Anyone seen it? Is it awful?
It’s a great fun movie. The plot’s great, the pacing is great, the references are great, the comedy is great. It’s a fun adventure with a relatable team of misfit heroes.
It takes some liberties with the game mechanics to accomplish this. If you can’t forgive that, you’ll have a rough time, especially if you like wildshaping druids and spellcasting bards.
While it does skirt some game mechanics, probably due to it being a movie and it’s a strange medium to adapt, it also does some really cool subtle things with the mechanics. For example, in the final major fight all of the characters attack in the same order. They’re in initiative!
My wife suspected this about that final fight, but it goes by quickly in the theater, and unfortunately it’s streaming on one of the few services we don’t have or want to pay for, so we haven’t re-watched it in a pause-able format.
This, pretty much. Pretty hard to be 100% game accurate and make a good movie. Appreciated where they took license, and where they stuck to some (often, obscure) lore.
They also show one of the characters, the bad guy if I remember, having to use concentration for a spell!
One of the rare movies that starts shaky and then finds its footing and breaks out into a conditioned run by the end of it. Didn’t go in expecting much, got a good time.
Rest ye Jarnathan, you deserve a break.
Edit, and the dragon! My wife is obsessed with dragons and she was in love with the one in the movie, it’s like her favorite dragon now.
But they do pay attention to a lot of fine detail. Such as the battle sequences where the party always remains in turn order properly.
Such a fun movie that felt just like playing a session or three with friends.
Oh goodness, hadn’t noticed that. Will have to watch for it on the inevitable rewatch.
You guys manage this in 3 sessions? My group is playing a space opera, and it takes about 3 sessions to fly from one system to the next.
Our last two hour session was combat round 2, continuing from combat round 1 from the previous week. The week before that was the end of the puzzle before the combat round.
It’s our groups first quest, we’ve been going for almost a year, and have done a dozen or so combats and 3 “one offs” that 2/3 lasted more than one session. The DM loves it because he gets to fill in a lot of flavor/lore for everything, we love it because we move at our own pace.
2 hour sessions can be rough. Even just bumping up to 2.5 hours feels like you get a lot more game per week. I do love how unhurried you guys are though. Sounds like everyone in your group is fully engaged and immersed.
It also helps if everyone simply enjoys being friends. The game becomes a reason to block your agenda and spend time with friends.
This is the most accurate description, IMO. If you’re looking for something that’s going to incorporate all the game mechanics into the story, and do so accurately, this isn’t it.
If you want a great time at the movies with excellent comedy, action, and characters you care about - while still holding true to the fantasy and adventure spirit of D&D?
Buckle up, baby.
First off I mean this in a good way. I thought it felt a lot more like a movie of how real life players would play the campaign, rather than an attempt at a movie adaptation of a book. And having played D&D, I think it made the movie more relatable to the core audience.
So definitely recommend it.
Plans that are doomed to fail, improper use of a magic item, overpowered npcs to nudge the players back in track? Yeah they nailed it.
I honestly enjoyed it way more than I thought I would. They is a chonky dragon. I repeat, a chonky dragon!
The best part of that was learning that the chonky dragon is actual canon content. Not made up just for the movie.
:3 yes please
It was such a fun movie! It was much better then it had any right being! With that said, the things I appreciated was, the world felt lived in, they didn’t make a big deal out of races other then humans, just continued on like “Yeah, bird people, that’s a thing we all know is real and accept”.
With no spoilers, I heavily appreciated the “dragon scene”, it was an interesting take that made it fresh but was still an incredibly dangerous situation for the characters.
It’s fun. Don’t expect anything extraordinary and you won’t be disappointed.
Some of the plans they hatch really feel like the wacky stuff players come up with.
Definitely go in with exceptionally low expectations if you want to have a good time. I was fairly optimistic based on the
reviewsrampant shilling on Reddit and was pretty disappointed. If you’d asked me for a score right after I watched it I’d go 4/10. In hindsight it’s more of a 6 if you allow that it’s supposed to be a bit tongue in cheek and the stilted dialog is a feature rather than a bug.With those caveats it’s a perfectly good way to waste two hours if you have nothing better to do. It has no memorable lines or scenes, and is just an average hot-topic-of-the-moment throwaway action movie.
As far as franchised products based films it’s very rewatchable and I imagine will be a comfort movie on the future.
Id put it just a little below the Lego Movie for quality for what’s essentially an advertisement movie. No complaints however.
As a D&D fan it hits the sweet spots of references but not to feel like it’s pandering (see Super Mario Movie). For a die hard D&D fan you can feel the die rolls going on in the movie.
I imagine Hasbro will kill or ruin Studio One somehow which is a shame I would want more of these kind of D&D movies
“Feeling the die rolls” is very accurate. My group of friends plays 5e pretty regularly, and we all enjoyed the movie a lot.
Not just feeling the die rolls, I could also feel the DM going “oh crap, the bridge is gone now, how will they get across? I know, I’ll give them a portal gun.” And then for the rest of the movie the DM going “oh crap, they have a portal gun now, how am I going to stop them from bypassing every challenge with it?”
As a D&D player, that was my favorite part. The times when the party was getting creative and you could see the DM say, “Ok, roll for xyz to see if that works.”
So many times when I thought, “Yeah, I could see us coming up with that.” Followed by, “Oh yeah, our DM would definitely do that.” And yet it managed to have enough heart and be generally entertaining enough that your non-D&D friends will enjoy it too.
Especially the very beginning, where they come up with the crazy plan to escape, somehow manage to actually pass the persuasion check they didn’t think they would pass, then go through with the plan anyway because they worked hard on it.
“We were going to release you!”
I felt the GM’s frustration in that one!
It is some times campy, but in a good way. It doesn’t take itself too seriously. Overall al lot of fun and a lot of great references for fans.
Highly recommend it!
It’s something we haven’t seen at the the movies for a while. A nice fun action romp. Think what Marvel films used to be at the start when they were self contained stories and not just set up for the next movie. It somehow manages to be exactly like a D&D game while also being completely enjoyable even if you don’t know what D&D is.
It is very good. Feels like DnD as played by players and a dm that has to adapt to their stupid ideas.
Exactly. Lots of house rules at this table.
To be fair, the DM had to adapt to his own stupid ideas at various points too.
I loved it. Campy as fuck but awesome.
Super underrated!! I didn’t expect to be laughing the whole time. Loved it!
It’s quite good. Far better than I expected it to be.
I had a great time watching it. It’s definitely worth checking out even if it’s not for you. There’s enough fun to justify it.
Thought I’d hate it. But all in all i came out of the cinema with a positive experience. The plot is kinda basic, but it captures a homebrew dnd campaign pretty well. It’s a lot of fun
As not a player I liked it. Light viewing, funny and they managed to show low rolls pretty well
Both myself and my wife really enjoyed it. I have played D&D for a long time and my wife had never had any interest in it.
