D&D Movie/TV D&D Movie Moves Forward With Deal With Former Marvel Exec Jeremy Latcham

[Chaosmancer]

Not picking on you, Haffrung, lots of people have been saying this in this thread, but.... Trying to be like GotG, or anything out of the MCU, is a huge mistake on so many levels.

First, consider that everyone has tried to copy the MCU, and pretty much everyone has failed. Universal tried to kickstart their own Universe with The Mummy; it failed. DC (Warner) tried to copy GotG with Suicide Squad; it failed. There are more. A D+D movie will have less budget, less material to pull from, less talent available, and less interest to the public (medieval fantasy vs sci-fi) than any of the copycats, and an equally lower chance of succeeding.

More importantly, though, a major reason GotG (and other movies in the MCU) was successful was because it was original and played against the standard. You can't copy that because now it's the standard.

I don't disagree with your point, but there are some big differences here.

First off, copying GotG is nothing like what Universal tried to do. GotG could easily have worked as a stand alone movie with no cinematic universe. Now, I haven't seen the Mummy from this attempt, but I did hear about it, and I think that there is a good lesson to be learned from it.

You should make stand alone movies that have the potential to tie-in with a Universe, not what Mummy reportedly did, which was throw a whole bunch at audiences assuming they would be okay not understanding until later movies came out. Actually, a good example of an MCU movie that Mummy was trying to emulate would be Captain Marvel. See, Captain Marvel has a lot of elements that were not explained in the movie (Nick Fury, SHIELD, the Tesseract) but that was fine because those elements were defined in previous movies that the audience was expected to have seen. The Mummy took the Captain Marvel approach without doing the homework, and I agree, the DnD movie shouldn't do that.


Now, Suicide squad is a much more apt thing to look at, and I think actually, it holds some very important lessons.

Suicide Squad had a lot of issues, but a big one that actually applies to the making of a movie like GotG or DnD is that the cast was actually too big. We had Deadshot, Quinn, Katana, Captain Boomerang, Diablo, Killer Croc, Enchantress, Flag, Slipknot just as members of the squad, ignoring Enchantress' Brother, Waller, and Joker. That is 9 members, plus three other important named characters.


Look at the Guardians. Starlord, Gamora, Rocket, Groot, Drax. Five people. More villains actually, with Ronin, Nebula, Yandu, and the Collector. But their entire named cast is actually the same size as the Suicide Squad team.

Now, second point, what do we actually know about these characters? Guardians gives us Quinn's story. That is actually our focus throughout most of the movie. What do we know about Gamora? Her dad is Thanos and she doesn't like him. She gets a bit of focus towards the end as a love interest, but not a lot. No flashbacks. Rocket? He is a racoon, was experimented on. No flashbacks. Groot? Plant thing, we don't even know how he and Rocket met. Drax? Ronin killed his family and he is out for revenge. We actually meet him the latest, after everyone else is in jail. But the story progresses pretty evenly. We start with Quinn, get Quinn's story, then Gamora shows up, along with Rocket and Groot, and they start fighting with minimal backstory and the rest of the movie just proceeds with the current action, not with telling us who they were.

Now, it has been a minute since I've seen suicide squad, but I remember it starts with Waller telling us there will be a team. Then, what do they do? They proceed to give us flashbacks and backstories for everyone. Deadshot was an assassin for hire, he has a daughter he loves very much, he was taken out by batman. Harley Quinn was the lover of the Joker, here are scenes of them together, she was taken out by batman. Here is Diablo's story and flahsbacks of his power and what he can do. Here is Captain Boomerang and the scene of him being taken out by the Flash, here is Killer Croc and his story. Here is Sorceress and Flag and their whole story. Each character is given far more screen time and instead of helping, it hurts the story by bogging it down.

And, think about this. Let us list off the locations of Guardians.
The planet Quinn gets the stone on, The Nova planet, the Jail station, Knowhere, and then back to Nova Planet for a big climatic battle.

What were the locations for Suicide Squad?
The Jail. The city where everything else happens.

While with the Guardians you can think of at least one set of actions or important events with each location, can you do that for suicide squad in the same way? Does anything actually important happen in the jail other than flashbacks?


And this ties in with what the biggest problem was. Suicide told you what the story was. Guardians told a story. They showed these characters and didn't do a bunch of flashbacks or big focuses on their backstories except where it was important to the plot. Suicide squad deluged you with the backstories of half a dozen characters before you even knew what the plot was.

So, the DnD movie should actually look to both movies. One as an example that worked well, one that worked poorly, and try to learn from them

 

[Haffrung]

More importantly, though, a major reason GotG (and other movies in the MCU) was successful was because it was original and played against the standard.

I think it was successful because it blended action, humour, music, and special effects in a very appealing way. As others have noted, the GotG movies don't have much to do with the Marvel Universe, and could easily have been standalone films.

That formula isn't necessarily easy to copy. But that's what a D&D movie should at least aspire to - a light action film with great effects and humour. And a kick-ass soundtrack.

 

[Traycor]

First, consider that everyone has tried to copy the MCU, and pretty much everyone has failed.

Totally agree that shared universes must be earned. Shoot too hard for that at the beginning and it fails every time.

That being said, every film uses other films as their template. It's part of the business model. Primarily what this means is tone. They want the tone of the D&D movie to be similar to the tone and feel of Guardians.

As far as the franchise/shared universe side - those things are kind of built in for all the D&D worlds. It's never presented that the heroes we see are the only knights/wizards/etc in the entire world. The larger universe of heroes is a given and doesn't require a lot of setting up.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I totally agree that Guardians' tone seems like a perfect fit for the D&D movie. I might also point out that for all its humor, it also doesn't skimp on the emotional beats - the beginning of the movie is such a punch in the gut.

I'm actually not sure that Guardians of the Galaxy could've existed without the MCU, though. Without the goodwill and financial success of those prior movies, it might have been hard to attract the talent and get the budget that they had. Would people have gone to see it if it wasn't the latest Marvel offering? I don't know, maybe?

I think it was successful because it blended action, humour, music, and special effects in a very appealing way. As others have noted, the GotG movies don't have much to do with the Marvel Universe, and could easily have been standalone films.

That formula isn't necessarily easy to copy. But that's what a D&D movie should at least aspire to - a light action film with great effects and humour. And a kick-ass soundtrack.

 

[Deset Gled]

I totally agree that Guardians' tone seems like a perfect fit for the D&D movie. I might also point out that for all its humor, it also doesn't skimp on the emotional beats - the beginning of the movie is such a punch in the gut.

I'm actually not sure that Guardians of the Galaxy could've existed without the MCU, though. Without the goodwill and financial success of those prior movies, it might have been hard to attract the talent and get the budget that they had. Would people have gone to see it if it wasn't the latest Marvel offering? I don't know, maybe?

I'll go a step further and say that the tone, pacing, and everything else that people loved about GotG wouldn't have worked without the MCU.

GotG had a huge advantage of coming in to a world that was already built. No one questioned the tech level, the motivation of the big bad, or the need for the macguffin. The visual aesthetic, special effect style, and overall art was established. Even the tone of a bunch of heroes that make pithy buffy-esque comments at each other was set by the MCU. This is what freed up the screen time to allow GotG the freedom to focus on the pacing and tone that it had. Take away that backdrop, and the rest of the movie either doesn't work, or is incomprehensible to 90% of the audience.

The D+D movie won't have these benefits. Introducing the world and characters of D+D is a monumental task that GotG was allowed to mostly gloss over. D+D The Movie will have to explain how magic works, who Elminster is, or what the magic/tech level of the world is. And no matter how much or how little time they spend on it, we'll all nitpick it to death.

Movies like Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Ready Player One, or Pixels are things that you could reasonably model a D+D movie after. Saying a D+D movie should be like GotG is like saying you should make a new comedy like Duck Soup or a disaster movie like Airport. They were great when they were released, but simply not something you can recreate in a vacuum.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I'll go a step further and say that the tone, pacing, and everything else that people loved about GotG wouldn't have worked without the MCU.

GotG had a huge advantage of coming in to a world that was already built. No one questioned the tech level, the motivation of the big bad, or the need for the macguffin. The visual aesthetic, special effect style, and overall art was established. Even the tone of a bunch of heroes that make pithy buffy-esque comments at each other was set by the MCU. This is what freed up the screen time to allow GotG the freedom to focus on the pacing and tone that it had. Take away that backdrop, and the rest of the movie either doesn't work, or is incomprehensible to 90% of the audience.

Hmm, not sure I agree.

Tech level is established by Sci-Fi alien setting. After all, Captain America and Hulk didn't have tech levels like GoTC.

Big Bad's motivation was still explained (Thanos was a shadowy figure and his motivation was not explained)

And the Macguffin isn't explained until very late in the movie, and it didn't need to be. It could have easily been any other "destroy a planet energy crystal" and the plot would have worked.

And since the tone was established with other movies, we can easily copy it.

The D+D movie won't have these benefits. Introducing the world and characters of D+D is a monumental task that GotG was allowed to mostly gloss over. D+D The Movie will have to explain how magic works, who Elminster is, or what the magic/tech level of the world is. And no matter how much or how little time they spend on it, we'll all nitpick it to death

The second point is why the first doesn't matter.

"Who is Elminster" doesn't matter. He is a powerful magical mentor. That is enough for audiences who don't care, and anything you would try and explain is probably wrong, so the nitpick fans will never like it.

 

[bedir than]

There should be no explanation about how magic works. Those parts of Dr. Strange are horrendous.

Be more like LotR and just have magic happen.

 

[Traycor]

I'm actually not sure that Guardians of the Galaxy could've existed without the MCU, though. Without the goodwill and financial success of those prior movies, it might have been hard to attract the talent and get the budget that they had.

Back when they were fighting over the rights a few years ago, it was mentioned that Warners wanted a 200-250 million budget version. The intention is to go big, and they've got a big producer. I don't think attracting talent will be a problem as long as they have a good script.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

There should be no explanation about how magic works. Those parts of Dr. Strange are horrendous.

Be more like LotR and just have magic happen.

IMHO, it should be like Eragon (the book series, not the crappy movie) where you can learn magic easily just by saying certain words and learning the proper ways to say them. This would be more cinematic than having it just happen, or having the characters have to study for it.

Or, they could just have whoever the magic user is just be a sorcerer, where magic happens when and how it wants.

 

[Redwizard007]

Why a movie? A Netflix series would be a much better vehicle. D&D can certainly beat the crap out of the Witcher.

Something episodic with an overarching storyline... sounds like a standard campaign.