Was anyone asking for a Dungeons & Dragons movie? Honestly, the Tolkien movies succeeded because there's a massive fan base for his stories. There may be a fairly large fan base for D&D the game, but by its very nature it lacks the memorable and beloved characters needed to drive the success they're probably looking for.
The idea of a Dungeons and Dragons movie only works if you make it a meta commentary on the game itself from the inside, otherwise you are essentially just making a fantasy film, unless you only use the most well known dnd characters which is a total crapshoot because even most people who play them don't know official dnd character names. Paizo tried that with Pathfinder for having each class having a default character but nobody uses them outside of Adventure League and they barely get touched on.
But you could do a DnD movie where a character gets killed off and when they arrive at the next town the actor is there in a different costume. "Barry, no I'm Larry, Barry's Twin Brother, he was a fighter, I'm a ranger." then later die and you meet the same actor in a wig and dress doing a bad woman's voice. "No I'm Marry, Larry and Barry's triplet sister, I'm a cleric because the party apparently doesn't have any healing."
Put in a point where the story fades to black and come back and the actors have bears and are dirty because the session got put on hold for like a month because nobody could get together and now they are picking it back up but their goal has changed because the DM forgot what they were doing and seeing if the audience realizes that's what happened when the group had originally set off to get a chalice but are not getting a necklace at the end.
Gamers 2 is the best of the trilogy and if anyone wants to watch just one of them then Dorkness Rising should always be that choice. There's a slight reference to something from the first one but apart from that it's very standalone and is best summed up as "a role-playing movie made by role-players for role-players".
Similar to the first movie It pokes fun at a lot of the stereotypes in DND but with a better budget and slightly better acting. The recurring jokes about the Paladin and his "lawful stupid" alignment are particularly good, as is everything involving the Bard.
D&D is full of normies that just buy mugs and t-shirts and are the biggest fans, although they played like 2 mediocre games of 5'th edition and never plan of playing again.
This are the target demographic of this movie, people that desperately WANT to be "geeks" and do not care about the settings.
Is the old problem we have in all our hobbies. Being a fan used to mean you held an IP to some standards now it just means you consume everything, critic nothing and wear the merch. Funny enough, this are the same people that hate capitalism.
I think this movie will be successful. It will get praised by The Critical Drinker, half KIA over on reddit will fawn over it, as they did with Hogwarts and the movie will be a box office success with 2 more sequels in the making.
Or they could have gone with Dragonlance. I actually knew some dipshit that said he changed his name to Raistlin in high school. IDK whether he went to court to do it or just stopped using his real name though.
I haven't read those books since I was a kid, but I remember liking them. I've heard that they don't age well if you go back as an adult. Still, between the books themselves, the game modules, and all the artwork and sourcebooks, if they had gone that route for the film, they would have had a huge head start on the screenplay and costume/set design.
I read an article that talked about how Hasbro claims the D&D brand is "under monetized", so we can expect to see more shit like this movie in the future.
Was anyone asking for a Dungeons & Dragons movie? Honestly, the Tolkien movies succeeded because there's a massive fan base for his stories. There may be a fairly large fan base for D&D the game, but by its very nature it lacks the memorable and beloved characters needed to drive the success they're probably looking for.
The idea of a Dungeons and Dragons movie only works if you make it a meta commentary on the game itself from the inside, otherwise you are essentially just making a fantasy film, unless you only use the most well known dnd characters which is a total crapshoot because even most people who play them don't know official dnd character names. Paizo tried that with Pathfinder for having each class having a default character but nobody uses them outside of Adventure League and they barely get touched on.
But you could do a DnD movie where a character gets killed off and when they arrive at the next town the actor is there in a different costume. "Barry, no I'm Larry, Barry's Twin Brother, he was a fighter, I'm a ranger." then later die and you meet the same actor in a wig and dress doing a bad woman's voice. "No I'm Marry, Larry and Barry's triplet sister, I'm a cleric because the party apparently doesn't have any healing."
Put in a point where the story fades to black and come back and the actors have bears and are dirty because the session got put on hold for like a month because nobody could get together and now they are picking it back up but their goal has changed because the DM forgot what they were doing and seeing if the audience realizes that's what happened when the group had originally set off to get a chalice but are not getting a necklace at the end.
There's a series of no-budget films that do this. I've only seen the one, and it was good for what it was.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ohk5Swy-04
Gamers 2 is the best of the trilogy and if anyone wants to watch just one of them then Dorkness Rising should always be that choice. There's a slight reference to something from the first one but apart from that it's very standalone and is best summed up as "a role-playing movie made by role-players for role-players".
Similar to the first movie It pokes fun at a lot of the stereotypes in DND but with a better budget and slightly better acting. The recurring jokes about the Paladin and his "lawful stupid" alignment are particularly good, as is everything involving the Bard.
Who do in fact suck as mentioned elsewhere.
"Hide behind the pile of dead bards!"
Bards suck :(
No
D&D is full of normies that just buy mugs and t-shirts and are the biggest fans, although they played like 2 mediocre games of 5'th edition and never plan of playing again.
This are the target demographic of this movie, people that desperately WANT to be "geeks" and do not care about the settings.
Is the old problem we have in all our hobbies. Being a fan used to mean you held an IP to some standards now it just means you consume everything, critic nothing and wear the merch. Funny enough, this are the same people that hate capitalism.
I think this movie will be successful. It will get praised by The Critical Drinker, half KIA over on reddit will fawn over it, as they did with Hogwarts and the movie will be a box office success with 2 more sequels in the making.
Or they could have gone with Dragonlance. I actually knew some dipshit that said he changed his name to Raistlin in high school. IDK whether he went to court to do it or just stopped using his real name though.
I haven't read those books since I was a kid, but I remember liking them. I've heard that they don't age well if you go back as an adult. Still, between the books themselves, the game modules, and all the artwork and sourcebooks, if they had gone that route for the film, they would have had a huge head start on the screenplay and costume/set design.
I read an article that talked about how Hasbro claims the D&D brand is "under monetized", so we can expect to see more shit like this movie in the future.