As an original-and-still fan of all things Dragon’s Lair, this is a hard blog post for me to write, but one that I believe is important. While I casually made my thoughts known about the Dragon’s Lair: The Movie Kickstarter on a few social media sites, it’s clear there’s enough confusion out there that something more formal needed to be written.

Typically, Kickstarter has been used to fund a specific project to completion, with most rewards centered around eventually delivering said completed project. It struck me as odd that this particular Kickstarter offered no reward tiers with the finished product, even though some, like the $125 pledge tier, offers a copy of Dragon’s Lair Blu-ray (plus all prior reward tiers). Unfortunately, if you don’t look carefully, you may not realize that the Dragon’s Lair Blu-ray that’s being offered is the same one that was released in 2007 (in case you didn’t know, that version is essentially a remastering of the original Dragon’s Lair arcade game playable on any device that plays Blu-ray movie discs).

Now, that may not be a big deal if you think you’re funding work on a movie. Unfortunately, again, if you don’t look carefully, you may not realize that what you’re actually funding is a pitch video so they can try and get funding to then go on to create a movie. So yeah, we’re at least one step removed from the movie making process, which makes sense considering the budget goal of $550,000. That’s not much for a movie, but seems like a lot for a pitch video that may or may not get “real” investors interested.

If, knowing all of this you still want to support them, by all means, do so, but all the Dragon’s Lair– and Space Ace-related items I’ve bought over 30+ years will have to suffice for now from my end. I’ll nevertheless be keeping a close eye on the progress of the funding, even though I obviously can’t share in what I feel is misplaced excitement over this particular effort.