Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="talien" data-source="post: 7700908" data-attributes="member: 3285">The long and winding history of the Dungeons & Dragons film rights <a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/long-sordid-of-d-3080857" target="_blank">has been covered extensively</a>, particularly as companies attempt to capitalize on our nostalgia by turning any brand of your youth into a franchise. And yet despite the numerous failings of the D&D movies that have gone before, we may already have gotten a D&D movie in the form of a 1983 film: Krull.[ATTACH=full]391604[/ATTACH]<h3>Krull? Yes, Krull!</h3>Wikipedia <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krull_(film)" target="_blank">sums up the plot of Krull</a>:Our hero, Prince Colwyn, is nursed back to health by a wise old man named Ynyr. Ynyr explains that the only way to defeat the Beast is with a five-pointed throwing blade known as the Glaive. Upon retrieving it, Colwyn much then catch the Beast's lair, which teleports to a new location every sunrise. Finding it requires scrying the location, which the Beast does not allow easily -- and then once the heroes find it, they must travel there quickly via magical means.By most measures Krull isn't very good. It holds a <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/krull/" target="_blank">33% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 18 reviews</a>, and it made over $16.5 million in the U.S., failing to recoup its $50 million budget. However, it has gained a cult in the intervening years since it debuted (51% of Rotten Tomatoes' audience liked it). Judging by the conversions of Krull to D&D, some of those fans are definitely tabletop gamers. But that connection alone doesn't explain Krull -- for that, we need to look to two popular franchises at the time in book and movie format.<h3>Fantasy and Sci-Fi Influences</h3>Given that Krull is nominally a fantasy adventure, the influence of Lord of the Rings is impossible to ignore. Jon Peterson in<a href="http://amzn.to/2ao7V7b" target="_blank">Playing at the World</a> explains just how influential Lord of the Rings was on American media:It's no wonder that Krull hews closely to the Tolkien formula: Like the Fellowship, a variety of nobles and a ragtag band of other folk gather together to save their world. The Beast/Sauron parallels of a nebulous evil holed up in a dark tower are easy to spot, but the more prominent comparison is the Widow of the Web and the battle with Shelob. <a href="http://www.nunesmagician.com/2008/03/ten-greatest-things-about-movie-krull.html" target="_blank">Sean Keeley explains at SBNation</a>:There was also another movie that would heavily influence Krull: Star Wars. Peterson explains how Star Wars influenced role-playing games:Nick Schager at the A.V. Club outlines <a href="http://www.avclub.com/article/krull-equal-parts-george-lucas-and-jrr-tolkien-227494" target="_blank">just how much the two movies have in common</a>:Krull tried to have it both ways, a fantasy film with a sci-fi villain. And yet that's not a far cry from many of the early D&D campaigns like Blackmoor, which were often a mashup of sci-fi and fantasy tropes.<h3>You've Got D&D in my Krull!</h3>Because Krull drew on the influence of Lord of the Rings, it had similar parallels to D&D, including the diverse adventuring party of nobles, wizards, thieves, and even a non-standard race (a cyclops), <a href="http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/17668/looking-back-at-krull" target="_blank">as Den of Geek explains</a>:Arriving at the Beast's lair even requires the heroes to navigate traps:Also like early D&D, there is a surprisingly high mortality rate among the adventurers:It is perhaps not surprising that the influence of tabletop role-playing games went both ways.<h3>You've Got Krull in my D&D!</h3>The most obvious influence of Krull on D&D is the Glaive. Of course, the glaive in D&D was nothing like the wicked five-pointed throwing star of the movie, but rather -- to the disappoint of the film's fans -- a kind of polearm. Fans rectified that situation by creating their own statistics for the killer artifact.I converted the entire Krull movie (and the Glaive) to the 3.5 Edition myself several years ago. You can pick it up <a href="http://members.toast.net/talien/michael/pdfs/krull.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>. For Fourth Edition stats of the Glaive, <a href="http://geekrampage.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-glaive-of-krulss-heroic-tier.html" target="_blank">see Geek Rampage</a>. For Fifth Edition stats , see this <a href="http://geekandsundry.com/bring-some-movie-magic-to-your-dd-campaign-with-these-5-legendary-weapons/" target="_blank">Geek and Sundry post</a>:<h3>So Why D&D?</h3>Just Press Play <a href="http://www.justpressplay.net/articles/6433-remembering-gary-gygaxour-way.html" target="_blank">elaborates on Krull's influence</a>:But was Krull really meant to be a D&D movie? According to the Internet Movie Database (IMDB), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085811/releaseinfo?ref_=tt_dt_dt#akas" target="_blank">Krull was originally titledDungeons & Dragons</a>. It's telling that the names listed on IMDB also include The Dungeons of Krull (apt, since our heroes journey into the Beast's dungeon) and Dragons of Krull (which makes no sense, as there are no dragons in the movie at all). If there's a rumor that was spread about Krull being titled Dungeons & Dragons, it likely started at IMDB.By all accounts, it never happened. Co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons <a href="http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=506454&sid=2d1b9ed5266c5aa9b2863c456cf6a6b9#p506454" target="_blank">Gary Gygax himself said</a>:Devin Faraci sums up <a href="http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2011/04/05/the-original-dungeons-dragons-movie-wasnt-dungeons-dragons" target="_blank">what fans may have been seeing for all these years</a>:</blockquote>

Verification