To call Maradonia and the Shadow Empire a movie is to devalue the word "movie". It was made at great cost by a bunch of amateurs, based on the works of Gloria Tesch who also starred as Maya, and failed about as hard as her writing career did. Oh yes, Ms. Tesch is an author. Not a real author as all her works were printed by a vanity publisher but she has her name out in print. Her books have been called, exciting, interesting and a real page turner by people close to her and people that have never actually read the books. In reality they're poorly written, poorly set up, poorly described and have plot holes large enough to drive a truck through. So how else can she make money and be the rich person she and her family have always pretended to be? Make a movie of course.
The movie was made, somehow, at a cost of almost $1 million. I don't know where that money went as according to a lot of people that were in it, they never got paid. Personally I think they stole half of it and the rest just kinda went... somewhere because it sure as hell wasn't in this movie.
What makes it so bad is... well... everything. As I said, this was an amateur production from the get go. The acting and the dialogue are second rate at best. There are scenes that happen for no reason. There's stock footage spliced in including some really bad CGI dragon flying overhead more than once and non-actors trying desperately to act. I've seen better special effects in youtube videos. In one scene there's supposedly a fire in front of them and they jump over it because it's an illusion. You can see where the fire was "cut" and more than once it seems to appear on the wrong side of the actor making it look like they're on fire.
This was shown once at an event in Florida where they rented out a theater and had a red carpet affair. I would have loved to have gone. And I would have gladly paid Gloria and her father up to $20 for a copy of the DVD including the cover art and everything but it was never offered. The only shining light came in the form of somebody who received a screener for the movie while Dr. Gerry was shopping around for a distributor. They eventually put it online and this is how we were able to see it.
It's still floating around youtube all these years later if you take the time to look. I'd advise you only to take a look if you're a lover of bad movies like I am or you're just morbidly curious. You have been warned.
