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TSR's Lost 1980s Dungeons and Dragons Movie Script, Reviewed
An anonymous reader writes: Over at the Escapist, games historian Jon Peterson (of Playing at the World) reviews a recently-unearthed copy of James Goldman's 1982 script for a Dungeons & Dragons movie. The synopsis sounds even worse than the Jeremy Irons Dungeons & Dragons film from 2000, if such a thing is possible. Given the resolution of recent legal problems paving the way for a new D&D cinematic universe, will we have better luck with the franchise today? How can you translate the interactive experience of D&D into a compelling movie?
It's roughly the same dumb premise. If you asked a movie company to make a fictional movie about baseball, it would be a complete disaster. Lots of good films about baseball players, or baseball teams. But not about baseball in general. "Let's capture all of baseball in this film." It would be nuts.
Same thing here. "D&D" is just a framework in which fantasies are played out. Most are fun to engage with, but ultimately have very boring narratives to an external audience.
Gotta make the movie about something smaller.
It doesn't work. D&D is all about making your own experience, it just like how almost every video game movie sucks. You could in theory make a good movie that is set in the D&D universe but you need a $100 million dollar budget and someone like Peter Jackson to make it. This will never happen, it will have a piddly budget, and some no name director, I actually believe that Vin Diesel would be a good director for this movie, since he has been a big D&D guy for years. The best D&D cross over to video that I've seen is actually the Futurama episidoe Benders Game.
One of the problems with every D&D movie attempt up until this point is that they're always about end-of-campaign type things. But D&D is fun for the entire campaign. Especially since HBO's Game of Thrones has demonstrated strongly that gritty low-magic fantasy has a large audience, I think it would help a D&D movie to focus on low-level adventures. Like, levels 1 - 3, where Magic Missile (the bottle rocket of evocation spells) is the flashiest thing your Wizard can do, and even then just once per day.
I think a trilogy of movies, low-level, mid-level, and high-level, could actually do very well. The caveat being that the first movie would have to be very good to ensure the sequels aren't just wasted cash.