D&D Movie/TV Here's The D&D Movie Trailer!

"Who needs heroes when you have thieves?" The movie arrives March 3rd, 2023. Here's the trailer! When they said it was inspired by Guardians of the Galaxy, they weren't kidding! We have dragons, owlbears, mimics, gelatinous cubes, quips, and more!



There was also a clip shown at San Diego Comic Con where the party cast speak with dead, and got to ask five questions. Also, apparently, the D&D cartoon characters from the 80s have a cameo!

 

[Jer]

My initial response was "is that dragon drunk?" before I realized it was a black dragon, and I'm not sure that's the response they were looking for. No one who isn't familiar with D&D dragons will understand why it isn't breathing fire, so that means there is gonna have to be at least one line of dialogue where they have to explain D&D mechanics to the audience- which are just throwaway lines of exposition. I really hope they don't have too many of those.

They just need someone to scream "watch out for its acid breath" and it's probably fine.

Although like I said elsewhere - I initially thought it was incomplete CG and wondered why they didn't put the flame in before I remembered it was a D&D dragon, not a generic movie dragon.

 

[Jer]

I just did a Twitter search, and there’s a whooolle lot of people there posting about how they don’t give a damn about D&D but are going to see this movie because they think Chris Pine or Michelle Rodriguez or Rene Jean Page are hot.

What's the last action movie where the stars weren't hot? Or at least cute?

 

[MGibster]

The problem with any Warhammer movie is that there lore is so weird and deep that you'd need to spend half the running time in exposition just explaining enough of it to make the basic fundamentals of the world make sense. Can't show space travel without talking about the warp or navigators. Can't talk about the Emperor without talking about Golden Throne, can't talk about the Golden Throne without talking about the Horus Heresy, can't talk about the Horus Heresy without getting into the Primarchs and Chaos, etc etc etc.

I don't think you actually need to explain all of that in order to tell a good story. In Star Wars, we learn that there's an emperor, that he's seized complete political power by dissolving the senate, there's a growing rebellion against his rule, and not so long ago there there was a Clone War. This wasn't a giant exposition dump, we got just enough detail to understand what was going on without being overwhelmed, and get a sense that the galaxy was a big place with things going on.

So go ahead and invoke the Emperor's name, but that doens't mean you have to cram a lot of back trivia in there. If the Horus Heresy and the Primarchs aren't relevant to the plot there's no reason to mention them. Certainly bring up the Emperor with phrases like "The Emperor Protects" or have a scene where a preacher in the background speaks about the Emperor of Man sitting upon his golden throne on Holy Terra, but there's no need to mention that the throne keeps him alive or that he serves as an actual beacon that makes navigating the warp possible. And about the warp? It should be trivally easy to just bring up the fact that a Geller shield is necessary to keep the bad things out while traveling through the warp. We don't need an indepth explanation anymore than we need one for warp speed in Star Trek.

Bite sized chunks. Just introduce the elements needed to tell a specific story.

 

[darjr]

Rule 34 suggests he already has a fansite somewhere.

Me: closes window on that new square space site.

 

[Demetrios1453]

My initial response was "is that dragon drunk?" before I realized it was a black dragon, and I'm not sure that's the response they were looking for. No one who isn't familiar with D&D dragons will understand why it isn't breathing fire, so that means there is gonna have to be at least one line of dialogue where they have to explain D&D mechanics to the audience- which are just throwaway lines of exposition. I really hope they don't have too many of those.

They don't have to do any such thing. I'm sure we'll have more shots of it, with its acid actually burning and dissolving things. The general audience will figure out pretty quickly what is happening.

 

[MGibster]

It is a reaction to all the ugliness in the real world. Who needs escapist fiction to also be ugly?

For some reason I feel as though this is a personal attack against me!

 

[darjr]

They don't have to do any such thing. I'm sure we'll have more shots of it, with its acid actually burning and dissolving things. The general audience will figure out pretty quickly what is happening.

My bet is that’s one of the “not quite done” affects shots.

 

[OB1]

My guess is that the Druid's wildshaping into an owlbear will be tied to a new subclass that comes out around the movie. In fact, I'd suspect all 5 mains get their own new subclass.

Druid - Circle of the Monster
Bard - College of Planning
Barbarian - Path of the Furious
Sorcerer - Noble Blood (couldn't think of a good one here)
Paladin - Oath of Honor

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Problem with Warhammer Fantasy is that to the non-fan it's functionally indistinguishable from D&D or Warcraft or a zillion other fantasy settings.

I don't really agree. It's obviously more towards the Witcher/Dark Fantasy end of things, and by your own logic, Warcraft is indistinguishable from D&D, D&D is indistinguishable from Warhammer, LotR is indistinguishable from D&D, Wheel of Time is indistinguishable from any of them, and so on, which is, I would suggest is obviously not true. It would probably have been true 20 years ago, when the core audience for this stuff was a lot less familiar with fantasy, being a bunch of staid Boomers and sulky Gen Xers, but we're not dealing with the 18-49 audience of 2000, we're dealing with the 18-49 audience of 2022, who is vastly more familiar with fantasy and who has pretty different tastes, being primarily Millennials and Gen Z. A ton of them grew up playing WoW or Warhammer, loads of them play D&D, and pretty much all of them would be insulted by the idea that they're so unsavvy as to be unable to distinguish the various IPs (they're vastly more IP-savvy than previous generations in general, even). Whereas a lot of Gen Xers (and Boomers) would be downright smug about their own inability to distinguish Warcraft and D&D! (I mean some of these guys are smug about being unable to distinguish Marvel and DC! That's more Boomer than Gen X I admit). I know you've seen that attitude - it used to be very common. It used to make you cooler if you didn't know the difference. But for younger generations? It just makes you seem a bit thick/unsavvy.

 

[MockingBird]

My initial response was "is that dragon drunk?" before I realized it was a black dragon, and I'm not sure that's the response they were looking for. No one who isn't familiar with D&D dragons will understand why it isn't breathing fire, so that means there is gonna have to be at least one line of dialogue where they have to explain D&D mechanics to the audience- which are just throwaway lines of exposition. I really hope they don't have too many of those.

My wife who knows nothing about D&D, much less about black dragons, figured out it was acid immediately. Her only knowledge of dragons was GoT. I think it'll be fine.