Dungeons & Dragons (2000) was a passion project turned cinematic disaster

Parmandur said:

Seems accurate. She has spent much of the past 30 years trying to make Buck Roger's happen in film, apparently.

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The only way I see Buck Rogers working is in a one off parody film. Like the Starsky and Hutch kinda thing.

Anything can work with good enough writing.

The name is very early 20th century rocketships and rayguns, though, so it might need a treatment something like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, or, perhaps a more auspicious example, the recent Fantastic Four movie. Or Fallout, maybe? Something retro-futuristic.

But that's a challenging category to sell to a mass market. You'd need excellent writing/story, as well as good visuals and actors.

payn said:

The only way I see Buck Rogers working is in a one off parody film. Like the Starsky and Hutch kinda thing.

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Depends on what specifics they consider important to keep. At it's heart, it's just another 'American (former) soldier encounters sci-fi phenomenon and finds themself in the future/on another planer' story the same as Rip Van Winkle, Flash Gordon, John Carter of Mars, or Three Hearts and Three Lions (or at an even more basic level, a Gulliver's Travels-esque travellogue through a fantastic alternate society). Even that gets minimized a lot, and (for instance) the TV show makes him relatively omnicompetent and so he's quickly just a space hero with occasional lapses into I-don't-know-this territory so someone can exposition an explanation for the audience. Something like that could work (it's effectively Star Lord from GoG), there's just nothing about Buck Rogers that really sells it, unless as Mannahnin suggests you are leaning into the nostalgic zeerust.

This is a movie I've been afraid to rewatch. I loved it as a kid, and I know it's bad. I just remember it hitting on a lot of tropes that are some of my favorite parts of D&D. Two plucky scoundrels getting in way over their heads. Getting the party together. And I'm glad the article called out my favorite scene, the thieves' guild. I remember the first time I played a rogue in D&D I harassed my poor brother, who was our DM. Every time we entered a town or a city I'd be begging to roll to discover whether or not there was any "Guild Presence" in town. I wanted so badly to find one, and be put to the test and given the opportunity to prove myself and be made king of the thieves.. Naturally his campaign wasn't prepared for this stuff, and he didn't have much desire to derail it to accommodate my one-man anti-heroic story arc.

I remember this being a fun movie, and I should probably just leave it there in the nostalgia bin.

Willie the Duck said:

Depends on what specifics they consider important to keep. At it's heart, it's just another 'American (former) soldier encounters sci-fi phenomenon and finds themself in the future/on another planer' story the same as Rip Van Winkle, Flash Gordon, John Carter of Mars, or Three Hearts and Three Lions (or at an even more basic level, a Gulliver's Travels-esque travellogue through a fantastic alternate society). Even that gets minimized a lot, and (for instance) the TV show makes him relatively omnicompetent and so he's quickly just a space hero with occasional lapses into I-don't-know-this territory so someone can exposition an explanation for the audience. Something like that could work (it's effectively Star Lord from GoG), there's just nothing about Buck Rogers that really sells it, unless as Mannahnin suggests you are leaning into the nostalgic zeerust.

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Sure, any concept could potentially work with good writing and excellent execution. As a betting man im not putting money on being wrong about Buck Rogers though.

payn said:

Sure, any concept could potentially work with good writing and excellent execution. As a betting man im not putting money on being wrong about Buck Rogers though.

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Legit. I think Lorraine and Flint working on this for the past 40 years without success attests to the difficulty of this. I just can see why they'd keep trying, given both their own investment and some of the crazy concepts that occasionally succeed (including several of the cartoon properties Flint worked on in the 80s).

Mannahnin said:

Legit. I think Lorraine and Flint working on this for the past 40 years without success attests to the difficulty of this. I just can see why they'd keep trying, given both their own investment and some of the crazy concepts that occasionally succeed (including several of the cartoon properties Flint worked on in the 80s).

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Bear in mind that the intellectual property rights to Buck Rogers were returned to the Nowlan Family Trust (representing the estate of Philip Francis Nowlan, creator of Buck Rogers) as of 2019, so Lorraine and Flint probably aren't trying to make anything for that particular bit of media anymore.

Alzrius said:

Bear in mind that the intellectual property rights to Buck Rogers were returned to the Nowlan Family Trust (representing the estate of Philip Francis Nowlan, creator of Buck Rogers) as of 2019, so Lorraine and Flint probably aren't trying to make anything for that particular bit of media anymore.

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Ah! Good reminder, thanks. I half remembered something about that, but took Parmandur at his word with the present tense.

Mannahnin said:

Certainly Riggs would give her a fair shake; he'd jump through flaming hoops to interview her.

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Agree on the latter, but he might turn on her if he felt that was more interesting.

Dire Bare said:

"Wrath of the Dragon God" (2005) … better than "Honor Among Thieves"?!?!

To each their own, I guess!

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I think it is much better. Less ambitious, but it delivered on what it was trying to do.