Most likely they'd have to do a Lord of the Rings and do several moves to satisfy us all.... though considering the last few flicks, would that be wise?!
i'm not that demanding really... all i want are 1 or 2 iconic monsters. like a dragon or a beholder. carrion crawler would be nice too. some traps... some awesome treasures they must seek. the rest is just races and some classes abilities and i'd be fine. thats like very easy to do in a movie. look at dragonhearts, that could easily have passed as a d&d movie.
we're seriously not asking much really, we just want good fantasy, but somehow they mess it up all the time. with bad story. the other elements are there, but bad story.
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I think the chances of us getting a decent movie is from non-existent to infinitely minute! I know most people gush over the LotR trilogy, personally I don't, I thought it sucked, but there's no way that we'd get something of that magnitude!
Lotr wasnt perfect. I never read the books. But it was the medieval fantasy movie we wanted. Same with dragonheart. Its not hard to take the good from those movies and put it together in one movie.
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I think the chances of us getting a decent movie is from non-existent to infinitely minute! I know most people gush over the LotR trilogy, personally I don't, I thought it sucked, but there's no way that we'd get something of that magnitude!
LotR sucked? I'd love to hear a justification for that comment...
As far as D&D adventures goes, it ticked just about all the boxes - good spread of combat, social, and exploring tiers. Magic items discovered/gifted. Struggles against the odds - both external and internal. Character growth. Unexpected allies, surprise betrayals (but hinted at, so not a complete shock.) Side adventures. A chance for all 9 of the company of the nein nine to shein shine.
Visually you had the magnificent scenery of New Zealand, the enormous shadowy halls of Mordor, the rustic hills of the Shire, the web shrouded caves of Shelob's Lair. And Liv Tyler. Ok, she was shoe-horned in to have a woman there, but just for once it wan't too grating. And Aragorn and Legolas for the ladies.
Yes, it is possible to tick all the boxes and still suck - some movies suck because they try too hard to tick them all, and appeal to all audiences.
What improvements do you think Guillermo could make to Peter Jackson's attempt at LotR? What would be your vision for a great movie that could have the "D&D" legend attached to it?
Some of the story actually sucked. While treant attack on the two towers was cool. The whole premise of it made no senses... While everything was cool looking... Wizards felt like psions instead. Unless you think telekinesis is the only powers wizards have. Call for griffons to save everyone... Why not go to mordor using flying mounts... Why do the whole on foot ride. Another one... Why do the whole travel by foot ? Wouldnt horses be better ?
And those are just some of the big faults of the movie. There are tons of them. That said... Unlike zentron, i did like the movies. But im not gonna say its perfect because its not.
The problem with a d&d movie is that storywise its hard to choose a style and please everyone. The original d&d movie had it right on most things... But failed to deliver a good story. Yet it was counted as suck badly. Because for most people a movie is either good or bad. There is no inbetween and that makes it hard on those creating it.
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The eagles were only able to fly into Mordor AFTER the ring (and therefore Sauron) was destroyed. Before that, the place was probably crawling (figuratively) with Fell Beasts and Sauron watching the skies ready to shoot down uninvited guests...After Sauron's dominating influence is disrupted, it's every man and beast for himself. Certainly they could have ridden to Minas-Tirith though! Except that Middle Earth is a very symbolic place, which is to say that symbols are important there. The nine walkers versus the nine riders struck Mr. Smith as poetic, so he rolled with it.
Wizards in Middle Earth were fairly non-descript, as per the books. Meddlers and politicians more than Arch-Mages. Sure, the director could have beefed them up, but that would have caused uproar with people who read the books.
All just nerdy justification though. :)
If a film can't stand on its own, then you are right to criticise. Maybe Sam should have stood up to 'the council' and said "It's alright for you long-shanks types, but Mordor is a bloody long way for a hobbit on foot! Where's the stables? If I'm saving the world, I want a mearas!" You know a warg attack would have ruined that plan though. If a DM/Director wants you to walk to Mordor, you might as well buy a sturdy pair of boots!
Personally, I thought LotR and the Hobbit trilogy were excellent, despite the gaping plot holes, and that gives me hope (faint hope, maybe) for a future D&D endorsed movie. As long as you can name one or two fantasy movies that you personally love (despite their flaws), then there is reason for hope.
Anybody who actually read the books would already tell you that both the lotr and the hobbit are very far from the books though. had a friend who seen both and he can tell you...
lotr didn't stop at the right times, it was wrongly cut, most of the thing in it were downgraded actually. so unlke what you think the studio had to downgrade the visuals because way too much money would of gone into CGI. hence why they tryed to use many physical alterations instead. to try and maintain cost. the hobbit is a whole other story, it was supposed to be 1 movie about the hobbit. instead they decided to do a trilogy, but the fact of the matter is, the hobbit from a readers point of view, was done in the middle of the first film, afterward he mixed other tolkien books, like the silmarillon. they also gave a a lot of though on making the hobbit and lotr fit together, something which was never ever explained int he books. because they are two completely different stories. yes a ring was in the hobbit, but that was it.
my only saying is... your interpretation is, it was awesome and anybody who tells you otherwise should rewatch it until he sees what you sees, but reality is... interpretation is different for everybody. so its not possible to please the people. contrary to wat you may think... LOTR was not like in the book and any book junkie who read them will tell you this much. jackson was a fan of the lotr books, so why was it so far from the books ? the answer is simple... interpretation... even jackson who read the book interpretted it the way he wanted to see it.
i stopped caring for the source material. as long as the heart is there im fine with it, thats why i love LOTR, the heart is there. yes many plot hooles, but still the heart is there and thats all there needs to be.
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I have read the books. At least 3 times. And the Book of Lost Tales, and the Silmarillion. I even started on the 'companion' books by his son, Christopher - but got bored very quickly. So I am aware of the film's shortcomings regarding it's sticking to the source material. But I still love them.
I have read Game of Thrones (as far as it currently goes) three times. I tried watching the series, and although enjoying it, the 20 minutes of adverts for every 40 minutes of program killed it for me. Let me tell you that it also takes plot and character liberties in the name of converting from book to screen. I look forward to the book series being finished, after which I will probably binge watch the whole thing.
I don't want to mention the Shannara Travesty.
"lotr didn't stop at the right times, it was wrongly cut, most of the thing in it were downgraded actually." - Have you ever watched the animated version? - it makes the film look 100% accurate! :) And yes, I really enjoyed that, even though it ended at Helm's Deep.
Dragons of Autumn Twilight I watched a couple of weeks back - and it was really disappointing. I watched it with my 13 yr old son, and he seemed to enjoy it. It was far too short to do the book justice. I don't think it was aimed at me though.
Zenton says the LotR films suck - an opinion he/she is welcome to, I just wondered at their reasons. I know my opinions are suspect - I like 4th Edition D&D! (And Nickleback!)
Side note - I watched John Wick 2 at the weekend; Mr. Wick makes several decisions which made me wonder at his sanity. They made no sense. But if Mr. Wick is insane (or just mentally different) then they probably made perfect sense to him. I still enjoyed the film though. I am quite shallow. :)
With 25 years of working in film and television and 35 years of gaming I've got this to say don't do anything till you have a script that the guys at WotC love. Let the creative team read it well before you go to production and take there notes vary seriously. Then hire the best crew you can get. Starting with the triumvirate of director, production designer and DOP after that spend lots of cash
That's the problem, more often then not, the creative or original authors are discarded and their ideas gets changed a lot by directors who try to make it "their" film. thus in the end you end up with their film and their vision, not yours or the original author. we've seen this behavior a lot. my problem with hollywood is how much a director gets attentions when he really doesn't do much in the movie. there is a reason why writers have gone in a big strike a few years back. in the end they really do not get the credits they deserves, and only the directors and producers gets everything.
the industry is very flawed because of this.
i mean if i was making a script, and then it got accepted, the last thing i would want would be for the director to change it.
a good exemple...
Sam Raimi with spiderman, the first two are his visions, and they were awesome. the third was not his vision. he was forced to add a ton of things he didn't want. that screwed up a near perfect trilogy.
now look at mel brooks, he literally wrote every movies hes done and directed them... his movies are entirely his own vision. and they are all great.
this leads me to wonder why producter aren't as lenient with the writers and directers. why is everyone just trying to steal the work of others and make it their own is completely beyond me...
@plundered_tomb
My points exactly, you ask why they dislike it, the reason being, you wonder wy they dont think like you do. but in the end that argument can only go round in circle. because in the end you will ask why to everything they say just to try and proove your view is better or that they can be wrong. i was doing the same many times in the past. i was way too judgemental in my own views. i stopped when i realised that everyones views is entirely dependant on the viewers. you have 200 people who watched the same movie, yet none of them have seen or heard the same things.
exemple of boromir death... many see him as a betrayor, he died and deserved it... i didn't... all i saw was a small moment of weakness in a fighter, the same weakness i saw in frodo at the end. doesn't matter how long it took to show it, all that matters is that boromir was ready since the get go to die for that mission and he died heroicly. staring at death itself. there was no greater honor for a great warrior. yet when i speak of that to many people, they just laugh at me and ask me, did i even see the movie ? My cousin tells me often things that weren't even in the movie, but he saw it that way. can i blame him for seeing what he wanted to hear and see ?
there is no way we can please everyone, and even in a perfect world where everyone would have the same opinion, we'd still not see or hear the same things. thats the beauty of the art.
thats why its asking way too much to just make a movie that is d&d. because in the end, they may please a certain numbers of things in fans... but you will start falling into edition wars. monster wars and the likes... d&d is way too vague to begin with, to make a movie about it.
DM of two gaming groups. Likes to create stuff. Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
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As a fan of the books, I felt the recent LotR movies missed the mark, I went in to the cinema expecting a better version than Ralph Bakshi's film, which missed out a lot from the books, but came away far more disappointed than I had expected. Also, when it came to the overall feel of the movies, they all kinda felt like an up-scaled episode of Xena Warrior Princess or Hercules The Legendary Journeys, the orcs certainly looked like they would have fitted into either series just fine, the Dark Riders were not much better either, way too stylised!
On the other hand... I really enjoyed The Hobbit movies! Weird no!?
The directors/story writers I suggested, are well versed in making fantasy movies and well crafted ones too, plus they would bring the look of the D&D world in a way that most would miss the mark and feel like a generic fantasy flick.
I hope they do adaptation of dnd modules like waterdeep: dragonheist or curse of strahd. In particular I think Xanathar would be a perfect villain for the first movie. He is much more memorable then a generic dragon that could exist in any other fantasy story, and has the perfect mix of ridiculous (Silgar) and utterly menacing.
Facing Xanathar for the first time was when I really noticed that DND was something special
I really wish Joe Manganiello would get his dream of making Dragonlance Chronicles, and that all the effort and skill that went into LotR went into that. I wouldn't mind seeing certain FR series either. Could definitely do Strahd, or some stories from the FR novels.
I'm pessimistic, but ever hopeful, because I really want a good D&D movie. I think the biggest problem D&D faces is that it's most famous IP is, for the most part, actually generic (i.e., specific monster types like beholders and mind flayers, magic items, and dungeons), in contrast to (for example) Marvel's IP, which is all about characters that are built in the context of stories. We have Drizzt, and that could work, or the Heroes of the Lance, but even those are nowhere near the zeitgeist the way Spiderman or Wolverine (or, from DC, Batman and Superman) are. You don't have to have ever read a comic book to know about Spiderman and probably some his lore. Success can be measured purely by the quality of the story/writing and cinematography, or in ticket sales... the second is easier than the first if you have very big names, which D&D kind of doesn't. And having high quality cinematography and story is something D&D fans have been conditioned to be skeptical of ever seeing.
I think Dragonlance is the best option. It has Dungeons and Dragons. It also has compelling characters that would translate to film just as easily as the LotR characters did.
However, I think a Netflix series or something of that sort would do justice to the content better than a trilogy of movies.
When I first saw the first D&D movie (and to be fair, I've never seen the others - guess I'm gunshy), I literally winced at the poor CGI. This was a while back, and tech has improved a lot, but the dragons were horrible. And the rods of dragon control were just too over the top. It turned me off almost from the beginning.
When I watched the 13th Warrior, I said to myself, "This is a pretty good D&D movie!" Yeah, it wasn't the greatest movie ever, but I really enjoyed it.
I barely got through the first episode of the Shannara series. It was just too... Overly colorful? It looked like they tried too hard. The story also failed to grab me, so maybe it was more that I was simply never invested in it. Haven't had the desire to watch anything else.
So - the two movies/shows with world shattering events - they were crap. The one with a focused localized objective that would not destroy the world if the heroes failed - that was pretty good.
I'm not sure what I'm really trying to say here.
I think in the past, they've (Producers / Directors / Writers) been trying to mimic what we've been getting in DnD the last several years for campaign books - world spanning / shattering events. That's great for a campaign, but not so good for a movie (unless you have 20 some other movies building up to it - looking at you Marvel!).
Of the campaign books we have now, I could see the Waterdeep books (definitely Dragon Heist, with maybe a little Mad Mage thrown in) or for a darker twist, Strahd. I think Strahd would be better as a second or third "D&D" movie down the road though, to showcase the possible horror aspects of the game/setting. Princes might be localized enough - not sure on that one.
Tyranny / Giants / ToA - they are just too over the top for a single movie. The Yawning Portal isn't really a campaign, too disjointed - but I think certain adventures from it might translate well into movies with a little expansion / story work.
So to boil it down, I think they've had an Icarus problem in the past, reaching for the sun and getting burned.
1) I think it should show players around the gaming table at the beginning then flow into the characters they play.
2) Read the books use the Illithid, a Beholder things that are D&D, not generic monsters. The 1st movie was horrid as the Gold Dragons attacking the city that gets saved by Red Dragons. Yes I know they were all being controlled by the BBEG and the Hero. Ans for GODS sake no freaking entitled BRAT Queen that has a Tantrum.
3) Please make it PG-13 and not for 5 year olds, don't limit the audience make it so younger kids can see it but the parents that bring them can enjoy it as well.
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If Guillermo del Toro, or Christophe Gans, or Wolfgang Petersen were to write and direct, I think everything would turn out super awesome!
Sounds exciting! But I'm also kinda skeptic about it since It seems hard for one movie to live up to the whole game...
Most likely they'd have to do a Lord of the Rings and do several moves to satisfy us all.... though considering the last few flicks, would that be wise?!
i'm not that demanding really... all i want are 1 or 2 iconic monsters. like a dragon or a beholder. carrion crawler would be nice too. some traps... some awesome treasures they must seek. the rest is just races and some classes abilities and i'd be fine. thats like very easy to do in a movie. look at dragonhearts, that could easily have passed as a d&d movie.
we're seriously not asking much really, we just want good fantasy, but somehow they mess it up all the time. with bad story. the other elements are there, but bad story.
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I think the chances of us getting a decent movie is from non-existent to infinitely minute! I know most people gush over the LotR trilogy, personally I don't, I thought it sucked, but there's no way that we'd get something of that magnitude!
Lotr wasnt perfect. I never read the books. But it was the medieval fantasy movie we wanted. Same with dragonheart. Its not hard to take the good from those movies and put it together in one movie.
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I'd love to hear a justification for that comment...
neinnine tosheinshine.Roleplaying since Runequest.
Plundered_tomb
Some of the story actually sucked. While treant attack on the two towers was cool. The whole premise of it made no senses... While everything was cool looking... Wizards felt like psions instead. Unless you think telekinesis is the only powers wizards have. Call for griffons to save everyone... Why not go to mordor using flying mounts... Why do the whole on foot ride. Another one... Why do the whole travel by foot ? Wouldnt horses be better ?
And those are just some of the big faults of the movie. There are tons of them. That said... Unlike zentron, i did like the movies. But im not gonna say its perfect because its not.
The problem with a d&d movie is that storywise its hard to choose a style and please everyone. The original d&d movie had it right on most things... But failed to deliver a good story. Yet it was counted as suck badly. Because for most people a movie is either good or bad. There is no inbetween and that makes it hard on those creating it.
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Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses
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The eagles were only able to fly into Mordor AFTER the ring (and therefore Sauron) was destroyed. Before that, the place was probably crawling (figuratively) with Fell Beasts and Sauron watching the skies ready to shoot down uninvited guests...After Sauron's dominating influence is disrupted, it's every man and beast for himself.
Certainly they could have ridden to Minas-Tirith though!
Except that Middle Earth is a very symbolic place, which is to say that symbols are important there. The nine walkers versus the nine riders struck Mr. Smith as poetic, so he rolled with it.
Wizards in Middle Earth were fairly non-descript, as per the books. Meddlers and politicians more than Arch-Mages. Sure, the director could have beefed them up, but that would have caused uproar with people who read the books.
All just nerdy justification though. :)
If a film can't stand on its own, then you are right to criticise. Maybe Sam should have stood up to 'the council' and said "It's alright for you long-shanks types, but Mordor is a bloody long way for a hobbit on foot! Where's the stables? If I'm saving the world, I want a mearas!"
You know a warg attack would have ruined that plan though. If a DM/Director wants you to walk to Mordor, you might as well buy a sturdy pair of boots!
Personally, I thought LotR and the Hobbit trilogy were excellent, despite the gaping plot holes, and that gives me hope (faint hope, maybe) for a future D&D endorsed movie.
As long as you can name one or two fantasy movies that you personally love (despite their flaws), then there is reason for hope.
Roleplaying since Runequest.
Anybody who actually read the books would already tell you that both the lotr and the hobbit are very far from the books though. had a friend who seen both and he can tell you...
lotr didn't stop at the right times, it was wrongly cut, most of the thing in it were downgraded actually. so unlke what you think the studio had to downgrade the visuals because way too much money would of gone into CGI. hence why they tryed to use many physical alterations instead. to try and maintain cost. the hobbit is a whole other story, it was supposed to be 1 movie about the hobbit. instead they decided to do a trilogy, but the fact of the matter is, the hobbit from a readers point of view, was done in the middle of the first film, afterward he mixed other tolkien books, like the silmarillon. they also gave a a lot of though on making the hobbit and lotr fit together, something which was never ever explained int he books. because they are two completely different stories. yes a ring was in the hobbit, but that was it.
my only saying is... your interpretation is, it was awesome and anybody who tells you otherwise should rewatch it until he sees what you sees, but reality is... interpretation is different for everybody. so its not possible to please the people. contrary to wat you may think... LOTR was not like in the book and any book junkie who read them will tell you this much. jackson was a fan of the lotr books, so why was it so far from the books ? the answer is simple... interpretation... even jackson who read the book interpretted it the way he wanted to see it.
i stopped caring for the source material. as long as the heart is there im fine with it, thats why i love LOTR, the heart is there. yes many plot hooles, but still the heart is there and thats all there needs to be.
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@DNDPaladin,
I have read the books. At least 3 times. And the Book of Lost Tales, and the Silmarillion. I even started on the 'companion' books by his son, Christopher - but got bored very quickly. So I am aware of the film's shortcomings regarding it's sticking to the source material. But I still love them.
I have read Game of Thrones (as far as it currently goes) three times. I tried watching the series, and although enjoying it, the 20 minutes of adverts for every 40 minutes of program killed it for me. Let me tell you that it also takes plot and character liberties in the name of converting from book to screen. I look forward to the book series being finished, after which I will probably binge watch the whole thing.
I don't want to mention the Shannara Travesty.
"lotr didn't stop at the right times, it was wrongly cut, most of the thing in it were downgraded actually." - Have you ever watched the animated version? - it makes the film look 100% accurate! :) And yes, I really enjoyed that, even though it ended at Helm's Deep.
Dragons of Autumn Twilight I watched a couple of weeks back - and it was really disappointing. I watched it with my 13 yr old son, and he seemed to enjoy it. It was far too short to do the book justice. I don't think it was aimed at me though.
Zenton says the LotR films suck - an opinion he/she is welcome to, I just wondered at their reasons.
I know my opinions are suspect - I like 4th Edition D&D! (And Nickleback!)
Side note - I watched John Wick 2 at the weekend; Mr. Wick makes several decisions which made me wonder at his sanity. They made no sense. But if Mr. Wick is insane (or just mentally different) then they probably made perfect sense to him.
I still enjoyed the film though.
I am quite shallow. :)
Roleplaying since Runequest.
With 25 years of working in film and television and 35 years of gaming I've got this to say don't do anything till you have a script that the guys at WotC love. Let the creative team read it well before you go to production and take there notes vary seriously. Then hire the best crew you can get. Starting with the triumvirate of director, production designer and DOP after that spend lots of cash
@Kave
That's the problem, more often then not, the creative or original authors are discarded and their ideas gets changed a lot by directors who try to make it "their" film. thus in the end you end up with their film and their vision, not yours or the original author. we've seen this behavior a lot. my problem with hollywood is how much a director gets attentions when he really doesn't do much in the movie. there is a reason why writers have gone in a big strike a few years back. in the end they really do not get the credits they deserves, and only the directors and producers gets everything.
the industry is very flawed because of this.
i mean if i was making a script, and then it got accepted, the last thing i would want would be for the director to change it.
a good exemple...
Sam Raimi with spiderman, the first two are his visions, and they were awesome. the third was not his vision. he was forced to add a ton of things he didn't want. that screwed up a near perfect trilogy.
now look at mel brooks, he literally wrote every movies hes done and directed them... his movies are entirely his own vision. and they are all great.
this leads me to wonder why producter aren't as lenient with the writers and directers. why is everyone just trying to steal the work of others and make it their own is completely beyond me...
@plundered_tomb
My points exactly, you ask why they dislike it, the reason being, you wonder wy they dont think like you do. but in the end that argument can only go round in circle. because in the end you will ask why to everything they say just to try and proove your view is better or that they can be wrong. i was doing the same many times in the past. i was way too judgemental in my own views. i stopped when i realised that everyones views is entirely dependant on the viewers. you have 200 people who watched the same movie, yet none of them have seen or heard the same things.
exemple of boromir death... many see him as a betrayor, he died and deserved it... i didn't... all i saw was a small moment of weakness in a fighter, the same weakness i saw in frodo at the end. doesn't matter how long it took to show it, all that matters is that boromir was ready since the get go to die for that mission and he died heroicly. staring at death itself. there was no greater honor for a great warrior. yet when i speak of that to many people, they just laugh at me and ask me, did i even see the movie ? My cousin tells me often things that weren't even in the movie, but he saw it that way. can i blame him for seeing what he wanted to hear and see ?
there is no way we can please everyone, and even in a perfect world where everyone would have the same opinion, we'd still not see or hear the same things. thats the beauty of the art.
thats why its asking way too much to just make a movie that is d&d. because in the end, they may please a certain numbers of things in fans... but you will start falling into edition wars. monster wars and the likes... d&d is way too vague to begin with, to make a movie about it.
DM of two gaming groups.
Likes to create stuff.
Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses
If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
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As a fan of the books, I felt the recent LotR movies missed the mark, I went in to the cinema expecting a better version than Ralph Bakshi's film, which missed out a lot from the books, but came away far more disappointed than I had expected. Also, when it came to the overall feel of the movies, they all kinda felt like an up-scaled episode of Xena Warrior Princess or Hercules The Legendary Journeys, the orcs certainly looked like they would have fitted into either series just fine, the Dark Riders were not much better either, way too stylised!
On the other hand... I really enjoyed The Hobbit movies! Weird no!?
The directors/story writers I suggested, are well versed in making fantasy movies and well crafted ones too, plus they would bring the look of the D&D world in a way that most would miss the mark and feel like a generic fantasy flick.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I hope they do adaptation of dnd modules like waterdeep: dragonheist or curse of strahd. In particular I think Xanathar would be a perfect villain for the first movie. He is much more memorable then a generic dragon that could exist in any other fantasy story, and has the perfect mix of ridiculous (Silgar) and utterly menacing.
Facing Xanathar for the first time was when I really noticed that DND was something special
I really wish Joe Manganiello would get his dream of making Dragonlance Chronicles, and that all the effort and skill that went into LotR went into that. I wouldn't mind seeing certain FR series either. Could definitely do Strahd, or some stories from the FR novels.
I'm pessimistic, but ever hopeful, because I really want a good D&D movie. I think the biggest problem D&D faces is that it's most famous IP is, for the most part, actually generic (i.e., specific monster types like beholders and mind flayers, magic items, and dungeons), in contrast to (for example) Marvel's IP, which is all about characters that are built in the context of stories. We have Drizzt, and that could work, or the Heroes of the Lance, but even those are nowhere near the zeitgeist the way Spiderman or Wolverine (or, from DC, Batman and Superman) are. You don't have to have ever read a comic book to know about Spiderman and probably some his lore. Success can be measured purely by the quality of the story/writing and cinematography, or in ticket sales... the second is easier than the first if you have very big names, which D&D kind of doesn't. And having high quality cinematography and story is something D&D fans have been conditioned to be skeptical of ever seeing.
I think Dragonlance is the best option. It has Dungeons and Dragons. It also has compelling characters that would translate to film just as easily as the LotR characters did.
However, I think a Netflix series or something of that sort would do justice to the content better than a trilogy of movies.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
When I first saw the first D&D movie (and to be fair, I've never seen the others - guess I'm gunshy), I literally winced at the poor CGI. This was a while back, and tech has improved a lot, but the dragons were horrible. And the rods of dragon control were just too over the top. It turned me off almost from the beginning.
When I watched the 13th Warrior, I said to myself, "This is a pretty good D&D movie!" Yeah, it wasn't the greatest movie ever, but I really enjoyed it.
I barely got through the first episode of the Shannara series. It was just too... Overly colorful? It looked like they tried too hard. The story also failed to grab me, so maybe it was more that I was simply never invested in it. Haven't had the desire to watch anything else.
So - the two movies/shows with world shattering events - they were crap. The one with a focused localized objective that would not destroy the world if the heroes failed - that was pretty good.
I'm not sure what I'm really trying to say here.
I think in the past, they've (Producers / Directors / Writers) been trying to mimic what we've been getting in DnD the last several years for campaign books - world spanning / shattering events. That's great for a campaign, but not so good for a movie (unless you have 20 some other movies building up to it - looking at you Marvel!).
Of the campaign books we have now, I could see the Waterdeep books (definitely Dragon Heist, with maybe a little Mad Mage thrown in) or for a darker twist, Strahd. I think Strahd would be better as a second or third "D&D" movie down the road though, to showcase the possible horror aspects of the game/setting. Princes might be localized enough - not sure on that one.
Tyranny / Giants / ToA - they are just too over the top for a single movie. The Yawning Portal isn't really a campaign, too disjointed - but I think certain adventures from it might translate well into movies with a little expansion / story work.
So to boil it down, I think they've had an Icarus problem in the past, reaching for the sun and getting burned.
I really hope they do a good job on the film.
1) I think it should show players around the gaming table at the beginning then flow into the characters they play.
2) Read the books use the Illithid, a Beholder things that are D&D, not generic monsters. The 1st movie was horrid as the Gold Dragons attacking the city that gets saved by Red Dragons. Yes I know they were all being controlled by the BBEG and the Hero. Ans for GODS sake no freaking entitled BRAT Queen that has a Tantrum.
3) Please make it PG-13 and not for 5 year olds, don't limit the audience make it so younger kids can see it but the parents that bring them can enjoy it as well.