Escape to the Movies: Dungeons & Dragons

[JaredXE]

Sadly, almost everytime there is an attempt at doing a officially licenced D&D movie, they give it to the wrong damned people and it turns atrocious. I seriously think they need to pick a campaign setting, grab a storyline, and hire a good director and effects house.


For instance (in my fervent dreams), if they decide to make the early Drizz't books into a trilogy of films, directed by Peter Jackson (or along the same vein, with the imagination and willpower to do a big-budget fantasy trilogy) and using the technology that allowed Cameron's Avatar to have regular actors in little make-up still look like anthropomorphic cat people.

Or howabout a (non-animated piece of shit) Dragonlance Chronicles trilogy? Hire a decent cast of knowns and unknowns to play the roles, DON'T TINKER WITH THE SCRIPT, and again hire out to Cameron's effects house to use their CG tech.

Just don't put a fucking Waynes Brother in my D&D movie. Seriously, why the fuck did they do that?

 

[flaming_squirrel]

Wait, vin diesel likes D&D?

I'm not sure what to say, my mind has imploded.

 

[Anacortian]

The only true D&D movies are "The Gamers" and "The Gamers II: Dorkness Rising". Every fan knows that.

Agreed. I patiently wait for a KoDT movie. If Jolly is reading this, get to work!

 

[SomeBritishDude]

Bender's Game; the best Futurama movie? Are you high?

Bender's Game was awful. I aside from a couple of decent jokes near the beginning it's an apsolute shambles. The premise was pretty interesting (i.e. What if Futurama was a parody of classic fantasy rather than classic sci-fi?) but in the end the whole thing ended up being lame Lord of the Rings parody.

If you want to buy decent Futurama movie The Beast with a Billion Backs and The Wild Green Yonder are the best bets (but honestly they don't really compare to the episodes, Futurama is just not designed for the movie format) but seriously, not Bender's Game.

 

[dalek sec]

Aww was hoping for your take on The Town

Yeah, count me in as well as for wanting to hear your view on that movie as well, or atleast the very least, a brutal mocking of "Devil".

 

[nilus2k]

Surprised no one mentioned the terrible animated direct to DVD Dragonlance movie from a few years back.

I never understood the whole D&D is hard because of math thing. Its just adding and subtracting, no one is asking you to do Calculus.

 

[ironlordthemad]

I actually have Wrath of the Dragon God on DVD its cheesy but its not that bad...
Never saw the first one after I was warned off of it by almost everyone I know.
The DnD references in the IT Crowd were actualy really embarassing because it made the game seem stupid, I watched the entire series with my family but didn't want too watch that episode because I DM a group and didn't want people throwing references at me to take the piss out of me.

 

[Dectilon]

What makes you think the Warcraft movie will be a "proper" movie?

 

[Nigh Invulnerable]

Three FANTASTIC D&D movies came out back from 2001-2003. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. The novels inspired about 90% of the flavor in D&D sourcebooks, and therefore could be considered D&D movies. You have the basic classes and everything at various points, though it's a bit low on magic.

 

[Christemo]

the version of the dungeons & dragons movie from 2000 was actually pretty good. guess they "fixed" it.

 

[OManoghue]

All things considered, WoW is pretty much a straight port of DnD

 

[The Root Beer Guy]

I actually enjoyed Wrath of the Dragon God. Then again, I don't play DnD.

 

[WanderingFool]

I watched that Syfy D&D movie, I thought it was okay... course it was a Syfy movie, and had all the elements of such, cheap and campy...

 

[ace_of_something]

I actually paid to see the D&D movie when it came out.
It was terrible. Though we enjoyed making fun of it the whole way through. The Scifi sequel (it was still scifi channel back then) is slightly more tolerable.

 

[bobthemarine]

Um I think you forgot about Eragon. I know one of the clerics domains is travel, and Eragon's character is based off the dragon rider class listed here.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/lists/prc

And the author is an confessed to writing the books based off of his own dnd games.

 

[Falseprophet]

The second D&D movie, Wrath of the Dragon God, was actually pretty decent for a SyFy original. It has an even lower budget than the first and the special effects definitely reflect that, and the plot's pretty unmemorable. But the actors actually play their roles with sincerity and empathy, which goes a long way. And Bruce Payne with his purple lipstick and scenery-chewing are thankfully relegated to the bookends of the film. Not a great film by any means, but worth a look.

Apart from the awesome youtube The Gamers series(not to be confused with a feature film by the same name that was crap), there is a really good adaptation of Dungeons and Dragons, in the form of anime. It's called Slayers. Now, it may not call itself an adaptation of dungeons and dragons, but it's about as D&D inspired you can get without it taking place in Forgotten realms.

I remember reading an article on sword & sorcery anime years ago, with the best line being:

"While Record of Lodoss War is what every DM wishes his D&D campaign could be, Slayers is probably closer to how your campaign actually is."

On that note, Lodoss War, especially the original OAV, is close to being a D&D adaptation, since it was based on the authors' own original campaign setting.

 

[II2]

Great overview episode. It's painful, but hilarious, to see Jeremy Irons overacting in the first D&D movie especially knowing him from works like Dead Ringers.

[sub]I actually watched that fucking thing more than once[/sub]

 

[Redem]

Heh bender game was problematic if you ask me, it seemed they wanted to make a movie about energy at first that centered around the professor and mum, but for some reason or another they decided to plug in the DND stuff at the end

Perhaps Bob should review the futurama movies in a future installement

 

[PunkRex]

I loved the Futurama films and the Riddick films.

The reason for the lack of "Dungeons & Dragons" films I think is proberly laziness (as Bob said). Have you seen the D&D section at Forbidden Planet? Theres so much of it, ITS F'ING HUUUUUUUUUGE.

Syfy films rock heheheheh.

Also, how good does the "Monsterpocalypse" film look?!

 

[Jaranja]

Wait, vin diesel likes D&D?

I'm not sure what to say, my mind has imploded.

He was also a WoW player.