D&D Movie/TV What would a good D&D movie be like?

[Ridley's Cohort]

Party Rapport.

Having a good zing and snap between the members of the party, lots of witticisms, tongue-in cheek humor, and a few "in" jokes for good measure.

That's something audiences readily get, and gamers readily recognize as a D&D party.

This.

I would remake the Seven Samurai to launch the franchise. A menagerie of heroes learn to work together to save a simple village in a larger setting. The survivors move onto to bigger things in later movies.

This approach allows the writer a lot of leeway to bring in the fantastic elements with an eye dropper, and bring it on faster later on. The larger world of magic can be referred to, without making the plot of this movie dependent on magical elements.

 

[delericho]

The problem is D&D the Game Experience makes for a rather bad movie. The best example is the Avengers. Imagine for a moment seeing the Avengers without seeing ANY of the Phase 1 Movies before it.

Counter example: X-Men.

While D&D needs a party dynamic, it needs a hero first. Someone to focus around. A Luke Skywalker or Aragorn. Then everyone else fills in the sidekick roles (the spunky heroine, the wing man, the mentor, the strong one, the roguish hero, etc) D&D has three strikes against it, now is not the time to experiment. It needs a solid first try, THEN it can deviate from the formula.

D&D has three strikes against it using the single hero approach.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

While D&D needs a party dynamic, it needs a hero first. Someone to focus around. A Luke Skywalker or Aragorn. Then everyone else fills in the sidekick roles (the spunky heroine, the wing man, the mentor, the strong one, the roguish hero, etc) D&D has three strikes against it, now is not the time to experiment. It needs a solid first try, THEN it can deviate from the formula.

That can work, but it goes against the D&D grain.

Do we really want another generic "coming of age" tale with a young underdog and a lot of gumption, set in a weirder than normal world? Did it work for you when I (Snails) died to keep Ridley in the spotlight.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Imagine for a moment seeing the Avengers without seeing ANY of the Phase 1 Movies before it.

As a side note, but for the first Iron Man movie, that's me.

 

[Ristamar]

I'm not sure "imagine [insert very well known superhero team movie]" is analogous, with or without origin stories. You're talking about iconic characters that have had decades to grow and stew in the market's consciousness through a lot of different mediums (comics, books, video games, television shows, cartoons, toys, etc). D&D's relative importance is a blip by comparison even when accounting for the more popular books and games.

 

[Lidgar]

I would make it a farce, in the spirit of the Holy Grail.

Have a mash-up of Elminster, Mordenkainen, and Rastlin taking off in Spelljammer ships and blowing up crystal spheres on their way to fight Lloth, Vecna and Tiamat. Go totally gonzo.

 

[Remathilis]

Counter example: X-Men.

Poor counter example; the X-Men movies primarily focused on Wolverine. He's the main character in X-Men, X2, X-Men United and Days of Future's Past, so much that all the other characters are either MacGuffins (Rogue, Shadowcat, Dark Phoenix) or side characters with little or no arc (Storm, Cyclops, Jean, Nightcrawler, etc). The only other characters with any real development are Xavier, Magneto and Mystique and that's primarily due to First Class.

D&D has three strikes against it using the single hero approach.

Then it should completely avoid using Drizz't and his merry band of sidekicks.

 

[Remathilis]

That can work, but it goes against the D&D grain.

Do we really want another generic "coming of age" tale with a young underdog and a lot of gumption, set in a weirder than normal world? Did it work for you when I (Snails) died to keep Ridley in the spotlight.

Marvel just now is moving away from Origin Stories for its "first movie" for a new character; they finally feel they don't need to follow the formula. However, they can do that because they have a strong line of hits. D&D will need to establish a line of hits before it can break the origin story pattern.

That said, you can have a strong team WITH a heroic lead; Guardians of the Galaxy is a great example. We follow Star Lord through as our "main hero" but all the guardians are important. He's even got that special "destiny" card (non-human father) thing going. As I think about it, I really can't think of a better example of a D&D movie than GotG; you really only need to shift the tech to magic and the setting to a single fantastical planet to make most of it work.

 

[delericho]

Poor counter example; the X-Men movies primarily focused on Wolverine.

I don't mean the X-Men movies, I mean the first X-Men movie. In which Wolverine was one of the main characters, sure, but Rogue, Xavier, and Magneto were also hugely important.

 

[delericho]

I would make it a farce, in the spirit of the Holy Grail.

Or "Your Highness"?