How I'd Do a D&D Movie

So there's been a settlement, and everyone gets to move forward with a new D&D movie. Apparently, Warner Brothers are going to make it, using the "Chainmail" script written by the guy who did "Wrath of the Titans", but retrofitted to take place in the Forgotten Realms. And Courtney Solomon is going to produce it. Virtually none of that fills me with any confidence.

Which raises the question: how would I do a D&D movie? (Well, actually, I'm not sure it does. But I'm going to write about that anyway.)

Well, the very first thing I would do is throw out any notion of making a "good" movie, not because I don't want it to be good, but because that's a useless goal since it doesn't actually mean anything. "The Dark Knight" is a good film, "Pulp Fiction" is a good film, but these are very different films.

What I'd be shooting for is an unabashedly entertaining film, something like the last three "Fast & Furious" films. I won't claim that any of those are "good" films, but I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed all of them, and especially "Fast 5". And, crucially, they now seem to have settled into a formula that just works. And there's a lot to be said for that.

(Those last three films have also been absurdly successful, which is a massive plus. A successful D&D film opens the doors for more films in the series, while a "good" film that flops does not. And while a sucky-but-successful film is of no use to me, a series of films that are at least entertaining is.)

There's another key reason why I'm looking to the recent "Fast & Furious" films for my model going forward: Vin Diesel. As we know, he is famously a fan of D&D, and he's also been known to take on projects as a labour of love (the third "Riddick" film, for instance).

So, my next step (after ditching the "good" goal) would be to approach Vin Diesel and (hopefully) the Rock, and indeed as much of the team behind those three F&F films, and see if they can't be persuaded to take it on - with a fairly simple remit: do all that stuff you do, but do it for D&D rather than F&F.

'Cos let's face it - I actually know sod all about making a film. And so, like Augustus Caesar but unlike Courtney Solomon, the biggest part of my plan would be to assemble a team of people who do know what they're doing, and then trust them.

As for the story, I think my premise would run something like this:

The Rock is the leader of a team of dungeon-crawling adventurers (the classic four-member group), who are of course less-than-entirely law abiding. VD is the badass bounty hunter sent to bring them in. (This effectively reverses their roles in F&F.)

Anyway, the film opens with TR and his team digging through some dungeon, with the very first shot probably being the classic image from the PHB cover of them digging the gem-eyes out of a dungeon statue.

There then proceed several scenes of TR leading VD a merry chase through various adventures, until we get the initial confrontation. This goes badly, with at least one of the adventurers (and probably one of VD's team also) dead on the ground. Worse, in the process of this confrontation the two forces set off some disaster (be it awakening the Tarrasque to wipe out the nearby town, or causes the dungeon to start to collapse, or something), thus forcing them to work together for the remainder of the film, the final confrontation with the BBEG (or whatever).

And the film therefore ends with VD giving TR and his team 24-hours head-start. Cue the end credits, and the stinger showing them all gathered at the table with dice and books.

Something like that, anyway.

One thing I'm pretty certain of is that I'd be avoiding the classic story of The Special hero Saving the World from the Nameless Dark Lord. That film has been made once or twice. (Of course, I'm pretty sure that that's exactly what we'll be getting, probably including the obligatory Plucky Comic Relief, the Love Interest, the Quest for the McGuffin, and the Potentious Voiceover at the start. Which I'm sure will be both cool and awesome. Like 4e.)