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The Path for a Good “Dungeons & Dragons” Movie is Very Narrow

Translating the tabletop game to the big screen is fraught with danger

The D&D movie was in the news again this week as it was announced actor Hugh Grant would be playing the film’s villain, prompting millions of jokes on Twitter about a bumbling, charming stutterer with a killer smile. His dark turn in HBO’s The Undoing aside, Grant is a strange choice as he’s more dashing than dastardly. It’s not hard to imagine him twirling a suitably wicked mustache though, and therein lies the (potential) problem.

You would be hard-pressed to find many fans of the previous D&D films. They are cheesey camp, cut from the same spandex as the 1960's Batman television show starring Adam West, but nowhere near as groovy. They are also objectively bad films – poorly written and cheaply cast.

This go-around, the film has secured an impressive bench of actors. Little is known about the script, but it is written and directed by the duo behind 2018's Game Night, a hilarious comedy with some action elements. Which also suggests a certain type of film.

Fantasy films are notoriously hard to get right. Even after the smashing success of The Lord of the Rings films, nobody was lining up to make fantasy films or television. The fantasy genre loves deep lore, complicated geopolitical scenarios, bizarre races, and characters with ridiculous names – all of which make the adaptation process difficult (and contributes to the general ghettoization of sci-fi/fantasy literature). Nobody takes the material seriously (a fatal flaw in the previous D&D films).

That all changed with Game of Thrones, which proved you could tell a complicated fantasy story with all the lore and worldbuilding goodies and make it engaging and enjoyable (at least until that final season). Since then, we’ve had more fantasy material on the screen than we can shake a remote controller at, all of it cut from the same gray cloth: Shannara Chronicles, Witcher, His Dark Materials, etc.

A dour, self-serious D&D film is a guaranteed disaster – this is a game where dick jokes are the norm and shenanigans the order of the day. But neither is a straight comedy the answer, or even a comedy with action. The absurdity of films like The Other Guys, Tropic Thunder, or Jumanji won’t cut it. The stakes need to matter to the characters.

The best chance for a good D&D film would be one in which it adheres to the well-worn path established by action-comedies such as Shanghai Noon, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Rush Hour. The action in these films isn’t taken lightly, is often a matter of life and death, but is frequently punctuated with moments of levity. In fact, I think the first Guardians film is probably the perfect template to follow: a hilarious, heartfelt action film that unites a group of weirdos against a common goal; most D&D characters are nothing if not weird.

There’s been some speculation that the film would try to incorporate the game aspect of D&D, in that one or more of the actors portray characters who are thrust into a fantastic world (ala Jumanji). While that could work, this D&D fan would rather see something that brings the spirit of the game to life while leaving the mechanics at home. We don’t need to see characters refer to saving throws or d20-sided dice. If the characters don’t take the proceedings seriously, the audience won’t either.

The talent involved has me optimistic that this time, we’ll get a good D&D film. But I’m not all that hopeful.

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