, for instance) - both in the effects and script - but it's an okay way to pass 90 minutes, if there isn't anything better on TV.

CAMPAIGN AUTOPSIES: Will I Ever Learn?

Photo by Giancarlo Revolledo on Unsplash

When the Tuesday Knights came into being I was the de facto gamesmaster, running a deliciously vanilla fantasy campaign in my homebrew setting of Tekralh.

However, I don't feel my gamesmastering chops really began to take form until May 2014 when Pete handed me the reins of his nascent Chronicles of Cidri campaign.

Pete had been running this, for a few months, using the old The Fantasy Trip rules, but I updated that to a retroclone of the system, Heroes & Other Worlds.

I have to confess that the mechanics were rather too "dice pooly" for my liking, but they really worked well in the context of our campaign.

I ran Cidri for the better part of three years, building up to a delightfully OTT apocalyptic climax.

This campaign remains my personal gold standard, a target I now wish to aim for again - and hopefully excel - when I'm finally allowed to return to the head of the table.

The Tuesday Knights' membership has changed a lot since those days, we've lost some people and gained more members, which means tastes have changed as well, but I still feel these "revelations" hold water and I really should adhere to them.

I wish I'd had the foresight to conduct an autopsy on our Cidri campaign when it wrapped, dissecting my thoughts on why it worked, but I think I was just basking in the adulation of my players... and so it never crossed my mind to attempt the kind of surprisingly perceptive analysis that I had with these earlier efforts that hadn't worked out.

As will be clear by now I've started work on my latest attempt to run an "open-ended" campaign for the Tuesday Knights, but this time with a new rules set (Twilight Sword) and a superficially-familiar fantasy setting.

This will actually be my fifth or sixth attempted campaign since the Tuesday Knights first started gaming back in August 2008.

So, what went wrong with my previous games?

TEKRALH I: The first game I ran for the Tuesday Knights started as heavily houseruled version of Castles & Crusades (with a large dose of Hackmaster and Arduin) and it worked really well to start with...

Until, for no readily apparent reason, I decided to switch horses mid-stream and changed the rules system to a by-the-book version of Labyrinth Lord. The characters were severely de-powered and the game turned into a meatgrinder of TPK after TPK.

Within a few sessions all the fun that we'd had at the start of the campaign was sucked from the campaign. Eventually, I had to pull the plug on the game as it wasn't getting anywhere.

When we started the players were giving me nice backstories for their characters, with plot hooks etc, but by the end I was lucky if they'd give their characters names as they knew their life expectancy had become so limited.

MORAL: If it ain't broke don't fix it.

KNIGHT CITY I: Next up was my Villains & Vigilantes campaign, set in Knight City. This was driven almost entirely by the naïve dream of trying to recapture the magic that Steve, Pete, Nick and I enjoyed with our original V&V games back in the '80s.

Almost from the start things went wrong with this campaign due to the simple fact that we weren't all singing from the same hymn sheet. It wasn't anyone's fault in particular, but when we were teenagers we were all (except for Nick) avid comic book readers and had reasonably similar tastes in comics and superheroes.

Thirty years later, tastes had changed and the sort of scenarios I wanted to run (e.g. dimension hopping, cosmic stuff) didn't sit comfortably with some of the players, who were expecting more straight-forward supervillain bashing.

There were also problems with the rules (from the clunky combat table at the game's heart to the peculiar diversity of character's random power sets), but ultimately these were just the straws that broke a very unhealthy camel's back. I think we could have overcome these if everyone had had contiguous ideas of where the game should be going.

MORAL: Make sure everyone is on the same page.

TEKRALH II: I thought I'd found a winner when I came across D101's Crypts & Things (a sword & sorcery variant of Swords & Wizardry) as I thought this kind of human-centric adventure game was the way to go.

The simple problem with this very short-lived campaign - and it had nothing to do with the rules - was I had just discovered A Song Of Ice & Fire!

I was in the grip of Westeros-fever and spent all my time thinking about developing the wider world, quickly losing sight of the intimate adventure I should have been running for the players. 

This would have been fine if the player-characters were all high-up members of House Stark or House Lannister, but they were actually 1st Level D&D proto-adventurers and tunnel grubbers.

Instead of developing scenarios or stocking dungeons I was researching medieval legal systems, clothing, cuisine, bartering etc My eyes were fixed on the horizon rather than the gamestable in front of me.

MORAL: Intimate, not epic.

SHADOWDARK: I only ran this for one session. The players told me afterwards that they loved it, but something about it just didn't click with me.

At the time I was working on my overcomplicated Frankengame monstrosity of assorted houserules all stapled together with my own ideas from decades of gaming.

As it happened, "my" system and Shadowdark shared some similar ideas. It's just Shadowdark did them more elegantly, more streamlined. So I should have been happy!

To this day, I have no idea why I bounced off of Shadowdark so hard, when - upon initially reading the rules - it felt like such a perfect fit for my style of gamesmastering. 

However, I'm glad I didn't drag this game out and euthanised it before people got too invested in the campaign.

MORAL: If you're going to kill off a game, kill it quickly.

KNIGHT CITY II: Last year - before the osteoarthritis in my back knocked me off my feet for more than six months - I started a new V&V campaign (this time with some houserules to avoid some of the issues we'd encountered mechanically last time).

I provided the players with pamphlets before hand introducing the setting and - hopefully - suggesting the style of game I was hoping for.

But, once again, it didn't take long to realise that we had four players all pulling in different directions. This meant, for instance, that the opening scenario - which should have taken one or two sessions to wrap up - was heading into its fourth month when I had to retire from the field.

At its core, the problems with this iteration of Knight City were exactly the same as before, even though the make-up of the group at the table was different.

Superheroes are such a broad genre that they can mean diametrically different things to different players, no matter how well you think you've spelled out your personal vision.

And a central element of that clash of ideologies lies at my own feet. Over the decades (I've been reading comics since I was a wee nipper, and a collector since I was a teenager), my personal beliefs about what makes a good costumed crimefighter have become so embedded in my psyche that I'm not only unable to clearly explain my "vision" (surely everyone else sees superheroes the same way, right?) but I get frustrated when my players don't automatically share the same "vision"!

Just because it's a beloved reading and viewing genre for me doesn't mean I can run it as an open-ended, forever campaign. In fact, I'm probably too emotionally invested in the genre for me to brook any deviation from my perceived "one true way".

To top that off - again ignoring my mistakes from previous failed campaigns - I'd gone full "Game of Thrones" on Knight City and obsessively detailed every borough, with hundreds and hundreds of locations. Most of which, the players bypassed when creating their character backstories. 

It's almost as if I'd totally ignored every single misstep I'd made previously as a gamesmaster and was trying to crash on regardless.

MORAL: Learn from your past mistakes. Pick a game genre that everyone understands.

Early Thoughts on Personalising The Twilight Sword Setting

As a youngling I had this Pauline Baynes map of Narnia on my bedroom wall

With the impending release of the beta PDF of Twilight Sword, I have begun to noodle around ideas for "personalising" the lands of Radia - the game's default setting. 

World building from scratch is one of my weaknesses as a gamesmaster: all my worlds created whole cloth tend to end up as simply reskinned versions of real lands from Medieval(ish) Earth... and not in a clever, Robert E Howard Age of Hyboria way.

I also have a tendency to "Game of Thrones" things up before the first die is slung, by which I mean I overcomplicate and hyperdetail the setting way beyond anything the players will probably ever have any interaction with.

This is because I tend to fall in love with my settings and then mistakenly believe I'm the next JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis or George RR Martin! When all I'm really doing is creating a backdrop for some wonderfully silly elfgames.

Aware of this fault in my planning process, I'm approaching Radia - which we know is inspired by video games and anime - with broader strokes.

At the moment, clearly, I know almost nothing about the actual, 'official' setting, so am just scraping together notes and bullet points of ideas, locations, names (for places and people) etc that - hopefully - veer away from the usual Western/Tolkien norm of fantasy settings.

For the anime influences for Radia, I shall be looking to pick up cues from my beloved Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, Record of Lodoss War, and Delicious in Dungeon.

My knowledge of anime is limited (although greater than my knowledge of video games), but I remain firm in my belief that these three serials have the best resources in the pure fantasy (Dungeons & Dragons-inspired) genre.

Beyond anime, I'm looking at established settings such as Narnia, Wonderland, Oz, Neverland, Eternia, and Arduin, and films like Labyrinth, The NeverEnding Story, The Dark Crystal, and so on, rather than my usual inspirations, for example Hawk The Slayer and Lord of The Rings. 

Don't get me wrong Hawk The Slayer remains the definitive old school Dungeons & Dragons movie in my book and Peter Jackson's Lord of The Rings trilogy is simply the greatest movie of all time, which I ensure I watch at least once a year from start to finish.

But, in my experience, the thing I find about such intricate settings as Middle-Earth and Westeros is that they are 'fragile'. If you mess around with them too much they break and are no longer the setting you fell in love with in the first place.

Now, I know you can say: but it's your game, you can do what you like with the setting, who's going to know?

But, besides the fact that I would know, it's my belief that these settings are so intricately interwoven that if you mess with, or change, one bit it will have a cascade effect further down the line so that something else isn't going to make sense (just look at George RR Martin's anger with The House of The Dragon tv show because characters were cut out who actually have an important role to play in the story at a later date).

Hence, why I'm shifting my focus to loosey-goosey, weird and surreal settings that are governed by more fairy tale aesthetics. I believe these will gel more with my vision - and understanding - of how Radia (and Twilight Sword) is supposed to operate.

Of course, I could be completely wrong. But I hope not.

I'd really like to run a setting that was, at once, familiar to the Tuesday Knights but also fresh and original, and not just another Middle-Earth/Forgotten Realms/Medieval Europe retread. 

And has talking animals.

The Green Knight (2021)

Although The Green Knight has been available to stream on Prime Video for ages now, it wasn't until I came across the Blu-Ray in an Amazon sale the other day that I finally decided it was time to clear 130 minutes in my schedule and sit down to watch this Arthurian epic.

It's Christmas in the court of King Arthur and aspiring knight Gawain (the perfectly cast Dev Patel) is seated beside the king, his uncle, when the mysterious emerald-skinned Green Knight (Ralph Ineson) rides in and issues an honour challenge.

He will allow someone to strike him, but then the following Christmas they must seek him out in The Green Chapel and he will repay the blow in the kind.

Gawain, with the loan of King Arthur's sword (is it Excalibur?), beheads the Green Knight, but then the supernatural entity picks up his head and rides off.

Eventually, time passes and the aged Arthur (a brilliant turn from Sean Harris) tells Gawain he really should go and find The Green Knight.

Thus begins Gawain's odyssey across the misty realm of Ancient Britain, searching for The Green Chapel where the unearthly knight will be found.

A hypnotic, often unsettling, blend of gritty Medieval verisimilitude and mythological magic realism, odd things happen throughout A24's The Green Knight and are just accepted as par for the course.

On his journey Gawain helps a ghost, meets a talking fox, mystical tokens are lost and found, and our hero is nearly flattened by hauntingly ethereal giants (who look like they've stepped out of the classic 1973 French animated movie Fantastic Planet).

As far as I can figure - and it feels as though you are diving into a dense text as you try to follow along on a first viewing - the story is primarily concerned about upholding a chivalric code of honour, a parable about being true to your word.

For some bizarre reason, although I've heard the tale of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight several times, I can never remember how it pans out, but the dialogue-free extended epilogue of writer/director David Lowery's adaptation of the original 14th Century text is sublime.

Although prone to occasional atmospheric mumbled dialogue and minimalistic, naturalistic, lighting that makes some scenes as dark as The Long Night, there's a lyrical quality to the narrative of Lowery's The Green Knight that buoys you along. 

While not the traditional swords-and-sorcery, knights-and-armour type of film that I enjoy, it certainly doesn't feel like an arduous two hours if you allow yourself to sink into the world David Lowery has conjured up for us.

It's not necessary to know the names of all the characters and their backstories (in fact, if you check IMDB very few of the characters even have names), because The Green Knight isn't that sort of story, rather it's a period piece told using modern technology but as it would have been recounted "back in the day".

We also don't need to know where the giants came from or how the fox spoke, because these were aspects of Medieval storytelling that were just accepted in stories told around the campfire.

That said, on a more academic scale, I strongly suspect that with a bit more reading about - and research into - the subject matter of The Green Knight, more will be gleaned from this great movie upon subsequent viewings.

In The Name of The King - The Last Mission (2014)

Dominic Purcell (from The Arrow'verse shows and Prison Break) is Hazen Kaine, a burned-out, no-nonsense American hitman working in Bulgaria. His "last" job - before retirement - is to kidnap the two daughters of the Bulgarian royal family, so his paymasters can demand an enormous ransom.

Although he's having doubts about his latest assignment, he hides the girls in the nominated shipping container anyway, then notices that one is wearing a pendant that matches the tattoo on his arm (which his late wife chose for him).

The girl tells Hazen the medallion, a family heirloom and talisman of protection against things he wouldn't understand, is magical. He takes it outside for a closer look... and causes a rift in time and space to materialise and drag him through.

Hazen finds himself in a mysterious land - which, he later learns is also called Bulgaria, but clearly is a fantastical, pseudo-Medieval version - and stumbles into a nearby village which is being attacked by a dragon!

He uses the last bullets in his gun to drive off the dragon, in the process befriending a pair of warrior princesses, Arabella (Ralitsa Paskaleva), and Emeline (Daria Simeonova).

They're living in this village because of Game of Thrones-style violent machinations which saw one of their uncles, Tervon (Marian Valev), usurp their father and steal his throne.

They are now part of a rebellion led by their other uncle, Tybalt (Nikolai Sotirov).

Eventually, Hazen comes to accept his position in this new world - his tattoo marks him out for a special destiny - and hatches a plan that will allow him to slay Tervon and steal the king's magical medallion, which will send Hazen back to our world.

During all this he develops a rather cute and chaste romantic relationship with Arabella; the hitman's flirting technique seems to be telling her about the horrific fiery death of his wife at the hands of other gangsters.

Hazen's big plan comes to nowt, as the rebels are ambushed in a forest by Tervon and his men.

However, the fight goes surprisingly well in favour of the rebels, even though Tervon has been controlling the dragon this whole time.

The evil king flees back his castle... followed by Hazen and Arabella.

The castle is remarkably easy to access and our heroes fight their way through Tervon's goons to confront the Big Bad on the roof of the castle, where Hazen dispatches him, causing the time rift to reopen.

This time, not only does Hazen travel back to our world, but also the dragon. Not entirely sure why Arabella didn't go with him.

Hazen then races to where the kidnapped girls have been hidden and fights the mobsters who have come to collect him... at which point you realise that the head gangster Ayavlo is also played by Marian Valev.

Does this mean that Hazen's whole isekai adventures in In The Name of The King - The Last Mission were a dream? Or a metaphor? He does kidnap two young princesses in our world and then become entangled with two princesses in the fantasy world. But then how do explain the dragon now loose in the skies over Sofia? 

There's a lot that's handwaved in Joel Ross's 85-minute script and under Uwe Boll's taut - let's get things done - direction. As an example, I particularly loved the blasé attitude of, I guess, the king of Bulgaria to having his daughters kidnapped and then returned by the same person. It rather implies that this happens all the time!

Honestly, for my money, too much time is spent in modern day Sofia and I'd have preferred Hazen to stay in mythical Bulgaria with his new love... but then that would have left the kids in the shipping container and at the mercy of the gangsters.

In D&D terms, I reckon it's a young black dragon (although it breathes fire)

For a decade-old, low budget , direct-to-video sword-and-sorcery flick, all the special effects, including those that bring the dragon to life, are pretty decent. Of course, the beast is obviously CGI, but I've seen far worse in this calibre of movie (yes, Asylum, I'm looking at you).

On the other hand, the fact that the rebellion relies on caves so much - despite having several villages to call their own - is a real throwback to '80s sword-and-sorcery films that also often operated on similar microbudgets and had to make do with what nature provided.

Director Uwe Boll certainly makes great use of the beautiful Bulgarian landscape and the film was largely filmed at Nu Boyana Film Studios where, co-incidentally, the new Red Sonja movie was shot as well as Jason Momoa's Conan The Barbarian and the excellent last Hellboy movie, The Crooked Man, and many other great films.

Dominic Purcell and pretty much the entire Bulgarian cast of In The Name of The King 3 are all great and clearly invested in their roles, but they're not always best served by a script which barrels along at such speed that a lot of plot threads are just left dangling.

It's also a shame that In The Name of The King - The Last Mission appears to be totally disconnected from either the first or second films in the franchise.

I'd rather hoped that Hazen was actually in the Kingdom of Ehb (where the previous films took place) and that Arabella and Emeline were the daughters of Dolph Lundgren's Granger, to continue the generational narrative of the two earlier movies.

I guess there's always headcanon. 

And So We Bid Farewell to Dunk & Egg... For A Short While

It's All Connected: Now you know!

The first season of the wonderful A Knight of The Seven Kingdoms has come to an end, but we only have to wait a year for the next one (which, I believe, is being shot as we speak).

This is, obviously, a very good thing because I loved the show's freshman year and can't wait for more, but also - and this is key - if the gaps between seasons get dragged out then I worry that the amazing Dexter Sol Ansell will age out of the role of Egg. 

Below are a final couple of 'making of' features for this season, the first is specifically related to this week's finale, while the second is an overview of the latter half of the season. 

"Suppose we can go anywhere in the Seven Kingdoms”

Roaring Back Into Action After Two Tumultuous Years

I know George RR Martin has fallen out quite publicly with House of The Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal. He's also pretty much disowned the show for all the changes that have been made to his original story.

Yet, as a viewer who's not deeply embedded in Westerosi lore, I'm quite happy to simply enjoy House of The Dragon as its own thing.

Matt Smith and Emma D'Arcy are never less than magnificent on screen, and are delightfully mischievous as the faces of the fascinating and twisted Targaryen family.

If I have a problem with the series, it's the epic wait between seasons (Season two ended on August 5, 2024, and this next season doesn't debut until June, so that's the better part of two years. It was a similar gap between seasons one and two, which certainly does the show no favours).

Just How Dreadful Will It Be?

Experience an unnerving Gothic tale of horror reuniting Game of Thrones stars Sophie Turner and Kit Harington and featuring the Academy Award-winning actress Marcia Gay Harden.

Set in medieval England, Anne and her domineering mother-in-law Morwen struggle to survive on the outskirts of society. But when a man from Anne’s past returns from war, a curse begins to take shape through a mysterious knight and threatens to destroy them all.

A Medieval horror starring two leads from Game of Thrones sounds like it should be square in my wheelhouse, yet I keep bouncing off the trailer.

There's something about this movie - maybe the way it's shot or the trailer is cut - that makes me wonder if The Dreadful might end up being an unfortunate choice of name for this work.

I hope I'm wrong.

It'll Soon Be Time For Dunk To Take A Well-Deserved Rest

I can't believe we've reached the final episode already. Watch the trailer for episode six above, confident in the knowledge that season two is currently being filmed (and is due for release next year) and George RR Martin has said he is working on more stories of Dunk and Egg (that can be adapted at some future date).

Then watch, below, a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the making of this week's episode:

I Blame Nominative Determinism

Showing off my new purchase... which means a new wargames project

Remember the other day when I said I would only be focusing on a single wargame project going forward?

Well, that pledge lasted about a week.

I shall be supplementing my investment in Dead Man's Hand with Hairfoot Jousting, a comical, fantasy jousting game that pitches halflings/hobbits/hairfoots against each other, while mounted upon pigs, sheep, giant turkeys, dogs, ferrets etc 

The rules seem simple and brief, so much so that the delightful book, published by Osprey, is actually split in two. The back half, which you flip the book to read, contains a variant of the game, Wartnose Jousting, allowing you to play despicable goblin jousters riding rats, roaches, frogs etc

Honestly, I couldn't help myself.

I've always been fascinated by knights (the clue's in the name) and, by extension, jousting.

The wallpaper of my childhood bedroom was resplendent with pictures of knights on horseback, and one of my early introductions to the concept of wargames was Andrew McNeil's 1975 tome, Knights At War (part of the Battlegame Book series).

One of the treasured books I have held onto since my childhood

As well as text pieces on the history of knights, arms and armour, heraldry etc, the oversized hardback contained four games. Each game's board was a double spread of pages, and the rules and counters you cut out from the card insert pages. It was a brilliantly simple idea that I can't believe hasn't been revived.

My favourite, and most played, game in the book was, unsurprisingly, Tournament, where you took control of teams of jousting combatants.

The other games were Arsouf, refighting the 12th Century clash between Saladin and Richard the Lionheart; Siege, which did exactly what it says on the tin; and Border Raiders, a snatch-and-grab scenario involving feuding 13th Century German lords.

To be honest, they were all great games, but it was Tournament I returned to most often.

In recent years, these passions have seen me visiting living history and re-enactment shows to get a more visceral taste of Medieval life.

For a while, there was even coverage of genuine, full contact jousting (rather than the scripted, wrestling-style jousting you see in the grounds of various castles and stately homes around the UK in the summer) on television.

I became quite a fan of world champion Charlie Andrews and his Knights of Mayhem. Sadly, those television shows - like the equally-enthralling Knight Fight about the Armoured Combat League - failed to attract the attention of audiences who'd rather watch yet more "documentaries" about Ancient Aliens and the Second World War.

Of course, now we have the magnificent A Knight of The Seven Kingdoms, the latest Game of Thrones spin-off, whose story unfolds amidst the grime and graphic violence of a jousting tournament. 

Anyway, I already ordered myself a set of miniatures for my new jousting wargame - a team of hairfoot jousters on their assorted mounts - from North Star, the game's manufacturer, using my monthly discount code from my Wargames Illustrated subscription. The figures arrived today.

Expect more updates on this new project in the future.

Hairfoot jousters from North Star Military Figures

The Reality of Hedge Life?

Dexter Sol Ansell is phenomenal as Egg

This week's episode of A Knight of The Seven Kingdoms was brilliant. While I always expect to be shocked by stories set in Westeros, I didn't expect to tear up... twice!

Check out the trailer above for a taste of the next episode - now things are kicking up a gear. 

Below you'll find a couple of official behind-the-scenes featurettes about episode three and as an added bonus this week, Jason Kingsley - head honcho of multimedia company Rebellion, publishers of 2000AD, and medieval reenactor supreme - examines the reality of "hedge knights":

What's Next For Dunk and Egg?

Above you will find a trailer for episode three (of six) of the fantastic A Knight of The Seven Kingdoms. Below is a short 'behind-the-scenes' featurette about this week's episode.

13 Assassins (2010)

The theme of 'honour' is often central to samurai movies, but I can't think of another movie that has handled its complexities as well as 13 Assassins.

Directed by Takashi Miike (who I tend to associate with graphic and disturbing horror movies rather than chambara swordfighting flicks), this is the story of 12 samaurai and a woodsman, who acts as their guide, plotting the death of the Shogun's half-brother, the evil Lord Naritsuga (Gorô Inagaki).

Naritsuga isn't Darth Vader/comic book evil, but a full-on, conscience-free psychopath, whose violent appetites, arrogant ambition and total disregard for human life threaten to shatter mid-19th Century Japan's fragile peace.

Of course, because of his blood ties with the Shogun (he's also the son of the previous Shogun), he goes unchallenged, until the Shogun's advisor Sir Doi (Mikijiro Hira) gets tacit approval from the Shogun to deal with the problem "off the record".

Doi recruits seasoned samurai Shinzaemon Shimada (Kôji Yakusho) for the difficult task - Shinzaemon's only chance is to ambush Naritsuga on the road back from the capitol to his family lands, when he's accompanied by around 70 soldiers.

In this time of peace, finding trained samurai up to such a task is hard work, but eventually Shinzaemon assembles a hit squad of a dozen and comes up with a plan to divert Naritsuga's caravan through a village which Shizaemon will have had fortified and turned into a "death trap".

While the plot is very straight forward, the story can get rather complex for a Western viewer as the opening, explanatory text flashes by fast enough to give you whiplash, and then the dialogue is quite heavy with a lot of names and places (much like Game Of Thrones in that sense) and much, if not all, of the motivation for the protagonists is driven by the concept of honour - they know it's a suicide mission, but it's the right thing to do to save their country (before Naritsuga can assume the high political office that has been offered to him by his half-brother).

On the other side of the coin, Naritsuga's chief samurai Hanbei (Masachika Ichimura) - an old frenemy of Shinzaemon - knows that his master is evil, but also sees his obligation as protecting his master with his life and not questioning orders.

The first hour-and-a-quarter of 13 Assassins sets the chess pieces in place, motivations and reasons are established, the assassination team is assembled (and some have a brief tussle with some henchmen of Naritsuga's clan), but all this building up to the stunning finale, a 45-minute running battle between the assassins and Naritsuga's army (which turns out to be far bigger than they first believed).

Now, I knew in advance of the much-heralded 45-minute battle scene and wondered if Miike could pull it off. And the simple answer is: yes. It's almost a mini-film within the film, never gets repetitive or boring, allows all the assassins their moment in the spotlight, is incredibly creative and bloody (without being unnecessarily gory) and wholly convincing. It shows how a small force of highly trained individuals with a strong leader and a solid plan can take on a much larger force and achieve some sense of victory.

There are, of course, some similarities between 13 Assassins and Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, but not to the detriment of either film.

What's To Come This Season For Dunk and Egg

The trailer above gives a taste of the adventures to come this season for Dunk and Egg, the charming protagonists of A Knight of The Seven Kingdoms, the latest Game of Thrones spin-off (and my favourite of George RR Martin's Westerosi books).

Below are a couple of behind-the-scenes features about this exciting new series:

Meet Dunk and Egg - Your New Favourite Westerosi

A Taste of Supergirl's Way of Guarding The Galaxy

Supergirl, DC Studios’ newest feature film to hit the big screen, will be in theatres worldwide this summer from Warner Bros. Pictures, starring Milly 'House of The Dragon' Alcock in the dual role of Supergirl/Kara Zor-El.

Craig Gillespie directs the film from a screenplay by Ana Nogueira.

When an unexpected and ruthless adversary strikes too close to home, Kara Zor-El, aka Supergirl, reluctantly joins forces with an unlikely companion on an epic, interstellar journey of vengeance and justice.

Supergirl lands in theatres on June 26.

A Knight of The Seven Kingdoms Rides Into View

I'm really looking forward to this as the very-grounded Dunk and Egg stories are my favourite part of George RR Martin's whole Song of Ice and Fire-related oeuvre.

As usual, while the show premiers on HBO Max on January 18, we'll see it in the UK on Sky Atlantic the day after (hopefully there'll be a 2am simulcast offered that I can record and watch first thing when I get up).

The Last Voyage of The Demeter (2023)

If you know Bram Stoker's Dracula, then you know The Last Voyage of The Demeter.

Inspired by the book's single chapter that details the captain's log of the doomed voyage from Bulgaria to England, Bragi Schut Jr. and Zak Olkewicz's script, directed by Trollhunter's André Øvredal, extrapolates those few pages into a near-perfect 119-minute 'spam in a cabin' horror flick.

It's July 1897 and the merchant ship Demeter is carrying cargo bound for London, including - unknowingly - a number of boxes of Transylvanian soil and one holding the sleeping body of the vampire lord, Count Dracula (Javier Botet).

Once the ship is at sea, with the crew eager to get to England quickly to earn some bonus pay, the deaths begin.

First the livestock, which was to be the crew's food for their journey, is mysteriously butchered.

Then the crew start being killed off.

The Last Voyage of The Demeter is Alien on a nautical vessel rather than a space vessel, the ship's small crew trapped at sea, being hunted by a supernatural killing machine that dines on them as they bring him closer to his desired destination: the fresh feeding grounds of Victorian England.

Kong: Skull Island's Corey Hawkins is the new ships doctor, Clemens, a man of science to counter the superstitious crew, headed by the ever-excellent Liam Cunningham (aka Game of Thrones' Davos Seaworth, another sailor of note) as Captain Eliot: an almost unrecognisable David Dastmalchian as Wojchek, the quartermaster; and Jon Jon Briones (the genie from Sinbad; The Fifth Voyage) as Joseph, the highly religious ship's cook.

A young Romani stowaway, Anna (Aisling Franciosi) is found when one of the boxes of soil is accidentally opened by rough seas, and we later realise that she was Dracula's packed lunch for the voyage.

Captain "this is my last voyage, I'm going to retire" Eliot even has his eight-year-old grandson, Toby (Woody Norman), along with him and if you think "oh, they wouldn't hurt a child" you clearly haven't been paying attention.

The fate of the Demeter and its crew is inevitable, a foregone conclusion set down in the text of Stoker's game-changing vampire opus.

But that doesn't stop The Last Voyage of The Demeter being nail-bitingly tense and claustrophobic, with several good jump scares, oozing atmosphere from every frame, and featuring a genuinely monstrous depiction of Dracula.

The vampire is no suave British character actor, instead starting a gaunt, grey ghoul and evolving through the film into a giant, Nosferatuesque bat-creature, unsentimental in its brutal slayings.

What adds to the terror is the realisation - to a modern audience - that these people have no idea what a vampire is or how to kill it, they don't know its powers and weaknesses and there is no spoonfeeding of exposition to give them a clue.

All Clemens learns from Anna is that the beast is Dracula, it drinks blood and has kept her people in servitude through fear of its wrath.

Unfortunately, The Last Voyage of The Demeter falls down in its denouement, at the very last moments when it suddenly decides to try and give the tale a pointless "feel good/Hollywood" ending, when the source material's nihilistic resolution would have had a more lasting impact.