Most likely "Dungeons & Dragons" will be in the title, either as the main title or subtitle, such as "Dungeons and Dragons: The Crystal Shard" or "The Crystal Shard: Dungeons & Dragons". D&D is the brand name they are selling, not FR or any specific character name.if it's called something like, "Drizzt Do'Urden and the Crystal Shard" they would probably never go see it.
Expect Elves to be black, asian, caucasian, and everything else. Same for dwarves and any other "races" in FR.An entire species where 99.99% are cacklingly evil psychopaths, and they're the most prominent dark-skinned civilisation in the setting, and all their pale-skinned counterparts are ethereal and elegant and majority-nice?
Expect Elves to be black, asian, caucasian, and everything else. Same for dwarves and any other "races" in FR.
D&D is a game system. A movie is about characters and plot. Which characters and plot will drive the movie and make it interesting?
<snippage>
There is (I assume) plenty of characterization and actual storyline to follow there versus "random adventuring party doing random stuff."
An elf that looks like a human that is ethnically black would look nothing like a drow (gray/purple/jet black, red eyes, white hair). No one is going to confuse a dark (brown) skinned elf for being a drow.It'd certainly work for a generic D&D story, but when a huge part of the Drizzt books is that he can be recognised on sight as a drow and gets judged accordingly, that ain't gonna fly.
Murderhoboing and point mining does not a plot make.
It gets the film company out of controversial territory, but it puts the writers into a difficult spot - why save the people of the FR when they treat obviously nice guy Drizzt so badly?If the only drow in the movie is Drizzt, and he's played by a dark-skinned actor, they'd be okay. They don't have to delve into his back story too much.
Not a fan of Drizzt myself, but if you need a popular FR character to build a movie around, he's your best option.
There are elements of the heist movie in a typical D&D story, such as gathering together a crew with specialist skills. However, in a standard heist movie the actual heist goes like clockwork until one thing causes it all to fall apart. In D&D things are usually constantly falling apart and being patched. Again, like GotG. 12% of a plan is pretty good for an average D&D party.No. But heist movies are a genre. And looting a dungeon is pretty much a heist.
Minsc and Boo are like nails on a chalkboard for me. Maybe it's because I never got into the main Baldur's Gate series (Dark Alliance is another story, though). I think we could see him appear as cameo (and I think existing characters will mostly appear as such), but the idea of a whole movie staring Minsc would...not be my thing.
It gets the film company out of controversial territory, but it puts the writers into a difficult spot - why save the people of the FR when they treat obviously nice guy Drizzt so badly?
And frankly, Drizzt is not a sufficiently well known character outside of the geek bubble to open a movie. None of the established FR characters are. There was a time, when D&D was down, when Drizzt had better name recognition than D&D (in Geekland). But now D&D is up and Salvatore is down (the latest Drizzt novel is ranked at 36,900 on Amazon UK).
And frankly, Drizzt is not a sufficiently well known character outside of the geek bubble to open a movie.
I find this notion strange. By this reasoning, the D&D movie shouldn't have characters... It's a D&D movie, so that IP name is part of the fanbase draw. The studio will also be looking at the most well-known characters within that IP to further draw fans, which using Drizzt would. He's not the whole draw, he's just one more checkbox.
It will have original characters, or it will have characters that are intrinsically interesting, not because they have recognisable names. Because frankly, outside of the name "D&D" itself, there are no recognisable names.I find this notion strange. By this reasoning, the D&D movie shouldn't have characters... It's a D&D movie, so that IP name is part of the fanbase draw. The studio will also be looking at the most well-known characters within that IP to further draw fans, which using Drizzt would. He's not the whole draw, he's just one more checkbox.
It'd certainly work for a generic D&D story, but when a huge part of the Drizzt books is that he can be recognised on sight as a drow and gets judged accordingly, that ain't gonna fly.
Evil drow don't have to be included. That being said, most paintings depict the drow with purple & gray skin, which is probably what we would get. The makeup department would create a look that is distinctly non-human, which makes sense considering that no ethnic group looks like drow anyway. There would probably be some alternations (such as minor prosthetics we see for Star Trek aliens) to make it clear they aren't human and make them unique. Problem solved!
BG1's characters really modelled the sort of PCs you might get in a slightly dysfunctional real TT RPG group pretty well. Maybe a little too well. And Minsc was clearly the joke-y guy's over-the-top character. Which can wear really thin, really fast.
No.The question remains, if we take aside popularity (or lack there of) of the various characters, are any of them compelling enough to adapt as main characters in a movie?
Not really, Sarevok perhaps. But then it would have to be Baldur's Gate the movie. You couldn't drop him into a different story.And we've been talking of protagonists, but what about the villain?
Mad wizards are trite, cliche and boring. The only compelling villains are sane, cunning villains.Mad Halaster certainly springs to mind.
To big a bad for a first film. Need to keep her back for potential sequels. Also, 100% CGI.Or perhaps Tiamat herself?
Has some name recognition, thanks to Stranger Things, but a primal force of chaos and destruction doesn't make a very interesting villain. Possibly summoned by the main villain.Demogorgon?