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Author Topic: Why are D&D movies... "D&D" movies, instead of something more specific?  (Read 7196 times)

Grognard GM

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Re: Why are D&D movies... "D&D" movies, instead of something more specific?
« Reply #30 on: January 29, 2023, 12:01:55 PM »
Aint' that the fate of most popular villians? They start out cool and mysterious, they get popular, they get over-used and run into the ground.

Or they get turned into a hero because some hack writer wanted to play with all the toys.

You either die a villain, or live long enough to become the hero.
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Insane Nerd Ramblings

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Re: Why are D&D movies... "D&D" movies, instead of something more specific?
« Reply #31 on: February 09, 2023, 09:26:24 PM »
Because the people in charge in Hollywood and at WotC know literally nothing about D&D beyond what little they're given (or in some cases learned by being players once upon a time). They also know next to nothing about world-building and pretty much crap out whatever they think will please "audiences". There is a reason all the D&D movies have been utterly forgettable garbage: there is nothing remotely interesting about the settings they have.

Compare the 1st D&D Movie to Episode 1 of the Record of Lodoss War OAV. We know nothing about Parn, Deedlit, Slayn Starseeker, Woodchuck and Ghim when we meet them at the start. The little bit of world building in the prologue gave you just enough information to set up that the Island of Lodoss is a messed up place due to 2 ancient gods murdering each other. However, we learn the group is trying to reach a sage and must enter the ruins to get to him, ruins which were inhabited by monsters. In a single 30 minute episode, the writers crammed just enough information into the story to (probably) make you want to learn more so you'll watch the next episode. Sure, it has some cringe anime moments but we are talking about a classic anime at this point.

What does the 1st few minutes of the D&D Movie have? Jeremy Irons, the main villain, killing a Dragon. No real world setup to speak of compared to, say The Fellowship of the Ring that showed The War of the Last Alliance. No reason why anyone should give a crap. The costuming was atrocious and the accoutrements look like RenFaire level drek. Not one bit of realistic armor, weaponry or anything that screams "adventurer". Our 2 protagonists aren't memorable in any way, shape or form. They're 2 thieves with less charisma than Arnold Schwarzenegger's 'Conan' and Gerry Lopez's 'Subotai' from Conan the Barbarian (who have way less dialogue than Whalin's 'Ridley Freeborn' or Marlon Wayans 'Snails'). Wayans as the comic relief was okay until Lee Arenberg's dwarf comes along and then its a case of "okay, you can't ALL be the funny man" shlock.

The biggest problem is none of them play it seriously IMO. They're purposely hamming it up and that's not going to actually make for a good movie. It makes it cringe and forgettable in ways that are only less detestable than Tommy Wiseau's The Room. If the setting isn't serious, then why should the actors play it serious? If you want a movie that the audience will laugh at because its unintentionally cringe and stupid, you don't want to make a D&D movie.
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Grognard GM

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Re: Why are D&D movies... "D&D" movies, instead of something more specific?
« Reply #32 on: February 09, 2023, 10:02:04 PM »
Definitely my favourite parts of the Record of Lodoss War OAV are when Parn says "Deedlit..." and when Deedlit says "Parn..."

So about 40% of Parn's dialogue, and 80% of Deedlit's.
I'm a middle aged guy with a lot of free time, looking for similar, to form a group for regular gaming. You should be chill, non-woke, and have time on your hands.

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Insane Nerd Ramblings

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Re: Why are D&D movies... "D&D" movies, instead of something more specific?
« Reply #33 on: February 10, 2023, 12:12:42 AM »
And yet still better dialogue than what was in the D&D Movie.....
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Wrath of God

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Re: Why are D&D movies... "D&D" movies, instead of something more specific?
« Reply #34 on: February 10, 2023, 05:56:10 AM »
Well RoLW was adaptation of actual campaign records written down.
On the other hand D&D films are adaptation of very incoherent 5 eidtions longs, multiple setting, multiple setting variants, and so on and so on.
Using D&D moniker because it's more recognizable.

But frankly I do not think you can do feature film that would be however spiritually D&D for D&D players. TV show - yeah. Film. No. Never. Nada. No reason to expect it.
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Ruprecht

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Re: Why are D&D movies... "D&D" movies, instead of something more specific?
« Reply #35 on: February 10, 2023, 08:49:24 AM »
But frankly I do not think you can do feature film that would be however spiritually D&D for D&D players. TV show - yeah. Film. No. Never. Nada. No reason to expect it.
Concentrate on low level adventure. Make it s comedy not epic fantasy. Make it for cheap not a CGI extravaganza. Put Dan Harmon or Colbert in charge. Think Clerks with swords. It could be amazing.
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Omega

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Re: Why are D&D movies... "D&D" movies, instead of something more specific?
« Reply #36 on: February 10, 2023, 11:44:36 PM »
Definitely my favourite parts of the Record of Lodoss War OAV are when Parn says "Deedlit..." and when Deedlit says "Parn..."

So about 40% of Parn's dialogue, and 80% of Deedlit's.

That is because the anime is cutting out alot of the characters thoughts from the manga and the novels it is based on. Par for the course. And they do talk. But shouting someones name is pretty common in animation.

But I feel the anime loses some of the nuance of what is going on. Why Deedlit likes Parn and so on.

Wrath of God

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Re: Why are D&D movies... "D&D" movies, instead of something more specific?
« Reply #37 on: February 11, 2023, 06:00:27 PM »
Quote
Concentrate on low level adventure. Make it s comedy not epic fantasy. Make it for cheap not a CGI extravaganza. Put Dan Harmon or Colbert in charge. Think Clerks with swords. It could be amazing.

But then all lovers of deadly serious mudcore murderous dungeons gonna whine D&D is not a comedy!
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Ghostmaker

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Re: Why are D&D movies... "D&D" movies, instead of something more specific?
« Reply #38 on: February 13, 2023, 11:36:49 AM »
Quote
Concentrate on low level adventure. Make it s comedy not epic fantasy. Make it for cheap not a CGI extravaganza. Put Dan Harmon or Colbert in charge. Think Clerks with swords. It could be amazing.

But then all lovers of deadly serious mudcore murderous dungeons gonna whine D&D is not a comedy!
Clearly they've never actually played in a campaign.

Lurkndog

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Re: Why are D&D movies... "D&D" movies, instead of something more specific?
« Reply #39 on: February 14, 2023, 08:47:45 AM »
But frankly I do not think you can do feature film that would be however spiritually D&D for D&D players. TV show - yeah. Film. No. Never. Nada. No reason to expect it.
Concentrate on low level adventure. Make it s comedy not epic fantasy. Make it for cheap not a CGI extravaganza. Put Dan Harmon or Colbert in charge. Think Clerks with swords. It could be amazing.

That sounds suspiciously like Your Highness.

Though, Your Highness wasn't nearly cheap enough. If they had made it for under $10 million, it would have been a success. Instead, they made it for $49 million. Oops.
« Last Edit: February 14, 2023, 08:51:00 AM by Lurkndog »

GeekyBugle

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Re: Why are D&D movies... "D&D" movies, instead of something more specific?
« Reply #40 on: February 15, 2023, 12:12:34 AM »
Could you even do a Drizzt move considering all the wokeness? I don't think you'd be allowed to portray the Drow as evil anymore which completely changes the entire character.

True; though Salvatore started that path, essentially ruining the drow.  Before Drizz't they were the suave, mysterious, super evil, super powerful, enigmatic villains that you loved to hate.  He opens the door and suddenly in the '90s practically every gaming group had someone wanting to play the "rare, good drow" just like everyone was suddenly infatuated with those brooding pedophile vampires.

In my experience, rare good drow PCs started becoming common when Unearthed Arcana was released in 1985 and made drow an official PC race. Especially since new options for AD&D had been rare, there was an explosion in most of the UA options - acrobats, weapon specialists, wild elves, drow, etc.


EDITED TO ADD: Regarding the original post, longer titles like "Dungeons & Dragons: The Legend of Drizzt" are usually only added for sequels, not for reboots. So the Star Trek reboot was just "Star Trek", and it was only sequels that added more lines. Going further, using classic D&D storylines for the initial film of a series has a problem of intended audience. The D&D novels have been niche products that were mostly written for people who are already D&D fans, while the big-release D&D movies have been trying to draw in people who know almost nothing about D&D. The classic storylines are likely to rely on the audience already being D&D fans.

You would be right if it weren't for the fact that the movie's name is: "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves"
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Omega

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Re: Why are D&D movies... "D&D" movies, instead of something more specific?
« Reply #41 on: February 19, 2023, 09:41:47 AM »
The first one was a comedy too. That went over soooooo well.
This one is a comedy x5. I really do not want another fucking comedy.

Bruwulf

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Re: Why are D&D movies... "D&D" movies, instead of something more specific?
« Reply #42 on: February 19, 2023, 08:04:25 PM »
The problem with making a D&D comedy movie is twofold.

One: Gamer humor is not mainstream humor. The original D&D movie had I think exactly one joke that had legs, and that was when the dwarf delivered the "...A nice dwarven woman, with some hair on her chin that ye' can hang on ta!" line, while making a vaguely hip-thrusting motion. Most of the rest - particularly the whole Snails character - just fell flat with most people.

Two: There are a few ways you can do a comedy movie. You can do something like Hot Fuzz, which is a satire of police movies, or you could do something like Tremors, where it's not exactly a pure comedy movie, but there are certainly lots of comedic elements.

Either one of those styles could work for a D&D movie, potentially - but a common feature of both those movies is that they ultimately fundamentally respected the movie itself.

Hot Fuzz worked because it was still a good buddy cop movie, and a good chunk of the humor was deliberately poking fun at those movies - but it was a good-natured sort of comedy. It was obvious the writers were actually a fan of the things they were poking fun at, they understood why it was funny, and you could laugh along with them.

Tremors was similar, but playing off monster movies.

And in both cases, the lead characters were memorable, they had clearly developed personalities, motives, and mannerisms, the dialog was rock solid, and the plots were still good plots underneath the comedy. Yet, at the same time, the comedy was integral to the movie - without the comedy, they may have "worked", but they would not have stood out.

The D&D movie wasn't that sort of comedy. The comedy was tacked on, like they were just trying to make sure they had a quota of "audience is suppose to laugh now!" moments. And the comedy didn't respect the audience, and it didn't give the feeling the authors either loved or even understood the source material. Again, with the notable exception of the bearded dwarven women joke, the jokes were just... jokes. And usually not very good ones. And too often, it felt like the underline theme of the joke was "this is all stupid".

Which, maybe it is? But I don't pay money for a movie to insult my hobby.

The character issue - which is kinda related to my whole original point that spawned this mess - is another issue. Again, to use Hot Fuzz and Tremors as examples. I remember the characters from both of the movies. I remember they had clear personalities, motivations, goals, and so on. I'm not going to say I remember all their names - I'm bad with names! But I remember them. I remember other police officers, the towns folk... the pub owners, the florist who got murdered, the reporter who got murdered, the actor, the grocery store owner. I remember how they related to each other, how they fit into the movie, and so on. Similarly, with Tremors... I remember Val and Earl, obviously, but I remember the geologist, I remember Burt and Heather, I remember Chang, I remember the punk kid, the little girl and her potter mother, I even remember characters that had very little screen time, like the doctor and his wife. Because they were all well crafted characters, and memorable in their way. And even when they didn't really have any major personality - the doctor and his wife, the two construction workers, etc - you remember them because they fit into a well-crafted web of a story. You may not remember them specifically because of anything they did, but rather because they were an element of a greater whole.

I couldn't even tell you most of the characters from the D&D movie. Thief-guy. Other thief-guy, but black. The dwarf. There was probably an elf, but I don't remember specifically. The bad guy with the dragon staff, and the bad guy with the blue lips. I don't remember a damned thing about any of them, though. Not their names - except for Snails - or their motivations or, really, their personalities. The dwarf's personality was "dwarf", Snail's personality was "obnoxious idiot", and blue-lip guy glowered. That's about it.

Which is why trying to make a D&D movie without strong established characters is going to be iffy. D&D is basically designed to be self-insertion fantasy. That's the whole point. You can't just say "The movie is about some adventurers", because adventurers without players are puppets with no strings. And the epic campaign as an hour and a half movie just won't work. You can't develop a plot or characters for a movie like that easily.
« Last Edit: February 19, 2023, 08:19:24 PM by Bruwulf »

Omega

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Re: Why are D&D movies... "D&D" movies, instead of something more specific?
« Reply #43 on: February 20, 2023, 08:19:56 AM »
Probably why the cartoon worked so damn well. They knew when to have humor and when to have tension. They actually payed attention to how kids watching were reacting.

The second movie has some humor in it too. But it is subtle and feels more natural.
This new movie its just feeling like the D&D setting is just an excuse to do jokes, snark and all that. Its coming across allmost insulting at times. But I think that is because the trailers have been pushing the snark alot.

Zelen

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Re: Why are D&D movies... "D&D" movies, instead of something more specific?
« Reply #44 on: February 28, 2023, 09:51:00 PM »
I'm really interested in additional Snails lore. What is the backstory of Snails? What about his earlier adventures? Does he ever return from death as an undead Lich? It's a real shame that WotC has never explored D&D's most compelling character.