Did We Actually Get a Good D&D Movie???
By Maddy Piggott
This review was carried out by Maddy Piggott as part of our ongoing partnership with Dendy Cinema. If any UC student wishes to get involved with film review opportunities, please reach out to us at curieux@canberra.edu.au.
I have a confession to make. I genuinely love bad movies and I also love playing D&D. So, when this movie was announced, I was immediately intrigued. It’s no secret that game to movie adaptations have been terrible in recent years and needless to say, I didn’t have high hopes for this being any better. But the press kept coming and the more information I heard, the more hopeful I became. Then the trailer dropped… Red wizards? A heist gone wrong? An accurate portrayal of Speak with Dead? I was onboard. But there was one line in the trailer and all the advertising that really sold it to me:
“Truth be told we helped the wrong person steal the wrong thing. We didn’t mean to unleash the greatest evil the world has ever known. But we’re going to fix it.”
I took this line and ran with it! It shaped the way I viewed the trailer as it was designed to do. So, this is what I was expecting: A D&D party, maybe down on their luck, agree to a heist where they help a red wizard steal an artifact for an ancient ritual and now it’s their personal responsibility to clean up the mess they created.
SPOLIER ALERT: This isn’t really the case. The character motivations are actually more wholesome than that and are significantly more personal. The key theme in this film is family, and not the party being a found family. The bard has an actual daughter that drives nearly all the motivation, and story, for this film, despite her not being mentioned in any advertising.
Edgin (The Bard) and Holga (The Barbarian) have to actually be convinced to do the original heist in the first place and Edgin only agrees because there’s an artefact that will allow him to resurrect his dead wife. Inevitability, this heist goes wrong, resulting in Edgin and Holga getting arrested. But even once they escape prison (2 years later), their focus is on reuniting with the daughter and retrieving the artefact.
The threat of the Red Wizard Sofina almost acts as a subplot throughout the film only really coming into fruition right at the climax. Right at the end of the film, the party sees her plan being completed and decides to step in and stop her then and there, partially out of a sense of guilt for unknowingly being a part of it in the first place.
Despite my differing expectations, I don’t think this movie is bad. The acting is both comedic and heartfelt. The effects, sets and costumes are incredible. And this movie brings the Swordcoast to life in a believable way. The filmmakers also do not expect their audience to have a pre-existing knowledge of D&D (be it mechanics, settings or creatures). Everything essential to the story is explained or can be taken at face value. But there are definitely easter eggs for long time D&D fans to enjoy sprinklered throughout it’s 2h 14min runtime. I can’t help myself and have to geek out over a couple of them.
The first is the other D&D party that the main group encounter in the maze who are dressed like the characters from the 90’s cartoon. The costumes are awkward, accurate and beautifully colour coded.
Then you have your traditional D&D monsters including; a displacer beast, a mimic and dragons with type themed breath weapons (finally). But my personal favourite has to be the magic effects that resemble specific spells that aren’t ever named by the characters. An assassin clearly uses Green Flame Blade as his preferred weapon of choice, while Xenk (The Paladin) seems to use Holy Weapon in his major fight.
All in all, I truly think this movie is worth seeing, whether or not you’ve played D&D. As long as you don’t go in expecting it to be something it’s not, I can tell you that you’re in for a fun time. At its core, this is a light-hearted family-themed adventure comedy, and it does a damn good job at it. Hopefully this movie is the start of good, high-quality adaptations for the Table Top Role Playing Game (TTRPG) and video game community.