Producer Compares 'Dungeons & Dragons' Movie To 'Guardians Of The Galaxy,' Rolls A Crit And Adds d6 Damage
The beauty of Dungeons & Dragons is that it's a big sandbox where anything and everything is possible. However, the great curse of Dungeons & Dragons is that it's a big sandbox where anything and everything is possible. As a game system, D&D is simply a bunch of rules and an ever-growing library of books that offer more options, letting players build their own adventures and tell their own stories around their table. Whether these adventures are rich and fulfilling or a total waste of time falls entirely on the gamers – it all comes down to how well you use that sandbox.
That's why a new film version of this beloved role playing game (now in its fifth edition) is equally intriguing and terrifying. After all, a film version can be anything! But it can also be anything. Now, one of the film's producers has given us an idea of what to expect. Are you ready for a fantasy riff on Guardians of the Galaxy?
Collider sat down with producer Roy Lee at DICE 2016 and he offered a variety of updates on his many projects, including The Stand, It, and Death Note. Their latest dispatch deals with the Dungeons & Dragons movie, which was initially announced last August and it sounds like the movie is starting to come together. In fact, Lee name-drops Marvel and Raiders of the Lost Ark when he describes what they're cooking up:
This new Dungeons & Dragons will be a Guardians of the Galaxy-tone movie in a Tolkien-like universe. Because when you think of all the Hobbit movies and The Lord of the Rings, they have an earnestness to them, and to see something fun, a Raiders romp inside that world, I feel is something the audience has not seen before.
He's right about that. D&D is commonly seen as being straightforward high fantasy, full of straightforward heroes battling evil villains and hordes of monsters. And some people do play D&D like that and they have a great time. However, the joy of this system is in that malleability. Making a film version that goes against the grain is actually in the spirit of a proper campaign – the one thing the various manuals don't tell you is what you cannot do.
Take my current D&D campaign, whose most recent sessions saw an adventuring party meet in prison, stage an escape, and then wander through the Underdark for days as they starve and bicker and almost die every time they turn around a corner. This party isn't all noble knights and mysterious elves. We're criminals and buffoons and psychopaths, drawn together by chance and kept together by the fear of death. If we can accidentally create our own ragtag group of unlikely adventurers around a dining room table, then Hollywood is entirely allowed to bring elements from successful films into this universe. Dungeons & Dragons was built to accommodate your whims.
A Dungeons & Dragons movie could be terrible (the first movie is pretty much a train wreck), but it could be magical. Remember, this is a sandbox – all of the elements are up for grabs, but a great storyteller will know how combine this and that to create something special.
For additional details, you can check out the full article at Collider via the link above.