Quote from: GamerforHire on April 06, 2023, 08:50:41 AM
To me the vibe and the execution was "Fantasy Guardians of the Galaxy" and IMHO they largely pulled it off, maybe at an A- or B+ grade if you assume a reference point of GoG being an "A" (obviously, Guardians of the Galaxy isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I think that is the comparison). If you dislike the Marvel movies and especially the humorous side of those movies, then D&D movie is not something you will like, which is perfectly fair.

The movie is not, and obviously was not, intended to be "serious" in the vein of the first D&D movie, Conan the Barbarian (original or remake), or many other fantasy movies. For what it is, I think it is pretty good. Frankly, most fantasy/sword & sorcery movies, classic or modern, feature laughable acting, underwhelming special effects, and extremely questionable plot sequences. I think we view many classic movies in the genre with enormous amounts of unacknowledged nostalgia.

I absolutely agree with this.  It would be a shame if HAT tanks and puts a damper on anybody else producing fantasy movies.

Quote from: BronzeDragon on April 06, 2023, 10:41:35 AM
The industry standard calculation is that marketing basically doubles the budget (except for Disney, who often spend one and half times the budget for marketing purposes), and then you have to account for the cut from the cinema chains, which comes to between 20 and 30% of the gross take (Disney tends to get better numbers here, theaters know Disney movies tend to be bankable so they only charge 15-20% of the gross).

A 151 million budget means this movie cost about 300 million to make and market, and whatever comes in as the total gross (domestic and international) needs to be cut to about 75% in order to get the actual return.

Figure about 500 million needed to turn a profit, to be safe.

P.S.: In the not-so-distant past there were also massive distribution costs that needed to be accounted for, but these have been cut substantially due to digital copies becoming more prevalent. Film rolls are fucking expensive.

Well actually now movies are digital not film so thats even cheaper for the studios.  But when they use known actors, they have to pay higher salaries plus CGI.

I agree with you about the cost making about breaking even and they have a long way to go before getting there.

Quote from: Grognard GM on April 06, 2023, 11:05:41 AM
The thing is, WotC aren't looking for break even, or a small profit; they're expecting marvel blockbuster money, and the start of a juggernaut movie franchise.

Absolutely delusional, but suits surrounded by Yes-Zem can be very detached from reality.

You are right about that.  People don't want woke BS movies, they want actual fantasy movies without the WOKE BS.

I wouldn't watch this movie for two main reasons.
One) I detest Ha$bro and Wotc.
Two) It looks like a mawkish fucking kids film.

Quote from: S'mon on April 06, 2023, 02:16:25 AM
Saw it Tuesday. It was alright. Very faithful to WoTC D&D I thought (eg the spells, the monsters, & all the black people in the far north of Faerun  ). It wasn't nearly as hostile to the male characters as you'd expect from the director/writer comments.

The only thing that really bugged me was how fake the city & castle looked; there was no sense at all of lived-in-ness. Very much the opposite of Star Wars, or the original Milius Conan film.

Quote from: GamerforHire on April 06, 2023, 08:50:41 AM
To me the vibe and the execution was "Fantasy Guardians of the Galaxy" and IMHO they largely pulled it off, maybe at an A- or B+ grade if you assume a reference point of GoG being an "A" (obviously, Guardians of the Galaxy isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I think that is the comparison). If you dislike the Marvel movies and especially the humorous side of those movies, then D&D movie is not something you will like, which is perfectly fair.

OK, I've seen it now too - and I'd largely agree with both of these. It didn't do a good job at world-building, but I thought it captured well the vibe of D&D players trying to get their way through a module - including some really clever bits (like the cart robbery) as well as some humorous blunders. The bad guys were serious and deadly, but the main cast had a lot of quips and jokes when fighting them.

To me, that vibe fit well with my D&D experience going back to the 1980s. For me, most D&D games weren't a deeply serious immersive exploration of a truly lived-in place. There are weird monsters and unexplained parts of the dungeon ("Why would anyone build this?!"). Serious deep world-building was more for games like Harn or RuneQuest in Glorantha. D&D has more often been a chance to kick back, roll some dice, drink Mountain Dew, and slay some dragons.

The less old-school parts was stuff like the theme of fatherhood, and characters having families they connect with - but that didn't seem particularly woke to me.

It's definitely a kids film. But then it's based on a kids game.

Quote from: mightybrain on April 06, 2023, 01:55:52 PM
It's definitely a kids film. But then it's based on a kids game.

Quote from: Grognard GM on April 06, 2023, 02:06:32 PM

Quote from: mightybrain on April 06, 2023, 01:55:52 PM
It's definitely a kids film. But then it's based on a kids game.

Must be why the movie is rated PG13 right? It's a kids movie right? That's what PG13 means right?

Quote from: mightybrain on April 06, 2023, 01:55:52 PM
It's definitely a kids film. But then it's based on a kids game.

Probably not a smart comment to make since there are a lot of us playing that "kids" game.

Learn to read a room.

I'm getting two sets of reviews. 

1.  Gamers with a predisposition to hate WotC for nerfing their hardcore RPG, getting VERY greedy and tried to "I am altering the deal.   Pray I do not alter it further."   Aka the OGL fiasco.  And the WotC leadership just don't seem like gamers, but more like clueless corporate businessmen only pretending to be gamers.  #NotOneOfUs.   The movie is doomed from the start.  Too much drama has already tainted it. 

2.  Normies, who don't know any behind the scenes greed stories, are watching the movie and like it.  Not love it, but they liked it. 

I'm not going to see it, but I'm also never been a fan in the first place. 

Now, if we could get Jerry Bruckheimer off the couch and make that Palladium Rifts movie they optioned off of Palladium Books years ago, then I'll get interested.  Right now they're just squatters with the rights to make a movie.  And I know that's almost always what happens, but it still sucks to never get a movie of your favorite IP's like Rifts, or many other IP's. 

For D&D the publishers' recommended age is 12 and up. They are many games that very definitely aren't aimed at kids, but D&D explicitly is.

Well this isn't my D&D which I run at my table.

And I'm not giving money to WotC. So I don't care if it *were* the form of D&D I run, with an all-star cast of badass actors from the Time Before. I still wouldn't pay money to see it.

One thing I noticed is that the film characters (for the most part) seem to fit together better as a party, than any 5e D&D game equivalents you can create. Neither the bard character, nor the druid character, appear to have or use any spells at all in the film. But this only serves to leave that role clear for the sorcerer. 5e definitely bloats most of the classes and races with way too many magic powers in the game. It's interesting that the screenwriters noticed this where the game designers didn't. But I guess the game designers were trying to emulate genre heroes with each class separately rather than thinking about them in terms of their role within a group.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on April 06, 2023, 05:47:26 PMNow, if we could get Jerry Bruckheimer off the couch and make that Palladium Rifts movie they optioned off of Palladium Books years ago, then I'll get interested.  Right now they're just squatters with the rights to make a movie.  And I know that's almost always what happens, but it still sucks to never get a movie of your favorite IP's like Rifts, or many other IP's.

I for one think the moviegoing public is finally ready for a movie where the good guys wear skulls all over, use weapons covered in skulls, and pilot skull-shaped vehicles to and from their skull-citadels.

So, a Warhammer movie?

Ah well, I did a bit of an elevator pitch for a D&D movie earlier this year:

Well, for myself I'd want it set in Greyhawk.

We start with an establishing scene of the classic map by Darlene on a table with a skull candle, dagger, and maybe the wand of orcus. In the background two people are making out, we pan into the shadow and it's Iuz and Zugtmoy making out and giggling. We shift frame through a glowing crimson pentacle on the wall into the nine Hells, Asmodeus and Dispatcher are explaining their plan to invade and seize the Flannesses region at long last. A cringing, grovelling Dretch limps away with the drink tray after a bit of mean spirited abuse and prays "Saint Cuthbert, one such as I has no right to gaze upwards at the heavens but grant thine fallen servant's prayer and warn them." The camera follows into a tear in his eye and spins out into a beautiful, immaculate glass cathedral where a scarred and beaten man kneels before an altar to Pelor, his hand resting on a battered cudgel. He raises an eye to the sungod's image in the stained glass and we pan back to a dark stone cathedral where a young priest in armour kneels before the altar his hand resting on a mace. He rises, looks into the ajoining chamber where fat priests are drinking and laughing and making sneering comments about their parishoners. The young priest sighs, shakes his head, and walks away out the side door. He walks down the street and a cloud passes overhead, casting the scene in shadow. A beautiful girl in tan leathers is leaning in a doorway hefting a sack of coins. She turns to the young priest and smiles and comes over, asks why he's looking so serious, after all, it's not the end of the world and he looks her right in they eye and says, "but it is, it really is." The scene shifts to a quiet tavern, there's a dwarf in plate armor, an ugly, female, half - orc in scale mail, the priest, the girl from the doorway, and a gnome in an elaborate robe talking and looking at a crudely drawn map on the table. We cut to them travelling up a mountain path in the rain. Their guide takes payment, pointing them to an ill used rocky path over looked by a skeleton nailed up on a post. The guide turns and leads the pack mules away and we follow the path up, passing the heroes as they march single file, and there is a disturbing cave, like the collapsed entrance of a forgotten temple ahead of them.