If by "best D&D movie" you mean the best movie with Dungeons & Dragons in the title that's a pretty low bar and I doubt there's a single player in existence who would disagree. If however we're talking movies that capture the feel of a D&D adventure or campaign Honor Among Thieves is very, very good but is not at all of the same calibre of the Lord of the Rings films. Or any number of movies of the genre that handle journeying and questing in a way that is vastly superior.
I absolutely loved the movie. I saw it twice during opening weekend. It's one of those movies that exemplifies, "they don't make movies like this anymore". It's just good fun and a great adventure. Great characters, fun story, great humor, and just wholesome fun all around. It harkens back to The Princess Bride, Star Wars, and Guardians of the Galaxy. I'm glad they leaned into a light-hearted comedy so that it breaks the barrier between the brand and the general audience who isn't familiar with it. I can't wait to watch it again. I hope the positive word of mouth helps the box office numbers in the long run.
I also loved it, I finally got to see it this weekend with some of my players! (hoping it comes out soon on Paramount+ so I can have a virtual movie night with my entire party!) it wasn't the best piece of writing out there, of course, but as a D&D fan I'm willing to overlook the less impressive parts of the movie because it captured the spirit of the game so well. I adored the humor of Honor Among Thieves in particular, because it felt so similar to the shenanigans that happen while having fun playing together at a table with your friends. it was great and I'm really glad it's doing so well
I also loved it, I finally got to see it this weekend with some of my players! (hoping it comes out soon on Paramount+ so I can have a virtual movie night with my entire party!) it wasn't the best piece of writing out there, of course, but as a D&D fan I'm willing to overlook the less impressive parts of the movie because it captured the spirit of the game so well. I adored the humor of Honor Among Thieves in particular, because it felt so similar to the shenanigans that happen while having fun playing together at a table with your friends. it was great and I'm really glad it's doing so well
Actually it has a $150 million budget to make up and Mario sucked up all the money on Honor Among Thieves 2nd weekend. So if you know people who are interested, tell them about it and give it a recommendation. The cast, crew, directors really delivered a solid movie I though, so I'd like to see it make some good money and maybe even get another one!
If by "best D&D movie" you mean the best movie with Dungeons & Dragons in the title that's a pretty low bar and I doubt there's a single player in existence who would disagree. If however we're talking movies that capture the feel of a D&D adventure or campaign Honor Among Thieves is very, very good but is not at all of the same calibre of the Lord of the Rings films. Or any number of movies of the genre that handle journeying and questing in a way that is vastly superior.
Let me start off with saying that i deeply love LotR, but it does not at all accurately reflect the D&D experience in my mind. It resembles a campaign that a DM imagines in his head, with grand overarching themes and all the characters acting just as he wants them to - cause that's basically what a book is.
In contrast, the D&D movie captures the feel of how the campaign actually turns out as a collaborative story told by several people who are just there to have fun and release some tension. No, that probably doesn't make it a lasting milestone in fantasy cinema, but it seems to me like finding the right tone would be incredibly tough and they totally nailed it.
I'll even go a step farther and say we don't need another LotR, and the filmmakers would have set themselves up for failure if that's what they were shooting for. This movie isn't just supposed to be an epic fantasy story, it's supposed to be about the game itself and the stories that come out of it. Previous D&D movies tried to lean too hard on telling their own (generic) fantasy story and suffered for it.
TLDR: LotR may be the campaign that we want, but D&D:HAT is the campaign that we get. Every time. And capturing that was no small feat.
I don't know, but I don't feel it fair to compare D&D: Honor Among Thieves to the Lord of the Rings movies.
That is kinda like comparing The Last Unicorn
To the Sword in the Stone
I love both movies, but one is an epic tale (LOTR, The Last Unicorn) and the other is a fun fantasy story (D&D: HAT, Sword in the Stone).
And in my opinion we need movies of both types, cause sometimes I want an epic tale and sometimes I just want to have fun for a few hours.
For sure!
I enjoyed it. Went in expecting to leave disappointed but was pleasantly surprised. It's a lot of fun. And I will assuredly watch it again once it's streamable.
Just think many are in flavor-of-the-month mode.
It's not at all realistic to believe people—players or otherwise—will be talking about the movie forty years from now as if it's one of the greatest fantasy films of all time.
Let me start off with saying that i deeply love LotR, but it does not at all accurately reflect the D&D experience in my mind. It resembles a campaign that a DM imagines in his head, with grand overarching themes and all the characters acting just as he wants them to - cause that's basically what a book is.
In contrast, the D&D movie captures the feel of how the campaign actually turns out as a collaborative story told by several people who are just there to have fun and release some tension. No, that probably doesn't make it a lasting milestone in fantasy cinema, but it seems to me like finding the right tone would be incredibly tough and they totally nailed it.
I'll even go a step farther and say we don't need another LotR, and the filmmakers would have set themselves up for failure if that's what they were shooting for. This movie isn't just supposed to be an epic fantasy story, it's supposed to be about the game itself and the stories that come out of it. Previous D&D movies tried to lean too hard on telling their own (generic) fantasy story and suffered for it.
TLDR: LotR may be the campaign that we want, but D&D:HAT is the campaign that we get. Every time. And capturing that was no small feat.
If the movie managed to capture one thing perfectly it is the banter often exchanged at the table between players and in turn their characters.
I was worried the constant humor was going to spoil it. But it was just right.
But the movie is not the campaign we get "every time" and to insist as much is an insult to those of us who have played and who play in a variety of settings that are tonally different and that explore different themes.
Not every campaign descends into comedy of like degree. Or has the pace as well as the tone of that film.
It's worth remembering that Honor Among Thieves is PG-13.
Most campaigns I've run and have played in over the past forty years if committed to film would warrant an R rating.
There are things the movie does very well as far as capturing the experience of play. The stream of backhanded compliments among them.
But it's not at all capturing the feel of how every adventure or campaign turns out. No one movie could achieve that.
Neither the tone nor the pace of the thing, or even the style, resembled games in which I play. The world depicted in Honor Among Thieves was a bit too safe for my liking. It also made the same mistake Disney has made with the MCU by producing what was mostly a string of action scenes with little to no "glue" between them. This makes sense to some degree as it is a different medium but it always feels a bit like taking great comic arcs full of tension and drama and tearing out some of the best pages and dedicating most of the thing to panels portraying fights. Thematically it was nowhere near as dark enough to even capture the feel of D&D novels from the 80s and the 90s.
It needed to be light to make it marketable to younger viewers. That's perfectly understandable.
Another thing I thought it did very well was ...
... the decision to save Holga.
That certainly felt like something in a game.
A character whose backstory has him seeking a magic item that will enable him to revive his wife obtaining the thing but instead having to make the difficult decision to save one of his companions.
The logging is a direct punishment for the Emerald Enclave questioning Forge's rise to rule; Forge is killing their people under flimsy pretenses and destroying their homes. That's made pretty explicit in the movie, not sure how people are missing that.
Anyway, good movie, liked it a lot.
This, Doric explained it when she introduced herself, during her "meet and greet".
I enjoyed the movie... so did all of my friends who went when I saw it (including a wife who doesn't enjoy/understand DnD, but loves fantasy based things), which was a total of 5.
I think the enjoying of the movie comes from what was expected... in this day and age I've stopped analyzing any movie I am going to see that is based off an IP. It doesn't matter whether it is based off comics, a book, or something else... something is always going to be glossed over, missed, or changed due to trying to appeal to a wider audience and other reasons.
This movie also tried to mix all editions of Dnd to create itself because they borrowed from a lot of different editions to help create the movie what it was... which isn't far different from what is happening to every other IP out there... which is why it's understandable that folks will try to pick it apart and/or disagree with things.
Its a good generic fantasy movie, but not a good D&D movie. Doesn't really represent what makes D&D ... D&D. Basically made for non-D&D gamers. Lots of really weird stuff in the movie too... Bradley Cooper looked like a shrunken cursed human... not a halfling.
Its a good generic fantasy movie, but not a good D&D movie. Doesn't really represent what makes D&D ... D&D. Basically made for non-D&D gamers. Lots of really weird stuff in the movie too... Bradley Cooper liked like a shrunken cursed human... not a halfling.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
However, they had players who messed up the use of a cleric spell while talking to the dead (I have seen this happen), a DMNPC essentially exists in the movie, fast travel happened, and crazy plans were made up and managed to get pulled off several times... I mean to me this sounds like either DnD games I have played, watched, or at least seen aspects of in games to me.
Its a good generic fantasy movie, but not a good D&D movie. Doesn't really represent what makes D&D ... D&D. Basically made for non-D&D gamers. Lots of really weird stuff in the movie too... Bradley Cooper liked like a shrunken cursed human... not a halfling.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
However, they had players who messed up the use of a cleric spell while talking to the dead (I have seen this happen), a DMNPC essentially exists in the movie, fast travel happened, and crazy plans were made up and managed to get pulled off several times... I mean to me this sounds like either DnD games I have played, watched, or at least seen aspects of in games to me.
Hey, I'm glad you liked it. D&D is different for everyone.
The D&D movie I would have liked to see would have been completely different. I would have made a movie about a group of friends getting together to play D&D one last time to complete a long running campaign. Before they go off to college, or get married, (or whatever) and the group has to disband permanently. We would delve into an epic story of their characters going up against a BBEG... but go back to the beginning of their characters origins and see how they leveled up over time. See the various quests that led their characters to the battle with the BBEG. The movie would mostly play out in the fantasy world, but would flash to the "real" world on occasion where we could see the players play the game, and maybe even get into a standard D&D rules argument. This way we would actually understand this is a D&D movie and see how the game is played a little bit. But the real focus would be to get into the epic fantasy storyline. The "heart" of the movie would be about the friendships of the players (in real life and in the fantasy world) and the fact that they realize their gaming group and long-running campaign is coming to an end. I think this would have separated a D&D movie from all the other fantasy stuff out there and made it much more memorable.
The D&D movie I would have liked to see would have been completely different. I would have made a movie about a group of friends getting together to play D&D one last time to complete a long running campaign. Before they go off to college, or get married, (or whatever) and the group has to disband permanently. We would delve into an epic story of their characters going up against a BBEG... but go back to the beginning of their characters origins and see how they leveled up over time. See the various quests that led their characters to the battle with the BBEG. The movie would mostly play out in the fantasy world, but would flash to the "real" world on occasion where we could see the players play the game, and maybe even get into a standard D&D rules argument. This way we would actually understand this is a D&D movie and see how the game is played a little bit. But the real focus would be to get into the epic fantasy storyline. The "heart" of the movie would be about the friendships of the players (in real life and in the fantasy world) and the fact that they realize their gaming group and long-running campaign is coming to an end. I think this would have separated a D&D movie from all the other fantasy stuff out there and made it much more memorable.
The D&D movie I would have liked to see would have been completely different. I would have made a movie about a group of friends getting together to play D&D one last time to complete a long running campaign. Before they go off to college, or get married, (or whatever) and the group has to disband permanently. We would delve into an epic story of their characters going up against a BBEG... but go back to the beginning of their characters origins and see how they leveled up over time. See the various quests that led their characters to the battle with the BBEG. The movie would mostly play out in the fantasy world, but would flash to the "real" world on occasion where we could see the players play the game, and maybe even get into a standard D&D rules argument. This way we would actually understand this is a D&D movie and see how the game is played a little bit. But the real focus would be to get into the epic fantasy storyline. The "heart" of the movie would be about the friendships of the players (in real life and in the fantasy world) and the fact that they realize their gaming group and long-running campaign is coming to an end. I think this would have separated a D&D movie from all the other fantasy stuff out there and made it much more memorable.
Umm, isn’t kind of what D&D: HAT was, with the exception of the irl player flashbacks? A group of friends (they were a band of thieves in their background) against a BBEG (Thay Wizard) with flashbacks of their backstories and their friendship that evolves through the movie.
I just watched the movie and I loved it. :) They used the right blend of humor and action and still managed to make it feel like it was a real D&D party.
I know some people don't feel the same way as me, but how everyone feels about this is all subjective. If enough people like the thing, then that's probably for a reason.
This completely feels like D&D. The laughs, the chaos, the Plan As Plan Bs Plan Cs and Plan Ds. The Mimic, the Displacer Beasts, the Intellect Devourers, and the messed up Speak With Dead are all commonly used elements of games.
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BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explainHERE.
I saw it during the second week, was disappointed my favorite theater moved it from it's "main theaters" to its "side theaters" for the Nike movie (I mean, I know it's a significant shoe, but....).
I liked it, met the expectations of the trailers. Might catch it again at some point as I made the "Large Soda mistake" at concessions so missed a moment I knew would be coming and want to see it play out.
I liked how it started sort of meta with a character's extensive back story in front of a group of adjudicators who really want to get things going along. I was a bit miffed that Doric wielded a slingshot, not a sling, but it didn't destroy the viewing. I liked the potato recurrence. I also liked how the party had a clear Gen X / Gen Z split that might've been demographic research but I also think it sort of worked in terms of personality conflicts and resolution.
One thing that sorta pulled me out of the movie, did the artwork depicting the Red Wizards always have a sort of aesthetic evocative of let's call it the "Stranger Things look" or is that D&D just sort of adapting to popular imagination.
I don't know if I'd necessarily want to see a direct sequel, but I'd be happy if the team behind the camera and story did another one in a couple of years, I guess the plan would be to do "maybe somewhere else" as a setting if box office was encouraging, but I'm reading in this thread that it doesn't look like it is.
I just watched the movie and I loved it. :) They used the right blend of humor and action and still managed to make it feel like it was a real D&D party.
I know some people don't feel the same way as me, but how everyone feels about this is all subjective. If enough people like the thing, then that's probably for a reason.
This completely feels like D&D. The laughs, the chaos, the Plan As Plan Bs Plan Cs and Plan Ds. The Mimic, the Displacer Beasts, the Intellect Devourers, and the messed up Speak With Dead are all commonly used elements of games.
Oh yeah, I think it was definitely a Dungeons and Dragons movie, especially in that the characters came off as player characters as opposed to Arthurian or other serious lore characters. You could totally see this whole being discussed in the pages of Dragon magazine back in the day or the Story and Lore section here. I mean, maybe someone could neg the movies as a two hour long "PCs be like..." meme, but in some ways I think it was going for that.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
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In my opinion it was the best D&D movie yet.
If by "best D&D movie" you mean the best movie with Dungeons & Dragons in the title that's a pretty low bar and I doubt there's a single player in existence who would disagree. If however we're talking movies that capture the feel of a D&D adventure or campaign Honor Among Thieves is very, very good but is not at all of the same calibre of the Lord of the Rings films. Or any number of movies of the genre that handle journeying and questing in a way that is vastly superior.
I don't know, but I don't feel it fair to compare D&D: Honor Among Thieves to the Lord of the Rings movies.
That is kinda like comparing The Last Unicorn
To the Sword in the Stone
I love both movies, but one is an epic tale (LOTR, The Last Unicorn) and the other is a fun fantasy story (D&D: HAT, Sword in the Stone).
And in my opinion we need movies of both types, cause sometimes I want an epic tale and sometimes I just want to have fun for a few hours.
I absolutely loved the movie. I saw it twice during opening weekend. It's one of those movies that exemplifies, "they don't make movies like this anymore". It's just good fun and a great adventure. Great characters, fun story, great humor, and just wholesome fun all around. It harkens back to The Princess Bride, Star Wars, and Guardians of the Galaxy. I'm glad they leaned into a light-hearted comedy so that it breaks the barrier between the brand and the general audience who isn't familiar with it. I can't wait to watch it again. I hope the positive word of mouth helps the box office numbers in the long run.
I also loved it, I finally got to see it this weekend with some of my players! (hoping it comes out soon on Paramount+ so I can have a virtual movie night with my entire party!) it wasn't the best piece of writing out there, of course, but as a D&D fan I'm willing to overlook the less impressive parts of the movie because it captured the spirit of the game so well. I adored the humor of Honor Among Thieves in particular, because it felt so similar to the shenanigans that happen while having fun playing together at a table with your friends. it was great and I'm really glad it's doing so well
Beginner DM & Barbarian
Actually it has a $150 million budget to make up and Mario sucked up all the money on Honor Among Thieves 2nd weekend. So if you know people who are interested, tell them about it and give it a recommendation. The cast, crew, directors really delivered a solid movie I though, so I'd like to see it make some good money and maybe even get another one!
Let me start off with saying that i deeply love LotR, but it does not at all accurately reflect the D&D experience in my mind. It resembles a campaign that a DM imagines in his head, with grand overarching themes and all the characters acting just as he wants them to - cause that's basically what a book is.
In contrast, the D&D movie captures the feel of how the campaign actually turns out as a collaborative story told by several people who are just there to have fun and release some tension. No, that probably doesn't make it a lasting milestone in fantasy cinema, but it seems to me like finding the right tone would be incredibly tough and they totally nailed it.
I'll even go a step farther and say we don't need another LotR, and the filmmakers would have set themselves up for failure if that's what they were shooting for. This movie isn't just supposed to be an epic fantasy story, it's supposed to be about the game itself and the stories that come out of it. Previous D&D movies tried to lean too hard on telling their own (generic) fantasy story and suffered for it.
TLDR: LotR may be the campaign that we want, but D&D:HAT is the campaign that we get. Every time. And capturing that was no small feat.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
For sure!
I enjoyed it. Went in expecting to leave disappointed but was pleasantly surprised. It's a lot of fun. And I will assuredly watch it again once it's streamable.
Just think many are in flavor-of-the-month mode.
It's not at all realistic to believe people—players or otherwise—will be talking about the movie forty years from now as if it's one of the greatest fantasy films of all time.
If the movie managed to capture one thing perfectly it is the banter often exchanged at the table between players and in turn their characters.
I was worried the constant humor was going to spoil it. But it was just right.
But the movie is not the campaign we get "every time" and to insist as much is an insult to those of us who have played and who play in a variety of settings that are tonally different and that explore different themes.
Not every campaign descends into comedy of like degree. Or has the pace as well as the tone of that film.
It's worth remembering that Honor Among Thieves is PG-13.
Most campaigns I've run and have played in over the past forty years if committed to film would warrant an R rating.
There are things the movie does very well as far as capturing the experience of play. The stream of backhanded compliments among them.
But it's not at all capturing the feel of how every adventure or campaign turns out. No one movie could achieve that.
Neither the tone nor the pace of the thing, or even the style, resembled games in which I play. The world depicted in Honor Among Thieves was a bit too safe for my liking. It also made the same mistake Disney has made with the MCU by producing what was mostly a string of action scenes with little to no "glue" between them. This makes sense to some degree as it is a different medium but it always feels a bit like taking great comic arcs full of tension and drama and tearing out some of the best pages and dedicating most of the thing to panels portraying fights. Thematically it was nowhere near as dark enough to even capture the feel of D&D novels from the 80s and the 90s.
It needed to be light to make it marketable to younger viewers. That's perfectly understandable.
Another thing I thought it did very well was ...
... the decision to save Holga.
That certainly felt like something in a game.
A character whose backstory has him seeking a magic item that will enable him to revive his wife obtaining the thing but instead having to make the difficult decision to save one of his companions.
That was handled great I thought.
This, Doric explained it when she introduced herself, during her "meet and greet".
I enjoyed the movie... so did all of my friends who went when I saw it (including a wife who doesn't enjoy/understand DnD, but loves fantasy based things), which was a total of 5.
I think the enjoying of the movie comes from what was expected... in this day and age I've stopped analyzing any movie I am going to see that is based off an IP. It doesn't matter whether it is based off comics, a book, or something else... something is always going to be glossed over, missed, or changed due to trying to appeal to a wider audience and other reasons.
This movie also tried to mix all editions of Dnd to create itself because they borrowed from a lot of different editions to help create the movie what it was... which isn't far different from what is happening to every other IP out there... which is why it's understandable that folks will try to pick it apart and/or disagree with things.
Its a good generic fantasy movie, but not a good D&D movie. Doesn't really represent what makes D&D ... D&D. Basically made for non-D&D gamers. Lots of really weird stuff in the movie too... Bradley Cooper looked like a shrunken cursed human... not a halfling.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
However, they had players who messed up the use of a cleric spell while talking to the dead (I have seen this happen), a DMNPC essentially exists in the movie, fast travel happened, and crazy plans were made up and managed to get pulled off several times... I mean to me this sounds like either DnD games I have played, watched, or at least seen aspects of in games to me.
Hey, I'm glad you liked it. D&D is different for everyone.
The D&D movie I would have liked to see would have been completely different. I would have made a movie about a group of friends getting together to play D&D one last time to complete a long running campaign. Before they go off to college, or get married, (or whatever) and the group has to disband permanently. We would delve into an epic story of their characters going up against a BBEG... but go back to the beginning of their characters origins and see how they leveled up over time. See the various quests that led their characters to the battle with the BBEG. The movie would mostly play out in the fantasy world, but would flash to the "real" world on occasion where we could see the players play the game, and maybe even get into a standard D&D rules argument. This way we would actually understand this is a D&D movie and see how the game is played a little bit. But the real focus would be to get into the epic fantasy storyline. The "heart" of the movie would be about the friendships of the players (in real life and in the fantasy world) and the fact that they realize their gaming group and long-running campaign is coming to an end. I think this would have separated a D&D movie from all the other fantasy stuff out there and made it much more memorable.
That… is a very good idea for a movie.
Umm, isn’t kind of what D&D: HAT was, with the exception of the irl player flashbacks? A group of friends (they were a band of thieves in their background) against a BBEG (Thay Wizard) with flashbacks of their backstories and their friendship that evolves through the movie.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
I just watched the movie and I loved it. :) They used the right blend of humor and action and still managed to make it feel like it was a real D&D party.
I know some people don't feel the same way as me, but how everyone feels about this is all subjective. If enough people like the thing, then that's probably for a reason.
This completely feels like D&D. The laughs, the chaos, the Plan As Plan Bs Plan Cs and Plan Ds. The Mimic, the Displacer Beasts, the Intellect Devourers, and the messed up Speak With Dead are all commonly used elements of games.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.I saw it during the second week, was disappointed my favorite theater moved it from it's "main theaters" to its "side theaters" for the Nike movie (I mean, I know it's a significant shoe, but....).
I liked it, met the expectations of the trailers. Might catch it again at some point as I made the "Large Soda mistake" at concessions so missed a moment I knew would be coming and want to see it play out.
I liked how it started sort of meta with a character's extensive back story in front of a group of adjudicators who really want to get things going along. I was a bit miffed that Doric wielded a slingshot, not a sling, but it didn't destroy the viewing. I liked the potato recurrence. I also liked how the party had a clear Gen X / Gen Z split that might've been demographic research but I also think it sort of worked in terms of personality conflicts and resolution.
One thing that sorta pulled me out of the movie, did the artwork depicting the Red Wizards always have a sort of aesthetic evocative of let's call it the "Stranger Things look" or is that D&D just sort of adapting to popular imagination.
I don't know if I'd necessarily want to see a direct sequel, but I'd be happy if the team behind the camera and story did another one in a couple of years, I guess the plan would be to do "maybe somewhere else" as a setting if box office was encouraging, but I'm reading in this thread that it doesn't look like it is.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Oh yeah, I think it was definitely a Dungeons and Dragons movie, especially in that the characters came off as player characters as opposed to Arthurian or other serious lore characters. You could totally see this whole being discussed in the pages of Dragon magazine back in the day or the Story and Lore section here. I mean, maybe someone could neg the movies as a two hour long "PCs be like..." meme, but in some ways I think it was going for that.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.