In The Name Of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale

The commentary by Uwe Boll begins interestingly, talking about a lot of the production elements, and how he was trying to get Kevin Costner for the lead. It is amusing the esteem he has for his film, describing it as “great”, “a cross between Lord Of The Rings and Gladiator”, and hoping that Jason Statham “does not have a career like Steven Seagal or Jean Claude Van Damm” after this epic. Unfortunately, the commentary is punctuated by silences and at one point Boll leaves to get coffee; this does lead to him hilariously describing his afternoon coffee and cake routine and the comment about getting “fat like Orson Welles”. The commentary ends early with Uwe making a plea to his fans to vote on IMDB because of people trashing him online. A desperate move for sure, but his commentary is at least twice as entertaining as the film.

The 20-minute making of is a self-congratulatory and deluded affair, with the cast and crew singing the praises of the film and the director. They talk about the production and the adaptation process, but the insight is fairly base level. Uwe’s view of the film as a “character driven action movie” is somewhat warped, and fans of Jason Statham will not be surprised to find out his favourite film is Goodfellas. The behind-the-scenes footage montage adds a little insight into the making of, but instead of explaining technical elements they’ve merely stuck some of the overwrought original soundtrack over it.

The deleted and extended scenes are consistent with the quality of the movie, though their inclusion in the finished film might have helped the pacing and one extended scene involving Duke Fallow is dramatically different from the version in the film. The reasonable DVD package for In The Name Of The King is rounded off with a trailer.