6
votes
Chris Pine to star in ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ movie
Link information
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- Title
- Chris Pine To Star In 'Dungeons & Dragons' For eOne And Paramount; Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley Direct
- Authors
- Mike Fleming Jr
- Published
- Dec 14 2020
- Word count
- 266 words
D&D is a medium for storytelling, not a story unto itself. This is like announcing "Books: The Movie" or "Cartoons: The Movie."
While I agree, there are enough officially branded stories that could be adapted, the standard adventure modules are designed to produce exciting stories with minimal effort plugging in the player characters in the party. In that case it'd make more sense to call it a "Baldur's Gate movie" or "Neverwinter Nights movie", but there's enough material for the branding to make some kind of sense.
Doesn't make me any less skeptical though.
Edit, having actually read the article:
Doesn't sound like they've gone that route though, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I believe that’s profoundly incorrect. There are hundreds of official adventures, campaigns, and scenarios for Dungeons and Dragons, as well as entire universes of worldbuilding. Dungeons and Dragons is literally brimming with lore just waiting to be used. There are not many franchises that vast and readily available to serve as source material.
Are you talking about Forgotten Realms? Or Planescape?
Everything!
That's the problem, yeah? It's so broad that D&D is mostly held together as a brand by game mechanics, not setting. How then do you make a movie that gets any agreement as to whether it represents D&D when the things that make it visibly D&D are nowhere in sight?
It’s so broad that they can simply pick one thing and do that. It’s just a film, it’s not meant to represent the “soul” of all things DND. Even if it uses the name. That is not how the movie industry works. That’s a misplaced expectation
Ok, but then we're down to "let's have a fantasy movie and stick the D&D franchise's name on it". Which is very on point for the movie industry, but still a disappointment.
No, that is not what I’m saying at all.
I would argue that that is "RPG's" not "D&D" but yeah...
Given that they're looking to make this a film franchise and the Marvel-adjacent staff, I wonder if there's a chance at them actually trying to capture some of the actual appeal of the source material. This current wave of comic book movies has managed to work because (for all their flaws) they've tried to go for the expansive kind of storytelling that characterizes modern comic books. Maybe someone's going "What's other shit that nerds like? Roleplaying games? Yeah, let's try to get normies into that."
Or it could be a generic fantasy movie with the brand attached. I'd hope for a retelling of a story that The Nerds actually care about more than Some Fantasy Movie though. Even Drizzt or Sellswords adaptations seem so obvious and marketable...it hurts that we haven't gotten them.
The last D&D movie was really indifferent because it used a generic fantastic setting and a setting alone doesn't get you anywhere. I'd love to see the dragonlance trilogy made into movies; it's already a great story.
The Dark Elf Trilogy, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Saga, and all the other Drizzt and Menzoberranzan based series. Dragonlance, Heroes of Phlan, Elminster Series, Moonshae Trilogy, The Harpers series, The Cleric Quintet, The Sellswords. Dark Sun's Prism Pentad, Tribe of One, and Chronicles of Athas.
There are so many legitimately good, official D&D universe book series out there that I wish they would finally make an effort to properly adapt one, instead of constantly making yet more bland, generic, "D&D" (in brand name only) fantasy movies.