Will we ever see a good D&D film?
Some posters above have suggested that such a film should not be set in the classic D&D worlds, others have.
I would submit that one such film has indeed already come out and I was a little suprised that no one has mentioned it here.
Anyone out there see a little film called "Pirates of the Caribbean"?
-Heros+Villans
-Great Sword fights
-Hillarious Dialoge (absolutly essential for D&D)
-Magic up the wazzu
The first thing I said when I left the theatre after watching this film was:
"That was a great day of D&D."
And, due to the fact that no one put "D&D" in the title, the public loved it so much Walt Disney was willing to pay both Johnny Depp and Orlando Blooms HUGE salaries to star in the up coming sequal.
So there's my opinion. It was so subtle that even alot of D&D players missed it, but a great "D&D Movie" has already hit the screen and hopefully will be the first of many to come.
-Rath
Will we ever see a good D&D film?
I would submit that one such film has indeed already come out and I was a little suprised that no one has mentioned it here.
Anyone out there see a little film called "Pirates of the Caribbean"?
"That was a great day of D&D."
I'm sorry Rothy ol'buddy, but I will disagree with you. My opinion of that movie wasn't exactly as high as yours. Sure, the visuals were stunning (the ships and the sea were awesome), but any movie which has a villain who is surrounded by bumbling fools will NEVER get my vote.
Here's a list of some of the things that make up a bad movie (in my opinion):
... Dumb bad guys (if the bad guys are that stupid, they wouldn't be dangerous),
... Child geniuses (I just can't stand them anymore!),
... Actors who try to be funny in a movie that's not supposed to be funny (enough with the silly one-timers during a fight),
... Heroes that aren't afraid of anything (hey, if they're not afraid, how can we, the audience, be?)
... Too much gore (when there's nothing left for the imagination),
... and Steven Segal.
There you go movie makers... Stay away from those and you might have a box office hit in your hands!
Ultradan
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Why not just make a damn fine Lankhmar movie and cut out the middle man? I'd go see that in a New York minute. Hmmm....
Yeah, Fafhrd and the Mouser on the big screen... How cool would that be?
As for Dragonlance, the D&D is buried deep enough that you don't notice it so much in these books. It was after all fantasy world that was born form the fluff side of D&D rather than crunch.
And Forgotten Realms was born without D&D at all.
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I’ve often thought about writing a D&D show, probably animated in a style similar to Justice League. (I can dream). This is my idea for an opening scene, which could be the opening of a movie just as easily.
Open on a magical machine, the size of a small house. From an opening in this device emerges a warforged, a human shaped creature, made from wood and metal. We will latter learn his name is SPEEDY. Speedy rotates his head slightly to take in his surroundings, but before he can absorb anything, the conveyor belt on which he stands, propells him forward.
Behind Speedy another warforged emerges from the machine. Followed by another. And another.
CUT TO:
A training field, filled with identical warforged armed with military pole arms. The warforged perform exercises in perfect unison, as a human overseer barks out commands.
CUT TO:
The warforged are on the march. The ground rumbles as their heavy feet strike the ground at the exact same instant. The mass of warforged reach the tope a hill.
Across the valley we see an army of zombies and skeletons, armed and armored. A tense silence surrounds both armies. They brace for the inevitable charge.
In the distance a horse and ride approach, waiving a white flag. The two armies stare at each other as they wait for the horseman to approach. Finally he arrives, meets the commanders of each army.
A human officer shouts to the warfoged:
"The war is over. You can all go home."
In unison all the warforged turn around, and leave the battle. All save one. Speedy remains perfectly still until his the thunder of his brethren’s feet fade. Then he looks around and utters:
"Home?"
This has been a great thread, I am a little dismayed by the general pessimism but understand fully where it comes from. In my opinion the problem with the D&D movies has been that they have tried to hard to BE D&D movies. And as someone here has already said, what works well in the game doesn't necessarily translate well to the screen.
As someone else said this has long been the failing of most comic-book movies, they try too hard to remain so faithful to the page that things end up looking campy and silly.
I think D&D would work just fine for the big screen, although I would much prefer (in the fantasy world of my own head) for an extended HBO treatment. It would just need to invoke the spirit of D&D and not the mechanics. I don't care about stereotypes and cliches, I don't care about discussions of Strength, Intelligence, divine versus arcane in the dialogue, and I don't care to see the character sheets afterwards. Just give me a solid plot that involves magic and monsters that we all recognise but keep us guessing about the classes and levels. And give me more character development and drama than action.
Once someone figures all of that out, we should be good to go...
Cheers
Llowellen
I would settle for an official release of the original animated cartoon classid on DVD, and they won't even give me THAT!The D&D cartoon is coming to DVD soon.
You made that statement with authority. Is this a "hunch", "opinion", or "insider knowledge"? Please don't construe this as a flame, I'm just wondering because I have been waiting a long time and haven't seen any evidence that it will ever be released. I even emailed Rhino and they said no.
You made that statement with authority. Is this a "hunch", "opinion", or "insider knowledge"? Please don't construe this as a flame, I'm just wondering because I have been waiting a long time and haven't seen any evidence that it will ever be released. I even emailed Rhino and they said no.I would settle for an official release of the original animated cartoon classid on DVD, and they won't even give me THAT!The D&D cartoon is coming to DVD soon.
Anybody know of any updates on this...?
Cheers
Llowellen
I hope we see a good film set in a rich world. I've watched Dungeons and Dragons and The Wrath of the Dragon God(realizing I had seen part of the later when they came to the Vault). I liked the first one better. Not only did I figure out everything in the second, including the answer to the riddle to get into the vault, way before everyone else(I figured it out even before they pushed the "X" in) it was a little boring. They also made Ismer look like a small country town while in the first one it was a big city. I will stop here, or it will take a day to read my comments seeing a good DnD film and my critique of the first two. I will say that I would rather see a film in the set Forgotten Realms, preferably with Drizzt Do'Urden atleast, hopefully with Artemis Entreri, Bruenor Battlehammer, Cattie Brie, Wulfgar, and Regis.
Here's a list of some of the things that make up a bad movie (in my opinion):
... Dumb bad guys (if the bad guys are that stupid, they wouldn't be dangerous),
... Child geniuses (I just can't stand them anymore!),
... Actors who try to be funny in a movie that's not supposed to be funny (enough with the silly one-timers during a fight),
... Heroes that aren't afraid of anything (hey, if they're not afraid, how can we, the audience, be?)
... Too much gore (when there's nothing left for the imagination),
... and Steven Segal.
There you go movie makers... Stay away from those and you might have a box office hit in your hands!
Ultradan
Yeah, leave Steven Segal out of it and it will do fine. I'd like to add:
... a baby crying in the background to indicate "gravity of the situation".
... Nu Metal playing during action sequences
... in the boss fight - the combatants throw down helmets and shields and weild one handed long swords 2 handed to denote ferocity
Though, not the formula that Ultrdan submitted, I just don't like a movie when they do those things. oh...
... throw your sword to denote a dramatic death to the enemy
... BBEG falls off a balcony and lands on an iron fence - sharp thing sticking out of the chest for all to view.
Oh and if you call your movie "Ultra Violet" it'll probably be bad enough to make you physically ill.
GGG
A human officer shouts to the warfoged:
"The war is over. You can all go home."
In unison all the warforged turn around, and leave the battle. All save one. Speedy remains perfectly still until his the thunder of his brethren’s feet fade. Then he looks around and utters:
"Home?"
Heh, that's actually pretty good.
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Anybody know of any updates on this...?The D&D cartoon is coming to DVD soon.You made that statement with authority. Is this a "hunch", "opinion", or "insider knowledge"? Please don't construe this as a flame, I'm just wondering because I have been waiting a long time and haven't seen any evidence that it will ever be released. I even emailed Rhino and they said no.
Finally checking back into this thread. When I said the D&D cartoon was coming soon, I had just read an article that looked like it was reporting a real announcement. Maybe I didn't read it well enough, because now all I could find was rumor:
http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/shownews.cfm?ShowID=1293
Would people object to a computer animated t.v. series treatment of Eberron or Forgotten Realms?
Would people object to a computer animated t.v. series treatment of Eberron or Forgotten Realms?
Only if they did it half-assed or tried to make it "hip" and "popular" by making it a clone of some other popular cartoon series. Then, yes, I would object stringently, loudly, and often. Story first, dammit, then worry about the flashy zip-a-dee-do-dahs LATER. Story, plot - very important things!!
Any adaptation of a setting needs to be done with care, no matter what media it's translated to. (Yeah, this is a subject I've thought a lot about. I'm still considering adapting my campaigns into a webcomic format.)
Any and every attempt at this kind of movie outside of LotR and Willow kinda, totally utterly sucked. D&D the movie was the worst of a bad lot, worse than the Dark Crystal and the Labyrinth. Conan was garbage. I used to like those movies right around the time that I liked D&D the cartoon I was 5 at the time, we all know the effects will rock, but like Lilith wrote it is about STORY and almost every one of those blew. Established setting or totally new setting is irrelevant if the story is garbage.
Perhaps I'm getting cranky in my old age, but I'm not sure H-wood is even capable of making good movies anymore.
[rant follows]
I know I've kind of stopped being interested to the point of not bothering to keep up with what's coming out. Not just fantasy movies, but all of Hollywood's action oriented movies have begun to seem to have forgotten what plot and character development are.
I thought Peter Jackson's LOTR series was admirable in some respects, and I think the novel is a real challenge to adapt to the big screen, but it had some serious flaws, too--not just in terms of omissions and alterations from the story. Too much action and not enough drama. For example, the pivotal scene where Gandalf tells the Balrog "you shall not pass"--completely anticlimactic after twenty minutes of troll-bopping. No subtlety in character portrayal, to the point where the movie character is not at all in the spirit of the original. Tolkien, I'm quite sure, is rolling in his grave after seeing Gandalf smack Denethor upside the head with his staff--this completely goes against what Gandalf stands for and robs this character of consistency, dignity, and force. Too much melodrama and ridiculous, anime-esque antics. Climbing an oliphaunt while it's rampaging through the battlefield? Aragorn thrown off a cliff by the wolf-things? The hystrionic conference in the Hornburg where everyone is about to give up? Elrond sends Arwen to the havens?
And this is a good fantasy movie--mostly because what is left of the original Tolkien shining through. Hollywood can't even do Three Musketeers right, let alone a good fantasy script.
(And don't get me started on ersatz computer-scenery, which has begun to have a cheez-wiz sameness to it, in my mind).
Maybe if Tracy Hickman wrote the script and Ang Lee directed it, you MIGHT get a decent movie.
[OK, rant over]
Now here's an idea--what about a BBC "Masterpiece Theatre" miniseries of an iconic fantasy series. You'd have more time for character development and revelation of the fantasy world with many of its subtleties and premises. The episodic feel of a miniseries would work well with the typically longer plot of a good fantasy novel (or series). Wheel of Time, one of Katherine Kurtz's Deryni rising trilogies, Robin Hobb's Liveship series, all would be good candidates for doing this way (and many more, I'm sure). BBC wouldn't feel obligated to spend billions on special effects and video-gamesque computerized backdrops, so the focus would be on the characters and the drama.
I agree with you, Peruhain. I'm easy to please, but it's been a while since a movie really bowled me over. I didn't like the special effects extravaganza that was the Lord of the Rings series. I'd rather have all the comparatively cheesy special effects from Clash of the Titans and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger than the overly polished films that are coming out now.
Story, story, story. Can't stress it enough.
my thoughts;
1. they wouldn't be able to call it dnd because that's been labled.
2. yes, it would have to be writen by gamers.
3. yes, it would have to be over seen by gamers.
4. it would have to be a compleatly original story.
5. if the set it in forgotten realms (for instance)they would only be able to hint at the big picture, the history, the familliar things that we gamers would relate to(legendary characters, no big story of fimalier characters, but somthing new to every body.
if they could make a movie with the quality of say BREAVEHEART or LOTR, the amount of money that could be made is phanominal.
Maybe I didn't read it well enough, because now all I could find was rumor:
Thanks for checking back in Occam. I closely monitor many merchants (online and brick and mortar) to find out about the release of this series. I have what episodes I could get on VHS, and I have the whole series on DVD (thanks ebay). I would pay an arm and a leg to get a legitamate DVD set with the whole series though.
Just another animated series would do it for me. Unless someone is going to invest 150 Million to show me their three hour vision of "The Temple of Elemental Evil", I'd rather see Genndy Tartakovsky's (sp?) animated version of a good day of D&D.
Anyone else like his work?
Would it be the right style for D&D?
Ok..isn't he the guy from Dexter??.....xD
The Drizzt books are NY Times bestsellers.
That means a lot of people care about the character.
A movie featuring that character should draw lots and lots of people to the box office. (especially readers who are in the target movie-going demographic -- teen and 20-something males)
(Plus, fantasy films have more mainstream appeal than ever before. Hollywood is looking for fantasy vehicles).
This makes money for movie studio, the licensee, etc.
Honestly, I'm clueless as to why no one's jumping on this -- unless the stumbling block is the rights holders and the author.
Yeah...but it would be cool to have a movie with DRizzt on it, not a movie with Drizzt being the main character and center of universe...
In my never-ending search for the D&D cartoon on DVD, I found some info at tvshowsondvd.com. Look slike we MIGHT get it sometime at the end of 2006; don't hold your breath though. And pardon the html garbage - it was tough to copy from their website. Details below.
On a side note, hats off to the PAIZO webmaster for accomplishing a feat Wizards have yet to accomplish: a search tool for the message boards!
Thanks!
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Late last year, on Christmas Eve, we exclusively broke the news</a> that the classic 1983 animated series <i>Dungeons & Dragons</i> would come to DVD in North America sometime in 2006.<br>
<Br>
Now we have word from Mark Evanier, one of the writers on the show, that he recorded extras for this release earlier this week. Here's what he had to say this past Wednesday:
<ul><i>I've got to run out to a recording session of my own (they're doing commentary tracks and special features for the forthcoming release of the Dungeons and Dragons cartoons on DVD)...</i></ul>
<br>
If that sounds like it was part of a longer story, it was, and about something completely unrelated. Visit Mark's always-interesting website for the rest of that other story, and for lots more. <bR>
<Br>
It's still several months before this title gets formally announced, though, and until the time is right and the studio involved is ready to talk, we're not planning to be the ones to go shooting off our mouths (we've been threatened to be hit with FeebleMind spells if we don't comply). But stay tuned, and we'll have more for you when the time is right!