Huh?
reapersaurus said:
My opinion:
You are blatently incorrect, and exaggerating to the point of misrepresentation.
I don't mind if people didn't like the movie, but to say "Nothing at all worked" is to ignore a lot.
You were transported to a world with commoners and rogues and mages and rangers and dwarves, etc.
THAT worked. I never heard people saying "That world is just so unbelievable, it shatters my suspension of disbelief"
A crowded bar where bunches of people hang out and have a fight. THAT worked. (The people who say "There wouldn't be orcs there" are too narrow-minded to bother with)
An evil mage creating a magic item to control dragons. THAT worked.
Dragons fighting each other in a desperate tooth-and-claw battle-to-the-death over a fantastical city for control of the empire.
THAT worked.
(ran out of time - gotta go - see my first post)
All this was of course the way I saw it, but I have looked back and seen it a couple times and can fairly objectively state these examples "worked" (i.e. for a normal, un-jaded observer who is not unduly comparing the movie to what THEIR idea of a D&D movie "should be").
You're putting words in my mouth. I wasn't talking about the film not working in a fantasy sense. I understand a film creates its own mythology. Adapting a game is much different from say adapting a book, comic, or tv show, where characters and worlds are firmly established.
I've read reviews in which people criticized a movie because they didn't portray a vampire or werewolf "correctly". The movie is creating its own mythology. Those are the rules of the world, so they can't be wrong.
The strangest example I've seen of this was an interview with a writer who wrote a "sequel" to Dracula. She said that Dracula wasn't killed at the end of the original novel because he was stabbed with a knife and everyone knows you need a wooden stake to kill one.
Nothing like telling the person who established the the groundwork for the modern vampire tale that he's wrong.
But, the question at hand was "What was wrong with the DnD movie?". All my comments were about the movie as a movie, not an adaption of a game.
The script was awful. Characters did things simply because it was in the script, the humor fell flat, and the dialogue was terrible.
The performances were nearly all bad (reflecting both the acting and direction) and there were numerous continuity errors (find its imdb.com entry and check under the "Goofs" sections).
I could go on, but I would just be repeating what I've written in my earlier post.
If you were to go back and change all the bad things in the films, there'd be virtually nothing left of the original. When it gets to that point, IMHO, you have a film which, much like Batman & Robin, just shouldn't have been made.