No, basing a movie on a mere game gets you Mortal Combat, Mario Brothers, Clue (a good movie actually) and Jumanji (2 good movies actually). The countless number of fantasy movies based on anything OTHER than D&D are 90% terrible, including the D&D movie! I agree that it needs humor, but it needs to be set in the world of D&D without glaring winks and nods to metaculture.
It gets you a lot more than that.
Funny thing, one of the best reviewed video game adaptations was the recent
Rampage movie, which has a >50% on Rotten Tomatoes. Almost every other adaptation has fared worse.
And when you add in board games... things don't get any better. Again, you have
Clue and...
Clue.
There's pretty much a zero percent chance of a good D&D movie by those standards.
So it can't just do the same thing as before and expect different results. You
need to do something different.
My favorite fantasy movies include the first LotR, original Conan the Barbarian and Dragonslayer, all of which ooze the feel of a D&D campaign. And all which also include almost no humor and treat themselves quite seriously.
Conan and
Lord of the Rings are book adaptations, which buys them a degree of seriousness and latitude. And "Conan" is by no means a guarantee of success, as the sequel and remake both bombed.
Dragonslayer was... well, an anomaly. Serious, but it also divided audiences. And, again, bombed. It actually lost money at the box office.
Almost every other high fantasy film has failed. And failed HARD.
D&D can't play the "literary adaptation" card to get away with being pretentiously dramatic and serious. Unless a film is low budget Oscar bait, it can't get away with being too serious.
And it can't bank on moviegoers flocking to see it based on it being a popular franchise with known name recognition. Because that doesn't work. Bigger names have done that and failed.
Nor can it bank on the many successes of past fantasy films. Again, as most have failed.
Hell, even the weakest link of all the Marvel movies has been the fantasy ones, with Thor's being the least popular.
To be a success the D&D movie has to look good, have decent trailers, and be entertaining enough that people tell their friends to see it and it builds decent buzz.
How do you do this? You do what
Thor: Ragnarok did. You make it look entertaining and fun.