We won! (OGL)

[Chris Brady]

We'll have to disagree on that. In the cases where you're talking about, I don't view the incompetence being a vehicle to make the other look more competent-

This is the problem I have with the D&D trailer. That's all we see. One side being incompetent, while the other does all the heroism. It's not funny, it's kinda insulting to the side they're trying to elevate. You're telling the audience that only they can be better, is if the other side is stupid or incompetent.

In a lot of these cases, from the outside looking in- the smarter person hasn't earned it. In the case with Captain Marvel, we know that Nick is younger. But he's already seen some shit- especially being in the war. But a lot of things he does are just stupid - not straight man stupid- just outright stupid. And it's done to give Carol and opening or to make her seem better. This is just lazy writing.

Exactly, my point. It's lazy.

 

[TJS]

I think you'll have to watch the movie in order to see if anyone is actually being insulted.

 

[Chris Brady]

I think you'll have to watch the movie in order to see if anyone is actually being insulted.

A trailer is a literal 'super-cut' of all the scenes that should entice you to see the movie. And yes, sometimes it spoils it (Which oddly enough has been proven to get more people to see the movie. I don't understand it, but movie goers are not like me), but if the trailers don't grab me, 95% of the time, I know what I'm going to see.

Maybe I'm wrong, I always hope I am, but I'll wait until my friends see it. Even if we disagree on what's good or not (Always a subjective point among us) I know I can trust them.

 

[Baulderstone]

Looking at the trailer and scenes that have been released so far, it seems Chris Pine is the one that gets to do all the funny, entertaining things, while the rest of the party collectively plays straight man. If you can view Hollywood movies as a form of entertainment rather than a way to hunt for grievances, Chris Pine clearly has the best role in the movie. I think they are going for something along the lines of Ash in The Evil Dead movies.

 

[Nick J]

Looking at the trailer and scenes that have been released so far, it seems Chris Pine is the one that gets to do all the funny, entertaining things, while the rest of the party collectively plays straight man. If you can view Hollywood movies as a form of entertainment rather than a way to hunt for grievances, Chris Pine clearly has the best role in the movie. I think they are going for something along the lines of Ash in The Evil Dead movies.

If they manage to pull it off then it will be the most D&D movie ever and actually be something I'm interested in seeing. Army of Darkness is still my favorite "D&D" movie of all time -- these things need jokes and humor to capture the general goofiness of the kitchen sink fantasy that D&D evinces.

 

[Necrozius]

I think you'll have to watch the movie in order to see if anyone is actually being insulted.

I was speaking in broad terms. You’re right that I need to lighten up though.

 

[CRKrueger]

As someone who is rather tired of “geek culture comedy”, I’m not likely to see this anyway.

“LOL the Bard rolled a 20, he seduces the dragon. I’m crying here!”

“Ho ho the Half Orc Barbarian lady just put that dude in his place. Yass Queen Slay!!”

“Did the Dragonborn Paladin just make a dad joke to cheer up the Tiefling? He made a dad joke. My heart… #bestThingEver #Feelz”

“This week we’re doing a puppet- musical episode! LOL so random!”

uuuuuuuuugh

In the paraphrased words of the Immortal Philosopher Jack - "This hobby needs an enema."

 

[MichaelTee]

Someone over on CotI has noticed one team of competitors in the maze in the new movie are the characters from the D&D cartoon show. Also the "Iconic" characters from the D&D 3.0 Novels of yesteryear (2000) (but I'm not familiar with them). See the link below for a clip.

https://www.travellerrpg.com/index.php?threads/d-d-movie-yea-its-nostalgia-bait-but-hell-yea.43363/

 

[CRKrueger]

Looking at the trailer and scenes that have been released so far, it seems Chris Pine is the one that gets to do all the funny, entertaining things, while the rest of the party collectively plays straight man. If you can view Hollywood movies as a form of entertainment rather than a way to hunt for grievances, Chris Pine clearly has the best role in the movie. I think they are going for something along the lines of Ash in The Evil Dead movies.

Yeah, I don't know about the "strong woman" thing. In Strange Days (1995), Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes) is the ex-cop turned simsense dealer and Mace Mason (Angela Basset) is the tough bodyguard that keeps him alive and is the adult in the room. That was 28 years ago. Hell, bumbling husband and wife who keeps him out of trouble and grounded goes back through Bewitched (1964) all the way back to Flintstones (1960) and Honeymooners (1955). If you want to really push it, strong women and goofy men goes back to Twelfth Night (1601). There's a reason Shakespeare is a popular subject of Feminist theses.

So while the current spate of agenda-driven movies would lead one to assume a political agenda, the fact that Chris Pine is the Bard in the party doesn't necessarily prove that in and of itself considering the long history of such characters. Plus, as Baulderstone says, the straight man in a comedy isn't the star.

So I'd agree. Before you add this to the very long list of Agenda Tripe, we need to know more.

 

[CRKrueger]

Someone over on CotI has noticed one team of competitors in the maze in the new movie are the characters from the D&D cartoon show. Also the "Iconic" characters from the D&D 3.0 Novels of yesteryear (2000) (but I'm not familiar with them). See the link below for a clip.

https://www.travellerrpg.com/index.php?threads/d-d-movie-yea-its-nostalgia-bait-but-hell-yea.43363/

Heh, I'm not familiar with all the Iconics, (I get them mixed with the Pathfinder ones) but I recognize the white-haired Dwarf/Gnome. That other group is definitely the D&D Cartoon folk though.

I think going with the semi-gonzo, kitchen sink form of D&D with Hugh Grant as the stuffy, uptight, comedic ruler is something Hollywood can pull off, where the Save the World serious form of EPIC D&D with a scene-chewing Jeremy Irons villain they simply can't.

Hollywood has never gotten John Milius' Conan formula right...you play it straight, dumbass, with comedy coming from the characters, not from modern meta-irony or tired tropes like sidekicks.

A comedy "Heist gone hilariously wrong with all hell breaking loose" is one of the movies Hollywood can get right.

 

[TristramEvans]

Hollywood has never gotten John Milius' Conan formula right...you play it straight, dumbass, with comedy coming from the characters, not from modern meta-irony or tired tropes like sidekicks.

I thin Dredd came closest to really pulling that off the tone that would work for a straight Conan adaptation, and Dredd can definitely be viewed as a throwback to 80s action films of the type Hollywood simply doesn't make these days.

I'm always reminded of something the director of Friday the 13th part VI said; he asked if the studio minded him making the film funny, and they said to him "you can insert as many jokes as you want, but just don't make fun of Jason himself"

 

[TJS]

The problem with Hollywood movies in recent years is not that they tend towards being comedic but the comedy seems to arise from a fear of having any real emotion.

 

[Chris Brady]

The problem with Hollywood movies in recent years is not that they tend towards being comedic but the comedy seems to arise from a fear of having any real emotion.

Or degrading people.

 

[T. Foster]

Once upon a time D&D was a really hard game and the expectation was that if you weren’t at the absolute top of your mental game - combat tactics and puzzle/riddle solving and knowing when and how to search for traps and secret doors and hidden treasures and so forth - that your characters were going to die. We all joked around at the table and busted each other’s balls but we absolutely knew that if you rolled up to pretty much any of the classic modules like the Ghost Tower of Inverness or White Plume Mountain or the Caves of Chaos or the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth and brought anything less than your A game (hopefully alongside 5 or 6 friends at least as smart as you who also brought their A games) that you were going to lose your character and feel humiliated and probably get mocked by your friends.

But the idea was that you’d get better with practice and learn from your mistakes (as well as from more experienced mentor players) and eventually you’d Git Gud and be able to take on tougher and tougher adventures, like the Hall of the Fire Giant King and Vault of the Drow and survive, and when you got really cocky and overconfident your DM would drop you in the Tomb of Horrors and if you made out of that one alive you really had something to brag about (and if you didn’t you went back to the gym until you were ready to take another shot at it).

That’s the game I grew up playing. We joked around and had fun but we also wanted to step up and get better, and aspired to being smart enough to be able to take on and beat those legendary toughest adventures, and felt like little 12 year old badasses when we managed to beat the mid-tier stuff like Inverness and Tsojcanth and White Plume Mountain, knowing that we were on our way. Even Ravenloft fit in that mode despite its cornball forced story - the dungeon was still a challenging meat-grinder!

But then somewhere the dynamic changed. I think I first noticed it reading the first Dragonlance novel. We’d already played those modules so we knew what was supposed to happen, but the characters in the novel weren’t smart and hyper-competent the way we thought D&D characters were supposed to be. They made mistakes and did dumb stuff that by the normal logic of the game should have gotten them killed, but it didn’t, and they “won” anyway, through a combination of luck, bad guy incompetence, and authorial fiat.

Increasingly after that it seemed like the tone of the game changed and it was no longer expected that the players would actually be smart and competent and that was no longer necessary to succeed. Almost immediately the game became primarily comical with the players cracking jokes and doing intentionally dumb and outrageous shit in-character because they knew they could get away with it and the story would keep chugging along. The DM went from being a feared Svengali-figure who would punish you for being stupid to the straight man, the put-upon square who sighed and expressed dismay at the players’ zany antics as they tried to outdo each other and derail the plot and then earnestly steered them back in line and made up flimsy explanations for why whatever series of goofy fuck-ups they enacted didn’t actually keep the plot from unfolding as it was supposed to. And a weird dichotomy developed where the tone of the books and adventures was still mostly straight (with a few exceptions like the joke Castle Greyhawk and the “Fluffy” series of RPGA modules) but in play it was pretty much all ironic and goofy with the players mostly feeling smugly superior to and taking the piss out of the DM’s earnest over-seriousness.

I get why they made this shift - it made the game more accessible to a broader audience, especially of younger players, and was also consistent with popular movies of the time like Raiders of the Lost Ark and Ghostbusters. But to me it seemed like a cheapening and devolution of the game and I didn’t like it. It was one of the things that drove me away from D&D in the late 80s towards more serious-toned simulation-oriented games like RuneQuest and Traveller. It was also very gratifying when I played AD&D with Gygax in 1988 and learned that he still played in the old style, with laughter and jokes at the players-at-the-table level but the in-game action was very serious and intense with no punches pulled. Since then I’ve always run my D&D games that way, which rubs a lot of players the wrong way.

I thought after WotC took over and 3E D&D came out that the tone had shifted back to something more straight-faced and less self-conscious and goofy (while still being cheesy and terrible in other ways), but stuff like Critical Role and the previews for this movie remind me exactly of the stuff I didn’t like then and don’t want to see now. Maybe it was out of fashion for a while but came back with 5E?

I’m sick of everything being either Game of Thrones (grimdark and dour and you know it’s for adults because they all say “fuck”) or Guardians of the Galaxy (a gang of wisecracking fuck-ups who treat everything as a joke but still win in spite of everything). I’d really like something that’s fun and adventurous but also straight-faced and unironic. Something like, say, the 1999 Mummy movie.

 

[robertsconley]

The movie is good. The heist plot is a bit pedestrian but you wind up liking the main characters. There is plenty of pathos to go along with the joking. The point of the heist follows from the motivations of the character. The plans they come up with that succeed or fail make sense given that it is a D&D world.

Seriously this film doesn't need deep analysis. It is just simply fun. Just like the majority of our campaigns do not withstand deep analysis but still a hell of lot of fun. The longer you have been playing this hobby the more you will enjoy the various easter eggs.

The only bad thing I will say is in the credit where it was listed as Hasbro's D&D. While no fan of Wizards I thought that was a bit of a dick move on Hasbro's part. Incidentally, the main end credit is an enjoyable bit of animation.

After having seen it, the only concern I have is that can they keep the right mix of elements going for the subsequent projects. For example, I thought they used the right level of Forgotten Realm lore Just enough to provide some structure to the background details.

 

[AsenRG]

The movie is good.

...if that's true, it's a first in the history of D&D!

 

[Necrozius]

I didn’t know it was out already.

I’m sure it will be a hit. I picked a good time to advertise a “beginner” D&D campaign at my FLGS.

 

[T. Foster]

I didn’t know it was out already.

I’m sure it will be a hit. I picked a good time to advertise a “beginner” D&D campaign at my FLGS.

The official release date is 3/31 but there was some sort of early screening fan event on 3/19 that apparently a lot of people went to but I didn’t even hear about. Maybe an invitation went out to people with DNDBeyond subscriptions or something?

 

[robertsconley]

The official release date is 3/31 but there was some sort of early screening fan event on 3/19 that apparently a lot of people went to but I didn’t even hear about. Maybe an invitation went out to people with DNDBeyond subscriptions or something?

It was a special viewing for Amazon Prime subscribers and I just happened to be lucky to hear about it.

 

[T. Foster]

It was a special viewing for Amazon Prime subscribers and I just happened to be lucky to hear about it.

Hmm, our Prime subscription is under my (non-gamer) wife’s name. Maybe she got an email about the event but decided to exercise a “pocket veto” lol

 

[Torque2100]

I am thoroughly sick of Hollywood Fan Baiting. I will be giving the Dungeons & Dragons movie a pass for that reason alone.

That said, I don't think the movie being "overly jokey" is really a valid critique. I have never run a campaign that didn't devolve into endlessly beating jokes from Monty Python's Holy Grail and Gamers 2: Dorkness Rising into the ground. Shrek style humor is pretty on point for most RPG campaigns and always has been.

 

[chuckdee]

It was a special viewing for Amazon Prime subscribers and I just happened to be lucky to hear about it.

I saw it also. But really wasn't interested.

 

[Bunch]

I saw it also. But really wasn't interested.

I'll say I saw it but due to the recent action I wasn't willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. I may see it but unless the kids say "Daddy take me!!" I'll wait for video release.

 

[chuckdee]

I'll say I saw it but due to the recent action I wasn't willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. I may see it but unless the kids say "Daddy take me!!" I'll wait for video release.

Having a season pass at Alamo, I tend to give more things a shot than I probably would otherwise.

 

[sharps54]

Having a season pass at Alamo, I tend to give more things a shot than I probably would otherwise.

If I lived a little closer to one I would have bought a season pass. The Alamo Drafthouse is the only theater I’ll go to anymore but with an hour drive to the nearest I don’t get to go that often.