The first film, simply entitled Dungeons and Dragons, was an famously rubbish, medium-budget movie released in 2000, starring Jeremy Irons, Thora Birch and Marlon Wayans. The sequel, Wrath of the Dragon God, was released in 2005 and was a near-zero budget movie starring absolutely no-one you've ever heard of. Whilst the first film was awful, it did have some basic watchability (due to the excellent 'down a pint every time Jeremy Irons either overacts or looks like part of his soul has died due to the dialogue' drinking game). The sequel was fifty times worse. If the trailer is accurate, the third will continue this decline in quality to hitherto unsuspected depths.
If you want to watch a decent D&D-based movie, I instead unreservedly recommend The Gamers II: Dorkness Rising, a very zero-budget indie movie made by fans with real talent and wit, and much more successfully nails what makes roleplaying games fun.
That was just... awful lol
ReplyDeleteThank you, that was hilarious! I realise, of course, that this was not the intent - by the way, did I miss-see or was it really called The Book of Vile Darlings?! That would be great - were this a parody...
ReplyDeleteLRK
There's always 'Knights Of Badassdom' coming out later in the year. Looks amusing.
ReplyDeleteNearly Headless Ned.
The Book of Vile Darkness... Really?
ReplyDeleteLooks worse than many fan-made films, in fact it looks like it was made by fans and not a professional studio at all.
ReplyDeleteIt's just really sad.
Adam,
ReplyDeleteIt is really easy to sit there and pull down someone else’s work because it might not fit in with your sensibilities. Have you ever made a film? If you have, may I we see it to pass judgement? No one sets out to make a bad film, but I am surprised at the level of negativity in your critique. If those films were so bad – how come they were funded for further instalments? In the business, this does not happen unless there is bottom line demand for the work which proves there is a paying fan base.
Looking forward to seeing your work.
Kenneth
"Have you ever made a film?"
ReplyDeleteYes. For my friend's film degree we made several short films over a decade ago.
"If you have, may I we see it to pass judgement?"
Since they no longer exist and weren't very good, then thankfully not :-)
"If those films were so bad – how come they were funded for further instalments? In the business, this does not happen unless there is bottom line demand for the work which proves there is a paying fan base."
Excellent question. The D&D movie rights saga would make a film in its own right. Essentially, TSR (the original D&D game company) sold the film rights to Silver Films in the late 1990s. These rights allow Silver Films to keep the rights as long as they make one D&D movie every seven or eight years or so. The second and third D&D movies have both been made at near-zero-budget (by Hollywood standards) solely to fulfil this contractual obligation.
This has become more pressing since Hasbro, who own Wizards of the Coast (the company which bought TSR in 1997), want to launch a big-budget D&D movie series (possibly based on one of the numerous best-selling novels in the franchise). They can't do this whilst Silver Films have the rights, unless they offer a substantial sum of money to buy the rights back from Silver Films early. Silver are likely holding onto the rights specifically for that purpose.
The situation is similar to that which has led to us getting a SPIDER-MAN reboot so quickly: unless Sony made a new SPIDER-MAN movie within five years, the rights would revert to Marvel Studios, who would be more than happy to incorporate Spider-Man into their collective movie universe. To keep hold of the lucrative franchise themselves, Sony had to make a new film with a completely new cast and production team once the previous creative team bailed.
The difference is that Silver Films have no interest in making a good movie themselves, only to hold onto the rights by exploiting the technicalities until they either do decide to make a massive blockbuster, or are able to re-sell the rights to Hasbro for a substantial sum.