It’s a great fun movie. The plot’s great, the pacing is great, the references are great, the comedy is great. It’s a fun adventure with a relatable team of misfit heroes.
It takes some liberties with the game mechanics to accomplish this. If you can’t forgive that, you’ll have a rough time, especially if you like wildshaping druids and spellcasting bards.
While it does skirt some game mechanics, probably due to it being a movie and it's a strange medium to adapt, it also does some really cool subtle things with the mechanics. For example, in the final major fight all of the characters attack in the same order. They're in initiative!
My wife suspected this about that final fight, but it goes by quickly in the theater, and unfortunately it’s streaming on one of the few services we don’t have or want to pay for, so we haven’t re-watched it in a pause-able format.
One of the rare movies that starts shaky and then finds its footing and breaks out into a conditioned run by the end of it. Didn't go in expecting much, got a good time.
Rest ye Jarnathan, you deserve a break.
Edit, and the dragon! My wife is obsessed with dragons and she was in love with the one in the movie, it's like her favorite dragon now.
As far as franchised products based films it's very rewatchable and I imagine will be a comfort movie on the future.
Id put it just a little below the Lego Movie for quality for what's essentially an advertisement movie. No complaints however.
As a D&D fan it hits the sweet spots of references but not to feel like it's pandering (see Super Mario Movie).
For a die hard D&D fan you can feel the die rolls going on in the movie.
I imagine Hasbro will kill or ruin Studio One somehow which is a shame I would want more of these kind of D&D movies
Not just feeling the die rolls, I could also feel the DM going "oh crap, the bridge is gone now, how will they get across? I know, I'll give them a portal gun." And then for the rest of the movie the DM going "oh crap, they have a portal gun now, how am I going to stop them from bypassing every challenge with it?"
As a D&D player, that was my favorite part. The times when the party was getting creative and you could see the DM say, "Ok, roll for xyz to see if that works."
So many times when I thought, "Yeah, I could see us coming up with that." Followed by, "Oh yeah, our DM would definitely do that." And yet it managed to have enough heart and be generally entertaining enough that your non-D&D friends will enjoy it too.
Especially the very beginning, where they come up with the crazy plan to escape, somehow manage to actually pass the persuasion check they didn't think they would pass, then go through with the plan anyway because they worked hard on it.
Definitely go in with exceptionally low expectations if you want to have a good time. I was fairly optimistic based on the reviews rampant shilling on Reddit and was pretty disappointed. If you’d asked me for a score right after I watched it I’d go 4/10. In hindsight it’s more of a 6 if you allow that it’s supposed to be a bit tongue in cheek and the stilted dialog is a feature rather than a bug.
With those caveats it’s a perfectly good way to waste two hours if you have nothing better to do. It has no memorable lines or scenes, and is just an average hot-topic-of-the-moment throwaway action movie.
It was such a fun movie! It was much better then it had any right being! With that said, the things I appreciated was, the world felt lived in, they didn't make a big deal out of races other then humans, just continued on like "Yeah, bird people, that's a thing we all know is real and accept".
With no spoilers, I heavily appreciated the "dragon scene", it was an interesting take that made it fresh but was still an incredibly dangerous situation for the characters.
First off I mean this in a good way. I thought it felt a lot more like a movie of how real life players would play the campaign, rather than an attempt at a movie adaptation of a book. And having played D&D, I think it made the movie more relatable to the core audience.
It's something we haven't seen at the the movies for a while. A nice fun action romp. Think what Marvel films used to be at the start when they were self contained stories and not just set up for the next movie. It somehow manages to be exactly like a D&D game while also being completely enjoyable even if you don't know what D&D is.
Thought I'd hate it. But all in all i came out of the cinema with a positive experience. The plot is kinda basic, but it captures a homebrew dnd campaign pretty well. It's a lot of fun
There would have been so many ways to make this movie suck. IMO they avoided all of them. I loved it.
Many people are saying that it was faithful to DND mechanics, but I personally don't care about that so much. I loved how it captured the feel of an evening of dnd at the table with my friends. The lightheartedness, the nonsensical stunts, the banter. It even makes fun of insane DM puzzles at some point. You can really tell the writers have some love for DND.
You people don't understand how grateful I am that this movie wasn't shit. It was very 'safe' sure but I don't care. This movie was good enough to warrant a sequel and that's all I ever wanted I am ecstatic about this movie.
It is funny, charming, and ISNT HORRIBLE! We might get sequels! Shows! I don't care! It just isn't a shitshow most game-movies are
I loved how it referenced a ton of things from D&D in terms of both tabletop stuff and TSR novels etc, but didn't try to cinematize the plot of any book in particular nor really focus on any particular book storyline etc.
I honestly loved it. I felt it was a decent movie with lots of easter eggs and iconic lore/characters in it, that was made by somebody who appreciated the source material. This is as opposed to say, the Mario movie which felt more low "let's toss in as many game characters and references as we can, then add some plot to that".
D&D was a savory soup with just about the right amount of spices, meat, and vegetables.
Mario was still an ok soup, but it had less broth/base and an almost overwhelming number of chunks of stuff in it.
It's been out long enough that it's starting to get some opinions that hate or nitpick it to death, but I think the fact it got so much overall good reception from the DnD crowd when it first came out says something. And once you realize it's a visualization of a session between players and the DM, a rewatch to catch the little details that were missed before makes it even more enjoyable.
It was so much better than we (wife and myself) expected it to be. Strongly recommend it to casual d&d enjoyers (such as we are), there was one or two things that didn't work, and the writing was cliche at a couple points, but the acting was superb and the visuals were awesome. more hardcore people will probably find more nits to pick, but I think it'll be appealing to a broad audience, d&d fans included. I hope it earns the studio enough to try to make another one, especially if they can bring back the main cast, they had really good chemistry.
It's an absolutely fine action fantasy movie. Expect a middle of the pack Marvel movie but it's D&D. Lot's of fun lore for newer and older Forgotten Realms needs.
We had fun at the movies when I watched it with both my DnD and Pathfinder group.
I didn't think it was. I'd definitely be down for more movies in the dnd universe though if this was an example of what they'd be doing if that helps at all. Probably not a theater level movie but a good home movie or fun with friends watching for sure.
I really enjoyed it. Probably a 8/10 for fantasy movies, 9/10 for D&D movie. Maybe a 7/10 for a movie in general? It's hard for me to say because I loved it.
It was a really fun movie, and while not top-tier cinema I'd definitely rate it as good. The actors did well, the dialogue was great, and there were so many easter eggs.
And you definitely felt in parts that it was a D&D game. The characters doing stupid things, the GM throwing a lifeline here and there, the sequence of combat in some of the battles...
I'm sad it came out at a bad time, I think it could've done better.
After the OGL stuff I vowed not to give Wizards another dime. I've got books all the way back to 1st edition. I calculated it that I had spend nearly $10k on D&D stuff over the years. So I was heavily invested. But that move really burned me. That being said, I have seen it, even if I didn't pay to do so, take that how you will. I did really enjoy it, it was over all very good in almost every way. Minor mechanics issues, but I don't mind that really.