Dragonlance movies? (1 Viewer)

[Greg_S_H]

With the success of Lord of the Rings, would anyone else like to see the first Dragonlance trilogy (Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Dragons of Winter Night, and Dragons of Spring Dawning) turned into a trilogy of movies? I really loved these books as a kid, and I suspect I still will when I begin rereading them tonight.

I do suspect that LOTR may be a one-shot, special thing, and that the public's appetite for fantasy in general may not have grown because of them. And, the Dragonlance movies would probably be dismissed as LOTR knockoffs in any case. But, I think they could really work if done right.

 

[Chuck Mayer]

Greg,
I loved, LOVED, LOVED this series as a youth (in Middle School). But they ARE LOTR knockoffs. I didn't know that then, but boy it's obvious now

But then, most fantasy books are. At least the Chronicles are well-written, atmospheric, and fun.

I'd go

Take care,
Chuck

 

[Greg_S_H]

Dragonlance got me into fantasy when I was that age. Strangely, I never read the LOTR books. There was another great series where these college kids were playing an RPG and they got transferred over into the RPG world. I don't remember the title (it's in the drawer across the room, but I'm lazy ), but it was really cool back then. I remember them using bat guano to make gunpowder.

Anyway, bring on Dragonlance! And, when it's a success, they can come out with the sequel trilogy about the twins.

 

[DaveGTP]

Re-reading the series via the Annotated Chronicles now. I always have thought that the likes of Dragonlance (and Dark Elf/Forgotten Realms stuff by Salvatore) would only really fly as anime series or (only maybe) as a TV series. The story is too long to condense into movies.

Honestly, I feel like the real point of the Chronicles/Test series is Raistlin's story, and it takes a while to get there with all of the other events going on. I don't think you could truly capture it all in a movie or three. Rumors were of a Dragonlance movie (and Dark Elf for that matter), but the movie/TV rights that had been sold out to someone by TSR/WoTC expired.

Weis & Hickman are writing a new trilogy right now (non-Dragonlance), rumors have been hinted at by others about a movie project of some sort, but nothing has ever been confirmed by Weis & Hickman, to my knowledge.


And I wouldn't say that Dragonlance is really a knockoff of LOTR - just rather generic fantasy at the beginning (getting less and less so as time goes on).

If anything, you could label the Sword of Shanarra as a LOTR knockoff more - the similiarities are many (despite my liking for the series).

 

[David Rogers]

Will *n*e*v*e*r get made due to the performance of Dungeons & Dragons. If you want to blame someone, blame the director. He was at DragonCon a few months before the movie released gushing about what he'd created.

Boy what a piece of crap it was. Actually, calling it a piece of crap is an insult to legimate pieces of crap. D&D the movie was so far past Suck that the light from Suck would take thousands of years to reach the depths of crapitude Dungeons & Dragons achieved.

I'd rather like a well done Dragonlance flick though. With some decent CGI to do the dragons and magic effects with, good costuming and armor (i.e., no chainmail sweaters or tinfoil plate), and a couple of name actors.

Oh well, dreams are nice huh?

 

[Greg_S_H]

Yeah, I think you're right. The more I thought about it, the more I realized it isn't something that will ever happen. But, yeah, it is fun to imagine it.

 

[John Doran]

holy shit that's funny.

 

[Artur Meinild]

As I've also mentioned many times before, I would *love* to see any "proper" D&D material translated to the big screen. And yes, the current DVD movie is NOT proper material, and I 100% agree with David, the D&D movie simply defined a new level of suckiness that makes me want to blind and deafen myself when exposed to it, just to ignite a faint hope that my brain may be restored from the humungously shitty appearance and dialogue of the so called characters.
If studio execs think this is the potential of a D&D movie they are so completely wrong, why it got made in the first place is completely beyond me...

 

[Matthew_Brown]

You're right, there's absolutely nothing good to say about Dungeons and Dragons the film except that I didn't go and see in in theaters and when it was on TV I was able to change the channel with only a modicum of effort.

Argh.. It's films like that which kill off the fantasy genre.

 

[Kevin Grey]

There are lot of great fantasy series out there that I imagine studios are looking at in order to find "the next LOTR." The problem is that LOTR is actually shorter than most epic fantasy series. Even though few fantasy novels even approach the depth of detail Tolkein had for Middle-Earth most series are so long that attempting a faithful adaptation would be almost impossible. The original Dragonlance Chronicles are one of the few series that is probably short enough to be adapted.

I know they are working on the Chronicle of Narnia and that should be pretty interesting- its a seven-book series so I don't know if they are going to try and adapt each book into a separte movie or combine and condense. If they do try for each book I don't think it will work- I would say that Harry Potter is probably the only series popular enough to sustain more than three movies.

 

[Max Leung]

Maybe they can make some of these books into (lower-budget) miniseries instead, a la Sci-Fi Channel's Dune miniseries?

Although, I guess anime or even a computer RPG game may work better.

 

[Marvin Richardson]

I'd love to see it, but man would it be expensive. There would be a lot, and I mean a lot of special effects involved.
You want to talk about a real unfilmable series...The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. I loved this series up until about book 8...but the last two have been 1000+ pages of nothing happening. Too bad, too. At the rate he's going, I imagine the story will be done around volume 35. This series might actually benefit from someone chopping the hell out of the story. Make about 5 seperate 3.5 hour movies and you're done!

 

[MikeFR]

I would like to a completely original 'fantasy' movie made. Not that I would mind seeing a dragonlance or d&d movie made, rather I would like to see something original written for the film medium rather than an adaptation that must make comprimises for the film medium.

Hehe the Wheel of Time is the definition of unfilmable. Just being able to represent the One Power visually would be a huge hurdle to overcome.

 

[Walter Kittel]

I haven't read any of the Dragonlance stories, so no real opinion on the topic. Pardon the slightly off topic post but...

My choice for the next fantasy series to be filmed would be Stephen Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. A visual depiction of The Land could be quite striking in the hands of the right filmmaker. Given the nature of the novel's protagonist I am uncertain that a filmed version could achieve enough popularity to support the type of budget required to do justice to the settings of the novels.

- Walter.

 

[Shayne Lebrun]

It's called 'Record of Lodoss War.' There's the original OVA, then the TV series, Chronicles of the Heroic Knight.

Based on good old Dungeons and Dragons, where 'elf' and 'dwarf' were character classes in their own rights.

I believe the story goes that the animes are based on the novels that were written down versions of the author's D&D campaign.

 

[Todd Terwilliger]

What would be cool is if someone snapped up the rights to some of the old D&D modules and produced them, mini-series perhaps, for TV.

 

[DaveGTP]

The problem is, most of the movies created this way suck. There's a reason that LOTR is the first fantasy movie to really rake in the cash - quality source material. Any Hollywood fantasy movie would probably be waayyyy to typical, produced with too much CG instead of the kind of work that PJ & Weta created, and probably suck (look at the piece of crap D&D movie which I didn't even try to watch). Ideally, yes - realistically - unlikely to get a good product.

My hopes for the next great thing is the Evangelion live-action movie that WETA is working on the special effects for (although Eva is not fantasy). Hopefully the story won't be butchered of its possibly-contraversial Christian symbolism and crazy depressing themes.

 

[Phil Carter]

Walter remarked:


You're definitely right about Covenant's character. Haggard, drawn, vicious to nearly everyone he meets, rapist....the dislikable qualities go on and on. I know that when I was reading the series for the first time I wanted to give the bastard a smack across the face, several times.

Nowadays, it's a series that I turn to when I want something slightly darker-edged (George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire also works well for that purpose).

Me, I'd like to see virtually anything by Dave Duncan brought to life on the big screen (the recent King's Blades series would be REALLY cool, I think, although the Seventh Sword trilogy would be my ideal).

cheers,
Phil

 

[Kevin Grey]

I completely agree with DaveGTP. Hollywood created fantasy movies usually turn out like D&D, Willow, or Dragonheart (though I admit to a weak spot for Willow). The advantage to using a pre-existing work is that the author has already labored to create a fantasy world with rich history and characters that can be leveraged. A Hollywood screenwriter who attempts to emulate the LOTR films is likely to produce the same bad Tolkein knockoffs that have plagued the fantasy book genre since The Sword of Shanarra was published in the late 70s.

I think the best alternative would be to hire acclaimed fantasy writers to write the screenplays for movies based on their worlds. For example, hire George RR Martin to do a film trilogy based around The Song of Ice and Fire. It could use the same premise and many of the same characters but the specific events that occur would have to be entirely reworked to fit within the confines of three movies. Or perhaps a completely new story in the same world. As long as its the author doing the changes, or perhaps an author paired with another screenwriter, I don't have a problem with changes to the source material.

 

[Todd Terwilliger]

The Thomas Covenant story would be cool but between the un-PC nature of the tale and the somewhat unlikeable nature of the lead character I'm not sure Hollywood would ever touch or, if they did, they wouldn't alter the story to fit its own image.