Don Bluth's Original Concept for His Unproduced DRAGON'S LAIR Animated Movie
I have fond memories of playing Don Bluth’s Dragon’s Lair game when I was a kid at my local arcade. I pumped so many quarters into that thing!
In the game, Dirk the Daring is a bumbling oaf who embarks on a journey in a booby-trapped castle to rescue his girlfriend, Daphne, from a ferocious dragon. The game was like an animated interactive movie, where the player would get to make the decisions for the main character in a series of sequences. The outcome of each scene is determined by entering the right move at each decision point; if you make the wrong decision you die in one of many several fun ways.
Dragon’s Lair was a huge hit! It used laserdisc tech and was unlike any game anyone had ever played before. The game became extremely popular, and Bluth attempted to capitalize on that popularity by making an animated film.
Bluth said at the time, “I think we have a really good shot with the movie version. If the Dragon’s Lair name appears on a movie marquee, kids won’t be threatened by it. They won’t feel shy about going into the theater. Seeing Snow White might embarrass them, but Dragon’s Lair is already theirs.”
He added, “We’re going to give them everything they want to see. Answer all their questions about our hero, Dirk, and his background. At the same time, we’re not going to aim the subject matter at the nursery level. We’re going to aim up.”
Bluth’s plan was to tell the story of how Dirk and Daphne met as teenagers and battled the evil sorcerer named Mordroc who was planning on raising an army of corpses from the river of the dead to take over the world. The story would have played out like this:
Dirk and his friend Strun are peasants who live in a forest and have been adopted by a strange old hag who was killed by Mordroc. Strun is kidnapped and becomes possessed. Princess Daphne and her aunt Brunhilde are disguised as gypsies and hide in the forest to elude Mordroc.
Dirk learns of a warrior knight who can defeat Mordroc and sets off to find him. Along the way he meets up with seven dwarf trolls called the Seven Deadlies named after the Seven Deadly Sins: Greed, Lust, Sloth, etc. Foster had designed them as thieving otters but Bluth changed them into a mixture of Disney’s Seven Dwarfs and the little people from the movie Time Bandits (1981).
They strike up an alliance to find the knight who turns out to be an aging, burnt-out former “hired gun”. Dirk is given his familiar chain mail and orange tunic and the knight agrees to face Mordroc.
Mordroc has taken over Strun’s body and has captured Daphne and intends to wed her. The knight kills Strun but Mordroc’s soul oozes out and transforms into a dragon. The knight collapses into a pile of empty armor.
Dirk slays the dragon but finds that Daphne has been killed. His love brings her back to life and Dirk has become the famous Dirk the Daring because of his bravery and sacrifice.
Bluth made the surprising decision to not include the silly and cartoony approach of the game in the movie. On top of that, the redesign of Dirk and Daphne left them almost unrecognizable.
Bluth went as far as to produce a short film to help get investors interested. That short consisted of roughly thirty story sketches and it was narrated in epic solemnity. When talking about this, writer John Cawley stated, “At one major studio, Bluth showed the presentation and then showed the work print of LAIR II which was almost completed. The executive sat there for a second then stated they should turn LAIR II into the feature and forget the other one.”
So what was Dragon’s Lair II about? It was titled Dragon’s Lair II: Time Warp, and that story takes place years after the first game and has Dirk married to Daphne with lots of children.
When Daphne is kidnapped by Mordroc to be forced into marriage, Dirk must once again go and save her. He is assisted by a talking time machine that has been possessed by the brother of Mordroc.
Dirk travels through several dimensions and historical eras searching for Daphne. Some of those scenes were inspired by classic stories and fairy tales like Alice in Wonderland and Sleeping Beauty.
I think either of these story ideas would have made for a cool movie! But ultimately a movie was never made. There is a movie coming, though! That movie is being produced by Netflix, and Ryan Reynolds will play Dirk.
I do wish that Bluth had been given the opportunity to expand the universe of Dragon’s Lair in movie form. I think he would have had a pretty cool and successful fantasy movie franchise. There’s no doubt in my mind that fans would have flocked to theaters to watch a Dragon’s Lair movie.
We talk about Dragon’s Lair in complete detail in an episode of our Secret Level podcast, which you can listen to below.
Source: CartoonResearch