To your point about the portal staff being convenient, that's actually one of many examples of this movie really mirroring the tabletop experience. The party walked themselves into a dead end and the dungeon master (the person running the game) threw in a useful magic item that would allow them to proceed. I actually heard someone make a similar point about Xenk (the paladin): he has the feel of an overpowered NPC that the DM threw in just long enough to help the party get unstuck. They were even a bit tongue-in-cheek about it: "you're kind of better than us at everything." This movie is enjoyable whether or not you've played the game, but if you have, it really FEELS like the game, even if they stretch the rules in places (that's also something we all do at the table 🙂).
I saw someone else point out that even the timing of the battles closely mirrors the game, with the characters all taking turns making a move about six seconds apart!
"I would like to investigate the bridge myself, see if I can assist as well." **nat 1** "Shit." DM: "Great... Uh... Would you mind giving me a perception check?" **rolls 16** DM: "You notice one of your party members is carrying a familiar looking object, and upon further inspection, you realise it is a Hither-Dither Staff."
I think my favorite gamer detail is the name "Jarnathan". It screams "the players have hatched some kind of crazy plan based on a detail I've forgotten, and now I have to, on the fly, flesh out an NPC who was never supposed to be anything but a random bit of background." That, and the arena being *literally* partitioned off into five-foot squares.
The bit where Regé-Jean Page walked away across the shore was a partial blooper: he didn't hear the director call cut, about halfway to the rock, so he just kept going. He figured that his character would never stray from his chosen path, so he just climbed the rock and continued going.
@@macmcleod1188 kinda both. He didn't hear them call cut and when he kept going they decided to let him keep going, instead of running someone after him, bc by that point it was just funny.
As a long-time D&D nerd, I thought this was a very enjoyable adaptation. The main thing to remember is that D&D isn't so much a story as it is a setting for stories. Several different setitngs, actually. The one this movie takes place in is The Forgotten Realms, which is easily one of it not the most popular ones. I think this movie did a great job of creating a fun story that takes place in that world. The snark level, the one-liners, and bickering all reflect what is the most common way people play D&D as well. These writers knew what they were doing, and they did it while also making it 100% accessible to people who don't know anything about D&D. I really didn't think it would be this good.
@@DarksideGmss0513 I agree generally, but I feel like it was a very deliberate choice on the part of the creators to help differentiate what the characters can do. It's tough to explain in character that 'bards can cast spells, but not as good as the Sorceror, and also druids cast spells but they're different spells that generally apply to different things' without slowing everything down. While it would have been better for D&D fans it would have been a whole other level of complexity for non-fans to grapple with, so I think in the end it was the right call. Still, I wish that Edgin could have contributed something besides talking good and bonking people with a lute. Doric ignoring her spells in favor of focusing on wild shape feels like a choice that an irl player would make, though.
I don't even think of D&D as a setting, but obviously it has a few built-in settings. D&D (and other table-top RPGs) are a storytelling medium. D&D specifically is optimized for action-adventure in a high fantasy world, but it's very versatile. There's always going to be cross-pollination between narrative media, and D&D is no different.
Watching the movie, it was the sneaking the painting into the carriage scene that felt the most D&D to me. The DM designs a whole castle and lets the characters get familiar with its layout already (at least 3 of them have already been inside it), plans a couple waves of guards for them to try to sneak or fight their way past, has them go on a short quest to get a magic item that will allow them past the last obstacle, and gets ready for the big "break into the castle" adventure... but the players decide to put a portal on a painting and sneak it into the vault instead. And the DM thinks, "Uh... wait... what?!" then takes a deep breath, rethinks their plans, and just goes with it. Because the majority of the time, the players come up with far more interesting and fun (and often bizarrely elaborate) plans than you would for them, and it's a blast!
The Legend of Drizzt is actually set in the Forgotten Realms universe of Dungeons and Dragons. D&D has a SHOCKINGLY large world and influence on almost every aspect of modern fantasy, probably just as large as Tolkiens work. So many games, movies and other properties are loosely set, or entirely set, in the Realms of D&D
@@dansmart3182 This is a common myth, misconception, but not the case. Drizzt was crated on the fly. They were literally on their way to a meeting about the book, and once of the existing characters could not be used and so they had to make a new one right then and there and Salvatore just made up Drizzt, who was supposed to be a side character at the time.
@@movienightwithjacqui The first time we see them in live action was for the Renault KWID car commercial in 2019. th-cam.com/video/IHoG3RS4QL8/w-d-xo.html
@@TynamM Eric gets a bad rap. The show always painted him as being wrong because of the mandated "pro-social" message of always going along with the group at the time, but if you listen to the actual things he's saying, most of the time, he's at least mostly right.
@@movienightwithjacqui FYI: A) The dragon that didn't spit fire was Black and thus spits acid. B) All of the spells cast in the whole movie are actual spells from the game so players can identify them. C) Watch some Critical Roll if you get a chance. Season 2 Episode 1 is enough to get a good feel for the genera. (The original table top series not the animated series from the 1980s nor the new one on Amazon.)
A lot of people believed the Hither Thither staff to be bad writing. Imagine the movie is a DnD session. The party has arrived at the bridge. The DM is explaining this difficult puzzle the party has to solve to progress. Somebody rolls a 1 (or they just screw up) and the bridge collapses. Now they have no way to cross and the DM has to come up with something. "You know what, that staff you got, it's a hither thither staff." Adventure continues. So glad you included the council member saying "Jarnathan!" again. Subtle humor, cracks me up.
Not necessarily, since it was purposefully placed, and even referenced, as something Holga claimed from a wizard she killed. In this case, the DM would be planning ahead for it's eventual use, and just needed someone with the right knowledge to see/identify it. The players simply used it for more than the DM originally planned, most likely.
@@richardyoung3462 Well, I think for the purpose of the film it was necessary to set up the staff earlier on. But I can easily imagine this scene to be exactly like a DM coming up with something on the fly to get the players across. Just, if they literally did that in the movie it would read as cheesy more than as humorous. It was a fine line, and I think they did it correctly.
And just like every DnD campaign, when the DM gives them a small equipment to keep the story going, the group abuses the hell out of it for the rest of the campaign.
"A lot of people believed the Hither Thither staff to be bad writing." A lot of people are also anal-retentive neckbeards who wouldn't know a fun time if it fell out of the sky, landed on their face, and started to wiggle.
17:52 I LOVE their relationship. For once they don't make the man and woman who spends time together become romantically involved. They love each other, 100%, but in a platonic, familial way. And those scenes show it so well, he knows how to cheer her up. She was feeling down about her ex husband and when he starts singing to her she starts to smile. Holga makes snarky remarks about Edgin, but the amount that she cares for him is obvious. When Forge and Kira were talking about the tablet and calling it the tablet of riches, Edgin could have stood up for himself fine but Holga made sure to speak up and try to defend him. Those two in this movie really have a super sweet relationship.
Mini Cooper S 189 hp over 135 hp 2 liter over 1.5 - My Aunt used to drive me to school accelerating through every corner/turn what an adrenaline rush for a 10 year old.
As someone whose only D&D experience is through osmosis from other media like Stranger Things I never felt lost with this movie. They did a great job of not alienating non players & it is truly one of my favourite in theatre experiences this year.
Yeah it has a good balance. Obviously they had to use a ton of CGI as well, especially for the wildshape creatures and spells, so I like that they were able to bring as much real elements in as well to help balance it out and ground it. It would've been very easy to make it feel too fake.
Jarnathan is such a D&D name, it makes me feel like Abed Nadir wrote this screenplay. I could definitely see Jarnathan alongside Brutalitops, Zippideedoo and Hector the Well-Endowed.
Absolutely a name that the DM pulled out of his rear end when the players unexpectedly asked about it. “Hey DM, what’s the Aaracokra member of the council called?” “Umm… Jar… Jarn… Jarnathon? Jarnathon!”
Oooh, excited to see this! As someone who has run a D&D game for the better part of five years: this movie is REMARKABLY accurate to how games actually go. You can tell where they rolled low, rolled high, when the DM is clearly fucking thing them ("The corpse says, 'I didn't,' and immediately dies.") when the DM was expecting them to NOT be able to fuck something up and had to pull something out of their ass to keep the plot moving when they do (the bridge and staff) etc. Just a really fantastic rendition of the hobby.
I love hearing that! I have many DnD players in my life, and they have very kindly refrained from giving me any feedback until I had seen it, so I love hearing positive feedback about this. It definitely helps me see the adaptation elements, so I appreciate it!
When I was watching it there was moments I was like, 'Oh... Edgin failed his dexterity saving throw.' and he got tripped on the table and time stopped. Or, the intelligence one as every character in the team usually has intelligence as their dump stat (Sorcerer and bard are charisma, Barbarian strength and Druid having Wisdom.)
The Legend of Drizzt is actually a D&D property set in the Forgotten Realms, same as this movie. The Underdark they go to is the same one that Drizzt is from, just a different section of it. In fact, they were originally planning on having Drizzt show up to help the party but decided not to go in that direction this time around and replaced him with Xenk.
As an adaptation this movie is incredible. Overall the feel of it mirrors the feel of playing in a D&D campaign, from seeing game mechanics realized in live action like the spellcasting (both the casting of the spell with their necessary components like words and gestures, and the actual effects), to the situations so many players have experienced (like accidentally wasting your questions on a Speak With Dead Spell or one impatient player not waiting to solve a puzzle and setting off the bridge trap). Just as important to me, though, one thing that makes this a successful adaptation is where it diverges from the game to create a better film experience while remaining true to the spirit of the game. Perfect example of this is the displacer beasts-the panther-like creatures in the maze. In the game they appear to be a few feet away from where they’re actually standing, so attacks are more likely to miss targeting the illusion. That wouldn’t translate to the screen. So, they created the decoy projection effect which worked wonderfully, and still keeps the theme and spirit of the displacer beast. Brilliantly done. It’s full of things to recognize if you’re familiar with the game, but those things aren’t required knowledge. Very much enjoyed your reaction!
Even though it was clearly going to happen, it was such a good scene to me for two things: 1) It showed that Holga was really her mom, something that is obvious in hindsight but I didn't necessarily think of her that way until that montage, and 2) the asking his daughter first rather than just doing it, which was probably 80% just making sure we that audience understood the stakes, but to me also seemed a subtle character growth moment of him realizing he can't just do what he thinks is best for Kira but instead needs to talk with her about what she thinks is best.
@@kenmarable Add to that his talk when rescuing not-Kira, admitting he wasn't trying to bring back her mom, but his wife. That distinction was a major character growth moment.
see, I was so happy about this scene as they made the typical, oH character died but we revive her trope actually good. I hate it ALL the time but this one was actually good despite being predictable (like they all are) as it serves a purpose and pivotal character moment then just, "oh we make the audience sad to then make it all for naught.'@@kenmarable
One of my favorite background details about this movie is that they actually got the cast together with a professional dungeon master from Wizards of the Coast, and ran them through a D&D game so that they could understand the character dynamics at play in the game. Particularly, the way that within a party (unlike in a normal movie) there is no singular main character who can do everything. Everyone has their role, and no one is greater or lesser than the others. Think of it - in a traditional blockbuster, Pine would probably be the all-around dashing hero, but in this... he's the bard. He's the comic relief and the heart of the group. He's no swashbuckler, he's just the character with the most investment in the story, and he's just desperately trying to keep everyone on task XD Also, speaking from the perspective of a D&D player, particularly one who was burned by the one in the early 2000s, when I heard that they were making another D&D movie... I was worried. They genuinely put all of my fears to rest, though, and did D&D justice cinematically at last.
Yeah, this film is super fun and everything plays out like a table top campaign. What's great is that it works for those that have never played but has a ton of stuff for those that have. It's crazy how well they balanced that. And, I agree, the fight choreography is probably way better than it had a right to be for a film, like this. You'd think that's where they'd really save budget but they really went for it and we're all thankful for it.
This movie was great. Never played D&D, but I did play other RPG’s. And this is exactly what I picture a group would imagine their characters would do in a game-all the quipping, improvising, and fails that somehow become successes despite themselves. Lol Such a fun story with such fun characters.
19:19 I know, confusing isn't it? We are used to seeing dragons that breathe fire. In Dungeons & Dragons lore, there are different varieties of dragons, there are dragons with scale colors based on basic colors like red and blue, they are called "chromatic dragons", and there are dragons with scale colors based on metals like gold and silver, they are called "metallic dragons". Red and gold dragons breathe fire. That dragon in that flashback scene, Rakor, he is a black dragon, and black dragons spit out corrosive acid. Blue dragons spit bolts of electricity, green dragons breathe poisonous gas, and white dragons breathe freezing ice. 23:09 There's a good reason why when you hear "Underdark", you think of Drizzt. This D&D movie is set in the same D&D world as R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt books, the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. In fact, the directors of this movie originally wanted Drizzt to appear in this movie, but they had to abandon all plans of Drizzt appearing. It's for the best, I mean the books are still going strong, there should be a new book coming in a couple months, you don't want to contradict anything Bob Salvatore has cooking up for the character. 26:43 To tell you the truth, Themberchaud is the very first obese dragon ever, and there is a reason why he is like that, but I'll give you the short version. He was born and raised in the Underdark by a monastic order of psychic Underdark dwelling dwarves, they used Themberchaud and other dragons before him to light up their forges so the dwarves could temper their weapons and armor with ease. They kept Themberchaud happy by feeding him slaves that tried to stand up against them. When Themberchaud got older, he eventually realized that the real reason why the monastic order that raised him kept feeding him is because they were trying to kill him off, as they don't let the dragons they use to keep forges on fire reach a certain age (dragons get more powerful the older they get, red dragons like Themberchaud are the strongest of the chromatic dragons). In other words, yes, that is how he is supposed to look. He wasn't THAT overweight in the Out of the Abyss adventure, but this movie is set a few years after that adventure, so it makes sense for him to gain more weight. 33:05 I LOVED that part! The whole theater erupted in laughter when that happened! 33:44 I wish I could tell you what the chanting is, but, as a guy who has played D&D related video games like Baldur's Gate for the past 13 years... I honestly don't know. I'd say its an original score. 36:43 Mimic. I HATE those things.
10:37: "With a brick!" Yep. Holga definitely has the "Tavern Brawler" feat. 11:36: "Bad things better happen to this man. Like, really funny bad things." I think we've got you covered. 19:17: Different color dragons in DnD breathe different things as a breath weapon. Red and Gold dragons breathe fire, green dragons breathe toxic gas, white and silver (if I recall correctly) breathe cold, black dragons breathe acid, and there are many others. Also, "chromatic" dragons -- red, blue, white, black, green -- are evil, "metallic" dragons -- gold, silver, bronze, copper -- are good. Though they're all pretty greedy and arrogant. 20:45: Don't worry. "Speak With Dead" only lasts fifteen minutes, and doesn't actually restore a soul to a body, just reanimates it to make use of whatever knowledge the corpse had in life. He'll be fine. Probably. 25:09: The Hither-Thither Staff is *exactly* the kind of thing a DM pulls out of nowhere when the players' own stupidity and/or bad rolls stick them in a dead-end in the story. Especially as it proves FAR more useful going forward than the item they actually came to get, as the players realize how versatile this thing the DM handed them is, and they start using it to solve all kinds of problems, and the DM has to adapt to keep it from snapping the adventure in half. Doric's line of "good save" is even a bit of lampshading, as in DnD a "saving throw" is made to resist something bad happening. In DnD fan parlance, the DM "saved against plot derailment." 41:49: "She lost her focus! Nice!" Yep. "Concentration" is a big thing in DnD, you can only concentrate on one spell at a time, and losing concentration ends the spell. It can be done by taking damage, as Doric did. Great piece of dice-to-narrative: Doric's player rolls an attack with her sling, the dice are good, DM rolls Concentration for Sophina, she fails. . . Doric's stone hits Sophina in the head, knocking her back and making her loose focus on her spell. I get your point on tone, but that's actually part of what makes the film work as an adaptation. Less the structure of "go here do this, go there do that, go this place and do some other thing," but in the sense of DnD , and tabletop role-playing games in general, being a very social experience. Getting together with your friends, sitting down and having an adventure, making jokes, having fun, working together to tell a great story. Every group that's gamed together for a prolonged period of time develops their own secret language of in-jokes, references, and call-backs to their old sessions. This really felt like a group that had been gaming together for awhile, had developed that bond. Maybe playing new characters on a new adventure, but the tightness is there. The players are all comfortable with each other, so the characters feel close, and they all bounce off each other really well, leading to that rapid-fire comedy. Now, yeah, "the players" aren't an entity in the movie, but for a tabletop gamer, you can practically *FEEL* them lurking just off the screen, picture the conversations that are leading to the decisions being made in the film, hear the players telling the DM what they're character is going to do, feel the DM's descriptions of places, settings, and actions. 51:38: I think it's a combination. Yeah, there were almost certainly studio executives saying "Marvel movies make huge money, make it like a Marvel movie!" But yeah, DnD has inspired and been inspired by so much fantasy fiction, there are definite similarities to see in other properties. But also. . . tabletop RPGs involve a group of friends sitting down to collaboratively tell a story. One player takes the role of Game Master (Dungeon Master in DnD-specific language), who runs the other players through the adventures. The GM controls all the other characters who aren't played by players, the NPCs. They decide what happens when there's ambiguity. They enforce the game's rules. And if they're not running a published adventure, they're coming up with the world, characters, and plot. They're kind of like writers, except they don't have control over what the main characters do (bad GMs try to enforce that control, known as "railroading," but tend to grow out of it as they gain experience in GMing). So a GM will likely pull story ideas and characters from other fiction and incorporate it into their world, sometimes in really cool and subtle ways, sometimes. . . not. Sure, this movie feels a lot like a Marvel movie. . . probably because the players of these characters are all MCU fans, maybe even go out to see Marvel movies as a group when they aren't gaming, and have picked up the Marvel snarky sense of humor and incorporated it into their games, intentionally or not. This leads me to what I think is my favorite bit in the movie. When the party are sailing away on the boat filled with Forge's treasure, I believe that was intended to be the end of the adventure. All their personal goals had been completed. The DM describes Sophina bringing down the Beckoning Death, the cap to this first session that will kick off a new campaign. Neverwinter has fallen, Thay has a foothold in the rest of the Forgotten Realms, war is coming. Alliances will need to be made, armies raised, heroes brought up, weapons and artifacts found to stand against. . . wait, what? What do you mean you're going back?!? You want to fight Sophina? *(sigh)* Are you SURE you want to do that? The DM does softball the fight with Sophina a bit, she was clearly way out of the heroes' league, but in the end they pull through. And the DM's whole campaign, starting with the fall of Neverwinter to Thay, is ruined. . . but that's okay. Because the important thing is that everyone had a good time.
As an avid D&D player/DM, this movie felt VERY much like an actual gaming session. If you know how the game works, you can tell when the characters roll well and when they roll poorly. And part of the point of playing the game is how you react to the poor rolls. D&D is from the early to mid 70s. It has influenced a lot since, but the granddaddy of fantasy is The Hobbit/LOTR, which influenced D&D and everything else. I suggest finding a group to join and play with, then re-watching this movie with some experience under your belt, to see how it feels then.
A lot of other comments already did a good job giving a bit of more info on the easter eggs. One of my favorites is Simon is a wild magic sorcerer, a class in the game that has a % chance of something random happening when casting a spell. From turning into a potted plant, to exploding, to turning blue or summoning an unicorn. In the movie they expressed that by making him use a roulette when casting spells and having a chance of not casting the wanted spell! Also the fat dragon is part of canon. He got spoiled by evil dwarves and fed slaves in exchange of keeping the forge going. (there is a story that the creator of the game created the fat dragon when he was about to introduce a dragon and his fat cat jumped on the table) Also! The cat with the hologram is called a displacer beast they are usually described as blurry and hard to hit. The chest is a mimic and the ooze cube all three stable monster in Dnd. The final battle is my favorite because 1 expose the concept of concentration which is needed to keep some spells going and that they take turns hitting her which is how dnd works. A round lasts 6 seconds from the first person to the last taken their turn. They made sure to choreograph the fight so it looks like they are taking turns while keeping the flow!
Don't forget the intellect devourer scene. Intelligence is a dump stat for almost every class. Thus, you had the bard (charisma), barbarian (strength, constitution), paladin (strength, constitution, charisma), druid (wisdom), and sorcerer (charisma). And the intellect devourers just walk on by. Hilarious.
This movie is how you cater to both fans and non-fans. It has a ton of references and inclusions for players, as well as just perfectly capturing the FEEL of a campaign with the tone and the DM needing to send in Xenk as an NPC to save the party. But it’s also super enjoyable for people who have never played it before! The people who made this movie are clearly fans, but they’re also extremely talented filmmakers
"Did this influence other fantasy? Did other fantasy influence this?" Yes. "This is definitely a post-Deadpool film." Deadpool's end credits scene was a duplication of the end credits scene from Ferris Beuler's Day Off, so that film should be the one given credit.
If you know DnD, you can actually follow along with the spells cast in the final battle. When the heroes emerge into the square, Sofina is casting Meteor Swarm, a max-level spell that calls meteors down from the sky. Simon casts a protective spell, likely Antimagic Field since the 1st level Shield wouldn't protect all of them. When Sofina gets knocked out of the sky by Doric, she casts Thunderwave to hurl Doric away, then what looks like Animate Object on the statue. Doric comes back at Sofina, who Misty Steps (teleports) up to the tower and maintains concentration on Animate Object. That ties up the party for a moment until Doric hits Sofina in the head with her slingshot, breaking her concentration. Sofina then casts Bigby's Hand to attack Doric, but that's blocked by Simon upcasting (casting a lower level spell at a high level for more power) Maximillian's Earthen Grasp. Then in that final beatdown, Simon appears to cast some low level lightning spell (there's not really a good analog for Force lightning, although it's possible it's a homebrewed spell), Sofina casts Shield, there's some trading of Thunderwaves and Shields, Simon casts Scorching Ray (the three bolts of fire) but whiffs it, and then Sofina Thunderwaves all of them away and begins her Time Stop.
Something that doesn't seem to get mentioned a lot, is that this movie doesn't have a typical love story, and I love that. Right from the beginning, they made it that Holga and Edgin were more brother and sister than being in love.
I've been playing D&D and various other table-top roleplaying games like it for something like 30 years and in particular I'm a huge fan of the forgotten realms (the setting this takes place in). They did an amazing job and I love this movie! Whoever wrote the script was very knowledgeable about the lore and all the exposition is very spot on (and I do understand it getting tedious, but there's so much stuff involved.) Fun fact: I first learned about that chunky dragon like 20 years ago when I was meeting some new friends to start a D&D group and we were sitting around swapping entertaining info. His name is something like Themberchaud, this city of evil dwarves that live in the underdark used him to light their forges in exchange for regular food and he got fat... I also really enjoyed the paladin, the way he played a Lawful Good (we jokingly call it lawful boring) character with no irony and all seriousness was perfect.
It's genuinely so wonderful to hear how happy D&D fans/gamers are with this movie. I enjoyed it regardless, but it means so much more when it resonates with the people who love it most. It's so special!
A dragon of that name appears in drizzt's guide to the underdark, but without any of the memorable details you mention. They're from 2015. Here's the entirety of DGttU's information on him: "Themberchaud (CE young adult red dragon), the Wyrm-smith of Gracklstugh, lurks in a hidden side cavern on the south side of Gracklstugh's central grotto atop a treasure hoard, unseen by visitors. Themberchaud's fiery breath weapon tempers the legendary steel blades of Gracklstugh in exchange for regular contributions to his hoard. Like his predecessors, the red dragon is attended by a monastic order of duergar priest/psionicists. Known as the Keepers of the Flame, they cater to the dragon's every whim that falls within the pact between the young wyrm and the rulers of House Steelshadow." Not really a character one would have a whole discussion about and remember 20 years later. (Even so, fair point about the earlier appearance, someone should really add it to the Forgotten Realms wiki for his character, which only mentions OOtA and movie-related appearances)
@@nescirian I love your assumptions about a conversation that you weren't a part of, and yes, the chunky dragon stuff wasn't really part of it. it had more to do with a dark dwarf city using a dragon as a forge, not to mention a planet of tarrasque and a few other random bits of nonsense that was part of a conversation I had with two really good friends when we first met. The best part was when one of them walked in the room to make a character and asked if we were rolling 16+1d3 for stats...
As a player, they did a pretty good job with the dnd. The story takes place in Faerun, an official dnd campaign setting, so as a player you recognize the places (Revel's End prison, Neverwinter, Baldurs Gate, etc), the races of creatures (Doric as a tiefling, dragonborn council member, Jarnathon the aarakocra, the tabaxi cat people), the magical beasts (owlbear, intellect devourer, rust monsters (blink and you miss early on), axe beaks (big ostrich like birds), mimic (the bitey treasure chest), displacer beast (the magic maze panther), the gelatinous cube they jumped into). And you recognize lore. Szass Tam and the red wizards of Thay are actual Faerun big bads. Themberchaud, the fat dragon, is a canon dnd character. You recognize what they get right, like spells that they cast or how black dragons have acid breath, not fire. And things they bent on purpose to make the movie fun, like technically druids can't be owlbears bc they are monstrosities, and wow she'd have to be an insanely high level to wildshape that many times in a row. But who cares bc it was dope to see in a movie. But, as you noticed, none of that is necessary to enjoy the movie. It just means for us players they brought dnd to life in a spectacular way without making that a barrier for entry to anyone else.
25:00 "It's a Ither-Tither staff ... / How convenient !" Yes, sometimes, the DM has to do something when the players screw up... in any other movie, this scene would have been a "deus ex machina" and bad writing... in a DnD movie, it's very accurate because in almost every game session, something like that happens.
I remember one time while poking around Undermountain, me and my crew were in a bad way. People were bleeding out. all magic was spent, potions were gone and it was time to camp. Suddenly a very familiar looking white-bearded wizard in a red robes chases a puppy through our camp waving a stick at it yelling "Heel! Heel!" Just like that, we were back in the game!
My favorite part is when the Red Wizard starts her epic villain monologue, they just smack her. That's something that every villain in movies does and the heroes always wait around to listen, but nobody does that in a D&D campaign, so neither did the heroes in this movie, as truly, that's what they are written to be.... not characters in a normal movie, but characters in a D&D campaign as played by players that don't have time for silly villain monologues!
16:40 “Are there supposed to be subtitles here” Yep I have no idea why it’s not showing for you but she basically said “the druid is probably working for the thieves that escaped and to follow them. Also these guards behind us failed to catch them (basically ‘kill them’)”
Most of the times you were talking about “terms you wouldn’t know because you don’t play” are like… names that were already established in the movie, real terms (things like “Druid” or “paladin” are real words outside of D&D), or something that’s like.. just a name (“lord of neverwinter” you don’t need to understand what neverwinter is, just to know that it’s a place that’s worth having a lord-of)
I have a headcanon that Xenk is a player that was in a previous game with this same group but had to drop out because he left for college and jumped in for a couple sessions on break mostly to screw with Edgin's player.
the legend of Drizzt is dnd. the R.A. Salvatore books that introduced Drizzit and the underdark were written in the Forgotten Realms, where this movie takes place. it started in Icewind Dale, where they were at the beginning in prison.
Love to see you broadening your scope and watching something I imagine you wouldn't normally consider!! There isn't much quite like a pure fun movie!! I had such a good time with this movie!! Glad it blew everyone's expectations out of the water!
I’ve watched some D&D stuff here or there but I didn’t know 75% of the names and places they mentioned. I loved it. I think you’re trying to hard to remember every single little thing. You don’t need to know any of it to follow what’s happening.
One of my favorite things in this movie (besides Themberchaud the Chonky Dragon, of course) is that Holga and Edgin have a long-standing, "life partners" kind of relationship with one another, but it's a completely platonic one, despite them both being single and having compatible orientations. It's so rare to see that in fiction, especially for main characters, and so rewarding when it's done this well.
27:37 "This movie is starting to drag a little bit". Said during the scene with the dragon. And you didn't say "drag on". Your license to pun is hereby revoked. 😛
To answer your question about airspeed of unladen swallow...do you mean african or european? You also asked what the dragon was breathing during the battle scene. Looked like a Black Dragon, and in D&D they breath acid. Fun fact, Chromatic Dragons are evil, and are colors like red, black, green, white, an so on. Metallic Dragons are good, and colors like gold, silver, bronze, copper, etc. I just watched this movie last night and was quite pleased. So thankful it wasn't as bad as previous D&D movies. Always hoped after the success of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, hollywood would put actual effort into fantasy films. Still hopeful one day we'll get a live adaptation of the Dragonlance Chronicles.
Drizzt is from the Forgotten Realms. This movie is set in the Forgotten Realms. Under the umbrella D&D setting, there are several settings (usually just different fantasy worlds). Like the Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Eberron, Dark Sun, Mystara, Greyhawk, Ravenloft, etc. Those brands, in the last five decades, have seen many D&D adventures and campaign modules, but also videogames, books, comic books, cartoons, Magic the Gathering cards, etc.
I know I'm commenting on an old video, but this whole film *feels* like a D&D game. It's great if you haven't played D&D, but it's even better if you have. I'll list some examples: - First, the movie itself is like the storyteller or DM telling the story of the game, but the characters themselves are also constantly acting as storytellers as happens in D&D. - "Jarnathan" and many other names feel like silly names the storyteller needed to come up with on-the-fly. Imagine the players ask, "are there any Aarakocra (bird people) on the Absolution Council?" as they try to plan for an escape plan. - Then Jarnathan arriving late was that the DM wanted them to try to get released, not break out of prison. He'd planned this big skill check and storytelling challenge for the players, so he didn't want to bring in the Aarakocra. He'd already said there was one on the council though, so he arrives at the end. - The scene where Edgin is trying to cut his binding ropes on the step is him constantly failing a skill check to free himself. - The first round of questions with the corpse they dug up was the storyteller not allowing the player to break character, which set a chain of failed questions. - The Paladin, Xenk, is a clearly a Non-Player Character (NPC) controlled by the storyteller, and is too powerful to keep in the party beyond that one quest. - After the players messed up with the bridge puzzle, they used the Hither-Thither Staff. I've always had 2 ideas for what that's meant to be in-game: - The players were basically stuck, so the storyteller decided to make it the Hither-Thither Staff to allow the game to continue. It's not fun otherwise. - The players started searching their sheets for any items that could get them out of this jam, and someone noticed the Hither-Thither staff on the barbarian's sheet. - The loop going: exposition, quest, exposition, quest was just separate game sessions. So each loop was the intro to prep the players for the day's session, and they play that one quest. - Forge feels like the DM said, "I need a quirk for this NPC... I know! I'll have him complain about everything!" - The group is constantly coming up with "plans" for how to get through things, and they feel like things players would come up with.
I like how the common praise is that it feels like an actual D&D game. There are nat 1s and 20s, moments where the DM was bullshitting just to continue the story, players are goofing off throughout it all and somehow succeeding in their idiotic plans, and the exhausted DM relents to let them get away with it because they rolled high enough or it fits in-character.
Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez have actually been playing D&D since their childhood, and it shows. Chris Pine has been an advocate of having schools get children to play as it teaches things like world building, character creation, problem solving and team work.
that movie has the most tasteful fan service ever. there's no wink-wink cynicism, it's a genuine heartfelt story, but internally, things work like they do in dnd. there's a part where the sorcerer throws a rock at the BBEG to break Concentration, it works, and the BBEG casts Misty Step as a Bonus Action to avoid Fall Damage. I lost my mind. And the movie respects the audience enough to not make a big joke out of it.
The origin story of Themberchaud, the fat dragon, involves a fat cat that jumped onto the table during a D&D session and knocked over the mini figures of the characters.
Evil dragons - color coded for your convenience! Red dragons breath fire, Black acid (like the one in the flashback), Blue dragons have lightning breath, Green poison gas, and White cold breath. The good dragons (metallics - Gold, Silver, Bronze, Brass, and Copper) I don't remember as clearly. Having the acid-breathing black dragon in the trailer was the first real indication to me that there was going to be a certain underlying faithfulness to this movie. Loved it, top to bottom!
I'll toss in another recommendation for The Legend Of Vox Machina. This movie was definitely a pleasant surprise, and the writers did a solid job making it feel like a real game, but Vox Machina just dials it up. Plus the cast is absolutely stacked.
There was a lot asked in questions at the end of the video.... so... As an adaption. It was fine. There were a lot of callbacks to D&D from the monsters, the magic spells, items, etc. You can look at it as a, "so, what if we took the premise of a group of players and put that into a movie". You had the character giving their backstory, etc. You had the DM (Dungeon Master) inserting an overpowered DM NPC in the form of the paladin to help complete the quest. Were there liberties taken? Yes. The druid shouldn't have been able to morph into an owlbear, but, in this case, the rule of cool won out. So yes, it was fine. As for what inspired what. You saw Guardians of the Galaxy meets D&D with how everyone interacted. You saw the Hulk and Loki scene with the wizard and druid in owlbear form. So yes, there were a lot of "people liked this so let's do that" in this movie. As for D&D, Tolkien helped inspire D&D. D&D has basically been its own thing since, with everyone referencing Tolkien instead of D&D when it comes to fantasy. The convenient. Yeah, that happens in D&D, as well. The group does something which would bork the quest, so the DM improvises a way the group can get out of it, hence, Simon borks the bridge and voila, the walking stick is a hither/thither staff. Then, the rules get... vague... during the campaign. At first, the hither/thither staff might get across that small chasm, then, it reaches from the bay to the balloon. The whole "oops" happens. In the cemetery, Pines character asks questions that don't pertain to the corpse, but, are counted. Well, dig up another corpse. So, the writers definitely looked at the movie as a group actually playing the game and how that would translate into a movie.
I've heard great things about Vox Machina! I think I watched the first episode with a friend, but I don't remember much of it, so I most likely will go and do it at some point 😄
By the way, there were three adventurer parties that were in the maze. Theirs, one that gets all the killed scenes, and the third is the party from the D&D cartoon from the 80s!
Everybody says, "fighter is so basic". Hey, when you are up a creek without a paddle, you need a class that delivers. Fighter, delivers, day in and day out. That is all.
Something younger players and younger viewers didn't catch on to is that one of the teams in the maze is actually the characters from the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon show that ran from 1983 to 1985. The small kid with the horned helmet's team in the background at 37:18. It was a nice detail to add for us older players who remember the cartoon.
The fat dragon is from fairly early D&D canon. Apparently, Gary Gygax (game creator) was playing a game when a cat jumped on the table and started causing havoc. Gygax decided it was like a fat dragon and created Themberchaud (spelling?), a dragon raised in captivity and fed to obesity by evil dwarves who wanted it to provide fire for their forge. Obesity was to make it harder to escape through narrow tunnels.
fun fact about the interlect devourers: they go by the inteligence score, the whole party (bard, barbarian, druid, sorcerer) and the DMNPC (paladin) are classes that tend to have low inteligence scores, since they focus on other abilities (charisma, strength, wisdom and charisma again, respectivly) so it would make sense that non of this group would have a high inteligence score XD
The thing I loved about this, was all the stuff with Michelle's character and her fighting style. I'm 100% certain she has a combat feat from the game called Improvised Weapon. Basically if you get that feat (ability) for your character, they can use pretty much any object around them as a weapon. Given she incorporates random objects in every fight, to painful effectiveness, INCLUDING a potato, it just feels like one of the creators was a fan of that feat from the game, and wanted to work it into the story. Because while it is funny, given how dense and tough a potato can be, having someone as muscular as Michelle Rodriguez chunk one at your FACE, yeah that's going to hurt! 🤣
12:00- Reverse Gravity is a High level Spell. Not common either. The oldest most powerful Silver Dragons naturally develope the ability to innately cast it.
I love this movie; one of the best of 2023 so far. I had no problem with the pacing except maybe the surprise cameo by Bradley Cooper's Marlamin. I think they moved the story along fine. As long as they did the quippy lines are enough for me. They don't have to escalate things. I think the repetition is part of the game - missions/quests is pretty much it. That is the fun playing with your friends. If you know the terms, I think it will be more funny, but as someone who never played the game, I was fine not knowing all the terminologies.
3:38 Close! 19:16 In DnD, Different color dragon has different breath weapons, Red Dragons has the classic fire, this is a Black one, they spew acid. (There is also Blue lightning, White Ice and Green Poison gas) 41:07 also, if you know a thing or two about the game, you can recognize the things they all do as actual spells and actions from it. 49:28 I don't really think there was a lot of exposition. for example, they mention that Zenk was a paladin. that would be akin to a medieval movie saying "He's a knight" it's just a curosry description. Exposition to me would be taking a beat to explain to the viewer what a Paladin were, (that is a warrior that has taken an oath and through that oath has gained magical powers) As someone said in an earlier comment, D&D is more of a setting than a story. D&D is the sandbox with rules for telling your own stories, this movie tells a story using the same set of rules as the games uses to tell the stories through improvisation and dice rolls. (If you'd like to see another D&D thing, check out "Legend Of Vox Machina" on Amazon, that is a story played during livestream by Critical Role adapted to an animated series)
The humor wasn't based on Deadpool. It is based on people playing the game and constantly trying to one up each other. Zinging each other and trying to roleplay the best and most interesting character is part of the fun. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings had a very heavy influence on Dungeons and Dragons but they were doing it for decades before any of the other modern fantasy stuff which was influenced by it. Shorter would have taken away a lot of the feel of playing the game being on the screen.
So, D&D the short version. You are playing John Wick. Director says 5 guys with guns break into your house. What would you do as John? John is very good with guns, you try to shoot an intruder. Your skill with guns, plus a roll of the dice, determines if you hit the intruder. Same situation, but now you are Playing Hermione. What would you do as Hermione?
Perfect adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons. The entire story development feels like a D&D campaign without feeling at all amateurish (which is common in gamey films).
-one year late- I'm sure lots of other people have said this but this movie genuinely is the closest thing I've seen in scripted media to what playing DnD actually feels like. Even down to pacing. I feel like everyone involved in this movie understood the assignment to make it a movie about DnD not a movie set in a DnD universe. Forgot how much I loved this movie, thanks for the reminder!
As far as influence, bit of both. Dnd was the product of Lord of the Rings and tactical tabletop wargames, but instead of controlling armies, you play as heroic individuals. But it has gone on to influence the culture, too, and be in turn influenced. Like you mentioned Drizzt. He's a many decades old famous dnd character. The Icewind Dale trilogy takes place in Faerun, the most well known dnd campaign setting. That prison where the movie starts and ends, Revel's End, is in the far north of Icewind Dale. And there are many other novels set in Faerun or simply influenced by the genre. As well as movies and video games. I think most dnd players see a movie like Guardians of the Galaxy and relate to it as a dnd party. A wild assortment of bumblefucks using chaos and mayhem to doofus their way into heroics bc 9/10 the plan fails and you have to improvise your way to awkwardly save the day. So is this movie reflective of the media being changed or did it change the media? Yes. It goes both ways. The game has evolved over several editions, influenced by changing culture, but it has also influenced culture and, as such, media. You can even see that with dnd as a game becoming way more mainstream in the last decade or so, with the rise in popularity of actual plays like Critical Role and Dimension 20. And CRs animated show based on their first campaign, The Legend of Vox Machina. If you watch animated shows it is well worth your time. It is... not for kids. They do change things for the shift in media, but it stays pretty damn true to the campaign so it's a good example of translation from actual gameplay to show if you want that kind of vibe check to compare to this.
D&D is cooperative storytelling. The person running the game creates the world which just might be a town or a ruined castle where ever the story is taking place. The players each control a character in the story. Each character has their own special skills and abilities. When something happens that may or may not work then you roll dice to see if it works. So if a monster tries to hit you with a claw then they roll to see if they succeed. Likewise, if you want to hit the monster with your sword then you would roll to see if you hit the monster. Success or failure the story always moves forward. D&D is used to tell sword and sorcery stories with larger than life heroes. There are other role playing games that allow you to tell science fiction, horror, dystopian future or any number of other types of stories. There is probably an RPG out there for you.
Yeah, this is very accurate to how tabletop D&D games go. The Hither-Thither staff is a prime example of that. A Dungeon Master will write a great story for the players, only for the players to muck it up and the DM inventing a convenient workaround. D&D players can get very silly, their solutions to problems are absolutely insane.
One of the gags with the Intellect Devourers (the little brains with legs) is that in early editions of the tabletop game, the Bard was an Intelligence based spell-caster. We never see Edgin cast any spells even though he's a Bard, since the Devourers simply ignore him, that means he doesn't have the Intelligence necessary to cast spells.
Bards now use Charisma, and have for at least the last 3 editions. Also, we definitely see Edgin use Bardic Inspiration often, and one could argue that more subtle mild charm spells could also have been used without fanfare.
Re: the no-fire-breathing dragon at the 19 minute mark.. Watching 2 months later, but didn't see this answered so didn't know if it had been. In Dungeons & Dragons different dragons have different "breath weapons", indicated by their color. That dragon was a black dragon, and their breath weapon is acid, so in the flashback battle sequences that's what it sprayed.
Also, Drizzt was originally supposed to appear in the movie, but there was controversy regarding drow, so they dropped it and replaced him....with Xenk Yendar.
I don't know if this has been mentioned or not, but Doric is an insanely powerful Druid that technically breaks the rules in several ways. 1) you can't wild shape more than twice before you need to rest, she does it 4 times in her recon. 2) She has 5 wild shapes, for which I don't know the precise rules but I suspect that she needs to be at least L10 out of the 20 you can get to, and is more likely to have to be an Archdruid in order to have that many. 3) Owlbear is not a wild shape you can have because you can only be a creature not something classified as a Monster. Oh, and the cynical side is both right and wrong. A lot of things that happen in a number of movies do have a source in events in someones RPG, but those scenes in movies also influence GM's to setup something in their games. It's hard to tell what the inspiration was in general but I'd say that half of the amusing action scenes in the movie take inspiration from other action movies, after all it's easier for professionals to use something that they know can be done rather than try to do something new that might not work.
Tolkein (lord of the rings) was the inspiriation for Dungeons and Dragons. Since then D&D has gone in many ways. Orginally its "world" was called Greyhawk, but in the late 80's a new world had been published and became a huge deal, called the Forgotten Realms. Which became the default world of D&D in modern times Drizzt and underdark are all part of the Forgottem Realms (way back at its beginnings) and so is the D&D movie which mentions a lot of popular locations in the Forgotten Realms as it is now the default world of D&D. D&D has inspired things itself, like the mentioned forgottem realms and thousands of others.
@Jacqui, One aspect to D&D is that there are several worlds/planets you can choose to play on that have been added over the game's 50 year existence, each with it's own flavor and idiosyncrasies, but all of them have at least a veneer of Medieval European era life being the foundation with the added trait that magic of some fashion is common in daily life. If you've ever watched "Game of Thrones" or "The Hobbit/The Lord of the Rings" you get the idea (and it's not a stretch to say a lot of D&D was directly inspired by Tolkien's fiction*). That said, yes this movie does a respectable job of representing both the game and this particular world (this Earth-like planet is called 'Toril', but the game world is more colloquially known among players as "The Forgotten Realms"). Most of the "action" in this world takes place on one continent called 'Faerun', a thinly vailed analog to Western Europe, and in this case the western-most region along a big ocean known as "The Sword Coast". *case in point, Bradley Cooper plays a "halfling", a.k.a. a Hobbit.
D&D is the OG Reality Story Telling media. You create the scene and script as you go. Over the decades you do develop a history accepted at large which is why those who know this loved this film. They didn't skimp or take shortcuts, or diverge from cannon, which is so reassuring for sequels. So many of those that I know feel the movie was too short. So, I disagree on it being too long. And the "Memberries" were woven nicely and not obnoxiously. I watched this about 6 times in the first week it released and continue to watch it often. It never gets old.
When you name-dropped Legend Of Drizzt, I did a doubletake. lol Legend Of Drizzt is a Dungeons & Dragons novel set in the exact same setting as this movie (The Forgotten Realms, specifically the Sword Coast of the continent of Faerun), and the directors considered putting Drizzt in this movie, but decided to create Xenk (Reggae Jean Page's character) instead, since he was gonna be the butt of alot of jokes and they weren't sure how fans would feel about making fun of such an iconic character. So yeah, the Underdark in this movie is the same Underdark, they just didn't go to Menzobarranzan.
Ah that makes sense! I read a huge chunk of Drizzt in high school, but I had no idea it was part of a larger universe, so hearing "The Underdark" definitely caught me off guard! I may have to revisit the series!
@@movienightwithjacqui I highly recommend it! Now that you have seen this movie, you may have new insights about the world you didn't previously! I am thinking about revisiting the Drizzt novels myself someday soon! Back in High School I read quite a few Drizzt novels myself, but my main Dungeons & Dragons book series of choice has always been Dragonlance (particularly the main books written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman). If you do revisit the novels, I hope you get new enjoyment out of them!
"But we approved your pardon" is genuinely one of the funniest moments I can think of in any movie. Perfect line delivery. EDIT: One of the many reasons I love this movie is that they take care and don't skip steps. Like, if you watch back the big fight against Sofina you can see the moment when she stabs Holga, it's not something they just throw in after the fact. A Marvel movie made in the last few years wouldn't have bothered, by comparison.
As a long-term D&D player, this was a fair adaptation of a tabletop game. It was also a fun game that's accessible to most audiences, though doubtless daunting to those who aren't familiar with the game. A shame it didn't become a series.
This movie is sort of a reboot. It was many years ago and if I remember correctly it was called "D&D the movie". Where the D&D community generally likes this film, that first film is referred to as "The movie that shall not be named" by D&D geeks.
my favorite part of this movie is how you can just feel that Xenk is a DM character. like, everything about him just screams "you guys are idiots so here i made you a super powerful lawful good paladin hot sexy man to get you to where you need to go" its HILARIOUS this movie was 100% made by people who not only play but LOVE playing DnD, i genuinely hope we get a second one with the same actors playing different characters on a different campaign i think that would be perfection
The dragon in flashback scene is spewing acid. In D&D, red dragons have a fire breath weapon and black dragons have an acid one (and white has ice, blue has lightning, etc.) It's a whole thing. Edit: Also, I just want to say that this film isn't exactly a masterpiece, but it pretty much perfectly captures the feel of a real D&D game. That very special blend of goofing off with your friends, heroic tales, and "Wait, WTF?" we all love so much. Also, also, you're dead on about the pacing issues. It's mostly fun and well done, but it really could have used another editing pass.
To your Deadpool references, in reality Deadpool is a return to that kind of snarkiness that was big in the 70's, 80's and 90's, check out movies like Smokey and the Bandit, Stripes, 48 Hours, Tango and Cash, Bull Durham, Caddyshack, Meatballs and so on
You asked what the dragon was spweing, and it was acid. There are five types of Chromatic and Metalic dragon, some worlds have gem dragons as well. But each dragon has a different breath weapon.
I think its one of the best movies made in recent memory. I watched it on chance on my TV randomly after it came out and it blew. Me. Away. People don't make movies this complete anymore. It felt like a throwback to the movies of the 80s and 90s.
Im sure it was said before but if it wasnt: red dragons breath fire, blue breathe lightning, green breathe poison, white breathe ice, and black (like this one) breathe acid
As an adaptation, I thought this movie was great. They use actual rules from the book like concentration (when Doric hits Sofina with the garlic in the final fight that breaks her concentration on the Animate Object spell she used on the dragon statue) and plenty of other spells and monsters straight from the handbooks. It genuinely feels like a DnD session in movie form, and I loved every minute of it.
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To your point about the portal staff being convenient, that's actually one of many examples of this movie really mirroring the tabletop experience. The party walked themselves into a dead end and the dungeon master (the person running the game) threw in a useful magic item that would allow them to proceed. I actually heard someone make a similar point about Xenk (the paladin): he has the feel of an overpowered NPC that the DM threw in just long enough to help the party get unstuck. They were even a bit tongue-in-cheek about it: "you're kind of better than us at everything."
This movie is enjoyable whether or not you've played the game, but if you have, it really FEELS like the game, even if they stretch the rules in places (that's also something we all do at the table 🙂).
The intellect devourers, too. All the characters' classes have intelligence as a dump stat, so _of course_ they ignored them.
@@mbpoblet
I made the same point. LOL. That scene was a riot for those that play D&D.
I saw someone else point out that even the timing of the battles closely mirrors the game, with the characters all taking turns making a move about six seconds apart!
"I would like to investigate the bridge myself, see if I can assist as well." **nat 1** "Shit."
DM: "Great... Uh... Would you mind giving me a perception check?"
**rolls 16**
DM: "You notice one of your party members is carrying a familiar looking object, and upon further inspection, you realise it is a Hither-Dither Staff."
I think my favorite gamer detail is the name "Jarnathan". It screams "the players have hatched some kind of crazy plan based on a detail I've forgotten, and now I have to, on the fly, flesh out an NPC who was never supposed to be anything but a random bit of background." That, and the arena being *literally* partitioned off into five-foot squares.
The bit where Regé-Jean Page walked away across the shore was a partial blooper: he didn't hear the director call cut, about halfway to the rock, so he just kept going. He figured that his character would never stray from his chosen path, so he just climbed the rock and continued going.
The way I heard it, they decided to punk him and intentionally didn't call 'cut' on a whim to see what he would do.
The fact that you can still see him walking in the next scene is gold
@@macmcleod1188 kinda both. He didn't hear them call cut and when he kept going they decided to let him keep going, instead of running someone after him, bc by that point it was just funny.
@@pemberliegh that's funny.
As a long-time D&D nerd, I thought this was a very enjoyable adaptation. The main thing to remember is that D&D isn't so much a story as it is a setting for stories. Several different setitngs, actually. The one this movie takes place in is The Forgotten Realms, which is easily one of it not the most popular ones. I think this movie did a great job of creating a fun story that takes place in that world. The snark level, the one-liners, and bickering all reflect what is the most common way people play D&D as well. These writers knew what they were doing, and they did it while also making it 100% accessible to people who don't know anything about D&D. I really didn't think it would be this good.
The only complaint I had was that the bard and druid didn't cast any spells.
@@DarksideGmss0513 I agree generally, but I feel like it was a very deliberate choice on the part of the creators to help differentiate what the characters can do. It's tough to explain in character that 'bards can cast spells, but not as good as the Sorceror, and also druids cast spells but they're different spells that generally apply to different things' without slowing everything down. While it would have been better for D&D fans it would have been a whole other level of complexity for non-fans to grapple with, so I think in the end it was the right call. Still, I wish that Edgin could have contributed something besides talking good and bonking people with a lute. Doric ignoring her spells in favor of focusing on wild shape feels like a choice that an irl player would make, though.
@@ezrawyrd9275 I agree.
I don't even think of D&D as a setting, but obviously it has a few built-in settings. D&D (and other table-top RPGs) are a storytelling medium. D&D specifically is optimized for action-adventure in a high fantasy world, but it's very versatile. There's always going to be cross-pollination between narrative media, and D&D is no different.
"D&D isn't so much a story as it is a setting for stories." Very well said, sir.
The Legend of Drizzt is set in the same universe as this movie. The prison is set in Icewind Dale, a major set piece in the books
"what's the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?"
"I'm bad at math." *dies*
"European or African Swallow?" dies.
Watching the movie, it was the sneaking the painting into the carriage scene that felt the most D&D to me. The DM designs a whole castle and lets the characters get familiar with its layout already (at least 3 of them have already been inside it), plans a couple waves of guards for them to try to sneak or fight their way past, has them go on a short quest to get a magic item that will allow them past the last obstacle, and gets ready for the big "break into the castle" adventure... but the players decide to put a portal on a painting and sneak it into the vault instead.
And the DM thinks, "Uh... wait... what?!" then takes a deep breath, rethinks their plans, and just goes with it. Because the majority of the time, the players come up with far more interesting and fun (and often bizarrely elaborate) plans than you would for them, and it's a blast!
The Legend of Drizzt is actually set in the Forgotten Realms universe of Dungeons and Dragons. D&D has a SHOCKINGLY large world and influence on almost every aspect of modern fantasy, probably just as large as Tolkiens work. So many games, movies and other properties are loosely set, or entirely set, in the Realms of D&D
Came here to say this!
Didn't Salvatore base drizzt off of his home game?
And the first trilogy is set in the Icewind Dale, which is the opening sequence of the movie!
@@dansmart3182 This is a common myth, misconception, but not the case. Drizzt was crated on the fly. They were literally on their way to a meeting about the book, and once of the existing characters could not be used and so they had to make a new one right then and there and Salvatore just made up Drizzt, who was supposed to be a side character at the time.
And also Drizzt was supposed to be in this movie he was supposed to be who they went to instead of the paladin Xenk.
37:19 - The group in the cage are dressed as the characters from the animated Dungeons and Dragons series!
That's so cool!
@@movienightwithjacqui The first time we see them in live action was for the Renault KWID car commercial in 2019. th-cam.com/video/IHoG3RS4QL8/w-d-xo.html
@Jamie_PritchardThat was never a risk. They knew their audience. If they'd killed off that party we'd have rooted.
Except Eric, obviously.
@@TynamM Eric gets a bad rap. The show always painted him as being wrong because of the mandated "pro-social" message of always going along with the group at the time, but if you listen to the actual things he's saying, most of the time, he's at least mostly right.
@@movienightwithjacqui
FYI:
A) The dragon that didn't spit fire was Black and thus spits acid.
B) All of the spells cast in the whole movie are actual spells from the game so players can identify them.
C) Watch some Critical Roll if you get a chance. Season 2 Episode 1 is enough to get a good feel for the genera. (The original table top series not the animated series from the 1980s nor the new one on Amazon.)
A lot of people believed the Hither Thither staff to be bad writing.
Imagine the movie is a DnD session. The party has arrived at the bridge. The DM is explaining this difficult puzzle the party has to solve to progress. Somebody rolls a 1 (or they just screw up) and the bridge collapses. Now they have no way to cross and the DM has to come up with something.
"You know what, that staff you got, it's a hither thither staff."
Adventure continues.
So glad you included the council member saying "Jarnathan!" again. Subtle humor, cracks me up.
Not necessarily, since it was purposefully placed, and even referenced, as something Holga claimed from a wizard she killed. In this case, the DM would be planning ahead for it's eventual use, and just needed someone with the right knowledge to see/identify it. The players simply used it for more than the DM originally planned, most likely.
@@richardyoung3462 Well, I think for the purpose of the film it was necessary to set up the staff earlier on. But I can easily imagine this scene to be exactly like a DM coming up with something on the fly to get the players across. Just, if they literally did that in the movie it would read as cheesy more than as humorous. It was a fine line, and I think they did it correctly.
Yeah, this is known as the ass-pull. For when you really have to pull something out of your ass.
And just like every DnD campaign, when the DM gives them a small equipment to keep the story going, the group abuses the hell out of it for the rest of the campaign.
"A lot of people believed the Hither Thither staff to be bad writing."
A lot of people are also anal-retentive neckbeards who wouldn't know a fun time if it fell out of the sky, landed on their face, and started to wiggle.
17:52 I LOVE their relationship. For once they don't make the man and woman who spends time together become romantically involved. They love each other, 100%, but in a platonic, familial way. And those scenes show it so well, he knows how to cheer her up. She was feeling down about her ex husband and when he starts singing to her she starts to smile. Holga makes snarky remarks about Edgin, but the amount that she cares for him is obvious. When Forge and Kira were talking about the tablet and calling it the tablet of riches, Edgin could have stood up for himself fine but Holga made sure to speak up and try to defend him. Those two in this movie really have a super sweet relationship.
That isn't just Bradley Cooper. it is a Mini-Cooper.
😂😂😂 I actually drive a Mini Cooper (a life-long obsession since the Italian Job) and I'm so mad I didn't make that joke! Gah! Props to you. Well done!
He had a *SMALL* role in this film…
Bada bum tisssss
Mini Cooper S 189 hp over 135 hp 2 liter over 1.5 - My Aunt used to drive me to school accelerating through every corner/turn what an adrenaline rush for a 10 year old.
@@magister343 I used to do that for my niece ! She used to squeak Mimiiiiii (her word for mini) as we went round the corner fast. 🥰🤭 good times
As someone whose only D&D experience is through osmosis from other media like Stranger Things I never felt lost with this movie. They did a great job of not alienating non players & it is truly one of my favourite in theatre experiences this year.
One of the things I love about this movie is the use of practical effects, miniatures/bigatures, animatronics, it feels real and quirky and lived in.
Yeah it has a good balance. Obviously they had to use a ton of CGI as well, especially for the wildshape creatures and spells, so I like that they were able to bring as much real elements in as well to help balance it out and ground it. It would've been very easy to make it feel too fake.
Jarnathan is such a D&D name, it makes me feel like Abed Nadir wrote this screenplay. I could definitely see Jarnathan alongside Brutalitops, Zippideedoo and Hector the Well-Endowed.
Your comment is streets ahead!
I mean, my current character who is a Druid of the Circle of Spores is named Truffle Portobello
@@paulonius42 Pierce, stop trying to coin streets ahead! It’ll never catch on
@@dr.k8610 Trying? Coined and minted! Been there, coined that! Streets ahead is verbal wildfire!
Absolutely a name that the DM pulled out of his rear end when the players unexpectedly asked about it.
“Hey DM, what’s the Aaracokra member of the council called?”
“Umm… Jar… Jarn… Jarnathon? Jarnathon!”
Oooh, excited to see this!
As someone who has run a D&D game for the better part of five years: this movie is REMARKABLY accurate to how games actually go. You can tell where they rolled low, rolled high, when the DM is clearly fucking thing them ("The corpse says, 'I didn't,' and immediately dies.") when the DM was expecting them to NOT be able to fuck something up and had to pull something out of their ass to keep the plot moving when they do (the bridge and staff) etc.
Just a really fantastic rendition of the hobby.
I love hearing that! I have many DnD players in my life, and they have very kindly refrained from giving me any feedback until I had seen it, so I love hearing positive feedback about this. It definitely helps me see the adaptation elements, so I appreciate it!
When I was watching it there was moments I was like, 'Oh... Edgin failed his dexterity saving throw.' and he got tripped on the table and time stopped.
Or, the intelligence one as every character in the team usually has intelligence as their dump stat (Sorcerer and bard are charisma, Barbarian strength and Druid having Wisdom.)
The Legend of Drizzt is actually a D&D property set in the Forgotten Realms, same as this movie. The Underdark they go to is the same one that Drizzt is from, just a different section of it. In fact, they were originally planning on having Drizzt show up to help the party but decided not to go in that direction this time around and replaced him with Xenk.
As an adaptation this movie is incredible.
Overall the feel of it mirrors the feel of playing in a D&D campaign, from seeing game mechanics realized in live action like the spellcasting (both the casting of the spell with their necessary components like words and gestures, and the actual effects), to the situations so many players have experienced (like accidentally wasting your questions on a Speak With Dead Spell or one impatient player not waiting to solve a puzzle and setting off the bridge trap).
Just as important to me, though, one thing that makes this a successful adaptation is where it diverges from the game to create a better film experience while remaining true to the spirit of the game. Perfect example of this is the displacer beasts-the panther-like creatures in the maze. In the game they appear to be a few feet away from where they’re actually standing, so attacks are more likely to miss targeting the illusion. That wouldn’t translate to the screen. So, they created the decoy projection effect which worked wonderfully, and still keeps the theme and spirit of the displacer beast. Brilliantly done.
It’s full of things to recognize if you’re familiar with the game, but those things aren’t required knowledge.
Very much enjoyed your reaction!
I knew he was going to resurrect her, and it was still a powerful scene. It shows what Edgin was giving up to save her.
Even though it was clearly going to happen, it was such a good scene to me for two things: 1) It showed that Holga was really her mom, something that is obvious in hindsight but I didn't necessarily think of her that way until that montage, and 2) the asking his daughter first rather than just doing it, which was probably 80% just making sure we that audience understood the stakes, but to me also seemed a subtle character growth moment of him realizing he can't just do what he thinks is best for Kira but instead needs to talk with her about what she thinks is best.
@@kenmarable Add to that his talk when rescuing not-Kira, admitting he wasn't trying to bring back her mom, but his wife. That distinction was a major character growth moment.
see, I was so happy about this scene as they made the typical, oH character died but we revive her trope actually good. I hate it ALL the time but this one was actually good despite being predictable (like they all are) as it serves a purpose and pivotal character moment then just, "oh we make the audience sad to then make it all for naught.'@@kenmarable
One of my favorite background details about this movie is that they actually got the cast together with a professional dungeon master from Wizards of the Coast, and ran them through a D&D game so that they could understand the character dynamics at play in the game. Particularly, the way that within a party (unlike in a normal movie) there is no singular main character who can do everything. Everyone has their role, and no one is greater or lesser than the others. Think of it - in a traditional blockbuster, Pine would probably be the all-around dashing hero, but in this... he's the bard. He's the comic relief and the heart of the group. He's no swashbuckler, he's just the character with the most investment in the story, and he's just desperately trying to keep everyone on task XD
Also, speaking from the perspective of a D&D player, particularly one who was burned by the one in the early 2000s, when I heard that they were making another D&D movie... I was worried. They genuinely put all of my fears to rest, though, and did D&D justice cinematically at last.
Yeah, this film is super fun and everything plays out like a table top campaign. What's great is that it works for those that have never played but has a ton of stuff for those that have. It's crazy how well they balanced that. And, I agree, the fight choreography is probably way better than it had a right to be for a film, like this. You'd think that's where they'd really save budget but they really went for it and we're all thankful for it.
I could definitely tell how much care and attention went into this, and it's fun to hear more about how well it worked as an adaptation. Such a blast!
This movie was great. Never played D&D, but I did play other RPG’s. And this is exactly what I picture a group would imagine their characters would do in a game-all the quipping, improvising, and fails that somehow become successes despite themselves. Lol Such a fun story with such fun characters.
19:19 I know, confusing isn't it? We are used to seeing dragons that breathe fire. In Dungeons & Dragons lore, there are different varieties of dragons, there are dragons with scale colors based on basic colors like red and blue, they are called "chromatic dragons", and there are dragons with scale colors based on metals like gold and silver, they are called "metallic dragons". Red and gold dragons breathe fire. That dragon in that flashback scene, Rakor, he is a black dragon, and black dragons spit out corrosive acid. Blue dragons spit bolts of electricity, green dragons breathe poisonous gas, and white dragons breathe freezing ice.
23:09 There's a good reason why when you hear "Underdark", you think of Drizzt. This D&D movie is set in the same D&D world as R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt books, the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. In fact, the directors of this movie originally wanted Drizzt to appear in this movie, but they had to abandon all plans of Drizzt appearing. It's for the best, I mean the books are still going strong, there should be a new book coming in a couple months, you don't want to contradict anything Bob Salvatore has cooking up for the character.
26:43 To tell you the truth, Themberchaud is the very first obese dragon ever, and there is a reason why he is like that, but I'll give you the short version. He was born and raised in the Underdark by a monastic order of psychic Underdark dwelling dwarves, they used Themberchaud and other dragons before him to light up their forges so the dwarves could temper their weapons and armor with ease. They kept Themberchaud happy by feeding him slaves that tried to stand up against them. When Themberchaud got older, he eventually realized that the real reason why the monastic order that raised him kept feeding him is because they were trying to kill him off, as they don't let the dragons they use to keep forges on fire reach a certain age (dragons get more powerful the older they get, red dragons like Themberchaud are the strongest of the chromatic dragons). In other words, yes, that is how he is supposed to look. He wasn't THAT overweight in the Out of the Abyss adventure, but this movie is set a few years after that adventure, so it makes sense for him to gain more weight.
33:05 I LOVED that part! The whole theater erupted in laughter when that happened!
33:44 I wish I could tell you what the chanting is, but, as a guy who has played D&D related video games like Baldur's Gate for the past 13 years... I honestly don't know. I'd say its an original score.
36:43 Mimic. I HATE those things.
10:37: "With a brick!"
Yep. Holga definitely has the "Tavern Brawler" feat.
11:36: "Bad things better happen to this man. Like, really funny bad things."
I think we've got you covered.
19:17: Different color dragons in DnD breathe different things as a breath weapon. Red and Gold dragons breathe fire, green dragons breathe toxic gas, white and silver (if I recall correctly) breathe cold, black dragons breathe acid, and there are many others. Also, "chromatic" dragons -- red, blue, white, black, green -- are evil, "metallic" dragons -- gold, silver, bronze, copper -- are good. Though they're all pretty greedy and arrogant.
20:45: Don't worry. "Speak With Dead" only lasts fifteen minutes, and doesn't actually restore a soul to a body, just reanimates it to make use of whatever knowledge the corpse had in life. He'll be fine.
Probably.
25:09: The Hither-Thither Staff is *exactly* the kind of thing a DM pulls out of nowhere when the players' own stupidity and/or bad rolls stick them in a dead-end in the story. Especially as it proves FAR more useful going forward than the item they actually came to get, as the players realize how versatile this thing the DM handed them is, and they start using it to solve all kinds of problems, and the DM has to adapt to keep it from snapping the adventure in half. Doric's line of "good save" is even a bit of lampshading, as in DnD a "saving throw" is made to resist something bad happening. In DnD fan parlance, the DM "saved against plot derailment."
41:49: "She lost her focus! Nice!"
Yep. "Concentration" is a big thing in DnD, you can only concentrate on one spell at a time, and losing concentration ends the spell. It can be done by taking damage, as Doric did. Great piece of dice-to-narrative: Doric's player rolls an attack with her sling, the dice are good, DM rolls Concentration for Sophina, she fails. . . Doric's stone hits Sophina in the head, knocking her back and making her loose focus on her spell.
I get your point on tone, but that's actually part of what makes the film work as an adaptation. Less the structure of "go here do this, go there do that, go this place and do some other thing," but in the sense of DnD , and tabletop role-playing games in general, being a very social experience. Getting together with your friends, sitting down and having an adventure, making jokes, having fun, working together to tell a great story. Every group that's gamed together for a prolonged period of time develops their own secret language of in-jokes, references, and call-backs to their old sessions. This really felt like a group that had been gaming together for awhile, had developed that bond. Maybe playing new characters on a new adventure, but the tightness is there. The players are all comfortable with each other, so the characters feel close, and they all bounce off each other really well, leading to that rapid-fire comedy. Now, yeah, "the players" aren't an entity in the movie, but for a tabletop gamer, you can practically *FEEL* them lurking just off the screen, picture the conversations that are leading to the decisions being made in the film, hear the players telling the DM what they're character is going to do, feel the DM's descriptions of places, settings, and actions.
51:38: I think it's a combination. Yeah, there were almost certainly studio executives saying "Marvel movies make huge money, make it like a Marvel movie!" But yeah, DnD has inspired and been inspired by so much fantasy fiction, there are definite similarities to see in other properties. But also. . . tabletop RPGs involve a group of friends sitting down to collaboratively tell a story. One player takes the role of Game Master (Dungeon Master in DnD-specific language), who runs the other players through the adventures. The GM controls all the other characters who aren't played by players, the NPCs. They decide what happens when there's ambiguity. They enforce the game's rules. And if they're not running a published adventure, they're coming up with the world, characters, and plot. They're kind of like writers, except they don't have control over what the main characters do (bad GMs try to enforce that control, known as "railroading," but tend to grow out of it as they gain experience in GMing). So a GM will likely pull story ideas and characters from other fiction and incorporate it into their world, sometimes in really cool and subtle ways, sometimes. . . not. Sure, this movie feels a lot like a Marvel movie. . . probably because the players of these characters are all MCU fans, maybe even go out to see Marvel movies as a group when they aren't gaming, and have picked up the Marvel snarky sense of humor and incorporated it into their games, intentionally or not.
This leads me to what I think is my favorite bit in the movie. When the party are sailing away on the boat filled with Forge's treasure, I believe that was intended to be the end of the adventure. All their personal goals had been completed. The DM describes Sophina bringing down the Beckoning Death, the cap to this first session that will kick off a new campaign. Neverwinter has fallen, Thay has a foothold in the rest of the Forgotten Realms, war is coming. Alliances will need to be made, armies raised, heroes brought up, weapons and artifacts found to stand against. . . wait, what? What do you mean you're going back?!? You want to fight Sophina? *(sigh)* Are you SURE you want to do that? The DM does softball the fight with Sophina a bit, she was clearly way out of the heroes' league, but in the end they pull through. And the DM's whole campaign, starting with the fall of Neverwinter to Thay, is ruined. . . but that's okay. Because the important thing is that everyone had a good time.
As an avid D&D player/DM, this movie felt VERY much like an actual gaming session. If you know how the game works, you can tell when the characters roll well and when they roll poorly. And part of the point of playing the game is how you react to the poor rolls. D&D is from the early to mid 70s. It has influenced a lot since, but the granddaddy of fantasy is The Hobbit/LOTR, which influenced D&D and everything else. I suggest finding a group to join and play with, then re-watching this movie with some experience under your belt, to see how it feels then.
A lot of other comments already did a good job giving a bit of more info on the easter eggs. One of my favorites is Simon is a wild magic sorcerer, a class in the game that has a % chance of something random happening when casting a spell. From turning into a potted plant, to exploding, to turning blue or summoning an unicorn. In the movie they expressed that by making him use a roulette when casting spells and having a chance of not casting the wanted spell! Also the fat dragon is part of canon. He got spoiled by evil dwarves and fed slaves in exchange of keeping the forge going. (there is a story that the creator of the game created the fat dragon when he was about to introduce a dragon and his fat cat jumped on the table) Also! The cat with the hologram is called a displacer beast they are usually described as blurry and hard to hit. The chest is a mimic and the ooze cube all three stable monster in Dnd. The final battle is my favorite because 1 expose the concept of concentration which is needed to keep some spells going and that they take turns hitting her which is how dnd works. A round lasts 6 seconds from the first person to the last taken their turn. They made sure to choreograph the fight so it looks like they are taking turns while keeping the flow!
Don't forget the intellect devourer scene. Intelligence is a dump stat for almost every class. Thus, you had the bard (charisma), barbarian (strength, constitution), paladin (strength, constitution, charisma), druid (wisdom), and sorcerer (charisma). And the intellect devourers just walk on by. Hilarious.
This movie is how you cater to both fans and non-fans. It has a ton of references and inclusions for players, as well as just perfectly capturing the FEEL of a campaign with the tone and the DM needing to send in Xenk as an NPC to save the party. But it’s also super enjoyable for people who have never played it before! The people who made this movie are clearly fans, but they’re also extremely talented filmmakers
Also, the other party in the arena, being the party from the 80's DnD cartoon
"Did this influence other fantasy? Did other fantasy influence this?" Yes.
"This is definitely a post-Deadpool film." Deadpool's end credits scene was a duplication of the end credits scene from Ferris Beuler's Day Off, so that film should be the one given credit.
If you know DnD, you can actually follow along with the spells cast in the final battle. When the heroes emerge into the square, Sofina is casting Meteor Swarm, a max-level spell that calls meteors down from the sky. Simon casts a protective spell, likely Antimagic Field since the 1st level Shield wouldn't protect all of them. When Sofina gets knocked out of the sky by Doric, she casts Thunderwave to hurl Doric away, then what looks like Animate Object on the statue.
Doric comes back at Sofina, who Misty Steps (teleports) up to the tower and maintains concentration on Animate Object. That ties up the party for a moment until Doric hits Sofina in the head with her slingshot, breaking her concentration. Sofina then casts Bigby's Hand to attack Doric, but that's blocked by Simon upcasting (casting a lower level spell at a high level for more power) Maximillian's Earthen Grasp.
Then in that final beatdown, Simon appears to cast some low level lightning spell (there's not really a good analog for Force lightning, although it's possible it's a homebrewed spell), Sofina casts Shield, there's some trading of Thunderwaves and Shields, Simon casts Scorching Ray (the three bolts of fire) but whiffs it, and then Sofina Thunderwaves all of them away and begins her Time Stop.
Simon cast witchbolt. 5e spell that acts just like force lightning
Something that doesn't seem to get mentioned a lot, is that this movie doesn't have a typical love story, and I love that. Right from the beginning, they made it that Holga and Edgin were more brother and sister than being in love.
I've been playing D&D and various other table-top roleplaying games like it for something like 30 years and in particular I'm a huge fan of the forgotten realms (the setting this takes place in). They did an amazing job and I love this movie! Whoever wrote the script was very knowledgeable about the lore and all the exposition is very spot on (and I do understand it getting tedious, but there's so much stuff involved.) Fun fact: I first learned about that chunky dragon like 20 years ago when I was meeting some new friends to start a D&D group and we were sitting around swapping entertaining info. His name is something like Themberchaud, this city of evil dwarves that live in the underdark used him to light their forges in exchange for regular food and he got fat... I also really enjoyed the paladin, the way he played a Lawful Good (we jokingly call it lawful boring) character with no irony and all seriousness was perfect.
It's genuinely so wonderful to hear how happy D&D fans/gamers are with this movie. I enjoyed it regardless, but it means so much more when it resonates with the people who love it most. It's so special!
A dragon of that name appears in drizzt's guide to the underdark, but without any of the memorable details you mention. They're from 2015. Here's the entirety of DGttU's information on him:
"Themberchaud (CE young adult red dragon), the Wyrm-smith of Gracklstugh, lurks in a hidden side cavern on the south side of Gracklstugh's central grotto atop a treasure hoard, unseen by visitors. Themberchaud's fiery breath weapon tempers the legendary steel blades of Gracklstugh in exchange for regular contributions to his hoard. Like his predecessors, the red dragon is attended by a monastic order of duergar priest/psionicists. Known as the Keepers of the Flame, they cater to the dragon's every whim that falls within the pact between the young wyrm and the rulers of House Steelshadow."
Not really a character one would have a whole discussion about and remember 20 years later.
(Even so, fair point about the earlier appearance, someone should really add it to the Forgotten Realms wiki for his character, which only mentions OOtA and movie-related appearances)
@@nescirian I love your assumptions about a conversation that you weren't a part of, and yes, the chunky dragon stuff wasn't really part of it. it had more to do with a dark dwarf city using a dragon as a forge, not to mention a planet of tarrasque and a few other random bits of nonsense that was part of a conversation I had with two really good friends when we first met. The best part was when one of them walked in the room to make a character and asked if we were rolling 16+1d3 for stats...
As a player, they did a pretty good job with the dnd. The story takes place in Faerun, an official dnd campaign setting, so as a player you recognize the places (Revel's End prison, Neverwinter, Baldurs Gate, etc), the races of creatures (Doric as a tiefling, dragonborn council member, Jarnathon the aarakocra, the tabaxi cat people), the magical beasts (owlbear, intellect devourer, rust monsters (blink and you miss early on), axe beaks (big ostrich like birds), mimic (the bitey treasure chest), displacer beast (the magic maze panther), the gelatinous cube they jumped into). And you recognize lore. Szass Tam and the red wizards of Thay are actual Faerun big bads. Themberchaud, the fat dragon, is a canon dnd character. You recognize what they get right, like spells that they cast or how black dragons have acid breath, not fire. And things they bent on purpose to make the movie fun, like technically druids can't be owlbears bc they are monstrosities, and wow she'd have to be an insanely high level to wildshape that many times in a row. But who cares bc it was dope to see in a movie.
But, as you noticed, none of that is necessary to enjoy the movie. It just means for us players they brought dnd to life in a spectacular way without making that a barrier for entry to anyone else.
25:00 "It's a Ither-Tither staff ... / How convenient !"
Yes, sometimes, the DM has to do something when the players screw up... in any other movie, this scene would have been a "deus ex machina" and bad writing... in a DnD movie, it's very accurate because in almost every game session, something like that happens.
And like many situations like this the DM doesn't consider the long ranging ramifications of them using the same magic item to solve other problems.
Hither-Thither
I remember one time while poking around Undermountain, me and my crew were in a bad way. People were bleeding out. all magic was spent, potions were gone and it was time to camp. Suddenly a very familiar looking white-bearded wizard in a red robes chases a puppy through our camp waving a stick at it yelling "Heel! Heel!"
Just like that, we were back in the game!
I've been playing DND for 40 years and I think this is the best adaptation of DND into a movie yet.
My favorite part is when the Red Wizard starts her epic villain monologue, they just smack her. That's something that every villain in movies does and the heroes always wait around to listen, but nobody does that in a D&D campaign, so neither did the heroes in this movie, as truly, that's what they are written to be.... not characters in a normal movie, but characters in a D&D campaign as played by players that don't have time for silly villain monologues!
"You sly dog! You caught me MONOLOGUING!"
As a massive dnd nerd and film major I had so much with this movie
You as a theater girl would LOVE playing dnd. It's literally just gameified improv
"Dungeons and Dragons is just Improv with Math"
16:40
“Are there supposed to be subtitles here”
Yep I have no idea why it’s not showing for you but she basically said “the druid is probably working for the thieves that escaped and to follow them. Also these guards behind us failed to catch them (basically ‘kill them’)”
One of the things I loved most about this movie, was the inclusion of the characters from the 80's animated series.
Most of the times you were talking about “terms you wouldn’t know because you don’t play” are like… names that were already established in the movie, real terms (things like “Druid” or “paladin” are real words outside of D&D), or something that’s like.. just a name (“lord of neverwinter” you don’t need to understand what neverwinter is, just to know that it’s a place that’s worth having a lord-of)
I have a headcanon that Xenk is a player that was in a previous game with this same group but had to drop out because he left for college and jumped in for a couple sessions on break mostly to screw with Edgin's player.
the legend of Drizzt is dnd. the R.A. Salvatore books that introduced Drizzit and the underdark were written in the Forgotten Realms, where this movie takes place. it started in Icewind Dale, where they were at the beginning in prison.
Love to see you broadening your scope and watching something I imagine you wouldn't normally consider!! There isn't much quite like a pure fun movie!! I had such a good time with this movie!! Glad it blew everyone's expectations out of the water!
I have so many DnD players in my life, so it's wonderful to see everyone happy with the adaptation! I really was so much fun 😄
I’ve watched some D&D stuff here or there but I didn’t know 75% of the names and places they mentioned. I loved it. I think you’re trying to hard to remember every single little thing. You don’t need to know any of it to follow what’s happening.
One of my favorite things in this movie (besides Themberchaud the Chonky Dragon, of course) is that Holga and Edgin have a long-standing, "life partners" kind of relationship with one another, but it's a completely platonic one, despite them both being single and having compatible orientations. It's so rare to see that in fiction, especially for main characters, and so rewarding when it's done this well.
27:37 "This movie is starting to drag a little bit". Said during the scene with the dragon. And you didn't say "drag on".
Your license to pun is hereby revoked. 😛
To answer your question about airspeed of unladen swallow...do you mean african or european?
You also asked what the dragon was breathing during the battle scene. Looked like a Black Dragon, and in D&D they breath acid. Fun fact, Chromatic Dragons are evil, and are colors like red, black, green, white, an so on. Metallic Dragons are good, and colors like gold, silver, bronze, copper, etc.
I just watched this movie last night and was quite pleased. So thankful it wasn't as bad as previous D&D movies. Always hoped after the success of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, hollywood would put actual effort into fantasy films. Still hopeful one day we'll get a live adaptation of the Dragonlance Chronicles.
The Paladin had a Lawful Good alignment, which is why he walks so straight and over the rock.
Drizzt is from the Forgotten Realms.
This movie is set in the Forgotten Realms.
Under the umbrella D&D setting, there are several settings (usually just different fantasy worlds).
Like the Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Eberron, Dark Sun, Mystara, Greyhawk, Ravenloft, etc.
Those brands, in the last five decades, have seen many D&D adventures and campaign modules, but also videogames, books, comic books, cartoons, Magic the Gathering cards, etc.
I love Holga barely ever using her actual weapon in the movie. Very true of barbarians. Anything is a weapon to them. Even a teddy bear.
I know I'm commenting on an old video, but this whole film *feels* like a D&D game. It's great if you haven't played D&D, but it's even better if you have. I'll list some examples:
- First, the movie itself is like the storyteller or DM telling the story of the game, but the characters themselves are also constantly acting as storytellers as happens in D&D.
- "Jarnathan" and many other names feel like silly names the storyteller needed to come up with on-the-fly. Imagine the players ask, "are there any Aarakocra (bird people) on the Absolution Council?" as they try to plan for an escape plan.
- Then Jarnathan arriving late was that the DM wanted them to try to get released, not break out of prison. He'd planned this big skill check and storytelling challenge for the players, so he didn't want to bring in the Aarakocra. He'd already said there was one on the council though, so he arrives at the end.
- The scene where Edgin is trying to cut his binding ropes on the step is him constantly failing a skill check to free himself.
- The first round of questions with the corpse they dug up was the storyteller not allowing the player to break character, which set a chain of failed questions.
- The Paladin, Xenk, is a clearly a Non-Player Character (NPC) controlled by the storyteller, and is too powerful to keep in the party beyond that one quest.
- After the players messed up with the bridge puzzle, they used the Hither-Thither Staff. I've always had 2 ideas for what that's meant to be in-game:
- The players were basically stuck, so the storyteller decided to make it the Hither-Thither Staff to allow the game to continue. It's not fun otherwise.
- The players started searching their sheets for any items that could get them out of this jam, and someone noticed the Hither-Thither staff on the barbarian's sheet.
- The loop going: exposition, quest, exposition, quest was just separate game sessions. So each loop was the intro to prep the players for the day's session, and they play that one quest.
- Forge feels like the DM said, "I need a quirk for this NPC... I know! I'll have him complain about everything!"
- The group is constantly coming up with "plans" for how to get through things, and they feel like things players would come up with.
An exquisite list 🤌
I like how the common praise is that it feels like an actual D&D game.
There are nat 1s and 20s, moments where the DM was bullshitting just to continue the story, players are goofing off throughout it all and somehow succeeding in their idiotic plans, and the exhausted DM relents to let them get away with it because they rolled high enough or it fits in-character.
Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez have actually been playing D&D since their childhood, and it shows. Chris Pine has been an advocate of having schools get children to play as it teaches things like world building, character creation, problem solving and team work.
Yes, it is the same Underdark as the R. A. Salvatore's The Legend of Drizzt, and the green city they passed is Menzoberranzan 👍
Edgin keeps bringing up Jarnathan even during his tragic part of the backstory is such a player behavior.
that movie has the most tasteful fan service ever. there's no wink-wink cynicism, it's a genuine heartfelt story, but internally, things work like they do in dnd. there's a part where the sorcerer throws a rock at the BBEG to break Concentration, it works, and the BBEG casts Misty Step as a Bonus Action to avoid Fall Damage. I lost my mind. And the movie respects the audience enough to not make a big joke out of it.
The origin story of Themberchaud, the fat dragon, involves a fat cat that jumped onto the table during a D&D session and knocked over the mini figures of the characters.
Evil dragons - color coded for your convenience! Red dragons breath fire, Black acid (like the one in the flashback), Blue dragons have lightning breath, Green poison gas, and White cold breath.
The good dragons (metallics - Gold, Silver, Bronze, Brass, and Copper) I don't remember as clearly. Having the acid-breathing black dragon in the trailer was the first real indication to me that there was going to be a certain underlying faithfulness to this movie. Loved it, top to bottom!
you've forgot the whole gem family of dragons with rare breathes like psychic, force etc. c:
Gold is fire silver is ice bronze is lighting brass is copy fire and coppers acid
I'll toss in another recommendation for The Legend Of Vox Machina. This movie was definitely a pleasant surprise, and the writers did a solid job making it feel like a real game, but Vox Machina just dials it up. Plus the cast is absolutely stacked.
There was a lot asked in questions at the end of the video.... so...
As an adaption. It was fine. There were a lot of callbacks to D&D from the monsters, the magic spells, items, etc. You can look at it as a, "so, what if we took the premise of a group of players and put that into a movie". You had the character giving their backstory, etc. You had the DM (Dungeon Master) inserting an overpowered DM NPC in the form of the paladin to help complete the quest. Were there liberties taken? Yes. The druid shouldn't have been able to morph into an owlbear, but, in this case, the rule of cool won out. So yes, it was fine.
As for what inspired what. You saw Guardians of the Galaxy meets D&D with how everyone interacted. You saw the Hulk and Loki scene with the wizard and druid in owlbear form. So yes, there were a lot of "people liked this so let's do that" in this movie. As for D&D, Tolkien helped inspire D&D. D&D has basically been its own thing since, with everyone referencing Tolkien instead of D&D when it comes to fantasy.
The convenient. Yeah, that happens in D&D, as well. The group does something which would bork the quest, so the DM improvises a way the group can get out of it, hence, Simon borks the bridge and voila, the walking stick is a hither/thither staff. Then, the rules get... vague... during the campaign. At first, the hither/thither staff might get across that small chasm, then, it reaches from the bay to the balloon. The whole "oops" happens. In the cemetery, Pines character asks questions that don't pertain to the corpse, but, are counted. Well, dig up another corpse. So, the writers definitely looked at the movie as a group actually playing the game and how that would translate into a movie.
If you enjoyed that, you might wanna react to The Legend of Vox Machina. An animated series based on an actual play D&D campaign.
I've heard great things about Vox Machina! I think I watched the first episode with a friend, but I don't remember much of it, so I most likely will go and do it at some point 😄
By the way, there were three adventurer parties that were in the maze. Theirs, one that gets all the killed scenes, and the third is the party from the D&D cartoon from the 80s!
Everybody says, "fighter is so basic". Hey, when you are up a creek without a paddle, you need a class that delivers. Fighter, delivers, day in and day out. That is all.
Something younger players and younger viewers didn't catch on to is that one of the teams in the maze is actually the characters from the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon show that ran from 1983 to 1985. The small kid with the horned helmet's team in the background at 37:18. It was a nice detail to add for us older players who remember the cartoon.
The fat dragon is from fairly early D&D canon. Apparently, Gary Gygax (game creator) was playing a game when a cat jumped on the table and started causing havoc. Gygax decided it was like a fat dragon and created Themberchaud (spelling?), a dragon raised in captivity and fed to obesity by evil dwarves who wanted it to provide fire for their forge. Obesity was to make it harder to escape through narrow tunnels.
fun fact about the interlect devourers: they go by the inteligence score, the whole party (bard, barbarian, druid, sorcerer) and the DMNPC (paladin) are classes that tend to have low inteligence scores, since they focus on other abilities (charisma, strength, wisdom and charisma again, respectivly) so it would make sense that non of this group would have a high inteligence score XD
To answer your question, yes there is supposed to be subtitles for when they are speaking Thayan.
The thing I loved about this, was all the stuff with Michelle's character and her fighting style. I'm 100% certain she has a combat feat from the game called Improvised Weapon. Basically if you get that feat (ability) for your character, they can use pretty much any object around them as a weapon. Given she incorporates random objects in every fight, to painful effectiveness, INCLUDING a potato, it just feels like one of the creators was a fan of that feat from the game, and wanted to work it into the story. Because while it is funny, given how dense and tough a potato can be, having someone as muscular as Michelle Rodriguez chunk one at your FACE, yeah that's going to hurt! 🤣
12:00- Reverse Gravity is a High level Spell.
Not common either.
The oldest most powerful Silver Dragons naturally develope the ability to innately cast it.
Thank you Critical Role for making D&D popular again, and making this possible ;) Even the writers said thank you with the "fresh cut grass" line.
I love this movie; one of the best of 2023 so far. I had no problem with the pacing except maybe the surprise cameo by Bradley Cooper's Marlamin. I think they moved the story along fine. As long as they did the quippy lines are enough for me. They don't have to escalate things. I think the repetition is part of the game - missions/quests is pretty much it. That is the fun playing with your friends.
If you know the terms, I think it will be more funny, but as someone who never played the game, I was fine not knowing all the terminologies.
3:38 Close!
19:16 In DnD, Different color dragon has different breath weapons, Red Dragons has the classic fire, this is a Black one, they spew acid. (There is also Blue lightning, White Ice and Green Poison gas)
41:07 also, if you know a thing or two about the game, you can recognize the things they all do as actual spells and actions from it.
49:28 I don't really think there was a lot of exposition. for example, they mention that Zenk was a paladin. that would be akin to a medieval movie saying "He's a knight" it's just a curosry description. Exposition to me would be taking a beat to explain to the viewer what a Paladin were, (that is a warrior that has taken an oath and through that oath has gained magical powers)
As someone said in an earlier comment, D&D is more of a setting than a story. D&D is the sandbox with rules for telling your own stories, this movie tells a story using the same set of rules as the games uses to tell the stories through improvisation and dice rolls.
(If you'd like to see another D&D thing, check out "Legend Of Vox Machina" on Amazon, that is a story played during livestream by Critical Role adapted to an animated series)
The humor wasn't based on Deadpool. It is based on people playing the game and constantly trying to one up each other. Zinging each other and trying to roleplay the best and most interesting character is part of the fun. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings had a very heavy influence on Dungeons and Dragons but they were doing it for decades before any of the other modern fantasy stuff which was influenced by it. Shorter would have taken away a lot of the feel of playing the game being on the screen.
So, D&D the short version.
You are playing John Wick. Director says 5 guys with guns break into your house. What would you do as John?
John is very good with guns, you try to shoot an intruder. Your skill with guns, plus a roll of the dice, determines if you hit the intruder.
Same situation, but now you are Playing Hermione. What would you do as Hermione?
Perfect adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons. The entire story development feels like a D&D campaign without feeling at all amateurish (which is common in gamey films).
-one year late- I'm sure lots of other people have said this but this movie genuinely is the closest thing I've seen in scripted media to what playing DnD actually feels like. Even down to pacing. I feel like everyone involved in this movie understood the assignment to make it a movie about DnD not a movie set in a DnD universe. Forgot how much I loved this movie, thanks for the reminder!
As far as influence, bit of both. Dnd was the product of Lord of the Rings and tactical tabletop wargames, but instead of controlling armies, you play as heroic individuals. But it has gone on to influence the culture, too, and be in turn influenced. Like you mentioned Drizzt. He's a many decades old famous dnd character. The Icewind Dale trilogy takes place in Faerun, the most well known dnd campaign setting. That prison where the movie starts and ends, Revel's End, is in the far north of Icewind Dale. And there are many other novels set in Faerun or simply influenced by the genre. As well as movies and video games.
I think most dnd players see a movie like Guardians of the Galaxy and relate to it as a dnd party. A wild assortment of bumblefucks using chaos and mayhem to doofus their way into heroics bc 9/10 the plan fails and you have to improvise your way to awkwardly save the day.
So is this movie reflective of the media being changed or did it change the media? Yes. It goes both ways. The game has evolved over several editions, influenced by changing culture, but it has also influenced culture and, as such, media. You can even see that with dnd as a game becoming way more mainstream in the last decade or so, with the rise in popularity of actual plays like Critical Role and Dimension 20. And CRs animated show based on their first campaign, The Legend of Vox Machina. If you watch animated shows it is well worth your time. It is... not for kids. They do change things for the shift in media, but it stays pretty damn true to the campaign so it's a good example of translation from actual gameplay to show if you want that kind of vibe check to compare to this.
D&D is cooperative storytelling. The person running the game creates the world which just might be a town or a ruined castle where ever the story is taking place. The players each control a character in the story. Each character has their own special skills and abilities. When something happens that may or may not work then you roll dice to see if it works. So if a monster tries to hit you with a claw then they roll to see if they succeed. Likewise, if you want to hit the monster with your sword then you would roll to see if you hit the monster. Success or failure the story always moves forward. D&D is used to tell sword and sorcery stories with larger than life heroes. There are other role playing games that allow you to tell science fiction, horror, dystopian future or any number of other types of stories. There is probably an RPG out there for you.
Yeah, this is very accurate to how tabletop D&D games go. The Hither-Thither staff is a prime example of that. A Dungeon Master will write a great story for the players, only for the players to muck it up and the DM inventing a convenient workaround.
D&D players can get very silly, their solutions to problems are absolutely insane.
In the script, Rege-Jean Page's role actually was going to be Drizzt, but he was replaced by the character of Xenk at the last minute.
One of the gags with the Intellect Devourers (the little brains with legs) is that in early editions of the tabletop game, the Bard was an Intelligence based spell-caster. We never see Edgin cast any spells even though he's a Bard, since the Devourers simply ignore him, that means he doesn't have the Intelligence necessary to cast spells.
Bards now use Charisma, and have for at least the last 3 editions. Also, we definitely see Edgin use Bardic Inspiration often, and one could argue that more subtle mild charm spells could also have been used without fanfare.
"How convenient! How very convenient!" Welcome to d&d
Re: the no-fire-breathing dragon at the 19 minute mark.. Watching 2 months later, but didn't see this answered so didn't know if it had been. In Dungeons & Dragons different dragons have different "breath weapons", indicated by their color. That dragon was a black dragon, and their breath weapon is acid, so in the flashback battle sequences that's what it sprayed.
Also, Drizzt was originally supposed to appear in the movie, but there was controversy regarding drow, so they dropped it and replaced him....with Xenk Yendar.
I don't know if this has been mentioned or not, but Doric is an insanely powerful Druid that technically breaks the rules in several ways. 1) you can't wild shape more than twice before you need to rest, she does it 4 times in her recon. 2) She has 5 wild shapes, for which I don't know the precise rules but I suspect that she needs to be at least L10 out of the 20 you can get to, and is more likely to have to be an Archdruid in order to have that many. 3) Owlbear is not a wild shape you can have because you can only be a creature not something classified as a Monster.
Oh, and the cynical side is both right and wrong. A lot of things that happen in a number of movies do have a source in events in someones RPG, but those scenes in movies also influence GM's to setup something in their games. It's hard to tell what the inspiration was in general but I'd say that half of the amusing action scenes in the movie take inspiration from other action movies, after all it's easier for professionals to use something that they know can be done rather than try to do something new that might not work.
44:10 "You can be a good man AND a moron"
So you're telling me there's a chance...
Also, African or European?
Tolkein (lord of the rings) was the inspiriation for Dungeons and Dragons.
Since then D&D has gone in many ways. Orginally its "world" was called Greyhawk, but in the late 80's a new world had been published and became a huge deal, called the Forgotten Realms. Which became the default world of D&D in modern times
Drizzt and underdark are all part of the Forgottem Realms (way back at its beginnings) and so is the D&D movie which mentions a lot of popular locations in the Forgotten Realms as it is now the default world of D&D.
D&D has inspired things itself, like the mentioned forgottem realms and thousands of others.
@Jacqui,
One aspect to D&D is that there are several worlds/planets you can choose to play on that have been added over the game's 50 year existence, each with it's own flavor and idiosyncrasies, but all of them have at least a veneer of Medieval European era life being the foundation with the added trait that magic of some fashion is common in daily life. If you've ever watched "Game of Thrones" or "The Hobbit/The Lord of the Rings" you get the idea (and it's not a stretch to say a lot of D&D was directly inspired by Tolkien's fiction*). That said, yes this movie does a respectable job of representing both the game and this particular world (this Earth-like planet is called 'Toril', but the game world is more colloquially known among players as "The Forgotten Realms"). Most of the "action" in this world takes place on one continent called 'Faerun', a thinly vailed analog to Western Europe, and in this case the western-most region along a big ocean known as "The Sword Coast". *case in point, Bradley Cooper plays a "halfling", a.k.a. a Hobbit.
D&D is the OG Reality Story Telling media. You create the scene and script as you go. Over the decades you do develop a history accepted at large which is why those who know this loved this film. They didn't skimp or take shortcuts, or diverge from cannon, which is so reassuring for sequels. So many of those that I know feel the movie was too short. So, I disagree on it being too long. And the "Memberries" were woven nicely and not obnoxiously. I watched this about 6 times in the first week it released and continue to watch it often. It never gets old.
When you name-dropped Legend Of Drizzt, I did a doubletake. lol
Legend Of Drizzt is a Dungeons & Dragons novel set in the exact same setting as this movie (The Forgotten Realms, specifically the Sword Coast of the continent of Faerun), and the directors considered putting Drizzt in this movie, but decided to create Xenk (Reggae Jean Page's character) instead, since he was gonna be the butt of alot of jokes and they weren't sure how fans would feel about making fun of such an iconic character. So yeah, the Underdark in this movie is the same Underdark, they just didn't go to Menzobarranzan.
Ah that makes sense! I read a huge chunk of Drizzt in high school, but I had no idea it was part of a larger universe, so hearing "The Underdark" definitely caught me off guard! I may have to revisit the series!
@@movienightwithjacqui I highly recommend it! Now that you have seen this movie, you may have new insights about the world you didn't previously! I am thinking about revisiting the Drizzt novels myself someday soon!
Back in High School I read quite a few Drizzt novels myself, but my main Dungeons & Dragons book series of choice has always been Dragonlance (particularly the main books written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman). If you do revisit the novels, I hope you get new enjoyment out of them!
Someone: Hi, nice to meet you. My name is-
Jacqui: Wow, this is a lot of exposition...
"But we approved your pardon" is genuinely one of the funniest moments I can think of in any movie. Perfect line delivery.
EDIT: One of the many reasons I love this movie is that they take care and don't skip steps. Like, if you watch back the big fight against Sofina you can see the moment when she stabs Holga, it's not something they just throw in after the fact. A Marvel movie made in the last few years wouldn't have bothered, by comparison.
As a long-term D&D player, this was a fair adaptation of a tabletop game. It was also a fun game that's accessible to most audiences, though doubtless daunting to those who aren't familiar with the game. A shame it didn't become a series.
This movie is sort of a reboot.
It was many years ago and if I remember correctly it was called "D&D the movie".
Where the D&D community generally likes this film, that first film is referred to as "The movie that shall not be named" by D&D geeks.
my favorite part of this movie is how you can just feel that Xenk is a DM character. like, everything about him just screams "you guys are idiots so here i made you a super powerful lawful good paladin hot sexy man to get you to where you need to go" its HILARIOUS
this movie was 100% made by people who not only play but LOVE playing DnD, i genuinely hope we get a second one with the same actors playing different characters on a different campaign i think that would be perfection
The dragon in flashback scene is spewing acid. In D&D, red dragons have a fire breath weapon and black dragons have an acid one (and white has ice, blue has lightning, etc.) It's a whole thing.
Edit: Also, I just want to say that this film isn't exactly a masterpiece, but it pretty much perfectly captures the feel of a real D&D game. That very special blend of goofing off with your friends, heroic tales, and "Wait, WTF?" we all love so much.
Also, also, you're dead on about the pacing issues. It's mostly fun and well done, but it really could have used another editing pass.
To your Deadpool references, in reality Deadpool is a return to that kind of snarkiness that was big in the 70's, 80's and 90's, check out movies like Smokey and the Bandit, Stripes, 48 Hours, Tango and Cash, Bull Durham, Caddyshack, Meatballs and so on
You asked what the dragon was spweing, and it was acid. There are five types of Chromatic and Metalic dragon, some worlds have gem dragons as well. But each dragon has a different breath weapon.
I think the biggest pop this vid got from me is when you pronounced Drizzt correctly. And then the realization that you knew Drizzt!
I think its one of the best movies made in recent memory. I watched it on chance on my TV randomly after it came out and it blew. Me. Away. People don't make movies this complete anymore. It felt like a throwback to the movies of the 80s and 90s.
Im sure it was said before but if it wasnt: red dragons breath fire, blue breathe lightning, green breathe poison, white breathe ice, and black (like this one) breathe acid
As an adaptation, I thought this movie was great. They use actual rules from the book like concentration (when Doric hits Sofina with the garlic in the final fight that breaks her concentration on the Animate Object spell she used on the dragon statue) and plenty of other spells and monsters straight from the handbooks. It genuinely feels like a DnD session in movie form, and I loved every minute of it.