D&D marketing: What were they thinking?

[Shadowdancer]

I recently bought the "Dungeons & Dragons" movie DVD (and I know a lot of you out there are now saying to yourselves: What was he thinking? I liked the movie, and it was part of a deal through my DVD club, now back to the story). I was checking out the extras and watched the little "History of Role Playing Games" documentary/marketing pitch. There was the movie's director, and some marketing guy from New Line Cinema, even the then-CEO of WOTC talking about their early gaming experiences.

And I was completely underwhelmed. If I hadn't been playing D&D for 20+ plus years already, that documentary wouldn't have interested me in starting to play now. In fact, it was so bad, it made me want to mail my core rulebooks back to WOTC.

I also was less than thrilled with some of the deleted scenes they included on the DVD. They didn't finish the special effects, so some of them just look stupid. Especially the one with the dragon egg -- in some of the shots you can see the edge of the blue screen behind Josh! It was so bad, I almost fell off the sofa laughing.

If you aren't going to go to the trouble and expense of finishing the special effects for the DVD extras, don't include the scenes at all.

 

[pensiv]

usually the "deleted scenes" were never filmed aside from the original test. When they don't even bother to film the scene full-format, why bother going through the post-production?

 

[Nasma]

Dare I say it, but once they decided that the scene was not going to be in the movie why put any more money into it? It is only an extra and the idea is to give you some extra info about the film.

PS. I'm not defending the film in any way, it stank

 

[Henry]

My opinion is that, had they finished those scenes and included them, the movie

(A) would have made more sense

(B) would not have been that bad.

It certainly wasn't location - both From Hell and Blade 2 was shot in the same city as this movie, and the locations were awesome!

Some times, I feel like I'm the wizard from the Wizard of Oz, hiding the D&D movie behind a smokescreen and a curtain, and propping up a HUGE copy of the Lord of the Rings.


"Pay no attention to the DVD behind the curtain! I am the great and powerful D&D!"

 

[Chaldfont]

D&D Movie real disappointment--but no surprise

Collectively, this message board could have constructed a better plot. If we all pitched in $5.00 each, we could have gotten better actors.

Ok, one thing and I will get off the soapbox:

A beholder is not a beachball with eyes used as a watchdog by the bad-guy's minions...

 

[Alaric_Prympax]

Re: D&D Movie real disappointment--but no surprise

Ok, one thing and I will get off the soapbox:

A beholder is not a beachball with eyes used as a watchdog by the bad-guy's minions...

Neither is it distracted nor fooled by the sound of a thrown rock. Beholders are supposed to be he highly intellegent, not mindless creatures that go into a rage at the least little sound. That to me was the absolute worst part of the film, well maybe just before Jeremy Iron's "Let their blood rain from the skies!" (IIRC that line) overacting scene towards end of the film, that was the worst part of the film. Then again there was the scene...

 

[WSmith]

Back to the topic of the "History" feature. I thought it was ok, but they could have and should have not let the director, (I dare not say his name) open his stinking mouth for that whole feature. I might just be my opinion, but it seemed like everything he said about D&D was stupid, and detracted from the game itself.

Of, course I don't have the DVD, I only rented it, so it was a while ago I saw it. So, I can't point out specifics, other than the "you get to be God!" spewing from his mouth, (I found this comment to be VERY CHEEZZY!) That is just the impression I have been left with.

 

[Heap Thaumaturgist]

Two Edged Swords

The same thing that makes SpiderMan such a rock hard movie is, I think, what killed D&D.

Sam Raimi loves Spiderman. He put his soul into the flick, by all accounts, and it shows. I mean, it's great how much needless expositional dialogue they managed to cut out of the film. I was expecting it to be a hoke-fest.

Unfortunately they got a guy who loves D&D but, frankly, sucks at D&D and allowed him to make a movie. I don't think he had much, if any experience in film, as well, which is why he obviously didn't make more with less. He spooged himself over a few shots that, honestly, it seems like he made just to see something he thought of made.

On the whole, it was the funniest thing I'd ever seen. I honestly laughed until I hyperventilated, and kept laughing for ten minutes after the movie was over. I started chuckling when they turned into motes of light totally randomly ... and then I heard two hard-core fanboy dorks two rows up start talking about how it was a good movie and how they liked this or that part, and I just started howling.

Honestly the movie was that game you played in, remember that one, when you were 12 and playing with the neighbor kid who still hadn't learned how to interact with people and did alot of rather silly things from time to time and had alot of fun designing pointless trap gauntlets for your characters to run through, and how the dwarf was badly stereotyped and was taller than everybody else in the movie, er, game. Stuff like that. I never saw all of the director commentary since we turned it off like five minutes after we started it up.

I rented the DVD specifically to see if the director had an accounting of himself ... some moment where he said: "Wow, this movie blew, but you have to understand, I was working under ..." ... instead he was talking about how every shot was perfect, and exactly what he'd envisioned, and the movie was the best thing since sliced bread ... and I realized that the poor fool was such a backward little gleob he didn't realize how bad the movie had really been.

D&D is the poster-child for the dangers of passion without talent. Sure, anybody can be extremely passionate about something, and dedicate decades of their life to championing it. But if they don't have talent? Then you waste millions of dollars and give a bad name to a struggling genre of entertainment that didn't need the bad press in the first place.

--HT