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 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:
I compared both D&D movies to Conan the Barbarian. Needless to say I didn´t like them at all.

Wouldn’t the natural comparison be Krull or Willow? Conan the Barbarian was a different subgenre with Beastmaster and Deathstalker. Seems like the closest modern equivalent would be Game of Thrones, fantasy for adults with a hard edge that gets progressively worse until you hit the Red Sonja stage and give up.

Dungeons & Dragons (2000) Awards:

The Stinkers Bad Movie Awards:
Worst Supporting Actress: Thora Birch
Worst Supporting Actor: Jeremy Irons
Worst Sense of Direction: Courtney Solomon
Worst On-Screen Group: The Entire Cast
Most Intrusive Musical Score: Justin Caine Burnett
Least Special Special Effects
Most Unfunny Comic Relief: Marlon Wayans (Snails)
Worst Picture
Source: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0190374/awards/

Damn, seems I have good feelers when discovering truly trash flicks!
When the dust settles the new D&D won´t be as bad as the predecessor (no Snails to ruin the fun!) but still will be a movie that RPG players will be ashamed off.


Now take a look what Conan the Barbarian (1982) achieved:
Source: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0082198/awards/?ref_=tt_awd

What always stood out for me was the epic music thanks to Basil Poledouris. As Conan doesn´t talk much the music tells the story. Also nominated as best Fantasy Film, best costumes and best make-up. Compared to that the D&D stuff is a total dumpster fire with feckless actors who won´t leave a lasting expression (with the exception of Snails of course ).


Both D&D and Conan the Barbarian are Fantasy movies so they will be compared with one another. Wanna see a cool movie? Watch Conan. Wanna be a reclusive nerd who revels in bad acting? Watch D&D.

Basil Poledouris score for Conan is iconic.

 Strg Alt wrote:
but still will be a movie that RPG players will be ashamed off.

If you don't like that is fine but don't for a moment believe you speak for all, or even many, RPG players.

 Lance845 wrote:
My biggest issue with both Grey Hawk and Forgotten Realms is the detail. Not necessarily that a city or nation is detailed, but that it;s all so densely populated that there are no "edge of the map" where the monsters can exist.

Where can a bullet exist that Never Winters military wouldn't just hunt it down? Where can a population of giants take up residence? How are there any dragons within threat range of any or all these major population centers? There is nowhere to explore left and nowhere for the monsters to hide.

Dark Sun is almost exclusively edges of the map. Vast tracts of dangerous wildness populated by horrors.

But Greyhawk? The 3rd ed Gazateer put an end to any idea of any real danger existing in the vast majority of the map. And Greyhawk isn't half as detailed as Forgetten Realms is.

If you look at the population density of nations in Greyhawk, you'll discover that it's VERY low for a medieval nation. That means the population is probably heavily concentrated around the cities and along roads between them. But once you get away from the roads, most of that open area is going to be nearly empty of people, where monsters can easily hide.

 Ahtman wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:
but still will be a movie that RPG players will be ashamed off.

If you don't like that is fine but don't for a moment believe you speak for all, or even many, RPG players.

Yes, I speak for many RPG players. The group who advocates the "message" is tiny and loud on social media with the intention to cancel anybody who does not adhere to their weird world view.

D&D fans also will have to answer for WOTC´s latest atrocities even if this is not at first directly related to the movie. People will say: "D&D?! Those are the woke nuts. Leave me alone with that trash."

How are you going to advertise this movie with a straight face to a potential new customer when the suits are deciding to do stupid stuff like recently labeling half-races as being racists? Or when they find out that WOTC has a team of "sensitivity readers" ( ) who mark everything being remotely fun as offensive just because they are themselves little, gakky snowflakes? This Fantasy movie has D&D at it´s core so you can´t simply stick your head into the sand and insist that the movie itself has nothing to do with it´s company woke policies.

By the way do they have half-races in the latest D&D movie? Idk but I would guess they don´t. Not very INCLUSIVE, if you ask me.

I have watched a couple of scenes and this was enough to label the movie as bad. The writers were obviously forced to cram in as many IP protected CGI D&D monsters as possible which was a thoroughly bad experience to endure as a viewer. Less is more. And what about the cast? I read that the front line fighters were women (strong & independent vibes ) and that they took efforts to make the men look to be dumb and ineffective. Geez, this is She-Hulk series level of awful right there.

There is more to say but why should I write wall of texts when Youtubers research WOTC failures more extensively? Here you go with the D&D dumpster fire:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MYN04MXSIs

 Strg Alt wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:
but still will be a movie that RPG players will be ashamed off.

If you don't like that is fine but don't for a moment believe you speak for all, or even many, RPG players.

Yes, I speak for many RPG players.

Here we go.

The group who advocates the "message" is tiny and loud on social media with the intention to cancel anybody who does not adhere to their weird world view.

D&D fans also will have to answer for WOTC´s latest atrocities even if this is not at first directly related to the movie. People will say: "D&D?! Those are the woke nuts. Leave me alone with that trash."

Yes. The "right wing loonies" are a vast quiet majority who are constantly being oppressed.

How are you going to advertise this movie with a straight face to a potential new customer when the suits are deciding to do stupid stuff like recently labeling half-races as being racists? Or when they find out that WOTC has a team of "sensitivity readers" ( ) who mark everything being remotely fun as offensive just because they are themselves little, gakky snowflakes? This Fantasy movie has D&D at it´s core so you can´t simply stick your head into the sand and insist that the movie itself has nothing to do with it´s company woke policies.

By the way do they have half-races in the latest D&D movie? Idk but I would guess they don´t. Not very INCLUSIVE, if you ask me.

Word vomit from this forums premiere producer of it.

I have watched a couple of scenes and this was enough to label the movie as bad.

Ah. See this bit makes sense. We have here your typical person who hates "woke". Completely ignorant and running on assumptions as though they were facts. Nothing here but "fake news".

The writers were obviously forced to cram in as many IP protected CGI D&D monsters as possible which was a thoroughly bad experience to endure as a viewer. Less is more. And what about the cast? I read that the front line fighters were women (strong & independent vibes ) and that they took efforts to make the men look to be dumb and ineffective. Geez, this is She-Hulk series level of awful right there.

There is more to say but why should I write wall of texts when Youtubers research WOTC failures more extensively? Here you go with the D&D dumpster fire:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MYN04MXSIs

Thanks for your "contribution".

In before the thread lock!



This D&D movie is the best D&D themed movie yet. It is relatively by-the-numbers and harmless. It is a typical tentpole movie since 2010 and the release of Iron Man 1. It is professionally done and workmanlike.

Are there things you can nitpick? Sure. This is the internet, the home of nitpicking. Hugh Grant, I am looking at you, but at least you were having fun. Otherwise, a solid product which is more than a lot of other movies can say.

Anyone who claims otherwise is trying to sell you something.... probably some strange Thulsa Doom-esque cult.

There are two different kinds of half-races in the movie, possibly a third, too. The wizard is half elf and half human. Chris Pine’s daughter is half Caucasian and half black (which I’m sure matters to some potential viewers of the film, as it could be considered “wokeness”).

Then there is the Tiefling(?) girl who says she was born to human parents. I’m not familiar with the setting enough to know if that’s normal or implied to be the result of , uh, cucking?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
There are two different kinds of half-races in the movie, possibly a third, too. The wizard is half elf and half human. Chris Pine’s daughter is half Caucasian and half black (which I’m sure matters to some potential viewers of the film, as it could be considered “wokeness”).

Then there is the Tiefling(?) girl who says she was born to human parents. I’m not familiar with the setting enough to know if that’s normal or implied to be the result of , uh, cucking?

A tiefling has fiendish blood at some point in their ancestry - it doesn't have to be that recent.

Planning on seeing the movies this Sunday or Monday. Looking forward to it!

Saw it in a theatre with 100 people from the FLGS - a mix of D&D players, MtG and 40K/AoS gamers. I played back in the early-80s and then a bit in 5th and while I have read Forgotten Realms books I would not be considered a hard-core D&D player.

I really enjoyed the movie, and that seemed to be the general consensus. I didn't see any "wokeness." I thought it was a fun, light-hearted movie that treated the subject material with respect while still having fun with it. There was no overt suggestion that we were watching a D&D session, but my impression was that the actions of the characters and the environment felt like a session. Happy to be called out on that! Plenty of easter-eggs, some on the nose and others well-concealed and I look forward to watching it again. My daughter went with her friends on another night (they have a weekly D&D session) and they also really liked the movie.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:


Then there is the Tiefling(?) girl who says she was born to human parents. I’m not familiar with the setting enough to know if that’s normal or implied to be the result of , uh, cucking?

Expanding on earlier comment;

Tieflings can result from a lot of things, but they're more a result of fiendish/demonic/devil (I can never keep entirely straight DnD's categories for this) influence than genetics.

Did great grandma cut a deal with some demon to make her paramour fall madly in love with her? You might be a Tiefling.

Were you born on cursed ground guarded by an order of paladins because there's a devil sealed under that church there? You might be a Tiefling.

Were your parents Tieflings? You might be a Tiefling.

So Tieflings can come from a whole lot of places/reasons per DnD. The lore on it is pretty open-ended (in 5e anyway).

 Strg Alt wrote:

Yes, I speak for many RPG players. The group who advocates the "message" is tiny and loud on social media with the intention to cancel anybody who does not adhere to their weird world view.

D&D fans also will have to answer for WOTC´s latest atrocities even if this is not at first directly related to the movie. People will say: "D&D?! Those are the woke nuts. Leave me alone with that trash."

Good, we don't want you. The sooner these attitudes and the people that hold them off out of the hobby, the better. If you're so offended by the idea that the action lead in the movie is a woman or that WOTC, after several major foul-ups that caused upset to real, actual human beings (not just annonymous folks on the internet) with their depictions of racist cariacatures, have employed sensitivity readers to ensure that harm isn't caused again, then I'm not sure it's us that are the snowflakes here...

I could correct you on your other uninformed comments about the movie (there is, in fact, a male character who is deliberately OP to the point of laughability) or the rules (the new edition will likely carry forward the current rules for custom lineages, meaning your Half-Elf or Orc can simply pick from the traits of two races as you like) but mainly, I just want to make it clear that if you can claim to speak for 'many' RPG players then so can I, and trust me, there's more of us.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Saw the movie again today, every bit as good as the first time and a lot of the humor works even better when you know where it's going (the Jarnathan bit, for example). It was a much busier screening as well, which gives me hope that despite the likelihood that Mario will knock it off the No.1 spot this weekend, it should have a pretty strong second week.

And if not, it was still the biggest movie in the world for its opening week, which given the brand's cinematic track record, is certainly something to celebrate!

Times have changed, and are changing yet again. It is what it is. D&D will evolve as brand names do for better or for worse. The good thing is one of the core premises of D&D is making it your own, bending the rules, or forgoing them altogether because after all it's your world, not Ed Greenwood's.

For the classicist, this movie may not be it. I'll give it a shot in due time. I'll keep an open mind and try to be entertained, though I'll surely have an opinion either way.

But in time The Forgotten Realms will live up to its name, and as all things before, it too will come to pass.

 Strg Alt wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:
but still will be a movie that RPG players will be ashamed off.

If you don't like that is fine but don't for a moment believe you speak for all, or even many, RPG players.

Yes, I speak for many RPG players.

Are they aware that you've taken such a liberty on their behalf?

 Strg Alt wrote:
The group who advocates the "message" is tiny and loud on social media with the intention to cancel anybody who does not adhere to their weird world view.

Eh, them. They can yap all they like, just like the old biddies at church did back in the '80s when they found out some of us kids played "THAT game".
The church ladies didn't manage to stop me from enjoying D&D back then & the woke/anti-woke nuts won't succeed today.

 Strg Alt wrote:
D&D fans also will have to answer for WOTC´s latest atrocities even if this is not at first directly related to the movie. People will say: "D&D?! Those are the woke nuts. Leave me alone with that trash."

Ok, I'l leave them alone & not give them a second thought. If they're upset about what Hasbro/WoTC is doing? Then they should bitch at them about it, not me.

 Strg Alt wrote:
How are you going to advertise this movie with a straight face to a potential new customer when the suits are deciding to do stupid stuff like recently labeling half-races as being racists? Or when they find out that WOTC has a team of "sensitivity readers" ( ) who mark everything being remotely fun as offensive just because they are themselves little, gakky snowflakes? This Fantasy movie has D&D at it´s core so you can´t simply stick your head into the sand and insist that the movie itself has nothing to do with it´s company woke policies.

I'm not. WoTC isn't paying me to advertise their movie, so....
My opinion is that it's a generally mediocre movie but it is entertaining enough overall. If someone asks I'll tell them that.
Now if I were being paid? I'd lie to your face without a qualm, sell you on the idea that this is one of the best films since_______, & sleep like a baby.

 Strg Alt wrote:
By the way do they have half-races in the latest D&D movie? Idk but I would guess they don´t. Not very INCLUSIVE, if you ask me.
I have watched a couple of scenes and this was enough to label the movie as bad. The writers were obviously forced to cram in as many IP protected CGI D&D monsters as possible which was a thoroughly bad experience to endure as a viewer. Less is more. And what about the cast? I read that the front line fighters were women (strong & independent vibes ) and that they took efforts to make the men look to be dumb and ineffective. Geez, this is She-Hulk series level of awful right there.

Maybe you should try watching something before you opine on it.

I saw it at the cinema this week, really enjoyed it.

It didn't feel overly long, which I was concerned about after seeing its runtime, and it was a lot of fun.

In fact, my only complaint, was that it was so dark in places but I think that may be down to the copy or the cinema as in trailers those parts were quite clear.

But it was over 2 hours of fun which is all I wanted tbh.

Saw the movie tonight. Not too familiar with d&d lore (played once a few years ago), but I thought that this movie was the most fun I had at the cinema in years. It was really funny, and my fave hurt from laughing so much. A really entertaining and tight movie imo. My wife, who knows nothing of d&d came out loving it too.

I saw it yesterday morning. It was a blast! Just a delightful, fun little movie. The ensemble really works well together, and Chris Pines has some impressive comic timing. Everyone got a chance to shine, no one got bogged down in too much backstory, and it all got tied up at the end. It reminded me very much of Stardust, but without the central focus on a romance.

Saw it yesterday afternoon. A great deal of fun. Hope they do another. I might even go and see it again.

 Lance845 wrote:

3) Of course I can just make up my own gak and do something else. Thats a silly ass argument. I am not critiquing what I can do (which is literally, infinitely, anything). I am critiquing what it actually is (which is fething silly).

But very few people who want to be writers know much about anything really. 40k background kinda stands out as it was done by a bunch of history graduates being silly.

But look at BL stuff, even for war porn it is terrible showing almost zero grasp of even WW2 scale and logistics. Most fantasy realms get even worse, you have your vaguely Germanic medieval setting with no understanding of the land or population dynamics before you start adding magic to it and how that would distort so much.

I am trying hard to think of what setting did it well, but can only really think of advanced heroquest where the monsters were on the fringes and you would have to be crazy to risk going into some dank abandoned dungeon, plus the pay and rewards are rubbish.

 Strg Alt wrote:

I have watched a couple of scenes and this was enough to label the movie as bad. The writers were obviously forced to cram in as many IP protected CGI D&D monsters as possible which was a thoroughly bad experience to endure as a viewer. Less is more. And what about the cast? I read that the front line fighters were women (strong & independent vibes ) and that they took efforts to make the men look to be dumb and ineffective. Geez, this is She-Hulk series level of awful right there.

In most RPG systems (including D&D), genders have identical stats, so having a female frontrow tank is hardly weird or unexpected. Actually in a long-running campaign I run, two out of three physically strongest player characters are female...

At any rate, (spoiler) most powerful fighter in 'Honor Among Thieves' is a dude.

There wasn't actually that many D&D-monsters in the movie, the trailers just managed to show them all.

 Strg Alt wrote:
By the way do they have half-races in the latest D&D movie? Idk but I would guess they don´t. Not very INCLUSIVE, if you ask me.

WOTC's idiocy in deciding that race-mixing is racist (like... what???) has nothing to do with this movie.

 Strg Alt wrote:
I have watched a couple of scenes and this was enough to label the movie as bad. The writers were obviously forced to cram in as many IP protected CGI D&D monsters as possible which was a thoroughly bad experience to endure as a viewer. Less is more. And what about the cast? I read that the front line fighters were women (strong & independent vibes ) and that they took efforts to make the men look to be dumb and ineffective. Geez, this is She-Hulk series level of awful right there.

As someone who went into this movie acutely aware of this as a potential issue (even the people making the film said that they went out of their way to emasculate the male characters) I can tell you that it is 100% not the case.

Everybody on the team contributes, significantly, and the final fight couldn't be more RPG if they tried, with all the player characters dogpiling the main bad guy.

The barbarian, who is a woman, acts like a barbarian should. The only unrealistic thing about it is that Michelle Rodriguez isn't particularly large, so she comes across as a rather slight barbarian. Beyond that, everything fits with the source material. The male characters, despite what the writers may have stated in interviews, were not idiots. The sorcerer (who is a half-elf, BTW) certainly has a lot of self doubt, but that's part of his character arc.

Your criticisms are not founded in any reality, and your pre-judgement of the movie based on the few scenes you've seen is premature and completely off-base.

Is that a real quote? None of the male characters appear to have been emasculated…well, maybe the half-elf wizard at the beginning of his arc. But Chris Pine is a charmer and leader type. And the paladin is a walking Old Spice commercial.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Is that a real quote? None of the male characters appear to have been emasculated…well, maybe the half-elf wizard at the beginning of his arc.

Hint to Simon's player: if you're making a Sorcerer, don't use CHA as your dump stat

Anyways, I quite liked the movie, even though it didn't feel particularly original, with really strong MCU vibes. First third felt bit weak but the movie started rolling nicely once they got to the Neverwinter. There was lot of RPG'esque touches and it felt like the writers and director had really played the game, and not just used the name as an excuse to make some generic fantasy. They might not make sense for a casual viewer, though. For example, names of the main characters were very believable D&D player character names, but if someone was judging them as fantasy names, they'd seem terrible.

My biggest complaint visually were the Halflings (I suppose they were Halflings, not Gnomes). They simply looked like downscaled humans and illusion was much worse than in LotR. Really makes you appreciate the trouble Peter Jackson went through to make Hobbits look like they were distinct critters and not just tiny humans.

Backfire wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Is that a real quote? None of the male characters appear to have been emasculated…well, maybe the half-elf wizard at the beginning of his arc.

Hint to Simon's player: if you're making a Sorcerer, don't use CHA as your dump stat

Anyways, I quite liked the movie, even though it didn't feel particularly original, with really strong MCU vibes. First third felt bit weak but the movie started rolling nicely once they got to the Neverwinter. There was lot of RPG'esque touches and it felt like the writers and director had really played the game, and not just used the name as an excuse to make some generic fantasy. They might not make sense for a casual viewer, though. For example, names of the main characters were very believable D&D player character names, but if someone was judging them as fantasy names, they'd seem terrible.

My biggest complaint visually were the Halflings (I suppose they were Halflings, not Gnomes). They simply looked like downscaled humans and illusion was much worse than in LotR. Really makes you appreciate the trouble Peter Jackson went through to make Hobbits look like they were distinct critters and not just tiny humans.

Using the wand (of dimension door??) on a portable object to break into a moving item sounds like the sort of situation where the player's ask the GM "can we do this?" and the GM goes "er.. I suppose?"

Halflings - I suppose they were forced to go with plain small humans rather than copy(ish) the interpretation of Tolkien/Wingnut Films/Amazon - just to keep a veneer of distance between them and the original source material.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

The barbarian, who is a woman, acts like a barbarian should. The only unrealistic thing about it is that Michelle Rodriguez isn't particularly large, so she comes across as a rather slight barbarian. Beyond that, everything fits with the source material.

She was a Barbarian? Didn't see her rage once, I thought she was a fighter or brawler...any way, I felt she was fine for the role other than her height perhaps. But then again, my last Barbarian was 5'4" androgynous Elf, so maybe I shouldn't criticize...

Backfire wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

The barbarian, who is a woman, acts like a barbarian should. The only unrealistic thing about it is that Michelle Rodriguez isn't particularly large, so she comes across as a rather slight barbarian. Beyond that, everything fits with the source material.

She was a Barbarian? Didn't see her rage once, I thought she was a fighter or brawler...any way, I felt she was fine for the role other than her height perhaps. But then again, my last Barbarian was 5'4" androgynous Elf, so maybe I shouldn't criticize...

I mean.. the bard never once used a any class abilities either. The Druid turned into things a Druid cannot turn into and did it way more times then they are capable while also never casting any spells. They were closer to generic representations of classes then the rules put on screen.

That and perhaps the DM was just adapting the rules to suit their player group

That happens all the time in real world DnD. Some groups stick to the words as written; others take it as a foundation.

Also for a film I'd prefer a representation rather than hard fast sticking to the rules.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Is that a real quote?

"We also love emasculating leading men. ... Just because it’s funny and fun and fresh." - John Francis Daley, co-director of the new D&D movie.

Really enjoyed the film. Will just echo what a lot of others have said and that it was just a great deal of fun. Good casting and characters, good FX (I liked that so much was practical effects), good pacing and most of the jokes landed. Someone described it to me as Guardians of the Galaxy meets Willow which I guess is a good summation.

Have to say I didn't notice any wokeness? But then I wasn't looking out for it. It must be terrible not ever really being able to enjoy any mass market media, because you constantly have your teeth on edge looking out for that sort of thing.

 Pacific wrote:
Have to say I didn't notice any wokeness? But then I wasn't looking out for it. It must be terrible not ever really being able to enjoy any mass market media, because you constantly have your teeth on edge looking out for that sort of thing.

There really wasn't any.