Stop mourning Game of Thrones because there’s a new dragon-filled fantasy epic in town, and it’s only taken 34 years for it to finally make it to the screen. The Dungeons and Dragons cartoon from 1983 saw six American children transported to the realm of Dungeons & Dragons via a magical theme park ride. The animated series now has a live action version, all thanks to... Renault?
Dungeons and Dragons was originally a Marvel Comics cartoon, based on TSR’s role-playing game of the same name. The series, which ran for 27 episodes over three years, saw six American children each granted a magical item by the Dungeon Master. The kids are joined by Uni the baby unicorn as they search for a way home. Along the way, evil wizard Venger seeks to steal their weapons in order to increase his power – when he’s not doing battle with five-headed dragon Tiamat of course.
The show ended on a cliffhanger – with final episode Requiem only ‘officially’ produced in a radio drama format for the now-deleted Region 1 DVD release – and the kids never got home. Until now.
The iconic cartoon has been brought to life – but as an advert for Renault cars in Brazil, of all places, where the show is still fondly remembered having been on repeat since the 80s. For the launch of their Renault Kwid Outsider, the company commissioned a campaign based on the series, filming in Salta, Argentina, near the Andes mountain range. The attention to detail is such that they even hired the original Brazilian voiceover actor, Orlando Drummond, to return and voice Venger and Dungeon Master once more.
The commercial, called Dragon’s Cave, has already led to fans asking Netflix to commission a real series, with some forum members commenting that the series eventually had a better finale than Game of Thrones…
Someone’s also made a version using the voices from the American cartoon:
If that’s not enough, here’s a featurette on the making of the commercial – sorry that we can’t translate, but it looks epic. You can always take your chances with YouTube's auto-translate subtitles.
Right then – where do we start the campaign to bring Dungeons and Dragons back properly? I'll make the banner, you start the online petition.
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