Let me start by saying I really enjoyed the first installment. Sam Neill is one of my favourite actors and he's perfectly cast as Merlin. They took the great decision to follow him through his life, so his motivations, actions and weaknesses were clear. There was a strong thread of conflict regarding the old ways vs Christianity to pull the whole story together.
The sequel is everything the first wasn't. The storyline ranges from fragmented to overly predictable to non-sensical. The acting is quite bad in places, even Sam Neill seems tired of it all at times (and not due to his character being so.)
Last chance to avoid spoilers (if you really want to watch this thing which I suggest against, but it's your choice!)
Merlin is overly angry and harsh in places, and seems to have no idea what he's doing in others. At one point he seems to throw a temper tantrum and lock himself in his room waiting for the enemy to come and kill them all? (Until he's talked out of it.) Of course there's the reformed bumbling, theif apprentice who turns out to have a true heart of gold. The gender swap girl knight, who is so obviously female that no one except Merlin seems to notice (???) You've got the Sir Lancelot stand in (right down to the "forbidden romance"). And the object of that forbidden romance that everyone (including Merlin) seems to be obsessing over her "purity" way too much. The very obvious traitors are also there. No real twists, just plain "these guys are baddies" from the get go.
Moving on... Does it get better? Oh no! No it gets worse. You see everything was swell until Merlin decides to take a nap in the hillside. The Lady of the Lake then enchants him to sleep for 50 years, during which time she non-consensually uh-hem has relations with him to create a child she wanted to use. Yes that's right. The previously sweet, helpful Lady of the Lake from the first movie, magically drugs Merlin so she can have her way with him. How completely messed up this is, barely seems to even be touched on.
Speaking of. Remember the Lady of the Lake in the first movie? How she was the opposite of Mab in many ways? Ethereal, willing to slide into nothingness without a fight as she believed it was their time? Yeah, well in this one she basically is Mab mark II. In fact I thought she was Mab until they said she was the Lady of the Lake. She looks like her, acts like her, sounds like her and is out for revenge to kill every single last person in Camelot because they polluted her lake I guess.
Um ok... Bit of a personality swap, and appearence swap, and everything swap really. Sometimes I'm pretty sure you can tell when a writer gets hired to do a sequel and kind of flips through the first scene of the movie. Decides it's too much work to watch the rest and so reads it's wikipedia page and decides "I've got this, how hard could it be?"
Anyway, there are lots of largely boring battles. Largely boring dialogue. People doing stupid things to move the plot along. The second half is definitely worse than the first, so if you are on the fence about whether to watch part two because "surely it'd have to get better?" Nope it doesn't.
The big bad of the movie that even Merlin couldn't go up against directly, apparently only needed a hand wave from his apprentice to destroy them. Quite anti-climatic, but I guess they needed to wrap the movie up and didn't know what else to do? Oh yeah, and there's a happy ever after for pretty much everyone including those who died in the last 10 minutes of the movie.
My advice is to avoid this movie. I really couldn't find much redeeming to it. Watch the first and pretend this one wasn't made if you can.
The sequel is everything the first wasn't. The storyline ranges from fragmented to overly predictable to non-sensical. The acting is quite bad in places, even Sam Neill seems tired of it all at times (and not due to his character being so.)
Last chance to avoid spoilers (if you really want to watch this thing which I suggest against, but it's your choice!)
Merlin is overly angry and harsh in places, and seems to have no idea what he's doing in others. At one point he seems to throw a temper tantrum and lock himself in his room waiting for the enemy to come and kill them all? (Until he's talked out of it.) Of course there's the reformed bumbling, theif apprentice who turns out to have a true heart of gold. The gender swap girl knight, who is so obviously female that no one except Merlin seems to notice (???) You've got the Sir Lancelot stand in (right down to the "forbidden romance"). And the object of that forbidden romance that everyone (including Merlin) seems to be obsessing over her "purity" way too much. The very obvious traitors are also there. No real twists, just plain "these guys are baddies" from the get go.
Moving on... Does it get better? Oh no! No it gets worse. You see everything was swell until Merlin decides to take a nap in the hillside. The Lady of the Lake then enchants him to sleep for 50 years, during which time she non-consensually uh-hem has relations with him to create a child she wanted to use. Yes that's right. The previously sweet, helpful Lady of the Lake from the first movie, magically drugs Merlin so she can have her way with him. How completely messed up this is, barely seems to even be touched on.
Speaking of. Remember the Lady of the Lake in the first movie? How she was the opposite of Mab in many ways? Ethereal, willing to slide into nothingness without a fight as she believed it was their time? Yeah, well in this one she basically is Mab mark II. In fact I thought she was Mab until they said she was the Lady of the Lake. She looks like her, acts like her, sounds like her and is out for revenge to kill every single last person in Camelot because they polluted her lake I guess.
Um ok... Bit of a personality swap, and appearence swap, and everything swap really. Sometimes I'm pretty sure you can tell when a writer gets hired to do a sequel and kind of flips through the first scene of the movie. Decides it's too much work to watch the rest and so reads it's wikipedia page and decides "I've got this, how hard could it be?"
Anyway, there are lots of largely boring battles. Largely boring dialogue. People doing stupid things to move the plot along. The second half is definitely worse than the first, so if you are on the fence about whether to watch part two because "surely it'd have to get better?" Nope it doesn't.
The big bad of the movie that even Merlin couldn't go up against directly, apparently only needed a hand wave from his apprentice to destroy them. Quite anti-climatic, but I guess they needed to wrap the movie up and didn't know what else to do? Oh yeah, and there's a happy ever after for pretty much everyone including those who died in the last 10 minutes of the movie.
My advice is to avoid this movie. I really couldn't find much redeeming to it. Watch the first and pretend this one wasn't made if you can.