D&D Movie/TV I saw the D&D Movie and I loved it.

[MonsterEnvy]

my wife said it was great but wanted much more Regé-Jean Page.

Guessing he will get spin-off stuff.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

However, the beginning was a bit exposition-heavy (but I suppose it kind of had to be)

People are way more forgiving of this than I assume. Almost no one remembers that the opening of The Dark Crystal is a narrator just talking, talking, talking while we watch a gelf fish. It's insanely "tell, don't show," but people love it anyway. I think it all depends on how good the exposition is and how good everything after ends up being.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Really well integrated to the region around Phandelin...interesting.

If the Phandalin campaign book turns out to be a much-delayed movie tie-in, I am going to laugh.

 

[Demetrios1453]

People are way more forgiving of this than I assume. Almost no one remembers that the opening of The Dark Crystal is a narrator just talking, talking, talking while we watch a gelf fish. It's insanely "tell, don't show," but people love it anyway. I think it all depends on how good the exposition is and how good everything after ends up being.

It helps that the beginning exposition here is sprinkled with a few jokes to keep it moving. And it is actually part of the plot itself.

 

[RuinousPowers]

I saw it in a crowded theater too, and while it wasn't a great movie, it's certainly a very fun D&D romp. Some scenes were a bit long and didn't really deliver, but on the whole the audience laughed at all the right parts and it was a lot of fun. Certainly a lot more enjoyable than I originally expected it to be.

 

[Parmandur]

If the Phandalin campaign book turns out to be a much-delayed movie tie-in, I am going to laugh.

Well, if all the releases this year, it was mot clearly a placeholder name.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Definitely the best D&D movie, but that's not exactly high praise. I reiterate what someone said above, it reminds me if a Marvel movie. Not as bad as Thor Dark World, but not the best either. A mid-point Marvel movie. Which is a great thing for this movie in context. Seriously, for a D&D movie that's about as good as you can expect. I'm glad they went with the campy humorous romp, it was the right choice for this movie.

Things I liked:
The easter eggs did not seem forced or out of place (like the two baby rust monsters fighting over a lock)
Holga's ex husband (the cameo)
Justice Smith did a great job
I was never a huge fan of Chris Pine, but he did really good here. Did not phone it in like Jeremy Irons did.
Michelle Rodriguez delivered her deadpan one liners really well.
I am a huge fan of Kenneth Collard since Cuckoo, so it was a nice surprise to see him in a bit part. Wished they would have done more with him.

Things I didn't like so well
Daisy Head's acting seemed forced and off. Which was too bad considering she was the archvillain...
The special effects seemed off as well for the races. Too puppet-like

But all in all I enjoyed it and it was better than I was expecting.

 

[Charlaquin]

People are way more forgiving of this than I assume. Almost no one remembers that the opening of The Dark Crystal is a narrator just talking, talking, talking while we watch a gelf fish. It's insanely "tell, don't show," but people love it anyway. I think it all depends on how good the exposition is and how good everything after ends up being.

The Dark Crystal is also helped a lot by being something of a visual storytelling masterpiece. Like, you could cut all the dialogue apart from that opening exposition and probably be able to follow the story fine.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I saw it and enjoyed it as well. More enjoyable than Quantumania at least. As a D&D player and knowledgeable about the Forgotten Realms, it was fun to listen for and hear all the references, as well as the standard monsters / spells that we would recognize as players.

EDIT: My favorite bit of the film was Rege-Jean Page. His seriousness and straight-man Lawful Good paladin act was such a lovely contrast to the others who were quick to quip.

Script-wise I do think they tried to pack too much into it... and as a result there were quite a number of moments in the first act where the editing was rather abrupt-- as it seemed like they ended up having to cut down (or cut out) longer scenes because the flow and momentum was off. I noticed several places where we cut to long-shots with ADR happening where I'm guessing they were re-inserting connecting dialogue that had probably been cut out when they lost various scenes.

A couple other things that bugged me... there were several scenes with rather shoddy FX... green screen work that they didn't match very well. A lot of the film had really good FX, which is why the ones that weren't really stood out. The biggest offender in my opinion was their attempts at forced perspective in the several cases of trying to create halflings. They just didn't work at all. Unfortunately, because the LotR trilogy succeeded for the most part in using forced perspective alongside all the other tricks they did to shrink their main actors... other films try to do it as well, and it just doesn't tend to work. For my money... I just wish the directors would put out a casting call for little people and cast them in roles of halflings, gnomes, goblins, kobolds etc. With all the different sizes of people across the globe... there's no reason not to find the most effective actors at whatever sizes the roles might require. We've finally started coming around to the idea of casting for roles that have disabilities with people who actually have said disabilities and not abled actors pretending. So why they don't do the same here I don't know. But maybe that's just me.

(And my apologies if my terminology is off as I mention these things, not completely sure what the proper terms are at this point.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The Dark Crystal is also helped a lot by being something of a visual storytelling masterpiece. Like, you could cut all the dialogue apart from that opening exposition and probably be able to follow the story fine.

You could probably do a gelf-language version of the film and have it work, in fact.