Overall I really liked this film! Hit all the right notes for me. Yeah, there were some things I could nitpick about, but I feel like it got more right than it got wrong.
And we need more cockatrice fighting over rusty plates.
I missed the cockatrices but did see the (miniature) rust monsters fighting over something on a roof beam while Edgin and Holga were being led down into Castle Never's dungeon.
Also, besides the D&D cartoon party in the maze, it seemed there was another party as well (there was a dwarf with a Battle Axe I thought might be Bruenor!?) but wondering if anyone else might have caught anything that would tie it in to other FR lore.
Yeah, there was a third group, but I don’t think they were known characters like the cartoon characters were. They were just some randos there to die. (The woman did look a little bit like Jennifer Lawrence to me but I doubt it was her.)
Memo to WotC - Are you really sure you want to take away tiny wildshapes from Druids till Tier III? Doric's escape is even more fun when it's a Tier I Druid doing it
On a related note, I feel like that scene also highlights the relative stinginess of the whole “resource management” aspect of D&D as a game. It sucks that a druid can't wildshape more than twice without needing to rest for an hour until they hit 20th level.
The attunement scenes. Really, this should 100% be part of the rules somehow. I'm totally using this in a future campaign.
Same. I’ve long wished that the attunement rules had more meat on their bones and weren’t such a box-checking exercise. (Same with identifying magic items.)
Absolutely! Themberchaud was both ridiculous and badass at the same time—it defies all dragon tropes.
Xenk: "He must have found a new den."
Edgin: "Did he eat the last one?"
I guess Thembie got wise to his duergar minders’ plans for him (viz.
Out of the Abyss) and managed to escape from Gracklstugh.
Yeah that was surprising and I liked it a lot. Also the ancestor had exactly the amount of attitude I might expect from a line of sorcerers descended from Elminster (who probably has like, thousands of descendants, the randy bastard!).
That was meant to
be Elminster himself (or, rather, Simon’s subconscious projection of him). They even included Elminster’s personal arcane sigil on his brooch. They just changed his appearance from looking like Gandalf/Ed Greenwood to looking like someone who could actually be Simon’s great-great-grandfather. (I appreciated the filmmakers' attention to detail, even if they did take a few liberties here and there.)
I got the impression Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) has a fetish for halflings. Besides her last halfling lover (a surprise cameo by Bradley Cooper) there was a shot of her looking at another halfling man near the end of the movie.
Kinda puts a different spin on the whole giantess fetish thing.
The emerald elf coalition thing was okay-ish. I think I missed the pointy ears on a lot of them, though. Could've been human and it wouldn't have made a difference.
I feel like they misrepresented the Emerald Enclave. They made it seem like it was just a group of elves living in the forest rather than a world-spanning organisation of eco-warriors.
She mentioned something about Elks so I think she's Uthgardt.
Yes. It’s not made clear in the film, but it’s been established elsewhere that she’s Uthgardt.
I don't think you can escape from a Gelatinous Cube by shrinking, but it worked. The cube was stationary, though.
Yeah, that was a fun bit of creative licence. I like how they made a point of showing Doric poking her finger out before wildshaping in order to leave herself an exit hole. It
was accurate to have the ones who got out reach back in and pull the others out, though.
Could be fun to have Xenk as the thru line, just having him come in and be a badass and then peace out before the final act.
That could be fun! It would seem that his being marked by Szass Tam has made him immortal (or at least extremely long-lived, since he certainly doesn't look like he's more than 100 years old).
