D&D Movie/TV There's A New Trailer For D&D: Honor Among Thieves

A brand new trailer for the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons movie has just been released! The movie comes out March 31st. This trailer very much highlights the tongue-in-cheek nature of the movie and is filled with one-liners. The trailer also gives us a good luck at the Red Wizards of Thay, along with the mimic, the owlbear, and other iconic D&D monsters.

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[doctorbadwolf]

I'm curious which book series you're thinking about here - may be ones I've completely missed somehow
Main ones I'm thinking of for show adaptations at least, outside of Rings of Power, are Wheel of Time and Game of Thrones, and I have difficulty imagining Pathfinder is more well known than those two were ahead of the shows.

There have been a sea of YA series adapted over the years.

Most fantasy TV is adaptations. The Magicians, Norell and Strange (however that name is constructed), something something shadow and/or bone, at least one thing based on his dark materials, that one where people have pet “daemons” and Lin Manuel Miranda is in it? Or is that one a movie, idk there are too many to track!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

And counterspelling a 5th level spell with a 3rd level counterspell is a DC15 Spell Ability check, a 50/50 chance for a 5th level character with an 18 in their Spellcasting ability. Heck, a 5th level character could counterspell Meteor Storm 30% of the time. So what's the issue?

I'm going to have to ask you guys not to sit near me at the movie theater.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

There have been a sea of YA series adapted over the years.

Most fantasy TV is adaptations. The Magicians, Norell and Strange (however that name is constructed), something something shadow and/or bone, at least one thing based on his dark materials, that one where people have pet “daemons” and Lin Manuel Miranda is in it? Or is that one a movie, idk there are too many to track!

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is only YA in the sense that extremely precocious young people with an interest in magic and Georgian England might want to tackle a (wonderful but dense) 800+ page novel. It's very much for adults and discusses the disappointments of growing old, marital politics and more.

 

[Undrave]

Hey! I kinda liked The Phantom movie...

All three of those films had great soundtracks, though!

And I kinda liked The Shadow! But we were in the minority...

 

[Parmandur]

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is only YA in the sense that extremely precocious young people with an interest in magic and Georgian England might want to tackle a (wonderful but dense) 800+ page novel. It's very much for adults and discusses the disappointments of growing old, marital politics and more.

I have nothing against modern YA fiction, but Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell is one of the most delightfully against the grain of modern publishing trends books of the century thus far.

 

[Steampunkette]

It releases on the anniversary of my marriage...

Hubby and I will still be seeing it. Date night is a go.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is only YA in the sense that extremely precocious young people with an interest in magic and Georgian England might want to tackle a (wonderful but dense) 800+ page novel. It's very much for adults and discusses the disappointments of growing old, marital politics and more.

Yeah but I wasn’t going to go out of my way to single out the one example that wasn’t YA.

 

[Rabulias]

And I kinda liked The Shadow! But we were in the minority...

Alec Baldwin was perfect casting for the Shadow. Shame the script was not. :-/

 

[gban007]

There have been a sea of YA series adapted over the years.

Most fantasy TV is adaptations. The Magicians, Norell and Strange (however that name is constructed), something something shadow and/or bone, at least one thing based on his dark materials, that one where people have pet “daemons” and Lin Manuel Miranda is in it? Or is that one a movie, idk there are too many to track!

Ah, fair enough - these have flown under my radar Except for His Dark Materials, but really didn't enjoy the book, so certainly wasn't interested in watching an adaptation. Nonetheless I thought His Dark Materials may be more well known than Pathfinder, with 17.5 million copies sold apparently. The others though I could imagine aren't, or at least maybe known of, but not widely purchased / read.

 

[MwaO]

Yeah, I don't think so. I haven't seen anything in the trailers that needs to be explained. Sure, there are lots of things that we as D&D players know more about. But none of the flash or weirdness needs to be explained to non-players. Just look at Stranger Things, now that had a lot of weirdness and none of that was explicitly explained and yet viewers loved it. Did they explain why they were rolling dice when playing D&D? No. Did they explain the BBEG or the otherside? No, not really and certainly not early on.
IMO, there is nothing about magic spells or weird monsters that need explaining. Who cares if it's earthen grasp or bigby's hand or firebolt? It's cool magic that makes something happen. It is visually dynamic and flashy.

The point is that regardless of whether or not you think anything needs to be explained, they are explicitly explaining the movie in the trailers. Stranger Things not explicitly explaining things is a sign of strength, of confidence that people will get the story that's being told. D&D Movie doing the opposite is a sign of weakness.

And you can have a very great movie have the studio execs decide they need to explain things in weird ways, because they are not confident in their product. As an example, Blade Runner had a dumb voice-over originally. But usually, that's not a good sign for the movie.