I will keep this simple. Perhaps the worst made movie I’ve seen in years. Horrendous script. Poor acting. Bad CGI. This happens and then this happens and then this happens… none of which furthers the plot or makes sense.

Comically bad.

The one from 20 years ago was WAAAAAAAYY worse.

A friend recommended it to me. I quit watching halfway through. As much as I enjoy Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez, their performances weren't enough to outweigh the retard wizard and the half-crazy druid.

Yep! It sucked ass.

quote:

Originally posted by creslin:
The one from 20 years ago was WAAAAAAAYY worse.

Yep. Believe it or not, this was the best of the various D&D movies, though that's a pretty low bar.

Hollywood just can't manage to get D&D right, despite sitting on a treasure trove of decades of D&D's classic fantasy stories and ideas to mine.

Just go watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy again.

Or, if you don't mind the juvenile humor (lots of swearing and sex/fart jokes, which is admittedly a part of most D&D groups anyway), The Legend of Vox Machina on Amazon Prime is an excellent animated adaption of the Critical Role D&D campaign, and it's probably the best option for a D&D on-screen adaptation, though they don't have the rights to the explicitly copyrighted D&D material. Though that's not much of a problem, since it's set in a custom homebrewed setting, not one of the usual D&D worlds with copyrighted people and places.

If I were going to make a D&D movie I'd take the biggest D&D nerds available, sit them all down and play a series of games. Take the best of the series and story board it and then put that on film.

Has this been done?

Kinda, but not with any of the official D&D movies. That's what happened with the Critical Role animated adaptation I talked out in my above post, The Legend of Vox Machina. It was originally a live video series of a group of actor friends sitting around a table playing through a weekly D&D campaign, which over the years exploded in popularity, and eventually got enough traction for their tabletop D&D campaign to be made into an animated streaming series.

But even if they had taken a similar route with this big budget D&D movie, just like with any big Hollywood production the studio execs and money guys and and script doctors and diversity consultants and marketings reps and etc. would all have their way with it as it works its way through the Hollywood studio sausage factory, and if you're lucky the end product might have some passing resemblance to the original D&D nerd campaign. (See the Star Wars sequel trilogy, or the recent LotR Rings of Power travesty, or any number of other similar examples of Hollywood finding ways to fuck up what started out as good foundational material.)

The reason why the Critical Role adaptation is so well-done and faithful is because it didn't go through the usual Hollywood studio channels. The Critical Role folks had enough popularity and enough money (gathered via Kickstarter) to be able to partner with a small animation studio and make a truly faithful adaptation on their own terms, which was then shopped around to the big streaming platforms just for distribution, with Amazon having the highest bid. But Amazon didn't get to meddle with it from the start, like they do with their own in-house stuff. The original creators retain full creative control.

quote:

Originally posted by Skull Leader:
...I'd take the biggest D&D nerds available...

Hey...I resemble that remark.



Back when creativity and imagination were used for entertainment. The point and click generations are missing out, I do believe.

quote:

Originally posted by Orguss:
I quit watching halfway through.

As did I.

Wanted to like it, but couldn't.