Dragon Quest: Your Story is a CGI movie adaptation of Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride, which has the unenviable task of cramming a thirty-hour game into an hour and forty minutes of runtime. Dragon Quest: Your Story has a rocky start, wins the audience, and then throws it away in a baffling twist that makes us want to recommend the film because it's so out of place and bizarre that it needs to be seen to believed.
For the sake of context, Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride is the story of a nameless hero (called Luca in the film), starting from his childhood, going into his teenage years and love story, which leads to marriage, children, and a quest to save the world. It's a game with a central focus on family and it subverts many of the tropes of the fantasy genre, most notably that of the destined hero.
How To Explain Your Dragon
Dragon Quest: Your Story literally opens with the intro from the Super Nintendo version of Dragon Quest V, before going into a montage of notable scenes from the game and quickly rushing through the childhood part of the story. The story doesn't properly pick up until Luca reaches his teenage years, yet the rest of the movie keeps referring to events that only people familiar with the game will know about.
It probably would have been for the best if Dragon Quest: Your Story was a trilogy instead of a single movie, as the beginning of the film is extremely rushed. As a fan of Dragon Quest V, I knew what the characters were referring to, but it will be a lot harder for people who weren't concentrating and remembering names from the beginning of the film. Dragon Quest: Your Story somehow manages to be both rushed and bloated, as there are some quests and storylines from the game that could have been trimmed to keep things moving.
The aesthetics of Dragon Quest: Your Story will seem strange to fans of the games, as the producers dumped the Akira Toriyama designs for something more akin to a Dreamworks movie. The visuals are still well done (except for some uncanny valley hands) and the voice actors do a great job, especially as they had to match the mouth movements of the existing footage. The actor portraying Bishop Ladja (Jason Marnocha) deserves a special shout out for being one of the most entertaining parts of the film as the preening villain of the story.
Love & War
Once the movie rushes through its introduction and reaches the love story, it starts to hit its stride. The love story was an integral part of the game and the movie does it justice. Dragon Quest: Your Story has some phenomenal action scenes and some genuinely touching moments. It has an amazing soundtrack (cribbed from the games) and it has a multitude of references to the series that don't overshadow the events of the story.
Dragon Quest: Your Story has a rocky start, but it starts to get good in the middle. The movie does the game justice, right until... the twist.
The Twist
Dragon Quest: Your Story received a theatrical release in Japan and word quickly got out that the fans were furious with the movie. Now that we've seen the movie, we know why.
Dragon Quest: Your Story builds up to a big ending, then it goes absolutely crazy out of nowhere. There is a twist in the film that is so baffling and self-serving that you have to wonder how it made its way onto the screen. We won't spoil it for you here, as it really needs to be seen to be believed. Dragon Quest: Your Story is the kind of movie that leaves the audience stunned into silence with the pure audacity and stupidity of its twist.
Dragon Quest: Your Story was so close to greatness. It had to adapt a massive story into a single movie and it almost stuck the landing. If it had been given more time and it didn't have the ridiculous (borderline insulting) twist, then it could have been something really special. As it is, the movie stands as a curiosity that should only be experienced to see how something can fly high and then plummet like a stone.
Dragon Quest: Your Story is available now on Netflix.
Dragon Quest: Your Story