The D&D movie trailer is problematic because it has done an amazing job of telling you what’s wrong with the movie in just a few short cuts. The one piece of bad dialogue by Thora Birch suggests a lot about how little thought went into the political intrigue of the film. The few interactions between Marlon Wayans and Justin Whalin immediately establish that the character development will have the depth of a `buddy picture’. The brief interlude about the dungeon strongly suggests the kind of contrivance we can expect from the plot. The fact that a good actor like Jeremy Irons overacts through most of the trailer suggests that we are dealing with a shitty director. And I find it more than a little significant that we see in the romantic teaser between Wayans and Wilson that the human/elf race line doesn’t exist, but the black/white one does.
However, I have not given up hope. It may very well be that the editors of the trailer were simply morons, choosing the worst stuff as representative.
I’m very impressed with the look of the movie, and I don’t expect to be a bit disapointed about the level of eye candy. If they manage to bring massive aerial dragon battles alive, then they’ve achieved something that D&D fans have wanted for a long time. That in itself is an achievement that will put the film on the map, though it looks like they aren’t trying to achieve much more than that.
Obviously, the film is going to be thick with cliches. This I expected. But what bothers me is that they appear to be Hollywood cliches, and not D&D cliches.
And as for Jeremy Irons’ over-the-top performance, I have to say that it’s the best overacting I’ve ever seen. I mean, damn. Wow. He delivers the most chilling, nuanced hamjob since Lawrence Olivier’s Richard III. I can’t wait to see the rest of it. I’m going to be very sorry to see him lose in the end.
Before you start condemning the entire D&D movie based on the trailer, I suggest you go to http://www.dndmovie.com. The webmaster of that site has personally interviewed almost everyone in the cast and crew. He’s got tons of pictures. He’s talked to Dave Arneson, one of the creators of D&D, and found out he approves of the film. He’s even gotten a review of the full movie written by a guy who works for a competitor to the company that’s releasing the film, and even that guy likes it! Not to mention that the so-called “lame dialogue” spoken by Thora Birch in the trailer isn’t even the actual dialogue she says in that scene in the movie!
Oh, and by the way, the D&D cliche of sleeping in full armor no longer works in 3rd Edition. Just FYI.
Party meets in a tavern and has no motivation for going anywhere except that then the players will be bored as soon as the pizza is gone.
The Caves of Ultimate Evil are built within 200 yards of a thriving town so the DM doesn’t have to hassle with a wilderness adventure.
Everyone has a 10’ pole, 50’ of rope, iron spikes, a bullseye lantern, and boots designated by height and sole thickness.
Goblins, orcs, kobolds, and other humanoids have no better existance than to squat in caves and attack people. They have no skills and no economy. They never trade in the town 200 yards away. However, they have a pressing need for lots of treasure in the form of coins.
Dragons have no better existance than to sit on level ten of a dungeon and wait for people to come to them. Then they use their combined wisdom of hundreds of years of life to do a breathe/claw/claw bite attack.
Do you know anyone that doesn’t play with house rules? Current group pretty much avoids every one of the cliche’s he mentions.
Sleeping in Armour? You can sleep in leather one night. One of the more desired enchantments on armour is that it is ‘sleepable’ and can be slept in. (One guy in our group had his ‘pajamas’, enchanted studded leather which was sleepable, his normal armour was plate.) Another is that it is sizing…always annoying to find the 5’ armour and you are 6’ tall.
The reason why the monster has the special weapon in a locked chest, is because it can’t destroy it, and doesn’t trust anyone else to have it.
Actually, I’ve been visiting the site religiously over the past couple of months (though I don’t remember reading that Birch’s speech from the trailer was different in the actual movie; I skipped the whole discussion of the trailer and went straight to the thing itself), and have had a lot of positive impressions. But it’s really easy to make the movie look one way or another with the careful selection of data. The unofficial site makes it look really good. The trailer sets off a lot of alarms.
Actually, my players had already stopped expecting to get away with it in 2nd edition. But, I can recall a time… =)
More cliches, and other amusing inconsistencies, some of which have been fixed in 3rd edition:
There are only two kinds of magical broaches in the game – one good, one bad. If you find one, test it out on an NPC.
Ogres run right past the 1st level characters to get to the 5th level party
Mage casts Find Familliar', rolls Toad’ (that would be funny as hell to see in the movie) or `quasit’ (maybe not so funny)
Sometimes a whole cluster of healing potions do minimum healing
All kinds of people can cast `detect evil’, yet there’s still lots of evil people running around undetected
Mages and priests have been casting permanent Continual Light spells for centuries, yet people still need candles.
Blindness, deafness, and disease can be cured magically. But there are still blind people, deaf people, and people who die of disease.
Mages are supposed to be relatively rare, but somebody has been blowing a lot of points of CON to make +1 swords, and other low-power magic items
The money you pay for Holy Water would probably do just as much damage to the undead, if you threw the money instead.
Gold coins from all kingdoms and all eras are worth exactly the same
Elves are much more adept at magic than humans, supposedly, but none of them ever make it past 9th level.
Any of these things would have made great inside jokes in the movie.
Um, I hate to point it out, but the Con loss associated with the permanancy spell has only a 5% chance of occuring when used in conjunction with the enchant weapon spell. I believe that the same holds true with the crafting of any magical item, but am not certain as I am at work, and the books are out in the car.
More D&D cliches, from the halcyon days of AD&D First Edition:[ul][li]Coins weigh a whopping one-tenth of a pound each.[/li][li]It takes seven of these tenth-of-a-pound pound gold coins to buy one lousy hooded lantern, and one additional tenth-of-a-pound gold coin for enough oil to run the lantern for one night.[/li][li]However, said lantern oil miraculously transforms into Greek Fire or napalm or a lit Molotov cocktail or something, in mid-air, when hurled at an enemy.[/li][li]You have to rob widows, orphans, and banks to get enough one-tenth-ounce gold coins to pay for the training you’ll need to gain one lousy experience level.[/li][li]And you’ll need to kill about 200 kobolds to get enough experience to gain said level, before you’ll even be allowed to pay for the training. (Make sure you kill the kobolds’ children while you’re at it; they aren’t worth any experience points alive. :rolleyes: )[/li][li]Somebody went to great lengths to dig an underground labyrinth, finish the rooms therein, and equip half of said rooms with booby traps. The sole purpose of this amazing feat of construction is to house wandering monsters and gobs of minimally-protected valuables.[/li][li]It takes a full minute to swing your sword at an opponent.[/li]Every alignment has its own language. Intelligent magic swords use this “alignment language” as their primary means of communication.[/ul]
You forgot some more D&D cliches (shame on you for hijacking you own thread):
Derenged wizards have nothing better to do than ride dragons and terrorize small villages
Anyone couls find out if an article of clothing or jewelry was magical by putting it in and seeing if it changed size to fit them
No matter what items were found, they could always be sold at the store for half their price as listed in the Player’s Handbook
And my personal favourite:
Any time something happened and the the players questioned why, the DM had only to say ‘because I said so!’
p.s. Couldn’t they come up with a better title than ‘Dungeons and Dragons the Movie’? I mean ,c’mon, don’t bother to think or anything.
Honestly, I think going up levels must work just like in Highlander. Maybe a bit less graphic. But the ontology of it suggests something very similar.
We used to like to play dungeons randomly generated as we went through them, with the characters instantly going up levels the moment they got the XP. We pictured the characters falling to the floor writhing in agony as they made the subtle but excruciating transition up the Great Chain of Being.
The way I figure it, if a character gets enough XP to gain a level, the process actually happens the next time the character goes to sleep. He or she has a very intense dream which recaps all the adventures they’ve gone through from their former level to their new level. When the character wakes up, he or she instinctively feels stronger.
Officially, in 1st Edition AD&D, gaining a level required weeks of training costing thousands of gold pieces.
In 3rd Edition D&D, however, levels are gained instantaneously, just like in the Rogue or Hack or Nethack computer games. It is possible to be down to 1 hit point while fighting 2 orcs, successfully kill one orc, and have the experience points from the orc you killed give you a new level, complete with an extra hit-die worth of hit points, allowing you to survive the remaining orc’s next attack.
“You memorized `affect normal fires’? What are you, a moron?”
“Look, two guys in leather armor.”
“Thieves! Get 'em!”
“Hey, baby. What’s your alignment?”
“Yeah, give me 100’ of silk rope, 10 pitons, a quiver, three flasks of oil, a 10’ pole, a pint of greek fire, ten iron rations, a wine skin – better make it two – a tinderbox, and some thieves’ tools.”
“Got an I.D. for the greek fire?”
“Ah, well, I must have left it in my other breeches.”
Finally got to view the trailer (I am LOVING this new cable modem), and the D&D movie looks at least as good as X-Men. Sure, Irons is overacting, but I’ll wager the role calls for it. And it’s really just “filler” until the Lord of the Rings movies come out, anyway. hehe…
I do take a certain level of exception with the claim of one swing a minute. The arguement has always been that the player is swinging far more than that, but that during a one minute segment a lower ability character will notice a single opening to strike at, higher level characters will naturally notice far more slip ups in their oponents defenses (This is explicetly mentioned in 2nd ed, and I believe also in 1st.) Obviously this has its own problems, since A) it assumes that the higher level guy hasn’t learned to better defend himself? and B) No counting for fatigue, so characters can swing all day and party all night.
Any others?