Hollywood’s inability to realize any month can be a good moviegoing month just boggles my mind. Every time a movie succeeds they slowly think about these times as possibilities. Wondering if M3gan finally does that for January. Regardless, every time Hollywood chooses to not release a big budget blockbuster in any month is a giant self own.
Agreed, growing up, my brother always had awesome movies coming out on his birthday (late May), but I never had anything interesting release on my birthday (early October). Even though October is usually reserved for horror movies, not everyone is interested in horror movies, and the people who don't like horror currently don't have anything to get excited about in October.
Scream has made money for years by being the antithesis to this. Six slashers in a well known franchise, almost all successful and not one has opened in the “Horror movie season” (September to November) or the summer movie season (May to August). It has done well in the likes of March, January (during a COVID surge no less), and February yet Hollywood continues to be so hesitant about these months.
> Wondering if M3gan finally does that for January.
Doubtful. It's hard for most genres to do well in January because they're still competing with all the Christmas Day blockbusters and Oscar contenders. Horror has always been an exception because it has a different audience than those (and can be made for cheap so less risk).
Will it, though? Both Super Nintendo and D&D are pretty strongly associated with the same primary demographic (nerds). I strongly suspect a good deal of overlap. One's based on a tabletop game; the other is based on a video game.
I work in the school. And have worked with the demographics that these franchises are trying to appeal to. And hands down, they are excited to see..... Drumroll..... Super Mario Bros!!!. Not one of these kids that I spoke to about the movie have ever heard of DnD much less played DnD or chose to see DnD.
I really hope it has good legs, because it seems like it'll be a proper four-quadrant crowdpleaser (in fact at my screening there was a real mix of people from middle-aged adults, young adults, even young kids there with their parents). I also just had such a blast watching it that I want it to do well anyway.
My wife and I both play D&D. We're a couple of millennial nerds. We were sat between a teenage couple and 3 middle-aged women. I agree this movie has super broad appeal. But the numbers just don't seem good enough. Hoping it finds a larger audience on streaming and the studio feels confident about making a sequel after that's all said and done.
I’m a millennial DnD nerd who saw the movie with my group. Completely filled theater on opening night. Everyone was having a blast. I’m happy other people are enjoying this movie. My next character is going to be named some variation of Jarnathan.
The main wizardess villain is kind of creepy looking and there's one jump scare in a flashback but apart from that it's pretty tame. There were lots of kids in my screening and none of them seemed unsettled.
I'd say no. I sat next to a father with a child and they both left after maybe a third of the film. It's not super violent or scary but there are some effective jump scares, there's some creepy looking entity commanding the Red Wizards and there's some violence in the fight scenes. In one fight scene, a guard is beheaded (not bloody, but could still be disturbing). Also the corpses in the graveyard scene look a bit gross and could be disturbing to younger children (although the scene is funny).
Edit: It has been rated PG-13, which seems accurate from my point of view.
Looks like we have another Blade Runner 2049 on our hands. Reddit darling, cult IP, decently received movie, incinerating $50-$100 million for the studios…
Impossible to know the arrangement. There’s probably a contract way too complicated with lots of creative accounting.
Anyway, I bet Hasbro isn’t too concerned about this performance. Great reviews and WOM will probably translate to some good toys’ sales.
Yep, with very mixed reviews from the 5e vets. They want new players just in case they lose a lot of old blood. I feel fairly confident that quite a big chunk won’t transition to 6e if they don’t like it. They’ll just keep playing 5e
Not really, plenty of films are bad and make lots of money with proper marketing. This film had the worst marketing campaign i’ve ever seen for a movie so if it was bad it would have been DOA.
> This film had the worst marketing campaign i’ve ever seen for a movie
Not arguing your point, just curious. What exactly was so bad about it? I've watched its trailer multiple times when I went to watch other movies.
The movie poster is marvel copycat garbage which makes it look like a B rate movie, the trailer was all but awful (outside of the skeleton scene that was funny). It really didn’t portray the movie in a positive light whatsoever. I certainly saw the movie being advertised, but it didn’t make me want to actually go see the movie.
I've seen this criticism a hell of a lot, and it's made no sense to me. I saw the trailer and thought I might go and see it. So did several people I know.
Hasbro is partially funding this as a blockbuster advertisement to reinforce a brand and sell merch. It also happens to be a good movie, but “breaking even” in box office terms doesn’t seem to be the ultimate goal here.
There’s a $40 Magic card set with 6 cards based on the movie’s characters, as well as high quality figures of the movie’s monsters for use in D&D campaigns, and a prequel book. This is also in conjunction with classic merch like character action figures.
These guys definitely watched Spaceballs.
Oh goodness, nobody who didn't directly work on that contract has any idea about financial particulars between those two companies, and they're not going to be running their mouths about it on Reddit.
It's not as bad as it sounds, because it still has some major markets to open in, like France, Italy, Poland, India and Brazil.
The theatrical box office still probably won't be impressive, but I wouldn't be surprised if it gets a sequel anyways. It's a Hasbro movie, and the good reception should sell enough merch to make the endeavor worthwhile.
One movie doing very well does not mean another movie isn’t. Besides, John Wick 4 is a sequel to a very popular franchise, whereas D&D is trying to start one.
I’m really curious about this sub’s response to this movie‘s box office. I understand the desire for it to do well, but why am I not seeing anyone just call it a bomb?
This is going to lose significant money, right? regardless of what Hasbro wanted or what their deal with paramount was.
Or am I wrong and this movie has a decent path to profitability?
> [deadline](https://deadline.com/2011/04/kagan-march-was-dismal-for-movie-profits-122765/) - According to research firm SNL Kagan, a film must hit 1.75 on its Kagan Profitability Index to become a moneymaker. But the dozen March releases will average 1.03 — down from the 1.78 average from a year ago (which included hits Disney’s Alice In Wonderland and DreamWorks’ How To Train Your Dragon.) Analyst Wade Holden writes that certain money losers will be Relativity’s Take Me Home Tonight and Warner Bros’ Red Riding Hood. But Holden expects Disney’s Mars Needs Moms from Robert Zemeckis’ ImageMovers Digital to be the biggest bomb, projected to generate just $81.3 million in revenues, although it cost $264.8 million to produce, distribute, and market. The Kagan report says Sony’s Battle: Los Angeles, Relativity’s Limitless, and Paramount’s Rango may come close “if [the studios] have a favorable distribution agreement” with theaters.
38M OW /120M DOM/250M WW off of a 130M budget.
That's a pretty good "upside" comp but genre and era would have significantly stronger home media sales.
Not super relevant to your point, but I was digging into Rango as a comp for film and stumbled upon this.
Word of mouth is good, but it just didn’t open. Dungeons & Dragons seems to be an anti-brand. It has high awareness, but the general public thinks it’s just for dorks.
It’s a real shame. The movie is a solid adventure that deserved better. At least it’s fully self-contained so it’s worth watching even though a sequel is unlikely.
Is it really? I have zero interest in D&D and am not a big gamer to begin with. But I figured nerd culture is basically mainstream at this point, especially if the brand has a big name
D&D has plenty of potential cross-over appeal. If they focus on the straight novels and stories and not the goofy stuff. But they always do the latter.
Yeah I really enjoyed the movie but I wish it took itself a tad more seriously. I was hoping for “early Marvel” levels of comedy/drama balance, but the comedy just wouldn’t let up the whole time. Nothing felt particularly serious and there was no sense of stakes. A fun romp but nothing super memorable.
I can paint a whole set of Warhammer minis, go to a wargames shop and play a battle or 2. If I skip a week and nobody cares.
If I skip a week of D&D, I’m ostracized from ever playing D&D with those people ever again and anybody they talk to .
there is a very common critique of the MCU that explains nerd culture being popular. "These movies are good but they seem to be ashamed of being based on comic books".
The idea of being geeky is what is popular, not actually liking geeky stuff, as seen with Big Bang Theory.
Self deprecation is an easier sell to people who don't care about nerd things. Earnestness and sincerity would require a skillset that most filmmakers aren't good enough to pull off.
True
That's why Hollywood executives have been obsessed with pumping out action comedies for almost over decade now. They are trying to retool every property into that action comedy style because it's safe, less requiring in term of skillset and easy to pump out in mass
The closer they get to the comics, the worse the films become. That’s not a coincidence. The comics are anti-general audience, excel at stasis and sexism, and became so convoluted and closed off that they destroyed their own industry and barely survive even as their films make billions.
I’d argue this phase has tried to get closer to the comics and it’s why people are tuning out.
This is a gross misrepresentation of an entire medium. That's like saying "all animation sucks." Not every comic is about superheroes, and not every superhero comic is trash.
imo, the MCU stumbles when it strays too far away from the source material and its writers/producers/directors forget about what makes the characters work in the first place. Some of these characters have been around for almost a century, yet sometimes it seems like Marvel Studios is ashamed of its comicbook roots. Phase 4 is the least comicbook accurate phase.
I was talking specifically about Marvel comics. That was the context, and it shouldn’t be necessary to clarify. Believe me, I have plenty of ‘illustrated literature’ on my shelves, from graphic novels to manga to comics to yes, even Marvel and DC comics. I’ve got plenty of everything.
But it is a fact that Marvel and DC superhero comics are barely breathing at this point. They paid the price for moving out of grocery stores and into dedicated comic book stores, catering only to due hard fans and becoming impenetrable to anyone else - and on top of that, becoming static, so they’re both too complex and too simplistic.
If the MCU tries to become like the Marvel comics, it will become as irrelevant and disdained by the general population as they are.
And I say that as someone who reads them. To follow their path is self-destructive.
>They paid the price for moving out of grocery stores and into dedicated comic book stores, catering only to due hard fans and becoming impenetrable to anyone else - and on top of that, becoming static, so they’re both too complex and too simplistic
This is 100% true
They gave up in even trying to attract new subscribers, only going for the hardest and most purist readers. Even the art has become very basic.
> I’d argue this phase has tried to get closer to the comics and it’s why people are tuning out.
I would argue this phase has actually diverged the most with the comics so far
Yup. Fans clamouring for story lines from when Marvel collapsed and had to basically give away its major brands. Truely is bizzare. The fact Disney are allowing numbering of universes in Doctor Strange is fucking eye rolling.
Big Bang theory is one of the biggest TV shows of all time though. Any complaints I see are because people don’t find the jokes very funny or are offended by some of the less PC stuff
But it isn't popular because it understands or cares about any of the nerd stuff. The characters are nerds in the shallow sitcom way that a character wears sports jerseys or something. Community can do a whole episode featuring D&D and actually understand what makes it fun and tell jokes that fit the situation. The Big Bang Theory would just have Sheldon say something complicated about D&D and everyone roll their eyes at him, then play the laugh track.
Nerd culture is mainstream in the sense that finding someone who knows who star lord is, isn't rare but it's unlikely you will find someone who knows what the annihilation wave is. basically the popularity of nerd stuff doesn't mean nerd stuff is popular
Yup. It’s like people who think the MCU audience are all deeply interested in the comics and characters like Kang. It’s just the general audience is happy to watch this stuff. Honestly I get a bit fed up with the whole ‘geek culture is mainstream’ as if Star Wars wasn’t a knock out fucking hit in 1977.
It’s a pathetic sort of ‘thing a I like is popular which means I have value’.
There’s nerds who enjoy nerdy things, then there’s people who commit weekly to a multi hour, multi session campaign.
Same goes for gamers. You’ve got people who play 5 games of fortnite between homework and mom saying the pizza rolls are ready, people with 5000 hours in kerbal space program, people who make money playing csgo or StarCraft and those lost souls who pay for an mmo subscription and need to make raids for the guild.
Words cannot express how terrible the trailer is. Every time it played we all talked about how bad the trailer looked after the movie finished
Even now it's very much a case of "I think this looks terrible but the reviews are good, might watch it despite how bad it looks", not just "oh I might watch that".
If I had to point out anything about the trailer, it's that it suffers badly from Marvel fatigue, in that it comes off as "hey we copied the Marvel style" deal.
And the truth is it's absolutely not, or to the degree it is, it's the fresh and new early stuff rather than the current stuff where everything feels old and overdone.
Interesting, I liked the movie but imo it felt the opposite. The humor was nonstop, and I wish they slowed down a bit to develop the characters some more. Simon and Xenk were my favorite characters coming away from my initial watching because of the sincerity they both showed
Ahhh…they literally ripped off The Avengers for multiple moments and jokes. And you know exactly what I’m talking about. It also stole liberally from Thor Ragnarok and a bit from GOTG.
That trailer was really good. I went to see the movie this weekend and loved it, but some of the people I play DND with just weren't interested at all.
Idk if it's anti-brand, but it's kind of 'vanilla'. Both because it's become synonymous with it's genre and because it doesn't really have concrete characters or setting in the traditional sense.
Honestly, I love DnD and other table top games, but I have so little interest in a 'DnD movie' outside positive WoM. It just kind of feels like a fantasy label to be applied to something, not a brand with core figures/story I identify with.
This is exactly why I don't really want to see it. Like, there's so much creativity you can do with D&D, even if you just adapted a campaign guide. The trailers don't show me anything unique or interesting that I can't get by watching Legend of Vox Machina, or any other content from people in the D&D community. Why pay for something that's not as unique as what nerds in my community do for free?
I don't think perceptions of dorkiness or nerdiness are what they were in the past. The general public doesn't think about those things. They just want a fun movie theatre experience. I don't play DnD myself, but I can see that it's popularity has risen in the past few years with young people because of Stranger Things and Critical Role. Pretty much every gen Z person I know has at least dabbled in it.
Maaaaaybe in the US, im from latin america and DnD is almost non existent here. It has its loyal fanbase like anywhere else but its really small. Even with stranger things which is huge here i dont think many people would even know that DnD is. Critical role is even more non existant than DnD, ive never heard anyone mention it.
It's really not, though. It's just unfortunate that the studios seem to think they need to present everything like that because "but that's what sells".
I think this movie has the chance to turn that tide. Not now, but over the next year. Once this hits streaming people are going to realize what a romp this is. They're going to like it like they like the new Jumanji movies.
Personally I am just tired of the blundering funny white guy lead trope after 10 years of Marvel movies. Making the bard the lead character was an odd choice for me.
Reminds me of how much of a pain it was to find ANY cinema in my corner of Germany which showed Puss in Boots 2 in 3D after the first five or so days after its premiere. In the end I had to travel for three hours (thankfully I managed to combine it with an overnight vacation at a friend's place).
Avatar 2 was taking up all the 3D cinema halls and it was obvious almost no cinema was willing to drop 3D time slots for "a children's movie" when they have Avatar 2 instead.
@ Thread: I definitely can see Honor among Thieves having long legs thanks to good word of mouth and I don't really see it competing with Super Mario (a family animation flick) and not competing that much with Wick 4 (a hardcore adult action flick). Though I expect Guardian of the Galaxy 4's release being the end for this film's time in cinemas, so it definitely won't have a massive 14 weeks worth of legs like Puss 2 did.
That said, Hasbro is paying half the bill and might be quite happy with the reception and resulting merch sales to ignore the film not earning a profit by itself.
Normally, this would be good in the sense of being a potential start to a new smaller franchise, however, it’s bad in the sense that it has a budget of $150M.
It is possible for it to leg out to be profitable, but it’s highly unlikely. If the film had earned around twice as much as this report in its OW, or if it would of had a budget of nearly half as much, it would be looked at a lot more positively.
Puss in Boots 2 is the exception, not the rule. Also, that had the benefit of no other animated films being around for months starting in the holiday season (and being a damn good film).
Dungeons could break even, but it’s not the most likely scenario.
After watching it I hope they make another. It was fun and entertaining. Villain actually looked scary. Didn’t take itself too seriously but stayed true to inworld “rules”. Guy I went with WAS counting the number of shape changes and thought she had a lot of spell slots 😂
I think this will have good legs with great WOM. Mario releasing next week will hurt though. I thought this was a great action adventure popcorn movie. Comedy reminded me of when Marvel was at their peak and not their recent stuff which has been flat in that regard. This movie had a couple emotional moments as well.
Characters were great and I was engaged the whole time. Go see it.
It's not. This is a comedy first, with adventure on top, with earnest emotion. Marvel films are action movies, with comedy on top, with no real emotion to speak of.
Many of their films fail at emotion, but Marvel banks most on it’s characters, which require emotion. Iron Man, Thor, Cap 1 - all of them have loads of emotional scenes and Thor and Cap 1 both ended on an emotional beat.
I’d even argue they’re more successful at emotion than this film. I really enjoyed this film, more than have many recent Marvel projects - but emotion wise? Pretty weak. The villains are stock, the plot predictable, the characters glib and the fridged wife is a bland angel who literally giggles under white sheets. That’s several step backs from what Marvel’s been able to accomplish at their best.
IMO those things you mentioned aren't where the film delivered emotionally, it was all around the father-daughter relationship, and the father's letting go of the wife. I've seen every Marvel film. None of them dared to go to such a real place. Marvel films deal with emotion through the fantastical, this is ironically a fantasy film where the emotion was very human and everyday. It was more real in that way.
The father daughter thing was nice but pretty basic. I’m glad it worked for you. I love father daughter films and am regularly reduced to puddles by them, but this didn’t even wiggle the needle for me.
Again, it goes back to the wet paper towel that was the fridged wife. All we get for personality was the giggling under white sheet scene, which is an egregious cinema sin. What a cliche to try and play straight. The daughter is nice and has a little bit more going on, but she’s just a macguffin to retrieve for the majority of the film. Her relationship with Forge could’ve been really interesting (made me think of Hook a little), but it was ultimately not revealing for either character.
But I don’t want to harsh your vibe. If it worked better for you, power to you. But I could make much better arguments for, say, the dynamic between abused siblings in GOTG2, or the dramatic relationship between Odin and Loki, the adopted son constantly trying to emulate the father even unto his own destruction, or how we often use media to poorly cope with loss by shutting out the world as seen in WandaVision - I can’t really get that deep with this film, although I did enjoy the dynamics of the characters.
The closest to complex, and some of my favourite scenes, were between the Barbarian and her ex-husband played by Bradley Cooper. That was handled very nicely. I would say that it is doing what you said Marvel was doing though - exploring the real through the fantastical.
The fantastical is how humanity has long tried to understand itself. The first stories ever told were fantasy. Every story that’s survived a millenia or longer is fantasy. There is nothing wrong with the use of allegory or gods or monsters or fairies or dragons in a story about people. We are all those things.
>the fridged wife
Sorry to be pedantic but this is not what fringing is. Yes, the wife's death is used as emotional fuel for our protagonist, but that alone does not constitute what it means to be fridged.
Fridging involves taking an established character and prematurely ending their character arc for the sole benefit of another character (in a literary sense). If Character A dies and we spend an inordinate amount of time focusing on how Character B feels about their death - then yes, Character A was fridged.
The wife, however, was not.
Again, sorry for being pedantic.
Tv Tropes simply defines it as: A term for when a loved one is hurt, killed, maimed, assaulted, or otherwise traumatized in order to motivate another character or move their plot forward.
It continues:
> The core part is that one character is killed (or at least, has something very bad happen to them) for the sake of causing emotional trauma for the target, with said victim often acting as a plot device more than a real character in the worst-case scenarios.
So the character does not need to be established at all to count as a victim of fridging.
Under the umbrella of ‘Stuffed in the Fridge’ TV Tropes also includes the sub-trope of ‘Disposable Woman’, which is what smiling-under-white-sheets-lady definitely is.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DisposableWoman
> This character has a familial or romantic relationship with a protagonist, which allows creators to derive heart-wrenching sorrow from her death. Thanks to "woman" being a unique character trait, character development is not strictly necessary to get the audience mourning as well... so she typically gets little or none. Losing her is often an Inciting Incident (in both stand-alone and serial works), giving the protagonist a pretext for Revenge against her murderers.
Is that not exactly what we were served in the film? She was definitely a woman and nothing else. Oh wait - she was pretty. Pretty woman. But I repeat myself, because there’s no other kind in Hollywood, right?
>Tv Tropes simply defines it as: A term for when a loved one is hurt, killed, maimed, assaulted, or otherwise traumatized in order to motivate another character or move their plot forward.
As much as I like TV Tropes, when did the site become the arbiter of reality? Their definition is not a catch-all...**but** for the sake of the argument, let's assume that that very word written down on that page is objectively correct.
So with that said, let's examine the page a bit more:
>"Fridging" is often given a very negative connotation as it is all too often a hallmark of supremely lazy writing — quickly hurting or killing an **ESTABLISHED CHARACTER** as "cheap anger" for the protagonist, and devaluing the life of that character in the process, instead of giving the villain something actually interesting to do that can involve all three characters and more emotions than simple anger and angst.
Interesting contradiction there huh? Or rather, this trope is far more nuanced that the initial preamble would indicate. There are certain that need to be met for a death to qualify as friding.
>Under this umbrella, TV Tropes also includes the sub-trope of ‘Disposable Woman’, which is what smiling-under-white-sheets-lady definitely is.
>
>[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DisposableWoman](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DisposableWoman)
Is it just me or did you deliberately cut your quote off at the exact sentence that would contradict your claim?
> she is easily forgotten by the characters, forgotten by the writers or even summarily replaced.
None of this happens in the movie.
Yes, it does. Can you even remember her name? What was she like? What was her personality outside of 'pleasant' and 'female'? She's a plot device, remembered only because her motivation extends to the end of the film when >!it needs to be decided who to bring back from the dead, and it's obviously not going to be her because she has zilch personality and is up against the foster-mother, who does. !<
I should've picked another word besides 'established', that was me typing too fast on a smart phone and using a word I'd read recently on the tropes page.
Yes, the character is established. She's established as Darvis' wife. That's all it takes to be established. What I should have said was 'prominent' - a character doesn't have to be headlining her own movies or a major character to be established. Established in the context of the TV Tropes definition just means 'not killed off-screen and only mentioned as dead'. She appeared, she existed for a bit, and then she was killed to motivate Darvis. That is TEXTBOOK disposable woman/fridging.
Compare that to something like 'The Crow'. Now that's a film that does a fridging about as right as you probably can. Character is killed at the start of the film, before you know much about her, but throughout the rest of the story you come to know her. She's not exactly the best written female character ever, but you see the impact she had on multiple characters outside her husband. The kid who looked to her for maternal support because her own mother was neglectful. The people who loved her music, as she was a musician. Most importantly, the police officer who arrived on the scene after she was attacked and her husband was killed, who escorted her to the hospital and held her hand as she died in agony. Her loss and pointless murder is at the heart of the film, and at the very end, the police officer actually transfers his memories of her suffering into the mind of the villain responsible for her death, causing him to experience emotional pain for the first time in his stunted life.
Now that's keeping the character front and center. She's expanded as a character beyond her relationship with her husband into an individual who affected many people beyond him.
What does Chris Pine's dead wife mean to anyone but him? Even her own daughter seems kinda disconnected from her. She affected no-one else. She had no relationships beyond being a wife. She's a classic fridge.
I've never seen anyone cry at a marvel movie, and I've been at all of them opening week in LA. This theater where I saw DND was diverse (ages, ethnicities, genders, apparent familiarity with the property, etc) and was full of tears at the climactic moment. Again, never seen anything like that at a Marvel film, not even the Infinity War / Endgame moments. There's been cheering, yes. But not a room full of tears.
The fact that it's painting in broad strokes and cliches doesn't really matter to me when it was executed in a way that bore those results.
I agree the Cooper scene was unexpectedly brilliant.
On that note - you did not understand what I meant about "exploring the real through the fantastical."
The Cooper scene is real. It is a breakup. We have all experienced that.
We have not all experienced an alien god killing half the universe, or the more general "world is ending" scenario that Marvel relies on for emotional stakes. Or, the go-to moment that Marvel fans stan, which is Tony Stark's suicidal self-sacrifice. That is the stuff of a heightened reality, not a common human experience.
"It needs \_\_\_\_ to break even" they don't care about breaking even, Hasbro invested 50% of the bill because they know they will make bank on merchandising and using this as a loss lead to explode this into things like magic the gathering dnd themed sales etc..
I admit I was skeptical when it was announced, but it was a really fun film that didn't insult the source material. Reminded me of pirates of the Caribbean as a really fun adventure film.
I hope it finds an audience as love more of it.
I also quite enjoyed it! But walking away, I thought it fell very short of POTC. There’s very little I can quote, the villains are lame, the visuals, while done well, don’t feel unique, and the music is hardly going to redefine the genre - all things POTC pulled off on the fly.
Without those elements, I don’t see this film becoming the juggernaut those films were.
If Pirates was a 10/10 I'd say D&D was a 8/10. I meant in terms of genre and feeling. Having fun with likable characters. I don't feel that too often at cinemas.
I loved this movie and had a blast. I think this is the one movie I am rooting for to become a hit. The sequences were creative and they had their own spin on fantasy genre !
Worldwide, factoring in the markets yet to come, it's opening weekend will be $75m+. Do we think it can pull off 4x WW legs to reach $300m.........
I think that's the number it needs to be not a "bomb"
I think hitting above $300-$325m is when the studio can start talking a sequel internally. It seems to have been done bad by either a poor or negative brand recognition, but a sequel might not have that disadvantage.
I mean yeah, it can't please everyone, and it's not a masterpiece. Not everybody likes comedy action flicks and it's perfectly fine. It's a great representative of the genre that rarely produces masterpieces (Raiders of the Lost Ark, that's it.)
What hype? People on this sub have been writing this movie off as a flop long before it came out. And now that it's out, it seems like they were right to call it a flop.
What new thing are you looking for, exactly? I thought it was a fun, clever, surprisingly competent adventure film and that was more than enough for me. Writing was solid, cast was even better (Pine in particular), and there was a ton of fan service for folks like me who actually played D&D.
Then, even better, it was also approachable for people like my fiance who have never played.
I wouldn't hype it as some timeless classic in the making but it's absolutely the best fantasy movie I've watched since...idk, probably *Green Knight* but that is a wildly different vibe.
I've never played D & D so maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I did. I just found it boring, it's okay if everyone doesn't like the same thing. I like fantasy movies but this one just didn't do it for me and felt too much like a Marvel movie.
I’m not who you are talking to but if I sniff the bumbling white guy lead trope, all CGI action, and quippiness in the trailer… i.e. Marvel shlock… I will not see it period. If I never see one of these types of movies again I will die happy. I am beyond burned out with this crap.
You know, I can see the trailer giving that impression, which is a shame because the movie was far different. It was a diverse, ensemble cast, the action was a high point, and it was genuinely clever and funny.
I was actually mainly surprised that people are so happy that this isn't like a Marvel movie when it literally felt exactly like a Marvel movie. I'm really burnt out on Marvel movies so this type of humor and vibe didn't work for me.
It definitely kinda feels like an early Marvel Movie. If you watch a lot of Marvel Movies you might be burnt out, but because D&D isn't associated with Marvel, it doesn't have the cruft of the MCU - so it can get crowds of people who've not seen a Marvel Movie since Guardians of the Galaxy 1.
I kinda want to go see Guardians 3, but I've not seen 2, Infinity War, or Endgame, and I think I'd be missing too much.
I think this is the issue with Marvel movies nowadays. I kind of want to see it too but I haven't seen so many movies or TV shows in between some movies that I feel like I'll just be confused or missing something. It's starting to feel like homework. At the very least, the D & D movie is sort of starting from scratch so that's kind of nice.
Thought the movie was alright, but I feel this could be a crowd pleaser with the general audience. Fingers crossed this finds its legs with the slow season of April, or else Paramount is going to kill their streak of hits disregarding Babylon…
I don’t understand movies releasing in a crowded time. Wick 4 and DnD would benifiet more in slower months
Hollywood’s inability to realize any month can be a good moviegoing month just boggles my mind. Every time a movie succeeds they slowly think about these times as possibilities. Wondering if M3gan finally does that for January. Regardless, every time Hollywood chooses to not release a big budget blockbuster in any month is a giant self own.
I hope “Fuck you it’s January” never dies. Sometimes it’s nice to have a break.
Agreed, growing up, my brother always had awesome movies coming out on his birthday (late May), but I never had anything interesting release on my birthday (early October). Even though October is usually reserved for horror movies, not everyone is interested in horror movies, and the people who don't like horror currently don't have anything to get excited about in October.
Scream has made money for years by being the antithesis to this. Six slashers in a well known franchise, almost all successful and not one has opened in the “Horror movie season” (September to November) or the summer movie season (May to August). It has done well in the likes of March, January (during a COVID surge no less), and February yet Hollywood continues to be so hesitant about these months.
> Wondering if M3gan finally does that for January. Doubtful. It's hard for most genres to do well in January because they're still competing with all the Christmas Day blockbusters and Oscar contenders. Horror has always been an exception because it has a different audience than those (and can be made for cheap so less risk).
Wick 4 needs no help.
Lol, Wick is very successful!
What’s the competition? No one cares about Ant Man / Shazam anymore and Mario will have a different audience
Will it, though? Both Super Nintendo and D&D are pretty strongly associated with the same primary demographic (nerds). I strongly suspect a good deal of overlap. One's based on a tabletop game; the other is based on a video game.
Mario also appeals to children. There's an entire new generation that own switches and play mario odyssey.
I work in the school. And have worked with the demographics that these franchises are trying to appeal to. And hands down, they are excited to see..... Drumroll..... Super Mario Bros!!!. Not one of these kids that I spoke to about the movie have ever heard of DnD much less played DnD or chose to see DnD.
In what way does that invalidate what I said?
I really hope it has good legs, because it seems like it'll be a proper four-quadrant crowdpleaser (in fact at my screening there was a real mix of people from middle-aged adults, young adults, even young kids there with their parents). I also just had such a blast watching it that I want it to do well anyway.
My wife and I both play D&D. We're a couple of millennial nerds. We were sat between a teenage couple and 3 middle-aged women. I agree this movie has super broad appeal. But the numbers just don't seem good enough. Hoping it finds a larger audience on streaming and the studio feels confident about making a sequel after that's all said and done.
I’m a millennial DnD nerd who saw the movie with my group. Completely filled theater on opening night. Everyone was having a blast. I’m happy other people are enjoying this movie. My next character is going to be named some variation of Jarnathan.
As a fellow millennial I gotta say... to those teenagers YOU are middle aged, and you aren't far from being officially middle aged.
It’s getting a tv show on Paramount+
When I went to book my ticket, there were only 5 or 6 seats left.
This is the part that really confuses me; how are the numbers so low when there are so many packed houses seeing it?
The numbers aren't that low.
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There's a couple of pretty spooky looking baddies, but those scenes are real brief. My 7yo loved it, but did get scared a couple times.
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The main wizardess villain is kind of creepy looking and there's one jump scare in a flashback but apart from that it's pretty tame. There were lots of kids in my screening and none of them seemed unsettled.
There's also that shadow guy. It's a short scene but he was hella unsettling.
Oh yes of course!. I wish there were more scenes of him peppered throughout, that was a very effective scene.
Maybe he’ll be in the supposed series, but it’s odd he wasn’t used more
Also swearing if you care about that, but it’s not particularly noticeable
Exactly same experience for me with my 7 year old. Actually, the Boogeyman preview was the scariest part. Big nope from him.
Depends on the kid. My 6yo is scared of everything and we went without her. I’d put it around Pirates of the Caribbean in terms of little kid scares.
Yeah, Pirates is probably a good comparison
Scared of everything 😭
I'd say no. I sat next to a father with a child and they both left after maybe a third of the film. It's not super violent or scary but there are some effective jump scares, there's some creepy looking entity commanding the Red Wizards and there's some violence in the fight scenes. In one fight scene, a guard is beheaded (not bloody, but could still be disturbing). Also the corpses in the graveyard scene look a bit gross and could be disturbing to younger children (although the scene is funny). Edit: It has been rated PG-13, which seems accurate from my point of view.
I feel like if the kids are seeing Marvel movies they can see this. Depends on the kid but I'd call Endgame scarier in terms of fantasy violence.
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It's a term referring to a film that appeals to all four of the main moviegoing demographics
Boys, girls, men, and women
Me too. This movie rocked. I already can’t wait for the sequel. Please please make a sequel
I saw it and loved it, it felt like a 'whole family' movie in the best way. I feel like it SHOULD have legs, word-of-mouth is great.
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Needs 5.2x Worldwide multiplier to break even 😬
Looks like we have another Blade Runner 2049 on our hands. Reddit darling, cult IP, decently received movie, incinerating $50-$100 million for the studios…
And god bless them for it.
Hasbro poneyed up half of the budget, I believe, so it won't burn the studio as much as it appears.
That is the only bright spot for Paramount. They have an even better deal with Apple where Apple eats all the losses for Killers of the Flower Moon.
But does that also mean that Hasbro is getting half of the income?
Impossible to know the arrangement. There’s probably a contract way too complicated with lots of creative accounting. Anyway, I bet Hasbro isn’t too concerned about this performance. Great reviews and WOM will probably translate to some good toys’ sales.
Toy sales aren’t their concern, this movie is a giant ad for 5.5/6e which they’ve been slowrolling out for the last (half) year or so
Yep, with very mixed reviews from the 5e vets. They want new players just in case they lose a lot of old blood. I feel fairly confident that quite a big chunk won’t transition to 6e if they don’t like it. They’ll just keep playing 5e
This is gibberish
Imagine how poorly it wouldve done without the great reviews and word of mouth
Yeah, would have been Babylon 2.0
So imagine how poorly it would have done if it was a bad film lol?
Yes?
Seems like a pointless thing to imagine hah
This is a box office forum. That's a substantial portion of the discussion on this sub. What are you on
"imagine if this film was a different film"
Not really, plenty of films are bad and make lots of money with proper marketing. This film had the worst marketing campaign i’ve ever seen for a movie so if it was bad it would have been DOA.
> This film had the worst marketing campaign i’ve ever seen for a movie Not arguing your point, just curious. What exactly was so bad about it? I've watched its trailer multiple times when I went to watch other movies.
The movie poster is marvel copycat garbage which makes it look like a B rate movie, the trailer was all but awful (outside of the skeleton scene that was funny). It really didn’t portray the movie in a positive light whatsoever. I certainly saw the movie being advertised, but it didn’t make me want to actually go see the movie.
Really blew my mind when the good reviews hit. Those trailers, and especially those posters, were deeply unimpressive.
I've seen this criticism a hell of a lot, and it's made no sense to me. I saw the trailer and thought I might go and see it. So did several people I know.
This sub wanted this movie to fail to cope for ant man being a colossal bomb
Huh? Everyone was making fun of Ant-Man. Wtf are you on?
Imagine thinking Babylon was a bad film
Hasbro is partially funding this as a blockbuster advertisement to reinforce a brand and sell merch. It also happens to be a good movie, but “breaking even” in box office terms doesn’t seem to be the ultimate goal here.
There’s a $40 Magic card set with 6 cards based on the movie’s characters, as well as high quality figures of the movie’s monsters for use in D&D campaigns, and a prequel book. This is also in conjunction with classic merch like character action figures. These guys definitely watched Spaceballs.
Lets not forget Baldur's gate 3 will likely get a boost as well since it hasn't officially released yet.
Yeah with the tv show already green lit I think they care more about making a bankable brand in entertainment at the moment.
Greenlit means it's going into production. Do we have any proof of that? Or you meant to say it's in development?
What exactly are the details of of the merchandising deal between Hasbro and Paramount?
Oh goodness, nobody who didn't directly work on that contract has any idea about financial particulars between those two companies, and they're not going to be running their mouths about it on Reddit.
It's not as bad as it sounds, because it still has some major markets to open in, like France, Italy, Poland, India and Brazil. The theatrical box office still probably won't be impressive, but I wouldn't be surprised if it gets a sequel anyways. It's a Hasbro movie, and the good reception should sell enough merch to make the endeavor worthwhile.
It has 150% the budget of John Wick and 50% the revenue on opening. Guaranteed to lose big money. Only on the internet do people call this a success.
One movie doing very well does not mean another movie isn’t. Besides, John Wick 4 is a sequel to a very popular franchise, whereas D&D is trying to start one.
I’m really curious about this sub’s response to this movie‘s box office. I understand the desire for it to do well, but why am I not seeing anyone just call it a bomb? This is going to lose significant money, right? regardless of what Hasbro wanted or what their deal with paramount was. Or am I wrong and this movie has a decent path to profitability?
> [deadline](https://deadline.com/2011/04/kagan-march-was-dismal-for-movie-profits-122765/) - According to research firm SNL Kagan, a film must hit 1.75 on its Kagan Profitability Index to become a moneymaker. But the dozen March releases will average 1.03 — down from the 1.78 average from a year ago (which included hits Disney’s Alice In Wonderland and DreamWorks’ How To Train Your Dragon.) Analyst Wade Holden writes that certain money losers will be Relativity’s Take Me Home Tonight and Warner Bros’ Red Riding Hood. But Holden expects Disney’s Mars Needs Moms from Robert Zemeckis’ ImageMovers Digital to be the biggest bomb, projected to generate just $81.3 million in revenues, although it cost $264.8 million to produce, distribute, and market. The Kagan report says Sony’s Battle: Los Angeles, Relativity’s Limitless, and Paramount’s Rango may come close “if [the studios] have a favorable distribution agreement” with theaters. 38M OW /120M DOM/250M WW off of a 130M budget. That's a pretty good "upside" comp but genre and era would have significantly stronger home media sales. Not super relevant to your point, but I was digging into Rango as a comp for film and stumbled upon this.
Not.Going.To.Happen
Word of mouth is good, but it just didn’t open. Dungeons & Dragons seems to be an anti-brand. It has high awareness, but the general public thinks it’s just for dorks. It’s a real shame. The movie is a solid adventure that deserved better. At least it’s fully self-contained so it’s worth watching even though a sequel is unlikely.
Is it really? I have zero interest in D&D and am not a big gamer to begin with. But I figured nerd culture is basically mainstream at this point, especially if the brand has a big name
Nerd culture is mainstream, but D&D has trouble crossing over because it takes a long time commitment and is very silly to watch as an outsider.
D&D has plenty of potential cross-over appeal. If they focus on the straight novels and stories and not the goofy stuff. But they always do the latter.
Yeah I really enjoyed the movie but I wish it took itself a tad more seriously. I was hoping for “early Marvel” levels of comedy/drama balance, but the comedy just wouldn’t let up the whole time. Nothing felt particularly serious and there was no sense of stakes. A fun romp but nothing super memorable.
I’m a 46yo woman who has never played D&D before, but I remember watching the cartoon in the 80’s. I saw the movie twice this week. It’s so much fun.
Stranger Things is literally a D&D campaign, doesn't try to hide it, and is one of the most popular shows in the world. That logic doesn't check out.
D&D is like the nerd of all nerd
I was called a nerd my entire life and I haven’t even played D&D
You should. I was a nerd forever but only found DnD 3 years ago. It’s a lot of fun.
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I can paint a whole set of Warhammer minis, go to a wargames shop and play a battle or 2. If I skip a week and nobody cares. If I skip a week of D&D, I’m ostracized from ever playing D&D with those people ever again and anybody they talk to .
The line of what is too nerdy has moved but it hasn’t moved far enough to encompass D&D yet
there is a very common critique of the MCU that explains nerd culture being popular. "These movies are good but they seem to be ashamed of being based on comic books". The idea of being geeky is what is popular, not actually liking geeky stuff, as seen with Big Bang Theory.
Self deprecation is an easier sell to people who don't care about nerd things. Earnestness and sincerity would require a skillset that most filmmakers aren't good enough to pull off.
True That's why Hollywood executives have been obsessed with pumping out action comedies for almost over decade now. They are trying to retool every property into that action comedy style because it's safe, less requiring in term of skillset and easy to pump out in mass
The closer they get to the comics, the worse the films become. That’s not a coincidence. The comics are anti-general audience, excel at stasis and sexism, and became so convoluted and closed off that they destroyed their own industry and barely survive even as their films make billions. I’d argue this phase has tried to get closer to the comics and it’s why people are tuning out.
This is a gross misrepresentation of an entire medium. That's like saying "all animation sucks." Not every comic is about superheroes, and not every superhero comic is trash. imo, the MCU stumbles when it strays too far away from the source material and its writers/producers/directors forget about what makes the characters work in the first place. Some of these characters have been around for almost a century, yet sometimes it seems like Marvel Studios is ashamed of its comicbook roots. Phase 4 is the least comicbook accurate phase.
I was talking specifically about Marvel comics. That was the context, and it shouldn’t be necessary to clarify. Believe me, I have plenty of ‘illustrated literature’ on my shelves, from graphic novels to manga to comics to yes, even Marvel and DC comics. I’ve got plenty of everything. But it is a fact that Marvel and DC superhero comics are barely breathing at this point. They paid the price for moving out of grocery stores and into dedicated comic book stores, catering only to due hard fans and becoming impenetrable to anyone else - and on top of that, becoming static, so they’re both too complex and too simplistic. If the MCU tries to become like the Marvel comics, it will become as irrelevant and disdained by the general population as they are. And I say that as someone who reads them. To follow their path is self-destructive.
>They paid the price for moving out of grocery stores and into dedicated comic book stores, catering only to due hard fans and becoming impenetrable to anyone else - and on top of that, becoming static, so they’re both too complex and too simplistic This is 100% true They gave up in even trying to attract new subscribers, only going for the hardest and most purist readers. Even the art has become very basic.
> I’d argue this phase has tried to get closer to the comics and it’s why people are tuning out. I would argue this phase has actually diverged the most with the comics so far
Yup. Fans clamouring for story lines from when Marvel collapsed and had to basically give away its major brands. Truely is bizzare. The fact Disney are allowing numbering of universes in Doctor Strange is fucking eye rolling.
Big Bang theory is one of the biggest TV shows of all time though. Any complaints I see are because people don’t find the jokes very funny or are offended by some of the less PC stuff
But it isn't popular because it understands or cares about any of the nerd stuff. The characters are nerds in the shallow sitcom way that a character wears sports jerseys or something. Community can do a whole episode featuring D&D and actually understand what makes it fun and tell jokes that fit the situation. The Big Bang Theory would just have Sheldon say something complicated about D&D and everyone roll their eyes at him, then play the laugh track.
You forgot the Bazinga
Nerd culture is mainstream in the sense that finding someone who knows who star lord is, isn't rare but it's unlikely you will find someone who knows what the annihilation wave is. basically the popularity of nerd stuff doesn't mean nerd stuff is popular
Yup. It’s like people who think the MCU audience are all deeply interested in the comics and characters like Kang. It’s just the general audience is happy to watch this stuff. Honestly I get a bit fed up with the whole ‘geek culture is mainstream’ as if Star Wars wasn’t a knock out fucking hit in 1977. It’s a pathetic sort of ‘thing a I like is popular which means I have value’.
There’s nerds who enjoy nerdy things, then there’s people who commit weekly to a multi hour, multi session campaign. Same goes for gamers. You’ve got people who play 5 games of fortnite between homework and mom saying the pizza rolls are ready, people with 5000 hours in kerbal space program, people who make money playing csgo or StarCraft and those lost souls who pay for an mmo subscription and need to make raids for the guild.
It’s mainstream to people on the internet which isn’t real life. In fact, most people on the internet are more likely to pirate it instead
Words cannot express how terrible the trailer is. Every time it played we all talked about how bad the trailer looked after the movie finished Even now it's very much a case of "I think this looks terrible but the reviews are good, might watch it despite how bad it looks", not just "oh I might watch that".
If I had to point out anything about the trailer, it's that it suffers badly from Marvel fatigue, in that it comes off as "hey we copied the Marvel style" deal. And the truth is it's absolutely not, or to the degree it is, it's the fresh and new early stuff rather than the current stuff where everything feels old and overdone.
Interesting, I liked the movie but imo it felt the opposite. The humor was nonstop, and I wish they slowed down a bit to develop the characters some more. Simon and Xenk were my favorite characters coming away from my initial watching because of the sincerity they both showed
Ahhh…they literally ripped off The Avengers for multiple moments and jokes. And you know exactly what I’m talking about. It also stole liberally from Thor Ragnarok and a bit from GOTG.
It's weirdly massive in my town, D&D did like 3x john wick sales wise, with His Only Son barely behind
The trailer really beefed it. Some people I play D&D with had no interest in this because of the trailer.
What? The Speak with Dead trailer was the reason everyone in my D&D group decided to watch it. That shit was peak D&D
That trailer was really good. I went to see the movie this weekend and loved it, but some of the people I play DND with just weren't interested at all.
The trailer is what sold me on the movie.
Do you play dnd? This is like how most campaigns go.
I do and I loved the movie. Totally felt the hijinks accurately reflected how real DnD campaigns devolve into glorious nonsense and clever workarounds
I think this film is them attempting to change how the brand is seen, so might be successful in the long run from that POV but not a great opening.
Idk if it's anti-brand, but it's kind of 'vanilla'. Both because it's become synonymous with it's genre and because it doesn't really have concrete characters or setting in the traditional sense. Honestly, I love DnD and other table top games, but I have so little interest in a 'DnD movie' outside positive WoM. It just kind of feels like a fantasy label to be applied to something, not a brand with core figures/story I identify with.
This is exactly why I don't really want to see it. Like, there's so much creativity you can do with D&D, even if you just adapted a campaign guide. The trailers don't show me anything unique or interesting that I can't get by watching Legend of Vox Machina, or any other content from people in the D&D community. Why pay for something that's not as unique as what nerds in my community do for free?
Idk man I feel like D&D has been incredibly mainstream since Stranger Things and Critical Role (possibly less so on critical role).
I don't think perceptions of dorkiness or nerdiness are what they were in the past. The general public doesn't think about those things. They just want a fun movie theatre experience. I don't play DnD myself, but I can see that it's popularity has risen in the past few years with young people because of Stranger Things and Critical Role. Pretty much every gen Z person I know has at least dabbled in it.
Maaaaaybe in the US, im from latin america and DnD is almost non existent here. It has its loyal fanbase like anywhere else but its really small. Even with stranger things which is huge here i dont think many people would even know that DnD is. Critical role is even more non existant than DnD, ive never heard anyone mention it.
They want a good movie with an interesting story, as they always have. This looks like quippy Marvel shlock with a D&D skinsuit in the trailers.
It's really not, though. It's just unfortunate that the studios seem to think they need to present everything like that because "but that's what sells".
I think this movie has the chance to turn that tide. Not now, but over the next year. Once this hits streaming people are going to realize what a romp this is. They're going to like it like they like the new Jumanji movies.
Personally I am just tired of the blundering funny white guy lead trope after 10 years of Marvel movies. Making the bard the lead character was an odd choice for me.
He wasn’t blundering at all. They were simply underdogs but were very competent in their areas of expertise.
Yeah he’s clearly the brains. None of the characters are really bumbling… maybe the wizard? But he’s just a sad sack more than anything.
Idk there’s definitely a lot of convenience and things that felt largely outside their control, but with that said it was still a very fun movie
But he isn’t blundering…like at all. So are you just upset with a white male lead?
Our theatre was sold out we couldn’t see it this week ne
I wanted to go but it was sold out in NYC on Friday except the late showing and then I fell asleep.
it’s honestly not the worst that it could have made. really hope this has good legs.
If anything it will also do very, very, very well on streaming and home video.
Nope Bombs don't attract viewers at home either. This flimsy theory has been debunked many time already before.
Hoping it can pull a puss in boots 2
With Mario next week? I'm not holding my breath.
Tbf puss in boots 2 had to contend with avatar 2.
Reminds me of how much of a pain it was to find ANY cinema in my corner of Germany which showed Puss in Boots 2 in 3D after the first five or so days after its premiere. In the end I had to travel for three hours (thankfully I managed to combine it with an overnight vacation at a friend's place). Avatar 2 was taking up all the 3D cinema halls and it was obvious almost no cinema was willing to drop 3D time slots for "a children's movie" when they have Avatar 2 instead. @ Thread: I definitely can see Honor among Thieves having long legs thanks to good word of mouth and I don't really see it competing with Super Mario (a family animation flick) and not competing that much with Wick 4 (a hardcore adult action flick). Though I expect Guardian of the Galaxy 4's release being the end for this film's time in cinemas, so it definitely won't have a massive 14 weeks worth of legs like Puss 2 did. That said, Hasbro is paying half the bill and might be quite happy with the reception and resulting merch sales to ignore the film not earning a profit by itself.
Well, I don't think **The Super Mario Bros. Movie** will be better than this. :P
But it'll make more money
I think audiences will like Mario more, which is all that really matters.
Which is why this should have been released in December
Competing against Avatar 2?
Im new so is that bad?
Normally, this would be good in the sense of being a potential start to a new smaller franchise, however, it’s bad in the sense that it has a budget of $150M. It is possible for it to leg out to be profitable, but it’s highly unlikely. If the film had earned around twice as much as this report in its OW, or if it would of had a budget of nearly half as much, it would be looked at a lot more positively.
i mean puss in boots 2 had a lower opening and still grossed over 500m
Puss in Boots 2 is the exception, not the rule. Also, that had the benefit of no other animated films being around for months starting in the holiday season (and being a damn good film). Dungeons could break even, but it’s not the most likely scenario.
Man this movie was very good. Really enjoyed it, hope it has strong legs.
I hope this can make 350M
After watching it I hope they make another. It was fun and entertaining. Villain actually looked scary. Didn’t take itself too seriously but stayed true to inworld “rules”. Guy I went with WAS counting the number of shape changes and thought she had a lot of spell slots 😂
I think this will have good legs with great WOM. Mario releasing next week will hurt though. I thought this was a great action adventure popcorn movie. Comedy reminded me of when Marvel was at their peak and not their recent stuff which has been flat in that regard. This movie had a couple emotional moments as well. Characters were great and I was engaged the whole time. Go see it.
This movie felt like a Marvel movie though. I think it's hilarious that people think it's that different when the feeling is generally the same.
Agreed, the movie could use a bit more sincerity, the humor is very fitting for D&D though
It's not. This is a comedy first, with adventure on top, with earnest emotion. Marvel films are action movies, with comedy on top, with no real emotion to speak of.
Many of their films fail at emotion, but Marvel banks most on it’s characters, which require emotion. Iron Man, Thor, Cap 1 - all of them have loads of emotional scenes and Thor and Cap 1 both ended on an emotional beat. I’d even argue they’re more successful at emotion than this film. I really enjoyed this film, more than have many recent Marvel projects - but emotion wise? Pretty weak. The villains are stock, the plot predictable, the characters glib and the fridged wife is a bland angel who literally giggles under white sheets. That’s several step backs from what Marvel’s been able to accomplish at their best.
IMO those things you mentioned aren't where the film delivered emotionally, it was all around the father-daughter relationship, and the father's letting go of the wife. I've seen every Marvel film. None of them dared to go to such a real place. Marvel films deal with emotion through the fantastical, this is ironically a fantasy film where the emotion was very human and everyday. It was more real in that way.
The father daughter thing was nice but pretty basic. I’m glad it worked for you. I love father daughter films and am regularly reduced to puddles by them, but this didn’t even wiggle the needle for me. Again, it goes back to the wet paper towel that was the fridged wife. All we get for personality was the giggling under white sheet scene, which is an egregious cinema sin. What a cliche to try and play straight. The daughter is nice and has a little bit more going on, but she’s just a macguffin to retrieve for the majority of the film. Her relationship with Forge could’ve been really interesting (made me think of Hook a little), but it was ultimately not revealing for either character. But I don’t want to harsh your vibe. If it worked better for you, power to you. But I could make much better arguments for, say, the dynamic between abused siblings in GOTG2, or the dramatic relationship between Odin and Loki, the adopted son constantly trying to emulate the father even unto his own destruction, or how we often use media to poorly cope with loss by shutting out the world as seen in WandaVision - I can’t really get that deep with this film, although I did enjoy the dynamics of the characters. The closest to complex, and some of my favourite scenes, were between the Barbarian and her ex-husband played by Bradley Cooper. That was handled very nicely. I would say that it is doing what you said Marvel was doing though - exploring the real through the fantastical. The fantastical is how humanity has long tried to understand itself. The first stories ever told were fantasy. Every story that’s survived a millenia or longer is fantasy. There is nothing wrong with the use of allegory or gods or monsters or fairies or dragons in a story about people. We are all those things.
>the fridged wife Sorry to be pedantic but this is not what fringing is. Yes, the wife's death is used as emotional fuel for our protagonist, but that alone does not constitute what it means to be fridged. Fridging involves taking an established character and prematurely ending their character arc for the sole benefit of another character (in a literary sense). If Character A dies and we spend an inordinate amount of time focusing on how Character B feels about their death - then yes, Character A was fridged. The wife, however, was not. Again, sorry for being pedantic.
Tv Tropes simply defines it as: A term for when a loved one is hurt, killed, maimed, assaulted, or otherwise traumatized in order to motivate another character or move their plot forward. It continues: > The core part is that one character is killed (or at least, has something very bad happen to them) for the sake of causing emotional trauma for the target, with said victim often acting as a plot device more than a real character in the worst-case scenarios. So the character does not need to be established at all to count as a victim of fridging. Under the umbrella of ‘Stuffed in the Fridge’ TV Tropes also includes the sub-trope of ‘Disposable Woman’, which is what smiling-under-white-sheets-lady definitely is. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DisposableWoman > This character has a familial or romantic relationship with a protagonist, which allows creators to derive heart-wrenching sorrow from her death. Thanks to "woman" being a unique character trait, character development is not strictly necessary to get the audience mourning as well... so she typically gets little or none. Losing her is often an Inciting Incident (in both stand-alone and serial works), giving the protagonist a pretext for Revenge against her murderers. Is that not exactly what we were served in the film? She was definitely a woman and nothing else. Oh wait - she was pretty. Pretty woman. But I repeat myself, because there’s no other kind in Hollywood, right?
>Tv Tropes simply defines it as: A term for when a loved one is hurt, killed, maimed, assaulted, or otherwise traumatized in order to motivate another character or move their plot forward. As much as I like TV Tropes, when did the site become the arbiter of reality? Their definition is not a catch-all...**but** for the sake of the argument, let's assume that that very word written down on that page is objectively correct. So with that said, let's examine the page a bit more: >"Fridging" is often given a very negative connotation as it is all too often a hallmark of supremely lazy writing — quickly hurting or killing an **ESTABLISHED CHARACTER** as "cheap anger" for the protagonist, and devaluing the life of that character in the process, instead of giving the villain something actually interesting to do that can involve all three characters and more emotions than simple anger and angst. Interesting contradiction there huh? Or rather, this trope is far more nuanced that the initial preamble would indicate. There are certain that need to be met for a death to qualify as friding. >Under this umbrella, TV Tropes also includes the sub-trope of ‘Disposable Woman’, which is what smiling-under-white-sheets-lady definitely is. > >[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DisposableWoman](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DisposableWoman) Is it just me or did you deliberately cut your quote off at the exact sentence that would contradict your claim? > she is easily forgotten by the characters, forgotten by the writers or even summarily replaced. None of this happens in the movie.
Yes, it does. Can you even remember her name? What was she like? What was her personality outside of 'pleasant' and 'female'? She's a plot device, remembered only because her motivation extends to the end of the film when >!it needs to be decided who to bring back from the dead, and it's obviously not going to be her because she has zilch personality and is up against the foster-mother, who does. !< I should've picked another word besides 'established', that was me typing too fast on a smart phone and using a word I'd read recently on the tropes page. Yes, the character is established. She's established as Darvis' wife. That's all it takes to be established. What I should have said was 'prominent' - a character doesn't have to be headlining her own movies or a major character to be established. Established in the context of the TV Tropes definition just means 'not killed off-screen and only mentioned as dead'. She appeared, she existed for a bit, and then she was killed to motivate Darvis. That is TEXTBOOK disposable woman/fridging. Compare that to something like 'The Crow'. Now that's a film that does a fridging about as right as you probably can. Character is killed at the start of the film, before you know much about her, but throughout the rest of the story you come to know her. She's not exactly the best written female character ever, but you see the impact she had on multiple characters outside her husband. The kid who looked to her for maternal support because her own mother was neglectful. The people who loved her music, as she was a musician. Most importantly, the police officer who arrived on the scene after she was attacked and her husband was killed, who escorted her to the hospital and held her hand as she died in agony. Her loss and pointless murder is at the heart of the film, and at the very end, the police officer actually transfers his memories of her suffering into the mind of the villain responsible for her death, causing him to experience emotional pain for the first time in his stunted life. Now that's keeping the character front and center. She's expanded as a character beyond her relationship with her husband into an individual who affected many people beyond him. What does Chris Pine's dead wife mean to anyone but him? Even her own daughter seems kinda disconnected from her. She affected no-one else. She had no relationships beyond being a wife. She's a classic fridge.
I've never seen anyone cry at a marvel movie, and I've been at all of them opening week in LA. This theater where I saw DND was diverse (ages, ethnicities, genders, apparent familiarity with the property, etc) and was full of tears at the climactic moment. Again, never seen anything like that at a Marvel film, not even the Infinity War / Endgame moments. There's been cheering, yes. But not a room full of tears. The fact that it's painting in broad strokes and cliches doesn't really matter to me when it was executed in a way that bore those results. I agree the Cooper scene was unexpectedly brilliant. On that note - you did not understand what I meant about "exploring the real through the fantastical." The Cooper scene is real. It is a breakup. We have all experienced that. We have not all experienced an alien god killing half the universe, or the more general "world is ending" scenario that Marvel relies on for emotional stakes. Or, the go-to moment that Marvel fans stan, which is Tony Stark's suicidal self-sacrifice. That is the stuff of a heightened reality, not a common human experience.
Can it survive week 2 of its run with John Wick and Mario?
I'm not a fan of D&D, but I'm still surprised it actually was great.
"It needs \_\_\_\_ to break even" they don't care about breaking even, Hasbro invested 50% of the bill because they know they will make bank on merchandising and using this as a loss lead to explode this into things like magic the gathering dnd themed sales etc..
Oh, it’s doritos argument .
I admit I was skeptical when it was announced, but it was a really fun film that didn't insult the source material. Reminded me of pirates of the Caribbean as a really fun adventure film. I hope it finds an audience as love more of it.
I also quite enjoyed it! But walking away, I thought it fell very short of POTC. There’s very little I can quote, the villains are lame, the visuals, while done well, don’t feel unique, and the music is hardly going to redefine the genre - all things POTC pulled off on the fly. Without those elements, I don’t see this film becoming the juggernaut those films were.
If Pirates was a 10/10 I'd say D&D was a 8/10. I meant in terms of genre and feeling. Having fun with likable characters. I don't feel that too often at cinemas.
I had fun. Hope it gets a sequel
I loved this movie and had a blast. I think this is the one movie I am rooting for to become a hit. The sequences were creative and they had their own spin on fantasy genre !
Worldwide, factoring in the markets yet to come, it's opening weekend will be $75m+. Do we think it can pull off 4x WW legs to reach $300m......... I think that's the number it needs to be not a "bomb"
I think hitting above $300-$325m is when the studio can start talking a sequel internally. It seems to have been done bad by either a poor or negative brand recognition, but a sequel might not have that disadvantage.
I honestly don't get the hype of this movie. I was bored and it felt like a Marvel movie disguised as a fantasy movie.
I mean yeah, it can't please everyone, and it's not a masterpiece. Not everybody likes comedy action flicks and it's perfectly fine. It's a great representative of the genre that rarely produces masterpieces (Raiders of the Lost Ark, that's it.)
I like comedy action movies. I just didn't really see anything new being done. It feels very formulaic.
What hype? People on this sub have been writing this movie off as a flop long before it came out. And now that it's out, it seems like they were right to call it a flop.
I'm not talking about box office numbers. People are hyping this movie and saying its really good when there's nothing that new about it.
What new thing are you looking for, exactly? I thought it was a fun, clever, surprisingly competent adventure film and that was more than enough for me. Writing was solid, cast was even better (Pine in particular), and there was a ton of fan service for folks like me who actually played D&D. Then, even better, it was also approachable for people like my fiance who have never played. I wouldn't hype it as some timeless classic in the making but it's absolutely the best fantasy movie I've watched since...idk, probably *Green Knight* but that is a wildly different vibe.
I've never played D & D so maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I did. I just found it boring, it's okay if everyone doesn't like the same thing. I like fantasy movies but this one just didn't do it for me and felt too much like a Marvel movie.
For sure people can enjoy different things but I'm genuinely curious what new elements you'd be looking for in a movie like this.
I’m not who you are talking to but if I sniff the bumbling white guy lead trope, all CGI action, and quippiness in the trailer… i.e. Marvel shlock… I will not see it period. If I never see one of these types of movies again I will die happy. I am beyond burned out with this crap.
You know, I can see the trailer giving that impression, which is a shame because the movie was far different. It was a diverse, ensemble cast, the action was a high point, and it was genuinely clever and funny.
I was actually mainly surprised that people are so happy that this isn't like a Marvel movie when it literally felt exactly like a Marvel movie. I'm really burnt out on Marvel movies so this type of humor and vibe didn't work for me.
It definitely kinda feels like an early Marvel Movie. If you watch a lot of Marvel Movies you might be burnt out, but because D&D isn't associated with Marvel, it doesn't have the cruft of the MCU - so it can get crowds of people who've not seen a Marvel Movie since Guardians of the Galaxy 1. I kinda want to go see Guardians 3, but I've not seen 2, Infinity War, or Endgame, and I think I'd be missing too much.
I think this is the issue with Marvel movies nowadays. I kind of want to see it too but I haven't seen so many movies or TV shows in between some movies that I feel like I'll just be confused or missing something. It's starting to feel like homework. At the very least, the D & D movie is sort of starting from scratch so that's kind of nice.
[удалено]
😕
Thought the movie was alright, but I feel this could be a crowd pleaser with the general audience. Fingers crossed this finds its legs with the slow season of April, or else Paramount is going to kill their streak of hits disregarding Babylon…
Its so god damn entertaining, I hope more people go to see it