The Wars of Darkness

The Wars of Darkness is a 2004 fantasy brickfilm by AJ Belongia. It follows a prince, Samuel, who has fled his kingdom after it was taken over by a great evil. Samuel befriends the king of a neighboring nation, and the two embark on a quest to defeat the evil that threatens the land.

The Wars of Darkness is perhaps most notable for being the longest known brickfilm ever made, at over three hours in its original cuts and over four hours in its final cut. It is also the only brickfilm released by Belongia.

Cast

 * AJ Belongia - Prince Samuel, Balkevar, Additional
 * Lee Evans - King Dagnith, Captain Abberdale, Captain Morgen, Gorelock, Grom Hellscream, Arkhan, Acolyte, Lord Maldoran, General Warning, Sir Ballador, Footman, Narrator, Additional
 * Jeremy McCulloch - Selavast
 * Robert Belongia - King Allindor, Orler, Additional
 * Brandon Sargent - Gerthawate
 * Kenneth MacLeod - Baruk
 * Mike Zidek - Additional

Crew

 * AJ Belongia - Director, Script and screenplay, Script editor, Orc model detailer, Set designer and builder
 * Robert Belongia - Executive producer
 * Jeremy McCulloch - Script editor, Advisor
 * Lee Evans - Script editor, Advisor
 * Brandon Sargent - Orc model detailer
 * Mike Zidek - Gorelock detailer
 * Monica Belongia - Catering

Production
The Wars of Darkness was created with the LEGO Studios camera and editing software. This posed a problem when it came time to render the film, as LEGO Studios could not export a project over 9 minutes long. Instead, the film was played in the editing preview window while the screen was recorded with a DV-R. This means that the film is in better quality than the average film made with LEGO Studios, as it did not undergo the heavy compression applied when exporting with the program.

Belongia also wrote a screenplay for a prequel to the film, but this ended up not being produced.

Release
At the time The Wars of Darkness was first completed, it was much too large to share over the internet. Belongia posted a forum thread on August 15, 2005 offering to send copies of the film on DVD to those interested. He offered a choice between the less violent regular cut or the longer director's cut, both of which required being spread across two discs each. He was willing to send a maximum of 10 copies of the film, completely for free.

On July 18, 2006, Belongia posted another thread to announce that he had created a new, 20-minute longer cut of the film and that he was willing to send DVDs of the film again. This time, he did not limit the number he would send. He also offered an optional additional DVD of extra features.

Belongia uploaded the 2006 cut of the film to YouTube in two halves in February 2012.