Mythica – A low-budget spectacle

I have three tabletop interviews in the pipeline, both on my podcast and via print interview on here. With that, I figured I would like to highlight a little-known series called Mythica.

I don’t remember exactly how I came across Mythica, but it was during a time when I was writing a campaign for a group I was playing with at the time. I don’t know if I googled inspiration or D&D vibes or something like that, but either way, I came across the Mythica series quite by accident and I was absolutely blown away.

Within the first ten minutes of the first movie, I was a little worried as it was clearly an extremely low budget film, but I am not one to pass on a film just because it was low budget, however; I was a touch concerned that this movie was going to be a farce. What I didn’t know at the time when I started it is that the entire movie series was kickstarted, so it was completely 100% crowdfunded.

But about a quarter of the way through, it became glaringly apparent that what I had stumbled upon was actually going to be quite good. Everything from the writing, to the entire cast was just hitting all the markers that they needed for me to continue investing my personal time into this film (and later, the franchise).

As each one goes on, the budget clearly improves, but overall, the entire series maintains its low budget factor; which is to be expected with a entirely crowdfunded project.

Another thing that screamed out at me within the first twenty minutes of the first one is that the writers of the series were definitely Dungeons and Dragons fans.

It had the typical party tropes; it followed that kind of stereotypical linear D&D format, but it was still original enough to keep me entertained.

As the series goes on, the world of Mythica really begins to flesh out, the story gets richer and infinitely darker. The last two actually star Matt Mercer, who I’m sure many of you are familiar with as the DM for Critical Role; who, funny enough, I didn’t know at that time. After the first couple of movies, I made a post in a Dungeons and Dragons group that I’m in on Facebook, and someone was like, “Hey, Matt Mercer’s in it.” I was like, “Oh, cool,” not really wanting to know to admit that I had no idea who that was.

Now I’m definitely due for a rewatch of the series because it has been a while; so, I’m building writing this post strictly off of memory. The story follows Marek, played by Melanie Stone, and  slave and budding magician who needs to flee from home. She ends up escaping, coming across half-elf rogue, played by Jake Stormoen. As the adventure continues, they come across a fighter (played by Adam Johnson) and a cleric/healer type (played by Nicola Posener). As the story unfolds, it may or may not reveal that Marek holds a much bigger role in the future of the land then one would have originally thought and that she is going to find the will within in herself to save the world or have it fall unto darkness.

Okay, so it’s really trope heavy, but I swear to you you’ll look past that.

Something that I really loved about this franchise was the amazing performance put on by these actors that are relatively unheard of (though, if you’re a fan of Yellowstone, you may recognize Adam from a particularly popular episode). The guys and gals put on a fantastic performance and I would cast any single one of them in a high budget film if it was my call.

I am almost certainly going to be doing another post for this franchise after I do a rewatch, as I am going to have to get that done because, funny enough, there’s actually a 6^th one coming out. It’s going to be directed by Stormeon, and it too has just finished its crowdfunding. I am eagerly anticipating this and very curious as to what is going to transpire because the last movie really ended, I thought, with a sense of finality to it.

This series was inspiring to me on multiple levels.

One, it significantly helped me get out of writer’s block for the campaign that I was preparing. And two, it introduced me to Kickstarter which is something that I am not sure I was aware before that. If I was aware of it, I wasn’t aware of the level that it could go. What I had just witnessed were low-budget, professionally made movies. The idea that you could actually get a group of people together and create a movie using budgets from people who want to see something awesome created was extremely inspiring to me and I just loved the idea that you could release something as fantastic as this franchise without having to beg and plead to high level financial executives in Hollywood. I actually have a couple of things boiling in the back of my brain that I think Kickstarter might be a great idea for, but it’s not fantasy-related, it’s a little more horror-oriented.

I would LOVE to add movie production under the banner of The Nerdyverse, so perhaps I will just look into that and see what could be done.

Nevertheless, if you like high fantasy, dark magic, a great cast of characters that’ll stick with you for the rest of the time; I highly, highly, highly recommend that you check out Mythica. It is top-tier fantasy content.

If you’re someone who can get troubled by low-budget special effects (I know that you’re out there), you MAY not like it, but I implore you to just at least give it a chance. If you look past the low budget visual effects and look at the vividly rich story, I almost guarantee that you will not be disappointed because it truly is is a fantastic series.

Until next time, thanks so much for reading.